Dude, this isn't Commmunist Russia where all work must be put to the benefit of the state.
This guy basically developed his own hard and soft platform for developing NES games from scratch. he deserves mad props for that. Respect what Brian has chosen to do with his spare time. Which is frankly more than most of us do in our spare time.
Don't forget that the current adminstration actually believes actively in god, in some cases, claiming that their political decisions are guided by god or their relationship with god. So from their perspective, this might constitute an actual threat. As completely ridiculous as that sounds, it's no more absurd than their basic belief in the concept of god.
MMO user fees represent the ongoing costs of developing and operating a service, not "being charged to live." It costs a lot more to maintain and operate a MMO than to develop one.
I know that they may be giving into market pressure to release early in the holiday season, but I think that they have a pretty solid product, and a development team and attitude that will work well towards improving their product in the long run. I haven't been in the EQ2 Beta, but what I did see in te WoW stress test was pretty promising. I think that they will have a good product, even if they go with the November 22nd launch.
I have some of the same PvP concerns, but feel that Blizzard will address those concerns rapidly, with clean code, either before or after launch.
Regarding Sony, specifically, they have lost their reputation as a MMO developer over the SWG fiasco. Jump to Lightspeed is apparently causing all sorts of bugs in the looting tables for the ground game, and people's items have been randomly disappearing since they started patching the code, I hear. The word on the street is that EQ2 is not ready yet either, although not as catastrophically bad as SWG at release. Given that Sony never got the 1 million customer base they predicted for SWG, they are hurting and in need of both market share and operating cash to keep their boats afloat.
Tons of players are not going to play EQ2 (which will be a decent game, for its genre), due to their experiences with their other buggy releases. This is going to be a tough holiday season for game developers. A lot of the products they are putting out are extremely well made and very time consuming, I suspect a lot of players may only be able to tackle 2-3 of them until the end of the year. A lot of people will take a "wait and see" attitude on early MMO releases, given that they have a boatload of solid single player console and PC games to keep them busy until the mess sorts itself out.
Blizzard can sit on WoW as long as they want. It has massive hype, and is in better shape than any MMO I have ever played, and it is still in Beta. They have a built in base of single player and online gamers waiting for their product, and a mountain of disgruntled MMO players who can bide their time in their less than satifactory worlds, until WoW comes out. Blizzard also drips with credibility regarding their quality control process, an increasingly important asset for anyone in the MMO market.
My roommate is playing this right now. And I am working what may be a 16 hour day. By the time I get home the controller is gonna be stuck to her hand and I won't get to play until she passes out from exhaustion.
As a veteran SWG player, my advice is to stay the hell away from SWG and it's expansion for at least 3 months. It is extremely likely that the bugs that this expansion ships with and the exploits it makes possible will make the game suck even more for several months. The core game still suffers from serious problems that were known in its beta and have been irritating customers since launch.
They are trying to get this product to market before EQ2 and WoW divide and conquer the MMO retail dollar, and from SOE, an early or on time launch means you are paying to be in beta.
You forgot that it also has the Sony Online Entertainment stigma against it. Their games are associated with bugs and poor management. Many players of SWG have sworn never to play a SOE MMO again.
...It will kick ass. I have the boxed set from Vice City, and it is totally worth owning. Nothing better than having that "Living in Vice City" feel as you tool around in your shitty car, trying to drift corners and wishing you had a pair of Uzis.
At the DNC in 2000 in Los Angeles, LAPD went wild with these things on a nearby black block. In addition to being innacurate, even at ranges as short as 10-20 feet, the dispersal of the pepper cloud makes them a general area irritant, affecting both the targets and those who are unfortunate enough to be near them. I also saw LAPD use these on a person who had climbed about 10-12 feet up on a pole and was carrying a banner with one hand. They shot him about 20 times before he fell onto the crowd below. Had there not been people under him, he would probably have been seriously, and quite possibly permanently injured. I will also note that when I saw these weapons used, the police were firing from behind a razor wire topped, concrete barrier reinforced chainling fence. They were in no danger, no one was in any danger, they chose to put people in danger, knowing that they would not be able to make any arrests, or be able to treat injured persons, should anyone have sustianed serious injury.
My concern about the use of these particular weapons and munitions is that they are innacuate and that there is a signifigant chance that usage can anger or irritate uninitended persons, possibly leading to more chaos. Not to mention the potential for serious, permanent disability related to eye injuries.
My other concern is that the marketing of these weapons as non-lethal creates an environment where police forces may feel more comfortable using force to deal with situations that do not require it. This can lead to serious injury or death, civil lawsuits that drain the municipality of resources and poor relations between the police and the community they serve.
I remember Apple's brief flirtation with SCSI. I'm suprised that they don't still make a high end laptop with SCSI for doing video work on the go. That would be an Apple product worth buying.
Hey, I've been playin Leisure Suit larry games since I was 6 or 7 years old. I don't care if the series changes grapically or in style. If Al Lowe wrote it, I would run out and buy it. Every product he has ever made has been fun to play. I have no loyalty, as a consumer, to the game, or the characters within. I have loyalty for the guys who made it.
The cost of living has not dropped, anywhere in America. The cost of living is going up, for most workers, and real wages are dropping. These are desperate times for many people, and desperate people make short sighted or uniformed decisions, like shopping at Walmart.
Who are you to declare weak economies worth killing? The small business owners who paid fair and decent wages until they were undercut by Walmart were providing good livings for their employees and their families. Those workers, once their jobs are destroyed, then have two choices, work like a dog for the new Walmart, or leave town. That is not how you build a strong economy.
I have seen towns that consist of a single street, filled with businesses, have a Walmart come in, and almost every one of those businesses is empty. I have seen dozens of these towns. And the people who are displaced are left with little choice but to stomach a drastic cut in dignity and pay and work at the Walmart. Wow. How great is that? How would you like it if that happened in your industry or business. Most large businesses require an interaction with local small businesses and communities in order to function. Walmart operates in defiance and animosity to its neighbors. That is not a successful plan for long term business groth.
I find that difficult to believe. I have gone through tough economic times, as a sudent, and later as a worker. I have never been unable to afford the basic food I need to survive, although I have had to live without some of the luxuries that I would like to enjoy at times. Also, if your economic straights are so dire, have you considered government support? There are many grant programs available to young people to help them while they are in school, and there are various forms of support for people who cannot afford to buy food. These programs are there to help people as they work their way up the ladder, and there is no shame in accepting assistance.
I live in a very poor neigborhood, and I shop in my regular markets, both independent and chain all of the time. I see people who don't speak English, have 3-4 children, etc... in the same line as me and they seem to be able to feed their family just fine. I imagine that these folks fall well below the income status of us/.ers, many of them do not have internet access, let alone the high speed access that most of us enjoy.
I don't see anything wrong with paying even relativly unskilled folks enough to eat and survive for thier labor. I also don't believe that American maufactuers are inefficient. We have high worker costs here, but our factories are some of the most advanced and productive, per worker in the world. I don't think the problem is that the manufacturers are inefficient, I think the problem is that Walmart is putting excessive and destructive pressure on them to push their operations to the breaking point, which makes the economy, in general, more unstable and the workers livelihoods are balanced on a razor thin margin of success or failure.
There are many large stores, like your local supermarket that are well stocked, and have highly paid workers working there. I don't have a Walmart in my community, and I have no problem finding low priced, quailty goods at my local retailers.
If I may analogise loosley, Walmart's method of retail centralisation is a reverse image of Soviet Union style centralisation. It is a simple system, that exists and maintains itself by overwhelming capitalist power(as opposed to overwhelming state communitst power), but at the same time it breeds massive problems wherever it touches(like the Soviet system). The problem is not that Walmart wants to run a highly organised, large scale retail operation, one who's primary goal is to maximize shareholder value and market share, it is that the problems it creates in its wake are so serious and damaging to the local and national economy, that it cannot sustain itself in the long run. It functions like a parasite, eventually either it or the host dies.
Our economy and communities functioned very well, with high levels of effiency before the existence of Walmats and similar retailers, and I think we would do well institute legislation locally and nationally that brings their business practices in line with the damages they inflict on the economy. We have no problem telling factories, which damage the environment, that they have to pay for the costs of doing business, I feel that we should approach these mega retailers in much the same way.
Yes, the penetration and presence of Walmart into the retail sector is immense.
I spent a summer travelling across the US 2 years ago, and I was totally shocked to see how the focus of most small towns is a single Walmert, often surrounded by the abandoned hulks of their former competitors, small businesses. In many small towns or even small cities, Walmart is the only place to buy many consumer goods, or the only place that you can do anything resembling one stop shopping. In these towns, they are not competing with the other large retailers, the other large retailers often never opened stores in markets that small. They are directly competing with family owned small businesses, and they are taking the right out of the market.
By doing this, they are carving out a niche for themselves that will be very hard to displace, should the other large retailers come to their territory to compete with them. Walmart's unique system of distribution and their predatory relationships with their suppliers will keep their position solid for some time to come.
To the benefit of everyone?
These large retailers, especially Walmart, gouge the state and local governments of the communities that allow them to operate. They do this by paying their workforce so little, that many of them are forced to rely on government support to survive and raise their families. They do this by desrtoying sucessful small businesses and destroying the character of business districts. They are involved in a race to the bottom where their low prices are sustained only by government welfare for them and their employeees.
Walmart also forces maufacturing businesses to accept disastrously low margins on their products, in order to sell in Walmart stores and maintain their market share. This is costing America tens of thousands of good paying manufacturing jobs, as manufacturers are forced to hold of on hiring, or even downsize, in order to maintain their shelf space at Walmart. Which further affects the tax base, locally and nationally. Walmart essentially redistributes resources and capital in a manner that is counterproductive to the citizenry and the government they depend on.
In other words, their business model is incompatable with the goals of our society as a whole and is forcing economic changes and pressures upon it that in the long term are damaging to that society's ability to function.
To the benefit of Walmart? Yes, for now.
To the benefit of everyone? No.
Given the technical issues involved, I imagine that solo sports would be the first sports to be MMO worthy. They tend to have developable stats, and some of them, especially skateboarding hae the ability to be portrayed in a virtual world environment, which team sports lack. to play a team sport, you have to meet up and play as a n organised group for a set period of time. I really don't ever see this as a big chunk of the market, given the lag issues involved and the nature of getting groups of folks together to play organised games.
Slashdot Mirror
Mysteriously smooth? Could it be a bowling ball?
Dude, this isn't Commmunist Russia where all work must be put to the benefit of the state.
This guy basically developed his own hard and soft platform for developing NES games from scratch. he deserves mad props for that. Respect what Brian has chosen to do with his spare time. Which is frankly more than most of us do in our spare time.
Someone get this man a beer. The greatest system (NES) + the most addictive non-puzzle game of all time = Motherfucking genuis.
Don't forget that the current adminstration actually believes actively in god, in some cases, claiming that their political decisions are guided by god or their relationship with god. So from their perspective, this might constitute an actual threat. As completely ridiculous as that sounds, it's no more absurd than their basic belief in the concept of god.
MMO user fees represent the ongoing costs of developing and operating a service, not "being charged to live." It costs a lot more to maintain and operate a MMO than to develop one.
I know that they may be giving into market pressure to release early in the holiday season, but I think that they have a pretty solid product, and a development team and attitude that will work well towards improving their product in the long run. I haven't been in the EQ2 Beta, but what I did see in te WoW stress test was pretty promising. I think that they will have a good product, even if they go with the November 22nd launch. I have some of the same PvP concerns, but feel that Blizzard will address those concerns rapidly, with clean code, either before or after launch.
Regarding Sony, specifically, they have lost their reputation as a MMO developer over the SWG fiasco. Jump to Lightspeed is apparently causing all sorts of bugs in the looting tables for the ground game, and people's items have been randomly disappearing since they started patching the code, I hear. The word on the street is that EQ2 is not ready yet either, although not as catastrophically bad as SWG at release. Given that Sony never got the 1 million customer base they predicted for SWG, they are hurting and in need of both market share and operating cash to keep their boats afloat. Tons of players are not going to play EQ2 (which will be a decent game, for its genre), due to their experiences with their other buggy releases. This is going to be a tough holiday season for game developers. A lot of the products they are putting out are extremely well made and very time consuming, I suspect a lot of players may only be able to tackle 2-3 of them until the end of the year. A lot of people will take a "wait and see" attitude on early MMO releases, given that they have a boatload of solid single player console and PC games to keep them busy until the mess sorts itself out. Blizzard can sit on WoW as long as they want. It has massive hype, and is in better shape than any MMO I have ever played, and it is still in Beta. They have a built in base of single player and online gamers waiting for their product, and a mountain of disgruntled MMO players who can bide their time in their less than satifactory worlds, until WoW comes out. Blizzard also drips with credibility regarding their quality control process, an increasingly important asset for anyone in the MMO market.
Maybe I should take the steam out of this issue by mentioning that my female roommate is married to my male roommate.
My roommate is playing this right now. And I am working what may be a 16 hour day. By the time I get home the controller is gonna be stuck to her hand and I won't get to play until she passes out from exhaustion.
As a veteran SWG player, my advice is to stay the hell away from SWG and it's expansion for at least 3 months. It is extremely likely that the bugs that this expansion ships with and the exploits it makes possible will make the game suck even more for several months. The core game still suffers from serious problems that were known in its beta and have been irritating customers since launch.
They are trying to get this product to market before EQ2 and WoW divide and conquer the MMO retail dollar, and from SOE, an early or on time launch means you are paying to be in beta.
You forgot that it also has the Sony Online Entertainment stigma against it. Their games are associated with bugs and poor management. Many players of SWG have sworn never to play a SOE MMO again.
I hear SWG is going to have expansions, as soon as their beta finishes, as well.
...It will kick ass. I have the boxed set from Vice City, and it is totally worth owning. Nothing better than having that "Living in Vice City" feel as you tool around in your shitty car, trying to drift corners and wishing you had a pair of Uzis.
At the DNC in 2000 in Los Angeles, LAPD went wild with these things on a nearby black block. In addition to being innacurate, even at ranges as short as 10-20 feet, the dispersal of the pepper cloud makes them a general area irritant, affecting both the targets and those who are unfortunate enough to be near them. I also saw LAPD use these on a person who had climbed about 10-12 feet up on a pole and was carrying a banner with one hand. They shot him about 20 times before he fell onto the crowd below. Had there not been people under him, he would probably have been seriously, and quite possibly permanently injured. I will also note that when I saw these weapons used, the police were firing from behind a razor wire topped, concrete barrier reinforced chainling fence. They were in no danger, no one was in any danger, they chose to put people in danger, knowing that they would not be able to make any arrests, or be able to treat injured persons, should anyone have sustianed serious injury.
My concern about the use of these particular weapons and munitions is that they are innacuate and that there is a signifigant chance that usage can anger or irritate uninitended persons, possibly leading to more chaos. Not to mention the potential for serious, permanent disability related to eye injuries.
My other concern is that the marketing of these weapons as non-lethal creates an environment where police forces may feel more comfortable using force to deal with situations that do not require it. This can lead to serious injury or death, civil lawsuits that drain the municipality of resources and poor relations between the police and the community they serve.
I remember Apple's brief flirtation with SCSI. I'm suprised that they don't still make a high end laptop with SCSI for doing video work on the go. That would be an Apple product worth buying.
2) I so agree. I would kill to have SCSI on my Laptop.
I just got locked into this Russian capsule for 500 days. Well, at least I get cable in here.
Hey, I've been playin Leisure Suit larry games since I was 6 or 7 years old. I don't care if the series changes grapically or in style. If Al Lowe wrote it, I would run out and buy it. Every product he has ever made has been fun to play. I have no loyalty, as a consumer, to the game, or the characters within. I have loyalty for the guys who made it.
The cost of living has not dropped, anywhere in America. The cost of living is going up, for most workers, and real wages are dropping. These are desperate times for many people, and desperate people make short sighted or uniformed decisions, like shopping at Walmart. Who are you to declare weak economies worth killing? The small business owners who paid fair and decent wages until they were undercut by Walmart were providing good livings for their employees and their families. Those workers, once their jobs are destroyed, then have two choices, work like a dog for the new Walmart, or leave town. That is not how you build a strong economy. I have seen towns that consist of a single street, filled with businesses, have a Walmart come in, and almost every one of those businesses is empty. I have seen dozens of these towns. And the people who are displaced are left with little choice but to stomach a drastic cut in dignity and pay and work at the Walmart. Wow. How great is that? How would you like it if that happened in your industry or business. Most large businesses require an interaction with local small businesses and communities in order to function. Walmart operates in defiance and animosity to its neighbors. That is not a successful plan for long term business groth.
I find that difficult to believe. I have gone through tough economic times, as a sudent, and later as a worker. I have never been unable to afford the basic food I need to survive, although I have had to live without some of the luxuries that I would like to enjoy at times. Also, if your economic straights are so dire, have you considered government support? There are many grant programs available to young people to help them while they are in school, and there are various forms of support for people who cannot afford to buy food. These programs are there to help people as they work their way up the ladder, and there is no shame in accepting assistance.
/.ers, many of them do not have internet access, let alone the high speed access that most of us enjoy.
I live in a very poor neigborhood, and I shop in my regular markets, both independent and chain all of the time. I see people who don't speak English, have 3-4 children, etc... in the same line as me and they seem to be able to feed their family just fine. I imagine that these folks fall well below the income status of us
I don't see anything wrong with paying even relativly unskilled folks enough to eat and survive for thier labor. I also don't believe that American maufactuers are inefficient. We have high worker costs here, but our factories are some of the most advanced and productive, per worker in the world. I don't think the problem is that the manufacturers are inefficient, I think the problem is that Walmart is putting excessive and destructive pressure on them to push their operations to the breaking point, which makes the economy, in general, more unstable and the workers livelihoods are balanced on a razor thin margin of success or failure. There are many large stores, like your local supermarket that are well stocked, and have highly paid workers working there. I don't have a Walmart in my community, and I have no problem finding low priced, quailty goods at my local retailers. If I may analogise loosley, Walmart's method of retail centralisation is a reverse image of Soviet Union style centralisation. It is a simple system, that exists and maintains itself by overwhelming capitalist power(as opposed to overwhelming state communitst power), but at the same time it breeds massive problems wherever it touches(like the Soviet system). The problem is not that Walmart wants to run a highly organised, large scale retail operation, one who's primary goal is to maximize shareholder value and market share, it is that the problems it creates in its wake are so serious and damaging to the local and national economy, that it cannot sustain itself in the long run. It functions like a parasite, eventually either it or the host dies. Our economy and communities functioned very well, with high levels of effiency before the existence of Walmats and similar retailers, and I think we would do well institute legislation locally and nationally that brings their business practices in line with the damages they inflict on the economy. We have no problem telling factories, which damage the environment, that they have to pay for the costs of doing business, I feel that we should approach these mega retailers in much the same way.
Yes, the penetration and presence of Walmart into the retail sector is immense.
I spent a summer travelling across the US 2 years ago, and I was totally shocked to see how the focus of most small towns is a single Walmert, often surrounded by the abandoned hulks of their former competitors, small businesses. In many small towns or even small cities, Walmart is the only place to buy many consumer goods, or the only place that you can do anything resembling one stop shopping. In these towns, they are not competing with the other large retailers, the other large retailers often never opened stores in markets that small. They are directly competing with family owned small businesses, and they are taking the right out of the market.
By doing this, they are carving out a niche for themselves that will be very hard to displace, should the other large retailers come to their territory to compete with them. Walmart's unique system of distribution and their predatory relationships with their suppliers will keep their position solid for some time to come.
To the benefit of everyone? These large retailers, especially Walmart, gouge the state and local governments of the communities that allow them to operate. They do this by paying their workforce so little, that many of them are forced to rely on government support to survive and raise their families. They do this by desrtoying sucessful small businesses and destroying the character of business districts. They are involved in a race to the bottom where their low prices are sustained only by government welfare for them and their employeees. Walmart also forces maufacturing businesses to accept disastrously low margins on their products, in order to sell in Walmart stores and maintain their market share. This is costing America tens of thousands of good paying manufacturing jobs, as manufacturers are forced to hold of on hiring, or even downsize, in order to maintain their shelf space at Walmart. Which further affects the tax base, locally and nationally. Walmart essentially redistributes resources and capital in a manner that is counterproductive to the citizenry and the government they depend on. In other words, their business model is incompatable with the goals of our society as a whole and is forcing economic changes and pressures upon it that in the long term are damaging to that society's ability to function. To the benefit of Walmart? Yes, for now. To the benefit of everyone? No.
Given the technical issues involved, I imagine that solo sports would be the first sports to be MMO worthy. They tend to have developable stats, and some of them, especially skateboarding hae the ability to be portrayed in a virtual world environment, which team sports lack. to play a team sport, you have to meet up and play as a n organised group for a set period of time. I really don't ever see this as a big chunk of the market, given the lag issues involved and the nature of getting groups of folks together to play organised games.
Given what comes out of Austin these days from SOE, I'd be willing to give Singapore a try.