$250M/year for four years will effectively shut down every other NFL game for four years, but that's not the kicker. The kicker is after those four years, if EA chooses not to keep their agreement "exclusive", any other football game (ESPN NFL Football, etc.) will be four years behind, at a minimum. I would guess that the more likely scenario would be that the project teams would be dissolved, and that EA would snap up any talent laid off by Sega, Microsoft, and whomever else. That -really- puts Madden in the driver's seat, with a four-year jump on everyone else from a software/technology standpoint, and any potential competitor having to start from scratch from a personnel standpoint.
It's almost anticompetitive in nature. EA (the 800-kg gorilla) is getting exclusive rights to a commodity (NFLPA licensing rights) that's almost necessary to compete in the market, and has been available to all competing parties until now. What'd happen if GM were to get exclusive rights to anti-lock braking or airbags? What if Nokia were the only company offering car chargers or customizable ringtones?
They drop a billion short-term in exchange for a major leg-up on the competition long-term, with the hopes of driving said competition out of business. No competition means they can cut costs and turn a bigger per-unit profit. Not only that, they can basically ditch their promotions and advertising. Tell me that being the only game in town when it comes to football games in the US isn't worth big money.
Although I can get on board with Ninja Gaiden being frustratingly difficult (rented it, no book, no hint of skills improving, gave up), the hardest game I ever played was Su-27. It was not enough to be a flight sim. It was not enough to be a seemingly-painstakingly-accurate flight sim. It was not enough to be a seemingly-painstakingly-accurate flight sim that put you in VERY sticky situations. It was a seemingly-painstakingly-accurate flight sim that put you in VERY sticky situations and all the controls and indicators were in RUSSIAN.
The "instant action" puts you head on with three OPFOR fighters just outside missile range. Here's how it went the seven times I tried it: Fly for a couple seconds, lock acquired on me, attempt to avert destruction by clever use of countermeasures and/or aerobatics, fail miserably.
I'm a fan of meticulous flight sims. The bigger the manual, the happier I am. I loved the Jane's series from EA, and Falcon 4.0 was right up my alley. But man, Flanker beat my ass and sent me crying home to mama.
It's sad that Microsoft's cutting out the XSN games because they had a great idea combining sports titles with Xbox Live
I think we're wandering back and forth across the line of XSN/Xbox Live, and I want to straighten this out:
The thing they're cutting out isn't Xbox Live, but XSN. I can (and, when I want to be embarassed, do) play ESPN NFL on Xbox Live - I just can't set up a tournament or track stats like I might with NFL Fever (XSN).
IMNSHO, XSN wasn't that robust to compel me to even TRY NFL Fever when I knew I'd be getting a good product from Sega's offering. Besides, I'm no damn good at football and I really have no compelling need to go up against kids who don't have f/t jobs or other people who're much better at it than I. I'm happier playing against a (dumbed down) AI or one of my buddies from work, and I can do that without XSN.
Competitive, yes, but not at the expense of being enjoyable. game (n.)
1. An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime: party games; word games.
A game is supposed to be FUN. I'm a casual Halo player, and when my friends and I get together to play split-screen or LAN Halo on the XBox, we have fun. When I play Counterstrike online, I get OWNED (or PWNED, or pwn3d), and it is NOT FUN. People much better than me make the game not fun, and it becomes an exercise in walking out, getting brained by some cat who spends his days playing Counterstrike, and waiting for the next round.
You don't put a high school pitcher on the mound against the Yankees, you don't put a twenty-something who commutes to work and back in a stock car at Daytona, and you don't put a casual player on a public CS server. It's competitive in the sense that two parties are trying to acheive mutually exclusive goals, but it's nowhere near fair. There's no doubt as to the outcome, no fun for the loser and no sense of accomplishment for the winner.
Thank you very much, but I'll play something else if I want to have fun, and I'll play Counterstrike if I need to feel inferior to a 14-year-old who doesn't do his homework. (A brash overgeneralization intended to illustrate a point; put down your flamethrowers.)
Is anybody else reminded of Explorers? That scene where Wolfgang's mouse or hamster or whatever it is steps on the switches to ask for cheese? Did anybody else see this one? Flight of the Navigator meets generic buddy flick? Bueller?
If there is a remote possibility that a school shootout was triggered in part by a violent game, lets avoid it.
Try substituting for "game" the phrase "TV show", "movie", "evening news story", or "behavior learned from a parent".
Why, oh why, do people seem to single out gaming as the only violent influence on a child? You think a 12 year old has never seen gore until he plays GTA3? Watching the Detroit TV news in the morning, I see more violence than I do most of the evening playing video games. I'm guaranteed at least a murder a night on Law & Order on TNT, and a extra one on the new episode on NBC, not to mention SVU and Criminal Intent. Just recently, a kid killed his... cousin? sister? by emulating professional wrestling - shall we legislate that too?
At a certain point, a child needs a regulating influence in their life to point at the TV or game or movie and say "This is fiction. This is not real life, and this is not acceptable behavior", and then point at the news and say "This is what happens in real life when people die - families are shattered and people go to prison." My dad was always there, and his favorite line was "You know this isn't how the world works, right?" and so I don't go around killing people. For a guy in desktop support, that's a noteworthy accomplishment.
The burden shouldn't be on the pimply teenager selling the movie ticket or renting the video game - he's probably on the kid's side anyhow. We can't expect Corporate America to raise our kids, and if we do, we deserve everything we get and more. Letting a company decide what's appropriate for one's child, be it ABC, HBO, Blockbuster, the MPAA, the ESRB or anyone else, is shirking one's duty as a parent The burden needs to be on the parent to get involved with the child and what he's doing. Hang out when your kid is playing games. Ask him to explain what's going on. Watch TV with him, even for a couple minutes, just to know. Then decide whether or not you approve, and raise your child accordingly.
More to the point, what else has he DONE? I've never heard his name other than in conjunction with Tetris. It's like talking to Don Johnson about Miami Vice. Yeah, he's done other roles, he had a single, but they all* kinda sucked. So every* interview he does, somebody has to ask a question about Miami Vice or Tubbs or pastel t-shirts and suit jackets.
Anybody remember Majestic by EA? Prototypical episodic gaming. The game calls you or sends you an email or some such, you play for an hour or two, or until you figure out the puzzle, you do whatever it is you have to do, and then you wait for the game to contact you again. Repeat 3-5 times per episode, about an episode a month. It came complete with cliffhangers ("Will the Black Helicopters catch Billy as he drives across the desert? Who was the agent talking to during the raid? Answers to these and more next week!") and other trappings of episodic drama.
Now, I enjoyed it, but apparently not enough other people did, as it is now "Does anybody remember?" instead of "Is anybody playing?". Whether this is due to the viability (or lack thereof) of episodic gaming's economic model or another factor (EA mismanagement, gigantic overhead, poor story, etc etc) is a question best left to history.
Supposedly this beta is going to include an NDA, incidentally...at least that's what their website said/says.
I'd be more surprised if it didn't include an NDA - they're pretty much SOP for MMORPGs. SWG had one and for a time the only news was "It's sweet, but I can't tell you why, cuz they'll sue my pants off" and "No, the NDA's not lifted yet. Go home." Whether they do it for legal reasons or to increase the buzz over a title, though... well, you'd have to ask them.
I've been the epitome of "casual gamer" since I started playing on Day Two. An hour here, half an hour there, maybe one or two days of solid eight hour playing.
For those unfamiliar with the game, here's how it works: When you create your character, The Game selects five professions and doesn't tell you what they are. If you master those five, you can create a Jedi character. People got sick of wandering around in the dark guessing, so The Game introduced Holocrons, which will tip you off to one of your assigned professions, except it won't tell you the last one - you're on your own for that one.
Of the 23 skill boxes required for my FIRST "holocron profession", I've filled three, and two of those I got in the same day. Bearing in mind that I've been on this particular profession for a couple weeks, and the three boxes I got are the fastest to fill, I think I'll be able to create a Jedi on about the 24th of Never.
Have I stopped playing? No. Why not? Just because I'm fascinated by Star Wars, mainly. Is it fun? Eh. I'm more motivated by the sense of accomplishment than the level grind itself.
I can tell you, though, that I'd be much more into it if there were an over-arching quest that hopped across all the planets, led me through the "Points of Interest" they've put in on all the planets, forced me to use skills from all six Starting Professions, and then let ME choose which Advanced Professions I wanted to master. Even if it were "From the elite/hybrid professions, pick one ranged combat, one melee combat, one support, one crafting/artisan, and one free choice", you could get the full complement of personal experience of the game and still have fun, without forcing you to drop all your Combat Medic or Bounty Hunter experience so you could spend hours grinding Bofa Treats on your long, miserable, reluctant journey to becoming the Galaxy-wide Master of Culinary Arts.
While I'm ranting, why not let me reclaim skills I had to surrender? Obviously, you want to make sure nobody has ALL the skills, but if I drop Master Scout to learn Medic and decide I hate it, let me just take my old skill back. Leave me without either skill for a week if you want, but don't make me grind up Scout AGAIN, re-earning all the experience. They can migrate stats, and it strikes me as a terribly good idea for skills.
But at the end of the day, I'm still playing. Partially because I want to be a Jedi, and partially because it's paid for already and I figure I should get my money's worth.
When World of Warcraft comes out, though, I probably won't be spending too much time in SWG. I'll find some new goal to work towards, but it won't be the same as being a Jedi - that's the carrot on the string for me. To walk the galaxy and put an uppity player on his butt with the wave of my hand (typing/forcepush).
The carrot on the end of the string is so far out of reach... but it's a lovely carrot...
If you're going to make a game that _needs_ some sort of reference, put it in game, or at least stick it in a PDF on the CD.
A PDF? Dear God No. I may be in the minority here, but I -like- complicated games. All the Jane's simulations, Falcon 4.0, that sort of thing. (Whether or not this makes me a nutjob is beyond the scope of this post.) If your game is THAT complex and you're going the no-ingame-tutorial route, you -need- to be including a printed manual, preferably ring-bound. Don't make me print 200 pages on an inkjet printer. Don't make me worry about getting pages out of order by knocking the stack off my desk because I don't have any way to bind these sheets. Just give me a book that will sit open on my desk so I can refer to it when the need arises. If it drives you over budget, fine - include the PDF and an order form for the printed book. I had just such an occasion arise with one of the Jane's games - my printed manual got ruined, but for... $10? they sent me a new one. Worth every penny.
As for the MOO3 interface, well, you can't win 'em all.
By buying a whole box, you'd likely triple their count of units sold, thus leading Nokia to believe that their $100-and-three-free-games incentive is actually worth pursuing.
Punish Nokia's poor design and planning - Wait till they make like ET and bury the units in a landfill or somesuch, then dig 'em up and perpetrate your beatdown.
Do some research on RDS -- found in Europe. RDS radios have the capability to interrupt normal radio or CD/tape output and give the driver the traffic news, at a pre-set volume.
My girlfriend drives a Pontiac in the US and it has a digital radio that purports to do the same thing. Of course, I've never seen it actually INTERRUPTING the music source, but doesn't this already exist on this side of the pond?
Look at it this way: A(n occasionally naked) girl gets more votes from Internet users than Linus in a popularity contest. I would have been genuinely surprised if Linus had won. [Put your favorite Diebold/election fraud joke here!]
She -was- one of the first people I would consider a "net.celebrity" in that she'd gotten mainstream press coverage for what she was doing on her website. It wasn't a pr0n website by-and-large, although I have seen a few images from what must be early Jennicam that made it look like she was taking requests for nudity. The vast majority of the time I caught it, it was either her at her computer or out of the house or her cat on her computer chair or some crap.
I always saw it as more of a cam-blog, before there was "blogging" as we understand it today. You could peek in and see the new boyfriend or maybe a change she'd made to her furniture or whatever. Mundane, but still something that you checked out anyhow.
I can't say that I'll actively miss it (I haven't seen the site in probably over a year), but it does strike me as an end-of-an-era sort of thing. Jennicam came out in the "frontier" days of the Internet - a time where the general public didn't know what a URL was, before "camwhore" was a word, before the corporate world started to use it as a marketing tool. It was just some chick who put her life on the internet as sort of a diary or exhibitionistic social experiment. In that sense, I am sad to see her site go, because to me it represents that time now gone, and I'm a sap when it comes to that sort of thing.
He's playing against his opponent's weaknesses. There's nothing new here. He knows Fritz to be very good in an open, tactical game, where "the right move" is key. That's why he's blocking everything up - to keep the game closed and force Fritz to find "the right strategy".
Human v Computer in chess is interesting because chess is very much an exercise in pattern recognition. Learn 20 openings and 30 endgames, then try to see how to get from there to here, based on the patterns you see on the board. Humans (and presumably animals, though I've never asked any) are inherently good at pattern recognition. Computers are not at all good at pattern recognition in this application. That's why Fritz has to brute-force it - it's actually more efficient than to look for a pattern.
(This, coincidentally, is the same reason we don't have computers running air traffic control stations. They suck at it. More pattern recognition.)
A bit (from memory) from the commentary on game three, where Kasparov won by playing anti-computer chess: Fritz doesn't see it coming. Its evaluation of its position is -1.5 - a pawn and a half behind - a marginal deficit, where any skilled human can see what's going to happen. Instead of taking action, it wastes its moves, oblivious to what Kasparov is building towards. A human player would have said, "Well, I have to do SOMETHING."
Against a human, he would have played a different game. Against a different program, he might have played a different game. He did his homework on Fritz (and Fritz had access to every game Kasparov ever played, which qualifies as homework) and each tried to exploit the other's weakness.
Man, I thought it was just me who thought that. My girlfriend thought Tommy Haas (?) was cute, but I thought the model made him look like some messed up vampire guy.
As for underrated games, I gotta get my vote in for Record of Lodoss War. I didn't find out it was based on anime/manga (still not clear) until well after I'd gotten done playing it. I really liked the rune words system (haven't played in years - don't know if that's the term) they used for upgrading a weapon. Somebody else should totally rip that off.
Both systems will be able to run the same games - the entire 32/128 isn't usable system memory - it's total memory - the sum of system and storage memory.
The Zodiac is not in competition with GBA. The Zodiac is not a game platform, although it does have some games optimized for its hardware. The target audience is not in middle school or high school.
The Zodiac is a gaming-oriented version of common consumer electronics. The Zodiac's closest competitors are the Palm Tungsten series (PalmOS PDAs) and the Nokia N-Gage (disaster of a gaming phone). Based on what I've seen, it beats both, blowing the N-Gage out of the water.
The target audience for the Zodiac is somebody a lot like me - a twenty-something yuppie who's into games but needs a PDA as well. Comparing the pricepoint of the Zodiac to the GBA is like comparing the pricepoint of a Land Rover or Range Rover to a Jeep Cherokee. One is a luxury multifunction device. The other is a single-function device that does its one job and does it well. If you're saving up for weeks to buy a GBA game, you shouldn't be considering a Zodiac.
If you can get bored in the morning, go out on your lunch break to Best Buy or Fry's or whatever you have and buy two or three GBA games without worrying if you have the money, but you're annoyed you have to carry them all around, you're the type of person who should think about a Zodiac. Zodiac takes regular old SD/MMC cards, and you can download Tapwave games, plus any other Palm games, onto your favorite 256MB card you got off eBay and be just fine.
If PalmOS 6 weren't right around the corner, I'd've ordered a Zodiac2 (the 128MB version) already, but I don't want to have to upgrade right away. If you have major gadget lust for these things, keep an eye on eBay after PalmOS 6 comes out - the upgrade-happy will have to have the new toy immediately and they'll offload the first-gen Zodiacs.
Slightly off topic, but saves me from making a separate post for a small point: The reviewer from IGN has a misconception about the memory on these devices: the 32/128MB memory device difference won't make any difference in performance. In PC terms, the system only has about 18MB of "RAM". The rest of the space (be it 14 or 110MB) is "hard drive" space - just storage. NB: I'm not positive on the numbers, but they're close and the concept is valid. Tapwave has been very careful to make sure that apps run just as well on the Zodiac1 as the Zodiac2. You can always upgrade your storage space by dropping a bigger SD card into the device.
I think people equate "newbie distro" with "crippled" or "unsuitable for the power user". I think a newbie distro can still be useful to somebody who knows what he's doing.
I'm a Solaris admin by day, and by night, I don't want to have to WORRY about it. Sure, I -could- invest the time in getting some crufty complex distro running, but I don't want to. I'm not obsessive-compulsive about programs on the system I won't ever use, so I let Mandrake install them. If I need something, I can put it on. Pull down the RPM or build it from source. It's not like it's not supported.
At the end of the day, if it's Linux, it's running the Linux kernel and you can do what you want on it. It's just a question of what other junk comes with it. I happen to like the junk Mandrake includes, especially their installer. I can click through most of the default options and have a functional system up in the time it takes the package to install, and still watch hockey in the background.
If you (in the general sense, not you-the-author-of-the-parent-post) derive your geek-self-esteem by doing more work to make your computer run than I do, more power to you. I'll spend the time doing something else, and you can be the bigger geek.
NO KIDDING. I thought it might be a kinda nifty gadget if I didn't want to carry my GBA SP, but holy crap. I'd never talk on that thing.
For those that don't get it, to talk on this behemoth without a hands-free of some sort, you hold the NARROW TOP EDGE to your head, and the screen points the same direction as your head does. A pair of these and you could go out as Dumbo this year. Combine that with the dismal launch titles and the fact that you have to disassemble the phone to change games, and this is just one poorly-thought-out design decision after another.
Hopefully the Zodiac is a better PDA that this appears to be a phone.
I put 9.2 on my machine last night. FTP install, and it detected and correctly configured the on-board NIC for the A7N8X-Deluxe from the floppy. It's not gigabit, but it got the job done - drivers installed, DHCP got an address correctly, negotiated the Mandrake firewall, the whole thing.
No need to spend a blank CD. Use the Network boot image on a floppy and give it a go. If it doesn't work, you're not out anything.
...in limited applications. UMich does (used to do) the same thing. Which is fine, for that application. They're controlling their own network.
But redirecting TLDs smacks of cybersquatting.
Think about it: Verisign is making money off my typos by posting ads or "adding value" to their (hypothetical?) service to sell redirections of typos to the real owners.
How is this different than me registering www.microsfot.com, oracel.com, etc, building a site pointed to those domains, and then loading it down with porn banner ads? How quickly would I have a cease-and-desist in my mailbox from Bill's/Larry's lawyers?
Hell, if Verisign wanted to redirect typos to a page that said "YOU TYPOED THE URL, JERKOFF. TRY AGAIN." and then put some ads on the bottom, I'm almost fine with that. Yes, I'm still putting hits on their banners, but at least I know I screwed up.
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$250M/year for four years will effectively shut down every other NFL game for four years, but that's not the kicker. The kicker is after those four years, if EA chooses not to keep their agreement "exclusive", any other football game (ESPN NFL Football, etc.) will be four years behind, at a minimum. I would guess that the more likely scenario would be that the project teams would be dissolved, and that EA would snap up any talent laid off by Sega, Microsoft, and whomever else. That -really- puts Madden in the driver's seat, with a four-year jump on everyone else from a software/technology standpoint, and any potential competitor having to start from scratch from a personnel standpoint.
It's almost anticompetitive in nature. EA (the 800-kg gorilla) is getting exclusive rights to a commodity (NFLPA licensing rights) that's almost necessary to compete in the market, and has been available to all competing parties until now. What'd happen if GM were to get exclusive rights to anti-lock braking or airbags? What if Nokia were the only company offering car chargers or customizable ringtones?
They drop a billion short-term in exchange for a major leg-up on the competition long-term, with the hopes of driving said competition out of business. No competition means they can cut costs and turn a bigger per-unit profit. Not only that, they can basically ditch their promotions and advertising. Tell me that being the only game in town when it comes to football games in the US isn't worth big money.
[+1, Funny] doesn't affect karma - it stands to reason that [-1, Lame] wouldn't either. Remember, kids: Note that being moderated Funny doesn't help your karma. You have to be smart, not just a smart-ass.
Although I can get on board with Ninja Gaiden being frustratingly difficult (rented it, no book, no hint of skills improving, gave up), the hardest game I ever played was Su-27. It was not enough to be a flight sim. It was not enough to be a seemingly-painstakingly-accurate flight sim. It was not enough to be a seemingly-painstakingly-accurate flight sim that put you in VERY sticky situations. It was a seemingly-painstakingly-accurate flight sim that put you in VERY sticky situations and all the controls and indicators were in RUSSIAN.
The "instant action" puts you head on with three OPFOR fighters just outside missile range. Here's how it went the seven times I tried it: Fly for a couple seconds, lock acquired on me, attempt to avert destruction by clever use of countermeasures and/or aerobatics, fail miserably.
I'm a fan of meticulous flight sims. The bigger the manual, the happier I am. I loved the Jane's series from EA, and Falcon 4.0 was right up my alley. But man, Flanker beat my ass and sent me crying home to mama.
It's sad that Microsoft's cutting out the XSN games because they had a great idea combining sports titles with Xbox Live
I think we're wandering back and forth across the line of XSN/Xbox Live, and I want to straighten this out:
The thing they're cutting out isn't Xbox Live, but XSN. I can (and, when I want to be embarassed, do) play ESPN NFL on Xbox Live - I just can't set up a tournament or track stats like I might with NFL Fever (XSN).
IMNSHO, XSN wasn't that robust to compel me to even TRY NFL Fever when I knew I'd be getting a good product from Sega's offering. Besides, I'm no damn good at football and I really have no compelling need to go up against kids who don't have f/t jobs or other people who're much better at it than I. I'm happier playing against a (dumbed down) AI or one of my buddies from work, and I can do that without XSN.
Besides, a game is meant to be competitive.
Competitive, yes, but not at the expense of being enjoyable.
game (n.)
1. An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime: party games; word games.
A game is supposed to be FUN. I'm a casual Halo player, and when my friends and I get together to play split-screen or LAN Halo on the XBox, we have fun. When I play Counterstrike online, I get OWNED (or PWNED, or pwn3d), and it is NOT FUN. People much better than me make the game not fun, and it becomes an exercise in walking out, getting brained by some cat who spends his days playing Counterstrike, and waiting for the next round.
You don't put a high school pitcher on the mound against the Yankees, you don't put a twenty-something who commutes to work and back in a stock car at Daytona, and you don't put a casual player on a public CS server. It's competitive in the sense that two parties are trying to acheive mutually exclusive goals, but it's nowhere near fair. There's no doubt as to the outcome, no fun for the loser and no sense of accomplishment for the winner.
Thank you very much, but I'll play something else if I want to have fun, and I'll play Counterstrike if I need to feel inferior to a 14-year-old who doesn't do his homework. (A brash overgeneralization intended to illustrate a point; put down your flamethrowers.)
Is anybody else reminded of Explorers? That scene where Wolfgang's mouse or hamster or whatever it is steps on the switches to ask for cheese? Did anybody else see this one? Flight of the Navigator meets generic buddy flick? Bueller?
I'll go sit by myself now.
If there is a remote possibility that a school shootout was triggered in part by a violent game, lets avoid it.
Try substituting for "game" the phrase "TV show", "movie", "evening news story", or "behavior learned from a parent".
Why, oh why, do people seem to single out gaming as the only violent influence on a child? You think a 12 year old has never seen gore until he plays GTA3? Watching the Detroit TV news in the morning, I see more violence than I do most of the evening playing video games. I'm guaranteed at least a murder a night on Law & Order on TNT, and a extra one on the new episode on NBC, not to mention SVU and Criminal Intent. Just recently, a kid killed his... cousin? sister? by emulating professional wrestling - shall we legislate that too?
At a certain point, a child needs a regulating influence in their life to point at the TV or game or movie and say "This is fiction. This is not real life, and this is not acceptable behavior", and then point at the news and say "This is what happens in real life when people die - families are shattered and people go to prison." My dad was always there, and his favorite line was "You know this isn't how the world works, right?" and so I don't go around killing people. For a guy in desktop support, that's a noteworthy accomplishment.
The burden shouldn't be on the pimply teenager selling the movie ticket or renting the video game - he's probably on the kid's side anyhow. We can't expect Corporate America to raise our kids, and if we do, we deserve everything we get and more. Letting a company decide what's appropriate for one's child, be it ABC, HBO, Blockbuster, the MPAA, the ESRB or anyone else, is shirking one's duty as a parent The burden needs to be on the parent to get involved with the child and what he's doing. Hang out when your kid is playing games. Ask him to explain what's going on. Watch TV with him, even for a couple minutes, just to know. Then decide whether or not you approve, and raise your child accordingly.
ps: that pac man game got canned.
What, you mean this Pac-Man game?
More to the point, what else has he DONE? I've never heard his name other than in conjunction with Tetris. It's like talking to Don Johnson about Miami Vice. Yeah, he's done other roles, he had a single, but they all* kinda sucked. So every* interview he does, somebody has to ask a question about Miami Vice or Tubbs or pastel t-shirts and suit jackets.
* - pending correction from anal AC
Anybody remember Majestic by EA? Prototypical episodic gaming. The game calls you or sends you an email or some such, you play for an hour or two, or until you figure out the puzzle, you do whatever it is you have to do, and then you wait for the game to contact you again. Repeat 3-5 times per episode, about an episode a month. It came complete with cliffhangers ("Will the Black Helicopters catch Billy as he drives across the desert? Who was the agent talking to during the raid? Answers to these and more next week!") and other trappings of episodic drama.
Now, I enjoyed it, but apparently not enough other people did, as it is now "Does anybody remember?" instead of "Is anybody playing?". Whether this is due to the viability (or lack thereof) of episodic gaming's economic model or another factor (EA mismanagement, gigantic overhead, poor story, etc etc) is a question best left to history.
Supposedly this beta is going to include an NDA, incidentally...at least that's what their website said/says.
I'd be more surprised if it didn't include an NDA - they're pretty much SOP for MMORPGs. SWG had one and for a time the only news was "It's sweet, but I can't tell you why, cuz they'll sue my pants off" and "No, the NDA's not lifted yet. Go home." Whether they do it for legal reasons or to increase the buzz over a title, though... well, you'd have to ask them.
I've been the epitome of "casual gamer" since I started playing on Day Two. An hour here, half an hour there, maybe one or two days of solid eight hour playing.
/forcepush).
For those unfamiliar with the game, here's how it works: When you create your character, The Game selects five professions and doesn't tell you what they are. If you master those five, you can create a Jedi character. People got sick of wandering around in the dark guessing, so The Game introduced Holocrons, which will tip you off to one of your assigned professions, except it won't tell you the last one - you're on your own for that one.
Of the 23 skill boxes required for my FIRST "holocron profession", I've filled three, and two of those I got in the same day. Bearing in mind that I've been on this particular profession for a couple weeks, and the three boxes I got are the fastest to fill, I think I'll be able to create a Jedi on about the 24th of Never.
Have I stopped playing? No. Why not? Just because I'm fascinated by Star Wars, mainly. Is it fun? Eh. I'm more motivated by the sense of accomplishment than the level grind itself.
I can tell you, though, that I'd be much more into it if there were an over-arching quest that hopped across all the planets, led me through the "Points of Interest" they've put in on all the planets, forced me to use skills from all six Starting Professions, and then let ME choose which Advanced Professions I wanted to master. Even if it were "From the elite/hybrid professions, pick one ranged combat, one melee combat, one support, one crafting/artisan, and one free choice", you could get the full complement of personal experience of the game and still have fun, without forcing you to drop all your Combat Medic or Bounty Hunter experience so you could spend hours grinding Bofa Treats on your long, miserable, reluctant journey to becoming the Galaxy-wide Master of Culinary Arts.
While I'm ranting, why not let me reclaim skills I had to surrender? Obviously, you want to make sure nobody has ALL the skills, but if I drop Master Scout to learn Medic and decide I hate it, let me just take my old skill back. Leave me without either skill for a week if you want, but don't make me grind up Scout AGAIN, re-earning all the experience. They can migrate stats, and it strikes me as a terribly good idea for skills.
But at the end of the day, I'm still playing. Partially because I want to be a Jedi, and partially because it's paid for already and I figure I should get my money's worth.
When World of Warcraft comes out, though, I probably won't be spending too much time in SWG. I'll find some new goal to work towards, but it won't be the same as being a Jedi - that's the carrot on the string for me. To walk the galaxy and put an uppity player on his butt with the wave of my hand (typing
The carrot on the end of the string is so far out of reach... but it's a lovely carrot...
If you're going to make a game that _needs_ some sort of reference, put it in game, or at least stick it in a PDF on the CD.
A PDF? Dear God No. I may be in the minority here, but I -like- complicated games. All the Jane's simulations, Falcon 4.0, that sort of thing. (Whether or not this makes me a nutjob is beyond the scope of this post.) If your game is THAT complex and you're going the no-ingame-tutorial route, you -need- to be including a printed manual, preferably ring-bound. Don't make me print 200 pages on an inkjet printer. Don't make me worry about getting pages out of order by knocking the stack off my desk because I don't have any way to bind these sheets. Just give me a book that will sit open on my desk so I can refer to it when the need arises. If it drives you over budget, fine - include the PDF and an order form for the printed book. I had just such an occasion arise with one of the Jane's games - my printed manual got ruined, but for... $10? they sent me a new one. Worth every penny.
As for the MOO3 interface, well, you can't win 'em all.
By buying a whole box, you'd likely triple their count of units sold, thus leading Nokia to believe that their $100-and-three-free-games incentive is actually worth pursuing.
Punish Nokia's poor design and planning - Wait till they make like ET and bury the units in a landfill or somesuch, then dig 'em up and perpetrate your beatdown.
Do some research on RDS -- found in Europe. RDS radios have the capability to interrupt normal radio or CD/tape output and give the driver the traffic news, at a pre-set volume.
My girlfriend drives a Pontiac in the US and it has a digital radio that purports to do the same thing. Of course, I've never seen it actually INTERRUPTING the music source, but doesn't this already exist on this side of the pond?
Baffles me that she's more popular than Linus.
Look at it this way: A(n occasionally naked) girl gets more votes from Internet users than Linus in a popularity contest. I would have been genuinely surprised if Linus had won. [Put your favorite Diebold/election fraud joke here!]
She -was- one of the first people I would consider a "net.celebrity" in that she'd gotten mainstream press coverage for what she was doing on her website. It wasn't a pr0n website by-and-large, although I have seen a few images from what must be early Jennicam that made it look like she was taking requests for nudity. The vast majority of the time I caught it, it was either her at her computer or out of the house or her cat on her computer chair or some crap.
I always saw it as more of a cam-blog, before there was "blogging" as we understand it today. You could peek in and see the new boyfriend or maybe a change she'd made to her furniture or whatever. Mundane, but still something that you checked out anyhow.
I can't say that I'll actively miss it (I haven't seen the site in probably over a year), but it does strike me as an end-of-an-era sort of thing. Jennicam came out in the "frontier" days of the Internet - a time where the general public didn't know what a URL was, before "camwhore" was a word, before the corporate world started to use it as a marketing tool. It was just some chick who put her life on the internet as sort of a diary or exhibitionistic social experiment. In that sense, I am sad to see her site go, because to me it represents that time now gone, and I'm a sap when it comes to that sort of thing.
Right on - this is the point most people miss.
He's playing against his opponent's weaknesses. There's nothing new here. He knows Fritz to be very good in an open, tactical game, where "the right move" is key. That's why he's blocking everything up - to keep the game closed and force Fritz to find "the right strategy".
Human v Computer in chess is interesting because chess is very much an exercise in pattern recognition. Learn 20 openings and 30 endgames, then try to see how to get from there to here, based on the patterns you see on the board. Humans (and presumably animals, though I've never asked any) are inherently good at pattern recognition. Computers are not at all good at pattern recognition in this application. That's why Fritz has to brute-force it - it's actually more efficient than to look for a pattern.
(This, coincidentally, is the same reason we don't have computers running air traffic control stations. They suck at it. More pattern recognition.)
A bit (from memory) from the commentary on game three, where Kasparov won by playing anti-computer chess:
Fritz doesn't see it coming. Its evaluation of its position is -1.5 - a pawn and a half behind - a marginal deficit, where any skilled human can see what's going to happen. Instead of taking action, it wastes its moves, oblivious to what Kasparov is building towards. A human player would have said, "Well, I have to do SOMETHING."
Against a human, he would have played a different game. Against a different program, he might have played a different game. He did his homework on Fritz (and Fritz had access to every game Kasparov ever played, which qualifies as homework) and each tried to exploit the other's weakness.
Man, I thought it was just me who thought that. My girlfriend thought Tommy Haas (?) was cute, but I thought the model made him look like some messed up vampire guy.
As for underrated games, I gotta get my vote in for Record of Lodoss War. I didn't find out it was based on anime/manga (still not clear) until well after I'd gotten done playing it. I really liked the rune words system (haven't played in years - don't know if that's the term) they used for upgrading a weapon. Somebody else should totally rip that off.
Both systems will be able to run the same games - the entire 32/128 isn't usable system memory - it's total memory - the sum of system and storage memory.
The Zodiac is not in competition with GBA. The Zodiac is not a game platform, although it does have some games optimized for its hardware. The target audience is not in middle school or high school.
The Zodiac is a gaming-oriented version of common consumer electronics. The Zodiac's closest competitors are the Palm Tungsten series (PalmOS PDAs) and the Nokia N-Gage (disaster of a gaming phone). Based on what I've seen, it beats both, blowing the N-Gage out of the water.
The target audience for the Zodiac is somebody a lot like me - a twenty-something yuppie who's into games but needs a PDA as well. Comparing the pricepoint of the Zodiac to the GBA is like comparing the pricepoint of a Land Rover or Range Rover to a Jeep Cherokee. One is a luxury multifunction device. The other is a single-function device that does its one job and does it well. If you're saving up for weeks to buy a GBA game, you shouldn't be considering a Zodiac.
If you can get bored in the morning, go out on your lunch break to Best Buy or Fry's or whatever you have and buy two or three GBA games without worrying if you have the money, but you're annoyed you have to carry them all around, you're the type of person who should think about a Zodiac. Zodiac takes regular old SD/MMC cards, and you can download Tapwave games, plus any other Palm games, onto your favorite 256MB card you got off eBay and be just fine.
If PalmOS 6 weren't right around the corner, I'd've ordered a Zodiac2 (the 128MB version) already, but I don't want to have to upgrade right away. If you have major gadget lust for these things, keep an eye on eBay after PalmOS 6 comes out - the upgrade-happy will have to have the new toy immediately and they'll offload the first-gen Zodiacs.
Slightly off topic, but saves me from making a separate post for a small point: The reviewer from IGN has a misconception about the memory on these devices: the 32/128MB memory device difference won't make any difference in performance. In PC terms, the system only has about 18MB of "RAM". The rest of the space (be it 14 or 110MB) is "hard drive" space - just storage. NB: I'm not positive on the numbers, but they're close and the concept is valid.
Tapwave has been very careful to make sure that apps run just as well on the Zodiac1 as the Zodiac2. You can always upgrade your storage space by dropping a bigger SD card into the device.
I definitely agree with you.
I think people equate "newbie distro" with "crippled" or "unsuitable for the power user". I think a newbie distro can still be useful to somebody who knows what he's doing.
I'm a Solaris admin by day, and by night, I don't want to have to WORRY about it. Sure, I -could- invest the time in getting some crufty complex distro running, but I don't want to. I'm not obsessive-compulsive about programs on the system I won't ever use, so I let Mandrake install them. If I need something, I can put it on. Pull down the RPM or build it from source. It's not like it's not supported.
At the end of the day, if it's Linux, it's running the Linux kernel and you can do what you want on it. It's just a question of what other junk comes with it. I happen to like the junk Mandrake includes, especially their installer. I can click through most of the default options and have a functional system up in the time it takes the package to install, and still watch hockey in the background.
If you (in the general sense, not you-the-author-of-the-parent-post) derive your geek-self-esteem by doing more work to make your computer run than I do, more power to you. I'll spend the time doing something else, and you can be the bigger geek.
NO KIDDING. I thought it might be a kinda nifty gadget if I didn't want to carry my GBA SP, but holy crap. I'd never talk on that thing.
For those that don't get it, to talk on this behemoth without a hands-free of some sort, you hold the NARROW TOP EDGE to your head, and the screen points the same direction as your head does. A pair of these and you could go out as Dumbo this year. Combine that with the dismal launch titles and the fact that you have to disassemble the phone to change games, and this is just one poorly-thought-out design decision after another.
Hopefully the Zodiac is a better PDA that this appears to be a phone.
I put 9.2 on my machine last night. FTP install, and it detected and correctly configured the on-board NIC for the A7N8X-Deluxe from the floppy. It's not gigabit, but it got the job done - drivers installed, DHCP got an address correctly, negotiated the Mandrake firewall, the whole thing.
No need to spend a blank CD. Use the Network boot image on a floppy and give it a go. If it doesn't work, you're not out anything.
...in limited applications. UMich does (used to do) the same thing. Which is fine, for that application. They're controlling their own network.
But redirecting TLDs smacks of cybersquatting.
Think about it: Verisign is making money off my typos by posting ads or "adding value" to their (hypothetical?) service to sell redirections of typos to the real owners.
How is this different than me registering www.microsfot.com, oracel.com, etc, building a site pointed to those domains, and then loading it down with porn banner ads? How quickly would I have a cease-and-desist in my mailbox from Bill's/Larry's lawyers?
Hell, if Verisign wanted to redirect typos to a page that said "YOU TYPOED THE URL, JERKOFF. TRY AGAIN." and then put some ads on the bottom, I'm almost fine with that. Yes, I'm still putting hits on their banners, but at least I know I screwed up.