Arcade games, like Pac Man and Space Invaders, and 1942. There are still some really lame arcade games being released (with nicer graphics perhaps), but still with the very simplistic gameplay.
Now that the market has matured, however, and people want GTA and DooM and CounterStrike, the gaming industry has to try and catch up.
But I have to ask a question here, who would you rather have dominating the future of the gaming industry - the people who wrote NetHack, or the people who wrote PacMan Jr?
Plus those titles were for the consoles that shown bad numbers for this year (the PC and the Xbox)
Uhh... the PC isn't a console. It's quite different, in many respects. Technically the XBox is a console (you can tell, because the games are poor in quality and have cludgy controls).
Unfortunately, these numbers do represent the change in the gaming arena... despite the fact that PC games are selling as well as they ever used to, consoles have grown so huge that companies now only see the PC as 10% of the gaming market.
The other problem is that so many of the game developers who used to code solely for consoles are now trying to code for PC as well (instead of exclusively).
Thus the quality of PC games on average is in decline as the low, buggy standards of console gaming engulf everything. Arcade games have never sold well on PC. It's not what the PC is for. People who want arcade games on a PC will just use MAME. People who don't own a PC and who want arcade games will buy a console. Now, for some reason, the industry sees the PC as "another console" and is trying desperately to shove the same poor quality arcade games at the much more mature PC gaming audience. It's not working, but instead of taking the PC gamers and their more sophisticated requirements into account, the games industry is just writing off the PC as a dead gaming environment, and ignoring the long rich history of great PC games.
Ahh, so the idea is, the virus infects Windows boxes, then sends data to SCO to tell them that it's a windows box, which frees SCO to sue *everyone* else who doesn't attack them with the virus, because they must be running Linux. And we all know who owns linux, don't we?
Okay, so everyone is complaining about third person perspective. I don't have a problem with this. Third person is excellent for an action game with a lot of melee. A good swordsman knows where his body is and is pretty aware of opponents all around him. Third person perspective fits this very well. For example, Jedi Knight II and Jedi Academy give you a first person view when shooting ranged weapons (also sensible), and a third person view when swordfighting. These games have been incredibly successful! And less successful on consoles. (Probably because you had to do adult things, like aim, think, and use more than just the fire button).
But seriously, I agree with what everyone else has been saying about consoles and worsening games. I couldn't believe the reviews of DX2, given that DX was one of the best games in recent years to grace the PC. But yes, DX2 was atrocious. The graphics weren't optimised at all, they were clunkier in a lot of ways compared with the original DX. I couldn't even bring myself to play it long enough to get out of the first area, it was just too clunky (even after using all the third party tweak patches!).
I grieve for the Thief franchise. I grieve for us all. The loss of great quality games on the PC lessens us all. With consoles there can be no new revolutions. There will be no "shareware" DooMs anymore, no OpenGL Quakes, no mod communities. We can't avoid change, but it is unusual in the IT world that any change brought by new technology takes so much away from us all.
Fact: Overclocking can reduce stability of a computer system.
Fact: Overclocking can increase the performance of a computer system significantly.
Fallacy: You can't overclock a cpu on a pc or a server that has any real use what-so-ever. -Haxx
As a matter of fact, you can. Overclocking can be as simple as bumping up the FSB or running the system memory at a CAS rate lower than specified. Of course, as I mentioned above, this can make the system less stable. This may not be a wise thing to do in a production environment where uptime is critical, but it doesn't mean you *can't* do it.
I'd say that my PC at home, and my server, perform real functions. My server does IP routing for the rest of my computers, as well as web caching, personal web server, and so on. It's overclocked!
Now, I'm all for computer gaming in general, I think if people played more computer games there'd be a lot less unpleasantness in the real world.
I used to play MUD's a long time ago, I even donated to the admins in exchange for "wishes" that increased my power in the MUD. The wish money was used for beer for the admins, paying the co-lo costs for the server, upgrades, and so on. It was a fair deal, I had fun on the MUD and these guys got rewarded for all the work they put in to the "Free as in beer" MUD.
But the MMORPG economy phenomenon (say that three times fast) is something remarkable and a little disturbing. I can't say that these people are advancing humanity by building new bridges or painting great works of art. So these are obviously "B Ark" people (along with used car salesmen and telephone sanitisers). Shouldn't resources be allocated somewhere more useful?
That, I realise is completely academic, despite Sony's attitude. People want to do the things they want to do, and if it doesn't hurt anyone else it's generally left alone (the exception is civil liberties in the USA, americans aren't allowed to use drugs, have privacy, etc etc).
Yes, the ridiculous LoneStar peanut shells on the floor issue.
Some, uhh, weight-challenged individual of female persuasion managed to slip and hurt herself on the peanut shells on the floor of a LoneStar steakhouse (like those Outback steakhouses you guys have in Texas, but this one pretends to be Texan for aussies).
Some litigation later, and there's no peanuts in LoneStar anymore. Thanks.
I wouldn't be surprised if slashdot was buggering up most of our international links. Telstra are a bit cheap when it comes to quality high speed connections, you see.
Multiplayer games where sniper rifles don't "rule everything"
Ghost Recon
Rainbow 6/Raven Shield
VietCong
Vietnam:Line of Sight
Hidden and Dangerous
Half-Life:SvenCoop mod
Operation Flashpoint
What's the connection? These are all co-op games, games where you may have one or two snipers providing support for a team of players working together. A game where you use teamwork to disable enemy snipers. A game genre that is being systematically ignored by game production houses. Co-op in Halo, anyone?
Fact of the matter is, nobody does Co-op anymore. What was the last big co-op game to be released? Raven Shield? That was months and months ago. Let alone there should be another game with the same scope and playability as Op Flashpoint or Ghost Recon.
Of course, everyone is complaining that the characters are being given western names instead of keeping the Japanese ones.
Why weren't the anime fans complaining that the characters who are drawn to look like westerners in the first place, some of whom are even described as coming from Germany, don't have western and german names??
I'm going to have a hard time dealing with white actors on a live action show having japanese names. It would be easier to puzzle out who each of the live action characters is portraying.
Since this is a remake of the story, who's to say they aren't going to change a few things? They won't make *exactly* the same story, that wouldn't work. Just look at Battlestar Galactica! It was a remake. But it wasn't the same as the original series. Nonetheless it was a very good show. I still like the original. I like the new miniseries too.
Actually, what happened was the Dr at some point froze up old Davros in suspended animation as a kind of imprisonment. The Daleks at the time were commanded by the Emperor Dalek, successor of the Supreme Dalek (not a pizza).
Now, the Daleks were at war with the Movellans, a race of very humanoid androids. Since both the Movellans and the Daleks were entirely logical creatures, they were at a stalemate. The Daleks then went in search of Davros, their creator, because they knew he was illogical and therefore could break the stalemate and allow them to win.
Davros, being the ultimate evil genius mad scientist that he is, really knows his stuff so he managed to "hack" the Daleks sent to get him, so he could set himself back up as leader of the Daleks. The Emperor didn't like this. Davros grew himself a new bunch of Daleks, and set himself up as the new Supreme Dalek, as the civil war raged on.
I had a look at it, it's very incomplete. There is a lot of data, but it's clunky and completely raw, no optimisations for anything but (presumably) the ATI Radeon, since ATI and Valve are of course in bed together.
It'll be an interesting first half of '04 when the next generation nVidia and ATI cards are released. A whole new war. I wonder if ATI will keep the crown?
Absolutely. You have to hand it to MS on this one, leveraging the already extensive DirectX development community was the only way the XBox could have reached a sizeable population of games as quickly as it has.
Having said that, it seems in a lot of ways like Sony is just complaining and whining and boasting and snorting just as they always do, whine whine, "Our PS/2 is faster than a 3.4GHz P4, whine whine" and "Our Cell technology will make computers 1,000 times faster than current computers and we'll sell them in PS3's next year, whine whine".
Of course at the moment they've only just announced that their console can maybe swing 60fps at about 800x600 or less. Hello, Sony, the early 90's called, they want their framerates back.
Well you know what they say, translation is like a mistress. Beautiful, or faithful, never both.
Anyway, this isn't so amazing, we've been region-free and mod-chip friendly in Australia for ages. Hasn't destroyed Sony or Microsoft's gaming sales here, either.
One of the greatest elements of PC roleplaying that I am yet to see grace a console is a vast, open-ended explorable world.
I know it was mentioned earlier that consoles favour the eastern style linear plotline and story elements, and yes, PC's don't, but this is because the PC is a very powerful instrument.
With vast amounts of memory and storage space, larger and more intricate virtual worlds can be created.
Take Morrowind for example. The world design was so intricate that you could walk into just about any city, pick the third house on the left of the main avenue, break into it, find the living room and count the spoons in the top drawer of the cabinet. Then steal and sell them. Because you're a nasty spoonseller.
Furthermore, it feels like a breathing living world, because as your reputation grows (in any direction, based on your actions and infamy), NPC's react differently to you.
What's more, the world of Morrowind is vast, exploring the continent took me weeks until I felt I'd been just about everywhere.
Then, after finishing all the quests, you are almost elevated to a God status! I can't think of many console gamers who'd even be interested in such a grand endeavour. PC gamers, yes, of course. Console gamers are not interested in investing so much time into a game, perhaps this is why open-endedness is not popular with consoles. Let them eat cake.
1) It was a console game, so the graphics and handling were sub-par
2) It was an arcade game. Gamers aren't kids anymore, we all grew past the left-right-shoot buttons, we need more sophistication.
Take two should be licensing out that GTA3 engine like crazy!
This is totally redundant. Didn't the new CAN-SPAM act in the USA completely eradicate all spam everywhere? Including hidden Weapons of Marketing Directly?
Bwahahaha. Make money on consoles! Not even Microsoft can do that despite their huge marketing muscle and discount raking ability. Who's going to be able to sell a "console that is almost as good as a customisable PC" for *more* than the selling price of an Xbox or a PS/2 today?
Huh. Anyone who can afford a TV like that will probably be rich enough to own a PC in the first place, and most likely smart enough to use the TV out on their video card instead of buying yet-another-Xbox-wannabe.
I am an economist, not employed as one of course (what kind of job is that!?), but I'm trained as one.
We have an interesting situation where, using the very simple closed system economic model for the USA, the more the US outsources, the more of it's ambient wealth and stock of riches haemorrages out of the country.
This will result, in the longer term, in declining GDP. The USA is a very rich nation, just like England was at the height of the British Empire. But as GDP declines, as it is doing through means of a capitalist economy (which of course is an inegalitarian economic model), the rich will remain rich, and the poor will become much, much poorer. This is what they once called a "Great Depression". The conditions have been seen before, starvation, apalling living conditions on a national or even global scale.
As this trend continues, more and more americans will live below the established line of poverty. This will in turn begin to drag the middle classes down with them.
There are two potential ways that this will be mitigated. The ability of the USA to export goods and services will offset the "wealth" flow towards india (You gotta pay those bills somehow!). Secondly, I fully anticipate that the US government will jump in, presumably after the next election, unless GWB is still in power. Remember, poor people can't pay tax, and with no tax you can't bomb other countries for more oil. The oil is used to pay for IT outsourcing in India.
The government will probably do something like, I dunno, modify minimum wage conditions to stop the leaking, or employ some other protectionist laws. How effective it will be in the post-depression USA is uncertain.
Of course the Disney ending would be quite different, if you recall Disney is a large anti-socialist corporation largely concerned with copywrite extensions.
So you would find that Darl McBride is the young orphaned son of the loving family that created SCO in order to protect the precious jewels of the magical UnixWare IP, and the evil Linus Torvalds and his Novell cronies try and flimflam him with their tricksy GPL and steal away his ownly possessions, the UnixWare IP and of course his wacky talking dog (who is also a lawyer).
Then after a few hit songs the judge reveals himself to be none other than our hero, John Ashcroft, who decrees that the evil tricks of the GPL crowd are illegal and Linus is thrown in jail, and Darl reopens his humble SCO shop and the talking dog gets a nice expensive bone.
Slashdot Mirror
Arcade games, like Pac Man and Space Invaders, and 1942. There are still some really lame arcade games being released (with nicer graphics perhaps), but still with the very simplistic gameplay.
Now that the market has matured, however, and people want GTA and DooM and CounterStrike, the gaming industry has to try and catch up.
But I have to ask a question here, who would you rather have dominating the future of the gaming industry - the people who wrote NetHack, or the people who wrote PacMan Jr?
Plus those titles were for the consoles that shown bad numbers for this year (the PC and the Xbox)
Uhh... the PC isn't a console. It's quite different, in many respects. Technically the XBox is a console (you can tell, because the games are poor in quality and have cludgy controls).
Unfortunately, these numbers do represent the change in the gaming arena... despite the fact that PC games are selling as well as they ever used to, consoles have grown so huge that companies now only see the PC as 10% of the gaming market.
The other problem is that so many of the game developers who used to code solely for consoles are now trying to code for PC as well (instead of exclusively).
Thus the quality of PC games on average is in decline as the low, buggy standards of console gaming engulf everything. Arcade games have never sold well on PC. It's not what the PC is for. People who want arcade games on a PC will just use MAME. People who don't own a PC and who want arcade games will buy a console. Now, for some reason, the industry sees the PC as "another console" and is trying desperately to shove the same poor quality arcade games at the much more mature PC gaming audience. It's not working, but instead of taking the PC gamers and their more sophisticated requirements into account, the games industry is just writing off the PC as a dead gaming environment, and ignoring the long rich history of great PC games.
Ahh, so the idea is, the virus infects Windows boxes, then sends data to SCO to tell them that it's a windows box, which frees SCO to sue *everyone* else who doesn't attack them with the virus, because they must be running Linux. And we all know who owns linux, don't we?
Okay, so everyone is complaining about third person perspective. I don't have a problem with this. Third person is excellent for an action game with a lot of melee. A good swordsman knows where his body is and is pretty aware of opponents all around him. Third person perspective fits this very well. For example, Jedi Knight II and Jedi Academy give you a first person view when shooting ranged weapons (also sensible), and a third person view when swordfighting. These games have been incredibly successful! And less successful on consoles. (Probably because you had to do adult things, like aim, think, and use more than just the fire button).
But seriously, I agree with what everyone else has been saying about consoles and worsening games. I couldn't believe the reviews of DX2, given that DX was one of the best games in recent years to grace the PC. But yes, DX2 was atrocious. The graphics weren't optimised at all, they were clunkier in a lot of ways compared with the original DX. I couldn't even bring myself to play it long enough to get out of the first area, it was just too clunky (even after using all the third party tweak patches!).
I grieve for the Thief franchise. I grieve for us all. The loss of great quality games on the PC lessens us all. With consoles there can be no new revolutions. There will be no "shareware" DooMs anymore, no OpenGL Quakes, no mod communities. We can't avoid change, but it is unusual in the IT world that any change brought by new technology takes so much away from us all.
Fact: Overclocking can reduce stability of a computer system.
Fact: Overclocking can increase the performance of a computer system significantly.
Fallacy: You can't overclock a cpu on a pc or a server that has any real use what-so-ever. -Haxx
As a matter of fact, you can. Overclocking can be as simple as bumping up the FSB or running the system memory at a CAS rate lower than specified. Of course, as I mentioned above, this can make the system less stable. This may not be a wise thing to do in a production environment where uptime is critical, but it doesn't mean you *can't* do it.
I'd say that my PC at home, and my server, perform real functions. My server does IP routing for the rest of my computers, as well as web caching, personal web server, and so on. It's overclocked!
Now, I'm all for computer gaming in general, I think if people played more computer games there'd be a lot less unpleasantness in the real world.
I used to play MUD's a long time ago, I even donated to the admins in exchange for "wishes" that increased my power in the MUD. The wish money was used for beer for the admins, paying the co-lo costs for the server, upgrades, and so on. It was a fair deal, I had fun on the MUD and these guys got rewarded for all the work they put in to the "Free as in beer" MUD.
But the MMORPG economy phenomenon (say that three times fast) is something remarkable and a little disturbing. I can't say that these people are advancing humanity by building new bridges or painting great works of art. So these are obviously "B Ark" people (along with used car salesmen and telephone sanitisers). Shouldn't resources be allocated somewhere more useful?
That, I realise is completely academic, despite Sony's attitude. People want to do the things they want to do, and if it doesn't hurt anyone else it's generally left alone (the exception is civil liberties in the USA, americans aren't allowed to use drugs, have privacy, etc etc).
Yes, the ridiculous LoneStar peanut shells on the floor issue.
Some, uhh, weight-challenged individual of female persuasion managed to slip and hurt herself on the peanut shells on the floor of a LoneStar steakhouse (like those Outback steakhouses you guys have in Texas, but this one pretends to be Texan for aussies).
Some litigation later, and there's no peanuts in LoneStar anymore. Thanks.
I wouldn't be surprised if slashdot was buggering up most of our international links. Telstra are a bit cheap when it comes to quality high speed connections, you see.
What did Gridlock Sam have to say about the increased instances of Godzillas and Volcanoes in his cities? How did this impact on traffic analysis?
Multiplayer games where sniper rifles don't "rule everything"
Ghost Recon
Rainbow 6/Raven Shield
VietCong
Vietnam:Line of Sight
Hidden and Dangerous
Half-Life:SvenCoop mod
Operation Flashpoint
What's the connection? These are all co-op games, games where you may have one or two snipers providing support for a team of players working together. A game where you use teamwork to disable enemy snipers. A game genre that is being systematically ignored by game production houses. Co-op in Halo, anyone?
Fact of the matter is, nobody does Co-op anymore. What was the last big co-op game to be released? Raven Shield? That was months and months ago. Let alone there should be another game with the same scope and playability as Op Flashpoint or Ghost Recon.
Of course, everyone is complaining that the characters are being given western names instead of keeping the Japanese ones.
Why weren't the anime fans complaining that the characters who are drawn to look like westerners in the first place, some of whom are even described as coming from Germany, don't have western and german names??
I'm going to have a hard time dealing with white actors on a live action show having japanese names. It would be easier to puzzle out who each of the live action characters is portraying.
Since this is a remake of the story, who's to say they aren't going to change a few things? They won't make *exactly* the same story, that wouldn't work. Just look at Battlestar Galactica! It was a remake. But it wasn't the same as the original series. Nonetheless it was a very good show. I still like the original. I like the new miniseries too.
Actually, what happened was the Dr at some point froze up old Davros in suspended animation as a kind of imprisonment. The Daleks at the time were commanded by the Emperor Dalek, successor of the Supreme Dalek (not a pizza).
Now, the Daleks were at war with the Movellans, a race of very humanoid androids. Since both the Movellans and the Daleks were entirely logical creatures, they were at a stalemate. The Daleks then went in search of Davros, their creator, because they knew he was illogical and therefore could break the stalemate and allow them to win.
Davros, being the ultimate evil genius mad scientist that he is, really knows his stuff so he managed to "hack" the Daleks sent to get him, so he could set himself back up as leader of the Daleks. The Emperor didn't like this. Davros grew himself a new bunch of Daleks, and set himself up as the new Supreme Dalek, as the civil war raged on.
I had a look at it, it's very incomplete. There is a lot of data, but it's clunky and completely raw, no optimisations for anything but (presumably) the ATI Radeon, since ATI and Valve are of course in bed together.
It'll be an interesting first half of '04 when the next generation nVidia and ATI cards are released. A whole new war. I wonder if ATI will keep the crown?
Absolutely. You have to hand it to MS on this one, leveraging the already extensive DirectX development community was the only way the XBox could have reached a sizeable population of games as quickly as it has.
Having said that, it seems in a lot of ways like Sony is just complaining and whining and boasting and snorting just as they always do, whine whine, "Our PS/2 is faster than a 3.4GHz P4, whine whine" and "Our Cell technology will make computers 1,000 times faster than current computers and we'll sell them in PS3's next year, whine whine".
Of course at the moment they've only just announced that their console can maybe swing 60fps at about 800x600 or less. Hello, Sony, the early 90's called, they want their framerates back.
Well you know what they say, translation is like a mistress. Beautiful, or faithful, never both.
Anyway, this isn't so amazing, we've been region-free and mod-chip friendly in Australia for ages. Hasn't destroyed Sony or Microsoft's gaming sales here, either.
MCSE's don't need to know percentages. There's a little bar that tells you when the job is done when it gets to the end.
Am I the only person imagining massive vats of Dissolving Cow Soup, frothing mildly as more cows are poured in?
One of the greatest elements of PC roleplaying that I am yet to see grace a console is a vast, open-ended explorable world.
I know it was mentioned earlier that consoles favour the eastern style linear plotline and story elements, and yes, PC's don't, but this is because the PC is a very powerful instrument.
With vast amounts of memory and storage space, larger and more intricate virtual worlds can be created.
Take Morrowind for example. The world design was so intricate that you could walk into just about any city, pick the third house on the left of the main avenue, break into it, find the living room and count the spoons in the top drawer of the cabinet. Then steal and sell them. Because you're a nasty spoonseller.
Furthermore, it feels like a breathing living world, because as your reputation grows (in any direction, based on your actions and infamy), NPC's react differently to you.
What's more, the world of Morrowind is vast, exploring the continent took me weeks until I felt I'd been just about everywhere.
Then, after finishing all the quests, you are almost elevated to a God status! I can't think of many console gamers who'd even be interested in such a grand endeavour. PC gamers, yes, of course. Console gamers are not interested in investing so much time into a game, perhaps this is why open-endedness is not popular with consoles. Let them eat cake.
Starsky and Hutch sucked for two big reasons.
1) It was a console game, so the graphics and handling were sub-par 2) It was an arcade game. Gamers aren't kids anymore, we all grew past the left-right-shoot buttons, we need more sophistication.
Take two should be licensing out that GTA3 engine like crazy!
This is totally redundant. Didn't the new CAN-SPAM act in the USA completely eradicate all spam everywhere? Including hidden Weapons of Marketing Directly?
Bwahahaha. Make money on consoles! Not even Microsoft can do that despite their huge marketing muscle and discount raking ability. Who's going to be able to sell a "console that is almost as good as a customisable PC" for *more* than the selling price of an Xbox or a PS/2 today?
Huh. Anyone who can afford a TV like that will probably be rich enough to own a PC in the first place, and most likely smart enough to use the TV out on their video card instead of buying yet-another-Xbox-wannabe.
I am an economist, not employed as one of course (what kind of job is that!?), but I'm trained as one.
We have an interesting situation where, using the very simple closed system economic model for the USA, the more the US outsources, the more of it's ambient wealth and stock of riches haemorrages out of the country.
This will result, in the longer term, in declining GDP. The USA is a very rich nation, just like England was at the height of the British Empire. But as GDP declines, as it is doing through means of a capitalist economy (which of course is an inegalitarian economic model), the rich will remain rich, and the poor will become much, much poorer. This is what they once called a "Great Depression". The conditions have been seen before, starvation, apalling living conditions on a national or even global scale.
As this trend continues, more and more americans will live below the established line of poverty. This will in turn begin to drag the middle classes down with them.
There are two potential ways that this will be mitigated. The ability of the USA to export goods and services will offset the "wealth" flow towards india (You gotta pay those bills somehow!). Secondly, I fully anticipate that the US government will jump in, presumably after the next election, unless GWB is still in power. Remember, poor people can't pay tax, and with no tax you can't bomb other countries for more oil. The oil is used to pay for IT outsourcing in India.
The government will probably do something like, I dunno, modify minimum wage conditions to stop the leaking, or employ some other protectionist laws. How effective it will be in the post-depression USA is uncertain.
Of course the Disney ending would be quite different, if you recall Disney is a large anti-socialist corporation largely concerned with copywrite extensions.
So you would find that Darl McBride is the young orphaned son of the loving family that created SCO in order to protect the precious jewels of the magical UnixWare IP, and the evil Linus Torvalds and his Novell cronies try and flimflam him with their tricksy GPL and steal away his ownly possessions, the UnixWare IP and of course his wacky talking dog (who is also a lawyer).
Then after a few hit songs the judge reveals himself to be none other than our hero, John Ashcroft, who decrees that the evil tricks of the GPL crowd are illegal and Linus is thrown in jail, and Darl reopens his humble SCO shop and the talking dog gets a nice expensive bone.