Just because Valve makes great games on their own time frame and has a huge community of players making mods and continually playing their 5+ year old games doesn't mean they aren't a money grubbing company.
Some people seem to forget that they are in the money making business, and being the company that made Counter-Strike, they will probably milk that license until something threatens to dethrone it.
I wish that I could say that Valve is in the wrong on this one, but they can charge whatever they want to let companies commercially profit from their games.
So, the question is, is this news? Or is it incredibly appropriate and just more free press for Valve with the inevitable release of Half-Life 2? I mean the story "Valve tells CyberCafe that fucked up to pay them money for using their product irresponsibly" isn't exactly newsworthy.... Cease and Desists are merely the respectable way (and somewhat traditional way) to go about things. But, IANAL and might just me missing the point completely. So tag me as flamebait appropriately.
No advanced first person shooter for the game boy will ever exist, just like they didn't exist on the super nintendo. Sniping would be impossible, the z-axis would be horribly crippled with no analog stick, and the aiming would just be nightmarish. That said, I may have believed this if the rumor had been "a 2-d sidescrolling version of Halo is in the works for the GBA."
I'm gonna go with Shigeru Miyamoto for having created Zelda, Mario, and Donkey Kong. Everything lept forward from there, the man was an innovator and an unparalleled genius when it came to designing simplistic, stripped-down games. I, easily and without question, classify him at the father of modern gaming.
What the hell is the difference? Seriously. Now instead of using programs already implemented and functioning, we'll have to carry around a little pen with some memory or bluetooth or some other technology built in? Thus slowing down bootup time, adding more drivers to deal with, and potentially more flaws? I love how the article says "this is very intuitive..." Shit guys, cut & paste is intuitive cuz we've been doing it the better part of 20 years, now you want to 'shift the paradigm' (TM).
Sony should have seriously sat back and said, "ya know, it isn't broken and it doesn't need to be made any better right now, we have better things to spend money on." But noooo, instead Joe Jackass VP said "Hyuk, I wanna touch my friends laptop and have my files automagically pop onto their computer."
And holy hacking batman, this is a whole new world of identity/property theft.
This will probably work and Sega will prove you can make bank and charge considerably less than the going rate for a game. After they rake in the beans from their mass quantity of sales the industry will go "[the sheep] are still willing to pay $50" and not change anything. Way to go Sega, keep fighting the good fight to stay afloat!
Oh, I understand the past, but I'm speaking specifically about the future. I should have clarified.
Allow me to refrain, what happens when the next generation of Indian Kids look up on jeeves how to 'unionize' and completely screw the outsourcing companies and demand US wages either here or over there?
Living in Maryland, I can see the need for cameras everywhere in the downtown area of Baltimore (not so much the inner harbor.
But what happens when most of the citizens in downtown baltimore have shiny new closed circuit video cameras in their house they liberated from poles on the street?
I wonder what happens when the next generation of Indian kids realizes he could be making $50k+ a year programming over here and they all start coming to America. I mean, $8,000 a year may be adequate there, but surely India will eventually go to war and completely shoot their bustling economy directly in the foot. All the computer programmers in the world won't be able to save them. What happens then? Does America get their obfuscated code? Will all the companies that outsourced spend even more money to re-localize the operations?
Don't open that! You don't know if there's air out there!/obligatory GalaxyQuestReference
Ever since I first programmed on a MUD the ease of letting people add content amazed me (possibly because I was much younger than I am now). There's something to be said about a game language that has a 'wiki' level of interaction. The word would be 'neat' if there was any amount of quality assurance that was applied to this concept. Unfortunately there isn't, which resulted in why I left many *Mud projects and why this probably won't work as well as it does in theory.
Dvorak is slowly becoming the Nostrodamus of the high-tech industry. I think it's about time he started writing apocalyptic theories in book form and sold them through thinkgeek.
Meh, he certainly doesn't deserve space on any part of slashdot.
Comeon guys, if you honestly think NCSoft is the devil you have your hat on backwards. First of all, this addition to Garriots team is largely positive. NCSoft is doing something that no other companies are willing to do in the MMOG market - diversify.
Between Auto Assault, City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, Alter Life, Lineage 2, and Guild Wars - NCSoft is hitting all the bases with their titles. They have EQ Clones, car combat, diablo type rpg, the Korean Treadmill, and superhero city fighting.
Complaining about NCSoft shows nothing but a complete lack of knowledge when it comes to the MMO Market. Next time just keep your mouth shut and do some research.
I have that list bookmarked. Half of them aren't out. Many will die before more are released. Many of them are independent with very little market penetration. You want a list of MMO's that matter?
WoW, EQII, Tabula Rasa, Vanguard, and MxO. The rest are neither here nor there.
The MMOG genre is not one that trifles with small budgets, the benchmark is set high - unfortunately, the gameplay benchmark is set very low.
What are you babbling about? There, Inc. has all but disappeared and they weren't even in the same class. One was going to be a cel-shaded Everquest-esque MMORPG and the other was a social experiment that barely classified as a game but more as a virtual world.
People are jumping into the MMO genre because it's new (read: the wave of the future) and there's a lot to be said for player retention in these types of games. Unfortunately very few people know how to make them right.
What has happened here is Microsoft has decided to put all their eggs in Brad McQuaid's (and the rest of the Vanguard team's) basket and hoping he can turn out his second Everquest. Most likely this will result in crap of the highest level. But it's their choice. They have the money to toss around on shit like this.
That said, I don't know where you get the idea "tons" of MMO's will flood the market. MMORPG's haven't even truly broken into the mainstream yet considering how many gamers there are out there. On top of that they cost an incredible amount of money to produce, execute, and maintain. One day someone will do it right, but until then, it's not oversaturation we have to worry about, it's the deluge of shitty games that we've seen thus far.
One last thing, $60 box and $10 a month? You obviously do not play MMO's or games for that matter. Besides the Star Wars Galaxies limited edition box + digital sunglasses, I haven't seen a $60 since Final Fantasy II (IV) came out for the Super Nintendo. As for the monthly price Star Wars, Lineage 2, and City of Heroes has upped the standard to $15 a month. That's $70 more than $10/month per year. That's a hefty freaking difference.
Please, don't talk again, ever again.
1. If you're going to be funny with the title, make it a funny article - if not have a serious title and give yourself some street cred.
2. You can quote me all the number games you want, but can you name 10 games that are must owns for every gamecube owner? No, but that is easily done with XBox and PS2. If you can't do that, who gives a shit what the numbers say. I can name hundreds for the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Gameboy (both) - the N64 and Gamecube (at least for me) have been total failures in that area.
The real problem with MMORPG's has nothing to do with developers. Actually it does, but it has more to do with the gamers. Currently, the trend in the MMORPG sector, across the board, is gamers expect very little from an MMORPG at live. They expect a buggy, incomplete, and reasonably content devoid game. Then they accept it because "that's how all MMORPG's are." There's only one solution to this, gamers need to STOP playing games that are not feature complete, or else developers, no matter how long the beta is will continue to turn out rehashes of EQ. The developers also need to step up to the plate and offer something new. Recently Planetside is the only game that comes to mind at being slightly innovative. Unfortunately it is about the farthest thing from a roleplaying game that is massively multiplayer. In addition to innovation the players need to stop asking for release dates and developers need to stop giving them.
Right now beta is treated as a sort of interim until release, it shouldn't be that way and developers shouldn't expect it. They know how many bugs there are, hell, they programmed the bugs in the first place. Not purposefully mind you, but they are still there. If a playerbase isn't delivering bug reports just delete accounts. It's free gaming, if they aren't doing what they applied for they should not be allowed to take part in beta. The poster above is pretty much right, the only way companies are going to get good beta testers is with incentive. If for example you find 10 or more bugs in game that need to be fixed before live, you get to keep your character, or at least get a head start or free copy of the game.
Unfortunately most of this is for naught, I myself am a jaded gamer and I don't think developers will ever change, and neither will the gamers. Long live mediocrity.
I'm surprised I was modded down for this. I mean, shit, YOU give me a link to an article, I rtfa and I get sandblasted by horrible writing. If anything I should get -1, grammar nazi.
"We dunno if it was Trink again" Any technical journalist who uses the word 'dunno' in an article about corporate entities should be modded -1, Flamebait and be sent back to English class.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because Valve makes great games on their own time frame and has a huge community of players making mods and continually playing their 5+ year old games doesn't mean they aren't a money grubbing company.
Some people seem to forget that they are in the money making business, and being the company that made Counter-Strike, they will probably milk that license until something threatens to dethrone it.
I wish that I could say that Valve is in the wrong on this one, but they can charge whatever they want to let companies commercially profit from their games.
So, the question is, is this news? Or is it incredibly appropriate and just more free press for Valve with the inevitable release of Half-Life 2? I mean the story "Valve tells CyberCafe that fucked up to pay them money for using their product irresponsibly" isn't exactly newsworthy.... Cease and Desists are merely the respectable way (and somewhat traditional way) to go about things. But, IANAL and might just me missing the point completely. So tag me as flamebait appropriately.
No advanced first person shooter for the game boy will ever exist, just like they didn't exist on the super nintendo. Sniping would be impossible, the z-axis would be horribly crippled with no analog stick, and the aiming would just be nightmarish. That said, I may have believed this if the rumor had been "a 2-d sidescrolling version of Halo is in the works for the GBA."
I'm gonna go with Shigeru Miyamoto for having created Zelda, Mario, and Donkey Kong. Everything lept forward from there, the man was an innovator and an unparalleled genius when it came to designing simplistic, stripped-down games. I, easily and without question, classify him at the father of modern gaming.
What the hell is the difference? Seriously. Now instead of using programs already implemented and functioning, we'll have to carry around a little pen with some memory or bluetooth or some other technology built in? Thus slowing down bootup time, adding more drivers to deal with, and potentially more flaws? I love how the article says "this is very intuitive..." Shit guys, cut & paste is intuitive cuz we've been doing it the better part of 20 years, now you want to 'shift the paradigm' (TM).
Sony should have seriously sat back and said, "ya know, it isn't broken and it doesn't need to be made any better right now, we have better things to spend money on." But noooo, instead Joe Jackass VP said "Hyuk, I wanna touch my friends laptop and have my files automagically pop onto their computer."
And holy hacking batman, this is a whole new world of identity/property theft.
This will probably work and Sega will prove you can make bank and charge considerably less than the going rate for a game. After they rake in the beans from their mass quantity of sales the industry will go "[the sheep] are still willing to pay $50" and not change anything. Way to go Sega, keep fighting the good fight to stay afloat!
Oh, I understand the past, but I'm speaking specifically about the future. I should have clarified.
Allow me to refrain, what happens when the next generation of Indian Kids look up on jeeves how to 'unionize' and completely screw the outsourcing companies and demand US wages either here or over there?
Living in Maryland, I can see the need for cameras everywhere in the downtown area of Baltimore (not so much the inner harbor.
But what happens when most of the citizens in downtown baltimore have shiny new closed circuit video cameras in their house they liberated from poles on the street?
So, what you're saying is Boeing went from a high during the tech boom to a low after 9/11 and the "war" in Iraq.
Comeon now, you don't expect us to take your sample as 'interesting' or 'insightful,' do you?
Don't open that! You don't know if there's air out there! /obligatory GalaxyQuestReference
Ever since I first programmed on a MUD the ease of letting people add content amazed me (possibly because I was much younger than I am now). There's something to be said about a game language that has a 'wiki' level of interaction. The word would be 'neat' if there was any amount of quality assurance that was applied to this concept. Unfortunately there isn't, which resulted in why I left many *Mud projects and why this probably won't work as well as it does in theory.
Dvorak is slowly becoming the Nostrodamus of the high-tech industry. I think it's about time he started writing apocalyptic theories in book form and sold them through thinkgeek. Meh, he certainly doesn't deserve space on any part of slashdot.
Between Auto Assault, City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, Alter Life, Lineage 2, and Guild Wars - NCSoft is hitting all the bases with their titles. They have EQ Clones, car combat, diablo type rpg, the Korean Treadmill, and superhero city fighting.
Complaining about NCSoft shows nothing but a complete lack of knowledge when it comes to the MMO Market. Next time just keep your mouth shut and do some research.
I have that list bookmarked. Half of them aren't out. Many will die before more are released. Many of them are independent with very little market penetration. You want a list of MMO's that matter?
WoW, EQII, Tabula Rasa, Vanguard, and MxO. The rest are neither here nor there.
The MMOG genre is not one that trifles with small budgets, the benchmark is set high - unfortunately, the gameplay benchmark is set very low.
Sigh, forgot html tags. (-1, crappy formatting)
What are you babbling about? There, Inc. has all but disappeared and they weren't even in the same class. One was going to be a cel-shaded Everquest-esque MMORPG and the other was a social experiment that barely classified as a game but more as a virtual world. People are jumping into the MMO genre because it's new (read: the wave of the future) and there's a lot to be said for player retention in these types of games. Unfortunately very few people know how to make them right. What has happened here is Microsoft has decided to put all their eggs in Brad McQuaid's (and the rest of the Vanguard team's) basket and hoping he can turn out his second Everquest. Most likely this will result in crap of the highest level. But it's their choice. They have the money to toss around on shit like this. That said, I don't know where you get the idea "tons" of MMO's will flood the market. MMORPG's haven't even truly broken into the mainstream yet considering how many gamers there are out there. On top of that they cost an incredible amount of money to produce, execute, and maintain. One day someone will do it right, but until then, it's not oversaturation we have to worry about, it's the deluge of shitty games that we've seen thus far. One last thing, $60 box and $10 a month? You obviously do not play MMO's or games for that matter. Besides the Star Wars Galaxies limited edition box + digital sunglasses, I haven't seen a $60 since Final Fantasy II (IV) came out for the Super Nintendo. As for the monthly price Star Wars, Lineage 2, and City of Heroes has upped the standard to $15 a month. That's $70 more than $10/month per year. That's a hefty freaking difference. Please, don't talk again, ever again.
Blizzard's Classic line for the GBA also has a flash demos available here.
What happens if I just play with a controller that doesn't have force feedback or whatever the buzzword is for it?
I see 2 problems with the article:
1. If you're going to be funny with the title, make it a funny article - if not have a serious title and give yourself some street cred.
2. You can quote me all the number games you want, but can you name 10 games that are must owns for every gamecube owner? No, but that is easily done with XBox and PS2. If you can't do that, who gives a shit what the numbers say. I can name hundreds for the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Gameboy (both) - the N64 and Gamecube (at least for me) have been total failures in that area.
schild @ f13.net
Holy crap are you David Bowman?!
The real problem with MMORPG's has nothing to do with developers. Actually it does, but it has more to do with the gamers. Currently, the trend in the MMORPG sector, across the board, is gamers expect very little from an MMORPG at live. They expect a buggy, incomplete, and reasonably content devoid game. Then they accept it because "that's how all MMORPG's are." There's only one solution to this, gamers need to STOP playing games that are not feature complete, or else developers, no matter how long the beta is will continue to turn out rehashes of EQ. The developers also need to step up to the plate and offer something new. Recently Planetside is the only game that comes to mind at being slightly innovative. Unfortunately it is about the farthest thing from a roleplaying game that is massively multiplayer. In addition to innovation the players need to stop asking for release dates and developers need to stop giving them.
Right now beta is treated as a sort of interim until release, it shouldn't be that way and developers shouldn't expect it. They know how many bugs there are, hell, they programmed the bugs in the first place. Not purposefully mind you, but they are still there. If a playerbase isn't delivering bug reports just delete accounts. It's free gaming, if they aren't doing what they applied for they should not be allowed to take part in beta. The poster above is pretty much right, the only way companies are going to get good beta testers is with incentive. If for example you find 10 or more bugs in game that need to be fixed before live, you get to keep your character, or at least get a head start or free copy of the game.
Unfortunately most of this is for naught, I myself am a jaded gamer and I don't think developers will ever change, and neither will the gamers. Long live mediocrity.
I'm surprised I was modded down for this. I mean, shit, YOU give me a link to an article, I rtfa and I get sandblasted by horrible writing. If anything I should get -1, grammar nazi.
"We dunno if it was Trink again"
Any technical journalist who uses the word 'dunno' in an article about corporate entities should be modded -1, Flamebait and be sent back to English class.
We all know the REAL top queries
1. Britney Spears naked
2. Harry Potter torrent
3. Matrix sucked!
4. Shakira's fine fine ass
etc.
Do the mods understand any of the math in this thread? I sure as hell don't...which would be the direct result of a degree in graphic design.
I'm quite sorry but this is in no way news for nerds, or stuff that matters. Fark.com has better filtering than this. /schild