The closest thing to MMO sports games right now would be online leagues based on popular sports management sims.
I'm in two online hockey leagues based off EHM, where the other 29 teams are controlled by a real person as well and on person acting as a "commissioner" ties it all in together. Full financial model, player development, trades and free agent signings, entry and waiver drafts...
Out of the Park (OOTP) baseball also has a plethora of online leagues in much the same way.
Done correctly, these are about as close as you'll probably get.
Years ago I helped playtest an online football (football, not soccer) game where all the real players were in "skill positions". Technically it worked. It was impossible to play though, the twitch/reaction requirements mean there has to be no lag whatsoever, and it's impossible to organize a group of people online like that to just even run one play, let alone a 2-minute-drill offense or audible a new defensive scheme at the line.
I'm sure some people out there love their Inspirons and are on their original power cords, but I'm sure as hell not one of them.
I worship my Inspiron 4000.
Then again, I got it barely-used with two batteries, two adapters, and a bunch of other crap for ~$350. So... yeah, if you dropped $1500 on it new, I'd guess it'd be annoying. However, the only problem I ever had with mine was the mouse wigging out -- and that was easily solved by disabling the little red touchknob thingy in the keyboard.
But yeah, the two adapters I have are the original and an extra/spare purchased at the same time as the laptop. I've had no problems with either of them. I suppose I should investigate this though and see what I maybe need to do for the recall.
I dunno, it's pretty simple to slip copies out to 4 or 5 large, free sites and let them deal with it as well and handling some of the load themselves -- it'd spread rather quickly then. If your company or host can't serve that sort of volume, that notes a problem in how your company is handling things.
I won't judge them on how they distributed the closed copy because that's rather irrlevant to the asinine fact that they're asking people to PAY MONEY FOR A BETA. Think about that for a second...
Is this the next big thing? Paying money for betas and demos?
And for the record, I won't play WoW simply because the world doesn't need another MMORPG to add to the literally-thousands already out there.
Blizzard's choice to align themselves in any way with FilePlanet should set of klaxons and throw up red flags all over the place. FilePlanet pretty much embodies everything that is wrong with the internet gaming scene right now, and apparently now by extension Blizzard would like to be included in that category. If you fall for this, PT Barnum would love you...
So don't waste your money people, either to shell out to Blizzard directly or to the losers at FilePlanet. I guess at least be thankful that Blizzard let everyone know ahead of time to not bother with WoW.
Mod Combat Mission and you still won't have an engine anyone will watch or want to watch. LIS, it may be effective for what it does, but it's not terribly-accurate and it's UGLY.
Whereas the newest Total War engine looks good, plays good, and does so without some major mythological mod needing to be applied for it.
Well having played Combat Mission, I like the game in a lot of respects but it does NOT feel at all realistic.
Why am I replying? You're meddling in *my* area right now -- history and wargames. Of COURSE I'm going to post a bunch on this, especially since I notice that a lot of people commenting on this have neither played a Total War game or even seen the show, yet seem to have no problem commenting on them...
I amused at the Primus comment, mainly because my name has absolutely nothing to do with them. Besides, an Anonymous Coward doesn't have a lot of room to comment on other people's nicks now do they...
Poster's point was that there are better combat engines to re-enact historical battles.
Really? Name a better engine to model ancient battles, go ahead let's hear it. Name a good engine to realistically model Napoleanic-era battles. What about if I want to model the Zulu or Maori wars? Or the Mongol razing of Samarkand? I'm waiting...
It's ridiculous to comment that there are better engines to use to recreate ancient wars, and then cite Combat Misison (a WWII game) as an example. That was my point. Combat Mission has nothing to do with the battles or time period discussed, not to mention it's rather ugly, so to bring it up is asinine and cliche. There's historical combat outside of WWII, and some people can't seem to grasp this. In the meantime I'm dying to hear how you'll use the Combat Mission engine to recreate Cannae or Kadesh.
Judging by the lousy ARENA show on G4, no it doesn't have a place. Part of that of course being that the people participating in these shows SUCK at the games.
It's really sad to be flipping through TV with some buddies, come across two teams playing a PS2 FPS none of us have ever played before, and the firsty comment out of someone's mouth within 30 seconds is "We've never played this game before and we'd mop the floor with both teams".
Having watched several different "competitive" gaming events on TV, streaming video, and in real life, I think I'm safe in saying that in many cases the best gamers aren't even participating. It's just that sad...
I really have no idea why you're rambling on about WWII and D-Day. For one thing, warfare is completely different between ancient times and WWII. I wish people would get off this WWII kick and none of it is relevant to the ancient combat we're discussing...
Stuff happens so fast at so many different places, and involves so many different troops, in modern warfare that it quickly gets confusing.
In the case of an ancient battle like Marathon or Guagamela, we know good details because records were written from BOTH SIDES regarding the battle, and usually those records agree on a majority of things. We may not know the exact number of troops involved, and we may not have a blow-by-blow account, but ancient warfare wasn't nearly as complicated as modern warfare, the battles generally didn't take too long because large-scale melee combat is exhausting, and usually enough survivors were around to record their memories and thoughts.
What ancient war weapons do we not have? People have recreated Greek Fire nowadays, although maybe not the exact concotion it's close enough we can see how terrifyingly-effective it is. People have read second-hand accounts of records lost in the fire at Alexandria and managed to recreate things like a "gatling arrow gun" that may or may not have ever actually been used in battle (but does work). And besides, ancient combat still came down to two (at least two) sides eventually running like madmen at one another and engaging in close-range melee combat.
We know a lot more than you might think. Read up on some of these battles sometime, you'll be surprised...
Decisive Battles bears nothing in common with the British show. This show is not a gameshow. They are merely using the R:TW engine to demonstarte what happened in the battle and the host explains everything via a voice-over.
The difference here is that you're not throwing random schmucks in to recreate the battle like on the British show. This show is first and foremost a voiceover documentary and recounting of the battles while the R:TW visually demonstrates the maneuvers and tactics the host is explaining. It's 20-billion times better than them showing blocks move around on a 2D map, and it's not really the same show at all as the British one was.
They clearly spent a lot of time setting up certain aspects, scenes, and whatnot to be able to show you exactly what happened. It's not 100% perfect because you can't micormanage every individual soldier on the battlefield, but it works VERY well and I'm quite impressed. My only real gripe is that this game still isn't out yet...
I doubt they'd be able to do Masada. A better, similar sort of siege-battle would be for them to do Alesia (which I would love), and Alesia has way more style and interesting things to report than Masada anyways. They're trying to include a sufficient amount of non-Roman battles though, and I can understand that.
Yes but... and I know this may come to a shock to you... there *IS* history prior to World War II. A big shock, I'm sure. But yes, there IS history outside of World War II.
Doing something like this with a WWII-based game would be pointless because it's easy to envision and demonstrate what happened in those battles. The beauty of Decisive Battles is that you finally get to see, to scale, what happened in ancient battles that noone's ever really been able to demonstrate before.
Nobody's ever done an accurate Thermpopylae, Marathon, or Cannae demonstration yet prior to this. I'm absolutely ecstatic about seeing Chalons and how they'll manage it, because that battle was ENORMOUS regardless of whether you use the hig-end estimates or the low-end ones.
This is a fantastic opportunity to breathe life into some of the most-famnous battles in history, and give you a look nobody's ever gotten before. It's a great show, and I can imagine a show like this being VERY useful in the History classroom to really show students what happened.
Guys, people like HTL and the others are only Modification users. HTL has threatened to attempt to buy the rights before DS does. Can HTL actually get a product that is any good on shelves? They may get enough to actually buy it, but they won't have any money left to actually develop something.
Even if they didn't have the resources to get anything good out, it'd still be better than any abomination Smart would release.
Did you guys read the thread on Avault? After his query to the public, the large community HTL started flaming him on thier forums and even started a mass flame on Darek for not posting on HTL forums.
*YOU* clearly didn't not read the thread on AdrenalineVault. Any fool with half a brain can see the mod developer simply expressed displeasure at the thought of Smart touching the Freespace series because, quite frankly, Smart and his products have been nothing but miserable failures (and I will *not* argue about this because despite anything you may say about BC3K I can dredge up *hundreds* of awful reviews of his games as a counter). He did so in a tactful and polite manner though (quite frankly a more-polite manner than any fool like Smart deserves).
Smart could have ignored the comment outright, or could have taken the opportunity to present some evidence in his defense. But nooo, this is Derek Smart. So naturally his reaction is to threaten a lawsuit (which he does, constantly, about eveyrthing, but never has the balls to actually go through with), and begin flaming everything and anything in sight.
It's like this though -- Smart probably needs professional help. Seriously... I've been around long enough to see his flamewars, temper tantrums, and whatnot. Not only does he have an insatiable need to feel worshipped, but he's a completely dysfunctional human being when it comes to interacting with other human beings. He's also a borderline-pathological liar (as has been proven time and time again), and as the years continue to roll on his posts and incidents continue to become more-disturbing. He has serious problems, and they only seem to be getting worse. He needs help, honestly. It's not just a natural tendency to troll or something, he's really not a normal, functional human being...
All of you who immediately are complaining that it's a political piece are missing two very important things:
1) Try getting a sense of humor.
2) He's right, and I'm not sure the article *is* a political piece really. I *DO* want to blow up orphanages. I *DO* want my aircraft every so often to just crash for no reason whatsoever. I *DO* want to be given a choice of whether or not civilian casualties are acceptable.
If I take prisoners, I *DO* want to be given the choice of whether or not to push the Happy Button so the prisoners make the Happy Sounds and go away (Medieval: Total War fans will know what I mean).
But he's right. Both RTS and true grognard-targeted startegy and wargames and too straight-forward and don't really let you do much of anything.
One of the whole reasons I liked playing Superpower was the fact that I could pull off some very Wrong things on other countries (rig elections, etc). A war isn't 100% fought through military anymore, so how come wargames are still 100% focused on the "legal" military actions? I want to be Evil sometimes,and sometimes I just want stuff to happen that I didn't plan on but have to deal with anyways. It's more fun that way.
For some godforsaken reason game designers seem reluctant to let a wargame be an actual wargame. Why is that?
(Rage and jealously does play a factor in sports) - remember the Curt Shilling / Doug Glanville incident?
Well the Schiling/Glanville case can also easily be explained away by the fact that they were teammates, and Glanville got a LOT of time to study Curt's pitching up close and personal.
This is why it's often-times much easier to hit against a former teammate in baseball -- you've seen hime day in and day out, you know all the pitches in his arsenal, and you know his tendencies.
'04: Mike Vick (broken leg) '03: Marshall Faulk (ankle) '02: Daunte Culpepper (crappy season, just a bad rating, not a true injury as the curse seems to claim to me) '01: Eddie George (crappy season again, low yardage per attempt)
Not true. Both Culpepper and George played throwugh (or tried playing through) injuries they probably shouldn't have in both cases, and basically got the living crap beat out of them in both seasons.
It's a little more-puzzling even when you consider that these are all guys who had not been prone to injury previously.
Yet another example of a math person having their head so far up their ass they don't even have a clue what they're talking about.
If you really knew anything whatsoever about the topic being discussed, you'd realize that the cover "jinx" has nothing to do with Good vs Bad seasons, and everything to do with the player on the cover suffering a serious-to-catastrophic injury that leaves them out for most of the season, or even puts their career in jeopardy.
I'm not sure why basic statistics seems so difficult to so many people, especially psycho sports fans: sports statisticians.
And I'm not sure how math people can get their head so far up their asses without the use of mechanical devices. Guess we'll never know will we?...
Do everyone a favor, and next time if you don't really know what you're talking about, don't chime in. K thnx bye.
Perhaps it will free up some funds for some original game concepts instead of the same old crap over and over and over...
Right. Instead of having another choice for gamers in a smaller but hardcore audience, that time and effort will be spent either on another crappy FPS or another stupid and pointless MMORPG.
They also are all about tentacle rape and dating sims. Not exactly the best in taste.
I'm sick and tired of the gaming world trying to revolve around Japan, just like I'm sick and tired of the animation world trying to do the same. It just makes for lousy games and animation.
Gotta' disagree with what some other people are saying regarding a "flood" of sports titles.
Fact is, there are what seem to be a huge amount of sports titles at first, until you realize how fragemented the games and series' are across systems and platforms.
It seems to me that Microsoft killing off an entire line of X-box games is a huge blow to a genre that is essentially now left only with the EA Sports line of games across all platforms, with possibly Sega having a small share of that.
It's sad. The RPG Bandwagon is really screwing up gaming in general.
RPGing's been going on over IRC for years and years and years...
Do a quick search on most IRC networks and you should find channels dedicated to specific systems even. And of course, as GM you can always create a channel specifically for your game (and password protect it and/or make it invite-only if needed).
It's not perfect, but it is still better than any other system I see out there if you want to do PnP RPG's online.
Still IMHO the best air combat sim ever, and by far the most fun. Someone needs to redo this game graphically and keep the gameplay the exact same as it was. I don't care how real the physics model was. It's also be fun to see a couple more craft thrown in just for kicks. Thankfully I see Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe is being remade, the other air combat sim I would immediately mention normally...
I also see Archon is being remade. I have no idea why it took so long...
And last but not least, someone really needs to remake the original Front Page Sports: Football, probably the best all around game and hardcore sports sim ever made (you could edit everything... and I mean everything).
I've only been playing games like this for years and years already, most of them text-based and many of them free.
If EA handles hardcore management the way they've handled their "sports sims" over the last few years (the degredation of their NHL series in particular is sickening, considering how dead-on it used to be), I imagine they will turn off all kinds of people from managing sims for years and years to come.
Here are some of the best-established sports management sims still out there (for those curious):
EastSide Hockey Manager **http://eastside.peliplaneetta.net/**
Front Office Football **http://www.solecismic.com/fof/index.html**
Out of the Park Baseball **http://www.ootp4.com/**
And of course the ever-revered Championship Manager series (fun fact, the man responsible for EastSide Hockey Manager is now working on a commaerical hockey manager product for the company that brought you Championship Manager).
I always have infinitely more-fun with managerial sims than the normal mainstream action-based sports games, and hopefully there's enough of a base there to ensure there will be many management sims for years to come...
Perfectly acceptable is in the eye of the beholder. I spent 5 years working at a top NSP, and 10 minutes of unplanned downtime at 2 AM sunday morning was unacceptable to our customers.
Yes and when my cable was down for a couple hours yesterday it sucked and I wasn't happy, but it's a fact of life.
Anyhow, it might be your opinion that 24 business hours is 'standard' -- but it isn't for a business service provided by a real provider. If I had a T1 and it was down, an ISP would be testing the line inside of minutes, and SWBell advertises business DSL as an alternative to 'expensive leased lines'.
Yes and in most all of my experiences a "Business" Cable or DSL outfit still costs less than pulling in a T1. Should businesses be smart and pull one in instead of goin Cable or DSL? Yes, of course I agree they probably should. Are businesses going to? NO. Why? Because there's a cheaper alternative, even though it's less-reliable. And "cheaper" is the only word that matters... a consumer can always bitch and whine about the "less-reliable" later on, even though they knew it was going to come back to bite them eventually.
You've been duped into thinking that the poor service provided by a telco monopoly is normal.
No, I'm afraid you've been duped into thinking that somehow everyone in today's business world isn't the cut-throat, backstabbing, screw-your-neighbor industry that it is. People are almost always going to go the cheap route -- rather it be for their busines usage, or even if they are the provider as a business.
Business is about somehow getting the most money you can out of someone at the lowest cost to yourself. Each side wants to screw the other over.
Welcome to capitalism. It's NEVER going to change. Get used to it. And if you don't like it, move to another society witha different economic model.
Slashdot Mirror
...just not as Action-oriented sports titles.
The closest thing to MMO sports games right now would be online leagues based on popular sports management sims.
I'm in two online hockey leagues based off EHM, where the other 29 teams are controlled by a real person as well and on person acting as a "commissioner" ties it all in together. Full financial model, player development, trades and free agent signings, entry and waiver drafts...
Out of the Park (OOTP) baseball also has a plethora of online leagues in much the same way.
Done correctly, these are about as close as you'll probably get.
Years ago I helped playtest an online football (football, not soccer) game where all the real players were in "skill positions". Technically it worked. It was impossible to play though, the twitch/reaction requirements mean there has to be no lag whatsoever, and it's impossible to organize a group of people online like that to just even run one play, let alone a 2-minute-drill offense or audible a new defensive scheme at the line.
-- Primis.
I'm sure some people out there love their Inspirons and are on their original power cords, but I'm sure as hell not one of them.
I worship my Inspiron 4000.
Then again, I got it barely-used with two batteries, two adapters, and a bunch of other crap for ~$350. So... yeah, if you dropped $1500 on it new, I'd guess it'd be annoying. However, the only problem I ever had with mine was the mouse wigging out -- and that was easily solved by disabling the little red touchknob thingy in the keyboard.
But yeah, the two adapters I have are the original and an extra/spare purchased at the same time as the laptop. I've had no problems with either of them. I suppose I should investigate this though and see what I maybe need to do for the recall.
-- Primis.
I dunno, it's pretty simple to slip copies out to 4 or 5 large, free sites and let them deal with it as well and handling some of the load themselves -- it'd spread rather quickly then. If your company or host can't serve that sort of volume, that notes a problem in how your company is handling things.
I won't judge them on how they distributed the closed copy because that's rather irrlevant to the asinine fact that they're asking people to PAY MONEY FOR A BETA. Think about that for a second...
Is this the next big thing? Paying money for betas and demos?
And for the record, I won't play WoW simply because the world doesn't need another MMORPG to add to the literally-thousands already out there.
-- Primis.
Blizzard's choice to align themselves in any way with FilePlanet should set of klaxons and throw up red flags all over the place. FilePlanet pretty much embodies everything that is wrong with the internet gaming scene right now, and apparently now by extension Blizzard would like to be included in that category. If you fall for this, PT Barnum would love you...
So don't waste your money people, either to shell out to Blizzard directly or to the losers at FilePlanet. I guess at least be thankful that Blizzard let everyone know ahead of time to not bother with WoW.
-- Primis.
And just who said anything about Romans with machine guns anyways, or What If scenarios?
-- Primis.
Mod Combat Mission and you still won't have an engine anyone will watch or want to watch. LIS, it may be effective for what it does, but it's not terribly-accurate and it's UGLY.
Whereas the newest Total War engine looks good, plays good, and does so without some major mythological mod needing to be applied for it.
-- Primis.
Well having played Combat Mission, I like the game in a lot of respects but it does NOT feel at all realistic.
Why am I replying? You're meddling in *my* area right now -- history and wargames. Of COURSE I'm going to post a bunch on this, especially since I notice that a lot of people commenting on this have neither played a Total War game or even seen the show, yet seem to have no problem commenting on them...
I amused at the Primus comment, mainly because my name has absolutely nothing to do with them. Besides, an Anonymous Coward doesn't have a lot of room to comment on other people's nicks now do they...
Poster's point was that there are better combat engines to re-enact historical battles.
Really? Name a better engine to model ancient battles, go ahead let's hear it. Name a good engine to realistically model Napoleanic-era battles. What about if I want to model the Zulu or Maori wars? Or the Mongol razing of Samarkand? I'm waiting...
It's ridiculous to comment that there are better engines to use to recreate ancient wars, and then cite Combat Misison (a WWII game) as an example. That was my point. Combat Mission has nothing to do with the battles or time period discussed, not to mention it's rather ugly, so to bring it up is asinine and cliche. There's historical combat outside of WWII, and some people can't seem to grasp this. In the meantime I'm dying to hear how you'll use the Combat Mission engine to recreate Cannae or Kadesh.
-- Primis
Judging by the lousy ARENA show on G4, no it doesn't have a place. Part of that of course being that the people participating in these shows SUCK at the games.
It's really sad to be flipping through TV with some buddies, come across two teams playing a PS2 FPS none of us have ever played before, and the firsty comment out of someone's mouth within 30 seconds is "We've never played this game before and we'd mop the floor with both teams".
Having watched several different "competitive" gaming events on TV, streaming video, and in real life, I think I'm safe in saying that in many cases the best gamers aren't even participating. It's just that sad...
-- Primis.
I really have no idea why you're rambling on about WWII and D-Day. For one thing, warfare is completely different between ancient times and WWII. I wish people would get off this WWII kick and none of it is relevant to the ancient combat we're discussing...
Stuff happens so fast at so many different places, and involves so many different troops, in modern warfare that it quickly gets confusing.
In the case of an ancient battle like Marathon or Guagamela, we know good details because records were written from BOTH SIDES regarding the battle, and usually those records agree on a majority of things. We may not know the exact number of troops involved, and we may not have a blow-by-blow account, but ancient warfare wasn't nearly as complicated as modern warfare, the battles generally didn't take too long because large-scale melee combat is exhausting, and usually enough survivors were around to record their memories and thoughts.
What ancient war weapons do we not have? People have recreated Greek Fire nowadays, although maybe not the exact concotion it's close enough we can see how terrifyingly-effective it is. People have read second-hand accounts of records lost in the fire at Alexandria and managed to recreate things like a "gatling arrow gun" that may or may not have ever actually been used in battle (but does work). And besides, ancient combat still came down to two (at least two) sides eventually running like madmen at one another and engaging in close-range melee combat.
We know a lot more than you might think. Read up on some of these battles sometime, you'll be surprised...
-- Primis.
Decisive Battles bears nothing in common with the British show. This show is not a gameshow. They are merely using the R:TW engine to demonstarte what happened in the battle and the host explains everything via a voice-over.
-- Primis.
The difference here is that you're not throwing random schmucks in to recreate the battle like on the British show. This show is first and foremost a voiceover documentary and recounting of the battles while the R:TW visually demonstrates the maneuvers and tactics the host is explaining. It's 20-billion times better than them showing blocks move around on a 2D map, and it's not really the same show at all as the British one was.
They clearly spent a lot of time setting up certain aspects, scenes, and whatnot to be able to show you exactly what happened. It's not 100% perfect because you can't micormanage every individual soldier on the battlefield, but it works VERY well and I'm quite impressed. My only real gripe is that this game still isn't out yet...
-- Primis.
I doubt they'd be able to do Masada. A better, similar sort of siege-battle would be for them to do Alesia (which I would love), and Alesia has way more style and interesting things to report than Masada anyways. They're trying to include a sufficient amount of non-Roman battles though, and I can understand that.
-- Primis.
Yes but... and I know this may come to a shock to you... there *IS* history prior to World War II. A big shock, I'm sure. But yes, there IS history outside of World War II.
Doing something like this with a WWII-based game would be pointless because it's easy to envision and demonstrate what happened in those battles. The beauty of Decisive Battles is that you finally get to see, to scale, what happened in ancient battles that noone's ever really been able to demonstrate before.
Nobody's ever done an accurate Thermpopylae, Marathon, or Cannae demonstration yet prior to this. I'm absolutely ecstatic about seeing Chalons and how they'll manage it, because that battle was ENORMOUS regardless of whether you use the hig-end estimates or the low-end ones.
This is a fantastic opportunity to breathe life into some of the most-famnous battles in history, and give you a look nobody's ever gotten before. It's a great show, and I can imagine a show like this being VERY useful in the History classroom to really show students what happened.
-- Primis.
Guys, people like HTL and the others are only Modification users. HTL has threatened to attempt to buy the rights before DS does. Can HTL actually get a product that is any good on shelves? They may get enough to actually buy it, but they won't have any money left to actually develop something.
Even if they didn't have the resources to get anything good out, it'd still be better than any abomination Smart would release.
Did you guys read the thread on Avault? After his query to the public, the large community HTL started flaming him on thier forums and even started a mass flame on Darek for not posting on HTL forums.
*YOU* clearly didn't not read the thread on AdrenalineVault. Any fool with half a brain can see the mod developer simply expressed displeasure at the thought of Smart touching the Freespace series because, quite frankly, Smart and his products have been nothing but miserable failures (and I will *not* argue about this because despite anything you may say about BC3K I can dredge up *hundreds* of awful reviews of his games as a counter). He did so in a tactful and polite manner though (quite frankly a more-polite manner than any fool like Smart deserves).
Smart could have ignored the comment outright, or could have taken the opportunity to present some evidence in his defense. But nooo, this is Derek Smart. So naturally his reaction is to threaten a lawsuit (which he does, constantly, about eveyrthing, but never has the balls to actually go through with), and begin flaming everything and anything in sight.
It's like this though -- Smart probably needs professional help. Seriously... I've been around long enough to see his flamewars, temper tantrums, and whatnot. Not only does he have an insatiable need to feel worshipped, but he's a completely dysfunctional human being when it comes to interacting with other human beings. He's also a borderline-pathological liar (as has been proven time and time again), and as the years continue to roll on his posts and incidents continue to become more-disturbing. He has serious problems, and they only seem to be getting worse. He needs help, honestly. It's not just a natural tendency to troll or something, he's really not a normal, functional human being...
-- Primis.
All of you who immediately are complaining that it's a political piece are missing two very important things:
1) Try getting a sense of humor.
2) He's right, and I'm not sure the article *is* a political piece really. I *DO* want to blow up orphanages. I *DO* want my aircraft every so often to just crash for no reason whatsoever. I *DO* want to be given a choice of whether or not civilian casualties are acceptable.
If I take prisoners, I *DO* want to be given the choice of whether or not to push the Happy Button so the prisoners make the Happy Sounds and go away (Medieval: Total War fans will know what I mean).
But he's right. Both RTS and true grognard-targeted startegy and wargames and too straight-forward and don't really let you do much of anything.
One of the whole reasons I liked playing Superpower was the fact that I could pull off some very Wrong things on other countries (rig elections, etc). A war isn't 100% fought through military anymore, so how come wargames are still 100% focused on the "legal" military actions? I want to be Evil sometimes,and sometimes I just want stuff to happen that I didn't plan on but have to deal with anyways. It's more fun that way.
For some godforsaken reason game designers seem reluctant to let a wargame be an actual wargame. Why is that?
-- Primis.
(Rage and jealously does play a factor in sports) - remember the Curt Shilling / Doug Glanville incident?
Well the Schiling/Glanville case can also easily be explained away by the fact that they were teammates, and Glanville got a LOT of time to study Curt's pitching up close and personal.
This is why it's often-times much easier to hit against a former teammate in baseball -- you've seen hime day in and day out, you know all the pitches in his arsenal, and you know his tendencies.
-- Primis.
'04: Mike Vick (broken leg)
'03: Marshall Faulk (ankle)
'02: Daunte Culpepper (crappy season, just a bad rating, not a true injury as the curse seems to claim to me)
'01: Eddie George (crappy season again, low yardage per attempt)
Not true. Both Culpepper and George played throwugh (or tried playing through) injuries they probably shouldn't have in both cases, and basically got the living crap beat out of them in both seasons.
It's a little more-puzzling even when you consider that these are all guys who had not been prone to injury previously.
-- Primis.
Any other explanation is just mumbo-jumbo.
Yet another example of a math person having their head so far up their ass they don't even have a clue what they're talking about.
If you really knew anything whatsoever about the topic being discussed, you'd realize that the cover "jinx" has nothing to do with Good vs Bad seasons, and everything to do with the player on the cover suffering a serious-to-catastrophic injury that leaves them out for most of the season, or even puts their career in jeopardy.
I'm not sure why basic statistics seems so difficult to so many people, especially psycho sports fans: sports statisticians.
And I'm not sure how math people can get their head so far up their asses without the use of mechanical devices. Guess we'll never know will we?...
Do everyone a favor, and next time if you don't really know what you're talking about, don't chime in. K thnx bye.
-- Primis.
Perhaps it will free up some funds for some original game concepts instead of the same old crap over and over and over...
Right. Instead of having another choice for gamers in a smaller but hardcore audience, that time and effort will be spent either on another crappy FPS or another stupid and pointless MMORPG.
Remind me why this is good again?...
-- Primis.
They also are all about tentacle rape and dating sims. Not exactly the best in taste.
I'm sick and tired of the gaming world trying to revolve around Japan, just like I'm sick and tired of the animation world trying to do the same. It just makes for lousy games and animation.
-- Primis.
Gotta' disagree with what some other people are saying regarding a "flood" of sports titles.
Fact is, there are what seem to be a huge amount of sports titles at first, until you realize how fragemented the games and series' are across systems and platforms.
It seems to me that Microsoft killing off an entire line of X-box games is a huge blow to a genre that is essentially now left only with the EA Sports line of games across all platforms, with possibly Sega having a small share of that.
It's sad. The RPG Bandwagon is really screwing up gaming in general.
-- Primis.
RPGing's been going on over IRC for years and years and years...
Do a quick search on most IRC networks and you should find channels dedicated to specific systems even. And of course, as GM you can always create a channel specifically for your game (and password protect it and/or make it invite-only if needed).
It's not perfect, but it is still better than any other system I see out there if you want to do PnP RPG's online.
-- Primis.
Still IMHO the best air combat sim ever, and by far the most fun. Someone needs to redo this game graphically and keep the gameplay the exact same as it was. I don't care how real the physics model was. It's also be fun to see a couple more craft thrown in just for kicks. Thankfully I see Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe is being remade, the other air combat sim I would immediately mention normally...
I also see Archon is being remade. I have no idea why it took so long...
And last but not least, someone really needs to remake the original Front Page Sports: Football, probably the best all around game and hardcore sports sim ever made (you could edit everything... and I mean everything).
-- Primis.
Wow, great! Owner Mode!
I've only been playing games like this for years and years already, most of them text-based and many of them free.
If EA handles hardcore management the way they've handled their "sports sims" over the last few years (the degredation of their NHL series in particular is sickening, considering how dead-on it used to be), I imagine they will turn off all kinds of people from managing sims for years and years to come.
Here are some of the best-established sports management sims still out there (for those curious):
EastSide Hockey Manager **http://eastside.peliplaneetta.net/**
Front Office Football **http://www.solecismic.com/fof/index.html**
Out of the Park Baseball **http://www.ootp4.com/**
And of course the ever-revered Championship Manager series (fun fact, the man responsible for EastSide Hockey Manager is now working on a commaerical hockey manager product for the company that brought you Championship Manager).
I always have infinitely more-fun with managerial sims than the normal mainstream action-based sports games, and hopefully there's enough of a base there to ensure there will be many management sims for years to come...
-- Primis.
Yes and when my cable was down for a couple hours yesterday it sucked and I wasn't happy, but it's a fact of life.
Anyhow, it might be your opinion that 24 business hours is 'standard' -- but it isn't for a business service provided by a real provider. If I had a T1 and it was down, an ISP would be testing the line inside of minutes, and SWBell advertises business DSL as an alternative to 'expensive leased lines'.
Yes and in most all of my experiences a "Business" Cable or DSL outfit still costs less than pulling in a T1. Should businesses be smart and pull one in instead of goin Cable or DSL? Yes, of course I agree they probably should. Are businesses going to? NO. Why? Because there's a cheaper alternative, even though it's less-reliable. And "cheaper" is the only word that matters... a consumer can always bitch and whine about the "less-reliable" later on, even though they knew it was going to come back to bite them eventually.
You've been duped into thinking that the poor service provided by a telco monopoly is normal.
No, I'm afraid you've been duped into thinking that somehow everyone in today's business world isn't the cut-throat, backstabbing, screw-your-neighbor industry that it is. People are almost always going to go the cheap route -- rather it be for their busines usage, or even if they are the provider as a business.
Business is about somehow getting the most money you can out of someone at the lowest cost to yourself. Each side wants to screw the other over.
Welcome to capitalism. It's NEVER going to change. Get used to it. And if you don't like it, move to another society witha different economic model.
-- Primis.