If there was ever a man who earned the right to take whatever new directions he sees fit, it's Miyamoto. To put it mildly, the man knows what he's doing.
For one, the article single-handedly convinced me to play through MGS2 in its entirety, looking at what I originally considered to be a hopelessly mangled story from a fresh perspective, and it instantly went from being one of my least favorite games to my second favorite game of all time (right behind the absolutely uparalleled ICO).
Worth noting--Tim Rogers's favorite online publisher, insertcredit.com, says the following about his methods: "If you're going for the Tim style, be sure to fabricate some element of your piece. It doesn't matter how small; the desire is merely to see how many emails you can get. Constant self-reference and inside joking is the way to play here. Drop as many names as possible. Make supplemental videos with lots of screaming and bizarre word pairings. Devise new names for all of your friends, and tell the world about it!"
Given sufficient time and budget (laughable, I know), there's no reason why a library should limit inself to one particular system when major technical and artistic advances are being made on practically every platform.
Also, given any kind of decent budget, there is no reason for games to become quickly obsolete. Simply pick up a few decent-condition used consoles after they fall out favor. If I can scrape up a near-mint SNES off of eBay for $25 it shouldn't be that hard to supply people with the hardware they need to play "obsolete" games. I realise this is a bit of a pipe dream since libraries are woefully underfunded as it is, but it's a concession that will have to made eventually if video games are actually considered by libraries to be a ligitimate medium and not just a quick way to post better numbers (which it unfortunately appears they are).
And I appreciate that the guy from TFA had a really crappy distributor to work with and he couldn't get M-rated titles, but if I walked into a library and saw that pile of games on the shelf I think I'd have to be dragged out laughing. If you're going to buy PS2 games for an instutution created ostensibly to promote the arts to the public and you can't get your hands on ICO and Metal Gear Solid 2 or 3, you might as well just give up and keep the money for next year.
Kojima is on the absolute bleeding edge of his craft, and I can say with utmost sincerity that I have no greater respect for any other developer except Shigeru Miyamoto. He's very right about MGS not carrying over properly into a movie. The MGS games are written from the position of being video games--the stories they tell fall apart without the interaction of the player.
Take MGS2, for example. Raiden is a specops newbie, trained entirely in virtual simulations, working through a mission designed as a parody of the Shadow Moses incident from MGS1. The entire game from the moment you start playing as Raiden is an analogy for the way the player relates to the game, and Raiden himself is meant to portray you, the player. The entire analogy falls apart if you convert the game into a movie because the player-game interaction no longer exists.
So I guess you would prefer that developers always tell completely self-contained stories and never, ever develop consistent universes where every new story enriches and is enriched by previous ones?
Kojima is such a bastard, he keeps saying "this is my last MGS, I swear!" Lying fuck, I can't help but love him.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Have Some More Raiden, Bitches!
Yes, because secondhand opinions from review magazines (most of which will jack up the score on any game named Final Fantasy just to support the hype) are much more reliable than the firsthand impressions of thousands of people who have played both FFTA and Disgaea and consider Disgaea by far the better title.
Doug Church, chief technology director, Eidos North America, is the game designer of Ultima Underworld (I & II), System Shock, and Thief: The Dark Project, three games in the top 20 of PC Gamers' recent list.
...
Shigeru Miyamoto, senior managing director, Entertainment Analysis and Development Division, Nintendo Co., Ltd., Kyoto, Japan, is the inventor of Donkey Kong.
... They give Doug Church credit for three of his biggest projects and all they can up with for freaking Shigeru Miyamoto is "he made Donkey Kong"? Where's the love?
The key to managing the little worshippers is simply not to micro-manage them. It's hard to do because we're so used to "Demand-Response" interaction in games as being the route to success, not "Demand-Ignore". Those little guys really do learn. If they learn that when they cry "We need food," some mystical force shows up and gives it to them.. guess what they're going to do next time they're hungry? On the other hand, if a couple starve, they soon figure out that if they need food, they'd best go get it.
Kinda answers a lot of religious quandaries, doesn't it?
"It doesn't really matter how long it is going to take you to do the work; security is an important issue and developers need to start doing that work now," Goodhew said.
Tell that to the college student who installs SP2 the night before the deadline for his midterm paper only to discover that his word processor doesn't work any more beause of "security issues."
The categories are completely rigged. There's no justification for separating series into their own categories except to guarantee than one of them winds up in the brackets. They give entire categories to series comprised of only two or three games, while almost any game in the "potpourri" category is worlds above most of the series games. Why should an Age of Empires title be guaranteed a position while choose between two Mario games, or two Zelda games, or Chrono Trigger and X-Com?
Age of Empires shouldn't even be in the qualifiers when these people are omitting games like ICO, which is a very strong competitor. And from an even more mainstream perspective, where the hell is any Metal Gear game on this list?
The algorithm uses the top 30 songs of the last five years as its base of comparison. It then analyzes thousands of songs and determines which ones are most likely to be hits, and those that score best are selectively fed into the market. These songs by necessity become the next set of top 30 hits, and are again used as the algorithm's base of comparison.
So basically, the basis of the system is "these songs will be hits because I say they'll be hits, and I say they'll be hits because they sound like songs that I said would be hits." Isn't this a really, really bad (read: dangerous) case of circular logic?
"All copy-protections can be hacked, but if (we) give people what they are asking for in terms of value, they won't go out and steal it. It's called trusting the consumer."
So, the CD costs $5, then? That's what people are asking for in terms of value.
Slashdot Mirror
Stop lowballing the prices, everyone knows they're $299.99 and $399.99.
If there was ever a man who earned the right to take whatever new directions he sees fit, it's Miyamoto. To put it mildly, the man knows what he's doing.
Be sure to post to tell everyone how quickly your office line gets slashdotted.
THEY TUK YER JERB!
For one, the article single-handedly convinced me to play through MGS2 in its entirety, looking at what I originally considered to be a hopelessly mangled story from a fresh perspective, and it instantly went from being one of my least favorite games to my second favorite game of all time (right behind the absolutely uparalleled ICO).
Second, the article introduced me to Tim Rogers, who has quickly become my favorite online writer. Rogers is definitely the love-him-or-hate-him type--your opinion will have a lot to do with your tastes in postmodern art, and even more to do with your tolerance for complete and unabashed pretentiousness. I liked him well enough before I found his (now-defunct) LiveJournal, but when I read this entry I gained a whole new level of respect for him and his writing. If you haven't read anything by Tim Rogers I suggest you check out the above two links, as well as live from seoul: tim rogers' 2003 insertcredit fukubukuro, in particular this one entry that, like all the other links in this post, ranks up there as one of my favorite articles of all time.
Worth noting--Tim Rogers's favorite online publisher, insertcredit.com, says the following about his methods: "If you're going for the Tim style, be sure to fabricate some element of your piece. It doesn't matter how small; the desire is merely to see how many emails you can get. Constant self-reference and inside joking is the way to play here. Drop as many names as possible. Make supplemental videos with lots of screaming and bizarre word pairings. Devise new names for all of your friends, and tell the world about it!"
Given sufficient time and budget (laughable, I know), there's no reason why a library should limit inself to one particular system when major technical and artistic advances are being made on practically every platform.
Also, given any kind of decent budget, there is no reason for games to become quickly obsolete. Simply pick up a few decent-condition used consoles after they fall out favor. If I can scrape up a near-mint SNES off of eBay for $25 it shouldn't be that hard to supply people with the hardware they need to play "obsolete" games. I realise this is a bit of a pipe dream since libraries are woefully underfunded as it is, but it's a concession that will have to made eventually if video games are actually considered by libraries to be a ligitimate medium and not just a quick way to post better numbers (which it unfortunately appears they are).
And I appreciate that the guy from TFA had a really crappy distributor to work with and he couldn't get M-rated titles, but if I walked into a library and saw that pile of games on the shelf I think I'd have to be dragged out laughing. If you're going to buy PS2 games for an instutution created ostensibly to promote the arts to the public and you can't get your hands on ICO and Metal Gear Solid 2 or 3, you might as well just give up and keep the money for next year.
Kojima is on the absolute bleeding edge of his craft, and I can say with utmost sincerity that I have no greater respect for any other developer except Shigeru Miyamoto. He's very right about MGS not carrying over properly into a movie. The MGS games are written from the position of being video games--the stories they tell fall apart without the interaction of the player.
Take MGS2, for example. Raiden is a specops newbie, trained entirely in virtual simulations, working through a mission designed as a parody of the Shadow Moses incident from MGS1. The entire game from the moment you start playing as Raiden is an analogy for the way the player relates to the game, and Raiden himself is meant to portray you, the player. The entire analogy falls apart if you convert the game into a movie because the player-game interaction no longer exists.
So I guess you would prefer that developers always tell completely self-contained stories and never, ever develop consistent universes where every new story enriches and is enriched by previous ones?
Kojima is such a bastard, he keeps saying "this is my last MGS, I swear!" Lying fuck, I can't help but love him. Metal Gear Solid 4: Have Some More Raiden, Bitches!
Also write to your other Senator informing him that his coleague Mr. Hatch is a smacktard and is not to be trusted.
Yes, because secondhand opinions from review magazines (most of which will jack up the score on any game named Final Fantasy just to support the hype) are much more reliable than the firsthand impressions of thousands of people who have played both FFTA and Disgaea and consider Disgaea by far the better title.
I've always been particularly fond of "Shiggity Shiggity Shwah".
"It doesn't really matter how long it is going to take you to do the work; security is an important issue and developers need to start doing that work now," Goodhew said. Tell that to the college student who installs SP2 the night before the deadline for his midterm paper only to discover that his word processor doesn't work any more beause of "security issues."
Age of Empires shouldn't even be in the qualifiers when these people are omitting games like ICO, which is a very strong competitor. And from an even more mainstream perspective, where the hell is any Metal Gear game on this list?
So basically we have the legality of EULA-based privacy violations pitted against the legality of copyright-based privacy violations.
*slams head repeatedly against a wall*
Maybe if we just let them fight they'll destroy each other like two ancient evils in apocolyptic battle.
In other news...
Well, wait, I guess there isn't any other news. No wonder we actually found the time to run this story.
So wait a minute.
The algorithm uses the top 30 songs of the last five years as its base of comparison. It then analyzes thousands of songs and determines which ones are most likely to be hits, and those that score best are selectively fed into the market. These songs by necessity become the next set of top 30 hits, and are again used as the algorithm's base of comparison.
So basically, the basis of the system is "these songs will be hits because I say they'll be hits, and I say they'll be hits because they sound like songs that I said would be hits." Isn't this a really, really bad (read: dangerous) case of circular logic?
The sole unfortunate drawback of this highly efficient supercomputer is that it can only be properly wielded by Chow Yun Fat.
So, the CD costs $5, then? That's what people are asking for in terms of value.
Oh, sure, it's a power source, but can it heat up leftover pizza without making it soggy? Hmm?
... Now I know you did not just diss Neo-Geo.