I also hate the teaser descriptions. I want news on Digg, not coersion to read OTHER news sites. I hate when people write "Read the article to find out which brand of keyboard could slice off your fingers!" when 2 additional words could have told me so.
Ico's a great example because it involves simple tactile gestures like hand-holding, but the concept of wordless devotion is pretty powerful as well.
Does this devotion, spoken or otherwise, have to be between 2 people? Can't it be between a man and his purpose? Rez, a kaleidoscopic rail shooter, is about as artsy as they come, but there's no dialog except for in a hidden level. Geometry Wars is visually stunning and exciting but it portrays no purpose other than to survive. Even The Sims can feature the life of a gifted loner who shuns society but spends all day painting still life portraits of fruit bowls.
So conversation is the border between artistic and non-artistic games? I say Pac Man is just as apt at portraying the human condition. He eats because he must to advance. He escapes his predators and he hunts his prey. Just because he doesn't talk about it, doesn't mean he's any less vulnerable or pitiable.
I agree with him for most games (99% or so), but there are some notable exceptions. Planescape:Torment for instance, that whole game is centered around questions such as "Can anything change the nature of a man? Would you REALLY want to be immortal?
By this rationale almost any video game can be called art. Would Pac Man really want to be immortal? What can he do besides eat and run? What would he do in the maze after he'd eaten all the ghosts and dots?
Yours is a kind of pessimistic take on art. IANAArtist but I knows what I likes. You describe the hoity toity side of "fine" art; the kind that only seasoned critics and professors will understand - the legalese of art. It reminds me of a recent King of the Hill episode where Bobby takes a class in clowning, only to find he was a better clown before he learned how.
And indeed, Ebert is a master of deconstructing film. He makes a zillion observations every minute of every film. When it comes to interpreting other media I don't think he is qualified. He can't see the forest through the trees. He busies himself finding ways that games are not movies or literature, when it's so obvious to the rest of us that it's completely different.
Reading between the lines I can see you've got the right idea on this. Art isn't art because people tell you so. It's art when it draws you in, when you understand it on more than the surface level, and it gives you pleasure and meaning. The Artful Dodger finds art in pickpocketing. Robert Pursig finds art in motorcycle maintenance. Mandelbrot finds art in math.
Much of today's generation finds art in interactive storytelling, and perhaps we are more correct than any generation before us. Not only are we consumers of the artistic visions of all the game designers, graphic and sound designers, programmers, manual writers, etc. that make the game, but we as gamers are artists ourselves because we compose our own unique stories as we play. Whatever part of the human condition is left out of the box is injected by the consumers as they paint their own caricatures onto the pastel landscape.
Think of it like this. Do you know what local delicacy means? It means nobody else in the world wants to eat it. If a game truly became art would anyone really want to play it?
Take the game of life, the best game I can think of akin to a local delicacy. (http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.ht ml) This is a game in the loosest sense of the word in which pixels represent communities of organisms who will flourish or die depending on the number of neighbours. You play it once and you learn a little something about populations. Maybe you don't play it more than once, or maybe you draw your name or a squirrel, or maybe you experiment with it for hours. No matter how you play it, it's obvious that the game itself is nothing but an empty grid without human participation. What you put in is exactly what you get out of it. Isn't this true of all games?
Roger Ebert is an old man who is unsurpassed in his craft, but should not be taken seriously on this matter. He is accustomed to watching movies and reading books passively, and is not prepared to criticize a medium that requires him to participate proactively. He is a niche journalist who has thus discredited himself from interpreting other niches.
So give interpretive dance a chance. Jump up on stage and flail around with that psychopath. Maybe it's clearly art while you're onstage.
Games will be made on the PS3, 360, and Revolution that are enjoyable. But games will only be made for the Revolution that are immersable, which just compounds the enjoyment.
Unless the game itself features a character reaching its arm out, I don't think the Rev controller will really be that much more immersive than a gamepad. If the controller moves a spaceship or Mario's body or even a mouse cursor, players will still have that extra degree of separation as they translate their physical moves to the onscreen action.
You're absolutely correct in a certain context, but by your argument the inverse works in favour of dual analog for flight sims, for example.
Also, the old VR\Virtual Boy\Powerglove argument comes into play here - you lose all immersiveness when you accidentally whack a lamp in your living room!
I agree with you mostly, but I can see how a designer like Takahashi would have an opinion like this. He is more interested in revolutionizing the existing system than bringing in a new standard that every game will have to abide by. He's obviously a veteran to games but he's new to the industry. In my opinion the Revolution is the Katamari of consoles - different and simple!
We Love Katamari was started without the say-so of Takahashi, who later joined the project to ensure quality control of his brand. Me And My Katamari for PSP was made entirely without Takahashi.
Smart! You can actually line your wallet with tinfoil (stick a sheet in the billfold) to block or garble the outgoign RFID broadcast. That way you only reveal your code when you take the card out of your wallet.
The way I see it, even if the effective broadcast range is 3 feet, what's to stop terrorists from strolling down the halls of an airport, duplicating a valid RFID transmission on a programmable card, and assuming that person's identity? Or for other identity thieves to do the same thing, capturing hundreds of valid IDs in minutes, and selling them to interested third parties? This could be done passively and completely undetected!
Even within the fraud-free bubble the government imagines this technology will flourish in, you gotta love the US for transitioning from a "papers please" state to a "papers if you don't please" 1984.
There are 2 issues being argued here and the line is being blurred. A PPU will spawn new kinds of physics based games, yes, but it will also assist "ordinary" games in looking more realistic. Gameplay is an important aspect of games, but so is suspension of disbelief.
All you naysayers would have sung the same song in the pre-3DFX days, trust me. How many modern console games would be fundamentally different without 3D acceleration? Does Viewtiful Joe's camera ever rotate? Wouldn't Tekken be just as playable with simulated 3D dodging? Does a hockey game that scrolls up and down need 3D modelled characters? In general, don't hand-drawn 2D sprites look way more detailed than hardware-accelerated meshes? And yet we all own 3D cards to crunch the hell out of polys.
If and when this technology takes off, whether it's onboard or in a GPU or in a standoff PCI card, you'll love this technology when you finally adopt it. It will even make His noodly appendage more noodly!!
Does the prospect of realistic physics really ruin a game?
Is it really more fun when it takes 30 sword slashes to cut down an opponent in an RPG? Is it more fun when you hack a guy 15 times in the face with a dagger, then stab him and the knee and he dies? Is it fun when you block a swinging mace with your wooden bow and you don't even get knocked backward? Or how you can carry 349 of 350 pounds, and then pick up a coin and be completely immobilized?
Yes, many of these are gameplay mechanics that can be fixed without buying a $250 PCI card, but they are also elements that accelerated physics could really spruce up. Just because Oblivion in particular is a good game, doesn't mean it wouldn't be better if the world were more believable.
Thank you for lauding the intended use of this technology instead of poo-poohing it like everyone else here. Racing, flight sims, sports games, fighting games, and a zillion new kinds of games could be made to take advantage of a PPU. And nobody says realistic physics have to mean reduced gameplay or fun. Not every physics-based game has to be as hard as GPL.
Or you can buy the house in Skingrad, enter the house, walk out onto the balcony, walk back in through the balcony door, run to the other side of the world, and get arrested for breaking in.
I'm not sure HL2 is too far ahead of its time - at least not from a "characterization" standpoint. I think people just resent the fact that Gordon is a busy guy who doesn't have time to ask revolutionary solder #35 what his favourite salad dressing is. How much characterization do you need in a game where you're running like mad from place to place?
One thing I found lacking in HL2 that was there to some extent in the original was dynamic arenas. By this I mean enclosed areas where you have to kill everyone (or almost everyone) to get through, and you'll have to quickload a few times to do so without getting explodered. HL1 and other games like Halo and Call of Duty had these awesome arenas with friends and foes duking it out, and whether or not you participated in the fray there would be a different outcome every single time. Sure there are some such arenas in HL2, but not as many and they are nowhere near as dynamic.
Overall I would still rate HL1 in the mid 90s. It's not only a watermark setter in game design and a revolution in first-person storytelling, it's a great game through and through. It's always engaging, has great variety, and it's damn hard. HL2 is a great game as well but it's more linear - like a novel compared to a choose your own adventure book. Even if you don't have a hankering to replay the sequel right after finishing it (though I did) you'll play it again in a few months and still be astounded at the detail, but I must admit that HL1 is the game with more longevity.
Fun fact - my girlfriend noticed me playing Half Life: Source and remarked "What are you playing? It looks just like Half Life 2!"
Most copy protection schemes simply encrypt the main executable file (e.g., GAME.EXE) to prevent crackers from reverse engineering the source. In addition to encryption, Starforce works like a rootkit to install bottom-level drivers ("ring 0 drivers") that directly control your CDROM drives by sitting just below Windows' built in IDE drivers, therefore controlling all CDROM access even for discs not protected by Starforce. Crackers have found it exceedingly difficult to squeeze code between ring 0 drivers and Windows' IDE drivers so many Starforce-protected games remain uncracked. Unfortunately, Starforce isn't compatible with all IDE chipsets and CDROM drives so it can cause Windows to read CDs incorrectly, cause burning software to find no CDRW drives, and even can reboot your computer without warning if it mistakenly thinks you're trying to circumvent the protection. Because Starforce's drivers are hidden it can be extremely difficult to tell whether you have it installed at all, and whether Starforce is the cause of such problems.
If Starforce had listened to its indirectly paying customers they could have made a better product, but instead their PR people called all naysayers idiots and criminals and touted their product as perfect. It's mainly because of this attitude (but also because of the bugs) that I'm glad they're losing such a high profile client as Ubisoft, and hopefully many more.
I think posting my screenshot detracted from my argument. Feel free to disregard as many people seem to be trumping my example left and right.
It's unfortunate that Windows has caused so many of us to thank our lucky stars when an OS doesn't kernel panic. I'm really happy to finally have a Windows OS that excels in so many areas. Security exploits (and updates that make you reboot) aside, Windows XP is the product that really restored my faith in MS.
However, I stand by my argument that XP (or any software for that matter) performs best with the leanest UI possible. Luna does nothing for functionality. Whether this will be true of Vista remains to be seen, but ol' Billy had better not put all his pirate eggs in one basket since many Windows skinning apps already proclaim themselves Vista complient.
I'm happy that this decision was related to bad PR. Starforce posted links to torrents of pirated games that didn't use their protection, they blew off legitimate complaints as whining from pirates, they held an unwinnable contest (regarding hardware failure) that didn't address the most contested issues (software failure), and the CEO is a pompous loudmouthed ass.
I have the utmost respect for the programmers of Starforce as it is a creative solution to a widespread problem, but such talented engineers are working for the wrong company. I truly feel bad for the programmers because their brilliance is overshadowed by their managers' childishness.
Turn it all off and see for yourself. Boot time is increased, minimizing and maximizing is instant, dragging windows is smoother, and you can fit a LOT more on the screen.
I used to be a theme junkie - I used ThemeXP and Windowblinds and kept like 400MB of themes and boot screens. The day a friend showed me his almost identical PC running way smoother was the day I deleted all that junk.
Just ask yourself - what are you using your computer for? To see marginally attractive windows or to get your crap done?
Yes, this game was friggin hard. I'm not sure there's a market for such a twitchy arcadey experience these days, but I'm all for a remake if it will introduce this gorgeous game to a new generation.
Slashdot Mirror
I also hate the teaser descriptions. I want news on Digg, not coersion to read OTHER news sites. I hate when people write "Read the article to find out which brand of keyboard could slice off your fingers!" when 2 additional words could have told me so.
from comments at http://digg.com/technology/Digg_Censors_Stories_Th at_Offend_Sponsors#c634036
Keng on 12/19/05
Thank you Kevin but shouldn't it still be under stories submitted?
Thanks
kevinrose on 12/19/05
Where do you see it missing?
end of conversation
Ico's a great example because it involves simple tactile gestures like hand-holding, but the concept of wordless devotion is pretty powerful as well.
Does this devotion, spoken or otherwise, have to be between 2 people? Can't it be between a man and his purpose? Rez, a kaleidoscopic rail shooter, is about as artsy as they come, but there's no dialog except for in a hidden level. Geometry Wars is visually stunning and exciting but it portrays no purpose other than to survive. Even The Sims can feature the life of a gifted loner who shuns society but spends all day painting still life portraits of fruit bowls.
Heck, how many paintings have dialogue?
So conversation is the border between artistic and non-artistic games? I say Pac Man is just as apt at portraying the human condition. He eats because he must to advance. He escapes his predators and he hunts his prey. Just because he doesn't talk about it, doesn't mean he's any less vulnerable or pitiable.
I agree with him for most games (99% or so), but there are some notable exceptions. Planescape:Torment for instance, that whole game is centered around questions such as "Can anything change the nature of a man? Would you REALLY want to be immortal?
By this rationale almost any video game can be called art. Would Pac Man really want to be immortal? What can he do besides eat and run? What would he do in the maze after he'd eaten all the ghosts and dots?
Yours is a kind of pessimistic take on art. IANAArtist but I knows what I likes. You describe the hoity toity side of "fine" art; the kind that only seasoned critics and professors will understand - the legalese of art. It reminds me of a recent King of the Hill episode where Bobby takes a class in clowning, only to find he was a better clown before he learned how.
t ml) This is a game in the loosest sense of the word in which pixels represent communities of organisms who will flourish or die depending on the number of neighbours. You play it once and you learn a little something about populations. Maybe you don't play it more than once, or maybe you draw your name or a squirrel, or maybe you experiment with it for hours. No matter how you play it, it's obvious that the game itself is nothing but an empty grid without human participation. What you put in is exactly what you get out of it. Isn't this true of all games?
And indeed, Ebert is a master of deconstructing film. He makes a zillion observations every minute of every film. When it comes to interpreting other media I don't think he is qualified. He can't see the forest through the trees. He busies himself finding ways that games are not movies or literature, when it's so obvious to the rest of us that it's completely different.
Reading between the lines I can see you've got the right idea on this. Art isn't art because people tell you so. It's art when it draws you in, when you understand it on more than the surface level, and it gives you pleasure and meaning. The Artful Dodger finds art in pickpocketing. Robert Pursig finds art in motorcycle maintenance. Mandelbrot finds art in math.
Much of today's generation finds art in interactive storytelling, and perhaps we are more correct than any generation before us. Not only are we consumers of the artistic visions of all the game designers, graphic and sound designers, programmers, manual writers, etc. that make the game, but we as gamers are artists ourselves because we compose our own unique stories as we play. Whatever part of the human condition is left out of the box is injected by the consumers as they paint their own caricatures onto the pastel landscape.
Think of it like this. Do you know what local delicacy means? It means nobody else in the world wants to eat it. If a game truly became art would anyone really want to play it?
Take the game of life, the best game I can think of akin to a local delicacy. (http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.h
Roger Ebert is an old man who is unsurpassed in his craft, but should not be taken seriously on this matter. He is accustomed to watching movies and reading books passively, and is not prepared to criticize a medium that requires him to participate proactively. He is a niche journalist who has thus discredited himself from interpreting other niches.
So give interpretive dance a chance. Jump up on stage and flail around with that psychopath. Maybe it's clearly art while you're onstage.
Yup, he is. Doom3 will never be on any level as Citizen Kane.
I'd say they're about on par in terms of incorporating shadow into the mood and cinematography.
How often have you seen someone move their controller wildly as they try to make Master Chief dodge enemy fire or have Mario perform a difficult jump?
Every time my mom or sister plays. Good point.
Games will be made on the PS3, 360, and Revolution that are enjoyable. But games will only be made for the Revolution that are immersable, which just compounds the enjoyment.
Unless the game itself features a character reaching its arm out, I don't think the Rev controller will really be that much more immersive than a gamepad. If the controller moves a spaceship or Mario's body or even a mouse cursor, players will still have that extra degree of separation as they translate their physical moves to the onscreen action.
You're absolutely correct in a certain context, but by your argument the inverse works in favour of dual analog for flight sims, for example.
Also, the old VR\Virtual Boy\Powerglove argument comes into play here - you lose all immersiveness when you accidentally whack a lamp in your living room!
I agree with you mostly, but I can see how a designer like Takahashi would have an opinion like this. He is more interested in revolutionizing the existing system than bringing in a new standard that every game will have to abide by. He's obviously a veteran to games but he's new to the industry. In my opinion the Revolution is the Katamari of consoles - different and simple!
We Love Katamari was started without the say-so of Takahashi, who later joined the project to ensure quality control of his brand. Me And My Katamari for PSP was made entirely without Takahashi.
Smart! You can actually line your wallet with tinfoil (stick a sheet in the billfold) to block or garble the outgoign RFID broadcast. That way you only reveal your code when you take the card out of your wallet.
The way I see it, even if the effective broadcast range is 3 feet, what's to stop terrorists from strolling down the halls of an airport, duplicating a valid RFID transmission on a programmable card, and assuming that person's identity? Or for other identity thieves to do the same thing, capturing hundreds of valid IDs in minutes, and selling them to interested third parties? This could be done passively and completely undetected!
Even within the fraud-free bubble the government imagines this technology will flourish in, you gotta love the US for transitioning from a "papers please" state to a "papers if you don't please" 1984.
whoops.. ever hit reply next to the wrong comment before? my mistake
There are 2 issues being argued here and the line is being blurred. A PPU will spawn new kinds of physics based games, yes, but it will also assist "ordinary" games in looking more realistic. Gameplay is an important aspect of games, but so is suspension of disbelief.
All you naysayers would have sung the same song in the pre-3DFX days, trust me. How many modern console games would be fundamentally different without 3D acceleration? Does Viewtiful Joe's camera ever rotate? Wouldn't Tekken be just as playable with simulated 3D dodging? Does a hockey game that scrolls up and down need 3D modelled characters? In general, don't hand-drawn 2D sprites look way more detailed than hardware-accelerated meshes? And yet we all own 3D cards to crunch the hell out of polys.
If and when this technology takes off, whether it's onboard or in a GPU or in a standoff PCI card, you'll love this technology when you finally adopt it. It will even make His noodly appendage more noodly!!
Does the prospect of realistic physics really ruin a game?
Is it really more fun when it takes 30 sword slashes to cut down an opponent in an RPG? Is it more fun when you hack a guy 15 times in the face with a dagger, then stab him and the knee and he dies? Is it fun when you block a swinging mace with your wooden bow and you don't even get knocked backward? Or how you can carry 349 of 350 pounds, and then pick up a coin and be completely immobilized?
Yes, many of these are gameplay mechanics that can be fixed without buying a $250 PCI card, but they are also elements that accelerated physics could really spruce up. Just because Oblivion in particular is a good game, doesn't mean it wouldn't be better if the world were more believable.
Thank you for lauding the intended use of this technology instead of poo-poohing it like everyone else here. Racing, flight sims, sports games, fighting games, and a zillion new kinds of games could be made to take advantage of a PPU. And nobody says realistic physics have to mean reduced gameplay or fun. Not every physics-based game has to be as hard as GPL.
Or you can buy the house in Skingrad, enter the house, walk out onto the balcony, walk back in through the balcony door, run to the other side of the world, and get arrested for breaking in.
I'm not sure HL2 is too far ahead of its time - at least not from a "characterization" standpoint. I think people just resent the fact that Gordon is a busy guy who doesn't have time to ask revolutionary solder #35 what his favourite salad dressing is. How much characterization do you need in a game where you're running like mad from place to place?
One thing I found lacking in HL2 that was there to some extent in the original was dynamic arenas. By this I mean enclosed areas where you have to kill everyone (or almost everyone) to get through, and you'll have to quickload a few times to do so without getting explodered. HL1 and other games like Halo and Call of Duty had these awesome arenas with friends and foes duking it out, and whether or not you participated in the fray there would be a different outcome every single time. Sure there are some such arenas in HL2, but not as many and they are nowhere near as dynamic.
Overall I would still rate HL1 in the mid 90s. It's not only a watermark setter in game design and a revolution in first-person storytelling, it's a great game through and through. It's always engaging, has great variety, and it's damn hard. HL2 is a great game as well but it's more linear - like a novel compared to a choose your own adventure book. Even if you don't have a hankering to replay the sequel right after finishing it (though I did) you'll play it again in a few months and still be astounded at the detail, but I must admit that HL1 is the game with more longevity.
Fun fact - my girlfriend noticed me playing Half Life: Source and remarked "What are you playing? It looks just like Half Life 2!"
Most copy protection schemes simply encrypt the main executable file (e.g., GAME.EXE) to prevent crackers from reverse engineering the source. In addition to encryption, Starforce works like a rootkit to install bottom-level drivers ("ring 0 drivers") that directly control your CDROM drives by sitting just below Windows' built in IDE drivers, therefore controlling all CDROM access even for discs not protected by Starforce. Crackers have found it exceedingly difficult to squeeze code between ring 0 drivers and Windows' IDE drivers so many Starforce-protected games remain uncracked. Unfortunately, Starforce isn't compatible with all IDE chipsets and CDROM drives so it can cause Windows to read CDs incorrectly, cause burning software to find no CDRW drives, and even can reboot your computer without warning if it mistakenly thinks you're trying to circumvent the protection. Because Starforce's drivers are hidden it can be extremely difficult to tell whether you have it installed at all, and whether Starforce is the cause of such problems.
If Starforce had listened to its indirectly paying customers they could have made a better product, but instead their PR people called all naysayers idiots and criminals and touted their product as perfect. It's mainly because of this attitude (but also because of the bugs) that I'm glad they're losing such a high profile client as Ubisoft, and hopefully many more.
I think posting my screenshot detracted from my argument. Feel free to disregard as many people seem to be trumping my example left and right.
It's unfortunate that Windows has caused so many of us to thank our lucky stars when an OS doesn't kernel panic. I'm really happy to finally have a Windows OS that excels in so many areas. Security exploits (and updates that make you reboot) aside, Windows XP is the product that really restored my faith in MS.
However, I stand by my argument that XP (or any software for that matter) performs best with the leanest UI possible. Luna does nothing for functionality. Whether this will be true of Vista remains to be seen, but ol' Billy had better not put all his pirate eggs in one basket since many Windows skinning apps already proclaim themselves Vista complient.
I'm happy that this decision was related to bad PR. Starforce posted links to torrents of pirated games that didn't use their protection, they blew off legitimate complaints as whining from pirates, they held an unwinnable contest (regarding hardware failure) that didn't address the most contested issues (software failure), and the CEO is a pompous loudmouthed ass.
I have the utmost respect for the programmers of Starforce as it is a creative solution to a widespread problem, but such talented engineers are working for the wrong company. I truly feel bad for the programmers because their brilliance is overshadowed by their managers' childishness.
Turn it all off and see for yourself. Boot time is increased, minimizing and maximizing is instant, dragging windows is smoother, and you can fit a LOT more on the screen.
I used to be a theme junkie - I used ThemeXP and Windowblinds and kept like 400MB of themes and boot screens. The day a friend showed me his almost identical PC running way smoother was the day I deleted all that junk.
Just ask yourself - what are you using your computer for? To see marginally attractive windows or to get your crap done?
Yes, this game was friggin hard. I'm not sure there's a market for such a twitchy arcadey experience these days, but I'm all for a remake if it will introduce this gorgeous game to a new generation.