Yeah, of course we do. "The Government" are just a group of people who we chose to serve us, its our money, we've already paid. And no, I don't mind paying the share of people who cannot, its called civilisation and its in my interests anyway (I believe Oliver Wendell Holmes once said something about that).
Being the fastest growing area of entertainment spending in the world to the extent that its crushing the music industry already in terms of stealing the discretionary purchase allowances out of the hands of its former customers and Hollywood is quaking in its boots?
In short, save video games from being overwhelmingly succesful? I don't take the point at all. Yeah sure, we can have a debate about how to make video games fresh and new, how to make the industry the progressive, how (even) to make games art, but this isn't it.
Memo to Sidney Shurman: Get in touch with reality. Its about money and video games right now are doing very well in that area.
are locked to a maximum "safe" volume. You can unlock them if you want but I've never felt the need myself.
I suppose its American-libertarian to let you deafen yourself when you damn well want to be deafened or something.
Oh, I agree with you on the whole (I'm not sure how you managed to read all that into my post actually). My only reservation would be that there might well be very able people who none the less lack the ability to speak well, especially off the cuff and they are largely barred from the higher levels of British politics because of this. On the whole though I think the job of a politician is representation and a contribution to political discourse, both of which it might be somewhat hard to do if you can't communicate well I suppose.
Its a bit weird reading a tabloid hyperventilating on the topic of public morality when the text is made to flow around "Abbey of Hertfordshire, 18" wearing a grin and not much else.
Interesting. I think I recognise your point although I should say its a little unfair to expect a US president to be able to cope with the situation Tony Blair put himself in. As you might see on C-SPAN (I'm told) Blair stands up answers direct questions for opposition MPs every week. Every week. And he's more or less in jail if he gets caught lying as well. So by the standard he has grown used to, a public Q&A session for Blair is a holiday. British voters demand a level of oratory from their politicians that US voters simply do not. That said, its an open question whether this means British politicians actually make better decisions for all their streetfighting smarts.
In the end though this a product of differences in the political system, not the media. I'd like to pretend we Brits are a race of intellectuals, but we aren't, and we have tabloid papers that write in words of one syllable and have bare breasts on page 3. You've just seen our better side I guess.
Theres more to it than money, its a question of the climate in which one does their work. If you are a stem cell researcher for example, it doesn't really matter when Caltech or whoever might put on the table, it simply not worth it to end up on the margins of your field because of uncertain political climate to do with your work. I think you can see that for every inch the present US administration has ratcheted up restrictions, canny European countries have relaxed theirs in reply. In the end being a researcher is a shitty way of earning money. If it was the cash you wanted you'd have left years ago, the thing is getting to do the work you want to do. At the moment people in certain fields don't trust the US government not to interfere.
As a scientist myself I'm very unhappy about the way the reporting of science has created a vicious circle. Journalists misreport science, the article comes up with some arguments as to why but in the end I'm tempted to think it has a lot to do with trying to summarise very complex things when you don't entirely understand them. But scientists are also to blame here; there is a general lack of both ability and interest in communicating our work more widely (the phrase "media don" is considered pretty offensive in certain circles). Unfortunately the kind of climate the journalists have created for us makes this venture even less appealing than it was in the first place. The eventual result is that people like myself don't like talking to journalists because we don't want to be involved in perpetrating a load of hype and making ourselves look unscrupulous in the eyes of our peers. The answer is probably getting scientists to try to write their own "popular" articles directly and to facilitate this would require that the systems that measure academic performance in terms of publication in impact-rated journals begins to pay some sort of recognition to activities of wider dissemination. Right now, you could be on the news once a week and have your own TV show discussing your work and it would do less (technically at least) to help you keep your academic job than publishing a two-page note in the back of an obscure journal. You might say that an academics job is to produce new research, not go on the TV. I think this is where the real question lies; what role should a scientist be occupying in the 21st century?
Well Sean, first off I wouldn't let random people on the internet incite any particular feelings within you. People are paid less than they were. What worked twenty or thirty years ago doesn't now, thats the just the way the labour market is. Its not an issue that gets talked about much here because of the.com boom for the average Slashdotter but the fact still remains. Second jobs pull in about as much as first jobs or are you insinuating women can't earn as much as men? It has to be this way because pay has shrunk so much since the 1950s heydey you apparently hark back to. The average family needs both parents to step up to the plate, simple as that.
And you can be "mildly offended" if you like but try and find a intelligent woman with a degree and ask her if she plans on spending 15 or 16 years at home and foregoing a career. Again, twenty years ago you'd get some takers, today...you'll get a punch in the mouth if you're lucky. The world has moved on, you can't use your parents as an example of anything really, lamentable as it might indeed be. Hell, I'd quite like a stay at home wife, but thats (a) just being selfish and (b) they don't really exist anymore anyway. Its called progress, stop being a caveman.
Of course that's par for the course for people today. Think of what is only IMMEDIATELY beneficial...
Its sort of nice to take the higher ground with arguments like that most people don't care, computers are just tools and they do whatever everyone else is doing. Thats generally Microsoft Office, Microsoft whateverelse and Games. For myself personally I agree with you, but I think the evidence is all around us that this is kind of a minority thing. If it wasn't 2001 would have been the year of the Linux desktop.
"Feature cutbacks" aren't a problem for anyone who didn't read the original press releases!
It seems that this new version was originally planned to be a large step forward from XP but as we learn more about it and Microsoft's plans for the future, the changes are constantly being scaled back from what was originally promised. Whether it's the lack of a new file system or the "Monad" scripting shell, the absence of innovation in this operating system is giving it a black eye, no matter how nice the GUI is or how much Internet Explorer 7 resembles FireFox.
From my perspective all thats a joke. What the hell do 99.999999% of potential customers want with "monad" and "a new file system". The vast majority of people had no idea what those things are (even in general) and certainly aren't going to miss them if they aren't in Vista at launch. Will it look prettier than XP? Apparently yes. Easier to use? Quite possibly. Thats all anyone except people already using Linux anyway cares about. Actually even suggesting they care that much is probably false, they'll take what they are given when they buy their next PC (and no, Linspire would not help, they'd just take their PCs back to the shop and scream and shout about it). This article smacks of not being able to see the wood for the trees.
is that it might be an answer for you but its not an answer for anyone else.
First, consider that to get anywhere with it you need to be rich. Rich enough that one partner (oh, you can't be divorced either really) essentially doesn't have to work and that you can buy all the materials required. OK, thats the bar just for you to do it, we'll assume you and yours are bright enough to do it and one of you despite these qualities and drives doesn't feel much like a career. Or that much contact with adults in their daily life either. If you won't trust schools with your kids I very much doubt you'd trust your neighbours either.
Second, what about everyone else who isn't that rich or that smart. The American way of thinking is so strongly individualist ("I'm alright Jack" as we called it in the army) I don't think this registers. If all the middle class parents pulled their kids out and homeschooled the result for society as a whole would be carnage. I wouldn't want to live amongst those people, with their public schools decimated in funding (the middle classes would certainly demand and get their tax cuts for this, undermining economies of scale). And thats the good outcome. The bad income is that some of the crazy/stupid people you meet everyday suddenly follow suit and become America's homeschool "teachers" (today we shall have PE, run down to the store and get me another bottle will you son...). Half the pressure already upon public education is parents who frankly cannot be trusted to be parents. The eight hours a day their kids get away from them and their craziness is those children's only hope of escaping their fate. Again then, those kids are screwed. Which you might say, well, sucks for them, but unless you want to live on a desert island one way or another its going to suck for you as well.
The problems in American schools require strong collective action to address and a widespread will toward improvement. The fracturing of this into private and home schooling is a major problem afflicting it. The solution is greater engagement, not complete disengagement.
I hate to say this but a lot of F/OSS are either derivative or simply not very news worthy in the way that HL2, the Sims or GTA:SA are (technical or gameplay innovation or else some sort of social phenomenon associated with them, this is particularly true of the Sims for example). This isn't to say FOSS games aren't fun to play, theres just not a lot one can really say about a FOSS version of Civilisation or an old arcade game beyond announcing them. Certainly though, by the same token, I have no idea why certain sequels in the EA library have had any discussion here.
what do college students know about anything?
In all seriousness, its virtually meaningless to take this as an indicator of the underlying state of affairs in the industry, when you are 17 or 18 years old you go with the prevailing opinion. I sort of wonder if these discussions on Slashdot lead to a sort of echo chamber effect.
All I'll say is can you name any other dramatist (who isn't Russian) whose work has genuinely outlived their own time? Well maybe you can, although I can't think of very many, the cupboard is surprisingly bare.
Well thats all true of course -- and this is a strange debate to be having really -- but I think the comparison to someone like Hitchcock would be more apt really. Its a great thing to be both populist but still an artist. I'm thinking of Charles Dickens as another example here, he was practically a rock star in his day but his work survives because of its quality. I could even grudgingly go as far as Spielberg (just) but Lucas I draw the line at. Don't get me wrong, I love Star Wars, but I think its craft not art.
But in the hands of others, something like Hamlet would have been a sort of creepy ghost story with court intrigue and violence bolted on. But in Shakespeare's hands its that and also a deeply insightful commentary on the human condition (it helps to remember just how much he predates the likes of Freud by). The conveyance of those insights is incredible. Heh, I don't think you can say Shakespeare's dialogue is poor. It has all sorts of qualities of cadence and metaphor that are really quite strikingly beautiful without one having to over-intellectualise it. Indeed, it doesn't really bother me if Shakespeare is just a sort of brand name for Shakey/Marlowe/Kyd/Fletcher/Beaumont's greatest hits or whatever.
I think I agree with you about the game itself, I just think we can do better, therefore it almost seems like complacency a bit to exhault it so high. You know, if we can make games as good as pulp novels now, surely making them as good as good genre novels can't be an impossible task?
Fair I think. I don't so much take any of that back but to be honest the rhetorical style was for effect mainly because it was a comment attached to something I felt had been unfairly modded down in the first place. I'd like to see more open minded debate in general on this site but the groupthink is sometimes very strong with regard to the majority opinion. Frankly I find being a bit muscular is often the only way back into the discussion, and actually it did work looking at the moderation.
More positively let me say this, Planescape wasn't bad but I think we can do better, a lot better. A game could become, as it were, great literature. I genuinely believe that. There was a time when nobody thought film could be an artistic medium either and photography was just for snaps. Basically I'd hate to think that it was considered some sort of pinnacle of interactive story telling when its really just a foot hill. Lets not stop here, lets press on. In this world of sequel factories, computer game censors and so on I hope the chances aren't missed.
I'm very aware of the Bard's populist approach. In that regard Planescape is very different from Shakespeare, its somewhat short on the nob jokes (lets just leave the idea that the Bard was an Elizabethan George Lucas shall we... popular yes, hack no...Beethoven isn't Britney Spears either).
Seriously though, fighting your own mortality to regain the ability to die is hackneyed as hell. Never heard of the Wandering Jew for example? Note the vast number of literary works that have made reference to that one manifestation of the theme. There are many other versions in different religions (e.g., Cain in the Bible) and mythologies. To anyone culturally literate (and yes that is pretentious, but don't we on Slashdot like kicking the living shit out of people who are merely not computer literate? fairplay and all that) it came as no surprise at all.
Sorry, the majority are not always right; if they were there would be no such word as "overrated" yes? Anyway, Planescape bombed commerically compared with BG/IWD so don't be so sure. The people who are still talking about it now probably did think it was amazing.
The plot of Planescape is somewhat trite and predictable. The dialogue writing is average to fair. The setting is the same-old same-old with a few cosmetic changes. This sort of thing had been done countless times before.
Let me explain to you why "over rated". When people talk about Planescape they discuss things like the plot and the quality of the writing. Words like "literate", "dramatic" and "philosophical" are used. These are people who clearly know nothing about good writing or drama; ie. computer nerds who if they do read anything other than programming manuals only read paperbacks with pictures of spaceships or unicorns on the front. They overrate the game because it far outside their expertise to assess it in the terms they are using. These are, for example, the same people who consider the FF VII theme to be a great piece of classical music and thought the Matrix was stunning philosophical statement.
Another specific problem is if you aren't blinded by the Shakespearean prose (LOL) you'll notice that a majority of the missions are basically FedEx jobs. People who do that in real life get paid because its tedious. I don't pay money to be a glorified mail man.
As an RPG it wasn't bad, I much preferred Fallout but thats just my opinion. But people don't restrain themselves to just considering a computer game, they get all flowery and at that point I think they are indeed overrating it.
I agree, its been hilariously over-rated ever since it came out. I suppose if your only reading matter is Star Trek novelisations or something it might seem special, but it doesn't really deserve the plaudits its gained.
Well, its only flamebait to the fanbois really and their view is not open to discussion anyway. Sure, I know ppl still playing and they admit they are fools; they weren't surprised by this latest issue anymore than they were by the last half dozen. They get enough out of it to keep going, thats cool. But they have and will continue to put up with a lot as consumers. I confess, as a general rule it does infuriate me that gamers as a group put up with so much nonsense from companies; I can think of few other groups of consumers so sheep-like in that way.
In fairness I wouldn't say SOE bungle everything, EQ2, although I stopped playing a couple of months ago but was with from launch, is pretty neat and seemed reasonably well tested and so on. Of course everyone moans about adjustments and "nerfs", and bugs will turn up in any code base of that size, by and large I don't think MMORPG providers should be held to ransom by their players over trivia, but they should try to deliver a fun playing experience. With SWG they simply aren't delivering that on the whole. You don't need to be forumite to see that its fundamentally broken in a number of key areas and subject to erratic corrections and counter-corrections. It goes beyond a specific gameplay change that has upset some people, its their whole attitude and apparent management approach (esp. Smedley claiming that players wanted to buy JTL before they wanted the core game fixed; we never saw his evidence for that claim but basically I never met a single player who felt that way).
No. I say anyone who continues to play that game and is surprised by the way its managed is a fool. Its futile. If you're happy with that level of service, fine, but if not, exactly how many times are you going to let the crocodile bite you before you stop putting your hand in its cage?
This nonsense has been going on since Beta. Over a year after the release some characters still didn't have skills that actually worked; I had a Carbineer toon, half his attacks did SFA because the code was never implemented. The trade system was nerfed, first there was combat rebalance than combat overhaul (or something, I can't remember the names they used to spin the facts and then lie about spinning and so on; by changing the name they could could work on varying the delivery dates for the fixes). Then, game fixes were basically suspended whilst the Dev team were moved to write Jump to Lightspeed because SOE wanted another wad of money out of everyone before they were prepared to give them what they'd paid for in the first place (content started sparse in SWG and has never improved).
The list just goes on and on and on. Take a look at the linked thread, the CSR is being batted about so much at one point she cracks and starts insulting the customers. You will see later on she has to take it all back, its not a short-term bug after all, its official policy. Nobody bothered to tell the CSR with the most community exposure what the hell was going on. Not that they even tested the code on the test server as per their stated process. Not that the whole fuck-up wasn't blantantly evidently going to happen when they tried to tweak the nature of the game to match their RoTS (SWIII) TV adverts. As everyone noted at the time, it was sure to bugger up game balance and indeed thats precisely what happened, hence the kneejerk correction. And now the kneejerk correction to the kneejerk correction.
Once or twice would suck I guess. I understand developers and even PHBs are only human. But on SWG these sort of events are a monthly occurence. Lucasarts is apparently very concerned about this as well and I don't blame them.
Attention moderator: given I'm agreeing with the story as posted how can it be flamebait? John Smedley, if thats you, stop jerking around on Slashdot and get back to sorting some of your games out huh.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, of course we do. "The Government" are just a group of people who we chose to serve us, its our money, we've already paid. And no, I don't mind paying the share of people who cannot, its called civilisation and its in my interests anyway (I believe Oliver Wendell Holmes once said something about that).
Save video games from what precisely?
Being the fastest growing area of entertainment spending in the world to the extent that its crushing the music industry already in terms of stealing the discretionary purchase allowances out of the hands of its former customers and Hollywood is quaking in its boots?
In short, save video games from being overwhelmingly succesful? I don't take the point at all. Yeah sure, we can have a debate about how to make video games fresh and new, how to make the industry the progressive, how (even) to make games art, but this isn't it.
Memo to Sidney Shurman: Get in touch with reality. Its about money and video games right now are doing very well in that area.
are locked to a maximum "safe" volume. You can unlock them if you want but I've never felt the need myself. I suppose its American-libertarian to let you deafen yourself when you damn well want to be deafened or something.
Oh, I agree with you on the whole (I'm not sure how you managed to read all that into my post actually). My only reservation would be that there might well be very able people who none the less lack the ability to speak well, especially off the cuff and they are largely barred from the higher levels of British politics because of this. On the whole though I think the job of a politician is representation and a contribution to political discourse, both of which it might be somewhat hard to do if you can't communicate well I suppose.
Its a bit weird reading a tabloid hyperventilating on the topic of public morality when the text is made to flow around "Abbey of Hertfordshire, 18" wearing a grin and not much else.
Interesting. I think I recognise your point although I should say its a little unfair to expect a US president to be able to cope with the situation Tony Blair put himself in. As you might see on C-SPAN (I'm told) Blair stands up answers direct questions for opposition MPs every week. Every week. And he's more or less in jail if he gets caught lying as well. So by the standard he has grown used to, a public Q&A session for Blair is a holiday. British voters demand a level of oratory from their politicians that US voters simply do not. That said, its an open question whether this means British politicians actually make better decisions for all their streetfighting smarts.
In the end though this a product of differences in the political system, not the media. I'd like to pretend we Brits are a race of intellectuals, but we aren't, and we have tabloid papers that write in words of one syllable and have bare breasts on page 3. You've just seen our better side I guess.
Theres more to it than money, its a question of the climate in which one does their work. If you are a stem cell researcher for example, it doesn't really matter when Caltech or whoever might put on the table, it simply not worth it to end up on the margins of your field because of uncertain political climate to do with your work. I think you can see that for every inch the present US administration has ratcheted up restrictions, canny European countries have relaxed theirs in reply. In the end being a researcher is a shitty way of earning money. If it was the cash you wanted you'd have left years ago, the thing is getting to do the work you want to do. At the moment people in certain fields don't trust the US government not to interfere.
As a scientist myself I'm very unhappy about the way the reporting of science has created a vicious circle. Journalists misreport science, the article comes up with some arguments as to why but in the end I'm tempted to think it has a lot to do with trying to summarise very complex things when you don't entirely understand them. But scientists are also to blame here; there is a general lack of both ability and interest in communicating our work more widely (the phrase "media don" is considered pretty offensive in certain circles). Unfortunately the kind of climate the journalists have created for us makes this venture even less appealing than it was in the first place. The eventual result is that people like myself don't like talking to journalists because we don't want to be involved in perpetrating a load of hype and making ourselves look unscrupulous in the eyes of our peers. The answer is probably getting scientists to try to write their own "popular" articles directly and to facilitate this would require that the systems that measure academic performance in terms of publication in impact-rated journals begins to pay some sort of recognition to activities of wider dissemination. Right now, you could be on the news once a week and have your own TV show discussing your work and it would do less (technically at least) to help you keep your academic job than publishing a two-page note in the back of an obscure journal. You might say that an academics job is to produce new research, not go on the TV. I think this is where the real question lies; what role should a scientist be occupying in the 21st century?
Well Sean, first off I wouldn't let random people on the internet incite any particular feelings within you. People are paid less than they were. What worked twenty or thirty years ago doesn't now, thats the just the way the labour market is. Its not an issue that gets talked about much here because of the .com boom for the average Slashdotter but the fact still remains. Second jobs pull in about as much as first jobs or are you insinuating women can't earn as much as men? It has to be this way because pay has shrunk so much since the 1950s heydey you apparently hark back to. The average family needs both parents to step up to the plate, simple as that.
And you can be "mildly offended" if you like but try and find a intelligent woman with a degree and ask her if she plans on spending 15 or 16 years at home and foregoing a career. Again, twenty years ago you'd get some takers, today...you'll get a punch in the mouth if you're lucky. The world has moved on, you can't use your parents as an example of anything really, lamentable as it might indeed be. Hell, I'd quite like a stay at home wife, but thats (a) just being selfish and (b) they don't really exist anymore anyway. Its called progress, stop being a caveman.
Of course that's par for the course for people today. Think of what is only IMMEDIATELY beneficial...
Its sort of nice to take the higher ground with arguments like that most people don't care, computers are just tools and they do whatever everyone else is doing. Thats generally Microsoft Office, Microsoft whateverelse and Games. For myself personally I agree with you, but I think the evidence is all around us that this is kind of a minority thing. If it wasn't 2001 would have been the year of the Linux desktop.
"Feature cutbacks" aren't a problem for anyone who didn't read the original press releases!
It seems that this new version was originally planned to be a large step forward from XP but as we learn more about it and Microsoft's plans for the future, the changes are constantly being scaled back from what was originally promised. Whether it's the lack of a new file system or the "Monad" scripting shell, the absence of innovation in this operating system is giving it a black eye, no matter how nice the GUI is or how much Internet Explorer 7 resembles FireFox.
From my perspective all thats a joke. What the hell do 99.999999% of potential customers want with "monad" and "a new file system". The vast majority of people had no idea what those things are (even in general) and certainly aren't going to miss them if they aren't in Vista at launch. Will it look prettier than XP? Apparently yes. Easier to use? Quite possibly. Thats all anyone except people already using Linux anyway cares about. Actually even suggesting they care that much is probably false, they'll take what they are given when they buy their next PC (and no, Linspire would not help, they'd just take their PCs back to the shop and scream and shout about it). This article smacks of not being able to see the wood for the trees.
is that it might be an answer for you but its not an answer for anyone else.
First, consider that to get anywhere with it you need to be rich. Rich enough that one partner (oh, you can't be divorced either really) essentially doesn't have to work and that you can buy all the materials required. OK, thats the bar just for you to do it, we'll assume you and yours are bright enough to do it and one of you despite these qualities and drives doesn't feel much like a career. Or that much contact with adults in their daily life either. If you won't trust schools with your kids I very much doubt you'd trust your neighbours either.
Second, what about everyone else who isn't that rich or that smart. The American way of thinking is so strongly individualist ("I'm alright Jack" as we called it in the army) I don't think this registers. If all the middle class parents pulled their kids out and homeschooled the result for society as a whole would be carnage. I wouldn't want to live amongst those people, with their public schools decimated in funding (the middle classes would certainly demand and get their tax cuts for this, undermining economies of scale). And thats the good outcome. The bad income is that some of the crazy/stupid people you meet everyday suddenly follow suit and become America's homeschool "teachers" (today we shall have PE, run down to the store and get me another bottle will you son...). Half the pressure already upon public education is parents who frankly cannot be trusted to be parents. The eight hours a day their kids get away from them and their craziness is those children's only hope of escaping their fate. Again then, those kids are screwed. Which you might say, well, sucks for them, but unless you want to live on a desert island one way or another its going to suck for you as well.
The problems in American schools require strong collective action to address and a widespread will toward improvement. The fracturing of this into private and home schooling is a major problem afflicting it. The solution is greater engagement, not complete disengagement.
I hate to say this but a lot of F/OSS are either derivative or simply not very news worthy in the way that HL2, the Sims or GTA:SA are (technical or gameplay innovation or else some sort of social phenomenon associated with them, this is particularly true of the Sims for example). This isn't to say FOSS games aren't fun to play, theres just not a lot one can really say about a FOSS version of Civilisation or an old arcade game beyond announcing them. Certainly though, by the same token, I have no idea why certain sequels in the EA library have had any discussion here.
what do college students know about anything? In all seriousness, its virtually meaningless to take this as an indicator of the underlying state of affairs in the industry, when you are 17 or 18 years old you go with the prevailing opinion. I sort of wonder if these discussions on Slashdot lead to a sort of echo chamber effect.
All I'll say is can you name any other dramatist (who isn't Russian) whose work has genuinely outlived their own time? Well maybe you can, although I can't think of very many, the cupboard is surprisingly bare.
Well thats all true of course -- and this is a strange debate to be having really -- but I think the comparison to someone like Hitchcock would be more apt really. Its a great thing to be both populist but still an artist. I'm thinking of Charles Dickens as another example here, he was practically a rock star in his day but his work survives because of its quality. I could even grudgingly go as far as Spielberg (just) but Lucas I draw the line at. Don't get me wrong, I love Star Wars, but I think its craft not art.
But in the hands of others, something like Hamlet would have been a sort of creepy ghost story with court intrigue and violence bolted on. But in Shakespeare's hands its that and also a deeply insightful commentary on the human condition (it helps to remember just how much he predates the likes of Freud by). The conveyance of those insights is incredible. Heh, I don't think you can say Shakespeare's dialogue is poor. It has all sorts of qualities of cadence and metaphor that are really quite strikingly beautiful without one having to over-intellectualise it. Indeed, it doesn't really bother me if Shakespeare is just a sort of brand name for Shakey/Marlowe/Kyd/Fletcher/Beaumont's greatest hits or whatever.
I think I agree with you about the game itself, I just think we can do better, therefore it almost seems like complacency a bit to exhault it so high. You know, if we can make games as good as pulp novels now, surely making them as good as good genre novels can't be an impossible task?
as it happens I'm really a bit of a wimp.
Fair I think. I don't so much take any of that back but to be honest the rhetorical style was for effect mainly because it was a comment attached to something I felt had been unfairly modded down in the first place. I'd like to see more open minded debate in general on this site but the groupthink is sometimes very strong with regard to the majority opinion. Frankly I find being a bit muscular is often the only way back into the discussion, and actually it did work looking at the moderation.
More positively let me say this, Planescape wasn't bad but I think we can do better, a lot better. A game could become, as it were, great literature. I genuinely believe that. There was a time when nobody thought film could be an artistic medium either and photography was just for snaps. Basically I'd hate to think that it was considered some sort of pinnacle of interactive story telling when its really just a foot hill. Lets not stop here, lets press on. In this world of sequel factories, computer game censors and so on I hope the chances aren't missed.
there is always a prediction that didn't come true.
"You make a grown man cry". Fair enough.
"If you start me up I never stop..."!!!
I'm very aware of the Bard's populist approach. In that regard Planescape is very different from Shakespeare, its somewhat short on the nob jokes (lets just leave the idea that the Bard was an Elizabethan George Lucas shall we... popular yes, hack no...Beethoven isn't Britney Spears either).
Seriously though, fighting your own mortality to regain the ability to die is hackneyed as hell. Never heard of the Wandering Jew for example? Note the vast number of literary works that have made reference to that one manifestation of the theme. There are many other versions in different religions (e.g., Cain in the Bible) and mythologies. To anyone culturally literate (and yes that is pretentious, but don't we on Slashdot like kicking the living shit out of people who are merely not computer literate? fairplay and all that) it came as no surprise at all.
It was an OK computer game but thats about it.
Sorry, the majority are not always right; if they were there would be no such word as "overrated" yes? Anyway, Planescape bombed commerically compared with BG/IWD so don't be so sure. The people who are still talking about it now probably did think it was amazing.
The plot of Planescape is somewhat trite and predictable. The dialogue writing is average to fair. The setting is the same-old same-old with a few cosmetic changes.
This sort of thing had been done countless times before.
Let me explain to you why "over rated". When people talk about Planescape they discuss things like the plot and the quality of the writing. Words like "literate", "dramatic" and "philosophical" are used. These are people who clearly know nothing about good writing or drama; ie. computer nerds who if they do read anything other than programming manuals only read paperbacks with pictures of spaceships or unicorns on the front. They overrate the game because it far outside their expertise to assess it in the terms they are using. These are, for example, the same people who consider the FF VII theme to be a great piece of classical music and thought the Matrix was stunning philosophical statement.
Another specific problem is if you aren't blinded by the Shakespearean prose (LOL) you'll notice that a majority of the missions are basically FedEx jobs. People who do that in real life get paid because its tedious. I don't pay money to be a glorified mail man.
As an RPG it wasn't bad, I much preferred Fallout but thats just my opinion. But people don't restrain themselves to just considering a computer game, they get all flowery and at that point I think they are indeed overrating it.
I agree, its been hilariously over-rated ever since it came out. I suppose if your only reading matter is Star Trek novelisations or something it might seem special, but it doesn't really deserve the plaudits its gained.
Hi, yeah I think those are all reasonable points.
Well, its only flamebait to the fanbois really and their view is not open to discussion anyway. Sure, I know ppl still playing and they admit they are fools; they weren't surprised by this latest issue anymore than they were by the last half dozen. They get enough out of it to keep going, thats cool. But they have and will continue to put up with a lot as consumers. I confess, as a general rule it does infuriate me that gamers as a group put up with so much nonsense from companies; I can think of few other groups of consumers so sheep-like in that way.
In fairness I wouldn't say SOE bungle everything, EQ2, although I stopped playing a couple of months ago but was with from launch, is pretty neat and seemed reasonably well tested and so on. Of course everyone moans about adjustments and "nerfs", and bugs will turn up in any code base of that size, by and large I don't think MMORPG providers should be held to ransom by their players over trivia, but they should try to deliver a fun playing experience. With SWG they simply aren't delivering that on the whole. You don't need to be forumite to see that its fundamentally broken in a number of key areas and subject to erratic corrections and counter-corrections. It goes beyond a specific gameplay change that has upset some people, its their whole attitude and apparent management approach (esp. Smedley claiming that players wanted to buy JTL before they wanted the core game fixed; we never saw his evidence for that claim but basically I never met a single player who felt that way).
No. I say anyone who continues to play that game and is surprised by the way its managed is a fool. Its futile. If you're happy with that level of service, fine, but if not, exactly how many times are you going to let the crocodile bite you before you stop putting your hand in its cage?
This nonsense has been going on since Beta. Over a year after the release some characters still didn't have skills that actually worked; I had a Carbineer toon, half his attacks did SFA because the code was never implemented. The trade system was nerfed, first there was combat rebalance than combat overhaul (or something, I can't remember the names they used to spin the facts and then lie about spinning and so on; by changing the name they could could work on varying the delivery dates for the fixes). Then, game fixes were basically suspended whilst the Dev team were moved to write Jump to Lightspeed because SOE wanted another wad of money out of everyone before they were prepared to give them what they'd paid for in the first place (content started sparse in SWG and has never improved).
The list just goes on and on and on. Take a look at the linked thread, the CSR is being batted about so much at one point she cracks and starts insulting the customers. You will see later on she has to take it all back, its not a short-term bug after all, its official policy. Nobody bothered to tell the CSR with the most community exposure what the hell was going on. Not that they even tested the code on the test server as per their stated process. Not that the whole fuck-up wasn't blantantly evidently going to happen when they tried to tweak the nature of the game to match their RoTS (SWIII) TV adverts. As everyone noted at the time, it was sure to bugger up game balance and indeed thats precisely what happened, hence the kneejerk correction. And now the kneejerk correction to the kneejerk correction.
Once or twice would suck I guess. I understand developers and even PHBs are only human. But on SWG these sort of events are a monthly occurence. Lucasarts is apparently very concerned about this as well and I don't blame them.
Attention moderator: given I'm agreeing with the story as posted how can it be flamebait? John Smedley, if thats you, stop jerking around on Slashdot and get back to sorting some of your games out huh.