that after stamping out trolls from slashdot with the mod system, they went onward and changed their profession to something similar (that is: continue to break the masses's balls - annoy them...)...
not patching their own windows 2k machines against code red, slammer, WHATEVER ELSE... and they are sysadmins who should care... now think at all the people running an unpatched microsoft machine on the internet, even if it is a crappy console...
Electronic Arts was sued by ESPN because EA tried to create a fictional "EA Sports Network" to brand their videogames... they already did it with the EANN (electronic arts news network) spoofing CNN in the Desert Strike/Jungle Strike series for the Sega Genesis but in the case of EANN they came over clean.
Can't find historical pages about this lawsuit, but there comes some quotes from google and google groups:)
google post (need to get to the part where it quotes EASN and ESPN). ESPN versus CSPN (need to get to page 3)
How naive. It's really simple. IBM is trying to rake in a few billion selling software they don't have to pay for.
Not totally true. If they want to sell it as a service then they have to test it TWICE or THREE TIMES than the usual since they can't trust that a single patch don't go over someone else's IP or don't start overwriting the system in an erratical way, trashing everything on the customers system. Still they have to pay a good deal for Quality Assurance.
I don't know what's giving you a warm fuzzy feeling. It's not charity. They're not "supporting the community", they're simply saving tens of millions on software development by letting gullible, naive college kids work for free.
Naive college kids certainly lack the interest to support exotic hardware like IBM's S/390. Also "Naive" college kids usually want MORE to haxx0r the neighbour box or to enter on teacher's pc and change their votes. I know this because I am still a CS student. (No, I am also working in the meanwhile). Less naive college kids instead want to collaborate on the linux kernel, the gnu system or whatever other project (bsd, reactos, xfree, their own videogame emulator) because:
a) it is a system they use and they want it to work well for them,
b) they want to gain more expertise in security or programming in a certain language, or simply make that grade in the "Operating System Course",
c) they maybe are doing it as an hobby, since they otherwise would get bored with other hobbies,
d) maybe they also hope for a "head hunter" to notice their work, OR to be able to use their software for a private, succesful infrastructure on which they can sell support (see VALinux's Sourceforge for an example).
Helping the opensource community is a balanced act between greed and helping people, between learning and teaching.
It's the same thing that happens at my local food co-op. The food co-op plasters the word "community" on everything, and people stand in line to "volunteer" there. The co-op is a business, and they're just using the same kind of gullible, naive people to work for free for them. Same fucking thing. Fuck it. Labor is expensive.
Yes, labor is so expensive that you have to buy retarded software that helps your business to be competitive by cutting jobs, and sending people with 3 or 4 children to the land of the joblessness.
I bet that at least your local food "co-op" doesn't teach your children that treating people like a mop is rightful a thing to do. Hell, It looks like we got back to the time of the ancient romans, who used to have a philosopher that said that "slaves were talking tools".
Yes, let's go back to the Roman Empire, where if you didn't worship the empereor you were sent to the arena to be eaten by Lions while we are at it.
Maybe I'll convert my business to a "co-op", and let the "community" "volunteer" to run my business while I sit in the back raking in the money.
Why not start a TacoMcStarbucks instead? More or less the it is the same greedy business than a food co-op, Labor is cheap as well, but usually the returns are better than the normal "co-op" with food from the third world. Oh, and you don't also fuck people plastering the place with >, but instead you can honestly do the big bad ugly employer who juggles the careers of very young people. Ask them to work overtime then fuck them giving no extra unpaid holidays.
+ + + +
To be back ontopic: at least "co-op" give you a _good_ dream and _good_ memes as well. With everyone spreading bullshit like "enterprises and capitalism are better than the happiness and completeness of individual", "co-op"s are a useful point for stating that the individual IS the center of the society, and that if the individual is oppressed, the society loses.
Also remember that I reminded that IBM was a bad guy as well in the first place...
"Collecting data is only the first step toward wisdom, but sharing data is the first step toward community," Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr advises the boy in the ad, recalling the ethos of the programming community behind Linux.
The ad closes with the slogan "Linux. The Future is Open. IBM."
My jaw is wide open.
Ok, IBM wants to capitalize on Linux, IBM is a company, in the past IBM has been a corrupt monopoly trying to stranglehold their clients with the proprietary ties after fscking them in the first place.
But the memes passed by this particular advertisement are something radically different than those teached by conventional advertisements and pro-capitalist ethos (consume! consume! don't think about tomorrow! spend now!).
Really, this stuff is jaw-dropping.
It's not like the cluetrain stopping in front of IBM (now we only need an express train passing in Darl McBride's office like that Athlon vs Pentium III commercial), but it's like someone saying that the time is mature for an economy based on Free Software to be born and TRY to impose herself on a wide-open scale. Not Eazel Gnome Nautilus and crap like that, not the dotcomboom of 121 different Linux distros, but a wide world collaborating on making better, documented, free, opensource and secure systems with minor tweakings among them just to make sure that they suit individual needs. (2414 different Gnu/Linux distros!!!;D)
Generally, when I see GameCube sales for a game like Soul Caliber that are much higher than the ratio for GameCube owners to PS2 owners, I tend to think those are the "know-nots" that are buying it, just because Link is on the cover. I also concede that this is a rather bad example, because the GameCube actually does have higher technical abilities than the PS2, so the "knows" actually go along with the "know-nots" and purchase the GameCube copy. In a perfect example, the GameCube owners would be in a 1:1 ratio with PS2 owners, and we could show both sets of people the same game, with a different character on the front... and knowing what those people know, they would choose one or the other. Then we would have definitive data on whether box art, or different characters, or technical abilities effect actual sales.
Ehm... the Soul Calibur example came out after I was being called "slashbot" or whatever else.
Anyway, for the "box art" I would like you to do an experiment. Go in a Blockbuster store, look at all the dvd covers, and count how many dvd covers there are WITHOUT one of the characters, how many of them are WITHOUT a human (or antropomorphic) face and how many of them aren't looking at you or "behind your shoulders".
Your generalising on such a broadscale your statement carries no substance whatsoever.
Well, ok, now you and AC go and fetch figures and try to demonstrate that there is a third force that is interesting to the videogame market, expecially when we are talking about figures of sales that go from 200.000 people upwards. I live in a town that barely makes 5.000 people, and I have a hell of time trying to imagine every household here having 40 gamecubes.
Anyway...
As much as the AC resorted to insults, fundamentally, he/she/it is right!
Reread his comment. He was thinking that I was disparaging the non-videogamers buying videogames. Instead I only stated a fact I can see everyday around myself, either when I read the forums, I read the magazines, I walk in a videogame shop or when I talk with colleagues, friends, expecially those people that know that I "understand" games and come to me and ask me "what game should I buy for christmas for my little Giacomo".
The I-Ninja demo included in Soul Calibur 2 for the PS2 illustrates a great example of non-silly punishment. On one level you must roll a barrel of gunpowder to a set spot, then detonate it. It's rather like monkey ball, except you control the barrel/ninja rather than the level.
If you fall off or the barrel explodes, it doesn't force you to back track or anything else. The barrel dropper drops another barrel, and I-Ninja hops onto the barrel -- ready for another attempt.
Looks like to me the "poo" level of Conker's Bad Fur Day on N64... you had to roll this ball of poo to unlock some doors, and when it finished, another one was formed for your perusal (and amusement).
Nintendo has done a lot to win back video game publishers: witness such amazing events as lowered royatly rates, parterships for developing titles (Sega/Namco/Nintendo F-Zero), and farming out franchise characters for use in third-party titles (Link in Soul Calibur 2).
Yes, the lower rates and technological partnerships are something new for Nintendo, but the farming out of franchise character isn't.
Nintendo has already let Mario, Luigi and Zelda to be stars in third party games, see Mario is Missing for the PC, Mario Typist (also for the PC), and Mario Hotel and Zelda for the CD-I. Thanks heaven Nintendo now has a tigher quality control on videogames with his own characters, so we have great third-party games like Mario Tennis and Mario Golf (I can't remind who was the publisher for the former, but I am positive the latter is from Camelot, that was doing "funny golf game" also on PSX).
It also tells us that people will buy for the GameCube when there is incentive to. The PS2 and GCN versions of SC2 have PL2 and widescreen; the GCN version also supports 480p. The Xbox triumphs over this with its 720p support and Dolby Digital audio. So why is the GameCube version selling more copies? Because Link's in it, duh!;)
Link feels so "outside" the Soul Calibur paradigm:(... at least Spawn is a character that has a charisma comparable to Cervantes' (is Cervantes in SC2? Haven't played it yet... think that yesterday evening I was playing with the first, SoulEdge on PSX)
Hopefully this example from Namco will show third-party publishers that simply porting a title is not enough; if they are willing to put in the effort to make each version distinct and worth owning, they will sell more copies than they would've otherwise. If they support the more powerful hardware (Xbox and GameCube) by truly using the features available to them, they will also sell more copies as compared to the PS2 version recompiled and slapped on a mini-DVD.
I can remember someone bashing PS2 because all the XBox games in the end had lower resolution textures and models only because they were also on PS2:D
Time will tell. Hopefully Nintendo will be able to make good on their promise to beat Sony to the 2005 next-gen console launches.
Hopefully I would have enough to buy all the most important consoles and enough time to play all the most important games, whoever makes them.
Normal People love to be able to buy a simple game for a party, yet to be able to access to good games as well, like Gran Turismo.
Stop talking about Normal People like they're a bunch of mindless sheep. You're the mindless sheep, fucking slashbot.
I was not certainly talking about normal people like sheep, but in the videogame userbase you see two patterns:
First one is the "normal people" pattern. They don't read videogame magazine, they don't know who the producers are. What they care however is to have a good, easy videogames to play. They count A LOT in the videogame biz however since they are in vast numbers and they buy a lot of games.
The other one is the "fandom" pattern. They are the contrary.
I was only trying to say that this was a move aimed at the fandom, but that Nintendo needs to target the common people as well.
By the way: this is also the opinion of one of the XBox team honchos (see this article), of Carmack and even Miyamoto as well.
By the way, my name's not Slashdot, but I like to fuck very much.:D
Every single person who commented on the low profile of Nintendo 64 (we can't say demise or total failure because N64 continued to bring a positive cash flow to Nintendo and had several hit games like Mario 64, Perfect Dark, the two Zeldas and an F-Zero, not talking about Pokemon Stadium) said that it was because they mainly scared Square and Enix off, and the other producers followed suit.
But the problem with N64, imho, and with Gamecube (which was instead going the Dreamcast way) was that there are no crappy games produced for the masses, no serial soccer/american football/whatever (like that ugly game series of FIFA and EA sports series).
Normal People love to be able to buy a simple game for a party, yet to be able to access to good games as well, like Gran Turismo.
Long Time Videogame Fandom (which is still an important market) instead likes to be able to buy great games, like Tales of Symphonia and FF: Crystal Cronicles, and sometimes to buy also a party game as well.
If Nintendo wants to be again the number one, they have to lower the prices of SDKs, and win back the hearts of the videogame publishers. But if they want to continue like they are now they can only count on a shrinking fanbase... not everyone wants to play the same game with the same "childish atmosphere" (albeit if they have a "really adult gameplay").
Glad i live in Europe, such nonsense seems to be going a little slower here.
But with EUCD they made every single consumer a potential criminal. In some places (Italy for example) jailtime for illegal copying is higher than armed robbery and fraud.
Forget about games. This could usher in a new golden era of pr0n.
I already envision it... for the joy of the slashdot trolls... vrml://3d.goatse.cx
Random generated games (or parts thereof)
on
Razor Blade Games?
·
· Score: 1
Well, randomly generated game may be good. The problem with it is that the random part must be absolutely part of the gameplay, that is:
it must bring a complete experience with it
it must feel like the rest of the environment
must be beatable
The problem that you said is that many randomly-generated games lack any personality, that is, lack an experience.
On the other hand danila says that there are some games (like Civilization) that have good randomly generated areas (well the entire world in Civilization is based randomly)... that is not only because the geography is believable, but also because it provides you with the challenge of exploration: you have to discover how the world is mapped and where are the rival civilizations are, and that is a good deal of experience that you make with the game.
Diablo on the other hand is too poor of details to give an experience.
It must feel like the rest of environment.
Yes, common error... you enter in the randomly generated mazes and then you find you lack of details... or there are too many details, or too many wildly interconnected parts with too much varying features one another.
It must be beatable. Well, a normal commercial game must be beatable, so this is another proof of concept: if the random part has too many tight constraints, then you will make for a poor game.
Now... what about roguelike games? They are completely random games, who have a great deal of atmosphere as well. The experience in good roguelikes (think nethack) is complete: you have many things to do and many things to discover. The problem is that usually you have only one possible way to do them. This last thing is what it makes nethack an hardly beatable game... this and also that fighting the RNG, the Random Nethack God (another name for the $DEITY known as Random Number Generator) is a proof in action of Darwinism... only the characters with the better stats and better players (that is experience) survive. (Once you ascend you can easily enter the elite of player who survive more times the dungeon of menace see rec.games.roguelike.nethack).
Anyway... for the most part of your post I agree with you, but don't tell me that I can't enjouy a random-generated game.:)
It's only that random-generated game does a good part for intellectual games, while statically made games is good for action games.
Ok, Gameboy Advance is a 32 bit console, but games like this, and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow still show how 16 bit style games still have something to tell.
These tecnological days, 2d tile-based games are like black and wite movies at your hometown cineplex. But in contrast to black and white (which is used only when a director wants to convey something with his story because otherwise it would be seen as a cheap gimmick - well... expensive cheap gimmick), 16bit style gaming is still a viable technology and a viable market and a viable channel to produce stories (in contrast to the old 8-bit days gaming).
I already love Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, I loved Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis (also on GBA), and I will buy this title when it comes out.
Slashdot Mirror
First: when the opensource community will produce a playable, high quality distributed mmorpg, just like all those IRC or Jabber networks.
Second: when the first grid-based MMORPGs and multiplayer gameservers will be online and running :(... they are a sooo interesting concept.
you sue the DMCA.
Wasn't Wednesday the trollday?
for ones, the new alien overlords welcome YOU.
XBox auto-update is a godsend.
clickety
Electronic Arts was sued by ESPN because EA tried to create a fictional "EA Sports Network" to brand their videogames... they already did it with the EANN (electronic arts news network) spoofing CNN in the Desert Strike/Jungle Strike series for the Sega Genesis but in the case of EANN they came over clean.
Can't find historical pages about this lawsuit, but there comes some quotes from google and google groups :)
google post (need to get to the part where it quotes EASN and ESPN).
ESPN versus CSPN (need to get to page 3)
I opened the page, and I saw the banner hovering over "How to destroy the computer"... It was a banner saying "Windows Dotnet Server as low as 99$"...
Ummm...
Really? That advertisement would be, IMO, the one the slogan: "Microsoft Winux. We were wrong. Now we have done it right."
That would be pleasing, but you can't shove an ideal that you like down the people's troath and call it a win.
+ + + + ;_;
I am a moron
Not totally true. If they want to sell it as a service then they have to test it TWICE or THREE TIMES than the usual since they can't trust that a single patch don't go over someone else's IP or don't start overwriting the system in an erratical way, trashing everything on the customers system. Still they have to pay a good deal for Quality Assurance.
I don't know what's giving you a warm fuzzy feeling. It's not charity. They're not "supporting the community", they're simply saving tens of millions on software development by letting gullible, naive college kids work for free.
Naive college kids certainly lack the interest to support exotic hardware like IBM's S/390. Also "Naive" college kids usually want MORE to haxx0r the neighbour box or to enter on teacher's pc and change their votes. I know this because I am still a CS student. (No, I am also working in the meanwhile).
Less naive college kids instead want to collaborate on the linux kernel, the gnu system or whatever other project (bsd, reactos, xfree, their own videogame emulator) because:
a) it is a system they use and they want it to work well for them,
b) they want to gain more expertise in security or programming in a certain language, or simply make that grade in the "Operating System Course",
c) they maybe are doing it as an hobby, since they otherwise would get bored with other hobbies,
d) maybe they also hope for a "head hunter" to notice their work, OR to be able to use their software for a private, succesful infrastructure on which they can sell support (see VALinux's Sourceforge for an example).
Helping the opensource community is a balanced act between greed and helping people, between learning and teaching.
It's the same thing that happens at my local food co-op. The food co-op plasters the word "community" on everything, and people stand in line to "volunteer" there. The co-op is a business, and they're just using the same kind of gullible, naive people to work for free for them. Same fucking thing. Fuck it. Labor is expensive.
Yes, labor is so expensive that you have to buy retarded software that helps your business to be competitive by cutting jobs, and sending people with 3 or 4 children to the land of the joblessness.
I bet that at least your local food "co-op" doesn't teach your children that treating people like a mop is rightful a thing to do. Hell, It looks like we got back to the time of the ancient romans, who used to have a philosopher that said that "slaves were talking tools".
Yes, let's go back to the Roman Empire, where if you didn't worship the empereor you were sent to the arena to be eaten by Lions while we are at it.
Maybe I'll convert my business to a "co-op", and let the "community" "volunteer" to run my business while I sit in the back raking in the money.
Why not start a TacoMcStarbucks instead? More or less the it is the same greedy business than a food co-op, Labor is cheap as well, but usually the returns are better than the normal "co-op" with food from the third world. Oh, and you don't also fuck people plastering the place with >, but instead you can honestly do the big bad ugly employer who juggles the careers of very young people. Ask them to work overtime then fuck them giving no extra unpaid holidays.
+ + + +
To be back ontopic: at least "co-op" give you a _good_ dream and _good_ memes as well. With everyone spreading bullshit like "enterprises and capitalism are better than the happiness and completeness of individual", "co-op"s are a useful point for stating that the individual IS the center of the society, and that if the individual is oppressed, the society loses.
Also remember that I reminded that IBM was a bad guy as well in the first place...
The ad closes with the slogan "Linux. The Future is Open. IBM."
My jaw is wide open.
Ok, IBM wants to capitalize on Linux, IBM is a company, in the past IBM has been a corrupt monopoly trying to stranglehold their clients with the proprietary ties after fscking them in the first place.
But the memes passed by this particular advertisement are something radically different than those teached by conventional advertisements and pro-capitalist ethos (consume! consume! don't think about tomorrow! spend now!).
Really, this stuff is jaw-dropping. ;D)
It's not like the cluetrain stopping in front of IBM (now we only need an express train passing in Darl McBride's office like that Athlon vs Pentium III commercial), but it's like someone saying that the time is mature for an economy based on Free Software to be born and TRY to impose herself on a wide-open scale.
Not Eazel Gnome Nautilus and crap like that, not the dotcomboom of 121 different Linux distros, but a wide world collaborating on making better, documented, free, opensource and secure systems with minor tweakings among them just to make sure that they suit individual needs. (2414 different Gnu/Linux distros!!!
Hell, also Microsoft is committed to a large-scale opensource initiative.
And I also think that this particular advertisement is what we waited in order to say that GNU and Linux have won.
+ + + + :D (ok, that was a joke)
BSD, on the other hand, is dead...
Ehm... the Soul Calibur example came out after I was being called "slashbot" or whatever else.
Anyway, for the "box art" I would like you to do an experiment. Go in a Blockbuster store, look at all the dvd covers, and count how many dvd covers there are WITHOUT one of the characters, how many of them are WITHOUT a human (or antropomorphic) face and how many of them aren't looking at you or "behind your shoulders".
Well, ok, now you and AC go and fetch figures and try to demonstrate that there is a third force that is interesting to the videogame market, expecially when we are talking about figures of sales that go from 200.000 people upwards. I live in a town that barely makes 5.000 people, and I have a hell of time trying to imagine every household here having 40 gamecubes.
Anyway...
As much as the AC resorted to insults, fundamentally, he/she/it is right!
Reread his comment. He was thinking that I was disparaging the non-videogamers buying videogames. Instead I only stated a fact I can see everyday around myself, either when I read the forums, I read the magazines, I walk in a videogame shop or when I talk with colleagues, friends, expecially those people that know that I "understand" games and come to me and ask me "what game should I buy for christmas for my little Giacomo".
Am I entitled to my opinion?
If you fall off or the barrel explodes, it doesn't force you to back track or anything else. The barrel dropper drops another barrel, and I-Ninja hops onto the barrel -- ready for another attempt.
Looks like to me the "poo" level of Conker's Bad Fur Day on N64... you had to roll this ball of poo to unlock some doors, and when it finished, another one was formed for your perusal (and amusement).
Nintendo has done a lot to win back video game publishers: witness such amazing events as lowered royatly rates, parterships for developing titles (Sega/Namco/Nintendo F-Zero), and farming out franchise characters for use in third-party titles (Link in Soul Calibur 2).
Yes, the lower rates and technological partnerships are something new for Nintendo, but the farming out of franchise character isn't.
Nintendo has already let Mario, Luigi and Zelda to be stars in third party games, see Mario is Missing for the PC, Mario Typist (also for the PC), and Mario Hotel and Zelda for the CD-I. Thanks heaven Nintendo now has a tigher quality control on videogames with his own characters, so we have great third-party games like Mario Tennis and Mario Golf (I can't remind who was the publisher for the former, but I am positive the latter is from Camelot, that was doing "funny golf game" also on PSX).
It also tells us that people will buy for the GameCube when there is incentive to. The PS2 and GCN versions of SC2 have PL2 and widescreen; the GCN version also supports 480p. The Xbox triumphs over this with its 720p support and Dolby Digital audio. So why is the GameCube version selling more copies? Because Link's in it, duh! ;)
Link feels so "outside" the Soul Calibur paradigm :(... at least Spawn is a character that has a charisma comparable to Cervantes' (is Cervantes in SC2? Haven't played it yet... think that yesterday evening I was playing with the first, SoulEdge on PSX)
Hopefully this example from Namco will show third-party publishers that simply porting a title is not enough; if they are willing to put in the effort to make each version distinct and worth owning, they will sell more copies than they would've otherwise. If they support the more powerful hardware (Xbox and GameCube) by truly using the features available to them, they will also sell more copies as compared to the PS2 version recompiled and slapped on a mini-DVD.
I can remember someone bashing PS2 because all the XBox games in the end had lower resolution textures and models only because they were also on PS2 :D
Time will tell. Hopefully Nintendo will be able to make good on their promise to beat Sony to the 2005 next-gen console launches. Hopefully I would have enough to buy all the most important consoles and enough time to play all the most important games, whoever makes them.
Stop talking about Normal People like they're a bunch of mindless sheep. You're the mindless sheep, fucking slashbot.
I was not certainly talking about normal people like sheep, but in the videogame userbase you see two patterns:
First one is the "normal people" pattern. They don't read videogame magazine, they don't know who the producers are. What they care however is to have a good, easy videogames to play. They count A LOT in the videogame biz however since they are in vast numbers and they buy a lot of games.
The other one is the "fandom" pattern. They are the contrary.
I was only trying to say that this was a move aimed at the fandom, but that Nintendo needs to target the common people as well.
By the way: this is also the opinion of one of the XBox team honchos (see this article), of Carmack and even Miyamoto as well.
By the way, my name's not Slashdot, but I like to fuck very much. :D
But the problem with N64, imho, and with Gamecube (which was instead going the Dreamcast way) was that there are no crappy games produced for the masses, no serial soccer/american football/whatever (like that ugly game series of FIFA and EA sports series).
Normal People love to be able to buy a simple game for a party, yet to be able to access to good games as well, like Gran Turismo.
Long Time Videogame Fandom (which is still an important market) instead likes to be able to buy great games, like Tales of Symphonia and FF: Crystal Cronicles, and sometimes to buy also a party game as well.
If Nintendo wants to be again the number one, they have to lower the prices of SDKs, and win back the hearts of the videogame publishers. But if they want to continue like they are now they can only count on a shrinking fanbase... not everyone wants to play the same game with the same "childish atmosphere" (albeit if they have a "really adult gameplay").
But with EUCD they made every single consumer a potential criminal. In some places (Italy for example) jailtime for illegal copying is higher than armed robbery and fraud.
I already envision it... for the joy of the slashdot trolls... vrml://3d.goatse.cx
On the other hand danila says that there are some games (like Civilization) that have good randomly generated areas (well the entire world in Civilization is based randomly)... that is not only because the geography is believable, but also because it provides you with the challenge of exploration: you have to discover how the world is mapped and where are the rival civilizations are, and that is a good deal of experience that you make with the game.
Diablo on the other hand is too poor of details to give an experience.
It must feel like the rest of environment.
Yes, common error... you enter in the randomly generated mazes and then you find you lack of details... or there are too many details, or too many wildly interconnected parts with too much varying features one another.
It must be beatable. Well, a normal commercial game must be beatable, so this is another proof of concept: if the random part has too many tight constraints, then you will make for a poor game.
Now... what about roguelike games? They are completely random games, who have a great deal of atmosphere as well. The experience in good roguelikes (think nethack) is complete: you have many things to do and many things to discover. The problem is that usually you have only one possible way to do them. This last thing is what it makes nethack an hardly beatable game... this and also that fighting the RNG, the Random Nethack God (another name for the $DEITY known as Random Number Generator) is a proof in action of Darwinism... only the characters with the better stats and better players (that is experience) survive. (Once you ascend you can easily enter the elite of player who survive more times the dungeon of menace see rec.games.roguelike.nethack).
Anyway... for the most part of your post I agree with you, but don't tell me that I can't enjouy a random-generated game. :)
It's only that random-generated game does a good part for intellectual games, while statically made games is good for action games.
These tecnological days, 2d tile-based games are like black and wite movies at your hometown cineplex. But in contrast to black and white (which is used only when a director wants to convey something with his story because otherwise it would be seen as a cheap gimmick - well... expensive cheap gimmick), 16bit style gaming is still a viable technology and a viable market and a viable channel to produce stories (in contrast to the old 8-bit days gaming).
I already love Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, I loved Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis (also on GBA), and I will buy this title when it comes out.
Otherwise Sco will sue you!
Sorry, but IBM has a lot of cash...
I will rememebr you that Sco was a company who was bought for crumbs from his former execs...