This exact point is covered in the extremely excellent "Everything Bad Is Good For You" which I'm sure Slashdot has reviewed...let's see. Yep.
It's an excellent book and well worth the time and money. Covers a huge range of topics from watching TV to playing Grand Theft Auto, and it does so in a well informed and enlightening way.
I'm not really sure what your quarrel with EVE is. It really is worlds better and more interesting than Everquest, WoW, or all their sword and sorcery derivations. There have been countless stories about EVE in the game media, a great piece in PC Gamer last year, any number of great pieces on The Escapist, and assorted gaming websites over the last couple years. Sure, it may not be as newbie friendly as WoW or City of Heroes, but it's a living breathing world, and the only unsharded MMOG around. Yesterday I was playing with 20,000 simultaneous players, and looking at the map and watching the stats glow, seeing alliances clash on that enormous galaxy map was just another reason to love the game.
It's full of trickery and scams, people who would kill you for just coming into their asteroid belt, PC characters more evil than any of the NPCs, spying, scheming, infiltration, betrayal, and distrust, and that's the beauty of it. Combat, trading, and anything that involves two player parties is much more reliant on your wits and intelligence, rather than your level 60 mage and his staff of smiting. Not that there's anything wrong with a staff of smiting, but in EVE, you can out think a much more heavily armed ship, a newbie can con a con man, and that's ok.
The best part about the world of EVE is that the devs know it's just that - a virtual world. They don't step in to regulate the market, they don't shut down corporations whose goal is to disrupt someone's legit space-business, they just set it in motion, provide timely updates, and make sure the servers are running. The rest is up to the players.
So in short, I say "yeah, right" back at you in all seriousness. In every way I can think of, EVE: Online is the MMORPG of the year.
Maybe I'm totally crazy, but I loved The Sims. To clear up, I am male, 22, (maybe 18, 19 when I played the sims) Hardcore gamer, other favorites at the time were Half-Life, Medal of Honor, Warcraft/Starcraft, Counter Strike, Grim Fandango, Thief, Fallout, et cetera. I got The Sims and fell in love with it. It's a beautiful game, the art direction is fantastic, though the tech they were working with was not so great it didn't matter. The socializing simulation which has been called "stilted" in these comments was nuanced and about as complex as I've ever seen in a game. The gameplay was immediately apparent - build a house, build any house you like. Buy things for that house. Live in that house. Who doesn't like making something? Who doesn't like shopping (don't answer that, I love shopping), and then who doesn't enjoy escapist fantasies. I mean for christ's sake, Second Life is thriving, and that's exactly what it is, an alternate life. The Sims is the same.
I've got the strat guide somewhere, and there's a long chapter about how the simulation runs, and I have to say it's amazing. It's simple and elegant, it's functional, and it only makes me appreciate how the game worked more. I was hooked on The Sims for a while, you start to see everything in your life in terms of how it would fit in the Sims world, and watching someone having a conversation out a window, you realize that we really do look just like the sims when we gesticulate and talk. It's a completely unique game experience, because it's so close to home. I don't know about you, but I don't invade underground science labs on a daily basis, but I do wake up and have breakfast.
The real thing that amazed me about the Sims didn't come until after I had stopped playing it. I read an interview with Will Wright, and he said something along these lines "People playing The Sims, they think the goal of the game is to have the big house, to have all the fanciest stuff, to be rich and have everything. Thing is, when they get all that stuff, and they have the huge house, things always need fixing, people need attention, and you everything is so much more complicated than it was before. The real point of The Sims is that you can buy anything, but time is the only unrenewable resource."
The Sims has a thesis. How many games can you think of that can match that?
If you didn't enjoy The Sims, that's just how it is. I'm just saying that it's an amazing piece of gaming, way ahead of its contemporaries, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.
The answer: Yes. EBGames has pulled the game from their shelves. I called a local EB branch, and the salesman told me that the game had been banned from sale due to the ESRB changing reconsidering the rating. When I asked if there was any way I could get the game at all, he simply said "no way. you're not going to be able to get this game from us for a while."
Interestingly enough, he was also pretty well versed in the hot coffee scandal, and thought it was a bunch of bullshit. Nonetheless, they have pulled the game from shelves.
Are there any LCDs out there that allow letterboxing? I've been using a Samsung 172T which natives at 1280x1024 (not quite 4x3) and games often only list 4x3 aspect ration resolutions (800x600, 1024x786, 1152x864, 1280x960, and 1600x1200). Using the 172T works great, but everything is just a tiny bit distorted as the flat screen is a bit more square than a CRT.
I'm using an old 19" CRT at home, and I'm thinking about LCDs - this is the only thing that makes me hesitate.
Thought you might like to see some of this stuff in motion. This is a shaky-cam video of the 15 minute ATI booth presentation of HL2 and CS: Source. Frankly, the Half-Life 2 stuff looks really great, and the CS stuff looks about like CS, with a facelift.
Actually, Greg Kasavin (GS Editor-in-chief) just posted on the Gamespot forums to let everyone know that Gamespot is having some technical dificulties, and that they will be back soon.
This is from Vivendi Universal Games' list. (after Half-Life 2, Men Of Valor, Blizzard's titles, etc.
Unnamed secret title, behind closed doors only, a FPS that can be described as "The Matrix meets The Ring" and developed by Monolith. (Got that from Voodoo Extreme)
What the hell does that mean? Is the Matrix crossed with the Ring even a good thing?
Whenever I play UT2004 online, I almost always play on an "ATARI/EPIC OFFICIAL EAST #" server - I am guaranteed the game as they intended it, with no extra distractions, and a fast consistent connection.
I think it's a very good idea for them, and I think other game developers should be thinking along the same lines.
That Doug Lombardi quote comes from somewhere soon after HL2 was shown at E3 in May of 2003. There was a lot of excitement over Source and Half-Life 2, and they slipped in that Team Fortress 2 was still in the works.
If anyone looked at the HL2 source code leak, you noticed that the code was divided in half. Half of it was about Half-Life2, and the other half was about Team Fortress 2. this is in no way a "dead" project, simply an completely secretive one. Some of the stuff in that code was really cool, a lot of good gameplay ideas, and what seemed to be some impressive innovation.
I'm guessing we'll hear more (and maybe see more) about Team Fortress 2 this E3 (May 12-14).
There's a technology, that can take a poorly shot digital photo, and then match it to a database of images of every building in the world, come up with a single match, and then let you know where you are?
Does such a database exist? Could it possibly work without bringing up false positives? I mean, I don't have figures, but there are millions of buildings in any large urban area, and within those millions, they all have multiple sides, and then they all look radically different at different times of day. We're talking storage space that seems like it would be incredibly dificult to manage, let alone search efficiently and return good results from a cell-phone camera image.
I completely agree about huddling in a group around a giant creature.
As graphics and AI get better and better, I want to see really thrilling battles. The day I pay my money for a MMORPG is the day that we go to take on a giant ogre and the battle reminds me of the fight against the Cave Troll in Fellowship of the Ring.
Imagine, for a moment, five members of your party, against one monster that actually reqires skill, reflexes and quick thinking to defeat. I'd have a lot more respect for a level 20 fighter in that game than i do in EQ or DAOC.
Did you see those screenshots?!? Obviously Warrn Spector has lost it. I played and finished Deus Ex, Thief 1 & 2, System Shock 1 & 2, and Ultima Underworld at least seven times the day the game came out, and this is so far from his original vision that he's lost control of his own company. Ok, ok, the graphics are good, but the game runs like ice cream melting in Alaska on my Dreamcast running bedian off a burned ISO. This whole transition to third person just means they are sharing the pants off Bill Gates with an Xbox. Just because there's more money to be had in consoles, consoles don't have the same customer support issues as PCs, consoles are getting the majority of creative games these days, more people play their consoles for games than PCs, there's more money to be had in consoles doesn't emean that they should abandon the peeps who got them there.
I've had it up to here. At least we still have Half-Life 2 and they're staying true to the cause. So, screw you $icro$soft! I'm not even going to buy Thief III, I'll just pirate it. PC ROXOR!!!!!
I agree completely. There have been some games that are wildly divergent in terms of their graphics, (Eye Toy, DDR) but by and large the game industry seems to have found something it's happy with in polygons. The next step will probably not be revolutionary, like the jump from 2D to 3D or sprites to polygons, but evolutionary.
As pixel shaders and frame buffer effects become more common, we'll probably see an increase in "cinematic" effects, like depth of field, distortion, and better lighting accuracy.
The best proof that graphics are pretty much stabilizing is the fact that the supposed "next-gen" games, are improving the fidelity of their game world, rather than reinventing it. Half-Life 2 is looking for a physically accurate and emotionaly involving world. Doom 3 is aiming at a well-lit world. Duke Nukem Forever is redefining how many times a game can be delayed, and many engines a single game can use.
I'm fine with the polygons too... they never hurt me.
Contrary to what many on the internet seem to believe, the First Amendment states that Congress is not to abridge the freedom of speech, which has been interpreted to mean that the government is not allowed to regulate speech. This was NOT the case here. Private groups of concerned citizens used their free speech to voice their objections to something which appeared in a commercial product. Seeing that offending potential customers is not the best way to sell more product, the creators of the product firmly and intelligently stood behind the product as a whole but agreed to change a reletively miniscule part of the product to avoid offending people.
This was not censorship, this was smart freedom of speech and smart business choices in action.
Slashdot Mirror
This exact point is covered in the extremely excellent "Everything Bad Is Good For You" which I'm sure Slashdot has reviewed...let's see. Yep.
It's an excellent book and well worth the time and money. Covers a huge range of topics from watching TV to playing Grand Theft Auto, and it does so in a well informed and enlightening way.
I'm not really sure what your quarrel with EVE is. It really is worlds better and more interesting than Everquest, WoW, or all their sword and sorcery derivations. There have been countless stories about EVE in the game media, a great piece in PC Gamer last year, any number of great pieces on The Escapist, and assorted gaming websites over the last couple years. Sure, it may not be as newbie friendly as WoW or City of Heroes, but it's a living breathing world, and the only unsharded MMOG around. Yesterday I was playing with 20,000 simultaneous players, and looking at the map and watching the stats glow, seeing alliances clash on that enormous galaxy map was just another reason to love the game.
It's full of trickery and scams, people who would kill you for just coming into their asteroid belt, PC characters more evil than any of the NPCs, spying, scheming, infiltration, betrayal, and distrust, and that's the beauty of it. Combat, trading, and anything that involves two player parties is much more reliant on your wits and intelligence, rather than your level 60 mage and his staff of smiting. Not that there's anything wrong with a staff of smiting, but in EVE, you can out think a much more heavily armed ship, a newbie can con a con man, and that's ok.
The best part about the world of EVE is that the devs know it's just that - a virtual world. They don't step in to regulate the market, they don't shut down corporations whose goal is to disrupt someone's legit space-business, they just set it in motion, provide timely updates, and make sure the servers are running. The rest is up to the players.
So in short, I say "yeah, right" back at you in all seriousness. In every way I can think of, EVE: Online is the MMORPG of the year.
Maybe I'm totally crazy, but I loved The Sims. To clear up, I am male, 22, (maybe 18, 19 when I played the sims) Hardcore gamer, other favorites at the time were Half-Life, Medal of Honor, Warcraft/Starcraft, Counter Strike, Grim Fandango, Thief, Fallout, et cetera. I got The Sims and fell in love with it. It's a beautiful game, the art direction is fantastic, though the tech they were working with was not so great it didn't matter. The socializing simulation which has been called "stilted" in these comments was nuanced and about as complex as I've ever seen in a game. The gameplay was immediately apparent - build a house, build any house you like. Buy things for that house. Live in that house. Who doesn't like making something? Who doesn't like shopping (don't answer that, I love shopping), and then who doesn't enjoy escapist fantasies. I mean for christ's sake, Second Life is thriving, and that's exactly what it is, an alternate life. The Sims is the same.
I've got the strat guide somewhere, and there's a long chapter about how the simulation runs, and I have to say it's amazing. It's simple and elegant, it's functional, and it only makes me appreciate how the game worked more. I was hooked on The Sims for a while, you start to see everything in your life in terms of how it would fit in the Sims world, and watching someone having a conversation out a window, you realize that we really do look just like the sims when we gesticulate and talk. It's a completely unique game experience, because it's so close to home. I don't know about you, but I don't invade underground science labs on a daily basis, but I do wake up and have breakfast.
The real thing that amazed me about the Sims didn't come until after I had stopped playing it. I read an interview with Will Wright, and he said something along these lines "People playing The Sims, they think the goal of the game is to have the big house, to have all the fanciest stuff, to be rich and have everything. Thing is, when they get all that stuff, and they have the huge house, things always need fixing, people need attention, and you everything is so much more complicated than it was before. The real point of The Sims is that you can buy anything, but time is the only unrenewable resource."
The Sims has a thesis. How many games can you think of that can match that?
If you didn't enjoy The Sims, that's just how it is. I'm just saying that it's an amazing piece of gaming, way ahead of its contemporaries, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.
...after Yesterday's story
Oops Mozilla. Damage control - Engage!.
In the last post, replace "EB" with "GameStop"
/idot
The answer: Yes. EBGames has pulled the game from their shelves. I called a local EB branch, and the salesman told me that the game had been banned from sale due to the ESRB changing reconsidering the rating. When I asked if there was any way I could get the game at all, he simply said "no way. you're not going to be able to get this game from us for a while."
Interestingly enough, he was also pretty well versed in the hot coffee scandal, and thought it was a bunch of bullshit. Nonetheless, they have pulled the game from shelves.
How would this not be spyware, exactly? It's not like this "research" will cure cancer.
If it's not curing cancer it's not research? I'm not sure about that...might want to check your sources.
Half-Life 2 will be unlocked at 12:00 Pacific Standard Time, 11/16/04. That means 3:00 AM Eastern, and Early morning for Europe.
Valve is actually not letting European stores sell until Midnight PST, which is making for some interesting situations in retailers abroad.
Are there any LCDs out there that allow letterboxing? I've been using a Samsung 172T which natives at 1280x1024 (not quite 4x3) and games often only list 4x3 aspect ration resolutions (800x600, 1024x786, 1152x864, 1280x960, and 1600x1200). Using the 172T works great, but everything is just a tiny bit distorted as the flat screen is a bit more square than a CRT.
I'm using an old 19" CRT at home, and I'm thinking about LCDs - this is the only thing that makes me hesitate.
There's some hidden stuff on that page, I found a trailer in pretty decent resolution.
Link-city
Thought you might like to see some of this stuff in motion. This is a shaky-cam video of the 15 minute ATI booth presentation of HL2 and CS: Source. Frankly, the Half-Life 2 stuff looks really great, and the CS stuff looks about like CS, with a facelift.
Here is the torrent
Actually, Greg Kasavin (GS Editor-in-chief) just posted on the Gamespot forums to let everyone know that Gamespot is having some technical dificulties, and that they will be back soon.
This is from Vivendi Universal Games' list. (after Half-Life 2, Men Of Valor, Blizzard's titles, etc.
Unnamed secret title, behind closed doors only, a FPS that can be described as "The Matrix meets The Ring" and developed by Monolith.
(Got that from Voodoo Extreme)
What the hell does that mean? Is the Matrix crossed with the Ring even a good thing?
Whenever I play UT2004 online, I almost always play on an "ATARI/EPIC OFFICIAL EAST #" server - I am guaranteed the game as they intended it, with no extra distractions, and a fast consistent connection.
I think it's a very good idea for them, and I think other game developers should be thinking along the same lines.
That Doug Lombardi quote comes from somewhere soon after HL2 was shown at E3 in May of 2003. There was a lot of excitement over Source and Half-Life 2, and they slipped in that Team Fortress 2 was still in the works.
If anyone looked at the HL2 source code leak, you noticed that the code was divided in half. Half of it was about Half-Life2, and the other half was about Team Fortress 2. this is in no way a "dead" project, simply an completely secretive one. Some of the stuff in that code was really cool, a lot of good gameplay ideas, and what seemed to be some impressive innovation.
I'm guessing we'll hear more (and maybe see more) about Team Fortress 2 this E3 (May 12-14).
There's a technology, that can take a poorly shot digital photo, and then match it to a database of images of every building in the world, come up with a single match, and then let you know where you are?
Does such a database exist? Could it possibly work without bringing up false positives? I mean, I don't have figures, but there are millions of buildings in any large urban area, and within those millions, they all have multiple sides, and then they all look radically different at different times of day. We're talking storage space that seems like it would be incredibly dificult to manage, let alone search efficiently and return good results from a cell-phone camera image.
Count me as a skeptic.
I completely agree about huddling in a group around a giant creature.
As graphics and AI get better and better, I want to see really thrilling battles. The day I pay my money for a MMORPG is the day that we go to take on a giant ogre and the battle reminds me of the fight against the Cave Troll in Fellowship of the Ring.
Imagine, for a moment, five members of your party, against one monster that actually reqires skill, reflexes and quick thinking to defeat. I'd have a lot more respect for a level 20 fighter in that game than i do in EQ or DAOC.
Did you see those screenshots?!? Obviously Warrn Spector has lost it. I played and finished Deus Ex, Thief 1 & 2, System Shock 1 & 2, and Ultima Underworld at least seven times the day the game came out, and this is so far from his original vision that he's lost control of his own company. Ok, ok, the graphics are good, but the game runs like ice cream melting in Alaska on my Dreamcast running bedian off a burned ISO. This whole transition to third person just means they are sharing the pants off Bill Gates with an Xbox. Just because there's more money to be had in consoles, consoles don't have the same customer support issues as PCs, consoles are getting the majority of creative games these days, more people play their consoles for games than PCs, there's more money to be had in consoles doesn't emean that they should abandon the peeps who got them there.
I've had it up to here. At least we still have Half-Life 2 and they're staying true to the cause. So, screw you $icro$soft! I'm not even going to buy Thief III, I'll just pirate it. PC ROXOR!!!!!
I agree completely. There have been some games that are wildly divergent in terms of their graphics, (Eye Toy, DDR) but by and large the game industry seems to have found something it's happy with in polygons. The next step will probably not be revolutionary, like the jump from 2D to 3D or sprites to polygons, but evolutionary.
As pixel shaders and frame buffer effects become more common, we'll probably see an increase in "cinematic" effects, like depth of field, distortion, and better lighting accuracy.
The best proof that graphics are pretty much stabilizing is the fact that the supposed "next-gen" games, are improving the fidelity of their game world, rather than reinventing it. Half-Life 2 is looking for a physically accurate and emotionaly involving world. Doom 3 is aiming at a well-lit world. Duke Nukem Forever is redefining how many times a game can be delayed, and many engines a single game can use.
I'm fine with the polygons too... they never hurt me.
The link would be nice too, wouldn't it? http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3 354
Oops. :)
Here are a bunch of Fallout 3 screenshots that the BIS guys leaked to the fans.
Site's getting hammered now, but will be back eventually.
guns for walkie talkies? that's awesome!
did they fire their walkie talkies?
Contrary to what many on the internet seem to believe, the First Amendment states that Congress is not to abridge the freedom of speech, which has been interpreted to mean that the government is not allowed to regulate speech. This was NOT the case here. Private groups of concerned citizens used their free speech to voice their objections to something which appeared in a commercial product. Seeing that offending potential customers is not the best way to sell more product, the creators of the product firmly and intelligently stood behind the product as a whole but agreed to change a reletively miniscule part of the product to avoid offending people. This was not censorship, this was smart freedom of speech and smart business choices in action.
Don't challenge the man, he's been positioning Duke Nukem Forever for success for what now, a decade? That's some positioning.
"... Just think, if you average the maneuvers of each of the sim pilots... ;)"
:)
The plane will crash, every time.