My point was that Majesco is a bottom-of-the-barrel publisher.
If you've got a great game, then someone else could probably do a much better job getting the game out there for you.
Just like the stuff you buy off of television...QVC doesn't get exclusive rights to a product because it's good...the just have a direct link to the least discerning consumers. Majesco is the same thing- the SPECIALIZE in cheap discount-bin games.
It's a small thing, but the first time I saw the blimp shadow, I thought 'oh cool, the blimp is overhead'.
Then it slowly moved across the field, and was always in the correct spot, during replays, and everything else.
It's small thing, but that's the kind of detail that makes the game great.
And of course, doing the replays in slow-mo, from every angle, zoomed in/out, etc etc.
And actually, the LOGIC of the announces is good too. Yes, they could use more phrases, but they give you enough information that it really does seem like someone is doing a play-by-play...not just a stupid artificial lack-of-intelligence.
Yes, absolutely- that is the way that business works now.
Because of protection...
Only crappy, sleazeball companies can copy other products.
But what if there were no protections? What if IBM were the one making he knock-offs...would they put out a crappy, inferior product? No, I doubt it.
What if Small Company A created a product- one that a lot of people liked, and was beginning to be successful. Well, if we didn't have any protections at all, and IBM wanted to copy that product, IBM could put out the exact same, or slightly better product WORLDWIDE and with a better marketing budget.
Where would that leave Small Company A? Out of business probably.
That's why we need the protection...so that every idea that one company has does not get swallowed up by someone else.
Thanks for providing the crappy counterfeit example- because it shows you what happens when it is illegal to copy things- since you can't do it legitimately, you end up with a crappier product that isn't really a threat.
But without protections, the market would be wide open for copycats- leaving the original company in the dust.
Well, it depends on your definition of 'great games'.
I've got an Xbox- Knights of the Old Republic is rated as one of the best Xbox games available. I don't like that kind of game. Grand Theft Auto Double Pack is also a 'great' game on the Xbox. I don't like that one either. Same with Prince of Persia.
But I like Splinter Cell, Halo, Crimson Skies, etc etc.
So, out of the 50 top games on the Xbox, I probably only like 25 or so.
In that case- (go with my logic here, not your opinion of Xbox games) does the Xbox have 50 great games, or does it have 25?
I know that the Gamecube does not have a lot of games that appeal to me. So if it has only 20 great games, but 17 of those don't appeal to me- I'm left with 3 games.
So I'd prefer more games- because it means I will have a better chance of finding games that *I* like.
So this isn't a knock on the Gamecube, but me just throwing in my opinion that everyone's definition of a great game will be different- and you can never have too many great games!
Of course they need to market, distribute, etc. etc.
But without a patent, someone else can just steal the idea...and now you no longer have a software company based on ideas. You have a bunch of companies who market, distribute, support the same ideas- and everyone competes to see who can do it for less money.
Software just became bottled water. It's all the same, but company A has better commercials.
With patents though, a company who comes up with something unique and original, can keep it unique and original. Other companies can compete, by coming up with their own version...but they can't just copy the same thing.
If other companies can steal your intellectual property, where is the competition? Who has the best ads? Who comes up with the best names?
Then again patents have a positive effect on writing software too.
Business out there know that if they spend a lot of time, effort and money developing something new- they can get a patent, so all of that time, effort and money will pay off.
Otherwise there would be less of an incentive for business to develop new ways of doing things. I'd hate to spend years developing new methods, just to have my competition copy everything I've done when it finally hits the streets.
Super Tecmo Bowl rocked. Up until about a week ago, I thought it was the best (most fun) football game ever.
Then I picked up ESPN/NFL2K5. Even a lame-ass like me, who has problems with games that use a lot of buttons, can handle this one. The play is great, it looks amazing, and is a lot of fun.
Finally- Tecmo Bowl gets unseated in my mind as number 1..after 14 years!
This was one of the most boring games I've played in a long, long, long time.
Sure, it looks pretty. But the gameplay consisted of me basically holding down the 'A' button to shoot.
I got through the first level, and to the first bossfight. Basically I circled some big ship for about 10 minutes until it finally blew up.
Then the next level I was flying up some river, and went past some butterflies- then the butterflies started to attack me in some way, so I held down the A button there. Then finally two giant caterpillars started attacking me.
I didn't have the patience to hold down A long enough to see what was next.
You've got some good points- or at least I agree with you, for whatever that is worth.
My experience has usually been "get the damn thing working" by doing all of the sql in the application.
Then, when things are looking good, customer is happy, you're happy...you can start moving to stored procedures.
Some people might feel that this is wrong, because it should 'be done right the first time'. But usually the reality is that it just has to get done SOON. And if I can sit there and dink around with some queries while I've got someone on the phone who is hitting 'refresh' to see the changes, then I am going to do it in the application where I have better access.
In my experience, which is not the be-all and end-all, but is 6 years or real-world day to day web app programming...(judge that as you will) 90% of the queries are total 'junk' anyway.
I don't really see the need to put things like 'select * from story where storynum=956' in a stored procedure. Looking through most of my code, I would guess that at least 90% of my queries are similar to that.
I've got other routines that do things like aggregate hundreds of thousands of pieces of data- in that case I use stored procedures because they make the difference between 6 minutes and 60 minutes. (but then again, if I were a real genius, maybe it would only take 6 seconds...but then my server might catch on fire or something) but most of my work on the web is pretty straight-forward.
On the other hand, I used to work with a guy who was always 'trying to save cycles'. Like he didn't want the server to have to work too hard. He would spend days trying to cut something down from 500 milliseconds, to 20 milliseconds. Yes, I agree that is all well and good (depending on the frequency of the query...in the 500/20 example, we're talking about a DAILY routine). But we've upgraded servers twice since that time, and that 500 millisecond query IS a 20 millisecond query now.
Not to mention the fact that the server sits at 1% of processor capacity all the time. I hate to say it, but we're living in a fairly hardware-rich environment. Most (I said most) people don't need to optimize the crap out of something, because as the original story said, users are waiting on their connection- not my database access.
Okay- it all sounds like me making excuses for being a lazy coder. But man, you should see all of my pretty comments!
Last thing...where I work, we pretty much upgrade hardware based on TIME, not on NEED- it is one of those 'spend it or lose it' situations. So, saying that if I had optimized the code, I wouldn't have needed to upgrade is a moot point- we would have upgraded anyway.
Do you know what is really going on in the world? (Beyond your bedroom door?)
In the console world (and the article is referring to console games) game sales in 2003 were broken down like this:
action (27.1%) sports (17.6 %) racing (15.7%) role-playing games (8.7%) fighting games (6.9%) family entertainment (4.7%) shooter games (4.6%)
Contrary to what you might guess by reading Slashdot, the world is not full of RPG playing geeks drooling over the latest mmorpg. Two of the most maligned genres (sports and racing) make up 33% of sales. That's a lot of games- and a lot of people. PC game sales are only about 1/3 of console game sales (and falling).
I just had 5 people come over to my house last night, and we played games for a while. Did they ask to play Morrowind? Or Zelda? Or KotOR? No...we played Basketball, Tennis and Golf.
Those games work in a social environment- there were guys and girls, some with experience on the games, some without. But we all had fun playing, and everyone liked the games. (I will go on record saying that Top Spin is one of the best party games ever).
It's fine that you like RPGs, and maybe you think they are the best things ever. But please realize that a large part of the world disagrees with you.
That's because you are thinking like the typical techie, not a business person.
There are more costs involved in running a business than college students, pizza and $490 apartments.
Things like insurance, accountants, office leases, advertising/sales, electricity bills, executive salaries, etc etc. A lot of people on the team are NOT productive.
On the other hand, I just picked up ESPN NFL2K5. Great game, and it LAUNCHED at $19.95. Pretty incredible that a company like Sega would put out a high quality game for so little. Maybe they are finally taking into consideration that each year is just a tweak of last years game, and pricing it accordingly.
I guess it makes more sense than re-enacting something that didn't happen.
They make movies about wars that actually happened...so why not games?
When they make movies/books/plays/games about wars that didn't happen, it is usually 'science fiction', which a large part of the population is not interested in. Personally, I'd rather watch 'Starship Troopers' than 'Glory' but that's me.
How far back into history would it be okay (ie: not to disturb our 'sensitivities') to portray a war in a video game?
Is WWII okay? That's fairly far back, and those old geezers are too busy signing up for Colonial Penn life insurance to play games.
World War I? Yes, it was the Great War...but fighting in trenches, funny looking tanks, and tossing grenades from bi-planes doesn't make for a lot of fun video games.
Have we had any games that were based on the Mexican-American war? Probably not, and we probably won't see too many...if for no other reason, the weapons were boring.
I think that the Vietnam war has a couple of things going for it that make it an interesting backdrop for a video game.
1- The entertainment industry has created a real mystique about the war. Movies like Apocolypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Rambo, and anything with Chuck Norris ("fucking Chuck Norris") have brought it to our entertainment conciousness.
3- The tactics were different. It seems like the individual walking through the jungle made more of an impact than a faceless soldier standing in line during the Civil War. Once you've played a few games of Stratego, you've pretty much re-enacted the Civil War anyway.
I like to 'finish' all of the games I play, and it frustrates me when I don't/can't.
Looking through the games I currently own, I've got 6 games that I'm still holding onto, because I need finish it. One game just has the final boss battle remaining, and it pisses me off. Why, oh why, does the final boss battle need to be an exercise in absolute frustration?
A good game that I can finish is very satisfying. Possibly I'll go back and play more, maybe not, but it will remain in my mind as a good game.
When I can't finish the final boss battle, it's like I had a really great meal, but I'm still waiting around for my check...now I'm getting pissed off, and I just want to leave.
Sands of Time had a horrible camera- what a shame for a beautiful game. I ended up trading it in because of the camera.
But consoles don't necessarily have to have crappy cameras. In fact, I find it easier to control third-person games on my Xbox controller, over a PC mouse/keyboard. (Try GTA 3 on both, and se which is better.)
A game with a *great* camera- Psi-Ops. Great camera, awesome game.
If the school is a 'City Technology College', then a lot of people will go into 'mainstream' technology jobs.
The mainstream uses Windows.
The school is there to provide you with the skill necessary in today's workforce. They need to use their dollars wisely, and addressing the largest segment of technology, for as little money as possible, is the responsible thing for them to do.
I only included one link (see it at MSNBC) but movie studios make much more profit from DVDs and promotions than they do the actual box office returns.
Slashdot Mirror
My point was that Majesco is a bottom-of-the-barrel publisher.
If you've got a great game, then someone else could probably do a much better job getting the game out there for you.
Just like the stuff you buy off of television...QVC doesn't get exclusive rights to a product because it's good...the just have a direct link to the least discerning consumers. Majesco is the same thing- the SPECIALIZE in cheap discount-bin games.
A lot of people were very upset when Microsoft dropped this game. "Oh, finally there is something original, and Microsoft had to go and dump it!"
The fact that it was picked up by Majesco should say something about the quality of the game. Possibly it is not all that it could have been?
And no teeth...
NFL 2K5 is crazy...
It's a small thing, but the first time I saw the blimp shadow, I thought 'oh cool, the blimp is overhead'.
Then it slowly moved across the field, and was always in the correct spot, during replays, and everything else.
It's small thing, but that's the kind of detail that makes the game great.
And of course, doing the replays in slow-mo, from every angle, zoomed in/out, etc etc.
And actually, the LOGIC of the announces is good too. Yes, they could use more phrases, but they give you enough information that it really does seem like someone is doing a play-by-play...not just a stupid artificial lack-of-intelligence.
Yes, absolutely- that is the way that business works now.
Because of protection...
Only crappy, sleazeball companies can copy other products.
But what if there were no protections? What if IBM were the one making he knock-offs...would they put out a crappy, inferior product? No, I doubt it.
What if Small Company A created a product- one that a lot of people liked, and was beginning to be successful. Well, if we didn't have any protections at all, and IBM wanted to copy that product, IBM could put out the exact same, or slightly better product WORLDWIDE and with a better marketing budget.
Where would that leave Small Company A? Out of business probably.
That's why we need the protection...so that every idea that one company has does not get swallowed up by someone else.
Thanks for providing the crappy counterfeit example- because it shows you what happens when it is illegal to copy things- since you can't do it legitimately, you end up with a crappier product that isn't really a threat.
But without protections, the market would be wide open for copycats- leaving the original company in the dust.
How fitting that the last message (read at -1) got modded 'flamebait'.
Some mod took the bait...
Well, it depends on your definition of 'great games'.
I've got an Xbox- Knights of the Old Republic is rated as one of the best Xbox games available. I don't like that kind of game. Grand Theft Auto Double Pack is also a 'great' game on the Xbox. I don't like that one either. Same with Prince of Persia.
But I like Splinter Cell, Halo, Crimson Skies, etc etc.
So, out of the 50 top games on the Xbox, I probably only like 25 or so.
In that case- (go with my logic here, not your opinion of Xbox games) does the Xbox have 50 great games, or does it have 25?
I know that the Gamecube does not have a lot of games that appeal to me. So if it has only 20 great games, but 17 of those don't appeal to me- I'm left with 3 games.
So I'd prefer more games- because it means I will have a better chance of finding games that *I* like.
So this isn't a knock on the Gamecube, but me just throwing in my opinion that everyone's definition of a great game will be different- and you can never have too many great games!
(Great game of the week? ESPN NFL 2K5)
Don't be such a stupid-fuck.
Of course they need to market, distribute, etc. etc.
But without a patent, someone else can just steal the idea...and now you no longer have a software company based on ideas. You have a bunch of companies who market, distribute, support the same ideas- and everyone competes to see who can do it for less money.
Software just became bottled water. It's all the same, but company A has better commercials.
With patents though, a company who comes up with something unique and original, can keep it unique and original. Other companies can compete, by coming up with their own version...but they can't just copy the same thing.
If other companies can steal your intellectual property, where is the competition? Who has the best ads? Who comes up with the best names?
Then again patents have a positive effect on writing software too.
Business out there know that if they spend a lot of time, effort and money developing something new- they can get a patent, so all of that time, effort and money will pay off.
Otherwise there would be less of an incentive for business to develop new ways of doing things. I'd hate to spend years developing new methods, just to have my competition copy everything I've done when it finally hits the streets.
Or on the flip side...
Patents promote private enterprise investing money into research that will pay off in the future.
Or, it is a case of idealism running smack into the wall of reality.
Super Tecmo Bowl rocked. Up until about a week ago, I thought it was the best (most fun) football game ever.
Then I picked up ESPN/NFL2K5. Even a lame-ass like me, who has problems with games that use a lot of buttons, can handle this one. The play is great, it looks amazing, and is a lot of fun.
Finally- Tecmo Bowl gets unseated in my mind as number 1..after 14 years!
Well, I loved Halo...you should have pulled the right trigger- that would have made it better.
To each his own...
This was one of the most boring games I've played in a long, long, long time.
Sure, it looks pretty. But the gameplay consisted of me basically holding down the 'A' button to shoot.
I got through the first level, and to the first bossfight. Basically I circled some big ship for about 10 minutes until it finally blew up.
Then the next level I was flying up some river, and went past some butterflies- then the butterflies started to attack me in some way, so I held down the A button there. Then finally two giant caterpillars started attacking me.
I didn't have the patience to hold down A long enough to see what was next.
If I DID have that query that I needed to optimized, I would. But I said that 90% of all queries were junk, and didn't need to be optimized.
And If I needed to optimize a query, it would definetly become a stored procedure.
But how many queries on a typical web app fall into this category of 'important to optimize'? From my experience, most do not.
You've got some good points- or at least I agree with you, for whatever that is worth.
My experience has usually been "get the damn thing working" by doing all of the sql in the application.
Then, when things are looking good, customer is happy, you're happy...you can start moving to stored procedures.
Some people might feel that this is wrong, because it should 'be done right the first time'. But usually the reality is that it just has to get done SOON. And if I can sit there and dink around with some queries while I've got someone on the phone who is hitting 'refresh' to see the changes, then I am going to do it in the application where I have better access.
In my experience, which is not the be-all and end-all, but is 6 years or real-world day to day web app programming...(judge that as you will) 90% of the queries are total 'junk' anyway.
I don't really see the need to put things like 'select * from story where storynum=956' in a stored procedure. Looking through most of my code, I would guess that at least 90% of my queries are similar to that.
I've got other routines that do things like aggregate hundreds of thousands of pieces of data- in that case I use stored procedures because they make the difference between 6 minutes and 60 minutes. (but then again, if I were a real genius, maybe it would only take 6 seconds...but then my server might catch on fire or something) but most of my work on the web is pretty straight-forward.
On the other hand, I used to work with a guy who was always 'trying to save cycles'. Like he didn't want the server to have to work too hard. He would spend days trying to cut something down from 500 milliseconds, to 20 milliseconds. Yes, I agree that is all well and good (depending on the frequency of the query...in the 500/20 example, we're talking about a DAILY routine). But we've upgraded servers twice since that time, and that 500 millisecond query IS a 20 millisecond query now.
Not to mention the fact that the server sits at 1% of processor capacity all the time. I hate to say it, but we're living in a fairly hardware-rich environment. Most (I said most) people don't need to optimize the crap out of something, because as the original story said, users are waiting on their connection- not my database access.
Okay- it all sounds like me making excuses for being a lazy coder. But man, you should see all of my pretty comments!
Last thing...where I work, we pretty much upgrade hardware based on TIME, not on NEED- it is one of those 'spend it or lose it' situations. So, saying that if I had optimized the code, I wouldn't have needed to upgrade is a moot point- we would have upgraded anyway.
Well, I think you are wrong again.
From the same article I referenced earlier, here is the breakdown for PC games:
strategy (27.1%)
children's entertainment (14.5%)
shooters (13.5%)
family entertainment (9.5%)
role-playing (8.7%)
sports titles (5.8%)
racing (4.4%)
adventure (3.9%)
simulation (3.5%)
So, role-playing on a PC (which is about 1/3 of console market) being 9% equals about 3% of the console market.
Really- I am not trying to tell you that RPGs suck, but I do want to put the facts out there that YES a lot of people do play sports games.
Do you know what is really going on in the world? (Beyond your bedroom door?)
In the console world (and the article is referring to console games) game sales in 2003 were broken down like this:
action (27.1%)
sports (17.6 %)
racing (15.7%)
role-playing games (8.7%)
fighting games (6.9%)
family entertainment (4.7%)
shooter games (4.6%)
Contrary to what you might guess by reading Slashdot, the world is not full of RPG playing geeks drooling over the latest mmorpg. Two of the most maligned genres (sports and racing) make up 33% of sales. That's a lot of games- and a lot of people. PC game sales are only about 1/3 of console game sales (and falling).
I just had 5 people come over to my house last night, and we played games for a while. Did they ask to play Morrowind? Or Zelda? Or KotOR? No...we played Basketball, Tennis and Golf.
Those games work in a social environment- there were guys and girls, some with experience on the games, some without. But we all had fun playing, and everyone liked the games. (I will go on record saying that Top Spin is one of the best party games ever).
It's fine that you like RPGs, and maybe you think they are the best things ever. But please realize that a large part of the world disagrees with you.
That's because you are thinking like the typical techie, not a business person.
There are more costs involved in running a business than college students, pizza and $490 apartments.
Things like insurance, accountants, office leases, advertising/sales, electricity bills, executive salaries, etc etc. A lot of people on the team are NOT productive.
On the other hand, I just picked up ESPN NFL2K5. Great game, and it LAUNCHED at $19.95. Pretty incredible that a company like Sega would put out a high quality game for so little. Maybe they are finally taking into consideration that each year is just a tweak of last years game, and pricing it accordingly.
I guess it makes more sense than re-enacting something that didn't happen.
They make movies about wars that actually happened...so why not games?
When they make movies/books/plays/games about wars that didn't happen, it is usually 'science fiction', which a large part of the population is not interested in. Personally, I'd rather watch 'Starship Troopers' than 'Glory' but that's me.
How far back into history would it be okay (ie: not to disturb our 'sensitivities') to portray a war in a video game?
Is WWII okay? That's fairly far back, and those old geezers are too busy signing up for Colonial Penn life insurance to play games.
World War I? Yes, it was the Great War...but fighting in trenches, funny looking tanks, and tossing grenades from bi-planes doesn't make for a lot of fun video games.
Have we had any games that were based on the Mexican-American war? Probably not, and we probably won't see too many...if for no other reason, the weapons were boring.
I think that the Vietnam war has a couple of things going for it that make it an interesting backdrop for a video game.
1- The entertainment industry has created a real mystique about the war. Movies like Apocolypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Rambo, and anything with Chuck Norris ("fucking Chuck Norris") have brought it to our entertainment conciousness.
2- They had fairly cool weapons in Vietnam.
3- The tactics were different. It seems like the individual walking through the jungle made more of an impact than a faceless soldier standing in line during the Civil War. Once you've played a few games of Stratego, you've pretty much re-enacted the Civil War anyway.
I too enjoy shorter games.
I like to 'finish' all of the games I play, and it frustrates me when I don't/can't.
Looking through the games I currently own, I've got 6 games that I'm still holding onto, because I need finish it. One game just has the final boss battle remaining, and it pisses me off. Why, oh why, does the final boss battle need to be an exercise in absolute frustration?
A good game that I can finish is very satisfying. Possibly I'll go back and play more, maybe not, but it will remain in my mind as a good game.
When I can't finish the final boss battle, it's like I had a really great meal, but I'm still waiting around for my check...now I'm getting pissed off, and I just want to leave.
Sands of Time had a horrible camera- what a shame for a beautiful game. I ended up trading it in because of the camera.
But consoles don't necessarily have to have crappy cameras. In fact, I find it easier to control third-person games on my Xbox controller, over a PC mouse/keyboard. (Try GTA 3 on both, and se which is better.)
A game with a *great* camera- Psi-Ops. Great camera, awesome game.
If the school is a 'City Technology College', then a lot of people will go into 'mainstream' technology jobs.
The mainstream uses Windows.
The school is there to provide you with the skill necessary in today's workforce. They need to use their dollars wisely, and addressing the largest segment of technology, for as little money as possible, is the responsible thing for them to do.
Well, sorry...but you are completely wrong.
I only included one link (see it at MSNBC) but movie studios make much more profit from DVDs and promotions than they do the actual box office returns.
Maybe you don't follow the videogame industry very closely.
But Microsoft announced, and will be releasing XNA which will give parallel paths of development between the Xbox (next one probably) and the PC.
They do have a plan for convergence.