I think US gamers are more likely to want realism in games - which means that in some games the player finds themselves in realistic situations which (like real life) are clearly unfair unless you have cyborg reflexes and a third eye - all for the sake of a realistic experience.
The Japanese couldn't care less for realism in games (take a military simulation game for example) if the eventual gameplay risks frustrating them.
I think, however, they DO like difficult, but not impossible challenges. If you tell them that the game can be completed without any ammo (for example) or without using any of "Continues" or it can be played "perfectly" or whatever, and there is a logical, repeatable way of doing it - the Japanese will hunker down for the challenge. Pacman was a perfect example of this kind of gameplay. Street Fighter II was also brilliant in this regard.
Yeah, but the original Resident evil COULD be completed with a logical, thought-out plan (although frustrating as it was). Even Pacman could be beaten past level 255 with a logically thought out plan.
I think in one way, the Japanese LOVE difficult masochistic logic puzzles (Resident Evil), but they dislike games in which loss sometimes just can't be helped (e.g. sniper in FPS).
A good game usually makes the player think that their loss was their own fault - not the game's. A bad game usually makes the player feel that there was nothing they could do and to "suck it up" - usually resulting in the American player sending the controller flying.
This is also something cultural the US just hasn't grasped yet. In Japan, when people make errors (in games, and in real life), the Japanese NEVER tell anyone directly that they screwed up (lest it cause offence). Rather, they subtly hint in their dialogue that something is wrong. They then expect the person that made the mistake to realise it for themselves that they screwed up - thus averting offence.
Most Japanese I've met can't handle it when they are told that they made a mistake - you always have to give them a "way out" of their mishap. They can't handle the fact that they're not perfect. If you don't let them off the hook, they just hate you and switch you out. (Yes, the Japanese are just like children)
Most Japanese I speak with have told me the number one reason they won't buy American.
The games are too unforgiving.
What they mean to say is that they are generally "unfair". Most FPSs fall under this category. Let's say that the typical Japanese player is playing an FPS and suddenly a sniper from out of nowhere on the opposite team gets a head shot on him. What does the Japanese person do? He switches the game off.
He doesn't get frustrated. He doesn't whine about how unfair it is and start namecalling over chat. He doesn't get angry and try harder. He just says "this is too hard, and unfair, therefore this isn't fun" and switches off.
Japanese want to play games that are (a) fair and (b) fun. They do not derive sick pleasure from being killed from out of nowhere with no chance to respond in a logically thought out way.
Sharp has done this already with their latest Zaurus line. With a built-in 4Gb hard disk, powered by Linux, rotatable screen and keyboard, it is like a miniature laptop.
The thing I want to know is, what CPU architecture are they playing with? Last time I checked, glibc was dropping support for ARM (which the Zaurus uses). What will IBM be using? (their own chips?) They're obviously not using x86 (too power hungry I think).
Somehow "piece of mind" must have jumped into my head when I recall how some customers give support companies a piece of their mind as they try to deflect them blame for downtime when their higher-ups come calling.
Rubbish. If you make an open source OS that is blindingly simple to install and use, there are going to be some enterprises that STILL want to have the OS backed by a company for their own piece of mind, security, and as an outlet to yell at in case they have a problem.
This looks like it could be adapted nicely to be a more modern "Night Driver" or "Speed Freak" game. All we need now are line vector cows and a some logs over the road.
A number of things I noticed: * You can totally slow down the game by adding WAY too many cars. * You can drive right off the road, fly through objects and lose the road entirely * You seem to be driving in circles
I remember a magazine article way back from 1990 when EA said they they thought they could do so much more with graphics and sports in games, and back then they were touting their On-track racing game (a horse racing derby sim) on the Commodore 64.
Since then, almost everything they've done (with a few exceptions) have been sports.
For examples of how to wreck a great game with a sequel: Deus Ex 2, and Unreal 2. Both those games took otherwise great gameplay mechanics which shouldn't have been messed with, overdid it on the graphics, dumbed down the playability, and shortened the overall length of the experience so we all felt ripped off.
After playing a game for two days plus without a decent amount of sleep, he would have gone psychotic - which usually does result in death as the brain starts malfunctioning.
It's not the game that killed him, it was probably lack of sleep + lack of other basic human necessities.
Well wouldn't you then just use Linux to download the patches manually and apply them to XP?
Thing is, if genuine advantage can be circumvented by WINE or Windows 98 for that matter, ANYONE can get their Windows XP patched (geuine, cracked, pirated or otherwise) without this stupid "Genuine advantage" nonsense.
The thing is, this WGA thing was only designed as a stop gap to help computer-illiterate customers report illegal Windows CD vendors. If you still want those patches, you can still get them.
From my understanding, these suicide bombers are just disaffected young men with life problems and frustrations. No different to the kids who committed Columbine IMHO.
The fact that there is a "secret" organization masterminding the whole thing makes them feel special or part of a group.
The irony is that these groups complain out loudly that games will affect kids when in fact they seem to be more affected by the virtual world than anyone else.
I want to feel valued by having a wage increase. I don't care much for the smiles and congratulations.... they're few and far between anyway, and then what are they going to say? "Thank you for keeping the network up, like it should be anyway"?
As far as I'm concerned, nobody knows I exist until the network goes down - then they all start to care.
I don't mind. I just want the cold hard cash anyhow.
I tried to pay seller fees by money order, but I kept on getting directed to a page which said that this selling option wasn't available yet. A few emails to ebay told me that payment by money order was in fact possible, but I needed to send in some kind of payment slip which could be printed out from a page on the eBay web site. I was given a URL to find this page and yet again... I find the page which says that this payment method wasn't accepted yet!
I go back to customer support and after a few pregenerated messages telling me the same thing over and over again about printing the payment slip - I explain the situation and yet again, almost as if I was ignored compeltely, I am told that the payment slip page actually DOES exist, only that when I click on the page it most certainly doesn't.
I check other computers.... same thing about that payment slip page.
Then I complain to eBay that I don't have a credit card and I can't pay because they obviously don't have this payment slip page on their screen. My problem gets ignored again and I get the SAME cookie cuter response... that I can accees the page at a certain URL which I tried a billion times already WHICH DOESN'T #%$&ing EXIST!
Eventually while I try and sort this out. I send cash, which is rejected which the note that I send the money order form. When I ask how to send this, I am told to access the same non-working URL AGAIN and print the damn payment slip which I CANNOT FIND.
I, at this point, give up. If they really couldn't handle a money order they should have just said so and that way I would have saved time mesing about with them.
Eventually my seller fee grace period wears thin and I get kicked from eBay. It couldn't have come sooner.
I don't know what it's like now, but I'm not going back to eBay.
IANAL, but I don't think it will change anything in Sweden. I think the Pirate Bay will just cling to the fact that it only distributes torrents, not the actual files containing the infringing material.
Even if the law changed, I think the guy who runs the pirate Bay is going to be a good captain and stay up as long as possible until he goes down with his ship.
According ot the article, N's profits are down, but they are still operating in the black. Seems that when they're operating at 80% profit less, they still do OK.
They just haven't had a blockbuster game recently.
Even still, unless Nintendo don't do something, they'll fall by the wayside like SEGA did.
I'm more inclined to get a Sharp Zaurus (with 4GB hard drive) than spend money on seperate PDA, gaming handheld, and iPod mini. Ok sure, maybe you can't play many taxing games on a Zaurus, but at least it can do emulators pretty well.
Plus I need something to view PDAs on the go as well.
What's so totally stupid about the whole sorry affair is the one realistic possibility that nobody else has seemed to mention.
The GTA_SA sex scenes were most probably removed into order to fit the game into a M rating! It's clumsiness on Rockstar's part that the code never got removed from the game media.
If they wanted to deceive anyone, they would have left the sex scenes in the game as your reward for 100% complete or something.
"The Register" has a better write up on this story (sorry guys). Apparently they've managed to get Windows CE, Linux, and VxWorks up and running on the CPU.
As for the patented instruction sets, apparently they aren't used in the chip. (Supposedly that's why it's 95% compatible).
Currently the chip clocks in at 400-500Mhz, but the next generation is going to be around the 1Ghz mark - by which point China is going to be spitting out all manner of sub $200 computers I imagine.
I thought the fastest supercomputer was the flux capacitor. You know, at the calculated moment, you start off from down the street driving toward the cable accelerating to 88 miles per hour. According to the flyer, at 10.04pm lightning will strike the clocktower sending 1.21 gigawatts into the flux-capacitor, sending you back to 1985.
Slashdot Mirror
I think US gamers are more likely to want realism in games - which means that in some games the player finds themselves in realistic situations which (like real life) are clearly unfair unless you have cyborg reflexes and a third eye - all for the sake of a realistic experience.
The Japanese couldn't care less for realism in games (take a military simulation game for example) if the eventual gameplay risks frustrating them.
I think, however, they DO like difficult, but not impossible challenges. If you tell them that the game can be completed without any ammo (for example) or without using any of "Continues" or it can be played "perfectly" or whatever, and there is a logical, repeatable way of doing it - the Japanese will hunker down for the challenge.
Pacman was a perfect example of this kind of gameplay. Street Fighter II was also brilliant in this regard.
Yeah, but the original Resident evil COULD be completed with a logical, thought-out plan (although frustrating as it was).
Even Pacman could be beaten past level 255 with a logically thought out plan.
I think in one way, the Japanese LOVE difficult masochistic logic puzzles (Resident Evil), but they dislike games in which loss sometimes just can't be helped (e.g. sniper in FPS).
A good game usually makes the player think that their loss was their own fault - not the game's. A bad game usually makes the player feel that there was nothing they could do and to "suck it up" - usually resulting in the American player sending the controller flying.
This is also something cultural the US just hasn't grasped yet. In Japan, when people make errors (in games, and in real life), the Japanese NEVER tell anyone directly that they screwed up (lest it cause offence). Rather, they subtly hint in their dialogue that something is wrong. They then expect the person that made the mistake to realise it for themselves that they screwed up - thus averting offence.
Most Japanese I've met can't handle it when they are told that they made a mistake - you always have to give them a "way out" of their mishap. They can't handle the fact that they're not perfect. If you don't let them off the hook, they just hate you and switch you out. (Yes, the Japanese are just like children)
Most Japanese I speak with have told me the number one reason they won't buy American.
The games are too unforgiving.
What they mean to say is that they are generally "unfair". Most FPSs fall under this category. Let's say that the typical Japanese player is playing an FPS and suddenly a sniper from out of nowhere on the opposite team gets a head shot on him. What does the Japanese person do? He switches the game off.
He doesn't get frustrated. He doesn't whine about how unfair it is and start namecalling over chat. He doesn't get angry and try harder. He just says "this is too hard, and unfair, therefore this isn't fun" and switches off.
Japanese want to play games that are (a) fair and (b) fun. They do not derive sick pleasure from being killed from out of nowhere with no chance to respond in a logically thought out way.
Sharp has done this already with their latest Zaurus line. With a built-in 4Gb hard disk, powered by Linux, rotatable screen and keyboard, it is like a miniature laptop.
The thing I want to know is, what CPU architecture are they playing with? Last time I checked, glibc was dropping support for ARM (which the Zaurus uses). What will IBM be using? (their own chips?)
They're obviously not using x86 (too power hungry I think).
Sorry, should have been "peace of mind".
Somehow "piece of mind" must have jumped into my head when I recall how some customers give support companies a piece of their mind as they try to deflect them blame for downtime when their higher-ups come calling.
Rubbish. If you make an open source OS that is blindingly simple to install and use, there are going to be some enterprises that STILL want to have the OS backed by a company for their own piece of mind, security, and as an outlet to yell at in case they have a problem.
This looks like it could be adapted nicely to be a more modern "Night Driver" or "Speed Freak" game.
All we need now are line vector cows and a some logs over the road.
A number of things I noticed:
* You can totally slow down the game by adding WAY too many cars.
* You can drive right off the road, fly through objects and lose the road entirely
* You seem to be driving in circles
I remember a magazine article way back from 1990 when EA said they they thought they could do so much more with graphics and sports in games, and back then they were touting their On-track racing game (a horse racing derby sim) on the Commodore 64.
Since then, almost everything they've done (with a few exceptions) have been sports.
For examples of how to wreck a great game with a sequel: Deus Ex 2, and Unreal 2.
Both those games took otherwise great gameplay mechanics which shouldn't have been messed with, overdid it on the graphics, dumbed down the playability, and shortened the overall length of the experience so we all felt ripped off.
I tried FreeBSD as a desktop OS for a while until I realized:-
* My GPU isn't going to get supported on BSD in this lifetime.
* Recompiling KDE from ports when a new version comes out is not fun.
It's OK I suppose if you use packages for everything and don't really need any graphics capabilities.
After playing a game for two days plus without a decent amount of sleep, he would have gone psychotic - which usually does result in death as the brain starts malfunctioning.
It's not the game that killed him, it was probably lack of sleep + lack of other basic human necessities.
AndyTommygun: omfg
MissionK0nTR07: gg
MileHighEileen: gg
NoguNogu: banzai!
SRobbocop: pwned u n00bz
Well wouldn't you then just use Linux to download the patches manually and apply them to XP? Thing is, if genuine advantage can be circumvented by WINE or Windows 98 for that matter, ANYONE can get their Windows XP patched (geuine, cracked, pirated or otherwise) without this stupid "Genuine advantage" nonsense. The thing is, this WGA thing was only designed as a stop gap to help computer-illiterate customers report illegal Windows CD vendors. If you still want those patches, you can still get them.
I'd hate to be the university giving him that doctorate.
I agree.
From my understanding, these suicide bombers are just disaffected young men with life problems and frustrations. No different to the kids who committed Columbine IMHO.
The fact that there is a "secret" organization masterminding the whole thing makes them feel special or part of a group.
The irony is that these groups complain out loudly that games will affect kids when in fact they seem to be more affected by the virtual world than anyone else.
I want to feel valued by having a wage increase. I don't care much for the smiles and congratulations.... they're few and far between anyway, and then what are they going to say? "Thank you for keeping the network up, like it should be anyway"?
As far as I'm concerned, nobody knows I exist until the network goes down - then they all start to care.
I don't mind. I just want the cold hard cash anyhow.
eBay's customer service sucks.
I tried to pay seller fees by money order, but I kept on getting directed to a page which said that this selling option wasn't available yet. A few emails to ebay told me that payment by money order was in fact possible, but I needed to send in some kind of payment slip which could be printed out from a page on the eBay web site. I was given a URL to find this page and yet again... I find the page which says that this payment method wasn't accepted yet!
I go back to customer support and after a few pregenerated messages telling me the same thing over and over again about printing the payment slip - I explain the situation and yet again, almost as if I was ignored compeltely, I am told that the payment slip page actually DOES exist, only that when I click on the page it most certainly doesn't.
I check other computers.... same thing about that payment slip page.
Then I complain to eBay that I don't have a credit card and I can't pay because they obviously don't have this payment slip page on their screen. My problem gets ignored again and I get the SAME cookie cuter response... that I can accees the page at a certain URL which I tried a billion times already WHICH DOESN'T #%$&ing EXIST!
Eventually while I try and sort this out. I send cash, which is rejected which the note that I send the money order form. When I ask how to send this, I am told to access the same non-working URL AGAIN and print the damn payment slip which I CANNOT FIND.
I, at this point, give up. If they really couldn't handle a money order they should have just said so and that way I would have saved time mesing about with them.
Eventually my seller fee grace period wears thin and I get kicked from eBay.
It couldn't have come sooner.
I don't know what it's like now, but I'm not going back to eBay.
IANAL, but I don't think it will change anything in Sweden. I think the Pirate Bay will just cling to the fact that it only distributes torrents, not the actual files containing the infringing material.
Even if the law changed, I think the guy who runs the pirate Bay is going to be a good captain and stay up as long as possible until he goes down with his ship.
According ot the article, N's profits are down, but they are still operating in the black. Seems that when they're operating at 80% profit less, they still do OK.
They just haven't had a blockbuster game recently.
Even still, unless Nintendo don't do something, they'll fall by the wayside like SEGA did.
I'm more inclined to get a Sharp Zaurus (with 4GB hard drive) than spend money on seperate PDA, gaming handheld, and iPod mini. Ok sure, maybe you can't play many taxing games on a Zaurus, but at least it can do emulators pretty well.
Plus I need something to view PDAs on the go as well.
What's so totally stupid about the whole sorry affair is the one realistic possibility that nobody else has seemed to mention. The GTA_SA sex scenes were most probably removed into order to fit the game into a M rating! It's clumsiness on Rockstar's part that the code never got removed from the game media. If they wanted to deceive anyone, they would have left the sex scenes in the game as your reward for 100% complete or something.
Hmmm.... the ability to PERL script my phone into calling me every 5 minutes when I'm down at the pub is going to make me look popular....
*wakes up, gets back to work*
"The Register" has a better write up on this story (sorry guys). Apparently they've managed to get Windows CE, Linux, and VxWorks up and running on the CPU.
As for the patented instruction sets, apparently they aren't used in the chip. (Supposedly that's why it's 95% compatible).
Currently the chip clocks in at 400-500Mhz, but the next generation is going to be around the 1Ghz mark - by which point China is going to be spitting out all manner of sub $200 computers I imagine.
I thought the fastest supercomputer was the flux capacitor. You know, at the calculated moment, you start off from down the street driving toward the cable accelerating to 88 miles per hour. According to the flyer, at 10.04pm lightning will strike the clocktower sending 1.21 gigawatts into the flux-capacitor, sending you back to 1985.
If funding runs out for this one, they'll end up with a 1 Belly-flop supercomputer
*ba-dum-dum ching!*