Is the gamecube slumping? Yes, but it isn't Nintendos cash cow right now anyway, the gameboy is. Most of the people crying for nintendo to improve the gamecube position are analysts outside the company. Sure more profit is always good but nintendo is hardly in any sort of danger right now. No big projects forth coming? Nintendo can be notoriously tight lipped at times, look at the Gameboy advanced SP, no info on it even leaked much earlier than a month before launch. They could be hiding a couple aces, and its not like MS or Sony have killer aps slated for this year either.
The big picture could change though. Sony's Portable is going to give a serious challenge for the mature gamers (18+) but its cost is going to be too high to capture the younger gamers at first. Nintendo is leaning very heavy on that portable leg and if it gets kicked out from under them they are going to be headed down the road Sega just recently hopped along if they don't get their claws into something else. Its hard to say though if this could happen over night. Sony venturing into the portable market is very similar to the launch of the game cube: a superior (in most respects) console against the entrenched behemoth.
Also keep this in mind: Sony's profits were very low last quarter, while their console is doing well, the company as a whole did not perform as well as Sony would have liked. Neither Nintendo or MS is so far behind that they couldn't rise up and close the gap quickly. If the market fragments with the next generation, Sony is the one with the most to lose, to go from 80% to 33% is a huge loss while virtualy any outcome would be better for Nintendo and MS since they together control only about 20-30%
I am not a big fan of guides in most cases since to me, getting a solution without finding it yourself defeats the entire purpose of playing the game in the first place. I do however purchase guides under certain circumstances. Some RPGs for example have just absurd amounts of complexity and having some charts to organize information can be welcome indeed.
Dark Cloud 2 springs to mind. If you have never played it, the game boasts a number of very deep side games and a robust item crafting system that could take you years to completely chronicle yourself. Having a reference for fish breeding, and inventing can save me from a lot of boring repetitive experimentation. While I think the fishing is neat, I have no desire to spend 40 hours doing it. Am I cheating? I guess but I prefer to think of it as speeding through something I don't find as entertaining in favor of spending more time beating monsters with my wrench.
Most games however are not this complex, A typical FPS has you wandering through a fairly straight-forward maze shooting and killing things and looking for some way to open a door at the end of it. Do I really need a guide to tell me that in order to finish the Last stage of Halo I need to drive really fast and not hit obstructions? Is it any mystery that I am supposed to shoot everybody I see when playing Red Faction 2?
Are guides dying? Not anytime soon. While the store charges you $15-$20 a piece for them, keep in mind that they only pay about a dollar a piece from the publisher so the huge markup balances any losses incurred from unsold stock. Besides, every on-line FAQ that appears in the first week of a game's release is plagiarized straight out of a guide anyway. If guides were gone, the FAQs would shrink up as well.
While I would hardly consider myself much of a supporter for the music industry, and in particular the RIAA, but the "True competition" argument is absurd. One of the edges that the "unauthorized reproducers" enjoy is that all they need to do is duplicate the album. The other costs associated with the production of an album, such as financing the tour, promoting the album, and the cost of the post-production are shouldered by the artists and (gasp) the record companies. All the Unauthorized reproducer needs to do is burn a bunch of discs, and sell them to stores. Is the RIAA wrong in trying to defend themselves? Not intrinsically though their current strategy can be likened to firing a shotgun at people standing in their yard (file swappers) and doing nothing about the people breaking into their homes (the large scale pirates) I suppose the only thing that determines their level of action is the vulnerability of the target. File swappers are kids with no legal defenses and the large-scale pirates are untouchable without the cooperation of the governments of their homelands.
Now, does an artist really need all of the benefits that the record companies can give them? Not really. I think it would be entirely possible for an artists to strike out on their own, sell their own albums via the internet and if enough like minded individuals were to get together establish another means of gaining exposure (internet radio is one possibility) Perhaps a better business model would see the artists owning their own music (radical I know) and contracting record labels to produce the albums for distribution to stores. In this way, those record labels that give the cheapest rates are the ones that get the business.
I got turned on to this game a few months back, and its great if you like old school shooter type game play. It manages to mix a very tight shooter with some strategy and resource management. Your not only out to destroy the enemy, but you also have to gather resources, research new technologies and defend your mother ship. Imagine X-Com Interceptor in 2-d and actually good.
For $25 you could buy this game, or some crack. Both are addictive, but Starscape will last you a lot longer than the crack will and it's a lot more fun too.
They should get the same people that due the "truth" anti-smoking adds to do some anti-file sharing adds.
They can create some eye-catching adds to help promote the awareness of the hidden dangers of file-sharing.
"This is Timmy, he lost his job because evil File sharers up-loaded kiddie porn onto his computer and his boss found it. Now Timmy is in jail, and he spends his days constructing shivs out of plastic silverware and avoiding gang rape in the showers"
"This is Rich, he used to direct films for Universal Studios but since file sharing started, none of his films have turned a profit. Now hes turning tricks on sunset blvd to support his family"
If the public only knew how terrible file sharing is, they would never do it again!
Oh no I know how long DW7 is, but I was able to stick with it a lot longer, it just has, IMO much better pacing. Balders gate was like this big rut: welcome to town, half a dozen people unload their troubles on me, I run around and solve the quests, move on to next area. Sure this is typical RPG structure and certainly DW7 does it too, but its so much more elegant in DW7, and it ultimately leads to a more interesting game.
Sure, we all have a pretty good idea of what a typical Japanese RPG is, but this ignores the fact that they are not all the same. For every Final Fantasy style game, there is a Dragon Quest style game with its own look and feel. Not all games force you to move from one cut scene to another, it just so happens that the most popular and most easily recognized Japanese RPGs do.
Western RPGs have their draw backs as well though. Games like Balder's gate or Morrowind are absurdly long, 60 hours plus, and while I personally appretiate the depth and breadth of the worlds that these two series bring me, I find myself getting bored with the relaxed pacing. I never finished Morrowind or Balder's Gate despite putting in crap tons of hours. I certainly enjoyed them but how much is too much?
I would say my personal all time favorite RPGs are mostly Japanese, but not the typical choices you may be expecting:(in no paticular order)
Final Fantast Tactics
Vagrant Story
Valkyrie Profile
Final Fantasy 4
Fallout
That would be akin to sitting down with some friends to play a game of "Monopoly" and mid game when Steve has 6 hotels on various properties, I take a 50 out of my wallet and hand it to him in exchange for his property. Its a game, I payed Parker Brothers $30 to own a copy of their real-estate trading game, but I bought it so I could play the game. If I only derive pleasure from owning little red plastic hotels I am missing the point of the exercise.
People don't climb Mt Everest so that they can have a better view, they climb it to climb it. Renting a helicopter to take you to the top is not the same thing even if the results are the same.
I was never a big fan of, well John Carpenter in general. But his work does have a certain something that makes it memorable even when it isn't worth remembering. I find myself liking and at the same time loathing his films. He has a vision; he just doesn't seem to be able to translate it into film very well. (Sound like anyone else we know?)
I admit that I play some online games that I end up having to pay for. I play PSO with a few friends and my brother from time to time. I played AC2 for awhile, I am playing in the FFXI beta right now.
But I could never see the justification in buying items with real money. I mean its a freakin game, as soon as it becomes so important to me that I'll spend $100 for an imaginary sword I hope that somebody is kind enough to snuff me out. The "items" one finds in a game are, at most, numbers. I can no more own a magic broad sword +2 vs Nose goblins as i can own the number 7.
People cheating/hacking can disrupt my enjoyment of a game, but its a game. Im not going to press charges against them, im not going to go over to their house and tell their mom. If the host of said game can't keep the miscreants under control than I will quit and find some better use for my money, simple as that.
People are just way too attached to their own self worth. It wouldn't be hard to throw in some arguments about artifical spirituality and psuedo-relegious behaviors associated with online gaming but I am out of scotch
What they should do, is Hand the Tomb Raider franchise over to 3D0. They have years of expereince milking mediocre games for millions of sequels. Maybe we could see some "Army Men"/"Tomb Raider" cross overs. Like Lara gets shrunk down and then has to defeat the evil tan army while recovering some artifact of immense value.
Ya know, when I first lifted the sig out of Futurama I made a single typo, and then I got flamed for it. So I got to thinking "damn is it ever easy to piss people off on slashdot, all I have to do is mix and match some programing languages and suddenly everyone thinks their the first one to notice my supposed mistake."
You see, I am laughing at you, not with you.
Thanks for the laugh.
Most of the targets seem to have been into top 40 stuff, thats a funny coinicidence. Or maybe file sharers have the same poor taste in music as everybody else?
There are 2 ways to look at a system such as this.
If we focus only on the potential positives of such a system, it looks good. One of the biggest complaints that people have is that the public school system does very little to tailor their curriculum to students that don't "fit the mold". Exceptional students are left in classes with average students where they quickly grow bored which can lead to a myriad of problems, and students that may be having difficulty whether it be from a learning disability, issues with parents or any other factor that can make an adolescents life complicated. Monitoring attendance and academic performance will make it easier to target the special attention. Blah blah blah we all know this song and dance.
But there are a whole host of reasons why this system isn't the best of ideas. Profiling and particularly racial profiling may very well lead to a lot of self-fulfilling prophecies. Secondly, if schools can't spare the resources to help those students that they know are having problems already, what makes us think that they are going to be able to handle it any better with a score card to consult? Many teachers and facilities are overworked and under equipped to handle the students that they have. Getting a database to track under achievers without providing the resources to do anything about it is akin to installing brand new instrumentation to a car that you can't afford to fix. To top these complaints off, the most common method states employ to rectify poor school performance is to cut the funding levels of schools that don't meet state mandated expectations. This is going to make it even easier to justifying cut budgets.
In a prefect world absent of ulterior motive and intrinsic human stupidity, this system could be helpful, but the way things are right now far too many other things would have to change before its going to do anyone a lick of good.
+2 dipolomacy? I thought one of the traits of the race is that they never feel at home with either human or elves. Why would an outcast get a diplomacy bonus in neither parent race seems them as "one of us"?
I never did like elves, maybe I have this backwards...
I agree with your rogue complaints myself, at least I did during first and second edition as far as HP is concerned but the number of skills and abilities that they now have in 3rd/3.5 more than makes up for it.
The medium leveled rogue will take no damage from powerful AOE attacks if they can pass a simple reflex save (which they likely will) where as the fighters and clerics are going to see a large chunk of their HP knocked off in a heart beat. Also the reworking of sneak attacks makes them ideal snipers/back stabbers. These abilities can let them eaisly out pace fighters in straight damage but of course you need to be careful and creative. If you have a "Final fantasy" DM (that is one that pictures combat as all the combatants just standing in a line and exchanging blows without any sort of strategy) your going to have a boring night.
THe best way to get that tankable thief is to dual class. A few levels of fighter can give you an extra bunch of HP, better attack rolls and a few extra combat feats. These combined with your hiding and sneak attacks makes you a force to be reckoned with.
Gotta disagree with you, Im in the FF XI beta and its pretty solid if MMORPG are your thing. Not a hack job, and definately not just a "mee too" type of game. THe game is pollished to a glossy sheen the like of which I have not seen in any other MMORPG.
Why not branch out? Taking a different approach on one isn't going to hurt too many feelings (i think after #8 it would take a lot of crap to shake off their fan bases)
Allow me to prepare a defense of another industry in the same spirit as this one given by the telemaketers federation of evil:
Not smoking is a harmful socially irresponsible thing to do because it would cost the medical profession Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs every year if nobody smoked, therefore everybody should smoke whether they want to or not
Remind me again why I am supposed to care about these idiots?
Sure, but so is justifying attacks on other countries with fabricated weapons assessments.
While I see how something like this may place the public "in fear" or even be manipulated behind the scenes so that it might be used to sway opinion, I think that this is more likely to calm than terrorize. Turning such events into games desensitizes people and distances them from the grim realities that they represent.
Why not though? Las Vegas is the very manifestation of the American Dream, why not embrace it and make it part of our foreign and domestic policy.
I wish my cable ISP was this clueless, but no matter how bad the service gets, they always seem to be able to keep it straight when I owe them money. I miss a bill and Im looking at snow and "cannot be found"s in no time flat.
Hypothetical:
Suppose I make a hot new video game about a tax attorney turned vigilante crime fighter. Lets say his real name is Hulk Hogan.
Should the real Hulk be able to sue me even though the character in my game bares no likeness to the WWE wrestler whatsoever? What if it could be proven that I had no intention on cashing in on the name but that it was simply a coincidence that the names matched?
Granted, Mr Payne never achieved any where near the notoriety of the Hulkamaniac but it's the same situation. Is there a minimum level of fame you must attain before you can be allowed to sue others for its usage?
What if I named my son Max Payne. Should Rockstar games and Mr Payne the wrestler sue me for using their names?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure they really need to do anything.
Is the gamecube slumping? Yes, but it isn't Nintendos cash cow right now anyway, the gameboy is. Most of the people crying for nintendo to improve the gamecube position are analysts outside the company. Sure more profit is always good but nintendo is hardly in any sort of danger right now. No big projects forth coming? Nintendo can be notoriously tight lipped at times, look at the Gameboy advanced SP, no info on it even leaked much earlier than a month before launch. They could be hiding a couple aces, and its not like MS or Sony have killer aps slated for this year either.
The big picture could change though. Sony's Portable is going to give a serious challenge for the mature gamers (18+) but its cost is going to be too high to capture the younger gamers at first. Nintendo is leaning very heavy on that portable leg and if it gets kicked out from under them they are going to be headed down the road Sega just recently hopped along if they don't get their claws into something else. Its hard to say though if this could happen over night. Sony venturing into the portable market is very similar to the launch of the game cube: a superior (in most respects) console against the entrenched behemoth.
Also keep this in mind: Sony's profits were very low last quarter, while their console is doing well, the company as a whole did not perform as well as Sony would have liked. Neither Nintendo or MS is so far behind that they couldn't rise up and close the gap quickly. If the market fragments with the next generation, Sony is the one with the most to lose, to go from 80% to 33% is a huge loss while virtualy any outcome would be better for Nintendo and MS since they together control only about 20-30%
I stop rambling now...
I am not a big fan of guides in most cases since to me, getting a solution without finding it yourself defeats the entire purpose of playing the game in the first place. I do however purchase guides under certain circumstances. Some RPGs for example have just absurd amounts of complexity and having some charts to organize information can be welcome indeed.
Dark Cloud 2 springs to mind. If you have never played it, the game boasts a number of very deep side games and a robust item crafting system that could take you years to completely chronicle yourself. Having a reference for fish breeding, and inventing can save me from a lot of boring repetitive experimentation. While I think the fishing is neat, I have no desire to spend 40 hours doing it. Am I cheating? I guess but I prefer to think of it as speeding through something I don't find as entertaining in favor of spending more time beating monsters with my wrench.
Most games however are not this complex, A typical FPS has you wandering through a fairly straight-forward maze shooting and killing things and looking for some way to open a door at the end of it. Do I really need a guide to tell me that in order to finish the Last stage of Halo I need to drive really fast and not hit obstructions? Is it any mystery that I am supposed to shoot everybody I see when playing Red Faction 2?
Are guides dying? Not anytime soon. While the store charges you $15-$20 a piece for them, keep in mind that they only pay about a dollar a piece from the publisher so the huge markup balances any losses incurred from unsold stock. Besides, every on-line FAQ that appears in the first week of a game's release is plagiarized straight out of a guide anyway. If guides were gone, the FAQs would shrink up as well.
While I would hardly consider myself much of a supporter for the music industry, and in particular the RIAA, but the "True competition" argument is absurd. One of the edges that the "unauthorized reproducers" enjoy is that all they need to do is duplicate the album. The other costs associated with the production of an album, such as financing the tour, promoting the album, and the cost of the post-production are shouldered by the artists and (gasp) the record companies. All the Unauthorized reproducer needs to do is burn a bunch of discs, and sell them to stores. Is the RIAA wrong in trying to defend themselves? Not intrinsically though their current strategy can be likened to firing a shotgun at people standing in their yard (file swappers) and doing nothing about the people breaking into their homes (the large scale pirates) I suppose the only thing that determines their level of action is the vulnerability of the target. File swappers are kids with no legal defenses and the large-scale pirates are untouchable without the cooperation of the governments of their homelands.
Now, does an artist really need all of the benefits that the record companies can give them? Not really. I think it would be entirely possible for an artists to strike out on their own, sell their own albums via the internet and if enough like minded individuals were to get together establish another means of gaining exposure (internet radio is one possibility) Perhaps a better business model would see the artists owning their own music (radical I know) and contracting record labels to produce the albums for distribution to stores. In this way, those record labels that give the cheapest rates are the ones that get the business.
I got turned on to this game a few months back, and its great if you like old school shooter type game play. It manages to mix a very tight shooter with some strategy and resource management. Your not only out to destroy the enemy, but you also have to gather resources, research new technologies and defend your mother ship. Imagine X-Com Interceptor in 2-d and actually good .
For $25 you could buy this game, or some crack. Both are addictive, but Starscape will last you a lot longer than the crack will and it's a lot more fun too.
They should get the same people that due the "truth" anti-smoking adds to do some anti-file sharing adds.
They can create some eye-catching adds to help promote the awareness of the hidden dangers of file-sharing.
"This is Timmy, he lost his job because evil File sharers up-loaded kiddie porn onto his computer and his boss found it. Now Timmy is in jail, and he spends his days constructing shivs out of plastic silverware and avoiding gang rape in the showers"
"This is Rich, he used to direct films for Universal Studios but since file sharing started, none of his films have turned a profit. Now hes turning tricks on sunset blvd to support his family"
If the public only knew how terrible file sharing is, they would never do it again!
Oh no I know how long DW7 is, but I was able to stick with it a lot longer, it just has, IMO much better pacing. Balders gate was like this big rut: welcome to town, half a dozen people unload their troubles on me, I run around and solve the quests, move on to next area. Sure this is typical RPG structure and certainly DW7 does it too, but its so much more elegant in DW7, and it ultimately leads to a more interesting game.
It depends on what your playing.
Sure, we all have a pretty good idea of what a typical Japanese RPG is, but this ignores the fact that they are not all the same. For every Final Fantasy style game, there is a Dragon Quest style game with its own look and feel. Not all games force you to move from one cut scene to another, it just so happens that the most popular and most easily recognized Japanese RPGs do.
Western RPGs have their draw backs as well though. Games like Balder's gate or Morrowind are absurdly long, 60 hours plus, and while I personally appretiate the depth and breadth of the worlds that these two series bring me, I find myself getting bored with the relaxed pacing. I never finished Morrowind or Balder's Gate despite putting in crap tons of hours. I certainly enjoyed them but how much is too much?
I would say my personal all time favorite RPGs are mostly Japanese, but not the typical choices you may be expecting:(in no paticular order)
Final Fantast Tactics
Vagrant Story
Valkyrie Profile
Final Fantasy 4
Fallout
That would be akin to sitting down with some friends to play a game of "Monopoly" and mid game when Steve has 6 hotels on various properties, I take a 50 out of my wallet and hand it to him in exchange for his property. Its a game, I payed Parker Brothers $30 to own a copy of their real-estate trading game, but I bought it so I could play the game. If I only derive pleasure from owning little red plastic hotels I am missing the point of the exercise.
People don't climb Mt Everest so that they can have a better view, they climb it to climb it. Renting a helicopter to take you to the top is not the same thing even if the results are the same.
I was never a big fan of, well John Carpenter in general. But his work does have a certain something that makes it memorable even when it isn't worth remembering. I find myself liking and at the same time loathing his films. He has a vision; he just doesn't seem to be able to translate it into film very well. (Sound like anyone else we know?)
I admit that I play some online games that I end up having to pay for. I play PSO with a few friends and my brother from time to time. I played AC2 for awhile, I am playing in the FFXI beta right now.
But I could never see the justification in buying items with real money. I mean its a freakin game, as soon as it becomes so important to me that I'll spend $100 for an imaginary sword I hope that somebody is kind enough to snuff me out. The "items" one finds in a game are, at most, numbers. I can no more own a magic broad sword +2 vs Nose goblins as i can own the number 7.
People cheating/hacking can disrupt my enjoyment of a game, but its a game. Im not going to press charges against them, im not going to go over to their house and tell their mom. If the host of said game can't keep the miscreants under control than I will quit and find some better use for my money, simple as that.
People are just way too attached to their own self worth. It wouldn't be hard to throw in some arguments about artifical spirituality and psuedo-relegious behaviors associated with online gaming but I am out of scotch
What they should do, is Hand the Tomb Raider franchise over to 3D0. They have years of expereince milking mediocre games for millions of sequels. Maybe we could see some "Army Men"/"Tomb Raider" cross overs. Like Lara gets shrunk down and then has to defeat the evil tan army while recovering some artifact of immense value.
you obviously aren't a bowler.
Ya know, when I first lifted the sig out of Futurama I made a single typo, and then I got flamed for it. So I got to thinking "damn is it ever easy to piss people off on slashdot, all I have to do is mix and match some programing languages and suddenly everyone thinks their the first one to notice my supposed mistake."
You see, I am laughing at you, not with you.
Thanks for the laugh.
Lets see....
Most of the targets seem to have been into top 40 stuff, thats a funny coinicidence. Or maybe file sharers have the same poor taste in music as everybody else?
There are 2 ways to look at a system such as this.
If we focus only on the potential positives of such a system, it looks good. One of the biggest complaints that people have is that the public school system does very little to tailor their curriculum to students that don't "fit the mold". Exceptional students are left in classes with average students where they quickly grow bored which can lead to a myriad of problems, and students that may be having difficulty whether it be from a learning disability, issues with parents or any other factor that can make an adolescents life complicated. Monitoring attendance and academic performance will make it easier to target the special attention. Blah blah blah we all know this song and dance.
But there are a whole host of reasons why this system isn't the best of ideas. Profiling and particularly racial profiling may very well lead to a lot of self-fulfilling prophecies. Secondly, if schools can't spare the resources to help those students that they know are having problems already, what makes us think that they are going to be able to handle it any better with a score card to consult? Many teachers and facilities are overworked and under equipped to handle the students that they have. Getting a database to track under achievers without providing the resources to do anything about it is akin to installing brand new instrumentation to a car that you can't afford to fix. To top these complaints off, the most common method states employ to rectify poor school performance is to cut the funding levels of schools that don't meet state mandated expectations. This is going to make it even easier to justifying cut budgets.
In a prefect world absent of ulterior motive and intrinsic human stupidity, this system could be helpful, but the way things are right now far too many other things would have to change before its going to do anyone a lick of good.
+2 dipolomacy? I thought one of the traits of the race is that they never feel at home with either human or elves. Why would an outcast get a diplomacy bonus in neither parent race seems them as "one of us"?
I never did like elves, maybe I have this backwards...
I agree with your rogue complaints myself, at least I did during first and second edition as far as HP is concerned but the number of skills and abilities that they now have in 3rd/3.5 more than makes up for it.
The medium leveled rogue will take no damage from powerful AOE attacks if they can pass a simple reflex save (which they likely will) where as the fighters and clerics are going to see a large chunk of their HP knocked off in a heart beat. Also the reworking of sneak attacks makes them ideal snipers/back stabbers. These abilities can let them eaisly out pace fighters in straight damage but of course you need to be careful and creative. If you have a "Final fantasy" DM (that is one that pictures combat as all the combatants just standing in a line and exchanging blows without any sort of strategy) your going to have a boring night.
THe best way to get that tankable thief is to dual class. A few levels of fighter can give you an extra bunch of HP, better attack rolls and a few extra combat feats. These combined with your hiding and sneak attacks makes you a force to be reckoned with.
Gotta disagree with you, Im in the FF XI beta and its pretty solid if MMORPG are your thing. Not a hack job, and definately not just a "mee too" type of game. THe game is pollished to a glossy sheen the like of which I have not seen in any other MMORPG.
Why not branch out? Taking a different approach on one isn't going to hurt too many feelings (i think after #8 it would take a lot of crap to shake off their fan bases)
Allow me to prepare a defense of another industry in the same spirit as this one given by the telemaketers federation of evil:
Not smoking is a harmful socially irresponsible thing to do because it would cost the medical profession Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs every year if nobody smoked, therefore everybody should smoke whether they want to or not
Remind me again why I am supposed to care about these idiots?
well the only problem is, that traditionaly, nintendo has been well, traditional.
It is an interesting idea though.
Now the "Arnold Rimmer" song is in my head, thank you oh so much. It will be there for days.....
that the Republicans are refusing to deal with Democratic lobbyists
Hey! thats no fair! Equal time and equal bribes! Thats a corner stone of the American system!
whew that reads a lot more callous than it felt when I wrote it, perhaps i should have included a "/sarcasm" at the end of that...
Is this is poor taste?
Sure, but so is justifying attacks on other countries with fabricated weapons assessments.
While I see how something like this may place the public "in fear" or even be manipulated behind the scenes so that it might be used to sway opinion, I think that this is more likely to calm than terrorize. Turning such events into games desensitizes people and distances them from the grim realities that they represent.
Why not though? Las Vegas is the very manifestation of the American Dream, why not embrace it and make it part of our foreign and domestic policy.
I wish my cable ISP was this clueless, but no matter how bad the service gets, they always seem to be able to keep it straight when I owe them money. I miss a bill and Im looking at snow and "cannot be found"s in no time flat.
Hypothetical:
Suppose I make a hot new video game about a tax attorney turned vigilante crime fighter. Lets say his real name is Hulk Hogan.
Should the real Hulk be able to sue me even though the character in my game bares no likeness to the WWE wrestler whatsoever? What if it could be proven that I had no intention on cashing in on the name but that it was simply a coincidence that the names matched?
Granted, Mr Payne never achieved any where near the notoriety of the Hulkamaniac but it's the same situation. Is there a minimum level of fame you must attain before you can be allowed to sue others for its usage?
What if I named my son Max Payne. Should Rockstar games and Mr Payne the wrestler sue me for using their names?