He's also awesome as Detective Mosley in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers for PC! He took on a great southern US accent, and so did Tim Curry as Gabriel!
I went to an anime convention a couple of years ago and sat in on a Q/A session with 4 voice actors including Scott McNeil. All the actors, but especially Scott, were always joking around and doing their voices for no reason. It was awesome hearing the one guy say "I love fluffy bunnies" as Cobra Commander and Starscream!
I asked the actors, all anime seiyuus (voice actors), a similar question to the one stated here - what was their opinion of their productions being distributed for free around the internet? Scott said that he didn't care one bit because voice actors are paid a flat fee regardless of the popularity of the show. 2 of the actors who did voices for Dragonball Z agreed with this wholeheartedly.
I get the impression that all but the most high profile voice actors don't see a dime of merchandising fees or other collateral income. It's a shame because these people are very passionate about what they do. The 4 panelists stayed way later than they were supposed to because they loved answering questions. Some people got up on their chairs and peformed some of their own wacky voices and the panelists were very supportive and encouraged them to pursue their dreams. I have a huge respect for these actors - particularly Billy West who is incredibly talented - and I hope the studios realize how hardworking and dedicated they are and reimburse them accordingly.
They said the same thing about Firefox but that's starting to change. Mozilla is fixing holes all the time and I'm starting to see ads that get through Adblock (stupid Mediaplex). This is just an article about security through obscurity - the best kind of security according to too many Apple fans I've talked to.
Faith in obscurity means you'll be totally unprepared when disaster strikes.
I agree with all your statements. Especially this one:
I'm thinking specifically of adventure games where a single guard would cause you to spend twenty minutes trying to avoid them, like Space Quest did at some point I can't exactly recall.
That point hit home. My problem with those sneaking sequences is my same problem with the fighting in Dreamfall. You're right when you say it's the implementation that I have a problem with, not the fact that they have these sequences at all. Crappy sneaking is just as crappy as crappy fighting. I liked how the Leisure Suit Larry series took care of that - action sequences could be skipped but you'd forgo some points by doing so.
Guh.. now you've reminded me about this super annoying sneaking sequence in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. These stupid zombies are super slow but their "clipping" box is huge so you can't even get near them without having your brains nibbled on. At least it's one of those sequences where adjusting the speed slider makes only your character faster so you can zip around them like lightning.
"I actually kinda like that the game actually gives the option for violence, as opposed to TLJ. The idea that the second the enemy attacks you you're dead in an adventure game is kinda lame. Kick them in the face and keep going."
Many games give the protagonist few "hit points" and work just fine: Thief, Metal Gear, Pac Man, just about every other adventure game ever made... Not every game is a run and gun smash-a-thon.
Adventure games are about finding creative solutions to problems. Hitting a guy in the face is not a creative solution. There are few better adventure games than The Longest Journey (opinion), but there are many better face hitting games than Dreamfall (fact).
The 'fights' in Dreamfall consist of repeatedly hitting buttons for twenty seconds.
And what does that add to the game? Time? Busywork? Certainly not challenge or depth. Wouldn't you rather have seen an expertly choreographed cut scene instead of watching 2 mannequins use pushbutton kung-fu grip action? The fights are bad, not hard. That's. What. I'm. Talking. About.
(Luckily, everyone you control in a fight is actually a skilled fighter, and I don't think that's an accident.)
It's not an accident, it's a convenient excuse to engage 12 year-olds with Xboxes. I look past this worthless Mickey Mouse combat system and picture an executive at Funcom saying "Your game needs a bullet on the back of the box about combat or we won't capture the male teen demographic. I know your game is done, but surely you can slap in some combat."
Did you play the original, The Longest Journey? Do you think TLJ and Dreamfall were designed for the same audience? I know you consider the combat to be a conquerable obstacle, but do you like it or just tolerate it?
The idea that the second the enemy attacks you you're dead in an adventure game is kinda lame. Kick them in the face and keep going.
I disagree. Combat has been done many ways in adventure games - some good, some bad. Monkey Island's swordfighting was awesome because you won by learning to best your opponent in an insult contest, and you HAD to lose several times to learn the rules. This scheme worked in context and was original. Dreamfall doesn't make sense in this respect. The protagonist is a black belt, yet she has 2 moves and she does them both poorly. Not every story's protagonist has to be Rambo. Horror movies are suspenseful because the heroes are overpowered and in constant danger.
Re:You have to empathise with game designers
on
Gamer's Kryptonite
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· Score: 1
That damsel would be done for if I was playing the game. I'd be too distracted with my x-ray vision. Ooh la la!
To be honest I think this guy might be too blame with his "getting adventures into the mainstream" crap. ...
This guy says it himself, there is a market for old scumm games but then totally fails to realize what this means by saying he wants to add RPG elements. Hello! There is a market for old scumm games.
THANK YOU for saying the obvious!! This really pissed me off when I read it. I got about 8 hours into Dreamfall, the sequel to The Longest Journey, and I can't stomach another second. They made it a 3D dual analog game with Shaq-Fu fighting sequences. The story is still solid and so far there have been some satisfying and intriguing continuations of old characters' stories, but the control scheme is a nightmare. Why would the fans of the point-and-click game be interested in this? Why would people who hadn't played the original want to play a sequel that continues the story?
The only really innovative adventure game I've seen in a long time is Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy but with n00dity). This game took an admittedly stale genre and breathed tons of new life into it. It had a fantastic no-button control scheme where you gestured with the analog sticks to perform actions, it featured cinematic camera angles that implied your next course of action, and the dialogue and subject matter were mature and not watered down.
Adventure gamers have grown up with fond memories. Dreamfall and Gilbert's travesty-to-be do not pander to the people who want these games the most, and they're apeish half-baked caricatures of genre busters like God of War and Metal Gear. When we want beat-em-ups and Diablo clones we'll buy them. Gilbert got it right when he said the story is its own reward in adventures of old, so don't make us wade through hundreds of robotic Foot Clan to hear then next 7 lines of dialogue.
Ooh look, I unlocked a 3-headed monkey costume for Guybrush! Now let's play chapter 2 scene 4 over and over and over until I collect enough grogs to view some concept art! Wow, a wireframe screen cap of the men of low moral fibre! Thank you for reminding me that I'm playing a game at my desk!
Even the latest Leisure Suit Larry game was better than Dreamfall, somehow. That game was basically a 1st year computer science assignment Warioware Inc. with lewd scenes, but the dialogue was clever and funny! I don't know what it says about me that I was willing to sit through 10 hours of garbage mini games to see boobies (wait, I DO know what that says about me) but the fact that I can't stand Dreamfall speaks volumes about how far Ragnar Tornquist missed the mark. If TLJ wasn't such an amazing standalone game I'd be mournful, but THANKFULLY my memory isn't tarnished by the awful sequel.
What about hint books and help lines? Publishers were more than happy to sell you the answers to the real stumpers. I have a couple of those ugly old white Sierra hintbooks with the red cellophane readers. They were $15, I believe, which is pretty steep now that I think of it.
NVidia is not "officially" supporting SLI for the 7950. This card has 2 GPUs so it is effectively an SLI card on one board. This has huge advantages over traditional SLI since it requires less power and cooling and affords greater speed due to the shortened data paths. Also, of course, it's far less expensive than a pair of 7900GTXes.
"Officially" being the operative word, NVidia is working with some high profile builders (i.e. Alienware) for dual and quad SLI solutions with the 7950. NVidia has stated that they will not provide drivers or support for enthusiasts, but we can be sure at least one party will homebrew something up.
Batman is cool because he's a normal guy with cool toys. He's more like Cain and Abel than a bash script because he has the tools for any job. Batman is a way easier subject of a video game premise.
Re:You have to empathise with game designers
on
Gamer's Kryptonite
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· Score: 1
Your game idea sounds totally amazing! I would love to play an RPG showing a young Superman coming to terms with his differences and guiding through the tribulations of youth and finding his place in a fragile world. It would make sense for him to level up and "awaken" to powers he's always had the potential for.
Too bad DC is such a litigious, monstrous company or I'd recommend you submit your idea to them. I think my fond optimism is probably a zillion times better than DC's doubtlessly half-assed implementation could ever been.
Big kudos to you, Rachel Lucid! You've made me reconsider my original comment. There are many interactive stories to be told about this character who is invulnerable in many ways but very vulnerable in others.
I don't know how widespread these places were, but in Toronto Sega opened several huge arcade centres called "Playdium". They had all the latest arcade cabinets in their hugest and coolest forms, plus tried n' true titles and retro areas. Plus they featured batting cages, rock climbing, go karts, motion simulators, Skee-ball and other ticket games, and I don't even know what else because I could never make it all the way around those places.
For some reason most of these places flopped. I believe they had 3 locations including an all-hours store in the entertainment district downtown. Strangely, that was the location to close first. Now the only one left is the first store in Mississauga which is a good 40KM from downtown.
They sound great in theory but in the end they're annoying. You have to stand in huge lines to play anything good and there's no "code of honour" to keep people from continuing their games indefinitely. Games are all priced differently and you pay via arbitrary "credits" on paycards that invariably leave you with 4.7 unusable and non-refundable doodads. Many card sliders are broken and either prevent you from playing, steal your credits, or require multiple swipes which take longer than a continue countdown timer.
These places are great for tourists but, aside from the odd $20 allnighter, are too expensive and too much of a drive for residents to call a regular hangout.
I, for one, would much sooner play PC on my 19" monitor or PS2 on my 31" TV than get jostled around by tittering tweens 45 minutes from my house.
You have to empathise with game designers
on
Gamer's Kryptonite
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Superman is one of the most hated superheroes because he has too many powers and is invulnerable to everything but space rocks from a jillion miles away. He's an overpowered flying side of beef with no natural predators. There's tons of room to write stories about such a character, but designing a challenging but sensible premise for a video game is really tough with Superman.
what happens 2 weeks after it's public release? Flaws. Flaws, flaws, horribly unexplainable flaws that should have been caught with some basic QA *before* release.
Isn't that what public beta tries to quash? No doubt this IE beta phones home after every session to report stats and issues.
Google's business methodology might not be the strongest, but it's because they can afford to be. I get the impression that they are just big kids with a huge monetary playground. They love tinkering and they love catering to other tinkerers.
I adore many of Google's new services - especially because I don't have to pay for them. I use Suggest, Gmail, Calendar, Video, Talk (with VOIP), and Maps all the time, and I occasionally find uses for Earth, Sets, and Froogle. Most of all, I love playing with all this new stuff they keep throwing at me!
Who could have thought anyone would object to clothes-on softcore adult material in a game rated M ("for Mature")?
A few days ago I watched a South Park episode called "Fun With Weapons" where the kids accidentally hurt someone with their real weapons, but get in trouble because one of the appears naked in public.
But hey, there's no such thing as bad publicity, right?
I agree that a right wing governement would be more likely to go down this route but then how on earth did this get through Spanish Parliament with the Spanish Socialist Workers Party in power?!
Just because they've introduced a copyright tariff, doesn't mean the system will become corrupted like CRIA is trying to do in Canada. However, it's questionable whether a socialist party would agree to a tax that assumes the only use for writable media is to duplicate copyrighted material. Then again, a cheap catch-all tax is better than some megalomaniacal company suing people left and right.
That's not what happens in Canada though. We pay the levy and the recording industry, who fought so hard to have it invoked, now wants to make copying illegal. Plus our government is paying the industry money specifically so that it can be lobbied against. I don't know whether the recording industry will win but I think it's more likely to happen with a Conservative government in power.
I love the idea of Second Life but I hate the implementation. I have a fairly beefy PC but the game runs like ass unless I kill the draw distance. There are menus upon menus upon menus that I just can't find my way around. The lag is so bad sometimes that I don't move for seconds after I press a key.
I much prefer There, not that I play these pseudogames any more. SL is the winner in content but There is superior in accessibility.
MDK freaking owns! I actually finished that game in software mode before realizing I had to run another EXE to run it in 3D! Doy...
Aside from all the other awesomeness crammed into that game, that's the title that made me aware of the fantastic composer Tommy Tallarico who also cohosts the Electric Playground and Reviews on the Run TV shows.
Slashdot Mirror
He's also awesome as Detective Mosley in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers for PC! He took on a great southern US accent, and so did Tim Curry as Gabriel!
I went to an anime convention a couple of years ago and sat in on a Q/A session with 4 voice actors including Scott McNeil. All the actors, but especially Scott, were always joking around and doing their voices for no reason. It was awesome hearing the one guy say "I love fluffy bunnies" as Cobra Commander and Starscream!
I asked the actors, all anime seiyuus (voice actors), a similar question to the one stated here - what was their opinion of their productions being distributed for free around the internet? Scott said that he didn't care one bit because voice actors are paid a flat fee regardless of the popularity of the show. 2 of the actors who did voices for Dragonball Z agreed with this wholeheartedly.
I get the impression that all but the most high profile voice actors don't see a dime of merchandising fees or other collateral income. It's a shame because these people are very passionate about what they do. The 4 panelists stayed way later than they were supposed to because they loved answering questions. Some people got up on their chairs and peformed some of their own wacky voices and the panelists were very supportive and encouraged them to pursue their dreams. I have a huge respect for these actors - particularly Billy West who is incredibly talented - and I hope the studios realize how hardworking and dedicated they are and reimburse them accordingly.
They said the same thing about Firefox but that's starting to change. Mozilla is fixing holes all the time and I'm starting to see ads that get through Adblock (stupid Mediaplex). This is just an article about security through obscurity - the best kind of security according to too many Apple fans I've talked to.
Faith in obscurity means you'll be totally unprepared when disaster strikes.
I agree with all your statements. Especially this one:
I'm thinking specifically of adventure games where a single guard would cause you to spend twenty minutes trying to avoid them, like Space Quest did at some point I can't exactly recall.
That point hit home. My problem with those sneaking sequences is my same problem with the fighting in Dreamfall. You're right when you say it's the implementation that I have a problem with, not the fact that they have these sequences at all. Crappy sneaking is just as crappy as crappy fighting. I liked how the Leisure Suit Larry series took care of that - action sequences could be skipped but you'd forgo some points by doing so.
Guh.. now you've reminded me about this super annoying sneaking sequence in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. These stupid zombies are super slow but their "clipping" box is huge so you can't even get near them without having your brains nibbled on. At least it's one of those sequences where adjusting the speed slider makes only your character faster so you can zip around them like lightning.
"I actually kinda like that the game actually gives the option for violence, as opposed to TLJ. The idea that the second the enemy attacks you you're dead in an adventure game is kinda lame. Kick them in the face and keep going."
Many games give the protagonist few "hit points" and work just fine: Thief, Metal Gear, Pac Man, just about every other adventure game ever made... Not every game is a run and gun smash-a-thon.
Adventure games are about finding creative solutions to problems. Hitting a guy in the face is not a creative solution. There are few better adventure games than The Longest Journey (opinion), but there are many better face hitting games than Dreamfall (fact).
The 'fights' in Dreamfall consist of repeatedly hitting buttons for twenty seconds.
And what does that add to the game? Time? Busywork? Certainly not challenge or depth. Wouldn't you rather have seen an expertly choreographed cut scene instead of watching 2 mannequins use pushbutton kung-fu grip action? The fights are bad, not hard. That's. What. I'm. Talking. About.
(Luckily, everyone you control in a fight is actually a skilled fighter, and I don't think that's an accident.)
It's not an accident, it's a convenient excuse to engage 12 year-olds with Xboxes. I look past this worthless Mickey Mouse combat system and picture an executive at Funcom saying "Your game needs a bullet on the back of the box about combat or we won't capture the male teen demographic. I know your game is done, but surely you can slap in some combat."
Did you play the original, The Longest Journey? Do you think TLJ and Dreamfall were designed for the same audience? I know you consider the combat to be a conquerable obstacle, but do you like it or just tolerate it?
The idea that the second the enemy attacks you you're dead in an adventure game is kinda lame. Kick them in the face and keep going.
I disagree. Combat has been done many ways in adventure games - some good, some bad. Monkey Island's swordfighting was awesome because you won by learning to best your opponent in an insult contest, and you HAD to lose several times to learn the rules. This scheme worked in context and was original. Dreamfall doesn't make sense in this respect. The protagonist is a black belt, yet she has 2 moves and she does them both poorly. Not every story's protagonist has to be Rambo. Horror movies are suspenseful because the heroes are overpowered and in constant danger.
That damsel would be done for if I was playing the game. I'd be too distracted with my x-ray vision. Ooh la la!
To be honest I think this guy might be too blame with his "getting adventures into the mainstream" crap.
...
This guy says it himself, there is a market for old scumm games but then totally fails to realize what this means by saying he wants to add RPG elements. Hello! There is a market for old scumm games.
THANK YOU for saying the obvious!! This really pissed me off when I read it. I got about 8 hours into Dreamfall, the sequel to The Longest Journey, and I can't stomach another second. They made it a 3D dual analog game with Shaq-Fu fighting sequences. The story is still solid and so far there have been some satisfying and intriguing continuations of old characters' stories, but the control scheme is a nightmare. Why would the fans of the point-and-click game be interested in this? Why would people who hadn't played the original want to play a sequel that continues the story?
The only really innovative adventure game I've seen in a long time is Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy but with n00dity). This game took an admittedly stale genre and breathed tons of new life into it. It had a fantastic no-button control scheme where you gestured with the analog sticks to perform actions, it featured cinematic camera angles that implied your next course of action, and the dialogue and subject matter were mature and not watered down.
Adventure gamers have grown up with fond memories. Dreamfall and Gilbert's travesty-to-be do not pander to the people who want these games the most, and they're apeish half-baked caricatures of genre busters like God of War and Metal Gear. When we want beat-em-ups and Diablo clones we'll buy them. Gilbert got it right when he said the story is its own reward in adventures of old, so don't make us wade through hundreds of robotic Foot Clan to hear then next 7 lines of dialogue.
Ooh look, I unlocked a 3-headed monkey costume for Guybrush! Now let's play chapter 2 scene 4 over and over and over until I collect enough grogs to view some concept art! Wow, a wireframe screen cap of the men of low moral fibre! Thank you for reminding me that I'm playing a game at my desk!
Even the latest Leisure Suit Larry game was better than Dreamfall, somehow. That game was basically a 1st year computer science assignment Warioware Inc. with lewd scenes, but the dialogue was clever and funny! I don't know what it says about me that I was willing to sit through 10 hours of garbage mini games to see boobies (wait, I DO know what that says about me) but the fact that I can't stand Dreamfall speaks volumes about how far Ragnar Tornquist missed the mark. If TLJ wasn't such an amazing standalone game I'd be mournful, but THANKFULLY my memory isn't tarnished by the awful sequel.
What about hint books and help lines? Publishers were more than happy to sell you the answers to the real stumpers. I have a couple of those ugly old white Sierra hintbooks with the red cellophane readers. They were $15, I believe, which is pretty steep now that I think of it.
NVidia is not "officially" supporting SLI for the 7950. This card has 2 GPUs so it is effectively an SLI card on one board. This has huge advantages over traditional SLI since it requires less power and cooling and affords greater speed due to the shortened data paths. Also, of course, it's far less expensive than a pair of 7900GTXes.
"Officially" being the operative word, NVidia is working with some high profile builders (i.e. Alienware) for dual and quad SLI solutions with the 7950. NVidia has stated that they will not provide drivers or support for enthusiasts, but we can be sure at least one party will homebrew something up.
Batman is cool because he's a normal guy with cool toys. He's more like Cain and Abel than a bash script because he has the tools for any job. Batman is a way easier subject of a video game premise.
Your game idea sounds totally amazing! I would love to play an RPG showing a young Superman coming to terms with his differences and guiding through the tribulations of youth and finding his place in a fragile world. It would make sense for him to level up and "awaken" to powers he's always had the potential for.
Too bad DC is such a litigious, monstrous company or I'd recommend you submit your idea to them. I think my fond optimism is probably a zillion times better than DC's doubtlessly half-assed implementation could ever been.
Big kudos to you, Rachel Lucid! You've made me reconsider my original comment. There are many interactive stories to be told about this character who is invulnerable in many ways but very vulnerable in others.
I don't know how widespread these places were, but in Toronto Sega opened several huge arcade centres called "Playdium". They had all the latest arcade cabinets in their hugest and coolest forms, plus tried n' true titles and retro areas. Plus they featured batting cages, rock climbing, go karts, motion simulators, Skee-ball and other ticket games, and I don't even know what else because I could never make it all the way around those places.
For some reason most of these places flopped. I believe they had 3 locations including an all-hours store in the entertainment district downtown. Strangely, that was the location to close first. Now the only one left is the first store in Mississauga which is a good 40KM from downtown.
They sound great in theory but in the end they're annoying. You have to stand in huge lines to play anything good and there's no "code of honour" to keep people from continuing their games indefinitely. Games are all priced differently and you pay via arbitrary "credits" on paycards that invariably leave you with 4.7 unusable and non-refundable doodads. Many card sliders are broken and either prevent you from playing, steal your credits, or require multiple swipes which take longer than a continue countdown timer.
These places are great for tourists but, aside from the odd $20 allnighter, are too expensive and too much of a drive for residents to call a regular hangout.
I, for one, would much sooner play PC on my 19" monitor or PS2 on my 31" TV than get jostled around by tittering tweens 45 minutes from my house.
Superman is one of the most hated superheroes because he has too many powers and is invulnerable to everything but space rocks from a jillion miles away. He's an overpowered flying side of beef with no natural predators. There's tons of room to write stories about such a character, but designing a challenging but sensible premise for a video game is really tough with Superman.
what happens 2 weeks after it's public release? Flaws. Flaws, flaws, horribly unexplainable flaws that should have been caught with some basic QA *before* release.
Isn't that what public beta tries to quash? No doubt this IE beta phones home after every session to report stats and issues.
By the way, the Japanese word for king is "oh". It sort of rhymes with the word "grow" if it had no w - "gro".
I heard that the Nintendo mascot was supposed to be named "Monkey Kong" but there was a translation snafu.
But you reminded me of another gawd-arful game name - "Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Offical Game of the Movie"
Google's business methodology might not be the strongest, but it's because they can afford to be. I get the impression that they are just big kids with a huge monetary playground. They love tinkering and they love catering to other tinkerers.
I adore many of Google's new services - especially because I don't have to pay for them. I use Suggest, Gmail, Calendar, Video, Talk (with VOIP), and Maps all the time, and I occasionally find uses for Earth, Sets, and Froogle. Most of all, I love playing with all this new stuff they keep throwing at me!
And that the car is..... rated M for mature....
You fail to mention that the car company hides this pornography in every car and it can be unlocked by anyone with publicly available free tools.
Who could have thought anyone would object to clothes-on softcore adult material in a game rated M ("for Mature")?
A few days ago I watched a South Park episode called "Fun With Weapons" where the kids accidentally hurt someone with their real weapons, but get in trouble because one of the appears naked in public.
But hey, there's no such thing as bad publicity, right?
then how come it's not called a Wristlojackimator?
I agree that a right wing governement would be more likely to go down this route but then how on earth did this get through Spanish Parliament with the Spanish Socialist Workers Party in power?!
Just because they've introduced a copyright tariff, doesn't mean the system will become corrupted like CRIA is trying to do in Canada. However, it's questionable whether a socialist party would agree to a tax that assumes the only use for writable media is to duplicate copyrighted material. Then again, a cheap catch-all tax is better than some megalomaniacal company suing people left and right.
That's not what happens in Canada though. We pay the levy and the recording industry, who fought so hard to have it invoked, now wants to make copying illegal. Plus our government is paying the industry money specifically so that it can be lobbied against. I don't know whether the recording industry will win but I think it's more likely to happen with a Conservative government in power.
y ed-celine-gets-paid.html
I blogged about this a while ago - http://demodulated.blogspot.com/2006/04/i-get-pla
I love the idea of Second Life but I hate the implementation. I have a fairly beefy PC but the game runs like ass unless I kill the draw distance. There are menus upon menus upon menus that I just can't find my way around. The lag is so bad sometimes that I don't move for seconds after I press a key.
I much prefer There, not that I play these pseudogames any more. SL is the winner in content but There is superior in accessibility.
MDK freaking owns! I actually finished that game in software mode before realizing I had to run another EXE to run it in 3D! Doy...
Aside from all the other awesomeness crammed into that game, that's the title that made me aware of the fantastic composer Tommy Tallarico who also cohosts the Electric Playground and Reviews on the Run TV shows.