Of course you can circumvent the advertising. Welcome to changing the channels on the televison. There are so many ways of avoiding advertising on TV, and yet, for some reason companies still do it. Are they stupid? No. Can you take steps to avoid advertising? Of course.
Game development costs *are* rising, and just like movies, product placement becomes more prevalent. You're ignoring a reality; of course you and I can circumvent having to consume the advertising. However, in the long run, advertising in games can still be profitable.
You don't really have the same kind of situation with Coke, or McDonalds, or Mopar autoparts outside of a vocal minority who usually have perfectly valid reasons to dislike the brand or product, and usually outside of the scope of the quality of the product. AOL makes an extremely easy case of mass advertising a service people wouldn't use, even if it was offered for free. There are thousands of products and companies that do not fall under this category of popular culture hatred. I think most people take a problem with companies they have valid reasons for not liking, and then pointing out how advertising is detrimental. I tend to doubt that AOL would have had 23 million subscribers in 2003 if they did not advertise. That their product did not stand the test of the market is really outside of the scope of a discussion of advertising.
Here's one reality: advertising is required. Companies must do it, in some form or another.
Unless you havn't watched television or movies since the dawn of time, you've been influenced by advertising, and more often than not, without even thinking about it.
When it comes time to purchase a product or a service, if you have been exposed to some form of advertising from a company, you will use that experience, subconsciously or not, as part of your purchasing decision.
I absolutely garauntee you own or use many products by companies to whose advertising you had been exposed to before you bought them, and it did not negatively affect your perception of that product or company.
All people are going to think for in game ads was "oh, those are those jerks flashing distracting crap at me while I was trying to play ______"
Well you'd better stop playing games now, because those jerks flashing distracting crap at you while you're trying to play are going to start quietly inserting contextually accurate brand names and logos at you while you don't explicitly make note of 95% of them.
I'm not trying to condone in game advertising. I'm neutral about it. If it makes sense and I don't really notice, fine. If it really breaks the game, then I just don't buy the game. Speaking of advertising, nothing prevents you from determining if a specific game's in game advertising is too intrusive or unrealistic before you lay down your hard earned cash.
Thats not a very special case. Thats every arena in a sports game (a huge slice of all video games.) Thats the garage and track in every racing game. Thats the vending machines, the store fronts, the billboards in most FPSes set in recent history or the future. The very fact that the vast majority of gameshave at least one or two fake brands (and usually significantly more) on game assets represents an opportunity for advertising.
Every single "game advertising" thread features the same supposed "ads for iPhones in 1943 berlin" point.
I'm no lover of in game advertising, but ad companies are far from stupid. Massive has stated that it only makes sense to place ads where it makes sense with respect to the immersion factor of the game. Jeez look at the study: Need for Speed Carbon, and ads for auto parts and fast food. Thats nothing that wasn't already done in the Fast the Furious movie franchise, and it sure didn't suffer at the cash register.
It's equivalent to going to the movies and being subjected to advertising crawlers across the bottom of the screen during the movie.
The very fact that you don't have this at the movies does not mean that movies are not chock full of advertising. The successful advertisements are the ones you don't question (although I'm a little preturbed that more of a stink wasn't raised that BumbleBee was a Dodge Charger in the movies. That seemed rather brash to me, and it still had 0 effect on box office gross.)
So what exactly was your point, beyond the blindingly obvious? Nobody wants an iPhone on D-Day, but providing that kind of feedback to Massive Inc is likely just to make them snicker and point out the games you recently played (or movies you saw) which did had advertising that you didn't even notice.
I'm with you in general (and having just finished the demo) Bioshock seems to been deeper than your average FPS, but it struck me as being far more shallow than system shock, deus ex. It looks and felt like an FPS that has fairly flexible AI in the sense that you can turn enemies against each other in a myriad of ways. I was particularly disappointed in the 'hacking' minigame: its PipeDream! Kinda takes you out of the immersion when you go and hack a security bot and it feels like you accidentally logged into the casual games section on yahoo by accident.
And Oblivion?? Why not go all the way and point out Myst wasn't an FPS despite being in first person.;)
No MMORPG can rob you of anything but time. (Are there MMORPGS that take money from your account when you die? Nope.) The question I would ask is what the benifits are. People routinely talk about getting punished in MMORPGS for dying; for me, the question is whether leveling up is the point? If its the act of leveling that's fun, well shit, all MMORPGS are boring. Call me when you are treated to an end game cutscene and need to move on after a MMORPG. Some "hardcore" MMORPGS that punish you more "timewise" dont bother me because the point for me is never to get more shit or to level up. The game should be fun. If that means staying lower level or losing equipment, who the fuck cares, its a video game. If its fun, its extremely secondary to not having great equipment or leveling. If 'progressing' in a MMORPG is your priority, thats completely fucked to me. By the time you get to level X with equipment Y, the company that publishes the game has expanded it to level Z. You're chasing a carrot.
You're giving yourself too much credit for being free of your subconscious. (And by the way, I didn't notice anyone else mention BonziBuddy.. I guess you *did* remember who made those ads.)
You also place a disproportionate amount of focus on ads you were turned off by. Okay, so Pepsi didn't win your vote, but if you're human, an ad has created a positive association in your mind between a brand and an ad you liked.
Branding works. Coke and Pepsi succeed *because* of their advertising, not in spite of it. Repetition improves memory recall. (See BonziBuddy, a brand you hated, you can still remember its name.) Its such basic psychology that its not even really worth discussing.
Branding ads are not meant to educate consumers. They are meant to bang a brand home via repetition, and in many cases, associate a lifestyle or a cultural association you identify with to a brand.
And hey, you and me both remember the brand name from the little camera ads;) Who're you trying to fool?
For example: If you're a geek, would you knowingly buy ANYTHING to do with AOL, if you had any other choice?
I can assure you, AOL ads are not targeted to you. That doesn't mean they are not effective to other people. In game ads are effective because ads are effective. No matter how 'free' you think you are from the effects of repeated exposure to anything, you ain't. You do not make decisions without unconsciously consulting your subconscious. In fact, I would imagine you are quite open to advertising that proposes a consumer of a brand that subverts against mainstream advertising.
Do I like ads? No. I think in many ways they subvert the concept of a free market where people make decisions based on product knowledge and education alone. But hey, they are a necessary evil. Trust me, they work, far too well for my taste.
As for AOL and Sony moving to disassociate from their own brands, you're right, it can be a double edged sword for companies. But more often than not, its pretty much a pre-requisite for consumer products to convince people that the brand is important. All things being equal for a consumer, "Lawnmower I've seen a gazillion commercials for is 300.00, Lawnmower I've seen 2 commercials for is 300.00," *most* people will go with the more heavily advertised lawnmower. Not all. Maybe not you. But most, until the first brand lawnmower starts exploding randomly.
No, the moral of the story is ones own experiences do not paint the full picture any more than one guy replacing his 360 11 times.
Overall tho, it certainly seems clear that the 360 box has had the most problems. I work at a game development shop, and out of the dozens upon dozens of people I know who own any combination of all three systems, only the people with 360s have had to get theirs replaced.
Which sucks; I just folded and bought one, because I can't miss out on GTA4 and Mass Effect. I don't think its a given that the system will break, but it certainly seems more delicate than the Wii and the PS3 when you look at it above individual experiences.
Hell, I just case-modded my wii; had to take the whole thing apart to the motherboard. Got it back together, still runs like a champ. (BTW, the mechanism that centers your gamecube discs if you try and insert them to either side of the DVD slot is freakin fun to watch in action.)
I think you missed the original point. I don't have enough time. Do you? If the tax return industry was full of corruption, would you suggest that everyone should do their own taxes and the whole problem would go away?
I dislike your hubris. The reality is, a significant portion of people who purchase Windows are not capable of understanding a EULA. Myself included. Some lawyer makes the same money I do to write these things; I can't understand what exactly hes saying no more than he can understand what my code does. He probably can't fix is car, any more than his mechanic can understand how to do your job. We live in an age of specialization; I can do what I do because I don't have to know how to repair an airplane engine. EULAs are complicated, so why would you push it back on the consumer? A free market simply doesn't work very well when everyone has to become an expert in everything.
No, the moral of your story is that businesses are risk-adverse when heavy upfront investment is required (after years of complaints and wishing and being told by Qwest that there just wasn't enough profit in this area (your argument).)
You're saying, eventually, business gets around to it once its absolutely sure that it will turn a profit. The parent poster is pointing out that quite often, the government would be better off leading the horse to water, because the private sector isn't going to do shit until it sees that horse drinking.
Hes only saying that the US often lags behind other countries because the US relies heavily on the private sector, which has to be risk adverse. Many other countries' citizens trust their government to promote and regulate the development of infrastructure. America seems quite split on this issue because they perceive the government to be grossly inefficient and presumably incapable of recognizing when it is in the public's interest to encourage infrastructure.
The market is reactionary; that makes it very good for refining processes, technologies, and competition, but it also makes it generally deficient when it comes to putting in the tough work required to foster a market. This is one reason why US companies are given grants by the US government to pursue foreign markets; they don't want the risk. The irony of the situation is that the government mitigates risk when it comes to selling cereal in Brazil, because nobody in rural US needs cereal, but when it comes time for the government to involve itself in more sure-bet, domestic projects such as infrastructure, all of a sudden everyone says they hate paying taxes for government waste. You get the government you vote for.
On a final note, when private companies are the ones who put in 'the last mile', they own that infrastructure. So it would seem to run counter to the capitalist goal of giving consumers a choice in service providers. If the entire process was privatized, you would end up with N service providers creating N last mile cables.. which seems awfully redundant. Imagine privatized roads: there isn't enough physical space to allow 5 companies to all offer 5 different road surfaces to your house. I don't see how a free market can exist if the cables themselves arn't at least at their inception regulated to allow competition.
I think that a transparent market involves not reading a contract for something that is a commodity like a PC. (Or software.)
If people were more selective about the products they buy instead of bitching about the industry, we would have more better products.
When you think about one product, sure. But imagine having to review contracts all the time in order to interact with a market. People are overwhelmed by choice. Its not really a transparent market if you can pollute it with legal stipulations to the degree that consumers have to ignore them simply out of day to day practicality.
They have caused more pain and suffering in this world under the idea of uniting it than any scientific advancement has, including nuclear bombs.
Oh yeah. We should totally 'weed them out'. That would totally end pain and suffering./sarcasm off
I don't really understand whats different from killing people because of their beliefs, and killing people because of their beliefs. You're as indignantly self-righteous as the next pious person. I'm an athiest, but I would put you in the 'dumb shit' category. Don't worry tho, I don't think there is any benifit to eradicating you any more than I think that there is any benifit to committing genocide or opporession against people who don't believe in evolution.
Re:Merging *does* suck (perforce, alien brain)
on
Linus on GIT and SCM
·
· Score: 1
We just moved to perforce. From alien brain.
You want to test a code management system? Try working at a games company. We're not just talking programmers (or code) here. We're talking versioning artistic assets, the works. Many people who use the system are not programmers (programmers are a small part of any video game.. tons of modelers, animators, texture artists, designers, illustrators.)
Combine that with the fact that you have to produce stable builds 60 days after you start the project, one a month, for a few years.. compiled for multiple hardware (ps2/gc/wii/xbox.. any combination, depending on the game) and to me, its a crazy test on code management software.
Alien brain was madding as hell when it came to anything more than checkouts, checkins. Perforce has a really nice command line interface, and a decent (but not as good as alien brain) gui.
The thing I will miss from Alien brain is that you could create a custom layout locally of the gui, much like Visual Studio (although clunkier.) The thing I'm looking forward to in perforce is atomic change sets and from what I understand so far from my limited use of it, decidedly better branching. I bet dollars to donuts that our artists like Alien Brain more, but p4 seems far more capable of the tools you need to keep the build stable.
I would advise you to pick up a book full of things you disagree with. The combine them with the things you agree with. Then you will have some reasonable level of reality. Your post is the kind of non starter that makes me disinterested in discussion, because their opinion is formed on the false assumption that impossible to learn more. You think? Hard data is impossible? Those are two statements that if required to ground an opinion on, I would rather not have an opinion.
Whos to say hes against murder? I was saying hes against people using video games to 'learn' how to do it. Surely, alcohol prohibitionists didn't think all the negative behaviour that came from drinking would stop - they just figured, if you prevented the sale of alcohol, you wouldn't have people abusing it as a technology. Similarly, Jack Thompson thinks that if violent video games were illegal, nobody would become more likely or more proficient at killing people thanks to a video game.
Thats where people get confused; hes not saying that banning video games will save humanity. Hes saying that he doesn't play video games, and why not ban violent games because they dont do anything for him and from his viewpoint they can encourage real life violence.
I don't agree with him, and obviously, given his previous 'success' in the legal system, most others don't as well, but he's a pretty successful demogogue given that there are thousands of other people who share his beliefs that have never generated large slashdot threads or cnn coverage or launched legal actions against video game companies.
I got attacked for saying that we should reluctantly admire his tenacity. I'm not sympathizing with him, I'm only pointing out that he knows his role in life; hes a protestor. We all know he'll be insignificant in the larger scheme of things. Should he 'die in a hole' like others have countlessly suggested in threads like these? I dont care who it is, nobody should die in a hole. I think hes an entertaining ankle biter for hire. Hes destined to a two paragraph article when he passes away. Hes wasted public time and money, but hey, thats science; its still a valid experience for society when he is proven to be in the tiny minority. Those who feel the same way will be able to know by the history of attempts against the distribution of violent video games that its not really worth trying to clog the system. The larger they are, the harder they fall.
I agree with your general idea, but Microsoft has more control over Halo 3 than any company on the planet. Microsoft *could* decide not to release Halo 3. Likely? Of course not. Could Microsoft ensure Halo 3 never hit the stores? They're the ones to go after if you honestly believe the courts would side in his favour.
But lets be frank. Hes not trying to stop the sale of Halo 3. Hes generating 'awareness'. Hes not trying to prevent violent games from reaching children. Hes trying to rid the world of violent games. Period. When he suggests that GTA is a 'murder simulator', I dont think hes saying that the ratings system doesn't work, I think hes saying that nobody would suffer from alcohol abuse if the world stopped creating alcohol. Hes a modern day prohibitionist; considering that prohibition really did exist at some point in time, its not all that nuts to suggest that he probably has more than a few financial backers. Hes just pretty shameless with his opportunism. You really ought to give more credance to your enemy; he may be really misguided, but you have to have at least some reluctant admiration for his tenacity.
Its more than likely just the click fraud. Having worked on internet ad servers and reporting engines, its a pretty reasonable number for people deliberately trying to improve their CPC by cheating.
I know people are desperate to believe that some people are stupid, and masturbate at the thought of them, like, getting their computer all screwed up because they deserve it for being so dumb, but cheating is a far more logical, and real explaination.
I wish it wasn't my comment you were replying to; that wasn't flame baiting. I'd give you a mod point in the opposite direction. I can't mod you tho. It wasn't much funny, but I don't consider it to be an insult or a racist comment. Maybe one day, slashdot will grant us with a 'needed to see his name up in writing' moderation.
You're missing the point; fair use is fair use. Its allowed. You and the parent poster should really be discussing the strengths granted to authors and the punishement to violators.
Fair use is fair use. Lets talk about 'punishment fitting the crime', not what we're still permitted to do.
"You're not innovating" is not something up to you, its up to the judicial system in the very same way that, "You're not physically abusing your spouse" is up to them. We vote for rational people who spend their lives studying this stuff. It seems awfully simplistic to think that "using the same sequence of words" violates copyright law. Define how long a sequence is. Define the purpose, socially and commercially of using those words. Etc, etc. We'd end up with the legal code, as defined by you. Hes not entirely wrong, and neither are you. But man, I find the verb 'innovating' annoying. The most important discoveries of the past 200 years did not occur in a vacuum, so when will we just admit that 'innovating' should be replaced with 'successfully claiming invention of'.
Copyright was created 'out of thin air', and very few people believe that copyright law shouldn't exist. The purpose of copyright law is to balance the needs of society with the belief that the author should retain limited control of his work.
Read that again. Limited. Even Disney, at one time the most powerful media company in the world, doesn't go around publicly trying to convince people that infinite-term copyright is the right solution because they know it just wouldn't fly. Its not in the spirit in which copyright law was created or is meant to be promoted.
You somehow believe people think this is a matter of an individual right; 'many slashdotters', to use your extremely specific and technical term, believe that at some point, when copyright law favours the creator too much, it ceases to promote the creation of artists works and protect common culture. You know, at some point, even if we all agree that shoplifting is bad, saying that you think punishment should be having your balls chewed off by an alligor would have put you squarey on the opposide side of the spirit of the past century of western judicial and political institutions you have your economic and political stability to thank for.
Even if I've been gloriously been trolled, if this message can reach just one person who has herefore not seen copyright law put in its correct historical context, I'll be happy.
Yeah, and while you're at it, lets ditch intellisense, visual assist, etc. When you're trying to juggle APIs from 28 different third party libaries, online docs are not the answer. Maybe "creative flow" sets off the hippy-alert for you, but having near immediate access to API signatures (ie, one second instead of twenty) is pretty much required if you are coding against lots of third party libs.
Just because the design is finalized (or you're in a pre-design stage, as others have noted), it doesn't mean you can immediately recall that language A takes the delimiter of explode first, and the string, second, or whether that was language B. Immediate access to API expectations are a huge tool in saving time, even when writing out well architected, fully planned software.
Considering how long Too Human has been in development, they do indeed seem to be committed to fixing things rather than just picking a release date at random, stuffing as many things into a game as possible at the cost of quality, and releasing under a blitzkrieg of marketing. He want to say, "It'll be done when it kicks ass. Check us out then and tell me straight up if it sucks." I have seen first hand what he is talking about; it happens 20,000,000 times a day in the business, and he wishes that would change. (Although this does mirror a similar dichotomy they experience in the movie world.. at what point does a movie go from, "We'll release it when its good" to development hell that can kill a project?)
On the whole, I don't think hes being hypocritical, and hes echoing sentiments that I can assure you are shared by many designers and developers. There is extremely limited integrity in the industry in terms of the relationships between the press and the games, and it hurts everyone's ability to produce quality games and judge them at their true value.
In psychology (hell, in science), the difference between coloration and causation is what you are taught on the very first day you go to class at university. If a study is conducted properly (and of course, people who study psychology and science will sometimes disagree if one is,) it renders your question moot. This is the very purpose of conducting studies, to isolate causation rather than correlation.
Perhaps people who are naturally violent are more likely to watch wrestling?
Surely you don't think that psychologists are totally unaware of this possibility?? Studies are specifically designed to attempt to remove all possible ambiguity of the conclusion? Chances are, if it comes up in a conversation between two friends, the people who go to school for this stuff for 5 to 9 years have probably given it a thought too. Thats their job, to ensure that psychology, physics, science, art, etc rises above what a few people sitting around a lunch table can come up with.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course you can circumvent the advertising. Welcome to changing the channels on the televison. There are so many ways of avoiding advertising on TV, and yet, for some reason companies still do it. Are they stupid? No. Can you take steps to avoid advertising? Of course.
Game development costs *are* rising, and just like movies, product placement becomes more prevalent. You're ignoring a reality; of course you and I can circumvent having to consume the advertising. However, in the long run, advertising in games can still be profitable.
You don't really have the same kind of situation with Coke, or McDonalds, or Mopar autoparts outside of a vocal minority who usually have perfectly valid reasons to dislike the brand or product, and usually outside of the scope of the quality of the product. AOL makes an extremely easy case of mass advertising a service people wouldn't use, even if it was offered for free. There are thousands of products and companies that do not fall under this category of popular culture hatred. I think most people take a problem with companies they have valid reasons for not liking, and then pointing out how advertising is detrimental. I tend to doubt that AOL would have had 23 million subscribers in 2003 if they did not advertise. That their product did not stand the test of the market is really outside of the scope of a discussion of advertising.
Here's one reality: advertising is required. Companies must do it, in some form or another.
Unless you havn't watched television or movies since the dawn of time, you've been influenced by advertising, and more often than not, without even thinking about it.
When it comes time to purchase a product or a service, if you have been exposed to some form of advertising from a company, you will use that experience, subconsciously or not, as part of your purchasing decision.
I absolutely garauntee you own or use many products by companies to whose advertising you had been exposed to before you bought them, and it did not negatively affect your perception of that product or company.
All people are going to think for in game ads was "oh, those are those jerks flashing distracting crap at me while I was trying to play ______"
Well you'd better stop playing games now, because those jerks flashing distracting crap at you while you're trying to play are going to start quietly inserting contextually accurate brand names and logos at you while you don't explicitly make note of 95% of them.
I'm not trying to condone in game advertising. I'm neutral about it. If it makes sense and I don't really notice, fine. If it really breaks the game, then I just don't buy the game. Speaking of advertising, nothing prevents you from determining if a specific game's in game advertising is too intrusive or unrealistic before you lay down your hard earned cash.
Thats not a very special case. Thats every arena in a sports game (a huge slice of all video games.) Thats the garage and track in every racing game. Thats the vending machines, the store fronts, the billboards in most FPSes set in recent history or the future. The very fact that the vast majority of gameshave at least one or two fake brands (and usually significantly more) on game assets represents an opportunity for advertising.
Every single "game advertising" thread features the same supposed "ads for iPhones in 1943 berlin" point.
I'm no lover of in game advertising, but ad companies are far from stupid. Massive has stated that it only makes sense to place ads where it makes sense with respect to the immersion factor of the game. Jeez look at the study: Need for Speed Carbon, and ads for auto parts and fast food. Thats nothing that wasn't already done in the Fast the Furious movie franchise, and it sure didn't suffer at the cash register.
It's equivalent to going to the movies and being subjected to advertising crawlers across the bottom of the screen during the movie.
The very fact that you don't have this at the movies does not mean that movies are not chock full of advertising. The successful advertisements are the ones you don't question (although I'm a little preturbed that more of a stink wasn't raised that BumbleBee was a Dodge Charger in the movies. That seemed rather brash to me, and it still had 0 effect on box office gross.)
So what exactly was your point, beyond the blindingly obvious? Nobody wants an iPhone on D-Day, but providing that kind of feedback to Massive Inc is likely just to make them snicker and point out the games you recently played (or movies you saw) which did had advertising that you didn't even notice.
I'm with you in general (and having just finished the demo) Bioshock seems to been deeper than your average FPS, but it struck me as being far more shallow than system shock, deus ex. It looks and felt like an FPS that has fairly flexible AI in the sense that you can turn enemies against each other in a myriad of ways. I was particularly disappointed in the 'hacking' minigame: its PipeDream! Kinda takes you out of the immersion when you go and hack a security bot and it feels like you accidentally logged into the casual games section on yahoo by accident.
;)
And Oblivion?? Why not go all the way and point out Myst wasn't an FPS despite being in first person.
No loss of anything but time.
No MMORPG can rob you of anything but time. (Are there MMORPGS that take money from your account when you die? Nope.) The question I would ask is what the benifits are. People routinely talk about getting punished in MMORPGS for dying; for me, the question is whether leveling up is the point? If its the act of leveling that's fun, well shit, all MMORPGS are boring. Call me when you are treated to an end game cutscene and need to move on after a MMORPG. Some "hardcore" MMORPGS that punish you more "timewise" dont bother me because the point for me is never to get more shit or to level up. The game should be fun. If that means staying lower level or losing equipment, who the fuck cares, its a video game. If its fun, its extremely secondary to not having great equipment or leveling. If 'progressing' in a MMORPG is your priority, thats completely fucked to me. By the time you get to level X with equipment Y, the company that publishes the game has expanded it to level Z. You're chasing a carrot.
You're giving yourself too much credit for being free of your subconscious. (And by the way, I didn't notice anyone else mention BonziBuddy .. I guess you *did* remember who made those ads.)
;) Who're you trying to fool?
You also place a disproportionate amount of focus on ads you were turned off by. Okay, so Pepsi didn't win your vote, but if you're human, an ad has created a positive association in your mind between a brand and an ad you liked.
Branding works. Coke and Pepsi succeed *because* of their advertising, not in spite of it. Repetition improves memory recall. (See BonziBuddy, a brand you hated, you can still remember its name.) Its such basic psychology that its not even really worth discussing.
Branding ads are not meant to educate consumers. They are meant to bang a brand home via repetition, and in many cases, associate a lifestyle or a cultural association you identify with to a brand.
And hey, you and me both remember the brand name from the little camera ads
For example: If you're a geek, would you knowingly buy ANYTHING to do with AOL, if you had any other choice?
I can assure you, AOL ads are not targeted to you. That doesn't mean they are not effective to other people. In game ads are effective because ads are effective. No matter how 'free' you think you are from the effects of repeated exposure to anything, you ain't. You do not make decisions without unconsciously consulting your subconscious. In fact, I would imagine you are quite open to advertising that proposes a consumer of a brand that subverts against mainstream advertising.
Do I like ads? No. I think in many ways they subvert the concept of a free market where people make decisions based on product knowledge and education alone. But hey, they are a necessary evil. Trust me, they work, far too well for my taste.
As for AOL and Sony moving to disassociate from their own brands, you're right, it can be a double edged sword for companies. But more often than not, its pretty much a pre-requisite for consumer products to convince people that the brand is important. All things being equal for a consumer, "Lawnmower I've seen a gazillion commercials for is 300.00, Lawnmower I've seen 2 commercials for is 300.00," *most* people will go with the more heavily advertised lawnmower. Not all. Maybe not you. But most, until the first brand lawnmower starts exploding randomly.
Then what term would you use in lieu of SKU?
No, the moral of the story is ones own experiences do not paint the full picture any more than one guy replacing his 360 11 times.
Overall tho, it certainly seems clear that the 360 box has had the most problems. I work at a game development shop, and out of the dozens upon dozens of people I know who own any combination of all three systems, only the people with 360s have had to get theirs replaced.
Which sucks; I just folded and bought one, because I can't miss out on GTA4 and Mass Effect. I don't think its a given that the system will break, but it certainly seems more delicate than the Wii and the PS3 when you look at it above individual experiences.
Hell, I just case-modded my wii; had to take the whole thing apart to the motherboard. Got it back together, still runs like a champ. (BTW, the mechanism that centers your gamecube discs if you try and insert them to either side of the DVD slot is freakin fun to watch in action.)
are you for real?
Nice try on the troll. The inclusion of Al Gore was a little too much tho.
I think you missed the original point. I don't have enough time. Do you? If the tax return industry was full of corruption, would you suggest that everyone should do their own taxes and the whole problem would go away?
I dislike your hubris. The reality is, a significant portion of people who purchase Windows are not capable of understanding a EULA. Myself included. Some lawyer makes the same money I do to write these things; I can't understand what exactly hes saying no more than he can understand what my code does. He probably can't fix is car, any more than his mechanic can understand how to do your job. We live in an age of specialization; I can do what I do because I don't have to know how to repair an airplane engine. EULAs are complicated, so why would you push it back on the consumer? A free market simply doesn't work very well when everyone has to become an expert in everything.
No, the moral of your story is that businesses are risk-adverse when heavy upfront investment is required (after years of complaints and wishing and being told by Qwest that there just wasn't enough profit in this area (your argument).)
.. which seems awfully redundant. Imagine privatized roads: there isn't enough physical space to allow 5 companies to all offer 5 different road surfaces to your house. I don't see how a free market can exist if the cables themselves arn't at least at their inception regulated to allow competition.
You're saying, eventually, business gets around to it once its absolutely sure that it will turn a profit. The parent poster is pointing out that quite often, the government would be better off leading the horse to water, because the private sector isn't going to do shit until it sees that horse drinking.
Hes only saying that the US often lags behind other countries because the US relies heavily on the private sector, which has to be risk adverse. Many other countries' citizens trust their government to promote and regulate the development of infrastructure. America seems quite split on this issue because they perceive the government to be grossly inefficient and presumably incapable of recognizing when it is in the public's interest to encourage infrastructure.
The market is reactionary; that makes it very good for refining processes, technologies, and competition, but it also makes it generally deficient when it comes to putting in the tough work required to foster a market. This is one reason why US companies are given grants by the US government to pursue foreign markets; they don't want the risk. The irony of the situation is that the government mitigates risk when it comes to selling cereal in Brazil, because nobody in rural US needs cereal, but when it comes time for the government to involve itself in more sure-bet, domestic projects such as infrastructure, all of a sudden everyone says they hate paying taxes for government waste. You get the government you vote for.
On a final note, when private companies are the ones who put in 'the last mile', they own that infrastructure. So it would seem to run counter to the capitalist goal of giving consumers a choice in service providers. If the entire process was privatized, you would end up with N service providers creating N last mile cables
I think that a transparent market involves not reading a contract for something that is a commodity like a PC. (Or software.)
If people were more selective about the products they buy instead of bitching about the industry, we would have more better products.
When you think about one product, sure. But imagine having to review contracts all the time in order to interact with a market. People are overwhelmed by choice. Its not really a transparent market if you can pollute it with legal stipulations to the degree that consumers have to ignore them simply out of day to day practicality.
They have caused more pain and suffering in this world under the idea of uniting it than any scientific advancement has, including nuclear bombs.
/sarcasm off
Oh yeah. We should totally 'weed them out'. That would totally end pain and suffering.
I don't really understand whats different from killing people because of their beliefs, and killing people because of their beliefs. You're as indignantly self-righteous as the next pious person. I'm an athiest, but I would put you in the 'dumb shit' category. Don't worry tho, I don't think there is any benifit to eradicating you any more than I think that there is any benifit to committing genocide or opporession against people who don't believe in evolution.
We just moved to perforce. From alien brain.
.. tons of modelers, animators, texture artists, designers, illustrators.)
.. compiled for multiple hardware (ps2/gc/wii/xbox .. any combination, depending on the game) and to me, its a crazy test on code management software.
You want to test a code management system? Try working at a games company. We're not just talking programmers (or code) here. We're talking versioning artistic assets, the works. Many people who use the system are not programmers (programmers are a small part of any video game
Combine that with the fact that you have to produce stable builds 60 days after you start the project, one a month, for a few years
Alien brain was madding as hell when it came to anything more than checkouts, checkins. Perforce has a really nice command line interface, and a decent (but not as good as alien brain) gui.
The thing I will miss from Alien brain is that you could create a custom layout locally of the gui, much like Visual Studio (although clunkier.) The thing I'm looking forward to in perforce is atomic change sets and from what I understand so far from my limited use of it, decidedly better branching. I bet dollars to donuts that our artists like Alien Brain more, but p4 seems far more capable of the tools you need to keep the build stable.
I would advise you to pick up a book full of things you disagree with. The combine them with the things you agree with. Then you will have some reasonable level of reality. Your post is the kind of non starter that makes me disinterested in discussion, because their opinion is formed on the false assumption that impossible to learn more. You think? Hard data is impossible? Those are two statements that if required to ground an opinion on, I would rather not have an opinion.
Whos to say hes against murder? I was saying hes against people using video games to 'learn' how to do it. Surely, alcohol prohibitionists didn't think all the negative behaviour that came from drinking would stop - they just figured, if you prevented the sale of alcohol, you wouldn't have people abusing it as a technology. Similarly, Jack Thompson thinks that if violent video games were illegal, nobody would become more likely or more proficient at killing people thanks to a video game.
Thats where people get confused; hes not saying that banning video games will save humanity. Hes saying that he doesn't play video games, and why not ban violent games because they dont do anything for him and from his viewpoint they can encourage real life violence.
I don't agree with him, and obviously, given his previous 'success' in the legal system, most others don't as well, but he's a pretty successful demogogue given that there are thousands of other people who share his beliefs that have never generated large slashdot threads or cnn coverage or launched legal actions against video game companies.
I got attacked for saying that we should reluctantly admire his tenacity. I'm not sympathizing with him, I'm only pointing out that he knows his role in life; hes a protestor. We all know he'll be insignificant in the larger scheme of things. Should he 'die in a hole' like others have countlessly suggested in threads like these? I dont care who it is, nobody should die in a hole. I think hes an entertaining ankle biter for hire. Hes destined to a two paragraph article when he passes away. Hes wasted public time and money, but hey, thats science; its still a valid experience for society when he is proven to be in the tiny minority. Those who feel the same way will be able to know by the history of attempts against the distribution of violent video games that its not really worth trying to clog the system. The larger they are, the harder they fall.
I agree with your general idea, but Microsoft has more control over Halo 3 than any company on the planet. Microsoft *could* decide not to release Halo 3. Likely? Of course not. Could Microsoft ensure Halo 3 never hit the stores? They're the ones to go after if you honestly believe the courts would side in his favour.
But lets be frank. Hes not trying to stop the sale of Halo 3. Hes generating 'awareness'. Hes not trying to prevent violent games from reaching children. Hes trying to rid the world of violent games. Period. When he suggests that GTA is a 'murder simulator', I dont think hes saying that the ratings system doesn't work, I think hes saying that nobody would suffer from alcohol abuse if the world stopped creating alcohol. Hes a modern day prohibitionist; considering that prohibition really did exist at some point in time, its not all that nuts to suggest that he probably has more than a few financial backers. Hes just pretty shameless with his opportunism. You really ought to give more credance to your enemy; he may be really misguided, but you have to have at least some reluctant admiration for his tenacity.
Its more than likely just the click fraud. Having worked on internet ad servers and reporting engines, its a pretty reasonable number for people deliberately trying to improve their CPC by cheating.
I know people are desperate to believe that some people are stupid, and masturbate at the thought of them, like, getting their computer all screwed up because they deserve it for being so dumb, but cheating is a far more logical, and real explaination.
I wish it wasn't my comment you were replying to; that wasn't flame baiting. I'd give you a mod point in the opposite direction. I can't mod you tho. It wasn't much funny, but I don't consider it to be an insult or a racist comment. Maybe one day, slashdot will grant us with a 'needed to see his name up in writing' moderation.
You're missing the point; fair use is fair use. Its allowed. You and the parent poster should really be discussing the strengths granted to authors and the punishement to violators.
Fair use is fair use. Lets talk about 'punishment fitting the crime', not what we're still permitted to do.
"You're not innovating" is not something up to you, its up to the judicial system in the very same way that, "You're not physically abusing your spouse" is up to them. We vote for rational people who spend their lives studying this stuff. It seems awfully simplistic to think that "using the same sequence of words" violates copyright law. Define how long a sequence is. Define the purpose, socially and commercially of using those words. Etc, etc. We'd end up with the legal code, as defined by you. Hes not entirely wrong, and neither are you. But man, I find the verb 'innovating' annoying. The most important discoveries of the past 200 years did not occur in a vacuum, so when will we just admit that 'innovating' should be replaced with 'successfully claiming invention of'.
Copyright was created 'out of thin air', and very few people believe that copyright law shouldn't exist. The purpose of copyright law is to balance the needs of society with the belief that the author should retain limited control of his work.
Read that again. Limited. Even Disney, at one time the most powerful media company in the world, doesn't go around publicly trying to convince people that infinite-term copyright is the right solution because they know it just wouldn't fly. Its not in the spirit in which copyright law was created or is meant to be promoted.
You somehow believe people think this is a matter of an individual right; 'many slashdotters', to use your extremely specific and technical term, believe that at some point, when copyright law favours the creator too much, it ceases to promote the creation of artists works and protect common culture. You know, at some point, even if we all agree that shoplifting is bad, saying that you think punishment should be having your balls chewed off by an alligor would have put you squarey on the opposide side of the spirit of the past century of western judicial and political institutions you have your economic and political stability to thank for.
Even if I've been gloriously been trolled, if this message can reach just one person who has herefore not seen copyright law put in its correct historical context, I'll be happy.
Yeah, and while you're at it, lets ditch intellisense, visual assist, etc. When you're trying to juggle APIs from 28 different third party libaries, online docs are not the answer. Maybe "creative flow" sets off the hippy-alert for you, but having near immediate access to API signatures (ie, one second instead of twenty) is pretty much required if you are coding against lots of third party libs.
Just because the design is finalized (or you're in a pre-design stage, as others have noted), it doesn't mean you can immediately recall that language A takes the delimiter of explode first, and the string, second, or whether that was language B. Immediate access to API expectations are a huge tool in saving time, even when writing out well architected, fully planned software.
Considering how long Too Human has been in development, they do indeed seem to be committed to fixing things rather than just picking a release date at random, stuffing as many things into a game as possible at the cost of quality, and releasing under a blitzkrieg of marketing. He want to say, "It'll be done when it kicks ass. Check us out then and tell me straight up if it sucks." I have seen first hand what he is talking about; it happens 20,000,000 times a day in the business, and he wishes that would change. (Although this does mirror a similar dichotomy they experience in the movie world .. at what point does a movie go from, "We'll release it when its good" to development hell that can kill a project?)
On the whole, I don't think hes being hypocritical, and hes echoing sentiments that I can assure you are shared by many designers and developers. There is extremely limited integrity in the industry in terms of the relationships between the press and the games, and it hurts everyone's ability to produce quality games and judge them at their true value.
In psychology (hell, in science), the difference between coloration and causation is what you are taught on the very first day you go to class at university. If a study is conducted properly (and of course, people who study psychology and science will sometimes disagree if one is,) it renders your question moot. This is the very purpose of conducting studies, to isolate causation rather than correlation.
Perhaps people who are naturally violent are more likely to watch wrestling?
Surely you don't think that psychologists are totally unaware of this possibility?? Studies are specifically designed to attempt to remove all possible ambiguity of the conclusion? Chances are, if it comes up in a conversation between two friends, the people who go to school for this stuff for 5 to 9 years have probably given it a thought too. Thats their job, to ensure that psychology, physics, science, art, etc rises above what a few people sitting around a lunch table can come up with.