I'm still very bothered about their news release last week:
"Infinium Labs Inc, onwer of the upcomming Phantom Gaming Service, is proud to annoucne that on January 6, 2004, Infinium Labs Inc. has acquired Infinium Labs Inc. in a merger. In such, Infinium Labs has acquired the rights to the Phantom Gaming Service. Infinium Labs Inc has no other material operations except those acquired in the merger with Ininium Labs Inc."
Sorry, but I'm still not convinced. Also, all of the developers that they mentioned (I checked a couple dozen of them) don't seem to confess to supporting the system on their own sites. I'm still waiting for a reply from Blizzard and a couple others asking if they really are supporting the Phantom.
The only thing that can dethrone Nintendo is Nintendo themselves.
The N64 and Gamecube would have dominated the Sony models if they had been out first, even if the Playstations were superior systems. Name recognition alone would have carried them.
But Nintendo dropped the ball, and was late to market, and they lost much of what the NES and SNES had built, and I don't think they will win that back at this point.
The only time to break into the portable market will be when the GBA is fading and Nintendo is working on the next generation. Beat Nintendo to market with a cheap, simple, fun system, and you'll have a snowball's chance in hell. Don't go all out on features. Nintendo has made great products because they're cheap, simple, and fun. Nokia has failed because they made an expensive and complex system, and those alone have washed the fun away, lackluster games notwithstanding.
TO: Nokia CC: Anybody else making a system to compete with the GBA FROM: Captain Obvious SUBJECT: Portable gaming systems
You all have it entirely wrong, but even getting it right won't save you at this point.
A set-top-box console will cost you $100-200 right now. Even the X-box has a relatively reasonable pricetag right now. They all have huge libraries of games, especially the PS2.
The successful portable systems (GBA, and the Wonderswan at least could move units in Japan) are under $100 bucks, and have huge libraries.
These new portables cost $300-500, and have a handful of games available. You lose. It's almost forgone conclusion. You're following almost the exact same business model that Nokia did with the N-Gage, and like a herd of lemmings you're all running out to sea.
They're too expensive, and have too few games to buy as a set-top-box, but as a portable, they're worthless. A portable should be cheap because it's at the most risk, and it's a lot more likely to need replacing than a set-top console.
My GBA gets bounced around a lot. It's taken trips down stairs, it's been dropped in puddles, stepped on, kicked, thrown in frustration, and it still works (although I did break the contact edge on my Golden Sun cart). If I do manage to break it, it's cheap enough to replace - $80 isn't peanuts, but it won't mean skipping meals.
I have a friend who has an N-Gage. Or should say HAD an N-Gage. Let's say it broke well. He dropped it once onto a carpeted floor, and it doesn't work anymore. And at $300 to replace, he's not getting a new one. Instead, he bought a GBA and SIX games, and still had enough money left to pay off the bet I made him that he'd buy a GBA before the year was out.
I tried to imagine how much money I'd be out if my GBA was as fragile as an N-Gage. It gave me a headache. I'd probably have had to sell my car by now.
RP in online games isn't all that much work, really. For the most part, it's simply a matter of talking about in-game things as real, and not referencing out-of-game material. At the most, it's a bit of dialect speech, which I generally didn't bother with short of the drunken slur while presiding at guild meetings (The guild I ran was always... shall we say, Well Lubricated. I always brought a few bottles of Parian Stout to council meetings).
The other thing is that 3D on phones ends up being a catch-22, which is why I figured back when it was announced that the N-Gage was not going to make a splash, but more of a loud plunk followed by the sound of crickets chirping.
For one, you'll never be able to hold a candle to the GBA for a long time. Nintendo has made some blunders with the GameCube, but they havn't missed a beat with the GBA.
For two, as soon as you start basing your system on graphics (The GBA is mostly 2D and mode 6 fake 3D, so its games have to market more heavily on gameplay and other aspects - Nintendo has a good track record with making low-end graphics compete successfully against high-end graphics. PCs far outclassed the SNES/SFC for most of its life, but the SNES even gave the PS1 and Sega Saturn a run for their money in Japan before the N64 came out) people look at it, and say, "Psst. My PS2 has far better graphics." Don't even try to bring up the, "Yeah, let's see you stick your PS2 in your pocket and play on the bus" argumentwith them, becuase it doesn't work.
My theory on gamers is that we're broken into three classes:
Eye Class: What some people call graphics whores. Sometimes I think they'd play XtremE Couch Sitting 2004 if it has good enough graphics. Unfortunately for RPG and strategy gamers, this is by far the largest group of gamers there is, and the group responsible for video games passing from the playthings of techies, nerds, and geeks to the mainstream popular culture, and it's their wants that hold the highest sway over the gaming industry in general.
Brain Class: Those people who wax nostalgic and call videogames the next form of literiture. Mostly play RPGs, but usually look for strong plot and character in games, and will readily sacrifice graphics, sound, even gameplay in some cases for that experience. This is the dominant group you find in discussion boards for old game systems like the SNES, and contribute more than any other to the "immortal games" that still get played a decade or more after their contemporaries pass into obscurity.
Endorphin Class: The people who just want to have fun. They may appreciate plot, or like graphics, but when it comes down to it, it's a game, and they just want to have fun. Gameplay is key, and will excuse poor graphics or lack of plot. I tend to lump sports gamers into this group, since most of them I've known are after the "___ball experience." Also, most young gamers will fall into this category, and my nephews have just as much fun goofing around with my old Atari as with their own PS2's, which gives me hope that they won't turn into Eye Class gamers in the future.
Now the problem with making a handheld system and basing it on the cutting edge 3D graphics is that those cutting edge 3D graphics are still pretty crude. By talking about graphics graphics graphics graphics graphics, you get the attention of the Eye Class, and may even deter the Mind and Endorphin Classes from looking at the system. The Eye Class sees it, and decides (rightfully) that it has crude graphics, and rejects it, and the system flops (a la N-Gage).
Nintendo has the right idea. They go for the Mind and Endorphin groups, and GBA games either emphasize storyline, character, and even cloaked commentary, like the RPGs that fill GBA racks, or just sheer fun, like most of the platformers. They havn't wasted their time squeezing half-assed 3D out of the GBA, because it won't really help their games.
Nah. Caffine, sliced bread, and holes in doughnuts are the best things ever. In that order. RPGs are pretty good, but I like FPS games online better. Hop in, frag a few friends, hop out, no hard feelings, no wasting hours of your life trying to get a +5 Axe of Really Cool or whatever.
In all the MMORPGs I've played, RP isn't the idea. It starts out nice, when hardly anybody plays them, and you can get some very cool roleplay between major guilds. I'm still nostalgic over the wars in Dransik between the Lotorian Knights and the Minions of Talazar. There was even a GM-controlled NPC named Talazar who would appear occasionally and lay waste to towns, and LK would show up and try to drive him off. Very fun.
Then, after a while, people with names like Oosexfucker69oO and l337asspwnj00n00b start playing, as well as a host of people with names from movies or video games (which gets very annoying. Say I lose in honorable combat to Legolas, and we have an RP rivalry and fight every time we meet up and argue in towns. Then, I try to do the same with Leg0las, thinking he's the same person, but he's just a jerk, so I kill him and take his sword. From then on, I never know who I'm talking to. Is Legolas482 and Legolas365 the same person? Who's theis Logolas person who's stealing my ettin kills?), and RP goes bye-bye.
About the only way to keep RP alive in a game is to have an RP-devoted server, and litterally make players apply for a character in it (like some of the old MUD's did), which unfortunately, no MMORPGs that I know of have ever done.
It is detrimental. I've played games that have paid powerleveling, as well as classic self-powerleveling (playing 20 hours a day and just outclassing more casual players), and there usually end up being two falldown points:
1. Once a character gets to level 100, or 99, or 250, or whatever the max is, there's a lot less for the player to do. This is even moreso for players that leveled their characters the "hard way," and end up having most of their main skills/abilities/stats/however the game's system works maxed out as well. At such levels, most of the game becomes fairly easy, again, especially for those that leveled the "hard way," and also have enough skill to take down the hard enemies designed for near-maxed characters.
2. This stems from 1: Maxed characters who have little else to do usually resort simply to PKing casual players en masse. I've seen games where this reaches the point of rendering entire areas of the game impassable for days on end. In one game I played, a guild blockaded a major transit point (also a bottleneck, as it was the only passage between the two largest landmasses) in shifts for over a week. From the stories that came out of the prolonged fight, it eventually came down to another guild that was known for doing the exact same thing kicked them out - only to take their place. Because of the bottleneck, the people trying to fight through could only get two or three attackers in at once (There was a dark passage that you couldn't see through, and archers couldn't shoot through), while the blockaders had two lines of archers cutting them down (just past the dark passage was a wide open cavern). Plus, the blockaders had an exit into a major town just behind them to resupply, where the attackers had to run through a cave that took the best part of ten minutes to navigate to restock (assuming they survived long enough to run out of potions - most of them died pretty quickly, and their potions added to the blockader's stock).
When the messageboards erupted in the flame war that followed the prolonged guild war over this event, the blockader's only reasoning was that, "We're already level 100. Not much else for us to do but kill you n00bs."
WebBug is a common term used to describe actions taken by spammers to track their targets. With the government trying to crack down on spam (or at least acting like they're trying. Don't seem to be working from my end), that word would look bad on the wrong side of a US vs. So-and-So case filing. Instead, they use a long term that sounds very complex and difficult. For example, they don't call Carnivore Carnivore in court. They have a complex name (Forget what it is, but if I remember right, it has the number 2000 in it, to make it sound even more important).
The thing to keep in mind is that the judge and jury probably won't know technology all that well. WebBug would sound just like them saying "we put a bug on the suspect's phone." They don't say that, because it sounds bad, and it doesn't sound very hard. The usually say something like, "We put a standard electronic wire-tap surveillance device on the suspect's landline analog communications line." It sounds complex, difficult, and important, and landline analog communications line just SOUNDS like something you'd only use if you were up to no good.
Actually, I had no access to blank license. Nor does anybody working in a Michigan Sec. of State office. In fact, only a few there have access to temp licenses, which are only valid with a state stamp (applied by the elected official in the back office) or with a punched full license stapled to it.
All I had access to were sheets of grainy photo paper and a camera the size of a small station wagon. The person behind me, who entered data into the computers to send to Lansing (the only place where the licenses are actually printed - and they never exist "blank", unless you count the white sheets of plastic with the magnetic strip on them. The picture, all the information,the graphics, the state seal hologram, the picutre of the Mackinac bridge, and even the blank organ donor form on the back are all printed, and the magnetic strip programmed, at once. Without being printed, the blank license could just as easily be a blank student ID, a blank credit card, or one of those filler cards they use to make wallets stand up in the display cases.
Actually, they could touch you in a court of law, since the initial finding of weakness was unsolicited and unapproved. However, they'd be much less likely to.
And for those who say white hats are doing a real service, try this (I did this as a kid, thinking I had a really smart scam going):
1. Go around and cut people's lawns.
2. Don't ask, just cut them.
3. Go up to the door, and inform the people they now owe you ten dollars.
5. Get your ass kicked.
No ???, no profit, just a size-12 lodged six inches up your colon.
Also, it wasn't everywhere, just certain idiot stores, apparantly. Imagine the disappointment of all the hackers out in the parkinglot who couldn't get any credit card information at the one here in Saginaw.
Everybody applying for a government job goes through a counterterrorism check. I wanted to get a part-time job at the local Secretary of State office. All I would do is sit there and take driver's license pictures and hand them to the lady who entered the information into the computer. However, they decided I was a potential terrorist. Apparantly, I'm safe enough to go out and buy a gun, watch people's children or pets, or even substitute teach in an elementary school, but I'm too dangerous to take driver's license photos.
It's not smart, or correct, but that's just the way it is.
A Carnivore box has to be set at the criminal's ISP. They didn't even know this guy's IP address, so they couldn't have known his ISP (If they did, they'd have his home address and credit card number for that matter). That's why I'm thinking it's probably a spam-style gif bug. Easy, cheap, field-proven. It can fail, certainly, but even if it succeeded, they could just go to plan B and continue to string the guy around and try to catch him when the money changes hands.
How many criminals actually get arrested for what they actually do?
Al Capone got arrested for tax evasion. There are a ludicrous number of pimps and madammes that can only get hauled into court because their girls don't have proper employee worker's comp, there are drug dealers who get arrested for violating immigrant employment laws or a trade embargo, but never get touched for their actual crime.
Criminals are none too bright - the ones who get caught anyway - but sometimes the people after them aren't the sharpest bulbs on the tree either.
In an avatar economy, however, the government can effortlessly peg many prices at any value."
I've played a number of online RPGs, and there's really nothing that can be done to control prices within the game short of putting item sale and trading and such in NPC hands.
I'll use the example of a game I used to play called Dransik. Several of the game's servers have had years of gold buildup in the player base, leading to virtual hyperinflation. When I first started playing, the best items in the game were 15 million gp if you were a good seller. Last time I checked, somebody could negotiate 600 million gp for a high end weapon on the Classic servers, and on some of the servers that use the game's newer graphics engine, gold prices are so inflated that gold is nearly useless, and you can't buy an item except to trade dozens of simmilar items, and even then, people often refuse. A single item sale thread on the messageboard will usually contain both "I want items if possible, not gold" and "I don't want those items. If I wanted a +4 broadsword, I wouldn't be selling my +5 sabre."
As long as you leave it in the hands of players, it seems inexorable that inflation eventually sets in. When a new server comes up in the game, it starts out good. People get a few +1 weapons, and give them to their friends, and they generate more and better weapons, and prices come down as things start circulating. Then, somebody gets a high end monster drop, and it's like a death knell for the server's economy. From there on, the game is just a struggle to generate wealth at the rate that prices increase.
I do. Considerably more than graphics, and moreso than story or character development (which I consider important, but many games just don't have room in the concept for much in that respect, and I'm forgiving if its a good game), but not as much as gameplay. I consider it even more important if there's not an option to turn it off.
Also, it depends on what kind of game. If I'm playing UT or something, I can't hear the music over the gunfire anyway, and odds are good it'll just end up drowning out the footfalls of the guy comming up behind me for the headshot.
If I'm playing an RPG, the music is really part of the game. I remember when I was playing Final Fantasy 3, and I first heard Atma's theme music, I was already in a cold sweat. I hadn't even seen the boss yet (Who himself was pretty fearsome, for being an unanimated sprite), but the music really let you know you were about to get your ass handed to you if you weren't properly prepared. When I try to think of fighting Lavos without the blazing organ solo in the background, it just doesn't work.
Nearly half my playlist is music from games. I have a good 500 SPC files from SNES games, and a bunch of mp3s from later ones. Play a game like Tales of Phantasia. About ten minutes into the game, the main character's home town is destroyed in a fire (Yeah, yeah, cliche storyline. stfu about it, it's a good game). When you walk up to the main character's house, one of the most touching songs I've ever heard in a video game. (Heck, if you don't want to bother playing the game, download the ToP sound track and the SPCAmp plugin from snesmusic.com, and listen to the song Be Absentminded It loses something without the cutscenes that accompany most of the times it plays in the game, but it's still there).
After that, come back and tell me you don't care about music in games anymore.
He's not really hating it. He's talking about it in relation to the games.
For one, graphics get innovated immensely. Since the days of the SNES (or even the NES, which was capable of much better sound than most developers squeezed out of it), sound quality has gone from telephone quality (The SNES could handle voice acting fairly well, but the cartridges couldn't hold the amount of data it intailed, and insturmental music was already realistic enough it would pass for a low-bitrate recording) and CD quality (which is about as good as it'll get. The sound quality might improve, but it'll be pushing the limits of perceptibility).
Graphics have gone from 8-bit 16x16 tile sprites to 3d models that themselves take up many times as much data as entire games once did.
Plus, graphics are often not as identifying as music. How many games had the same rough level design as Mario? How many games had (and even in modern games, have) character models that could be exchanged between games and not seem out-of-place?
I love old games. I still pick up new games, of course. There's only so much you can do with a limited supply of old games, and obviously no new ones will come out, else they wouldn't be old.
But it is the music that sticks most, because... well, music sticks. I found myself even humming the music from Lavos's second form for days after spending an afternoon trying to beat him in Chrono Trigger.
I've never heard of anybody getting the picture of Mario stuck in their head - although when I was 6, I had weird dreams of being chased by baelrogs after playing an RPG at a cousin's house. Not really nightmares, they never scared me much, it's just that they were there (sometimes I dream turn-based after a hard day of gaming, so they'd just be standing there waiting for me to get on with things), and the Magic +5 Vorpal Sword of Light (or whatever uber weapon the game had that was the only way to kill really strong monsters was called) that I thought I'd stuck in my inventory two dungeons back wasn't there.
You probably play action games. Those, while good, rarely prove to be timeless. The article talks mostly about those games that have achieved immortality, and still hold loyal fans sometimes well over a decade after their release.
Go to a website like GameFAQs, and look at the top boards in any of the older systems (especially the NES, Genesis, and above all the SNES). The top lists don't change much, except shuffling around between the top twenty or so, and they very rarely contain action games. The action games sold a lot better during their time, but they didn't pull off immortality, and live forever for the next game to keep the fans interested. The top games are mostly RPGs (For example, the top list on GameFAQs' SNES boards has almost always been dominated by Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, and Super Mario RPG, with Star Ocean, Tales of Phantasia, Earthbound, Zelda, and a few others making their bids now and then). Other genre's only make a good calling for the high slots if they have storylines comparable to the RPGs they're competing against, or just had a fan-made translation hack released, or something simmilar.
While you're there, look at the top ten or fifteen boards or so. You'll almost always be able to find a thread asking just what has kept people interested in the game for all the years its been around.
Graphics almost never get mentioned - obviously, if that's what you cared about, you wouldn't be opening up and tinkering with your SNES cartridges constantly just to keep the SRAM batteries alive or fighting with dead ROM sites to emulate games when you can't revive or find the hardware anymore. The only mention graphics will usually get is that they may be excellent considering the meager hardware they run on (Some late SNES games were easily a match for the first year's stock of PS1 games, but still not much by any modern reckoning).
What does get mentioned is most often storyline (although the older a game gets, the less this gets mentioned, as people get to the point of memorizing event triggers and dialog threads), music, and sometimes gameplay (although that tends to trail off with time too, with brief resurgences when somebody stumbles along some trick that's never been discussed before).
I didn't like Lament of Innocence's soundtrack *at*all*. The old Castlevania games had very excelent and moody classical scores to them. I remember the original Castlevania had some of the best music the NES ever saw. Then comes this new game with the sort of music I expect from a game like Mario. Not bad music, per se, but it doesn't fit the gloom-and-doom feel of the game.
Slashdot Mirror
That the considerable majority of the games listed are very old? Hasbro Interactive released Risk II in, what, 1989?
I'm still very bothered about their news release last week:
"Infinium Labs Inc, onwer of the upcomming Phantom Gaming Service, is proud to annoucne that on January 6, 2004, Infinium Labs Inc. has acquired Infinium Labs Inc. in a merger. In such, Infinium Labs has acquired the rights to the Phantom Gaming Service. Infinium Labs Inc has no other material operations except those acquired in the merger with Ininium Labs Inc."
Sorry, but I'm still not convinced. Also, all of the developers that they mentioned (I checked a couple dozen of them) don't seem to confess to supporting the system on their own sites. I'm still waiting for a reply from Blizzard and a couple others asking if they really are supporting the Phantom.
Plus, with Square and Nintendo reconciled at last, the GBA can reasonably expect a few Final Fantasy ports of its own.
The only thing that can dethrone Nintendo is Nintendo themselves. The N64 and Gamecube would have dominated the Sony models if they had been out first, even if the Playstations were superior systems. Name recognition alone would have carried them. But Nintendo dropped the ball, and was late to market, and they lost much of what the NES and SNES had built, and I don't think they will win that back at this point. The only time to break into the portable market will be when the GBA is fading and Nintendo is working on the next generation. Beat Nintendo to market with a cheap, simple, fun system, and you'll have a snowball's chance in hell. Don't go all out on features. Nintendo has made great products because they're cheap, simple, and fun. Nokia has failed because they made an expensive and complex system, and those alone have washed the fun away, lackluster games notwithstanding.
TO: Nokia
CC: Anybody else making a system to compete with the GBA
FROM: Captain Obvious
SUBJECT: Portable gaming systems
You all have it entirely wrong, but even getting it right won't save you at this point.
A set-top-box console will cost you $100-200 right now. Even the X-box has a relatively reasonable pricetag right now. They all have huge libraries of games, especially the PS2.
The successful portable systems (GBA, and the Wonderswan at least could move units in Japan) are under $100 bucks, and have huge libraries.
These new portables cost $300-500, and have a handful of games available. You lose. It's almost forgone conclusion. You're following almost the exact same business model that Nokia did with the N-Gage, and like a herd of lemmings you're all running out to sea.
They're too expensive, and have too few games to buy as a set-top-box, but as a portable, they're worthless. A portable should be cheap because it's at the most risk, and it's a lot more likely to need replacing than a set-top console.
My GBA gets bounced around a lot. It's taken trips down stairs, it's been dropped in puddles, stepped on, kicked, thrown in frustration, and it still works (although I did break the contact edge on my Golden Sun cart). If I do manage to break it, it's cheap enough to replace - $80 isn't peanuts, but it won't mean skipping meals.
I have a friend who has an N-Gage. Or should say HAD an N-Gage. Let's say it broke well. He dropped it once onto a carpeted floor, and it doesn't work anymore. And at $300 to replace, he's not getting a new one. Instead, he bought a GBA and SIX games, and still had enough money left to pay off the bet I made him that he'd buy a GBA before the year was out.
I tried to imagine how much money I'd be out if my GBA was as fragile as an N-Gage. It gave me a headache. I'd probably have had to sell my car by now.
RP in online games isn't all that much work, really. For the most part, it's simply a matter of talking about in-game things as real, and not referencing out-of-game material. At the most, it's a bit of dialect speech, which I generally didn't bother with short of the drunken slur while presiding at guild meetings (The guild I ran was always... shall we say, Well Lubricated. I always brought a few bottles of Parian Stout to council meetings).
The other thing is that 3D on phones ends up being a catch-22, which is why I figured back when it was announced that the N-Gage was not going to make a splash, but more of a loud plunk followed by the sound of crickets chirping.
For one, you'll never be able to hold a candle to the GBA for a long time. Nintendo has made some blunders with the GameCube, but they havn't missed a beat with the GBA.
For two, as soon as you start basing your system on graphics (The GBA is mostly 2D and mode 6 fake 3D, so its games have to market more heavily on gameplay and other aspects - Nintendo has a good track record with making low-end graphics compete successfully against high-end graphics. PCs far outclassed the SNES/SFC for most of its life, but the SNES even gave the PS1 and Sega Saturn a run for their money in Japan before the N64 came out) people look at it, and say, "Psst. My PS2 has far better graphics." Don't even try to bring up the, "Yeah, let's see you stick your PS2 in your pocket and play on the bus" argumentwith them, becuase it doesn't work.
My theory on gamers is that we're broken into three classes:
Eye Class: What some people call graphics whores. Sometimes I think they'd play XtremE Couch Sitting 2004 if it has good enough graphics. Unfortunately for RPG and strategy gamers, this is by far the largest group of gamers there is, and the group responsible for video games passing from the playthings of techies, nerds, and geeks to the mainstream popular culture, and it's their wants that hold the highest sway over the gaming industry in general.
Brain Class: Those people who wax nostalgic and call videogames the next form of literiture. Mostly play RPGs, but usually look for strong plot and character in games, and will readily sacrifice graphics, sound, even gameplay in some cases for that experience. This is the dominant group you find in discussion boards for old game systems like the SNES, and contribute more than any other to the "immortal games" that still get played a decade or more after their contemporaries pass into obscurity.
Endorphin Class: The people who just want to have fun. They may appreciate plot, or like graphics, but when it comes down to it, it's a game, and they just want to have fun. Gameplay is key, and will excuse poor graphics or lack of plot. I tend to lump sports gamers into this group, since most of them I've known are after the "___ball experience." Also, most young gamers will fall into this category, and my nephews have just as much fun goofing around with my old Atari as with their own PS2's, which gives me hope that they won't turn into Eye Class gamers in the future.
Now the problem with making a handheld system and basing it on the cutting edge 3D graphics is that those cutting edge 3D graphics are still pretty crude. By talking about graphics graphics graphics graphics graphics, you get the attention of the Eye Class, and may even deter the Mind and Endorphin Classes from looking at the system. The Eye Class sees it, and decides (rightfully) that it has crude graphics, and rejects it, and the system flops (a la N-Gage).
Nintendo has the right idea. They go for the Mind and Endorphin groups, and GBA games either emphasize storyline, character, and even cloaked commentary, like the RPGs that fill GBA racks, or just sheer fun, like most of the platformers. They havn't wasted their time squeezing half-assed 3D out of the GBA, because it won't really help their games.
Nah. Caffine, sliced bread, and holes in doughnuts are the best things ever. In that order. RPGs are pretty good, but I like FPS games online better. Hop in, frag a few friends, hop out, no hard feelings, no wasting hours of your life trying to get a +5 Axe of Really Cool or whatever.
In all the MMORPGs I've played, RP isn't the idea. It starts out nice, when hardly anybody plays them, and you can get some very cool roleplay between major guilds. I'm still nostalgic over the wars in Dransik between the Lotorian Knights and the Minions of Talazar. There was even a GM-controlled NPC named Talazar who would appear occasionally and lay waste to towns, and LK would show up and try to drive him off. Very fun.
Then, after a while, people with names like Oosexfucker69oO and l337asspwnj00n00b start playing, as well as a host of people with names from movies or video games (which gets very annoying. Say I lose in honorable combat to Legolas, and we have an RP rivalry and fight every time we meet up and argue in towns. Then, I try to do the same with Leg0las, thinking he's the same person, but he's just a jerk, so I kill him and take his sword. From then on, I never know who I'm talking to. Is Legolas482 and Legolas365 the same person? Who's theis Logolas person who's stealing my ettin kills?), and RP goes bye-bye.
About the only way to keep RP alive in a game is to have an RP-devoted server, and litterally make players apply for a character in it (like some of the old MUD's did), which unfortunately, no MMORPGs that I know of have ever done.
By how much people talk about it, and preorder sales. If I remember right, World of Warcraft preorder registration was open for the best part of 2003.
It is detrimental. I've played games that have paid powerleveling, as well as classic self-powerleveling (playing 20 hours a day and just outclassing more casual players), and there usually end up being two falldown points: 1. Once a character gets to level 100, or 99, or 250, or whatever the max is, there's a lot less for the player to do. This is even moreso for players that leveled their characters the "hard way," and end up having most of their main skills/abilities/stats/however the game's system works maxed out as well. At such levels, most of the game becomes fairly easy, again, especially for those that leveled the "hard way," and also have enough skill to take down the hard enemies designed for near-maxed characters. 2. This stems from 1: Maxed characters who have little else to do usually resort simply to PKing casual players en masse. I've seen games where this reaches the point of rendering entire areas of the game impassable for days on end. In one game I played, a guild blockaded a major transit point (also a bottleneck, as it was the only passage between the two largest landmasses) in shifts for over a week. From the stories that came out of the prolonged fight, it eventually came down to another guild that was known for doing the exact same thing kicked them out - only to take their place. Because of the bottleneck, the people trying to fight through could only get two or three attackers in at once (There was a dark passage that you couldn't see through, and archers couldn't shoot through), while the blockaders had two lines of archers cutting them down (just past the dark passage was a wide open cavern). Plus, the blockaders had an exit into a major town just behind them to resupply, where the attackers had to run through a cave that took the best part of ten minutes to navigate to restock (assuming they survived long enough to run out of potions - most of them died pretty quickly, and their potions added to the blockader's stock). When the messageboards erupted in the flame war that followed the prolonged guild war over this event, the blockader's only reasoning was that, "We're already level 100. Not much else for us to do but kill you n00bs."
WebBug is a common term used to describe actions taken by spammers to track their targets. With the government trying to crack down on spam (or at least acting like they're trying. Don't seem to be working from my end), that word would look bad on the wrong side of a US vs. So-and-So case filing. Instead, they use a long term that sounds very complex and difficult. For example, they don't call Carnivore Carnivore in court. They have a complex name (Forget what it is, but if I remember right, it has the number 2000 in it, to make it sound even more important).
The thing to keep in mind is that the judge and jury probably won't know technology all that well. WebBug would sound just like them saying "we put a bug on the suspect's phone." They don't say that, because it sounds bad, and it doesn't sound very hard. The usually say something like, "We put a standard electronic wire-tap surveillance device on the suspect's landline analog communications line." It sounds complex, difficult, and important, and landline analog communications line just SOUNDS like something you'd only use if you were up to no good.
Actually, I had no access to blank license. Nor does anybody working in a Michigan Sec. of State office. In fact, only a few there have access to temp licenses, which are only valid with a state stamp (applied by the elected official in the back office) or with a punched full license stapled to it.
All I had access to were sheets of grainy photo paper and a camera the size of a small station wagon. The person behind me, who entered data into the computers to send to Lansing (the only place where the licenses are actually printed - and they never exist "blank", unless you count the white sheets of plastic with the magnetic strip on them. The picture, all the information,the graphics, the state seal hologram, the picutre of the Mackinac bridge, and even the blank organ donor form on the back are all printed, and the magnetic strip programmed, at once. Without being printed, the blank license could just as easily be a blank student ID, a blank credit card, or one of those filler cards they use to make wallets stand up in the display cases.
Actually, they could touch you in a court of law, since the initial finding of weakness was unsolicited and unapproved. However, they'd be much less likely to.
And for those who say white hats are doing a real service, try this (I did this as a kid, thinking I had a really smart scam going): 1. Go around and cut people's lawns. 2. Don't ask, just cut them. 3. Go up to the door, and inform the people they now owe you ten dollars. 5. Get your ass kicked. No ???, no profit, just a size-12 lodged six inches up your colon.
Also, it wasn't everywhere, just certain idiot stores, apparantly. Imagine the disappointment of all the hackers out in the parkinglot who couldn't get any credit card information at the one here in Saginaw.
Everybody applying for a government job goes through a counterterrorism check. I wanted to get a part-time job at the local Secretary of State office. All I would do is sit there and take driver's license pictures and hand them to the lady who entered the information into the computer. However, they decided I was a potential terrorist. Apparantly, I'm safe enough to go out and buy a gun, watch people's children or pets, or even substitute teach in an elementary school, but I'm too dangerous to take driver's license photos.
It's not smart, or correct, but that's just the way it is.
Actually, it can't.
A Carnivore box has to be set at the criminal's ISP. They didn't even know this guy's IP address, so they couldn't have known his ISP (If they did, they'd have his home address and credit card number for that matter). That's why I'm thinking it's probably a spam-style gif bug. Easy, cheap, field-proven. It can fail, certainly, but even if it succeeded, they could just go to plan B and continue to string the guy around and try to catch him when the money changes hands.
How many criminals actually get arrested for what they actually do?
Al Capone got arrested for tax evasion. There are a ludicrous number of pimps and madammes that can only get hauled into court because their girls don't have proper employee worker's comp, there are drug dealers who get arrested for violating immigrant employment laws or a trade embargo, but never get touched for their actual crime.
Criminals are none too bright - the ones who get caught anyway - but sometimes the people after them aren't the sharpest bulbs on the tree either.
In an avatar economy, however, the government can effortlessly peg many prices at any value."
I've played a number of online RPGs, and there's really nothing that can be done to control prices within the game short of putting item sale and trading and such in NPC hands.
I'll use the example of a game I used to play called Dransik. Several of the game's servers have had years of gold buildup in the player base, leading to virtual hyperinflation. When I first started playing, the best items in the game were 15 million gp if you were a good seller. Last time I checked, somebody could negotiate 600 million gp for a high end weapon on the Classic servers, and on some of the servers that use the game's newer graphics engine, gold prices are so inflated that gold is nearly useless, and you can't buy an item except to trade dozens of simmilar items, and even then, people often refuse. A single item sale thread on the messageboard will usually contain both "I want items if possible, not gold" and "I don't want those items. If I wanted a +4 broadsword, I wouldn't be selling my +5 sabre."
As long as you leave it in the hands of players, it seems inexorable that inflation eventually sets in. When a new server comes up in the game, it starts out good. People get a few +1 weapons, and give them to their friends, and they generate more and better weapons, and prices come down as things start circulating. Then, somebody gets a high end monster drop, and it's like a death knell for the server's economy. From there on, the game is just a struggle to generate wealth at the rate that prices increase.
That's why I personally think that the last few years or so will produce few timeless classics in the video game arena.
I do. Considerably more than graphics, and moreso than story or character development (which I consider important, but many games just don't have room in the concept for much in that respect, and I'm forgiving if its a good game), but not as much as gameplay. I consider it even more important if there's not an option to turn it off. Also, it depends on what kind of game. If I'm playing UT or something, I can't hear the music over the gunfire anyway, and odds are good it'll just end up drowning out the footfalls of the guy comming up behind me for the headshot. If I'm playing an RPG, the music is really part of the game. I remember when I was playing Final Fantasy 3, and I first heard Atma's theme music, I was already in a cold sweat. I hadn't even seen the boss yet (Who himself was pretty fearsome, for being an unanimated sprite), but the music really let you know you were about to get your ass handed to you if you weren't properly prepared. When I try to think of fighting Lavos without the blazing organ solo in the background, it just doesn't work. Nearly half my playlist is music from games. I have a good 500 SPC files from SNES games, and a bunch of mp3s from later ones. Play a game like Tales of Phantasia. About ten minutes into the game, the main character's home town is destroyed in a fire (Yeah, yeah, cliche storyline. stfu about it, it's a good game). When you walk up to the main character's house, one of the most touching songs I've ever heard in a video game. (Heck, if you don't want to bother playing the game, download the ToP sound track and the SPCAmp plugin from snesmusic.com, and listen to the song Be Absentminded It loses something without the cutscenes that accompany most of the times it plays in the game, but it's still there). After that, come back and tell me you don't care about music in games anymore.
He's not really hating it. He's talking about it in relation to the games.
For one, graphics get innovated immensely. Since the days of the SNES (or even the NES, which was capable of much better sound than most developers squeezed out of it), sound quality has gone from telephone quality (The SNES could handle voice acting fairly well, but the cartridges couldn't hold the amount of data it intailed, and insturmental music was already realistic enough it would pass for a low-bitrate recording) and CD quality (which is about as good as it'll get. The sound quality might improve, but it'll be pushing the limits of perceptibility).
Graphics have gone from 8-bit 16x16 tile sprites to 3d models that themselves take up many times as much data as entire games once did.
Plus, graphics are often not as identifying as music. How many games had the same rough level design as Mario? How many games had (and even in modern games, have) character models that could be exchanged between games and not seem out-of-place?
I love old games. I still pick up new games, of course. There's only so much you can do with a limited supply of old games, and obviously no new ones will come out, else they wouldn't be old.
But it is the music that sticks most, because... well, music sticks. I found myself even humming the music from Lavos's second form for days after spending an afternoon trying to beat him in Chrono Trigger.
I've never heard of anybody getting the picture of Mario stuck in their head - although when I was 6, I had weird dreams of being chased by baelrogs after playing an RPG at a cousin's house. Not really nightmares, they never scared me much, it's just that they were there (sometimes I dream turn-based after a hard day of gaming, so they'd just be standing there waiting for me to get on with things), and the Magic +5 Vorpal Sword of Light (or whatever uber weapon the game had that was the only way to kill really strong monsters was called) that I thought I'd stuck in my inventory two dungeons back wasn't there.
You probably play action games. Those, while good, rarely prove to be timeless. The article talks mostly about those games that have achieved immortality, and still hold loyal fans sometimes well over a decade after their release. Go to a website like GameFAQs, and look at the top boards in any of the older systems (especially the NES, Genesis, and above all the SNES). The top lists don't change much, except shuffling around between the top twenty or so, and they very rarely contain action games. The action games sold a lot better during their time, but they didn't pull off immortality, and live forever for the next game to keep the fans interested. The top games are mostly RPGs (For example, the top list on GameFAQs' SNES boards has almost always been dominated by Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, and Super Mario RPG, with Star Ocean, Tales of Phantasia, Earthbound, Zelda, and a few others making their bids now and then). Other genre's only make a good calling for the high slots if they have storylines comparable to the RPGs they're competing against, or just had a fan-made translation hack released, or something simmilar. While you're there, look at the top ten or fifteen boards or so. You'll almost always be able to find a thread asking just what has kept people interested in the game for all the years its been around. Graphics almost never get mentioned - obviously, if that's what you cared about, you wouldn't be opening up and tinkering with your SNES cartridges constantly just to keep the SRAM batteries alive or fighting with dead ROM sites to emulate games when you can't revive or find the hardware anymore. The only mention graphics will usually get is that they may be excellent considering the meager hardware they run on (Some late SNES games were easily a match for the first year's stock of PS1 games, but still not much by any modern reckoning). What does get mentioned is most often storyline (although the older a game gets, the less this gets mentioned, as people get to the point of memorizing event triggers and dialog threads), music, and sometimes gameplay (although that tends to trail off with time too, with brief resurgences when somebody stumbles along some trick that's never been discussed before).
I didn't like Lament of Innocence's soundtrack *at*all*. The old Castlevania games had very excelent and moody classical scores to them. I remember the original Castlevania had some of the best music the NES ever saw. Then comes this new game with the sort of music I expect from a game like Mario. Not bad music, per se, but it doesn't fit the gloom-and-doom feel of the game.