My first, second, and twentieth reactions to the article all consisted of "DON'T!" when it comes to in-game ads.
The only in-game advertising I would enjoy is the same style as used in Wayne's World. Sarcastic shilling is ok in my book. And I have to admit, I really loved capturing and dismantling the Energizer Bunny in Space Quest 4 (I think it was 4...was a long time ago). But those are the exceptions that prove the rule, which is that immersive ads in our entertainment are a bad thing.
I never read Moby Dick. We were often pushed towards alternatives to read than the mainstream in highschool, thankfully. Altho it did result in reading The Chocolate War, I think it was titled. All I took away from that was something about masturbation and fundraisers.
Later on in highschool, I got to voluntarily read "Catch-22", "1984", "Brave New World", and others for papers (some of the research- variety). Those voluntary novels were always a lot more fun than the school picked drek (I admit that I enjoyed Grapes and Gatsby, but Chopin's "The Awakening" and Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers" really didnt do it for me...
I was luckily always in either honors, advanced, or AP english classes (depending on what grade), and thus I really think I came out a lot better than standard english students. I was first introduced to Shakespeare in 8th grade via "The Tempest", and we saw either movies or stage versions of every shakespeare we ever studied. Kenneth Branagh is freaking amazing on screen.
And we even saw the movie version of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead", which sparked me to pick up the book. Great stuff. In general they did well with mixing media and books together for us, at least.
"To be frank, anybody levelling Ranger or Ninja at a rate of more than one or two levels per week is almost certainly buying gil, unless they started with a vast amount of capital."
What he's saying there isn't that someone who levels multiple times in a week is buying gil (I do it all the time), but that someone who levels a RNG or NIN as their first job (aka not having tons of funding from another high level job) is most likely buying gil, due to the extremely high costs of those jobs. I spent about 1million gil to craft a ton of ninja tools to use (something that would probably cost me 3million now), and I could have sold them for 2-3 times what it cost to make them. They'll see me thru for maybe 4-5 levels, and thats pre-50. At higher levels the cost per level increases dramatially. As my Ranger, I would spend a significant amount of time (a couple hours) farming and crafting for each session I would go and level with it. Simply to afford all the ammo I would use during that time. Those are the two jobs that require constant consumption of consumables, and the price of those consumables is constantly rising, especially for ninjas.
That said, if someone is smart, they can easily level RNG or NIN almost non-stop, without having to buy gil. So it is possible, however unlikely given the mindset of so many players. I do it myself, simply by applying my craft skills and long term investments such as gardening. But when I see a player whom I helped as a newb (level 1 no subjob, etc, had to explain how the basic game mechanics worked) as a L75 ninja 3 months later, with all that nice multi-million gil equipment, I get a wee bit suspicious. Whats the point in powering thru all those levels on bought gil, there's no accomplishment to that. You're not earning anything, you're only investing time for the xp. At least crafting, farming, NM camping, etc, require some thought and skill (and luck!) to do well. The level grind is the least part of the game.
"What judge wants to be the first one to deny such a request if it later turns out to be true and a wiretap could have prevented an attack?"
The judge thats doing his job and asks for collaborating evidence that meets the structures for wiretapping (which I don't know offhand, but have been in place for some time)? The judge thats not a patsy to the FBI and respects our Constitutional rights?
As I said, its tangential to the issue at hand, but is a larger issue in and of itself, that I mainly mention due to the recent lack of intelligence shown by our nation's highest court. Judge's should be held accountable when they fail in their job, whether its giving away private property to advance commercial interests, or giving away free wiretaps to a buddy at the FBI without due process.
Yes, because the ability to carry out a wiretap obtained legally via due process in the courts within a useful timeframe is definitely an awful, horrible infringement upon my liberty and freedom by the government/end sarcasm
If they had the ability to carry out a 10-minute tap on anyone whenever they pleased, we'd have issues; as it is now they need to walk it past a judge still, and should not be able to indiscriminately tap people for no reason.
Whether or not the judges are competent in their positions or pushovers who'll sign every wiretap order they're handed regardless of merits is an entirely different problem, of course, tangentially related to the conversation at hand.
Yes!! I had an old Gateway keyboard from my first PC that I used up until it finally and truly died 2 years ago. That thing could wake the dead (or at least my roommate) when I started coding. And I miss it. It was a good tactile response to my keypresses, and the audible portion is ingrained in my mind as what a keyboard should sound like.
Also, after over a decade, none of the key labels had worn off. My laptop is suffering after barely a year. They don't make them like they used to. I doubt this 'extra sensitive' keyboard will be any better, especially since my typing isn't 100% adherent to the traditional touch typing methods; that would render those differed key weights completely useless for me.
Where did you pick up these flash cables and such? I looked at Lik-sang (I believe) a long time ago, but honestly I got lost trying to find anything useful. Is that still the only decent (read: reputable) source?
I'd love to slim down some games onto a single cart, my GBA carrying case is strained trying to hold all the old GB game cartridges as well as the GBA ones.
Offtopic to a point, sorry. I've no plans on a PSP nor a DS until some point much later in the future, after price cuts and better game libraries and all.
That was the moment that hooked me on Firefly. I loved the Crazy Ivan move in the pilot, but I was still ambivalent about it until that point. But when Claw started threatening Mal, I looked at my friends and said "Eh, kill him."
First time a TV show has listened to my advice. I was floored, and been an addict ever since:)
Thank you! I was initially shocked they had the sound in space, until I noticed the proximity to the planet and what appeared to be atmospheric distortions around the ship. I'd mod you up if I hadnt been posting here.
I'm wondering if the killing children bit wasnt editted to be deliberately misleading; you'll notice it wasnt one continual scene, but it jumped around a bit, so its quite possible that it was placed there deliberately out of context. Movie trailers (sadly) do that all the time.
Yeah, they'll never match the original, sadly. It'd be like star wars and the matrix. Too much hype and too many expectations. Hopefully they won't ruin it to the point of wretchedness, though.
I'd almost like to see something in the style of Titan: AE. I know they didnt intend it to be a mixture of CGI and traditional animation, but I liked the effects.
If you read at the bottom, there's a note from the guy who's done all 3 interviews; this is a testbed for future expansion upon the topic, so he used a standard set of questions for all the interviews so as to try and avoid injecting personal bias, or going off on tangents with any particular person. And in all 3 cases, the answers are all a matter of subjective opinion (even if Thompson wants everyone to believe its a fact).
Its an interesting approach to seeing the views of both sides of the community on game-related violence. Webcomic authors are usually some of the more in-touch people with the pulse of serious gamers (at least, authors like those @ PA, CAD, VGCats, etc). So they're generally well respected voices in the gamer community, and have a little more clout I'd say than Joe Gamer pulled off the street.
Of course it helps that he chose two webcomics (that are both hilarious of course) that are on the more violent/weird side of things, while being drawn by normal, non-homicidal people. They're a perfect contrast to Jack Thompson, and a perfect example of why he's a nutcase.
I know this is a couple days after the fact, but I've been on travel all last week and missed out on the conversation/debates here. I'm on the Gilgamesh server myself; we had 2 groups of well known gilsellers, and multiple smaller groups as well. Last I checked, the most notorious group (most well known at least) is back and happily monopolizing their drops (Archers Ring) once again.
The others havent returned yet. We'll see if they do or if they were banned.
But to address Point A in your post, FFXI NMs typically *are* in an area spawn. And that works to the advantage of the gilseller groups, as there are anywhere from 1-6 of them to cover the spawn range. The group I competed with primarily (known as the Bugs) was in a desert area(Valkurm Dunes), and the spawn range of the NM (Valkurm Emperor) covered a very large area (it was increased in size recently, and the item drop rate lowered, in efforts to curb the gilseller inflation on it -- which actually made it worse).
Thus, an average player has 4x as much ground to cover as the group of 4 that spread out to cover it all at once; unless it spawned right in front of you, they would have it, as they'd found the optimal spots for it to spawn within sight of at least one of them. And with a spawn time that can vary between 1.5-6+ hours between each pop, your odds are reduced yet again. The solo NM hunter has an incredibly small chance versus them, and thanks to SE's lowering the drop rate even more, when you do get a claim you typically don't get the item. Luckily for me the Bugs are still gone for 2 weeks running, so I actually have a chance now.
The group that was not banned is even worse; the spawn areas (for Stroper Chyme) they camp are spread all over, and the 6 of them will spread out and cover every possible spot; they can be beaten every now and then, but the drop rate is something like 0.001%, so good luck beating them enough to get the drop.
So general area spawns simply make it harder for legitimate players, and even easier for the gilsellers who sat in that zone for literally months, 24hours a day.
Instanced dungeons would be nice, except FFXI basically isnt setup to handle that in most cases; there are fights (called BUrning Circle fights) that you trade items to get into, that have nice potential rewards, that are instanced; but those are a limited access commodity, and only encompass a small number of good items possible in the game. Making it so whole zones were instanced would cause many, many issues with the game mechanics I think.
Ok, that's my bit of input, if anyone ever comes back to read it.
To this day my mouse finger itches and twitches if I hear the starcarft music. My roommate in college used to play it softly sometimes, and then laugh when I started complaining that my mouse hand was twitching.
Whats scary though is when you get something in real life that makes a noise like some of the game's sound effects...I instantly wonder what my enemy is doing before realizing it was just a car door.
"The problem is that this is something that does not need to involve the government. We do not need a new law every time a new product hits the shelf."
You're completely right, in my opinion. What we need is for people to realize that existing laws apply in many cases, and in others a little common sense should reign. If stores took a little social responsibility and restricted sales to minors of Mature videogames, we'd not need a law concerning it. But most businesses, sadly, are loathe to interfere with profits by following the actual law, much less from being responsible to society.
We might have a fringe study or two, done under questionable conditions. But I'm pretty sure, no, we don't.
There are plenty of living, breathing examples to disprove this theory, however. If all we experienced was a life of violent imagery and inputer, then most likely we'd become more violent. Tempered with a family and the normal social/familial interaction most kids have, and a parent explaining to them that such movies are 'bad' and not to be emulated, such movies do not produce homicidal maniacs. There are a few notable cases where blame is pinned on violent media for producing killers, but such instances usually gloss over the other factors in the culprit's life (molestation, rampant depression, other psychological issues, etc)
I'm not saying that knowing 50 or even 100 examples disproving the grandparent's theory makes valid scientific point (small sample of examples != evidence), but I'm disagreeing with his claims of having scientific evidence as well.
As has been posted elsewhere in this thread, if watching movies and playing video games of the violent genre made even a quarter of us psychotic, we'd be living like Mad Max in the shattered remains of society or something.
Talking with ACs is near impossible, as any/. troll can come along and hijack things. You never know if you're talking to the same person, and it generally makes a reasonable conversation next to impossible beyond one or two posts.
Hence why I generally prefer talking to folks with accounts, so at least then I know I'm getting a consistent opinion from someone, rather than 5 trolls taking turns being idiotic as AC.
Its my thread, that I started, and I'm not allowed to post my opinions? Yep, typical Slashdot behavior to be sure.
Once again, let me just state that I dont require anyone to change their opinions to suit my own. Simply because I don't like the game doesnt force you to change anything. Yeesh.
You're entitled to enjoy it more than Monkey Ball or Marble Madness (altho that game was annoying to no end on the last stage). I dont. Again with the whole freedom of choice thing that/. seems to hate unless its 'their' choice, not an opposite one.
Theres nothing high and mighty about not understanding the appeal behind a game. I am friends with a lot of gamers (we did little else in college) and exactly one of them likes KD. The rest of us scratch our heads and try to figure out why. We certainly don't try to force him to stop playing it or make him not like it.
Stop posting as an Anonymous Coward and use an accout, and we'll have a real discussion if you want. You might even be able to explain it to me if you know how to carry on politely. But I'm done talking to ACs for the day.
Innovation is a game that looks to have been designed while someone was drunk? That has so many language irregularities to make AYBABTU look like proper grammar-school english? That consists of rolling around picking stuff up as the sum total of its gameplay?
Yeah, innovative is one word for it, but I think the acid-trip comic describes it better. You want simply controls and rolling around, go play Super Monkey Ball, or better yet Marble Madness. Both tons more fun, and a lot less screwy, than KD.
Slashdot Mirror
My first, second, and twentieth reactions to the article all consisted of "DON'T!" when it comes to in-game ads.
The only in-game advertising I would enjoy is the same style as used in Wayne's World. Sarcastic shilling is ok in my book. And I have to admit, I really loved capturing and dismantling the Energizer Bunny in Space Quest 4 (I think it was 4...was a long time ago). But those are the exceptions that prove the rule, which is that immersive ads in our entertainment are a bad thing.
It cant be *that* hard to restore backups from paper....right?
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19971127
I never read Moby Dick. We were often pushed towards alternatives to read than the mainstream in highschool, thankfully. Altho it did result in reading The Chocolate War, I think it was titled. All I took away from that was something about masturbation and fundraisers.
Later on in highschool, I got to voluntarily read "Catch-22", "1984", "Brave New World", and others for papers (some of the research- variety). Those voluntary novels were always a lot more fun than the school picked drek (I admit that I enjoyed Grapes and Gatsby, but Chopin's "The Awakening" and Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers" really didnt do it for me...
I was luckily always in either honors, advanced, or AP english classes (depending on what grade), and thus I really think I came out a lot better than standard english students. I was first introduced to Shakespeare in 8th grade via "The Tempest", and we saw either movies or stage versions of every shakespeare we ever studied. Kenneth Branagh is freaking amazing on screen.
And we even saw the movie version of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead", which sparked me to pick up the book. Great stuff. In general they did well with mixing media and books together for us, at least.
"To be frank, anybody levelling Ranger or Ninja at a rate of more than one or two levels per week is almost certainly buying gil, unless they started with a vast amount of capital."
What he's saying there isn't that someone who levels multiple times in a week is buying gil (I do it all the time), but that someone who levels a RNG or NIN as their first job (aka not having tons of funding from another high level job) is most likely buying gil, due to the extremely high costs of those jobs. I spent about 1million gil to craft a ton of ninja tools to use (something that would probably cost me 3million now), and I could have sold them for 2-3 times what it cost to make them. They'll see me thru for maybe 4-5 levels, and thats pre-50. At higher levels the cost per level increases dramatially. As my Ranger, I would spend a significant amount of time (a couple hours) farming and crafting for each session I would go and level with it. Simply to afford all the ammo I would use during that time. Those are the two jobs that require constant consumption of consumables, and the price of those consumables is constantly rising, especially for ninjas.
That said, if someone is smart, they can easily level RNG or NIN almost non-stop, without having to buy gil. So it is possible, however unlikely given the mindset of so many players. I do it myself, simply by applying my craft skills and long term investments such as gardening. But when I see a player whom I helped as a newb (level 1 no subjob, etc, had to explain how the basic game mechanics worked) as a L75 ninja 3 months later, with all that nice multi-million gil equipment, I get a wee bit suspicious. Whats the point in powering thru all those levels on bought gil, there's no accomplishment to that. You're not earning anything, you're only investing time for the xp. At least crafting, farming, NM camping, etc, require some thought and skill (and luck!) to do well. The level grind is the least part of the game.
Yeah, I'll stop now. Must get back to work.
Yes, thank you. Thats one of those words I can never quite get right. At least I've stopped (mostly) using 'irregardless' now :D
"What judge wants to be the first one to deny such a request if it later turns out to be true and a wiretap could have prevented an attack?"
The judge thats doing his job and asks for collaborating evidence that meets the structures for wiretapping (which I don't know offhand, but have been in place for some time)? The judge thats not a patsy to the FBI and respects our Constitutional rights?
As I said, its tangential to the issue at hand, but is a larger issue in and of itself, that I mainly mention due to the recent lack of intelligence shown by our nation's highest court. Judge's should be held accountable when they fail in their job, whether its giving away private property to advance commercial interests, or giving away free wiretaps to a buddy at the FBI without due process.
Yes, because the ability to carry out a wiretap obtained legally via due process in the courts within a useful timeframe is definitely an awful, horrible infringement upon my liberty and freedom by the government /end sarcasm
If they had the ability to carry out a 10-minute tap on anyone whenever they pleased, we'd have issues; as it is now they need to walk it past a judge still, and should not be able to indiscriminately tap people for no reason.
Whether or not the judges are competent in their positions or pushovers who'll sign every wiretap order they're handed regardless of merits is an entirely different problem, of course, tangentially related to the conversation at hand.
Yes!! I had an old Gateway keyboard from my first PC that I used up until it finally and truly died 2 years ago. That thing could wake the dead (or at least my roommate) when I started coding. And I miss it. It was a good tactile response to my keypresses, and the audible portion is ingrained in my mind as what a keyboard should sound like.
Also, after over a decade, none of the key labels had worn off. My laptop is suffering after barely a year. They don't make them like they used to. I doubt this 'extra sensitive' keyboard will be any better, especially since my typing isn't 100% adherent to the traditional touch typing methods; that would render those differed key weights completely useless for me.
Hmm...
I don't see any image verification.
Where did you pick up these flash cables and such? I looked at Lik-sang (I believe) a long time ago, but honestly I got lost trying to find anything useful. Is that still the only decent (read: reputable) source?
I'd love to slim down some games onto a single cart, my GBA carrying case is strained trying to hold all the old GB game cartridges as well as the GBA ones.
Offtopic to a point, sorry. I've no plans on a PSP nor a DS until some point much later in the future, after price cuts and better game libraries and all.
That was the moment that hooked me on Firefly. I loved the Crazy Ivan move in the pilot, but I was still ambivalent about it until that point. But when Claw started threatening Mal, I looked at my friends and said "Eh, kill him."
:)
First time a TV show has listened to my advice. I was floored, and been an addict ever since
Thank you! I was initially shocked they had the sound in space, until I noticed the proximity to the planet and what appeared to be atmospheric distortions around the ship. I'd mod you up if I hadnt been posting here.
I'm wondering if the killing children bit wasnt editted to be deliberately misleading; you'll notice it wasnt one continual scene, but it jumped around a bit, so its quite possible that it was placed there deliberately out of context. Movie trailers (sadly) do that all the time.
Yeah, they'll never match the original, sadly. It'd be like star wars and the matrix. Too much hype and too many expectations. Hopefully they won't ruin it to the point of wretchedness, though.
I'd almost like to see something in the style of Titan: AE. I know they didnt intend it to be a mixture of CGI and traditional animation, but I liked the effects.
This at least prompted me to make a new sig.
Oh man, your last line there has had me chuckling for hours now. Mind if I add that to my list of life goals too?
If you read at the bottom, there's a note from the guy who's done all 3 interviews; this is a testbed for future expansion upon the topic, so he used a standard set of questions for all the interviews so as to try and avoid injecting personal bias, or going off on tangents with any particular person. And in all 3 cases, the answers are all a matter of subjective opinion (even if Thompson wants everyone to believe its a fact).
Its an interesting approach to seeing the views of both sides of the community on game-related violence. Webcomic authors are usually some of the more in-touch people with the pulse of serious gamers (at least, authors like those @ PA, CAD, VGCats, etc). So they're generally well respected voices in the gamer community, and have a little more clout I'd say than Joe Gamer pulled off the street.
Of course it helps that he chose two webcomics (that are both hilarious of course) that are on the more violent/weird side of things, while being drawn by normal, non-homicidal people. They're a perfect contrast to Jack Thompson, and a perfect example of why he's a nutcase.
I know this is a couple days after the fact, but I've been on travel all last week and missed out on the conversation/debates here. I'm on the Gilgamesh server myself; we had 2 groups of well known gilsellers, and multiple smaller groups as well. Last I checked, the most notorious group (most well known at least) is back and happily monopolizing their drops (Archers Ring) once again.
The others havent returned yet. We'll see if they do or if they were banned.
But to address Point A in your post, FFXI NMs typically *are* in an area spawn. And that works to the advantage of the gilseller groups, as there are anywhere from 1-6 of them to cover the spawn range. The group I competed with primarily (known as the Bugs) was in a desert area(Valkurm Dunes), and the spawn range of the NM (Valkurm Emperor) covered a very large area (it was increased in size recently, and the item drop rate lowered, in efforts to curb the gilseller inflation on it -- which actually made it worse).
Thus, an average player has 4x as much ground to cover as the group of 4 that spread out to cover it all at once; unless it spawned right in front of you, they would have it, as they'd found the optimal spots for it to spawn within sight of at least one of them. And with a spawn time that can vary between 1.5-6+ hours between each pop, your odds are reduced yet again. The solo NM hunter has an incredibly small chance versus them, and thanks to SE's lowering the drop rate even more, when you do get a claim you typically don't get the item. Luckily for me the Bugs are still gone for 2 weeks running, so I actually have a chance now.
The group that was not banned is even worse; the spawn areas (for Stroper Chyme) they camp are spread all over, and the 6 of them will spread out and cover every possible spot; they can be beaten every now and then, but the drop rate is something like 0.001%, so good luck beating them enough to get the drop.
So general area spawns simply make it harder for legitimate players, and even easier for the gilsellers who sat in that zone for literally months, 24hours a day.
Instanced dungeons would be nice, except FFXI basically isnt setup to handle that in most cases; there are fights (called BUrning Circle fights) that you trade items to get into, that have nice potential rewards, that are instanced; but those are a limited access commodity, and only encompass a small number of good items possible in the game. Making it so whole zones were instanced would cause many, many issues with the game mechanics I think.
Ok, that's my bit of input, if anyone ever comes back to read it.
I'm not sure how many times now I've dreamed that I got my Leaping Boots in FFXI...but that dang lizard continues to taunt me.
Yes, the MMORPG dreams suck the worst; so much exhultation then I log on and sigh.
To this day my mouse finger itches and twitches if I hear the starcarft music. My roommate in college used to play it softly sometimes, and then laugh when I started complaining that my mouse hand was twitching.
Whats scary though is when you get something in real life that makes a noise like some of the game's sound effects...I instantly wonder what my enemy is doing before realizing it was just a car door.
"The problem is that this is something that does not need to involve the government. We do not need a new law every time a new product hits the shelf."
You're completely right, in my opinion. What we need is for people to realize that existing laws apply in many cases, and in others a little common sense should reign. If stores took a little social responsibility and restricted sales to minors of Mature videogames, we'd not need a law concerning it. But most businesses, sadly, are loathe to interfere with profits by following the actual law, much less from being responsible to society.
We might have a fringe study or two, done under questionable conditions. But I'm pretty sure, no, we don't.
There are plenty of living, breathing examples to disprove this theory, however. If all we experienced was a life of violent imagery and inputer, then most likely we'd become more violent. Tempered with a family and the normal social/familial interaction most kids have, and a parent explaining to them that such movies are 'bad' and not to be emulated, such movies do not produce homicidal maniacs. There are a few notable cases where blame is pinned on violent media for producing killers, but such instances usually gloss over the other factors in the culprit's life (molestation, rampant depression, other psychological issues, etc)
I'm not saying that knowing 50 or even 100 examples disproving the grandparent's theory makes valid scientific point (small sample of examples != evidence), but I'm disagreeing with his claims of having scientific evidence as well.
As has been posted elsewhere in this thread, if watching movies and playing video games of the violent genre made even a quarter of us psychotic, we'd be living like Mad Max in the shattered remains of society or something.
Its a new day so I'll bite on the AC thing.
/. troll can come along and hijack things. You never know if you're talking to the same person, and it generally makes a reasonable conversation next to impossible beyond one or two posts.
Talking with ACs is near impossible, as any
Hence why I generally prefer talking to folks with accounts, so at least then I know I'm getting a consistent opinion from someone, rather than 5 trolls taking turns being idiotic as AC.
Its my thread, that I started, and I'm not allowed to post my opinions? Yep, typical Slashdot behavior to be sure.
/. seems to hate unless its 'their' choice, not an opposite one.
Once again, let me just state that I dont require anyone to change their opinions to suit my own. Simply because I don't like the game doesnt force you to change anything. Yeesh.
You're entitled to enjoy it more than Monkey Ball or Marble Madness (altho that game was annoying to no end on the last stage). I dont. Again with the whole freedom of choice thing that
Theres nothing high and mighty about not understanding the appeal behind a game. I am friends with a lot of gamers (we did little else in college) and exactly one of them likes KD. The rest of us scratch our heads and try to figure out why. We certainly don't try to force him to stop playing it or make him not like it.
Stop posting as an Anonymous Coward and use an accout, and we'll have a real discussion if you want. You might even be able to explain it to me if you know how to carry on politely. But I'm done talking to ACs for the day.
Innovation is a game that looks to have been designed while someone was drunk? That has so many language irregularities to make AYBABTU look like proper grammar-school english? That consists of rolling around picking stuff up as the sum total of its gameplay?
Yeah, innovative is one word for it, but I think the acid-trip comic describes it better. You want simply controls and rolling around, go play Super Monkey Ball, or better yet Marble Madness. Both tons more fun, and a lot less screwy, than KD.