I somehow received a free Zinio subscription to EGM, and as far as digital reading software goes it's quite well designed. It's intuitive, streamlined, clean, and clear. You can tell Zinio has attempted to replicate the reading process digitally with its turning pages and fold out ads. I was impressed.
That said, when a subscription to the Zinio/digital EGM costs $19.99 and you can easily find a four year paper subscription for under $5, why bother with the hassle? If I subscribe to the magazine, why can't I pay a few dollars more and get access to the digital version as well?
I remember reading an interview with the suits at NetFlicks in Wired a year or two ago. They said it was still cheaper, and practically faster, to snail-mail data on CDs to someone than to provide it over the net. Zinio's pricing proves this hasn't changed.
I suppose the only advantage to Zinio is not having magazines pile up somewhere. Of course, I have yet to find a game magazine that's worth keeping anyway. They're so filled with hyperbolic previews, barely edited junior high level writing, and gratituous screenshots that they're not worth the hard drive space to save them on.
I'm amused by the comments here, mostly about Valve protecting "their games", or about how Valve has a right to protect "their" intellectual property.
Let's get this straight: Valve has made one game. One. Not two, not three; one. How many people out there are still playing the single player game? Because that's all Valve has ever done. Even Steam, which is the second (or first) coming of the Messiah based on what you'd read here, was mostly developed by hired people from outside of Valve. Counter-Strike was not even an intentional gamble on behalf of Valve. It was a completely random lightning strike, lady luck smiling on Gabe Newell and friends. Counter-Strike, and the community that surrounded it, are the only reasons Valve has the power to hire lawyers expensive enough to bully around these gaming centers. Valve exists, now, because of chance and luck, solely because of the efforts of other people. If it weren't for Counter-Strike, a game designed altogether by other people (and for free), Valve would've forced the same pressured deadlines as any other developer so that they could feed their families. They haven't had to deal with that because of the efforts of gamers, and they have the nads to do stuff like this? We don't even know if Valve's sophmore effort will be any good.
They've outright lied to the gaming community (September 30), they pull stunts like this, and like an abused wife we keep coming back. Why do we keep kissing their ass?
If this is paid for by public funds, the video feeds should be available to everyone.
Maybe you're on to something here. I've often heard that one of the faults of the London camera system is that no one watches it. What if the feeds were available to anyone with net access? Users could log in and alert a master operator to suspicious activity.
Take this a step further. Users with valid reports would get a bolstered rating, we'll call it "karma," say. These same users could then use this karma to allocate higher priority rating based on what they're seeing.
Someone bumping into a wall? +1 Funny. Someone pissing on a cultural artifact? +1 Insightful, modded later by someone else with -1 Overrated. Someone walking around with a bomb shaped suitcase in the parking lot of the federal building? +1 Dear God Look Out?
I waited to see if anyone would respond, and no one did except with more titles that are "Xbox Exclusive." Who in the wide world of video games would want to play any of the games these people listed on a PC anyway? That's like lamenting that Encarta 2004 never made it the Xbox.
Are they exclusive to the Xbox? Well, I guess. I suppose in the techincal definition. But we're talking an intereference call here, a game that could have made it to the PC if it weren't for Microsoft doing something to prevent it. So, let's go one by one through the titles. What you'll see is a string of PC developers that never sold anything on the PC, but went to Xbox not because of money from Microsoft but money from more consumers.
Ninja Gaiden - Team Ninja, of Tecmo, is no doubt being paid by Microsoft but it has nothing to with the PC because Team Ninja has never made a PC game in their developing life. Ninja Gaiden doesn't even resemble any form of PC game. If Tecmo ever did a PC game, it was a port of a console game to begin with. I doubt PC even came up in the conversation with Tecmo.
Riddick - Maybe, but probably not. Starbreeze, the devs, created Enclave a few years ago for Xbox alone not because of any monies thrown their way, but because they were PC demonsceners and it was easier to code for the Xbox than the other consoles. Riddick uses the same engine. It's a PC-esque game, so I can see the relation, but I didn't read anything about money passing hands. It'll end up on the other systems, but doubtfully on the PC.
Buffy. Developed by the Collective, who did PC games before. Namely an excellent Deep Space Nine game which was quite console-like. Buffy was even more so, and had no place being anywhere a controller was not. Microsoft did not pay any exclusive money to prevent its movement to the PC; rather, it was a situation not unlike Starbreeze's Riddick. Mo' money on console from a larger market.
DOA3/VB. Oh please. A fighting game on PC? And do you really want DOAVB spreading at all?
Brute Force, Crimson Skies, and MechAssault. Maybe, but Microsoft already owns FASA Studios, so all they had to do was just tell them to make the games for Xbox instead, not sign an exclusive contract. Brute Force was designed as a console game from the ground up according to the studio, Crimson Skies on originally on the PC did horribly if only because it was a misplaced console title on the PC. Same for Midtown Madness. Wrymwood mentioned MechAssault, but then in the same breath said that MW4 was completely different. So why bitch about MechAssault not on PC but MW4 only on the PC? Did Microsoft pay money to keep MW4 on the PC?
Silent Hill 2. Made it to PC.
Sega GT, PGR1&2. Neither developers of both have ever published for PC, and Sega only did so in outsourcing a port.
Whew. Stop sending me these dumb looks fellow slashdotters. Away with your silly Microsoft conspiracies that they paid your precious PC developers whores and cars so that you wouldn't have your PC games. Face the future: the PC market is too small, too troublesome, and not profitable enough to develop for right now. Surprise. It's easier to quality control a console game, still harder to pirate games on than the PC, and ultimately more profitable.
I played Planetside with at least 60 people in the same area and I was not impressed. Factor in that at least 25% of (and I'm being very conservative) are morons, another 25% are jerks, and really you've got 30 players who hampered by poor CPU performance and the presence of morons and jerks. Realistically, there's probably only about 10-25% that are really wanting to play well and on a team. Besides, how many games can perform effectively with 60+ enemies on the screen at one time?
I think we'd all agree that the constraints of previous systems actually meant that companies had to be more creative. The same is true here. I've had far more fun with the four player Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow than nearly any other online game. I'm not saying I don't run across my share of stupid people, but it's far easier to find 4 good people than it is 60-100. When you do find people that play fair, that don't camp, that play as a team, SCPT is an amazing multiplayer game - and usually lagless. I'm all up for more creative gameplay with what we have, not just adding more players.
If I had mod points I'd have used them negatively on your post instead of posting. Part of learning any operating system, or anything, is spending time it, poking around, and doing things you didn't know how to do. Another large part is asking questions from people who have the know-how, just like the OP did. Instead of sharing knowledge, which you presumably have, you decided to deconstruct his or her post.
I can't think of a better way to learn than learning while helping charity. If the OP was doing this for money, or for a multi-million dollar company you'd be right. But since this is a library, isn't it well within the very spirit of public libraries to learn? Really, you ought to be asking yourself why you're not learning to do something for charity that you didn't know how to do.
Name one other title that has been "exclusive" to the Xbox and not the PC. Even Halo eventually made its way to the PC.
As far as interfaces go, dumbed down does not always equal bad. In fact, unless you're coding in assembly and using nothing but pure unix command line, you've dumbed down as well.
Halo 2 - Check, said that
Fable - Check, also said that
Mechassault 2 - Check, said that
Doom 3 - Not first party
Jade Empire - Check (I did miss this one, granted)
Full Spectrum Warrior - Not first party
Star Wars: Republic Commando - Not first party
KOTOR 2 - Not first party
Starcraft: Ghost - Neither exclusive nor first party
Sudeki - Ummm, probably allowed to live because it was so close to completion
So, again, where are the titles in Microsoft's pocket? And, if you'll check my previous posts, I am not trolling. I am often the paladin of defense for microsoft on games.slashdot. I think that the Xbox Live Arcade almost makes up for this blunder. But they're still making a mistake by thinning out their lineup.
Or maybe I'm still bitter about Psychonauts.
It's funny, it's as if calling a parent poster a troll is the slashdot equivalent of making fun of someone's mom, or calling McFly a chicken. Go check your definition of "troll" before you start slinging it around please. If anything, calling someone a troll is more troll-ish now than posting "BILL GATES ROX."
. . . at canceling these days. Talk about Japan not having any titles? What does that leave in Microsoft's pocket for the US after Fable and Halo 2? Mechassault 2? Citizen Zero, another MMORPG that has been in development for two years and will most likely get canceled as well? Ooo. My guess is that anyone working for MS right now, either first or second party, has sent out more than a few resumes in the last few weeks and is all but waiting for The Email. Unless they're Bungie and (ironically) Rare.
Which reminds me. Need proof of in house politics at MS? Note that none of Rare's wholly unimpressive games have been canceled. -cough-PeterMoore-cough-.
I hadn't seen True Fantasy firsthand, but I will say that the fact that you didn't have to fight at all seemed rather interesting. It's nothing new, but it seemed to be a focus rather than an afterthought. Fishing sounded cool, is all. And, it was by the team that did Dark Cloud 2, which was excellent. Oh well.
Don't fret Txiasaeia, you just have to change karma mines. Try typoing two random words in response to any games.slashdot post and link them to a random PA cartoon. Sit back, and watch the karma check in.
If this were Irrational speaking, or Bioware, or another proven creative team I'd believe them. But while Planet Moon hasn't really bombed on anything, they haven't exactly done anything groundbreaking either. Their two games in house, Giants and Armed and Dangerous, actually exhibit a progression away from creativity. A&D is fun and funny- I'm playing through it right now - but it's essentially the action levels from Giants stretched into one big game. Nothing in the game screams "creative" although I see no reason why it couldn't have.
I think what Loeb and Moon want is more chances at bat. They might get that, of course, but I think they're going to be surprised to find that creativity might as hard to pull off on the PSP as the Xbox and PC. If Sony locks in the specs they've been touting, it's not much less powerful than a PS2, so in terms of graphic design and what have you we're still working with a system that will require extensive development time. And, the PSP is portable. Right now anyway, the gameboy library is far more licensed than any of the console games. Creative games get passed over routinely because they're lost in the morass of subpar Mary Kate and Ashley and Finding Nemo games. What's more is that they may find the PSP a little more crowded than they're obviously hoping for. If it's the GBA kids that the PSP pulls, they'll want to play Finding Nemo 2. If it's the home console owners, they'll want to play Madden. There's little room for creativity no matter where you are in video games right now, but Moon seems intent on convincing themselves otherwise.
So, what I'm trying to say is that this seems like Planet Moon has talked themselves out of the possibility that they just might not be able to make groundbreaking games,. What Loeb is saying, essentially, is that it was development costs that stopped them from making their great game, not that they can't make great games.
Well, best of luck to them. I think that if they had that special creative spark within them, it would've shown up already.
Endnote:
I'm not sure we can count MDK as some kind of creative track record. Dave Perry and Shiny worked on that as well and went on to work on the glorious testament to non-creative-ness that is Enter the Matrix.
I'm in graduate school with high hopes to become a history professor one day. I also consider myself quite computer literate. With that in mind, I see two obvious problems with Muzzy Lane's software.
First, Muzzy Lane seems to have missed the boat on the "new cultural history," which is a historical interpretational model that is simply history from the bottom-up. If it were really "new" I would understand this negligence, but the movement isn't new at all. The new cultural history is a historical interpretational development that is a solid 20/30 years underway. What I mean by referring to cultural history is that professors and teachers are moving away from the sweeping political and military histories and towards histories of very specific or localized people groups. Unfortunately, Muzzy Lane's "Making History" is not groundbreaking at all. It is very much a computerized form of this antiquated political history, and that's something that history teachers are trying to do less of, not more. Neville Chamberlain is someone I would want to speak as little as possible about in my class. It's the people who elected and empowered Chamberlain that should be the focus on Muzzy Lane's game and my class, not the select few who Muzzy Lane believes have "made history." Using phrases like "everything flows from your decisions" makes me cringe. The game's description implies that the decisions of one or two people influence the lives of everyone else, but developments in history in the last 20-30 years have firmly established that this rarely the case. Political and military history, history from the top-down, is very much out of style and for very good reason.
Secondly, the webpage for "Making History" implies that "this is how it was." They seem to be framing their game within language similar to phrasing ina textbook, which is definitely a bad thing. History textbook language is changing from the "this is the historical truth" towards "this is one historical truth." Muzzy Lane is making up history as they go, as do all historians, but in refusing to admit this students will walk away from "Making History" thinking, "This is what really happened." They promise "historically valid consequences." That's a dangerous perspective to take, one that I certainly wouldn't want to encourage in my class.
The name itself reflects the two problems inherent in their software. It suggests that one person is responsible for "making history," and at the same time it implies that there is one true version of history.
I'm not sure how Muzzy Lane can solve the first problem. I just guessing off the top of my head, but I think that a time period mod for the Sims might be more helpful in the classroom than Muzzy Lane's "Making History." The second problem is merely language, and I think if they qualified their description more and moved away from the textbook-feel in the language it might remedy this. I think that the game is fine and good as a game and merely that. I played the hell out of Pirates! when I was a kid, and it spurred a year of trips from the library with my arms full of pirate books. If "Making History" inspires likewise, then great. But I think what Muzzy Lane is going for is not so much a game as much as something you'd base one or two class periods around. That, to me, is giving too much authority to a company that apparently isn't as up on historical pedagogy as they imply.
I played the first, I guess probably three times over. I've played the second now twice through, and I'm just not impressed. I'm not one of the people who bitched about the skill system - I liked it. I could handle the poor system performance as well. The ammo system didn't bother me. What bothered me more was that there really wasn't any choice at all. Throughout the game, the same factions kept bothering me. There was nothing I could ever do to piss anyone off enough that I closed a door or burned a bridge. In Ion Storm's pursuit of the ultimate open-ended game, they made a game where choices don't really matter at all. There's no cost or consequence. In fact, you can see all three endings by saving only 10 minutes away from the conclusion of the game. That's lame, particularly since it's little different operationally from DE1. What changed from DE1 to DE2? Very litte, save an overused physics engine, a graphics upgrade, and some interface variations. What sold me in DE1 was the story, and what let me down in DE2 was the story.
The characters had no life to them whatsoever. I didn't care for any of the factions, which really shouldn't have happened. Ion Storm should have crafted the game so that I liked each for different reasons, but what ended up happening is that I disliked all of them for the same reason. Was it enjoyable to play? Sure. You're right, had it not been attached to DE I probably would have liked it more. But as I thought more about DE2 after finishing it, and got further away from it, the worse I think Ion Storm did with DE2.
The biggest problem with Hall's manifesto is that he's not paying for quality, he's paying for good reviews. There's a big difference. While there is usually correlation between a truly good game and the reviews, particularly when using meta ranking sites, it doesn't always match up. Take Black & White, for example, which was highly rated by the press. Two years later, B&W was lauded at by the very same magazines for its overwhelming boredom. Or Deus Ex 2, which also received comparetively high scores from the media but among fans and consumers hurt the Ion Storm brand far more than it helped? Good reviews does not always equal quality. More importantly, ti doesn't always equal sales either, and quite practically that's what Jason Hall should be most concerned about. Would more people have bought Enter the Matrix had it been a decent game? Probably. Does Enter the Matrix hurt the next Matrix game? Unarguably. But you can't chart the quality of a game with game reviews alone. Relying on those is too simplistic, and too impractical.
If Hall actually gets to put this into place - which I doubt he will - why wouldn't Developer X unofficially bring on Mr. EGM Reviewer as a "consultant," with the thanks taking the shape of an HDTV? Allowing game reviewers to ultimately dictact the size of multi-thousand dollar royalty paychecks is a big mistake. I read game magazines all the time, and with the rare exception it's pisspoor writing stitlted with poop and boob jokes. I wouldn't trust them with determining my family's income, so why is Jason?
So, I assume that if he truly feels persuaded by this vast etropic force, him and EA will be selling this new Simcity at cost right? You know, disperse funds back out to people otherwise "all this stuff will get sorted"?
International House of Mojo reports that without a publisher, Psychonauts creator Tim Schaffer had to show the game out of his hotel room. Although that sounds weird, my bet is that it was a very funny hotel room, maybe as funny as some of those Korean booths at E3 in the warehouse near the restrooms.
From the Mojo:
Wonder why there is no Psychonauts news from any other media sites? Our own Doug Tabacco on the show floor explains:
That's because Psychonauts isn't being shown on the floor. With no publisher to host them and no time or space left to secure a booth of their own, Tim is reduced to showing it out of a hotel suite. We called him and tried to set up a meeting, but he said he's totally booked up. We take that to be a good thing, since it means lots of people (hopefully some of them publishers) are seeing the game.
Thre you have it folks... You heard it here first! Exclusive E3 News coverage. Come on you know Mojo still loves you. It does.
This sounds like the "boardwalk" of the sports games monopolies to me. Is it coicidence that in the span of two months, the smaller sports video games franchises - Microsoft's and Sony's - are canned for a year? Was that "Park Place"? Then, in the same two months, EA's trying to get exclusive on the likenesses? I doubt that Sega or Midway or Microsoft and Sony's sports games ever posed any kind of challenge singularly, but collectively formed a competitor that took a considerable chunk out of EA's potential profits. Sounds to me like EA is trying to exterminate the swarm of small annoying bugs at the same time.
If I were any other video game publisher besides EA I would be up in arms, even if they were little insect-y fly arms, and I'm including the first party publishers. EA is, perhaps, more powerful than Microsoft, Nintendo, and even Sony.
Of course, the ones with the real power here are consumers. Frankly, as gamers we should perhaps be more worried about this than the publishers who are probably in no position financially to challenge EA, or politically if it's the console makers. This won't happen, because we lack a cohesive voice. The gaming media is as much a part of the machine as the publishing houses themselves. So, I imagine Madden 200X will be the only football game on the shelves for the next twenty years until EA gets lazy and careless.
The proliferation of Halo has little to do with PR people. I was an assistant manager at EB when the Xbox launched and continued to be until last summer. At the EB I was working at, Microsoft was too busy pushing Munch and Oddworld to really recognize Halo. It took a good 6 months until Microsoft really realized, "Dear God, we're still in the console game because of Bungie."
There are two related reasons why Halo has done so First, the co-op experience is great - you can breeze through Halo in a day with a friend, and then there is everything that happens in between. You start experimenting with jumps in the caverns, or messing around with the warthog. You're really just playing together, in a very sandbox-y kind of way. That rarely happened in PC games because anyone you really played with were miles away, or if you took the pain to get together you didn't want to waste it "playing."
Secondly, the ease in setting up multiplayer far exceeds the ease in setting up a PC lan. The xbox is a heavy beast, but a featherweight compared to the pain in the ass that is lugging around a midtower, a keyboard, a mouse, cables from here to kingdom come, and a monitor. About 10-20 of us used to have a LAN party every month. That is, until Halo came along. The 1-2 hours minimum in copying patches, maps, installing CDs you forgot or didn't have - suddenly became 10-20 minutes tops, and was just plugging things in. It was so much easier to bring friends too, because all you needed was a controller - not an entire PC. And, the Halo you played was exactly the same Halo someone played at there house. No one had an advantage because of a faster PC.
As you demonstrated, Halo's greatness is often lost on PC players, whom you refer to as "die hard gamers." It's greatness is difficult for PC people to understand, people who've gone to LAN parties for the last 8 years and can, in fact, get the setup down to 30 minutes or less. The feat of 16 players playing the same game at the same time is as difficult to comprehend for PC people who are used to 64+ people, but for video games it was a revolution. Sure, in comparison to PC FPS's, Halo is good. Not great, not bad, but good. Solid. However, as a console FPS, it is the seminal console FPS of all time. The controls are a dream for a console FPS, the graphics were amazing at the time, but more than that it was a pick up and play FPS. A friend who had played video games on his own but never an FPS could hold his own after an hour of playing. I'm not sure you could say that about most virgins to PC FPSs. What you saw of Halo wasn't really Halo. Halo is a bunch of friends in the same house or apartment, drinking beers or soda, cursing at each other from the other room, then taking as much time to recap, retell, and laugh at the stories made during the round that it took to actually play the round. That's Halo. It is a socially viral experience that has little to do with its single player.
What are PC FPS's? They are they elite, the bourgeoisie of video games. They are the ones in the high castle on the high hill. This form is shared in attitude by the people who play them exclusively. Go read some of the comments above on mouses and fps; the belief among PC FPS players is that the video game experience is a diluted, impure one. They're wrong.
What is Halo? Halo is the embodiment of concepts once held so dearly as PC-indiginous, Halo is the democratized FPS for the video gaming mainstream masses. This democratization, this bringing the FPS to the people, was an artform that Bungie pulled off brilliantly. You can say that Halo is average as an FPS, "inoffensive," "nothing new," or "special." That's fine. What you can't say though, is that Halo is not great. If you doubt the impact of Halo on video gaming, you just don't get it , quite objectively, quite plain and simple. You're being too PC-elite to accept that a game can be great, can be really good, can be amazing without you t
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but what you're describing is the case for MOST game developers.
I thought of this as I was writing. Perhaps what I should have emphasized more is that with the exception of GTA3, anything good that Rockstar has done is based extremely closely to GTA3 (I don't think MC2 counts). SimAnts - while still a Sim game - is fairly different in principle than SimCity. Sure, it's overheard, and it's management. But there's more to SimEarth and SimAnt than SimCity + More Vehicles and mountains, or even SimCity with Ants or SimEarth with Earth. The gaming principles, objectives, design, is all different. What is the same is merely the gaming interface really. With GTA, it's the interface that's changing in small degrees but the gaming theory behind it is barely changed. I'd agree with you about iD, as I'm not a fan anyway. Bioware? Well KOTOR comes immediately to mind - sure it's a variation of Baldur's Gate to some degree, but it's much more different from Baldur's Gate than GTA:SA/VC is from GTA3. Even Neverwinter Nights is substantially different enough from Baldur's Gate that it's nowhere near the similarity between the GTA 3-SA.
So you're right; companies do well in something and they keep doing similar games (Blizzard also comes to mind). But good companies, the great ones that you mentioned (I'll accept iD even though I'm personally no fan) take their initial breakthrough and improve on it well beyond mere ascetic variations. You mentioned the difficulty of producing games, and yet Rockstar will have managed to produce 3 GTA games in ~2 years (GTA3, 2002; GTA:VC, 2003; GTA:SA, 2004). That's what I mean by soaking it dry.
I think we'd agree that the few great companies are the ones who do things radically different but do them well. Miyamoto's Mario and Zelda, Wright's SimCity and Sims, Irrational's System Shock II and Freedom Force, Bungie's Myth and Halo/Marathon; the great developers can create great games whatever the language, be it FPS, RPG, or RTS.
First, GTA3 was unarguably seminal in video gaming. No doubt about that. It framed not only how games are played, but how they're perceived, how they're designed - through and through GTA3 changed everything about video games.
Enter GTA:VC. It did what - great music? This new GTA is as groundbreaking how? They have mountains? Eating? Minigames? Ragdoll physics?
Rockstar has produced one groundbreaking game. One. And, they've been living off it ever since. Even Midnight Club II, which was racing bliss at its most pure, was developed by a company they bought that had designed the original Midtown Madness series for Microsoft on the PC. Maybe they're waiting for the next gen systems to really do something new, but as far as I'm concerned Rockstar is an overrated one-hit wonder that, apparentely quite accidently, hit an oil well in their background and are sucking it dry. Most of their other work has been luck (Midnight Club II) or medicore to above average at best (State of Emergency, Revolver, Manhunt, etc). What remains to be seen is how long the public will endure variations of the same thing, made more difficult by Rockstar in that other companies are trying to draw from the same well.
Slightly OT, but I wonder if Microsoft is making the same mistake in portables that they made in console: entering the game late. I think they're watching to see how the PSP does, but it seems that if it does well they'll be playing catchup all over again in 3-4 years as they are trying to do with the Xbox. Would it have been wiser to pull out an Xbox-Teeny (ha) at the same time as the PSP?
I'm not a cheapskate. I believe in paying for good software.
But I won't pay for Movable Type. Here's why.
On SixApart's behalf, they made several big mistakes in launching their pricing structure. Since they announced MT3 and that they were going to charge for it, they also promised a free non-crippled version of MT3. Blogging is generally a communual experience. I blog casually, and I have a couple of friends who write posts on my blog from time to time, and a wife who keeps her own blog. The free version of MT3 is crippled, because it limits the users and number of blogs. Limiting user base is bad thing to do when blogging is still relatively new.
Secondly, the pricing structure is much higher than what people anticipated. Those in the beta test for MT3 had absolutely no idea that it was going to cost this much, and many who did participate have publically stated they wouldn't have if they did know. Why the hostility?
Two reasons. It's the community that made MT what it is now. There's not really that much new functionality in MT3 that makes it worth paying $100 for (the $70 is a temporary discount remember?). Many of the features that made MT2x worth using were coded by non-SixApart people. Users - with no profit motive whatsoever - coded hundreds of MT plugins that exceeded the coding ability of SixApart. Others wrote far more detailed tutorials and instructions than SixApart provided for their own software. So, SixApart is compensating them by running a contest for the best plugin? That's insulting, honestly.
Secondly, there are blogging apps that do as good a job as MT3, if not better. And, they'refree. Others have similar pricing structures as MT3 but do more. So, why MT3? And let's get this straight: using something for free isn't necessarily being a cheapass. If maintaining my blogs as they are will cost me upwards $150, why shouldn't I migrate to a free solution? Imagine if Windows had the same stability and security as Linux, but cost the same as it does now for a company to run. Why wouldn't a company move to Linux? Are companies being the durgatory form of cheapskates by moving to a lower priced product? No. It's common market sense, and because of its love for linux and open source, slashdot should be aware of this better than anyone. Some MT users probably are cheapass, and will warez the MT software if they can or do whatever they can to avoid paying.
But a larger portion are paying for accounts on livejournal and blogger. They are paying for internet access and webhosting. They're not cheapskates. Instead, like me, they just don't want to pay $150-200 for what is basically a hobby, and a hobby that can continue for free if we switch software. Why should we support a company that doesn't announce its pricing structure beforehand, and keeps it as close to their chest as possible? Why did SixApart do that? Why didn't they announce it before time?
Because they knew people would be pissed. This reaction is no surprise to anyone.
I like how at every E3, the Date Fairy suddenly dumps her (his?) magical bag of special date dust over everyone's game. In fact, E3 is just one huge calendar orgy.
And then, come forth quarter, the Date Fairy's true magic is revealed: she used disappearing ink; dates that were so firm, so solid, so there suddenly disappear into vaporness, or instead they morph into the ancient puzzling runes "WHEN IT'S DONE."
Slashdot Mirror
I somehow received a free Zinio subscription to EGM, and as far as digital reading software goes it's quite well designed. It's intuitive, streamlined, clean, and clear. You can tell Zinio has attempted to replicate the reading process digitally with its turning pages and fold out ads. I was impressed.
That said, when a subscription to the Zinio/digital EGM costs $19.99 and you can easily find a four year paper subscription for under $5, why bother with the hassle? If I subscribe to the magazine, why can't I pay a few dollars more and get access to the digital version as well?
I remember reading an interview with the suits at NetFlicks in Wired a year or two ago. They said it was still cheaper, and practically faster, to snail-mail data on CDs to someone than to provide it over the net. Zinio's pricing proves this hasn't changed.
I suppose the only advantage to Zinio is not having magazines pile up somewhere. Of course, I have yet to find a game magazine that's worth keeping anyway. They're so filled with hyperbolic previews, barely edited junior high level writing, and gratituous screenshots that they're not worth the hard drive space to save them on.
I'm amused by the comments here, mostly about Valve protecting "their games", or about how Valve has a right to protect "their" intellectual property.
Let's get this straight: Valve has made one game. One. Not two, not three; one. How many people out there are still playing the single player game? Because that's all Valve has ever done. Even Steam, which is the second (or first) coming of the Messiah based on what you'd read here, was mostly developed by hired people from outside of Valve. Counter-Strike was not even an intentional gamble on behalf of Valve. It was a completely random lightning strike, lady luck smiling on Gabe Newell and friends. Counter-Strike, and the community that surrounded it, are the only reasons Valve has the power to hire lawyers expensive enough to bully around these gaming centers. Valve exists, now, because of chance and luck, solely because of the efforts of other people. If it weren't for Counter-Strike, a game designed altogether by other people (and for free), Valve would've forced the same pressured deadlines as any other developer so that they could feed their families. They haven't had to deal with that because of the efforts of gamers, and they have the nads to do stuff like this? We don't even know if Valve's sophmore effort will be any good.
They've outright lied to the gaming community (September 30), they pull stunts like this, and like an abused wife we keep coming back. Why do we keep kissing their ass?
If this is paid for by public funds, the video feeds should be available to everyone.
Maybe you're on to something here. I've often heard that one of the faults of the London camera system is that no one watches it. What if the feeds were available to anyone with net access? Users could log in and alert a master operator to suspicious activity.
Take this a step further. Users with valid reports would get a bolstered rating, we'll call it "karma," say. These same users could then use this karma to allocate higher priority rating based on what they're seeing.
Someone bumping into a wall? +1 Funny. Someone pissing on a cultural artifact? +1 Insightful, modded later by someone else with -1 Overrated. Someone walking around with a bomb shaped suitcase in the parking lot of the federal building? +1 Dear God Look Out?
I waited to see if anyone would respond, and no one did except with more titles that are "Xbox Exclusive." Who in the wide world of video games would want to play any of the games these people listed on a PC anyway? That's like lamenting that Encarta 2004 never made it the Xbox. Are they exclusive to the Xbox? Well, I guess. I suppose in the techincal definition. But we're talking an intereference call here, a game that could have made it to the PC if it weren't for Microsoft doing something to prevent it. So, let's go one by one through the titles. What you'll see is a string of PC developers that never sold anything on the PC, but went to Xbox not because of money from Microsoft but money from more consumers.
Ninja Gaiden - Team Ninja, of Tecmo, is no doubt being paid by Microsoft but it has nothing to with the PC because Team Ninja has never made a PC game in their developing life. Ninja Gaiden doesn't even resemble any form of PC game. If Tecmo ever did a PC game, it was a port of a console game to begin with. I doubt PC even came up in the conversation with Tecmo.
Riddick - Maybe, but probably not. Starbreeze, the devs, created Enclave a few years ago for Xbox alone not because of any monies thrown their way, but because they were PC demonsceners and it was easier to code for the Xbox than the other consoles. Riddick uses the same engine. It's a PC-esque game, so I can see the relation, but I didn't read anything about money passing hands. It'll end up on the other systems, but doubtfully on the PC.
Buffy. Developed by the Collective, who did PC games before. Namely an excellent Deep Space Nine game which was quite console-like. Buffy was even more so, and had no place being anywhere a controller was not. Microsoft did not pay any exclusive money to prevent its movement to the PC; rather, it was a situation not unlike Starbreeze's Riddick. Mo' money on console from a larger market.
DOA3/VB. Oh please. A fighting game on PC? And do you really want DOAVB spreading at all?
Brute Force, Crimson Skies, and MechAssault. Maybe, but Microsoft already owns FASA Studios, so all they had to do was just tell them to make the games for Xbox instead, not sign an exclusive contract. Brute Force was designed as a console game from the ground up according to the studio, Crimson Skies on originally on the PC did horribly if only because it was a misplaced console title on the PC. Same for Midtown Madness. Wrymwood mentioned MechAssault, but then in the same breath said that MW4 was completely different. So why bitch about MechAssault not on PC but MW4 only on the PC? Did Microsoft pay money to keep MW4 on the PC?
Silent Hill 2. Made it to PC.
Sega GT, PGR1&2. Neither developers of both have ever published for PC, and Sega only did so in outsourcing a port.
Whew. Stop sending me these dumb looks fellow slashdotters. Away with your silly Microsoft conspiracies that they paid your precious PC developers whores and cars so that you wouldn't have your PC games. Face the future: the PC market is too small, too troublesome, and not profitable enough to develop for right now. Surprise. It's easier to quality control a console game, still harder to pirate games on than the PC, and ultimately more profitable.
I played Planetside with at least 60 people in the same area and I was not impressed. Factor in that at least 25% of (and I'm being very conservative) are morons, another 25% are jerks, and really you've got 30 players who hampered by poor CPU performance and the presence of morons and jerks. Realistically, there's probably only about 10-25% that are really wanting to play well and on a team. Besides, how many games can perform effectively with 60+ enemies on the screen at one time?
I think we'd all agree that the constraints of previous systems actually meant that companies had to be more creative. The same is true here. I've had far more fun with the four player Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow than nearly any other online game. I'm not saying I don't run across my share of stupid people, but it's far easier to find 4 good people than it is 60-100. When you do find people that play fair, that don't camp, that play as a team, SCPT is an amazing multiplayer game - and usually lagless. I'm all up for more creative gameplay with what we have, not just adding more players.
Dammit, don't give Carmack any ideas! I'll barely be able to run Doom 3!
If I had mod points I'd have used them negatively on your post instead of posting. Part of learning any operating system, or anything, is spending time it, poking around, and doing things you didn't know how to do. Another large part is asking questions from people who have the know-how, just like the OP did. Instead of sharing knowledge, which you presumably have, you decided to deconstruct his or her post.
I can't think of a better way to learn than learning while helping charity. If the OP was doing this for money, or for a multi-million dollar company you'd be right. But since this is a library, isn't it well within the very spirit of public libraries to learn? Really, you ought to be asking yourself why you're not learning to do something for charity that you didn't know how to do.
Name one other title that has been "exclusive" to the Xbox and not the PC. Even Halo eventually made its way to the PC.
As far as interfaces go, dumbed down does not always equal bad. In fact, unless you're coding in assembly and using nothing but pure unix command line, you've dumbed down as well.
Blatimore should offer some muncipal service, say free waste disposal for a year in Baltimore, per gmail swap. Problem solved.
Halo 2 - Check, said that
Fable - Check, also said that
Mechassault 2 - Check, said that
Doom 3 - Not first party
Jade Empire - Check (I did miss this one, granted)
Full Spectrum Warrior - Not first party
Star Wars: Republic Commando - Not first party
KOTOR 2 - Not first party
Starcraft: Ghost - Neither exclusive nor first party
Sudeki - Ummm, probably allowed to live because it was so close to completion
So, again, where are the titles in Microsoft's pocket? And, if you'll check my previous posts, I am not trolling. I am often the paladin of defense for microsoft on games.slashdot. I think that the Xbox Live Arcade almost makes up for this blunder. But they're still making a mistake by thinning out their lineup.
Or maybe I'm still bitter about Psychonauts.
It's funny, it's as if calling a parent poster a troll is the slashdot equivalent of making fun of someone's mom, or calling McFly a chicken. Go check your definition of "troll" before you start slinging it around please. If anything, calling someone a troll is more troll-ish now than posting "BILL GATES ROX."
. . . at canceling these days. Talk about Japan not having any titles? What does that leave in Microsoft's pocket for the US after Fable and Halo 2? Mechassault 2? Citizen Zero, another MMORPG that has been in development for two years and will most likely get canceled as well? Ooo. My guess is that anyone working for MS right now, either first or second party, has sent out more than a few resumes in the last few weeks and is all but waiting for The Email. Unless they're Bungie and (ironically) Rare.
Which reminds me. Need proof of in house politics at MS? Note that none of Rare's wholly unimpressive games have been canceled. -cough-PeterMoore-cough-.
I hadn't seen True Fantasy firsthand, but I will say that the fact that you didn't have to fight at all seemed rather interesting. It's nothing new, but it seemed to be a focus rather than an afterthought. Fishing sounded cool, is all. And, it was by the team that did Dark Cloud 2, which was excellent. Oh well.
Well, damn!
Don't fret Txiasaeia, you just have to change karma mines. Try typoing two random words in response to any games.slashdot post and link them to a random PA cartoon. Sit back, and watch the karma check in.
If this were Irrational speaking, or Bioware, or another proven creative team I'd believe them. But while Planet Moon hasn't really bombed on anything, they haven't exactly done anything groundbreaking either. Their two games in house, Giants and Armed and Dangerous, actually exhibit a progression away from creativity. A&D is fun and funny- I'm playing through it right now - but it's essentially the action levels from Giants stretched into one big game. Nothing in the game screams "creative" although I see no reason why it couldn't have.
I think what Loeb and Moon want is more chances at bat. They might get that, of course, but I think they're going to be surprised to find that creativity might as hard to pull off on the PSP as the Xbox and PC. If Sony locks in the specs they've been touting, it's not much less powerful than a PS2, so in terms of graphic design and what have you we're still working with a system that will require extensive development time. And, the PSP is portable. Right now anyway, the gameboy library is far more licensed than any of the console games. Creative games get passed over routinely because they're lost in the morass of subpar Mary Kate and Ashley and Finding Nemo games. What's more is that they may find the PSP a little more crowded than they're obviously hoping for. If it's the GBA kids that the PSP pulls, they'll want to play Finding Nemo 2. If it's the home console owners, they'll want to play Madden. There's little room for creativity no matter where you are in video games right now, but Moon seems intent on convincing themselves otherwise.
So, what I'm trying to say is that this seems like Planet Moon has talked themselves out of the possibility that they just might not be able to make groundbreaking games,. What Loeb is saying, essentially, is that it was development costs that stopped them from making their great game, not that they can't make great games.
Well, best of luck to them. I think that if they had that special creative spark within them, it would've shown up already.
Endnote: I'm not sure we can count MDK as some kind of creative track record. Dave Perry and Shiny worked on that as well and went on to work on the glorious testament to non-creative-ness that is Enter the Matrix.
I'm in graduate school with high hopes to become a history professor one day. I also consider myself quite computer literate. With that in mind, I see two obvious problems with Muzzy Lane's software.
First, Muzzy Lane seems to have missed the boat on the "new cultural history," which is a historical interpretational model that is simply history from the bottom-up. If it were really "new" I would understand this negligence, but the movement isn't new at all. The new cultural history is a historical interpretational development that is a solid 20/30 years underway. What I mean by referring to cultural history is that professors and teachers are moving away from the sweeping political and military histories and towards histories of very specific or localized people groups. Unfortunately, Muzzy Lane's "Making History" is not groundbreaking at all. It is very much a computerized form of this antiquated political history, and that's something that history teachers are trying to do less of, not more. Neville Chamberlain is someone I would want to speak as little as possible about in my class. It's the people who elected and empowered Chamberlain that should be the focus on Muzzy Lane's game and my class, not the select few who Muzzy Lane believes have "made history." Using phrases like "everything flows from your decisions" makes me cringe. The game's description implies that the decisions of one or two people influence the lives of everyone else, but developments in history in the last 20-30 years have firmly established that this rarely the case. Political and military history, history from the top-down, is very much out of style and for very good reason.
Secondly, the webpage for "Making History" implies that "this is how it was." They seem to be framing their game within language similar to phrasing ina textbook, which is definitely a bad thing. History textbook language is changing from the "this is the historical truth" towards "this is one historical truth." Muzzy Lane is making up history as they go, as do all historians, but in refusing to admit this students will walk away from "Making History" thinking, "This is what really happened." They promise "historically valid consequences." That's a dangerous perspective to take, one that I certainly wouldn't want to encourage in my class.
The name itself reflects the two problems inherent in their software. It suggests that one person is responsible for "making history," and at the same time it implies that there is one true version of history.
I'm not sure how Muzzy Lane can solve the first problem. I just guessing off the top of my head, but I think that a time period mod for the Sims might be more helpful in the classroom than Muzzy Lane's "Making History." The second problem is merely language, and I think if they qualified their description more and moved away from the textbook-feel in the language it might remedy this. I think that the game is fine and good as a game and merely that. I played the hell out of Pirates! when I was a kid, and it spurred a year of trips from the library with my arms full of pirate books. If "Making History" inspires likewise, then great. But I think what Muzzy Lane is going for is not so much a game as much as something you'd base one or two class periods around. That, to me, is giving too much authority to a company that apparently isn't as up on historical pedagogy as they imply.
I played the first, I guess probably three times over. I've played the second now twice through, and I'm just not impressed. I'm not one of the people who bitched about the skill system - I liked it. I could handle the poor system performance as well. The ammo system didn't bother me. What bothered me more was that there really wasn't any choice at all. Throughout the game, the same factions kept bothering me. There was nothing I could ever do to piss anyone off enough that I closed a door or burned a bridge. In Ion Storm's pursuit of the ultimate open-ended game, they made a game where choices don't really matter at all. There's no cost or consequence. In fact, you can see all three endings by saving only 10 minutes away from the conclusion of the game. That's lame, particularly since it's little different operationally from DE1. What changed from DE1 to DE2? Very litte, save an overused physics engine, a graphics upgrade, and some interface variations. What sold me in DE1 was the story, and what let me down in DE2 was the story.
The characters had no life to them whatsoever. I didn't care for any of the factions, which really shouldn't have happened. Ion Storm should have crafted the game so that I liked each for different reasons, but what ended up happening is that I disliked all of them for the same reason. Was it enjoyable to play? Sure. You're right, had it not been attached to DE I probably would have liked it more. But as I thought more about DE2 after finishing it, and got further away from it, the worse I think Ion Storm did with DE2.
The biggest problem with Hall's manifesto is that he's not paying for quality, he's paying for good reviews. There's a big difference. While there is usually correlation between a truly good game and the reviews, particularly when using meta ranking sites, it doesn't always match up. Take Black & White, for example, which was highly rated by the press. Two years later, B&W was lauded at by the very same magazines for its overwhelming boredom. Or Deus Ex 2, which also received comparetively high scores from the media but among fans and consumers hurt the Ion Storm brand far more than it helped? Good reviews does not always equal quality. More importantly, ti doesn't always equal sales either, and quite practically that's what Jason Hall should be most concerned about. Would more people have bought Enter the Matrix had it been a decent game? Probably. Does Enter the Matrix hurt the next Matrix game? Unarguably. But you can't chart the quality of a game with game reviews alone. Relying on those is too simplistic, and too impractical.
If Hall actually gets to put this into place - which I doubt he will - why wouldn't Developer X unofficially bring on Mr. EGM Reviewer as a "consultant," with the thanks taking the shape of an HDTV? Allowing game reviewers to ultimately dictact the size of multi-thousand dollar royalty paychecks is a big mistake. I read game magazines all the time, and with the rare exception it's pisspoor writing stitlted with poop and boob jokes. I wouldn't trust them with determining my family's income, so why is Jason?
So, I assume that if he truly feels persuaded by this vast etropic force, him and EA will be selling this new Simcity at cost right? You know, disperse funds back out to people otherwise "all this stuff will get sorted"?
International House of Mojo reports that without a publisher, Psychonauts creator Tim Schaffer had to show the game out of his hotel room. Although that sounds weird, my bet is that it was a very funny hotel room, maybe as funny as some of those Korean booths at E3 in the warehouse near the restrooms.
From the Mojo:
Wonder why there is no Psychonauts news from any other media sites? Our own Doug Tabacco on the show floor explains:
That's because Psychonauts isn't being shown on the floor. With no publisher to host them and no time or space left to secure a booth of their own, Tim is reduced to showing it out of a hotel suite. We called him and tried to set up a meeting, but he said he's totally booked up. We take that to be a good thing, since it means lots of people (hopefully some of them publishers) are seeing the game.
Thre you have it folks... You heard it here first! Exclusive E3 News coverage. Come on you know Mojo still loves you. It does.
This sounds like the "boardwalk" of the sports games monopolies to me. Is it coicidence that in the span of two months, the smaller sports video games franchises - Microsoft's and Sony's - are canned for a year? Was that "Park Place"? Then, in the same two months, EA's trying to get exclusive on the likenesses? I doubt that Sega or Midway or Microsoft and Sony's sports games ever posed any kind of challenge singularly, but collectively formed a competitor that took a considerable chunk out of EA's potential profits. Sounds to me like EA is trying to exterminate the swarm of small annoying bugs at the same time.
If I were any other video game publisher besides EA I would be up in arms, even if they were little insect-y fly arms, and I'm including the first party publishers. EA is, perhaps, more powerful than Microsoft, Nintendo, and even Sony.
Of course, the ones with the real power here are consumers. Frankly, as gamers we should perhaps be more worried about this than the publishers who are probably in no position financially to challenge EA, or politically if it's the console makers. This won't happen, because we lack a cohesive voice. The gaming media is as much a part of the machine as the publishing houses themselves. So, I imagine Madden 200X will be the only football game on the shelves for the next twenty years until EA gets lazy and careless.
Of course, they are just games. -shrug-
The proliferation of Halo has little to do with PR people. I was an assistant manager at EB when the Xbox launched and continued to be until last summer. At the EB I was working at, Microsoft was too busy pushing Munch and Oddworld to really recognize Halo. It took a good 6 months until Microsoft really realized, "Dear God, we're still in the console game because of Bungie."
There are two related reasons why Halo has done so First, the co-op experience is great - you can breeze through Halo in a day with a friend, and then there is everything that happens in between. You start experimenting with jumps in the caverns, or messing around with the warthog. You're really just playing together, in a very sandbox-y kind of way. That rarely happened in PC games because anyone you really played with were miles away, or if you took the pain to get together you didn't want to waste it "playing."
Secondly, the ease in setting up multiplayer far exceeds the ease in setting up a PC lan. The xbox is a heavy beast, but a featherweight compared to the pain in the ass that is lugging around a midtower, a keyboard, a mouse, cables from here to kingdom come, and a monitor. About 10-20 of us used to have a LAN party every month. That is, until Halo came along. The 1-2 hours minimum in copying patches, maps, installing CDs you forgot or didn't have - suddenly became 10-20 minutes tops, and was just plugging things in. It was so much easier to bring friends too, because all you needed was a controller - not an entire PC. And, the Halo you played was exactly the same Halo someone played at there house. No one had an advantage because of a faster PC.
As you demonstrated, Halo's greatness is often lost on PC players, whom you refer to as "die hard gamers." It's greatness is difficult for PC people to understand, people who've gone to LAN parties for the last 8 years and can, in fact, get the setup down to 30 minutes or less. The feat of 16 players playing the same game at the same time is as difficult to comprehend for PC people who are used to 64+ people, but for video games it was a revolution. Sure, in comparison to PC FPS's, Halo is good. Not great, not bad, but good. Solid. However, as a console FPS, it is the seminal console FPS of all time. The controls are a dream for a console FPS, the graphics were amazing at the time, but more than that it was a pick up and play FPS. A friend who had played video games on his own but never an FPS could hold his own after an hour of playing. I'm not sure you could say that about most virgins to PC FPSs. What you saw of Halo wasn't really Halo. Halo is a bunch of friends in the same house or apartment, drinking beers or soda, cursing at each other from the other room, then taking as much time to recap, retell, and laugh at the stories made during the round that it took to actually play the round. That's Halo. It is a socially viral experience that has little to do with its single player.
What are PC FPS's? They are they elite, the bourgeoisie of video games. They are the ones in the high castle on the high hill. This form is shared in attitude by the people who play them exclusively. Go read some of the comments above on mouses and fps; the belief among PC FPS players is that the video game experience is a diluted, impure one. They're wrong.
What is Halo? Halo is the embodiment of concepts once held so dearly as PC-indiginous, Halo is the democratized FPS for the video gaming mainstream masses. This democratization, this bringing the FPS to the people, was an artform that Bungie pulled off brilliantly. You can say that Halo is average as an FPS, "inoffensive," "nothing new," or "special." That's fine. What you can't say though, is that Halo is not great. If you doubt the impact of Halo on video gaming, you just don't get it , quite objectively, quite plain and simple. You're being too PC-elite to accept that a game can be great, can be really good, can be amazing without you t
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but what you're describing is the case for MOST game developers.
I thought of this as I was writing. Perhaps what I should have emphasized more is that with the exception of GTA3, anything good that Rockstar has done is based extremely closely to GTA3 (I don't think MC2 counts). SimAnts - while still a Sim game - is fairly different in principle than SimCity. Sure, it's overheard, and it's management. But there's more to SimEarth and SimAnt than SimCity + More Vehicles and mountains, or even SimCity with Ants or SimEarth with Earth. The gaming principles, objectives, design, is all different. What is the same is merely the gaming interface really. With GTA, it's the interface that's changing in small degrees but the gaming theory behind it is barely changed. I'd agree with you about iD, as I'm not a fan anyway. Bioware? Well KOTOR comes immediately to mind - sure it's a variation of Baldur's Gate to some degree, but it's much more different from Baldur's Gate than GTA:SA/VC is from GTA3. Even Neverwinter Nights is substantially different enough from Baldur's Gate that it's nowhere near the similarity between the GTA 3-SA.
So you're right; companies do well in something and they keep doing similar games (Blizzard also comes to mind). But good companies, the great ones that you mentioned (I'll accept iD even though I'm personally no fan) take their initial breakthrough and improve on it well beyond mere ascetic variations. You mentioned the difficulty of producing games, and yet Rockstar will have managed to produce 3 GTA games in ~2 years (GTA3, 2002; GTA:VC, 2003; GTA:SA, 2004). That's what I mean by soaking it dry.
I think we'd agree that the few great companies are the ones who do things radically different but do them well. Miyamoto's Mario and Zelda, Wright's SimCity and Sims, Irrational's System Shock II and Freedom Force, Bungie's Myth and Halo/Marathon; the great developers can create great games whatever the language, be it FPS, RPG, or RTS.
First, GTA3 was unarguably seminal in video gaming. No doubt about that. It framed not only how games are played, but how they're perceived, how they're designed - through and through GTA3 changed everything about video games.
Enter GTA:VC. It did what - great music? This new GTA is as groundbreaking how? They have mountains? Eating? Minigames? Ragdoll physics?
Rockstar has produced one groundbreaking game. One. And, they've been living off it ever since. Even Midnight Club II, which was racing bliss at its most pure, was developed by a company they bought that had designed the original Midtown Madness series for Microsoft on the PC. Maybe they're waiting for the next gen systems to really do something new, but as far as I'm concerned Rockstar is an overrated one-hit wonder that, apparentely quite accidently, hit an oil well in their background and are sucking it dry. Most of their other work has been luck (Midnight Club II) or medicore to above average at best (State of Emergency, Revolver, Manhunt, etc). What remains to be seen is how long the public will endure variations of the same thing, made more difficult by Rockstar in that other companies are trying to draw from the same well.
Slightly OT, but I wonder if Microsoft is making the same mistake in portables that they made in console: entering the game late. I think they're watching to see how the PSP does, but it seems that if it does well they'll be playing catchup all over again in 3-4 years as they are trying to do with the Xbox. Would it have been wiser to pull out an Xbox-Teeny (ha) at the same time as the PSP?
I'm not a cheapskate. I believe in paying for good software.
But I won't pay for Movable Type. Here's why.
On SixApart's behalf, they made several big mistakes in launching their pricing structure. Since they announced MT3 and that they were going to charge for it, they also promised a free non-crippled version of MT3. Blogging is generally a communual experience. I blog casually, and I have a couple of friends who write posts on my blog from time to time, and a wife who keeps her own blog. The free version of MT3 is crippled, because it limits the users and number of blogs. Limiting user base is bad thing to do when blogging is still relatively new.
Secondly, the pricing structure is much higher than what people anticipated. Those in the beta test for MT3 had absolutely no idea that it was going to cost this much, and many who did participate have publically stated they wouldn't have if they did know. Why the hostility?
Two reasons. It's the community that made MT what it is now. There's not really that much new functionality in MT3 that makes it worth paying $100 for (the $70 is a temporary discount remember?). Many of the features that made MT2x worth using were coded by non-SixApart people. Users - with no profit motive whatsoever - coded hundreds of MT plugins that exceeded the coding ability of SixApart. Others wrote far more detailed tutorials and instructions than SixApart provided for their own software. So, SixApart is compensating them by running a contest for the best plugin? That's insulting, honestly.
Secondly, there are blogging apps that do as good a job as MT3, if not better. And, they're free. Others have similar pricing structures as MT3 but do more. So, why MT3? And let's get this straight: using something for free isn't necessarily being a cheapass. If maintaining my blogs as they are will cost me upwards $150, why shouldn't I migrate to a free solution? Imagine if Windows had the same stability and security as Linux, but cost the same as it does now for a company to run. Why wouldn't a company move to Linux? Are companies being the durgatory form of cheapskates by moving to a lower priced product? No. It's common market sense, and because of its love for linux and open source, slashdot should be aware of this better than anyone. Some MT users probably are cheapass, and will warez the MT software if they can or do whatever they can to avoid paying.
But a larger portion are paying for accounts on livejournal and blogger. They are paying for internet access and webhosting. They're not cheapskates. Instead, like me, they just don't want to pay $150-200 for what is basically a hobby, and a hobby that can continue for free if we switch software. Why should we support a company that doesn't announce its pricing structure beforehand, and keeps it as close to their chest as possible? Why did SixApart do that? Why didn't they announce it before time? Because they knew people would be pissed. This reaction is no surprise to anyone.
I like how at every E3, the Date Fairy suddenly dumps her (his?) magical bag of special date dust over everyone's game. In fact, E3 is just one huge calendar orgy.
And then, come forth quarter, the Date Fairy's true magic is revealed: she used disappearing ink; dates that were so firm, so solid, so there suddenly disappear into vaporness, or instead they morph into the ancient puzzling runes "WHEN IT'S DONE."