Unfortunately, I haven't played or studied Ultima 4, so I can't really discuss it. On of the interesting things about it was that you could take good or bad to a far flung conclusion. one wasn't a failure interfering with the game's progress.
My girlfriend and I flipped coins to see who was to play "good" and who was "evil". She got good. A week into it, we realized that being bad was incerdibly difficult, because people just hate it (like monkey torture)
Of course around that time, we also learned that that my evil baboon would probably never learn to eat his own poo, no matter how much I rewarded him for it. Molyneaux forgot that when your evil, negative conditioning should alter people to accept "non-meanness" asn almost praise. Oh yeah, after a week, we realized the game wasn't fun. Just tedious. But it spawned several weeks of discussion and speculation...
I imagine there are more than even 2 games where moralaty is a) integral to the story and gameplay b) fun to muse over.
I've often wondered why a 90 minute film or a 60 minute album could move me in ways a 3 day game-fest couldn't. I've longed for games that actually were stimulating and educational. Edu-tainment is a poisonous word to put on a piece of interactive software, but the exact same concepts sell other enetertainment mediums. David Byrne's Latin Jazz Compilations and Akira Kirasawa's Films both educate me on new visions and draw from events and styles existing already to entertain. Perhaps the coders could code, the graphic designers could do graphics and the developers need to develop the game, rather than oversee the technical..There are few "Directors" in the developer/designer position. The rest are juggling some premise with the needs of marketing and limits of hardware....
Hell, even retarded Ahnold movies, like Terminator and The 6th Day, bring up relevent settings and illuminate moral questions? Only a handful of the finest games, like Romance of the 3 Kingdoms and Civ explore the awy the world works (worked) outside my limitied experience. Well, I guess Black and White was worth something; a failed game, but it brought that morality and consequences to the table, showing the strengths and weaknesses of each...
Maybe if Warcraft had actually let me choose if the Palladin went bad, and made me struggle with the choice.
The only place in gaming I've seen this sort of development is in the small brand traditional (pen& paper) RPG companies. But they have their own geek-factor by nature of the format.
I remember my split life in the early nineties...Chatting with nerds on IRC around the world, cultivating a tast for debate on topics I could never find in school (fetishism), teaching my parents first how to email me (then how to stop spamming me), and hip young IM'ers on AIM. Now thanks to IIP, Trillian, and webmail, I have the same non-integrated, anti-convergent issue as ever on a larger scale. No, wait, my parents don't pass every chain letter on.
Am I just impatient, or has development of browser/im/streaming media all really slowed since IE5?
Metcalfe's law, 2.0? The value of a network increases as the size increases, but the value decreases as the user-base grows? The web was a faster way of finding important reference information over my 33.6 modem when I wasn't constantly barraged by advertising (and we thought it was bad then). And my IM list was easy to manage, and my email box had letters from actual people.(I may seem to be waxing nostalgic, but I'm referring to specific features of the time, picture searches/corporate info research are much better today.
Trillian is not an IM solution. All it does is save me screen space. I used to use 2 monitors and keep Y!/MSN/AIM on one while i did everything on the ohter.
Well, I guess, if we need the approval of France Russia and China to go to war, lest they be sitting in the dark, wars might be reduced by the multinational beuracracy... oooh, that sounds dangerous. Unless you are a draft-age citizen of a country with a propensity for initiating "police actions"...Then maybe, it ain't so bad.
Memsa members, beware your high IQ's. That and $5.00 gets you a cup at starbuck's.
on the other hand, not many game developers are still writing games for the current computers, instead, manufacturers are trying to come out with something so that their consumers can finally play GTA3 smoothly.
Well, Diminishing returns is a Good Thing. Video games don't need to run at 240 fps. only a fighter pilot could sense the framerate advantage...(maximumpc) Nevertheless, that abundance is neccessary. I don't want to hear the resolution of an mp3, and likewise i don't want to see the pixels of an immage. at 4k x 4k i could atleast save the cpu cycles no wasted on antialiasing everything.
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My girlfriend and I flipped coins to see who was to play "good" and who was "evil". She got good. A week into it, we realized that being bad was incerdibly difficult, because people just hate it (like monkey torture)
Of course around that time, we also learned that that my evil baboon would probably never learn to eat his own poo, no matter how much I rewarded him for it. Molyneaux forgot that when your evil, negative conditioning should alter people to accept "non-meanness" asn almost praise. Oh yeah, after a week, we realized the game wasn't fun. Just tedious. But it spawned several weeks of discussion and speculation...
I imagine there are more than even 2 games where moralaty is a) integral to the story and gameplay b) fun to muse over.
Hell, even retarded Ahnold movies, like Terminator and The 6th Day, bring up relevent settings and illuminate moral questions? Only a handful of the finest games, like Romance of the 3 Kingdoms and Civ explore the awy the world works (worked) outside my limitied experience. Well, I guess Black and White was worth something; a failed game, but it brought that morality and consequences to the table, showing the strengths and weaknesses of each...
Maybe if Warcraft had actually let me choose if the Palladin went bad, and made me struggle with the choice.
The only place in gaming I've seen this sort of development is in the small brand traditional (pen& paper) RPG companies. But they have their own geek-factor by nature of the format.
And now I'm gay.
well, mebbe replies will import value to the parent, and somebody will mod it up.
Ah, modded troll. By the guys that brought you the adaware only divix news. Well, just pretend you were modded funny. I will.
I remember my split life in the early nineties...Chatting with nerds on IRC around the world, cultivating a tast for debate on topics I could never find in school (fetishism), teaching my parents first how to email me (then how to stop spamming me), and hip young IM'ers on AIM. Now thanks to IIP, Trillian, and webmail, I have the same non-integrated, anti-convergent issue as ever on a larger scale. No, wait, my parents don't pass every chain letter on.
Am I just impatient, or has development of browser/im/streaming media all really slowed since IE5?
Metcalfe's law, 2.0? The value of a network increases as the size increases, but the value decreases as the user-base grows? The web was a faster way of finding important reference information over my 33.6 modem when I wasn't constantly barraged by advertising (and we thought it was bad then). And my IM list was easy to manage, and my email box had letters from actual people.(I may seem to be waxing nostalgic, but I'm referring to specific features of the time, picture searches/corporate info research are much better today.
Trillian is not an IM solution. All it does is save me screen space. I used to use 2 monitors and keep Y!/MSN/AIM on one while i did everything on the ohter.
Well, I guess, if we need the approval of France Russia and China to go to war, lest they be sitting in the dark, wars might be reduced by the multinational beuracracy... oooh, that sounds dangerous. Unless you are a draft-age citizen of a country with a propensity for initiating "police actions"...Then maybe, it ain't so bad.
Memsa members, beware your high IQ's. That and $5.00 gets you a cup at starbuck's.
on the other hand, not many game developers are still writing games for the current computers, instead, manufacturers are trying to come out with something so that their consumers can finally play GTA3 smoothly.
They have something for that. The PS2.
Well, Diminishing returns is a Good Thing. Video games don't need to run at 240 fps. only a fighter pilot could sense the framerate advantage...(maximumpc) Nevertheless, that abundance is neccessary. I don't want to hear the resolution of an mp3, and likewise i don't want to see the pixels of an immage. at 4k x 4k i could atleast save the cpu cycles no wasted on antialiasing everything.