I've been noticing a distinct lack of buzz, actually.
On some GameFAQs boards I frequent, I couldn't see a topic about Wii on the first page; this compared to the controller where every third topic was about it.
On the RPGDL forums it was linked briefly, and commented on, but by today the discussion had already changed to whether a hacker from brittain should be extradited to the United States.
On my company email at Shaba (an Activision studio) the name change was mentioned and a few jokes were passed around, but today the email distractions were all about LARPers (and to a lesser extend X360's decent jump in Japanese sales last week).
All in all, more buzz than the namechange from Xenon to X360, but when I have to actively search for discussion about it, it's not much buzz.
I remember hearing in a 3D animation class a while back that Spirits Within had the lowest turnout of any computer animated movie ever made. Say what you will, but there's more going on here than just "Anime-style movie". (The professor's theory was that the Uncanny Valley was to blame; this doesn't sound unreasonable to me--I remember liking the theme of the plot, but being unable to get into the movie).
First, Jumping Flash. I've never heard of it, and by the looks of it neither has anyone else. If you're going to include obscure but very good games then I have no objection (lord knows Valkyrie Profile largely defined the PS1 for me) but other than this game the list does not.
Second: Battle Arena Toshinden. It is flat out the worst fighting game I've ever played. Now, if you want to include a PS1 fighting game that actually sold a million copies (like, oh, say, any of the Tekken games...er, Tekken 1 was on the PS1...right?) then I would have no objection.
I found it interesting enough. I don't own Nintendogs, or even a DS, but I certainly was curious about what "strategies" you would use in a dog simulation, and the technical details on the microphone they had to offer.
Umm...a big part of MMORPGs is supposed to be the community, right? So what if you pay for the game and then the community dwindles away?
This happens in general communities too--the competitive scene for Tekken 4 is all but dead now, for instance; is this negligence on the part of Namco? What if the key players all stopped doing Super Metroid speed runs and got tired of paying for web hosting the videos. Can you complain to Nintendo? What about how the FFT SCC community is no longer nearly as vogue as it once was. Is this Square's fault?
Freedom? How about supply and demand. If not enough people demand AC2, then it won't be supplied.
The second step is to drop the price further for games that are simply rehashes of PS2 games.
In *theory* SCEA is requiring all PS2 ports to have 30% more content in the PSP version. Problem is that SCEJ hasn't adopted this policy last time I checked. The other problem is that this is having a stifling effect on PSP development; I know at least one game that has been delayed and quite possibly cancelled because of the policy.
3) The first step is to drop game prices by $10 to $20 each, accross the board.
Except these games cost as much to develop as full PS2 games. It's not like GBA games which really are cheaper to make. Could Sony shoulder the hit themselves and lose money on software? Not really: doing this would help them gain market share, but place an XBox-esque hole in their wallet, which they can't afford due to debt.
I agree that there's nothing wrong with this "know your roots" T-Shirt.
Can I honestly say that my roots were Pong or Spacewar? No. I played pong, but frankly there's activities which I honestly preferred (like Table Tennis).
Can I honestly say that my roots were in the Arcade? I visited the arcade often as I liked videogames, but the idea of pumping in quarters didn't appeal to me due to the stress "this is my only quarter! I have to make this last!!" (and that was when I had quarters to spare).
So...at least from my perspective, we're down to consoles or PCs to sum up where my enjoyment started. Now, I've played quite a lot of stuff on PC that predates the NES. In fact I have fond memories of an old 8086 Compaq. However, PC hardware is inherently less emblematic (almost nobody would recognize it, and those that do wouldn't necessarily think "videogames" when they saw it. In fact half my aquaintances would think "FORTRAN!!")
So...we're down to consoles. As mentioned, I never did find Pong to be this great gift to entertainment, but where do we draw the line? Well...what games do people still play today? A quick glance at an infamous 11 minute video tells us that NES games still see play (and indeed I've played an NES within the past year). Earler than NES? Pac-Man and Q*Bert still have frequent competitions...except those are held not on Atari 2600s/Intellivisions but on arcade cabinets, and arcade cabinets something which I've already expressed a desire to avoid.
Seriously, though, can anyone think of an Atari 2600 or earlier game that originated on a console which people still play? I can think of influential games like Adventure (arguably precursor to Legend of Zelda and the first easter egg) but nobody still plays that outside of historical value (whereas people do still play Legend of Zelda--I know people who've done the "go through LoZ without a sword" as recently as last year).
For that matter, can anyone think of a game franchise that originated on a pre-NES console and not in the Arcade? There's...Pitfall...I guess. Whereas the NES has Metal Gear, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Metroid, Zelda, Dragon Warrior....
And there's just a number of intangibles here too; NES sold miles better than any previous console. Regardless of age, you're going to get more people fondly remembering the NES than the Atari 2600. Granted, this disparity is likely not unrelated to the above noted differences....
All in all, the NES makes a whole lot of sense as the "roots" of modern day videogames. If someone can find a way to emblemize the Arcades of the early 80s (right around when Galaga, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Q-Bert, Joust, Dig Dug, Galaxian, Missile Command, and Donkey Kong were all released) into one easily recognizable T-Shirt logo, then sure: that might well be the better T-shirt choice. (Though, like I said I wasn't a big arcade person myself). As is? The NES makes far more sense than any other option I can think of (bite me Pong--I don't love you).
Agreed entirely. Heck, there were games pre-DOOM that displayed your completion time (I believe Metroid 1 didn't, but I know Metroid 2 did). As a kid who got two games a year if I was lucky (christmas and birthday) speed runs seemed like something completely obvious for making them last longer, and seemed intended by the designers to add replay value.
Interestingly enough, between SMB1, SMB3, and SMW, the one I'm most inclined to go back and play is SMB1. Bear in mind too that I never got too far as a kid, and only picked it up in a flea market during my final year of undergrad (in a lot of ways, the first time I really played it) so I can't say I'm acting on nostalgia. I do, however, have a rather healthy respect for the level design, and the various hidden ways to give an extra challenge to talented players (killing each bowser through fireballs to find out what they were, for instance).
The mechanics are nothing too special (play Super Tux, or Super Mario Land for comparison; same mechanics, but the level design's overall not as good; granted both games have their moments).
Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not saying SMB1 magically became my favourite game of all time once I finally played it in-depth, or even that I liked it the most of the NES games I've gone back to play recently, but it's still remarkably playable...unlike some games that used to seem great at the time but aged poorly *coughStreetFighter2cough*.
The most common complaint I hear from programmers that used to be in the game biz is that the hours are long and only the bosses made a decent living.
Having just started in such a job last month...the hours are 40 per week, and the pay is...better than most friends of mine who have been out of school for years, and competitive with my academic parents. No, I can't afford a Ferrari, but I'd be lying if I claimed I was starving.
Now, I know companies do exist with awful hours, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were some companies with low salaries, but at least in my case it hasn't been an issue.
It is similar to the "exploits" in single player rpgs where a mob keeps respawning to give in theory infinite xp. If you got the patience to kill the same mob, go through the same conversation, clear the same dungeon again and again.
I'd argue that this isn't an "exploit" at all. Controlling your own power level (whether RPG levels or Super Metroid energy tanks) is a built-in way to set challenge level. Often a second time through an RPG you won't get lost, and thus will gain fewer levels, thus making the game harder (despite still often feeling easier due to being familiar with the system...but that's a balance issue). Yes, there was a band of idiots on GameFAQs a while back who levelled up to 99 in the first reactor of FF7, but that takes about three times as long as playing the game normally, so they just get a big "YOU HAVE NO LIFE" stamp on their forehead.
This same system breaks, however, when faced with a MMORPG, where the entire goal is to level up and gain resources. Best online RPG-esque game I ever played, actually, was a pretty basic text game which restricted you to three user challenges per day (only way to get exp) so those with the best strategy, not the most time, pulled ahead.
Sony is the only company that has an official path by which a hobbyist can get his own code running on their console -- and it ain't cheap either.
The problem about Sony, is that you actually have to get their approval to release a game on the PS2, which even established developers frequently enough fail to do. Furthermore, they often make content requests (for instance, they refused to allow our game unless it had double the characters...which will likely end up in clones). Hell, european developers sued SoE for not allowing their games, and won (which is why it's easier to pass the European approval process now, and why we've seen more underground titles there as a result). By comparison, I haven't heard of a GC game being turned down, and the only talk of content has been some whisperings that Nintendo will let us use one of their franchise characters for the GC version (if we want).
Basically, don't paint Nintendo as developer-unfriendly while trying to claim that Sony is making an effort. That may have been true at one point, but as a modern developer if there's one company that pisses me off for their restrictions, it's Sony. The five digit cost of a PSTool doesn't help, either.
The first book I talked about implementing a total quality assurance system to the game industry that's been in use for decades in the auto industry. The second book was built around ways to prevent bug defects which include eliminating the counter-productiveness of 80 hour work weeks.
And there are companies who do both (Relic and Bioware are jumping to mind, having talked to them about jobs). I'm quite happy with merely the 40 hour work week and a group of people I enjoy at the moment, myself; maybe I'll look at moving to one of the afforementioned at a later date if QA starts to rub me the wrong way.
The problem is that managers have really never truly managed a large scale project outside of the industry
My producer who spent years as a Lawyer would suggest otherwise.
and the developers and artists have never worked anything other than games.
Artists? Animators? Usually come from a film background, actually. "Developers" umm...that tends to encompass everybody. Programmers? Frequently computer science students, and the main major difference is that games expect you to be able to run everything in real time, and often to worry about low level details, which tends not to matter for programmers in industry (most game programmers who leave to another field find themselves very bored). Game Designers? Not sure of a good comparison for them. Writers? Usually outsourced, and those who aren't often have book credits (see: Bioware). Composers? Same. "Never" is just BS.
I've watched the same thing happen with PSP launch titles; two or three bugs were fixed just after sending things in to Sony for final approval, but they'll likely never be fixed even in post-launch copies just because that requires a resubmission, which costs a fee and needs to be approved again by Sony (and they're likely to be harsher when they're not gasping for launch titles).
"newbified"? You say that as if there was some element of complexity present in SMK that was removed by a later version. The only thing I can think of is that SMK doesn't let you hold a power slide indefinitely (though doing so is still stupid in later games). On the other hand, all of the later game introduce new elements.
Or perhaps by newbified you mean how they actually kept the same control scheme between 100cc and 150cc in later games--having different control styles wasn't some kind of godly SMK feature you know; it was a bad flaw.
Or perhaps by newbified you mean that they made more than two characters useful, so that newbies wouldn't get screwed over by simply choosing whichever character they liked. Oooh, yeah, damn newfangled kart games with actual character balance!!1!
Don't get me wrong, I still play SMK from time to time (largely for the battle mode) but if anything the series has been generally improving (battle mode asside due to arena-size concerns).
Actually, 2004 was one of the most profitable years in theatres in quite a while. Hold on, I'll try and find the post with the relevant statistics I saw a while back...
(Captain K's post). Yeah...Shrek 2, Spiderman 2, The Passion of the Christ, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Incredibles. This was not a small year for movie releases--in fact quite the opposite.
Now, if you're referring to the quality of the releases, then...actually most people I know prefer Spiderman 2 to Spiderman, and think the kids in Prizoner of Azkaban are finally learning to act, and...well The Passion of the Christ was different, at any rate (I am not going to start on a debate over whether it's good or bad).
Case in point, THQ bought out Relic Entertainment recently. I spoke with the lead designer and assistant prodcuer at Relic a few weeks back, and they said the company dynamic was still just fine, and THQ simply trusted them to produce good content, and agreed to publish whatever they produce (whereas formerly they had to cast around for publishers).
Now granted, Ubisoft doesn't need publishers, so there's no clear advantage to the deal, but if for some strange reason EA decided to treat this deal differently from other purchases, it wouldn't -have- to be a bad thing. How likely is that to happen? Hmm...Ubisoft is probably larger than any previous purchase, so it might have more bargaining power in the deal, but I'm not getting my hopes up yet.
Y'know, I realize that these articles are here to try and help keep PA from being slashdotted by the charity links and all that, but these slashdot articles are reminding me that I'm a month behind in the PA comics, and that I ought to go browsing right now....
Wonder if the/. mirroring is actually helping their server overload....
The good thing from this story is that I hope employers will open their ears and eyes to the fact that university is USELESS to form engineers when the drive is not there, and that university is just a replacement for forced military service.
I'm not sure what University you attended, but the purpose of a university degree is to teach you how to think and research, and to give a broad view of of a field. It's easy enough to be a self-taught programmer without having touched object oriented programming, for instance. Engineering and Software Engineering teach building processes that tend to be robust and have a lot of checks along the way. Sure, if you're good you either come up with your own checks, or maybe you just read a programming style manual from cover to cover and get all the info anyway.
Point is, University students shouldn't have holes in their knowledge, and should be forced to do creative thought (yeah, there's sucky universities out there, but that's an asside). There's obviously people who learn to think on their own, and people who can get all the info they need for one area of programming or FPGA or whatever, so it's not useful for everyone, just a lot of people. On the other hand, military service teaches a less relevant kind of knowledge (for programmers) and values obedience over independent thought. It's really not the same thing at all (though this may depend on the university I suppose).
Yeah, I'll sheepishly admit that I'm in the same boat.
There are, however, inherent advantages to dual-booting in the first place. If some random program I download screws up my Windows desktop...eh, just reset in Linux, get back to work, and worry about it later. Useful, especially since I seem capable of crashing just about any OS (I've crashed Red Hat Linux, stalled an automatic, and crashed a GameCube....Windows XP lasted approximately 16 hours the last time I booted up...).
Oh? What about the videogame rental market? Smaller than video I'm sure, but also not factored in.
The main difference here is that games simply cost much more than seeing a movie. Sure, Bungie made more money in a day from Halo 2 than Spiderman 2 made in the opening weekend, but more people saw Spiderman 2 than bought Halo 2. Movies are still much more mainstream, just that the gaming industry is more lucrative.
Slashdot Mirror
On some GameFAQs boards I frequent, I couldn't see a topic about Wii on the first page; this compared to the controller where every third topic was about it.
On the RPGDL forums it was linked briefly, and commented on, but by today the discussion had already changed to whether a hacker from brittain should be extradited to the United States.
On my company email at Shaba (an Activision studio) the name change was mentioned and a few jokes were passed around, but today the email distractions were all about LARPers (and to a lesser extend X360's decent jump in Japanese sales last week).
All in all, more buzz than the namechange from Xenon to X360, but when I have to actively search for discussion about it, it's not much buzz.
I remember hearing in a 3D animation class a while back that Spirits Within had the lowest turnout of any computer animated movie ever made. Say what you will, but there's more going on here than just "Anime-style movie". (The professor's theory was that the Uncanny Valley was to blame; this doesn't sound unreasonable to me--I remember liking the theme of the plot, but being unable to get into the movie).
First, Jumping Flash. I've never heard of it, and by the looks of it neither has anyone else. If you're going to include obscure but very good games then I have no objection (lord knows Valkyrie Profile largely defined the PS1 for me) but other than this game the list does not. Second: Battle Arena Toshinden. It is flat out the worst fighting game I've ever played. Now, if you want to include a PS1 fighting game that actually sold a million copies (like, oh, say, any of the Tekken games ...er, Tekken 1 was on the PS1...right?) then I would have no objection.
I found it interesting enough. I don't own Nintendogs, or even a DS, but I certainly was curious about what "strategies" you would use in a dog simulation, and the technical details on the microphone they had to offer.
Umm...a big part of MMORPGs is supposed to be the community, right? So what if you pay for the game and then the community dwindles away?
This happens in general communities too--the competitive scene for Tekken 4 is all but dead now, for instance; is this negligence on the part of Namco? What if the key players all stopped doing Super Metroid speed runs and got tired of paying for web hosting the videos. Can you complain to Nintendo? What about how the FFT SCC community is no longer nearly as vogue as it once was. Is this Square's fault?
Freedom? How about supply and demand. If not enough people demand AC2, then it won't be supplied.
Hmm...lots of PC and Sega games on that list....
The one game I can think of which really needs a sequel is FFT. And no: FFTA doesn't count.
The second step is to drop the price further for games that are simply rehashes of PS2 games.
In *theory* SCEA is requiring all PS2 ports to have 30% more content in the PSP version. Problem is that SCEJ hasn't adopted this policy last time I checked. The other problem is that this is having a stifling effect on PSP development; I know at least one game that has been delayed and quite possibly cancelled because of the policy.
3) The first step is to drop game prices by $10 to $20 each, accross the board.
Except these games cost as much to develop as full PS2 games. It's not like GBA games which really are cheaper to make. Could Sony shoulder the hit themselves and lose money on software? Not really: doing this would help them gain market share, but place an XBox-esque hole in their wallet, which they can't afford due to debt.
I agree that there's nothing wrong with this "know your roots" T-Shirt.
Can I honestly say that my roots were Pong or Spacewar? No. I played pong, but frankly there's activities which I honestly preferred (like Table Tennis).
Can I honestly say that my roots were in the Arcade? I visited the arcade often as I liked videogames, but the idea of pumping in quarters didn't appeal to me due to the stress "this is my only quarter! I have to make this last!!" (and that was when I had quarters to spare).
So...at least from my perspective, we're down to consoles or PCs to sum up where my enjoyment started. Now, I've played quite a lot of stuff on PC that predates the NES. In fact I have fond memories of an old 8086 Compaq. However, PC hardware is inherently less emblematic (almost nobody would recognize it, and those that do wouldn't necessarily think "videogames" when they saw it. In fact half my aquaintances would think "FORTRAN!!")
So...we're down to consoles. As mentioned, I never did find Pong to be this great gift to entertainment, but where do we draw the line? Well...what games do people still play today? A quick glance at an infamous 11 minute video tells us that NES games still see play (and indeed I've played an NES within the past year). Earler than NES? Pac-Man and Q*Bert still have frequent competitions...except those are held not on Atari 2600s/Intellivisions but on arcade cabinets, and arcade cabinets something which I've already expressed a desire to avoid.
Seriously, though, can anyone think of an Atari 2600 or earlier game that originated on a console which people still play? I can think of influential games like Adventure (arguably precursor to Legend of Zelda and the first easter egg) but nobody still plays that outside of historical value (whereas people do still play Legend of Zelda--I know people who've done the "go through LoZ without a sword" as recently as last year).
For that matter, can anyone think of a game franchise that originated on a pre-NES console and not in the Arcade? There's...Pitfall...I guess. Whereas the NES has Metal Gear, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Metroid, Zelda, Dragon Warrior....
And there's just a number of intangibles here too; NES sold miles better than any previous console. Regardless of age, you're going to get more people fondly remembering the NES than the Atari 2600. Granted, this disparity is likely not unrelated to the above noted differences....
All in all, the NES makes a whole lot of sense as the "roots" of modern day videogames. If someone can find a way to emblemize the Arcades of the early 80s (right around when Galaga, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Q-Bert, Joust, Dig Dug, Galaxian, Missile Command, and Donkey Kong were all released) into one easily recognizable T-Shirt logo, then sure: that might well be the better T-shirt choice. (Though, like I said I wasn't a big arcade person myself). As is? The NES makes far more sense than any other option I can think of (bite me Pong--I don't love you).
Agreed entirely. Heck, there were games pre-DOOM that displayed your completion time (I believe Metroid 1 didn't, but I know Metroid 2 did). As a kid who got two games a year if I was lucky (christmas and birthday) speed runs seemed like something completely obvious for making them last longer, and seemed intended by the designers to add replay value.
Interestingly enough, between SMB1, SMB3, and SMW, the one I'm most inclined to go back and play is SMB1. Bear in mind too that I never got too far as a kid, and only picked it up in a flea market during my final year of undergrad (in a lot of ways, the first time I really played it) so I can't say I'm acting on nostalgia. I do, however, have a rather healthy respect for the level design, and the various hidden ways to give an extra challenge to talented players (killing each bowser through fireballs to find out what they were, for instance).
The mechanics are nothing too special (play Super Tux, or Super Mario Land for comparison; same mechanics, but the level design's overall not as good; granted both games have their moments).
Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not saying SMB1 magically became my favourite game of all time once I finally played it in-depth, or even that I liked it the most of the NES games I've gone back to play recently, but it's still remarkably playable...unlike some games that used to seem great at the time but aged poorly *coughStreetFighter2cough*.
Let's look at the N64's innovations.
Analogue stick: copied by Sony within a short period of time.
Rumble Pack: copied by Sony within a short period of time.
Four controller slots built into the system: Featured in all big systems that came afterwards (except Sony for god knows what reason).
Now, I know companies do exist with awful hours, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were some companies with low salaries, but at least in my case it hasn't been an issue.
This same system breaks, however, when faced with a MMORPG, where the entire goal is to level up and gain resources. Best online RPG-esque game I ever played, actually, was a pretty basic text game which restricted you to three user challenges per day (only way to get exp) so those with the best strategy, not the most time, pulled ahead.
Basically, don't paint Nintendo as developer-unfriendly while trying to claim that Sony is making an effort. That may have been true at one point, but as a modern developer if there's one company that pisses me off for their restrictions, it's Sony. The five digit cost of a PSTool doesn't help, either.
I've watched the same thing happen with PSP launch titles; two or three bugs were fixed just after sending things in to Sony for final approval, but they'll likely never be fixed even in post-launch copies just because that requires a resubmission, which costs a fee and needs to be approved again by Sony (and they're likely to be harsher when they're not gasping for launch titles).
Or perhaps by newbified you mean how they actually kept the same control scheme between 100cc and 150cc in later games--having different control styles wasn't some kind of godly SMK feature you know; it was a bad flaw.
Or perhaps by newbified you mean that they made more than two characters useful, so that newbies wouldn't get screwed over by simply choosing whichever character they liked. Oooh, yeah, damn newfangled kart games with actual character balance!!1!
Don't get me wrong, I still play SMK from time to time (largely for the battle mode) but if anything the series has been generally improving (battle mode asside due to arena-size concerns).
Actually, 2004 was one of the most profitable years in theatres in quite a while. Hold on, I'll try and find the post with the relevant statistics I saw a while back...
6 #2 3856
http://www.rpgdl.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2385
(Captain K's post). Yeah...Shrek 2, Spiderman 2, The Passion of the Christ, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Incredibles. This was not a small year for movie releases--in fact quite the opposite.
Now, if you're referring to the quality of the releases, then...actually most people I know prefer Spiderman 2 to Spiderman, and think the kids in Prizoner of Azkaban are finally learning to act, and...well The Passion of the Christ was different, at any rate (I am not going to start on a debate over whether it's good or bad).
Now granted, Ubisoft doesn't need publishers, so there's no clear advantage to the deal, but if for some strange reason EA decided to treat this deal differently from other purchases, it wouldn't -have- to be a bad thing. How likely is that to happen? Hmm...Ubisoft is probably larger than any previous purchase, so it might have more bargaining power in the deal, but I'm not getting my hopes up yet.
Wonder if the /. mirroring is actually helping their server overload....
Point is, University students shouldn't have holes in their knowledge, and should be forced to do creative thought (yeah, there's sucky universities out there, but that's an asside). There's obviously people who learn to think on their own, and people who can get all the info they need for one area of programming or FPGA or whatever, so it's not useful for everyone, just a lot of people. On the other hand, military service teaches a less relevant kind of knowledge (for programmers) and values obedience over independent thought. It's really not the same thing at all (though this may depend on the university I suppose).
There are, however, inherent advantages to dual-booting in the first place. If some random program I download screws up my Windows desktop...eh, just reset in Linux, get back to work, and worry about it later. Useful, especially since I seem capable of crashing just about any OS (I've crashed Red Hat Linux, stalled an automatic, and crashed a GameCube. ...Windows XP lasted approximately 16 hours the last time I booted up...).
The main difference here is that games simply cost much more than seeing a movie. Sure, Bungie made more money in a day from Halo 2 than Spiderman 2 made in the opening weekend, but more people saw Spiderman 2 than bought Halo 2. Movies are still much more mainstream, just that the gaming industry is more lucrative.