Of course they're also planning on releasing expansions every few months.
This of course is your monthly fee.
For my money I prefer it this way.
I see it as a bit of a win all around: 1. Game maker gets rewarded for making good content repeatedly 2. Consumers don't get shafted for expansions and a monthly fee
It should keep the game fresh, and if the expansions are of a similar content level to the original game, it'll keep people interested for quite a few years I'd expect.
Really, there's no problem for me with pay-as-you-play, but there is a huge problem with PAYP as well as getting bent over for expansions - even itty bitty ones (hey Sony, wussup).
"IANAG, but I wonder if open source will be able to create a rich online FPS game/MMORG that offers the rich world-depth of a big-budget game without the need for millions of dollars in development labor."
Well, you could always check out Once. It's pretty idealistic, and they really need code ragers and artists bad, but the idea's there. Apart from questions surrounding "who the hell's going to fund all this 'width!?" I think an open source Massive game holds potential to deliver fun, rather than something to addict you and keep Sony/Blizzard/whomever rich beyond dreams of avarice.
I sort of miss the days of MUDs, but I'm a graphics whore and can't go back. Guild Wars, now that's some candy I can get into - done without, as near as I can tell, an EA/Hollywood style budget.
You've got to be kidding. AIX has just managed to catch up to where Solaris was years ago. Notes has arguably the worst human interface of any piece of software in the known world.
Having said that, my experience/opinion of IBM here in New Zealand is: great hardware, shame about the support. The real failing is that they don't even come close to Sun in the arena of product support. Heck, even Microsoft give us better support.
And IBM is a strategic partner of ours.
Maybe that's why? Perhaps they think they've got us "in the bag?" Whatever, it's going to need more than some king dick cheese saying they're going to be a services company; they best pick up some human interfaces coders and some customer service trainers.
You think you've got it bad?! The clowns at Vivendi only distributed 200 - for our entire COUNTRY.
EB Games got 40 units for its complete shipment nationwide. I ordered a month in advance, two copies, from a major online retailer here - who received only 60 copies, and couldn't fulfil either of those orders.
I posted about this [worldofwarcraft.com] on their forums, but got no reply, when I found out before launch day.
It really blows! I really wanted the art book. And what with the region locking of accounts, it looks like I can't buy one from eBay either (there are a few copies there, going for nutso money).
I know exactly one person (personally) in my country who's managed to get their order filled. Vivendi have told retailers here that they won't be re-releasing this pack either, or any of the product within it seperately.
For my money: whilst I'm not into piracy per-say, I really hope someone scans and copies the products and rips 'em out to a torrent or ed2k source. I mean, ffs, 200 for an entire country is a joke.
I hear you about Halo's pain over tunnel systems. Using Xbox Connect, or Xbox Tunnel (GameSpy), or whatever doesn't make a difference - the game seems tuned for LAN levels of latency and throughput.
A new tunnel system won't solve these problems, but a larger pipe and improvements to the speed of light probably will;)
Look at it this way. Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are wrapping their consoles in hundred dollar bills and firing them into the street to get consumers to scoop them up. They have all the plug and play you need, current games that look good and just work. Add onto that a Gamefly (http://www.gamefly.com/) account with a similar monthly fee, and you get all the games you want, couriered to your door, included in the content fee.
I think companies like Speakeasy have free Xboxes when you subscribe for a year of DSL too. I can't find the link I had on this before, but even if you had to lay down USD$149 for an Xbox, it wouldn't make you cry would it?
So if you shop around, you can get more variety, for less, with current technology that exists on the market today. I have to wonder, exactly whom this is aimed at? I wouldn't touch it - I've already got a PC thanks, and an Xbox, PS/2, and GCN. Exclusives push consoles over other consoles - if this one is just competing against the PC, or products like the ApeXtreme (http://www.apexdigitalinc.com/proddetail.asp?cate gory=ApeXtreme&subcat=&linenumber=76&c =4) or AlienWare DHD line (http://www.alienware.com/intro_Pages/dhd.aspx) I'd say it's got a painful, expensive, and short future.
> The PS/2 has the best games followed by the Gamecube.
No, that's not right. I've got a PC, PS/2, GameCube, and an Xbox.
I have one game for the 'Cube - Metroid Prime.
I have, I think, five for the PS/2.
My Xbox library holds something like 25 titles.
If you like Japanese RPGs, the PS/2 has the best games. If you like having a Hello Kitty shitting yellow flowers on your screen, then get a 'Cube. If you want superior controls, graphics, sound, and games, then you want an Xbox.
Exclusives aside, it's a better console. If you include exclusives, it's got more of what I want to play.
Although - it's worth mentioning my PC library is huge, because I've been collecting games on that platform since Prince of Persia (the original).
...and all games produced on consoles require a large amount of simplification (a severe reduction of complexity and therefore depth: see Deus Ex IW). Consoles are great for fight games like Tekken, though.
...what the hell? Sure, some games (like Invisible War) are simplified, but they were simplified on the PC as well. You've obviously not played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - perhaps one of the finest and most complex RPGs of all time. Yep! Console game first!
FFS. This kind of spurious, "Consoles are for no-brain dweebs," argument is elitist nonesense. I've got a PC, and two consoles. They all play great games, which is what it's about. Good interface design != reduction in complexity.
Get your head out of the "consoles only play kids games" or "console games only play arcade games" mem space, and see what's out there. There's some stellar console gaming available, with rich gameplay and complexity. Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, Beyond Good and Evil, KotOR, etc etc etc - the list goes on. They're all console games.
> But what you're getting for your money is the support that comes with it. Right?
Having been through the gamut of Red Hate support, I can assure you that it's not the support that you're paying for.
Or if you are paying for it, you're paying too much.
What I'm paying for, when I buy Red Hate, is:
a) A supported OS for our hardware platform b) A supported OS for our software layer
That's it. If I want real support, I'll buy Sun - they actually solve problems and return phone calls.
Last time I logged a support call with Red Hate (for which we'd paid money to have), they blamed Dell's hardware. Dell said there's nothing wrong with their hardware, referred back to Red Hate. Red Hate said it's still the hardware, then - two weeks later - released a patch to fix it.
How's that work? Oh yeah, must be the hardware. It's probably worth noting, this was an SMP issue, and Debian worked fine. But Debian wasn't supported by Dell.
"...yet the games industry cannot rely on replica t-shirts, dolls, posters, cinema tickets for their income."
They cannot rely on it as much. I've got a Halo hoodie, and some game coffee mugs kicking around. Now that doesn't sound a lot, but I've not a single piece of movie memorabilia in the same vein.
Of course, the flip side is volume - I've got about 200 DVDs (movies) in my library, and maybe 50 games. Games cost more each, but the volume of movies makes up for it.
People can wax lyrical about how code wants to be free, and about how you shouldn't have to pay for good software.
That's all crap. Someone wrote it, and is entitled to expect fair return on their investment of time. If they're doing it for a living, piracy stops them living.
Now, don't get me wrong. Free software is great - heck, I use Linux, and haven't paid a brass wazoo for any of the code running on my Debian box. That doesn't mean I wouldn't, though. I've purchased product from the likes of Interplay, Microsoft, Eidos, iD, Epic, CodeWeavers, and so on. If I use code, and the author wants money, I pay money. I don't expect my hardware to be free. It'd be nice if it was, but this is the real world.
If developers do it "free" I use it for free. If they want money and I want the product, I pay.
You can whine and bitch all you want about how MP3s should be downloadable, and about how Microsoft are raping the economy for every copy of Word. Bottom line is, if you don't like it, you don't have to use it. But if you do like their product, the law requires that you pay for it.
I live and work in Wellington, and our company is wired with Citylink. My last employer (a government department) were also wired on the network.
Basically we get a full duplex 100Mb Ethernet cable hanging in our machine room, and we can participate on the BGP peering system available on the network.
In New Zealand, ISP tarrif charges can be high (at least, this is the dirty rumour going about). For about, er, NZD$350 per month, we can get all-you-can-eat traffic to any of our peers without crossing an ISP. It's free, and fast.
The slowest access available is 10Mb (Ethernet). So, worst case scenario is that your updates to local servers (like linux.wellington.net.nz, for example) are blazingly fast; 100Mb access to the same server is staggering.
Naylor's vision was extraordinary, and has enabled Wellington to be a wired city in ways most people can only dream about:) We have cheap access to a high speed MAN, peering with our neighbours, and a really quick and easy way to connect to our ISPs without paying telco frame relay charges etc.
Unfortunately, it didn't just spring up overnight. I've been working with Citylink connected places for what, about four years now. The network has grown and expanded since then, gaining better core kit and so on. It's amazing now, and promises to get better. What cities need to appreciate is that it won't happen overnight; your network needs to grow organically overnight. Pick a good location for installation, get some interested companies, and be willing to take a little bit of a hit in the first year.
Wellington is kind of unique in that the entire central business district is walking distance from everywhere; you can cover the city on foot in any direction for business purposes in about 45 minutes or so. However, Auckland (a larger city in New Zealand) is starting to get on the ball with their APE (Auckland Peering Exchange). Auckland is a sprawling behemouth that has traffic congestion problems shocking for a city its size. But if they can do it, so can you:)
Sun Microsystems have had "PC cards" for a while now. There was a whitepaper they published some time ago on using a small Sun server (say, an E450) and populating it with PC cards.
They demonstrated how an entire Windows NT cluster could be built using this technology, chucked in some Terminal Services under Windows, ran Exchange, and then did all the important stuff (mail, DNS, whatever) on the Sun box itself.
Granted, it's not Linux, and granted, he cost of a Sun box is quite high - but the PC cards are significantly cheaper over here for Sun hardware, and Sun architecture seems to be a bit more robust and scalable than PC stuff.
These chaps have launched an Internet banking service (https://sec.westpactrust.co.nz that is all server-side - so as long as you've got something written after the year 1700 that supports frames and http over ssl, you're sweet.
However, other banks in New Zealand use all kinds of Mickey Mouse custom Java thick client solutions and crap like that. Really, it boils down to the bank - if they're smart, they're using Solaris with some good engine, if they're not, then change banks.
It's all good having these multiple technologies, but being able to be caught is always risky. Lets face it, at some stage some script kiddies will be sharing their c00L war3z d00d, and it's all goind to go to crap - and especially so if there's even a hint of a financial transaction.
The chaps at iMesh (http://www.imesh.com/) are trying to do something a bit more distributed. I don't think it's quite there yet, but it's a start. I guess it means that iMesh themselves aren't going to have to purchase a bulk order of KY in the near future, but their luzers might.
Winblows clients only, unfortunately, so I'd also recommend a trip to http://antivirus.cai.com/ for the latest InnoculatePE.
Y'all should look outside of the USA for people who've been doing this a while. I've been involved in a project with http://www.arc.net.nz/ for paying bills online.
It was a pretty cool project; the real goals were to make it easier than paying bills the normal (paper) way, cheaper, and friendlier. It's pretty much succeeded, and been a blast to work on.
Security was (and still is) a real concern. The backend magic to make this thing sing and so on was fairly hairy, and the interfacing with banks and billers is - well, let's not go there. Suffice to say that _everyone_ has a "better" way:)
Will it work? Sure - it's cheaper than most billpay situations with banks around here, and has met large user acceptance. I think the real kicker will be being able to do _all_ your bills online - the real attraction will be when everyone from your power company to your milk vendor will allow you to pay online.
As one of the chaps here at work said, they're not simlinks, but borglinks.
Whilst this article certainly reads like Mickey$oft have the cure for cancer, their real innovation is the magic behind it. Probably all of four lines of perl:)
How's this for a theory... The borglinks are kept in a hive (like the registry hive) and when it corrupts itself, you lose 80% of your filesystem.
Slashdot Mirror
For my money I prefer it this way.
I see it as a bit of a win all around:
1. Game maker gets rewarded for making good content repeatedly
2. Consumers don't get shafted for expansions and a monthly fee
It should keep the game fresh, and if the expansions are of a similar content level to the original game, it'll keep people interested for quite a few years I'd expect.
Really, there's no problem for me with pay-as-you-play, but there is a huge problem with PAYP as well as getting bent over for expansions - even itty bitty ones (hey Sony, wussup).
You've got to be kidding. Have you seen the female elementalist /dance emote?
I'll never have to get pr0n again when I get this game.
"IANAG, but I wonder if open source will be able to create a rich online FPS game/MMORG that offers the rich world-depth of a big-budget game without the need for millions of dollars in development labor."
Well, you could always check out Once. It's pretty idealistic, and they really need code ragers and artists bad, but the idea's there. Apart from questions surrounding "who the hell's going to fund all this 'width!?" I think an open source Massive game holds potential to deliver fun, rather than something to addict you and keep Sony/Blizzard/whomever rich beyond dreams of avarice.
I sort of miss the days of MUDs, but I'm a graphics whore and can't go back. Guild Wars, now that's some candy I can get into - done without, as near as I can tell, an EA/Hollywood style budget.
You've got to be kidding. AIX has just managed to catch up to where Solaris was years ago. Notes has arguably the worst human interface of any piece of software in the known world.
Having said that, my experience/opinion of IBM here in New Zealand is: great hardware, shame about the support. The real failing is that they don't even come close to Sun in the arena of product support. Heck, even Microsoft give us better support.
And IBM is a strategic partner of ours.
Maybe that's why? Perhaps they think they've got us "in the bag?" Whatever, it's going to need more than some king dick cheese saying they're going to be a services company; they best pick up some human interfaces coders and some customer service trainers.
You think you've got it bad?! The clowns at Vivendi only distributed 200 - for our entire COUNTRY.
EB Games got 40 units for its complete shipment nationwide. I ordered a month in advance, two copies, from a major online retailer here - who received only 60 copies, and couldn't fulfil either of those orders.
I posted about this [worldofwarcraft.com] on their forums, but got no reply, when I found out before launch day.
It really blows! I really wanted the art book. And what with the region locking of accounts, it looks like I can't buy one from eBay either (there are a few copies there, going for nutso money).
I know exactly one person (personally) in my country who's managed to get their order filled. Vivendi have told retailers here that they won't be re-releasing this pack either, or any of the product within it seperately.
For my money: whilst I'm not into piracy per-say, I really hope someone scans and copies the products and rips 'em out to a torrent or ed2k source. I mean, ffs, 200 for an entire country is a joke.
I hear you about Halo's pain over tunnel systems. Using Xbox Connect, or Xbox Tunnel (GameSpy), or whatever doesn't make a difference - the game seems tuned for LAN levels of latency and throughput.
;)
A new tunnel system won't solve these problems, but a larger pipe and improvements to the speed of light probably will
Exactly.
e gory=ApeXtreme&subcat=&linenumber=76&c =4) or AlienWare DHD line (http://www.alienware.com/intro_Pages/dhd.aspx) I'd say it's got a painful, expensive, and short future.
Look at it this way. Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are wrapping their consoles in hundred dollar bills and firing them into the street to get consumers to scoop them up. They have all the plug and play you need, current games that look good and just work. Add onto that a Gamefly (http://www.gamefly.com/) account with a similar monthly fee, and you get all the games you want, couriered to your door, included in the content fee.
I think companies like Speakeasy have free Xboxes when you subscribe for a year of DSL too. I can't find the link I had on this before, but even if you had to lay down USD$149 for an Xbox, it wouldn't make you cry would it?
So if you shop around, you can get more variety, for less, with current technology that exists on the market today. I have to wonder, exactly whom this is aimed at? I wouldn't touch it - I've already got a PC thanks, and an Xbox, PS/2, and GCN. Exclusives push consoles over other consoles - if this one is just competing against the PC, or products like the ApeXtreme (http://www.apexdigitalinc.com/proddetail.asp?cat
> The PS/2 has the best games followed by the Gamecube.
No, that's not right. I've got a PC, PS/2, GameCube, and an Xbox.
I have one game for the 'Cube - Metroid Prime.
I have, I think, five for the PS/2.
My Xbox library holds something like 25 titles.
If you like Japanese RPGs, the PS/2 has the best games. If you like having a Hello Kitty shitting yellow flowers on your screen, then get a 'Cube. If you want superior controls, graphics, sound, and games, then you want an Xbox.
Exclusives aside, it's a better console. If you include exclusives, it's got more of what I want to play.
Although - it's worth mentioning my PC library is huge, because I've been collecting games on that platform since Prince of Persia (the original).
...what the hell? Sure, some games (like Invisible War) are simplified, but they were simplified on the PC as well. You've obviously not played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - perhaps one of the finest and most complex RPGs of all time. Yep! Console game first!
FFS. This kind of spurious, "Consoles are for no-brain dweebs," argument is elitist nonesense. I've got a PC, and two consoles. They all play great games, which is what it's about. Good interface design != reduction in complexity.
Get your head out of the "consoles only play kids games" or "console games only play arcade games" mem space, and see what's out there. There's some stellar console gaming available, with rich gameplay and complexity. Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, Beyond Good and Evil, KotOR, etc etc etc - the list goes on. They're all console games.
> But what you're getting for your money is the support that comes with it. Right?
Having been through the gamut of Red Hate support, I can assure you that it's not the support that you're paying for.
Or if you are paying for it, you're paying too much.
What I'm paying for, when I buy Red Hate, is:
a) A supported OS for our hardware platform
b) A supported OS for our software layer
That's it. If I want real support, I'll buy Sun - they actually solve problems and return phone calls.
Last time I logged a support call with Red Hate (for which we'd paid money to have), they blamed Dell's hardware. Dell said there's nothing wrong with their hardware, referred back to Red Hate. Red Hate said it's still the hardware, then - two weeks later - released a patch to fix it.
How's that work? Oh yeah, must be the hardware. It's probably worth noting, this was an SMP issue, and Debian worked fine. But Debian wasn't supported by Dell.
"...yet the games industry cannot rely on replica t-shirts, dolls, posters, cinema tickets for their income."
They cannot rely on it as much. I've got a Halo hoodie, and some game coffee mugs kicking around. Now that doesn't sound a lot, but I've not a single piece of movie memorabilia in the same vein.
Of course, the flip side is volume - I've got about 200 DVDs (movies) in my library, and maybe 50 games. Games cost more each, but the volume of movies makes up for it.
People can wax lyrical about how code wants to be free, and about how you shouldn't have to pay for good software.
That's all crap. Someone wrote it, and is entitled to expect fair return on their investment of time. If they're doing it for a living, piracy stops them living.
Now, don't get me wrong. Free software is great - heck, I use Linux, and haven't paid a brass wazoo for any of the code running on my Debian box. That doesn't mean I wouldn't, though. I've purchased product from the likes of Interplay, Microsoft, Eidos, iD, Epic, CodeWeavers, and so on. If I use code, and the author wants money, I pay money. I don't expect my hardware to be free. It'd be nice if it was, but this is the real world.
If developers do it "free" I use it for free. If they want money and I want the product, I pay.
You can whine and bitch all you want about how MP3s should be downloadable, and about how Microsoft are raping the economy for every copy of Word. Bottom line is, if you don't like it, you don't have to use it. But if you do like their product, the law requires that you pay for it.
Quit whining.
I live and work in Wellington, and our company is wired with Citylink. My last employer (a government department) were also wired on the network.
:) We have cheap access to a high speed MAN, peering with our neighbours, and a really quick and easy way to connect to our ISPs without paying telco frame relay charges etc.
:)
Basically we get a full duplex 100Mb Ethernet cable hanging in our machine room, and we can participate on the BGP peering system available on the network.
In New Zealand, ISP tarrif charges can be high (at least, this is the dirty rumour going about). For about, er, NZD$350 per month, we can get all-you-can-eat traffic to any of our peers without crossing an ISP. It's free, and fast.
The slowest access available is 10Mb (Ethernet). So, worst case scenario is that your updates to local servers (like linux.wellington.net.nz, for example) are blazingly fast; 100Mb access to the same server is staggering.
Naylor's vision was extraordinary, and has enabled Wellington to be a wired city in ways most people can only dream about
Unfortunately, it didn't just spring up overnight. I've been working with Citylink connected places for what, about four years now. The network has grown and expanded since then, gaining better core kit and so on. It's amazing now, and promises to get better. What cities need to appreciate is that it won't happen overnight; your network needs to grow organically overnight. Pick a good location for installation, get some interested companies, and be willing to take a little bit of a hit in the first year.
Wellington is kind of unique in that the entire central business district is walking distance from everywhere; you can cover the city on foot in any direction for business purposes in about 45 minutes or so. However, Auckland (a larger city in New Zealand) is starting to get on the ball with their APE (Auckland Peering Exchange). Auckland is a sprawling behemouth that has traffic congestion problems shocking for a city its size. But if they can do it, so can you
Sun Microsystems have had "PC cards" for a while now. There was a whitepaper they published some time ago on using a small Sun server (say, an E450) and populating it with PC cards.
They demonstrated how an entire Windows NT cluster could be built using this technology, chucked in some Terminal Services under Windows, ran Exchange, and then did all the important stuff (mail, DNS, whatever) on the Sun box itself.
Granted, it's not Linux, and granted, he cost of a Sun box is quite high - but the PC cards are significantly cheaper over here for Sun hardware, and Sun architecture seems to be a bit more robust and scalable than PC stuff.
I bank with a company called WestpacTrust http://www.westpactrust.co.nz.
These chaps have launched an Internet banking service (https://sec.westpactrust.co.nz that is all server-side - so as long as you've got something written after the year 1700 that supports frames and http over ssl, you're sweet.
However, other banks in New Zealand use all kinds of Mickey Mouse custom Java thick client solutions and crap like that. Really, it boils down to the bank - if they're smart, they're using Solaris with some good engine, if they're not, then change banks.
It's all good having these multiple technologies, but being able to be caught is always risky. Lets face it, at some stage some script kiddies will be sharing their c00L war3z d00d, and it's all goind to go to crap - and especially so if there's even a hint of a financial transaction.
The chaps at iMesh (http://www.imesh.com/) are trying to do something a bit more distributed. I don't think it's quite there yet, but it's a start. I guess it means that iMesh themselves aren't going to have to purchase a bulk order of KY in the near future, but their luzers might.
Winblows clients only, unfortunately, so I'd also recommend a trip to http://antivirus.cai.com/ for the latest InnoculatePE.
Y'all should look outside of the USA for people who've been doing this a while. I've been involved in a project with http://www.arc.net.nz/ for paying bills online.
:)
It was a pretty cool project; the real goals were to make it easier than paying bills the normal (paper) way, cheaper, and friendlier. It's pretty much succeeded, and been a blast to work on.
Security was (and still is) a real concern. The backend magic to make this thing sing and so on was fairly hairy, and the interfacing with banks and billers is - well, let's not go there. Suffice to say that _everyone_ has a "better" way
Will it work? Sure - it's cheaper than most billpay situations with banks around here, and has met large user acceptance. I think the real kicker will be being able to do _all_ your bills online - the real attraction will be when everyone from your power company to your milk vendor will allow you to pay online.
As one of the chaps here at work said, they're not simlinks, but borglinks.
:)
:)
Whilst this article certainly reads like Mickey$oft have the cure for cancer, their real innovation is the magic behind it. Probably all of four lines of perl
How's this for a theory... The borglinks are kept in a hive (like the registry hive) and when it corrupts itself, you lose 80% of your filesystem.
Heh, yeah I'd put that on my production server!