My child walks by the computer with a magnetically mounted family photo frame, sticks it on the side of my computer. CPU ERASED! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Actually, they are text-book examples of terrorists:
terrorism n. The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
terrorist n. One that engages in acts or an act of terrorism.
It's ironic, 'terrorism' has become so overused and diluted that when you have a group that is worthy of the label, people think it's a gross extension of the definition...
Yeah, I too signed up for the one month free trial while at university and, naturally, being lazy students meant that we decided to just keep the subscription for a few more months and pay for it. Cancelling was straightforward and they begged me to sign up again, offering extra freebies and such.
Now, if I had bothered to cancel the free trial instead of letting it tick over into a paid subscription I could have easily had a bad service experience similar to yours and then sworn off ScreenSelect. As it happens, I found it to be worth my time and good value for money and thus far I'm satisfied enough to keep paying my 15 clams a month back at my home address.
I guess "screwing over people who watch a lot of movies" is one of their "improvements" that they've made.
Actually, this is nothing new, despite the summary for this story leading with Netflix has begun using a 'fairness algorithm'. The article I link to dates back to April 2003 and such 'punishments' were apparent back then.
I am signed up with ScreenSelect, a British version of Netflix, and it can be quite obvious that they throttle heavy users. For instance, I'm on the most expensive three-disk plan for £15 a month and if I were to send all of the movies back on a Monday, I will only receive two disks back on Wednesday. Looking at the selection page of the website, it will describe the third film as 'awaiting allocation' and the trailing DVD will usually arrive on Thursday, using the above timeline as an example.
Having said that, I keep my account with ScreenSelect because I can still average 10-12 films a month and if you look at what I am paying it is good value when compared to walk-in rental like BlockBuster. Furthermore, the selection is huge, the website is excellent in all aspects and they are generally quite good in getting your high priority titles out to you first (although I hardly ever rent new releases so make of that what you will).
However, I do believe virtual golf can be the next golf. Then perhaps after that virtual virtual golf, where you could almost swear you were playing real virtual golf.
You're right, but at least there's fresh air and natural light involved.
Also, sport is as much about the drinking as it is about the actual exercise element these days. Drinks in the club house and all that. Just ask any university team member. You might not get a response though, as they're likely to be unconscious with vomit dribbling down their chin.;)
Your post and one of the replies reminds me of a joke.
A young man is enjoying a few drinks in the pub with some friends when a fat, balding man staggers up to the table and says quite loudly to the young guy, 'I've fucked your mum!' The young lad feels a little embarrassed but he and his friends just ignore the drunkard and he stumbles off. Five minutes later the lush is back, this time exclaiming 'I've sucked your mum's tits! Your mum sucked my cock!' through beery breath. Having had enough, the young guy gets up and says sternly, 'Dad, you're drunk. Go home!'.
You are definitely right in principle. However, as others have pointed out, the movie industry is in a terrible rut at the moment and is completely obsessed with sequels, remakes and plundering other cultural media like comic books for 'new' material. Infact, it seems as though both industries are in a race to outdo eachother in terms of effortless moneymaking.
But forgetting current lapses and addressing the original point, I believe that the games industry could learn a lot from film-making in order to eke out better games. Think of your favourite film. What makes you like it so much? For most people those answers would be all of the following:
Engaging premise, storyline and plot development.
Believable and memorable characters to identify with.
Realistic and well-designed sets, costumes and effects (i.e. visuals).
All of these can be translated across to a computer game, yet I really doubt I would find many titles, if any, fitting the above criteria by walking into my local branch of Game.
I'm not saying that there's no room for mindless, repetitive games to pick up and play for 5 minutes at a time, I just believe that the balance has tipped too far away from creativity and thinking outside the box.
Perhaps we can start by not leading players by the hand everywhere.
Go to checkpoint A. Shoot some Nazis. Then, go to checkpoint B and shoot some Nazis in a truck. You can not go straight to checkpoint B. There is only one route to checkpoint A. The switch to the bridge will have a big hand icon above it because you are too fucking stupid to figure out how to lower the bridge on your own. This type of thing will happen for ten or so levels until you are sitting there in your living room trying to convince yourself that this was worth 50 bucks. Yours sincerely, EA.
We need more spontaneity. We need more risks. We need more genres. We need cutscenes to not fucking suck with contrived dialogue and 2d (metaphorically!) characters. We need more games that place you right in the middle of something big, where you ask yourself 'what the fuck?' as you start unravelling the storyline, overcoming the twists and turns that are presented to you.
If I may to refer to movie eXistenZ (a love-it-or-hate-it film, I'm in the former camp), set in a world where virtual reality games are commonplace and interface directly with your spinal column, the lead characters find themselves in a virtual, cyberpunkesque games emporium where some of the titles on offer are 'Chinese Restaurant' (slogan 'Will You Make It Out Alive?') and 'Hit By A Car'. While we may not have that level of mind-altering technology, I quite like the idea of games becoming less of a throwaway timesink and more of a rollercoaster ride that leaves you in a post-orgasmic state of sheer amazement. VR needs to get out of the 80s and catch up, although Nintendo's new controller looks like a stepping stone.
Perhaps when the time finally comes when we hit the technical ceiling (I'm talking graphics, physics, audio) and there is no room for improvement left except in gameplay and fundamental ideas we will see some real leaps-and-bounds improvement.
In summary, redefining games as 'interactive movies' need not be a negative connotation.
Actually, if you read those links you'll find that they are rather interesting and well-presented articles, par for the course as far as The (Sunday) Times is concerned. No 'hot and exclusive' pictures or cheap puns like you'd expect in the tabloids, although the titles are somewhat of a red herring.
I encountered both the 'Brain or Bimbo' and 'Confessions...' pieces in the dead tree edition of The Sunday Times and found them to be good reads. I'd quite like to get my hands on a copy of Female Chauvinist Pigs (No Referral) by Ariel Levy. The observations of 'raunch culture' and how the modern young female is encouraged to be some kind of liberated sexual goddess with fake boobs, low inhibition and the ability to pole-dance are quite astute and very Brave New World.
Slashdot Mirror
I learnt everything I know about driving from Carmageddon.
My child walks by the computer with a magnetically mounted family photo frame, sticks it on the side of my computer. CPU ERASED! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Is your child named Luke, by any chance?
That's no antenna, that's a Freedom Pole.
Now, if you'd care to focus your attention on that funny monkey outside the window, I'm sure that you will be quite amused by his comical antics.
Actually, they are text-book examples of terrorists:
terrorism n. The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
terrorist n. One that engages in acts or an act of terrorism.
It's ironic, 'terrorism' has become so overused and diluted that when you have a group that is worthy of the label, people think it's a gross extension of the definition...
Yeah, I too signed up for the one month free trial while at university and, naturally, being lazy students meant that we decided to just keep the subscription for a few more months and pay for it. Cancelling was straightforward and they begged me to sign up again, offering extra freebies and such.
Now, if I had bothered to cancel the free trial instead of letting it tick over into a paid subscription I could have easily had a bad service experience similar to yours and then sworn off ScreenSelect. As it happens, I found it to be worth my time and good value for money and thus far I'm satisfied enough to keep paying my 15 clams a month back at my home address.
Funny how it goes like that.
I guess "screwing over people who watch a lot of movies" is one of their "improvements" that they've made.
Actually, this is nothing new, despite the summary for this story leading with Netflix has begun using a 'fairness algorithm'. The article I link to dates back to April 2003 and such 'punishments' were apparent back then.
I am signed up with ScreenSelect, a British version of Netflix, and it can be quite obvious that they throttle heavy users. For instance, I'm on the most expensive three-disk plan for £15 a month and if I were to send all of the movies back on a Monday, I will only receive two disks back on Wednesday. Looking at the selection page of the website, it will describe the third film as 'awaiting allocation' and the trailing DVD will usually arrive on Thursday, using the above timeline as an example.
Having said that, I keep my account with ScreenSelect because I can still average 10-12 films a month and if you look at what I am paying it is good value when compared to walk-in rental like BlockBuster. Furthermore, the selection is huge, the website is excellent in all aspects and they are generally quite good in getting your high priority titles out to you first (although I hardly ever rent new releases so make of that what you will).
However, I do believe virtual golf can be the next golf. Then perhaps after that virtual virtual golf, where you could almost swear you were playing real virtual golf.
Walk with me, talk with me.
You're right, but at least there's fresh air and natural light involved.
;)
Also, sport is as much about the drinking as it is about the actual exercise element these days. Drinks in the club house and all that. Just ask any university team member. You might not get a response though, as they're likely to be unconscious with vomit dribbling down their chin.
WoW is as much a substitute for a sport as it is for a social life.
Your post and one of the replies reminds me of a joke.
A young man is enjoying a few drinks in the pub with some friends when a fat, balding man staggers up to the table and says quite loudly to the young guy, 'I've fucked your mum!' The young lad feels a little embarrassed but he and his friends just ignore the drunkard and he stumbles off. Five minutes later the lush is back, this time exclaiming 'I've sucked your mum's tits! Your mum sucked my cock!' through beery breath. Having had enough, the young guy gets up and says sternly, 'Dad, you're drunk. Go home!'.
But forgetting current lapses and addressing the original point, I believe that the games industry could learn a lot from film-making in order to eke out better games. Think of your favourite film. What makes you like it so much? For most people those answers would be all of the following:
All of these can be translated across to a computer game, yet I really doubt I would find many titles, if any, fitting the above criteria by walking into my local branch of Game.
I'm not saying that there's no room for mindless, repetitive games to pick up and play for 5 minutes at a time, I just believe that the balance has tipped too far away from creativity and thinking outside the box.
Perhaps we can start by not leading players by the hand everywhere.
Go to checkpoint A. Shoot some Nazis. Then, go to checkpoint B and shoot some Nazis in a truck. You can not go straight to checkpoint B. There is only one route to checkpoint A. The switch to the bridge will have a big hand icon above it because you are too fucking stupid to figure out how to lower the bridge on your own. This type of thing will happen for ten or so levels until you are sitting there in your living room trying to convince yourself that this was worth 50 bucks.
Yours sincerely, EA.
We need more spontaneity. We need more risks. We need more genres. We need cutscenes to not fucking suck with contrived dialogue and 2d (metaphorically!) characters. We need more games that place you right in the middle of something big, where you ask yourself 'what the fuck?' as you start unravelling the storyline, overcoming the twists and turns that are presented to you.
If I may to refer to movie eXistenZ (a love-it-or-hate-it film, I'm in the former camp), set in a world where virtual reality games are commonplace and interface directly with your spinal column, the lead characters find themselves in a virtual, cyberpunkesque games emporium where some of the titles on offer are 'Chinese Restaurant' (slogan 'Will You Make It Out Alive?') and 'Hit By A Car'. While we may not have that level of mind-altering technology, I quite like the idea of games becoming less of a throwaway timesink and more of a rollercoaster ride that leaves you in a post-orgasmic state of sheer amazement. VR needs to get out of the 80s and catch up, although Nintendo's new controller looks like a stepping stone.
Perhaps when the time finally comes when we hit the technical ceiling (I'm talking graphics, physics, audio) and there is no room for improvement left except in gameplay and fundamental ideas we will see some real leaps-and-bounds improvement.
In summary, redefining games as 'interactive movies' need not be a negative connotation.
Your mother!
My post grows when I first get up!
I could swear 20 Fingers' Short Dick Man was never on this playlist before!
Yeah, I too once got really drunk at a bar and got the exhaust mixed up with the intake. I think she enjoyed it more.
And if you bring in guards, who will guard the guards?
I dunno, Coast Guard?
Actually, if you read those links you'll find that they are rather interesting and well-presented articles, par for the course as far as The (Sunday) Times is concerned. No 'hot and exclusive' pictures or cheap puns like you'd expect in the tabloids, although the titles are somewhat of a red herring.
I encountered both the 'Brain or Bimbo' and 'Confessions...' pieces in the dead tree edition of The Sunday Times and found them to be good reads. I'd quite like to get my hands on a copy of Female Chauvinist Pigs (No Referral) by Ariel Levy. The observations of 'raunch culture' and how the modern young female is encouraged to be some kind of liberated sexual goddess with fake boobs, low inhibition and the ability to pole-dance are quite astute and very Brave New World.
I know that there are a few other taffers on Slashdot; where are you? Come out of the shadows and give praise to The Builder! Er, I mean Garrett.
The same idiots that spell Voila as "viola"
At least those idiots aren't as bad as the ones that actually spell it 'Walla'...
This message brought to you by ExxonMobil.
What a carp pun.
Oops.
Not that they are particularly distinguishable, anyway...
This is forbidden by Directive 2:
Must not sue self
Also related is Directive 2.i:
Must not sue any RIAA member or any third party of political influence and/or monetary support
Any attempts to violate these hard-wired directives will result in immediate self-destruction.
Porn or no, both of them should be on the same page about it.
Best. Metaphor. Ever.