So your philosophy is "I suck, therefore all other players must bow before me while I cheat my way to the top"?
You, sir, are the problem and why we need anti-cheat systems in the first place.
Play games with single-player modes against bots to develop your skills. Play on heavily-populated servers where there is wide range of players and skills to challenge. Success does not happen overnight, like any game practice is essential to become decent at it.
Only a selfish clod would ruin the game for everyone else by cheating to cover his own incompetence.
You don't just wake up one morning in search of a job and suddenly decide "I'll be a level designer." I've been doing it since 1997 having gotten started in Descent. While I've put in applications, I've spent far more time just trying to hone my skills.
Aside from the original Descent's DEVIL and DMB2 (which was based on the idea of cubes/rectangular solids attached on one or more sides), I've also picked up Descent 3's D3Edit (manipulate vertices and faces), Unreal Tournament's UnrealEd (brush-based), FreeSpace's FRED (ship placement, scripting events), and Red Faction's RED (sort of a cross between D3Edit and UnrealEd). All of these games, except FreeSpace, can be arguably classified as first-person shooters. FreeSpace, on the other hand, was an arcade space simulation. I'll speak briefly about each, neglected DEVIL/DMB2 since they are much too old.
D3Edit, as I said, is based on the premise of vertices and faces. Essentially, you insert the vertices, select a bunch of them, and then create a face in between them. Additionally, there are tools like extrude, lathe, and bend available. With D3Edit, you also have the chance to import terrain heightmaps (since Descent 3 had indoor and outdoor areas). It also has an extremely robust scripting tool called DALLAS that allows you to do all sorts of neat things in single-player maps - everything from cutscenes to shattering glass to weather effects. And because you manipulate the vertices/faces directly, you are afforded much more control over the whole level (contrasted against UnrealEd). For that reason, Descent 3 is really my single-player game of choice. However, there are a few downsides. One is that the community is very small and shrinking. Not only is it bad for longevity, but it's also bad for receiving feedback which is vital to any serious map designer. The second con is that by its very nature, Descent 3 has no need for elevators or stairways. Because it is such a unique game, you miss out on "practical" devices such as these since the player can fly anywhere. The third is that the lighting effects in Descent 3 are somewhat inflexible, especially compared to Unreal.
I spent most of last summer learning the ins and outs of the tremendously world of UnrealEd. Although it is certainly not without its quirks (most notably the evil BSP holes from hell), it is by far one of the more intuitive editors to pick up and understand. This is reinforced by the Unreal community's superb mapping resources such as the UnrealWiki. UnrealEd is a brush-based editor. What this means is that unlike D3Edit where you manipulate vertices and faces, in UnrealEd you manipulate primitives like rectangular solids, cones, spheres, stairs, etc. After you position combinations of these, you build the level and UnrealEd takes care of chopping up the geometry so it works. It's a double-edged sword. While the whole notion of using primitives is fast, as well as easier to comprehend and understand, your hands are rather tied when it comes to preventing BSP holes and the like. So, your architecture has to strike a balance between simplicity and complexity. Complex enough to not be an uninteresting box, but simple enough so that the editor doesn't mess up.
But because Unreal maps are comparatively faster to make, and because there is such a large community, the chances are good of getting valuable feedback you can use to improve your next map.
Feedback is really important because, as a map designer, it can be difficult to disconnect yourself from your work and see things as a player would see them. What makes logical sense to you need not be as lucid for the player to understand. It is mandatory that you seek feedback from peers on your work.
So the first thing I would do is get a good editor like UnrealEd (probably from Unreal Tournament, since Unreal Tournament 2003 is considerably more time-consuming), read the tutorials, and get to work on constructing a solid multiplayer level with all of the necessities - convincing shadows, bot path
The EA remark is way off-base. EA contributed more of the highest-grossing titles on the top 10 PC and top 10 console games list than any other company. Madden 2004 is making a killing on the consoles, and the Sims and its perpetual expansions continue to be a best seller for the PC.
Sure, they are rehashing old ideas, but to claim EA is going the way of 3DO is simply absurd.
While it's not exactly the same, Worms essentially takes the basic concepts of Scorched Earth. You have an assortment of weapons and, accounting for trajectory and speed, fire them at your opponents. The terrain even deforms accordingly.
Your point about e-mail as a "simple, convenient method of communication" is the very reason why it is so susceptible to spam. So long as there is nothing to obstruct the flow of a billion e-mails, fishing for the two fools that will fall for them, spam will continue.
We can put all of the technology in place to stem the flow at the gates, but it fails to confront the issue of disrupting the spamming at the source.
No one ever said stopping spam would be easy, but we have to act. Otherwise, the actions of a few, selfish individuals are going to destroy this technology for everyone.
I think a "puzzle" would be more like the randomly-generated authorization codes that we frequently see when we sign up for free services in order to verify that a human signed up and not a bot.
For example, if you sent an e-mail, you'd be hit back with some alphanumeric code to put into a box in order to verify the ongoing mail.
It would work in theory, until the criminal spammers figure out how to read the incoming code and enter it automatically. I have a feeling that it works on Geocities because, short of link farms, there's little virtue in signing up for a hundred Geocities accounts. But if a code blocks the way between the spammers and the people they harass, they'll no doubt dedicate their efforts towards breaking it.
For reasons like this, Gates is right to assume that a "puzzle" alone would not be the sole solution. We'd still need intelligent spam filtering on the client end that learns to classify spam by example. We would also need significant and prompt fixes to any exploits in the dominant operating system so as to prevent this new wave of Sobig virus-spam hybrids from proliferating any more than they already have.
It is also mandatory for that above reason that we diversify how we use the Internet, e-mail, and the computer in general. This need not necessarily mean "switch from Windows to Linux." It could be as basic as "use Mozilla instead of IE." By introducing variety, it becomes more difficult for spammers to lock onto a single exploitation.
It is unfortunate that our "representatives" in the federal government, instead of fighting spam, have instead gone out and legalized it. The fight against it is something we have to do ourselves because we clearly cannot rely on the government to institute any meaningful legislation.
Re:How much was operating revenue?
on
MandrakeSoft Roundup
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
$99 on average for the OEM edition of Windows XP.
It's why I always tended to think of Mandrake as expensive. Though I would contribute $20-$30, minimum donations of $70 or more suck, moreover such donations on a yearly basis. If they're really in dire straits, they'd take whatever they're given.
Unreal 2's greatest fault was that it lacked inspiration. Visually, being an Unreal mapper myself, I can appreciate the insane amount of work that went into modeling their environments. Unreal 2 had its bright moments, like the Hell level. And others that were less than spectacular (the neverending defense missions). The length of the single-player campaign wasn't bad, considering it started to drone on by the sixth mission. I can accept the Red Faction II approach of "short but sweet" campaign design, but Unreal 2 just droned on and on, even though it was short.
It lacked originality. Though enormously pretty, the environments could have been so much more than run-of-the-mill factories and space stations, and the obligatory H.R. Giger-influenced jaunt into an alien ship. Indeed, there are even scenarios that seem lifted from user-made Unreal campaigns (Xidia Gold, in particular) that came before Unreal 2. By the time it was over, it was a very been-there-done-that affair. Once you got by the pretty looks, there just wasn't much substance beneath the surface.
I think it's relative to what competitors (especially Nokia) have offered. Sony has wisely chose to focus on the gaming aspect of the portable instead of making it into a PDA, a cell phone, a pager, etc. That aspect is shrewd. You can have a gaming device, though, that coincidentally plays movies and music in the same format as the game discs - there's nothing wrong with that, is there?
What the PSP has going for it, aside from its name, is ushering in a new era of portable gaming involving optical discs. This in and of itself is not a bad idea, although suddenly it involves moving parts (the GBA, by comparison, has no moving parts). The discs will obviously be able to contain an absurd amount of information, allowing the designer to do PS2-level graphics.
The big question would be what are people willing to pay to do this? The GBA is not without some 3D titles of its own, like Driver 2, Doom I and II, and the upcoming Need for Speed: Underground (which actually looks quite impressive, hardware limitations nonwithstanding). But these games aren't any more popular than the traditional 16-bit era titles. If anything, the GBA has become a mecca for the more simplistic sprite-based game, as if there were a system in between the SNES and the PSOne. And, as the high numbers of consumers have shown, people are happy with this.
If Sony is indeed going to rock Nintendo's world, it has to come in at a much lower price point, even if it's a loss in the short-run. Because, given a $100 GBA SP and a (perhaps) $150 PSP, the consumer acting on graphics alone is going to spend the extra $50 for superior technology. But at $100 vs. $350, the PSP is doomed.
The most likely thing Nintendo would do is back away from console design and pull a Sega. While I once had confidence and faith in their designs, with the twin disasters (relative to the PS2 and even Xbox) of the Nintendo 64 and the GameCube, they just can't keep doing this and expect anyone but fanboys to rush to their aid.
$250-$300 is definitely quite expensive for a handheld console. Nokia found that out the hard way by offering a sub-par handheld at an unusually high price. Sony is the one entering a market literally dominated by Nintendo. As the newcomer, it would be arrogant to somehow "expect" that people will flock to it no matter what the price.
And kids are an important factor, no matter what the market strategists say. I can correlate taht - I've seen far more pre-teens and younger playing with Game Boy Advances than people my age and I have a feeling that parents would not be keen on handing a $300 device over to a little kid. Though I might be closed-minded in saying so, it also seems like aiming for the "young adult" crowd is asking for trouble. I have a hard time grasping the notion that the stereotypical games such player enjoy - like survival horror or bloody FPS combat - would translate to a tiny screen very well.
And like you said, longevity is another questionable factor. I've had to replace my GBA once due to a non-functioning shoulder button and while I cringed at paying Nintendo $100 for a glitch in the design (thus rewarding them), it didn't kill me. But a lost $300 PSP?
All I can say is that I hope, at that price, the PSP doesn't take off and usher in a new era of really expensive portables. The leading home consoles can be had for half that price, and I suspect that the next generation of consoles will probably have $300 as a starting point. That said, with its then-ancient PS2 technology, Sony is being quite ambitious and greedy.
Much like Nintendo's arrogant reluctance to accept that Sony is a legitimate threat to the console market, so too is Sony's arrogance that it will single-handedly conquer the market without trouble. Playstation or not behind them, history has shown that Nintendo is a very difficult opponent in the portable market - moreso than in the home console market - and it would be a mistake for Sony to underestimate that.
Strictly speaking, there wasn't a TMNT3 in the arcades.
Although it gets confusing, the arcades saw two Ninja Turtles games. The first, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, became TMNT II on the NES. The second, Teenage Mutant Ninda Turtles II: Turtles in Time became TMNT IV on the SNES.
TMNT III: The Manhattan Project, was only on the NES. It was quite a lengthy game that really pushed the NES graphically (lots of sprite breakup).
The irony is, I bet the TMNT licensers thought they were pretty smart commissioning Konami to make the new games. Alas, Konami really dropped the ball on those and produced some very inane crap.
The 7-Up Spot (I wonder why they off'ed this mascot?) also appeared in the NES title "Spot," which was a take on Reversi, I believe. It was a rather fun and challenging game and, if I recall correctly, there was some deal where $9.99 + the UPCs of 7-up bottles allowed you to mail-order it.
Also, in the pizza vein, there was Capcom's "Yo Noid!" based on the rabbit-eared mascot of Dominos Pizza (again, another mascot that mysteriously vanished).
One of the early games devoted entirely to a brand was McKids, which was (clearly) based on McDonalds. To it's credit, this NES game was actually a pretty good platformer with some interesting gameplay elements like frequent gravity switches.
The old Ninja Turtles game might have beaten it slightly. Back on the NES in 1990, there were plugs in TMNT2 for Pizza Hut pizza. I'm not sure if they were present in the original arcade version or not.
You bother because console games have greater variety. There are many console games that, for one reason or another, would just not work the same on a PC. And the same is true vice versa. But whereas the PC world is pretty much ingrained with FPS, RTS, and simulation games (despite having a ton more variety a few years ago), consoles have many puzzle games, third-person adventures, 3D platformers, kart racers, and other genres that - for some reason or another - are absent on the PC.
And regarding the price, console games are usually more expensive, but in recent months computer games have been catching up. Starting with WarCraft III, it seems as if the average price for a new PC game is right up there with the consoles at $50, when I remember it used to be $40 before. The good part, however, is that unlike consoles, PC games usually don't have a price-fixing entity behind them, so you see some retailers (e.g. Frys) offering obscenely low prices on even new games from time to time.:)
Unless you're a nut obsessed with squeezing every last FPS out of your video card, the notion that PC games require tweaking is nothing more than a myth. I haven't bought a PC game that presented issues in years.
I'd post what you said, but then it would be redundant.;)
I would add to your list option #4 - levels. Between new mods and new levels, PC online gaming has everything over console gaming.
My hypothesis is that ancient games like Half-Life continue to do well for one sole reason - there is a constant influx of new material. Most of this material comes not from the company that made the game, but rather from fans and hobbyists. This creates a whole community of builders and developers that adds an enormous creative dimension to the game. And I think you'll find that, with arguably no exceptions, that all popular PC games have this element. And the ones that don't fade into obscurity. People don't want to play in the exact same world day in and day out. They need new experiences to rejuvenate the game.
Currently, this is all-but-impossible with console gaming. They can't build levels or write mods for console games - they are slaves to the companies to release such tools and additions. The Xbox is a bold step in the right direction with the hard drive idea, but still has a way to go. I think that console developers try to inject rejuvenation by making their games very open-ended such that in participating with a team or party that you have, in essence, the players generating new experiences. But still, there's nothing like UnrealEd on the console scene. And until tools like that become commonplace, along with the ability to share new materials easily, PC gaming will continue to be the home of multiplayer gaming.
I too would share the sentiment that it might be easier to purchase a used Skee-Ball machine than build a new one. While the electronics are relatively simple, it's the actual construction of the unit and the ramps that's bound to cost a small fortune.
With the increasing presence of consoles, arcades are going the way of the dodo bird. I think these would be fortunate times during which to investigate buying a used one.:)
And more power to each one of them. Let's face it - with the existence of OpenOffice, there is simply no reason why anyone should pay $500 out the nose for Microsoft Office.
It's also time for the US federal and state governments to get with the program. Think about it. If the average state has about 4,000 government-owned computers and each actually pays $500 per copy of MS Office, that's $2,000,000. And since Microsoft likes to milk its customers every couple of years, the numbers add up.
That our government routinely chooses proprietary and expensive solutions as opposed to obvious free ones is not only lunacy, but it's also insulting to me as a taxpayer. For a public institution run on public dollars, free software is not just a good idea - it's a responsibility!
In my original post, I do understate the problem of video card manufacturers not living up to their end of the equation. As has been pointed out by nearly every reply, ATI and nVidia drivers are closed-source and, as such, they are more to blame than X is. Since, if they were open source for anyone to get at, I have no doubt we'd have greater compatibility and performance.
Moreover, that "ATI lags and nVidia is buggy" is their own fault, since they have not done the above, and is really not the fault of X.
So, in short, my blame is sorely misplaced. It should be focused squarely on the 3D card manufacturers and not the specific X server itself.
It goes without saying that merely faster processor speed does not instantly translate into fast 3D rendering.
Also, although kooky to install, games such as Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, Descent 3, and several others are significant 3D applications already supported to some degree by Linux.
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You, sir, are the problem and why we need anti-cheat systems in the first place.
Play games with single-player modes against bots to develop your skills. Play on heavily-populated servers where there is wide range of players and skills to challenge. Success does not happen overnight, like any game practice is essential to become decent at it.
Only a selfish clod would ruin the game for everyone else by cheating to cover his own incompetence.
Aside from the original Descent's DEVIL and DMB2 (which was based on the idea of cubes/rectangular solids attached on one or more sides), I've also picked up Descent 3's D3Edit (manipulate vertices and faces), Unreal Tournament's UnrealEd (brush-based), FreeSpace's FRED (ship placement, scripting events), and Red Faction's RED (sort of a cross between D3Edit and UnrealEd). All of these games, except FreeSpace, can be arguably classified as first-person shooters. FreeSpace, on the other hand, was an arcade space simulation. I'll speak briefly about each, neglected DEVIL/DMB2 since they are much too old.
D3Edit, as I said, is based on the premise of vertices and faces. Essentially, you insert the vertices, select a bunch of them, and then create a face in between them. Additionally, there are tools like extrude, lathe, and bend available. With D3Edit, you also have the chance to import terrain heightmaps (since Descent 3 had indoor and outdoor areas). It also has an extremely robust scripting tool called DALLAS that allows you to do all sorts of neat things in single-player maps - everything from cutscenes to shattering glass to weather effects. And because you manipulate the vertices/faces directly, you are afforded much more control over the whole level (contrasted against UnrealEd). For that reason, Descent 3 is really my single-player game of choice. However, there are a few downsides. One is that the community is very small and shrinking. Not only is it bad for longevity, but it's also bad for receiving feedback which is vital to any serious map designer. The second con is that by its very nature, Descent 3 has no need for elevators or stairways. Because it is such a unique game, you miss out on "practical" devices such as these since the player can fly anywhere. The third is that the lighting effects in Descent 3 are somewhat inflexible, especially compared to Unreal. I spent most of last summer learning the ins and outs of the tremendously world of UnrealEd. Although it is certainly not without its quirks (most notably the evil BSP holes from hell), it is by far one of the more intuitive editors to pick up and understand. This is reinforced by the Unreal community's superb mapping resources such as the UnrealWiki. UnrealEd is a brush-based editor. What this means is that unlike D3Edit where you manipulate vertices and faces, in UnrealEd you manipulate primitives like rectangular solids, cones, spheres, stairs, etc. After you position combinations of these, you build the level and UnrealEd takes care of chopping up the geometry so it works. It's a double-edged sword. While the whole notion of using primitives is fast, as well as easier to comprehend and understand, your hands are rather tied when it comes to preventing BSP holes and the like. So, your architecture has to strike a balance between simplicity and complexity. Complex enough to not be an uninteresting box, but simple enough so that the editor doesn't mess up.
But because Unreal maps are comparatively faster to make, and because there is such a large community, the chances are good of getting valuable feedback you can use to improve your next map.
Feedback is really important because, as a map designer, it can be difficult to disconnect yourself from your work and see things as a player would see them. What makes logical sense to you need not be as lucid for the player to understand. It is mandatory that you seek feedback from peers on your work.
So the first thing I would do is get a good editor like UnrealEd (probably from Unreal Tournament, since Unreal Tournament 2003 is considerably more time-consuming), read the tutorials, and get to work on constructing a solid multiplayer level with all of the necessities - convincing shadows, bot path
Remind me to NEVER buy a Sophos product.
Sure, they are rehashing old ideas, but to claim EA is going the way of 3DO is simply absurd.
While it's not exactly the same, Worms essentially takes the basic concepts of Scorched Earth. You have an assortment of weapons and, accounting for trajectory and speed, fire them at your opponents. The terrain even deforms accordingly.
We can put all of the technology in place to stem the flow at the gates, but it fails to confront the issue of disrupting the spamming at the source.
No one ever said stopping spam would be easy, but we have to act. Otherwise, the actions of a few, selfish individuals are going to destroy this technology for everyone.
For example, if you sent an e-mail, you'd be hit back with some alphanumeric code to put into a box in order to verify the ongoing mail.
It would work in theory, until the criminal spammers figure out how to read the incoming code and enter it automatically. I have a feeling that it works on Geocities because, short of link farms, there's little virtue in signing up for a hundred Geocities accounts. But if a code blocks the way between the spammers and the people they harass, they'll no doubt dedicate their efforts towards breaking it.
For reasons like this, Gates is right to assume that a "puzzle" alone would not be the sole solution. We'd still need intelligent spam filtering on the client end that learns to classify spam by example. We would also need significant and prompt fixes to any exploits in the dominant operating system so as to prevent this new wave of Sobig virus-spam hybrids from proliferating any more than they already have.
It is also mandatory for that above reason that we diversify how we use the Internet, e-mail, and the computer in general. This need not necessarily mean "switch from Windows to Linux." It could be as basic as "use Mozilla instead of IE." By introducing variety, it becomes more difficult for spammers to lock onto a single exploitation.
It is unfortunate that our "representatives" in the federal government, instead of fighting spam, have instead gone out and legalized it. The fight against it is something we have to do ourselves because we clearly cannot rely on the government to institute any meaningful legislation.
It's why I always tended to think of Mandrake as expensive. Though I would contribute $20-$30, minimum donations of $70 or more suck, moreover such donations on a yearly basis. If they're really in dire straits, they'd take whatever they're given.
Unreal 2's greatest fault was that it lacked inspiration. Visually, being an Unreal mapper myself, I can appreciate the insane amount of work that went into modeling their environments. Unreal 2 had its bright moments, like the Hell level. And others that were less than spectacular (the neverending defense missions). The length of the single-player campaign wasn't bad, considering it started to drone on by the sixth mission. I can accept the Red Faction II approach of "short but sweet" campaign design, but Unreal 2 just droned on and on, even though it was short.
It lacked originality. Though enormously pretty, the environments could have been so much more than run-of-the-mill factories and space stations, and the obligatory H.R. Giger-influenced jaunt into an alien ship. Indeed, there are even scenarios that seem lifted from user-made Unreal campaigns (Xidia Gold, in particular) that came before Unreal 2. By the time it was over, it was a very been-there-done-that affair. Once you got by the pretty looks, there just wasn't much substance beneath the surface.
I think it's relative to what competitors (especially Nokia) have offered. Sony has wisely chose to focus on the gaming aspect of the portable instead of making it into a PDA, a cell phone, a pager, etc. That aspect is shrewd. You can have a gaming device, though, that coincidentally plays movies and music in the same format as the game discs - there's nothing wrong with that, is there?
The big question would be what are people willing to pay to do this? The GBA is not without some 3D titles of its own, like Driver 2, Doom I and II, and the upcoming Need for Speed: Underground (which actually looks quite impressive, hardware limitations nonwithstanding). But these games aren't any more popular than the traditional 16-bit era titles. If anything, the GBA has become a mecca for the more simplistic sprite-based game, as if there were a system in between the SNES and the PSOne. And, as the high numbers of consumers have shown, people are happy with this.
If Sony is indeed going to rock Nintendo's world, it has to come in at a much lower price point, even if it's a loss in the short-run. Because, given a $100 GBA SP and a (perhaps) $150 PSP, the consumer acting on graphics alone is going to spend the extra $50 for superior technology. But at $100 vs. $350, the PSP is doomed.
The most likely thing Nintendo would do is back away from console design and pull a Sega. While I once had confidence and faith in their designs, with the twin disasters (relative to the PS2 and even Xbox) of the Nintendo 64 and the GameCube, they just can't keep doing this and expect anyone but fanboys to rush to their aid.
And kids are an important factor, no matter what the market strategists say. I can correlate taht - I've seen far more pre-teens and younger playing with Game Boy Advances than people my age and I have a feeling that parents would not be keen on handing a $300 device over to a little kid. Though I might be closed-minded in saying so, it also seems like aiming for the "young adult" crowd is asking for trouble. I have a hard time grasping the notion that the stereotypical games such player enjoy - like survival horror or bloody FPS combat - would translate to a tiny screen very well.
And like you said, longevity is another questionable factor. I've had to replace my GBA once due to a non-functioning shoulder button and while I cringed at paying Nintendo $100 for a glitch in the design (thus rewarding them), it didn't kill me. But a lost $300 PSP?
All I can say is that I hope, at that price, the PSP doesn't take off and usher in a new era of really expensive portables. The leading home consoles can be had for half that price, and I suspect that the next generation of consoles will probably have $300 as a starting point. That said, with its then-ancient PS2 technology, Sony is being quite ambitious and greedy.
Much like Nintendo's arrogant reluctance to accept that Sony is a legitimate threat to the console market, so too is Sony's arrogance that it will single-handedly conquer the market without trouble. Playstation or not behind them, history has shown that Nintendo is a very difficult opponent in the portable market - moreso than in the home console market - and it would be a mistake for Sony to underestimate that.
Although it gets confusing, the arcades saw two Ninja Turtles games. The first, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, became TMNT II on the NES. The second, Teenage Mutant Ninda Turtles II: Turtles in Time became TMNT IV on the SNES.
TMNT III: The Manhattan Project, was only on the NES. It was quite a lengthy game that really pushed the NES graphically (lots of sprite breakup).
The irony is, I bet the TMNT licensers thought they were pretty smart commissioning Konami to make the new games. Alas, Konami really dropped the ball on those and produced some very inane crap.
Also, in the pizza vein, there was Capcom's "Yo Noid!" based on the rabbit-eared mascot of Dominos Pizza (again, another mascot that mysteriously vanished).
One of the early games devoted entirely to a brand was McKids, which was (clearly) based on McDonalds. To it's credit, this NES game was actually a pretty good platformer with some interesting gameplay elements like frequent gravity switches.
Analogous to the question of "Why do we pay extra for cable, but get more advertisements than local television?" :)
But, likewise, not a new idea. :)
RTFA. Fiorina isn't the one that said that. The founder of the Information Technology Professionals Association of America said it out of sarcasm.
It's what happens when you let "ahrt-teeeeets" dictate programs. :)
And regarding the price, console games are usually more expensive, but in recent months computer games have been catching up. Starting with WarCraft III, it seems as if the average price for a new PC game is right up there with the consoles at $50, when I remember it used to be $40 before. The good part, however, is that unlike consoles, PC games usually don't have a price-fixing entity behind them, so you see some retailers (e.g. Frys) offering obscenely low prices on even new games from time to time. :)
Unless you're a nut obsessed with squeezing every last FPS out of your video card, the notion that PC games require tweaking is nothing more than a myth. I haven't bought a PC game that presented issues in years.
I would add to your list option #4 - levels. Between new mods and new levels, PC online gaming has everything over console gaming.
My hypothesis is that ancient games like Half-Life continue to do well for one sole reason - there is a constant influx of new material. Most of this material comes not from the company that made the game, but rather from fans and hobbyists. This creates a whole community of builders and developers that adds an enormous creative dimension to the game. And I think you'll find that, with arguably no exceptions, that all popular PC games have this element. And the ones that don't fade into obscurity. People don't want to play in the exact same world day in and day out. They need new experiences to rejuvenate the game.
Currently, this is all-but-impossible with console gaming. They can't build levels or write mods for console games - they are slaves to the companies to release such tools and additions. The Xbox is a bold step in the right direction with the hard drive idea, but still has a way to go. I think that console developers try to inject rejuvenation by making their games very open-ended such that in participating with a team or party that you have, in essence, the players generating new experiences. But still, there's nothing like UnrealEd on the console scene. And until tools like that become commonplace, along with the ability to share new materials easily, PC gaming will continue to be the home of multiplayer gaming.
I too would share the sentiment that it might be easier to purchase a used Skee-Ball machine than build a new one. While the electronics are relatively simple, it's the actual construction of the unit and the ramps that's bound to cost a small fortune.
With the increasing presence of consoles, arcades are going the way of the dodo bird. I think these would be fortunate times during which to investigate buying a used one. :)
It's also time for the US federal and state governments to get with the program. Think about it. If the average state has about 4,000 government-owned computers and each actually pays $500 per copy of MS Office, that's $2,000,000. And since Microsoft likes to milk its customers every couple of years, the numbers add up.
That our government routinely chooses proprietary and expensive solutions as opposed to obvious free ones is not only lunacy, but it's also insulting to me as a taxpayer. For a public institution run on public dollars, free software is not just a good idea - it's a responsibility!
Moreover, that "ATI lags and nVidia is buggy" is their own fault, since they have not done the above, and is really not the fault of X.
So, in short, my blame is sorely misplaced. It should be focused squarely on the 3D card manufacturers and not the specific X server itself.
No hard feelings, right? ^_^;
Also, although kooky to install, games such as Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, Descent 3, and several others are significant 3D applications already supported to some degree by Linux.