"Care to cite your sources for that tidbit? Or were you just making that all up?"
I think you're misunderstanding me. I am simply making the point that there is always a price that can be paid. That price might be ridiculously high, but it does always exist. For example, I have no intention of selling my home. I built it myself and it's exactly what I want and where I want it, but if someone came around and offered me $10 million for it, it's as good as sold. Likewise, the Nation estate is squabbling with the BBC over creative control, but if BBC offered the Nation Estate enough money, they would forget all about creative control. Just ask the Rolling Stones who claimed they would never sell their songs to advertisers.
It's always a monetary issue. There is a price at which the Nation estate will let the Daleks perfom Hitler on Ice with the Spice Girls on the New Worzel Gummidge Show starring Jon Pertwee's corpse without any input from the Nation estate whatsoever. That price is probably very high, but if the Beeb can take a popular entity from a newly popular (assuming Dr. Who does take off) show and give the new writers the leeway to do what they like with it, they might be willing to pay that price.
If I remember correctly, the series ran new episodes until 1989. Now I can remember some shows I watched from back when I was 3 or 4 years old (Dave Allen at Large, Paul Hogan Show). So to be a fan, I'm assuming you would have to watch at least two seasons. I was a fan of Family Guy after two seasons. 4 (yrs old) + 2 (yrs to be a fan) = 6. 1989 - 6 (total years of age required) = 1983. So someone born in 1983 could potentially be a fan of the show and that's assuming you would only be a fan if you saw the episodes when they were new. Most 21 year olds will be alive and well in 10-20 years.
Even a fan from the 1970's (I'll assume fan in 1970 and born in 1966 here) will only be 48 - 58 years old in 10-20 years and that would be a fan during the shows peak years.
Dr. Who is an old show, but I think that if it were going to fall to the asheap of history any time soon, it would already have done so in the 1990's when the show was pulled.
There might not be Daleks right now, but I gaurantee you that if Dr. Who becomes a hit, the Beeb will gladly pony up the cash to the Nation estate for rights to the Daleks.
Personally, there are few Dalek stories I like (Genesis, Day of, the 7th Doctor one) so I'm glad to see they won't be returning. I tend to prefer non-recurring villans.
Nat'l Review is the only magazine I have a subsciption to, but I get it mostly for the Buckley tidbits and the political cartoons. I'm also rather fond of The Economist and American Spectator. I used to read a wakeboard magazine a few years back, but I left the sport for a while (no boat) and don't see it on the newsstand anymore.
I was actually thinking the game would fall somewhere between horrible and decent. Since the game can't be better than Tony Hawk OR GTA according to my theory, it must be worse than the worse of the two. I think Tony Hawk is OK, but far from perfect. I also think GTA is far from perfect, but still good enough that I could see some people labeling it as perfect. So at best case Spider-Man is ok, but no Tony Hawk. You can interpret that how you like but I don't see that as much of an accomplishment.
"What Treyarch has done... is to blend in that nearly unattainable addiction so inherent in Neversoft's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series and meld it with Spider-Man's web slinging in a Grand Theft Auto-style open city."
When watching a preview for a movie, I have discovered that the more other movies are mentioned the worse the movie being advertised will be. For example, there were a lot of crappy sci-fi movies coming out directly after the Matrix saying things like "If you liked the Matrix, you'll definately love [insert movie title here]." It is almost garaunteed that this movie will be bad. I have also discovered that even good movies that mention other movies are not as good as the movies they mention. For example, I remember the Bourne Identity comparing a car chase scene to one in the French Connection. While Bourne Identity was decent, it was no French Connection.
While this is a review of the game rather than something paid for directly by the company producing the game, I am still weary seeing two other games mentioned in such a small space when describing the Spider-Man game. At worst the game will be crap. At best it will not be as good as Tony Hawk or GTA.
I think that Guillaume is just a little bit better known as Benson than Detective Catfish. they could have at least mentioned his role in Sports Night. Or maybe that new commecial where all the maids and butlers from different TV shows are on vacation.
My personal reaction would be surprise that such a game would be made, but only because I think it would be unpopular. I do not think the government would try to censor the game at all.
I would expect to see stores like Wal-Mart not carry the game, but not out of a gov't mandate. More out of a Wal-Mart staying away from almost anything controversial. Also, even though I would be surprised if Wal-Mart carried such a game, I would not be upset about it. They can sell or not sell whatever they want as far as I am concerned.
Would I buy the game? If it were a good game and the anti-US sentiment were kept to a minimum, I'd at least check it out.
I had Columbia House call me one time for a monthly tape of my favorite TV shows subscription. I decided to have a little fun.
I started off asking her if they had Rhoda. She mentioned that they didn't have Rhoda but did have Mary Tyler Moore. I told her I can watch Mary Tyler Moore on TV anytime. I asked for several similar spinoff titles including The Lou Grant Show, Flo, The Tortellis, Three's a Crowd, and It's Punky Brewster (Sat Morning Cartoon, NOT live action Punky Brewster).
I ran out of spinoffs from the top of my head so I made a comment similar to "Well you don't have any spinoffs I'm interested in, how about..." and I went on with some obscure TV shows like The Charmings, The D&D Cartoon, Free Spirit, I Married Dora, Mr. T (I was looking for the Satuday Morning Cartoon, NOT the A-Team like the lady offered), and just about every other Saturday Morning cartoon I could think of (Morals be damned, if she had "Turbo Teen" or "Benji, Zax and the Alien Prince" I was going to get them).
Then when she didn't have any of those I got really cocky and started asking for popular shows. I was asking for shows like The Bob Newhart Show (She thought she had a sale until she realized it wasn't Newhart), the live action Batman, The Tim Conway Show, The Tracey Ulman Show, The Bill Cosby Show (not to be confused with The Cosby Show), GI Joe, and Transformers. Then I asked about Quincy and she actually had it so I had to end our call, which is a shame because I really like Quincy but I'm not about to encourage telemarketing by buying things from a telemarketer (except for the Saturday Morning Cartoon exception mentioned above).
I think Infogrammes will fold and teach other game companies a lesson about hyping a bad game (If Driv3r is indeed a bad game). They seem to think slapping a faux-Atari logo onto a crappy sequel (from the reviews and consensus I've seen) will equal sales as long as they hype the game enough. This isn't the movie industry. How much does it cost to go see a movie? How much does the video game cost to buy? The average person is going to do a lot more research before buying a game than before seeing a movie.
Is this North Korean gov't-run paper aware that UbiSoft is not an arm of the American gov't? I could see if America's Army had a similar storyline due to its US Army ties, but this is a Tom Clancy game.
Even if the paper is referring to US citizens instead of the US govt, this game isn't something that a large percentage of our general population will play. This game will be played by video game players who like war games. How much of our population is that? I imagine it's somewhere around 5% - 10% at most. Also, these games seem to me to have no bearing on players' opinions of real war situations. I imagine there will be some people who would be very upset about a US invasion of North Korea who would still enjoy this game, because they have the ability to separate reality from fantasy.
Did movies get cheaper because of advertisement and product placement? Not the last time I checked. I still paid the same price to see ET with it's Reeses Pieces product placement as I did to see any regularly priced movie that year. The cost isn't going to go down for games with advertisements, but the game makers will have to be careful about making product placements and advertisements fit in with the game or at least not get in the way. For example, if your character has to drive a card for some action does it really matter whether you're in a Honda or a generic video game car? You probably don't care but the game maker who is getting a good chunk of cash from Honda to put the car in the game cares a great deal.
I agree that Jet Moto was a shining example of how to do in-game advertisement, but Jet Moto is a sports title and sports titles will always have easier times figuring out produce placement and advertisement becasue the real live sport (or sports in Jet Moto's case) that inspires such a game has already worked out advertising logistics.
Figuring out where to place products and advertisements in something like a new Alone in the Dark game or an Everquest game will probably be significantly harder. I can see those types of games taking the easy way out and resorting to commercials for advertising money.
The problems are really no different than the problems you would encounter when getting a neighborhood group or intramural group together to play. People might leave early. Enough people might not show up. People might show up late. The teams could be given options of what to do in those situations. They could play a man short, get to pick a player from the other team, etc. There could also be an option to sub in an AI player for a human as needed. The AI player could come out when a human wants to join in on the game as long as both teams agree on proper procedure.
The rules could be as laid back or as strict as the players dictate. You might have different substitution rules for a tournament than you do for an exhibition game.
It seems to me like every MMOG I've ever played is just the same MMORPG in a different setting. While change of scenery is nice, I'd like to see a little bit more variety than that. How about a MMO football or soccer game? I'd buy that in a second if it were at least decent. Maybe someone out could do a MMO casino. I think it would add a level of social interaction not found in the browser-based casino games. They probably wouldn't even have to charge a subscription for that one since the house should be taking enough in to pay for the servers.
Vivendi has closed the doors on Sierra, but Sierra ran itself into the ground years ago. I'd like to see a company acquire the Sierra line and make Sierra adventure games again. It's obvious that Vivendi had no intentions of doing that sort of thing anyways. I hope they let someone else give it a go. Maybe we could eventually see Space Quest 7. I've always wondered how they would work that considering a Space Quest 7 was already established in Space Quest 4.
If you want to virtually work, I can give you a virtual job with my dad building virtual houses in the virtually hot a$$ summer heat. Extrememly realistic environment and I won't even charge much for an 8 hour session.
If you're bored surfing then get youself a wakeboard and get pulled behind an internal combustion engine like God intended.
Seriously though, I like surfing but I don't mind waiting for the wave and I surf somewhere where waves don't come too often (coastal GA). I'm not too good a surfer though (I live inland) and usually spend my time contemplating what I did wrong last time.
It's a shame Fritz will be retiring. I just hope that Disney & Co don't buy off a representative that is more charismatic and knowledgeable to replace him or we might really be in trouble.
What uses more power, your PC Speaker (I mean the old school one tone PC Speaker) or a Sound Blaster? The reason the ring tones use up more power is because a more complicated system is powering them in the newer ring tones (like the ones that will take sound waves as input instead of just notes).
There are some newer phones that use less energy than their less advanced ancestors, but then it stands to reason that a newer phone with similar features to the older phone will use less battery power than than the stocked new one.
On the boat, it's usually 6AM to 8PM but sometimes we go boating down the river by day and camp by tent at night. Those trips are usually three to five days.
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No, what they need is a shoe phone with integrated mp3 so CONTROL agents can listen to some tunes while on assignment.
They are out there every day making deliciously evil candy that entices kids to get in the car with strangers. This must be stopped!
"Care to cite your sources for that tidbit? Or were you just making that all up?"
I think you're misunderstanding me. I am simply making the point that there is always a price that can be paid. That price might be ridiculously high, but it does always exist. For example, I have no intention of selling my home. I built it myself and it's exactly what I want and where I want it, but if someone came around and offered me $10 million for it, it's as good as sold. Likewise, the Nation estate is squabbling with the BBC over creative control, but if BBC offered the Nation Estate enough money, they would forget all about creative control. Just ask the Rolling Stones who claimed they would never sell their songs to advertisers.
It's always a monetary issue. There is a price at which the Nation estate will let the Daleks perfom Hitler on Ice with the Spice Girls on the New Worzel Gummidge Show starring Jon Pertwee's corpse without any input from the Nation estate whatsoever. That price is probably very high, but if the Beeb can take a popular entity from a newly popular (assuming Dr. Who does take off) show and give the new writers the leeway to do what they like with it, they might be willing to pay that price.
"most the people who know about it will be dead"
If I remember correctly, the series ran new episodes until 1989. Now I can remember some shows I watched from back when I was 3 or 4 years old (Dave Allen at Large, Paul Hogan Show). So to be a fan, I'm assuming you would have to watch at least two seasons. I was a fan of Family Guy after two seasons. 4 (yrs old) + 2 (yrs to be a fan) = 6. 1989 - 6 (total years of age required) = 1983. So someone born in 1983 could potentially be a fan of the show and that's assuming you would only be a fan if you saw the episodes when they were new. Most 21 year olds will be alive and well in 10-20 years.
Even a fan from the 1970's (I'll assume fan in 1970 and born in 1966 here) will only be 48 - 58 years old in 10-20 years and that would be a fan during the shows peak years.
Dr. Who is an old show, but I think that if it were going to fall to the asheap of history any time soon, it would already have done so in the 1990's when the show was pulled.
"...hardly integral to the series like Gallifrey and the Time Lords (and Earth!) are."
Don't tell that to William Hartnell.
There might not be Daleks right now, but I gaurantee you that if Dr. Who becomes a hit, the Beeb will gladly pony up the cash to the Nation estate for rights to the Daleks.
Personally, there are few Dalek stories I like (Genesis, Day of, the 7th Doctor one) so I'm glad to see they won't be returning. I tend to prefer non-recurring villans.
Nat'l Review is the only magazine I have a subsciption to, but I get it mostly for the Buckley tidbits and the political cartoons. I'm also rather fond of The Economist and American Spectator. I used to read a wakeboard magazine a few years back, but I left the sport for a while (no boat) and don't see it on the newsstand anymore.
I was actually thinking the game would fall somewhere between horrible and decent. Since the game can't be better than Tony Hawk OR GTA according to my theory, it must be worse than the worse of the two. I think Tony Hawk is OK, but far from perfect. I also think GTA is far from perfect, but still good enough that I could see some people labeling it as perfect. So at best case Spider-Man is ok, but no Tony Hawk. You can interpret that how you like but I don't see that as much of an accomplishment.
"What Treyarch has done... is to blend in that nearly unattainable addiction so inherent in Neversoft's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series and meld it with Spider-Man's web slinging in a Grand Theft Auto-style open city."
When watching a preview for a movie, I have discovered that the more other movies are mentioned the worse the movie being advertised will be. For example, there were a lot of crappy sci-fi movies coming out directly after the Matrix saying things like "If you liked the Matrix, you'll definately love [insert movie title here]." It is almost garaunteed that this movie will be bad. I have also discovered that even good movies that mention other movies are not as good as the movies they mention. For example, I remember the Bourne Identity comparing a car chase scene to one in the French Connection. While Bourne Identity was decent, it was no French Connection.
While this is a review of the game rather than something paid for directly by the company producing the game, I am still weary seeing two other games mentioned in such a small space when describing the Spider-Man game. At worst the game will be crap. At best it will not be as good as Tony Hawk or GTA.
"better known as Benson" I was actually thinking of Soap, but I did enjoy his spinoff titled Benson also.
I think that Guillaume is just a little bit better known as Benson than Detective Catfish. they could have at least mentioned his role in Sports Night. Or maybe that new commecial where all the maids and butlers from different TV shows are on vacation.
My personal reaction would be surprise that such a game would be made, but only because I think it would be unpopular. I do not think the government would try to censor the game at all.
I would expect to see stores like Wal-Mart not carry the game, but not out of a gov't mandate. More out of a Wal-Mart staying away from almost anything controversial. Also, even though I would be surprised if Wal-Mart carried such a game, I would not be upset about it. They can sell or not sell whatever they want as far as I am concerned.
Would I buy the game? If it were a good game and the anti-US sentiment were kept to a minimum, I'd at least check it out.
I had Columbia House call me one time for a monthly tape of my favorite TV shows subscription. I decided to have a little fun.
I started off asking her if they had Rhoda. She mentioned that they didn't have Rhoda but did have Mary Tyler Moore. I told her I can watch Mary Tyler Moore on TV anytime. I asked for several similar spinoff titles including The Lou Grant Show, Flo, The Tortellis, Three's a Crowd, and It's Punky Brewster (Sat Morning Cartoon, NOT live action Punky Brewster).
I ran out of spinoffs from the top of my head so I made a comment similar to "Well you don't have any spinoffs I'm interested in, how about..." and I went on with some obscure TV shows like The Charmings, The D&D Cartoon, Free Spirit, I Married Dora, Mr. T (I was looking for the Satuday Morning Cartoon, NOT the A-Team like the lady offered), and just about every other Saturday Morning cartoon I could think of (Morals be damned, if she had "Turbo Teen" or "Benji, Zax and the Alien Prince" I was going to get them).
Then when she didn't have any of those I got really cocky and started asking for popular shows. I was asking for shows like The Bob Newhart Show (She thought she had a sale until she realized it wasn't Newhart), the live action Batman, The Tim Conway Show, The Tracey Ulman Show, The Bill Cosby Show (not to be confused with The Cosby Show), GI Joe, and Transformers. Then I asked about Quincy and she actually had it so I had to end our call, which is a shame because I really like Quincy but I'm not about to encourage telemarketing by buying things from a telemarketer (except for the Saturday Morning Cartoon exception mentioned above).
I think Infogrammes will fold and teach other game companies a lesson about hyping a bad game (If Driv3r is indeed a bad game). They seem to think slapping a faux-Atari logo onto a crappy sequel (from the reviews and consensus I've seen) will equal sales as long as they hype the game enough. This isn't the movie industry. How much does it cost to go see a movie? How much does the video game cost to buy? The average person is going to do a lot more research before buying a game than before seeing a movie.
"U.S. warmongering"?
Is this North Korean gov't-run paper aware that UbiSoft is not an arm of the American gov't? I could see if America's Army had a similar storyline due to its US Army ties, but this is a Tom Clancy game.
Even if the paper is referring to US citizens instead of the US govt, this game isn't something that a large percentage of our general population will play. This game will be played by video game players who like war games. How much of our population is that? I imagine it's somewhere around 5% - 10% at most. Also, these games seem to me to have no bearing on players' opinions of real war situations. I imagine there will be some people who would be very upset about a US invasion of North Korea who would still enjoy this game, because they have the ability to separate reality from fantasy.
Did movies get cheaper because of advertisement and product placement? Not the last time I checked. I still paid the same price to see ET with it's Reeses Pieces product placement as I did to see any regularly priced movie that year. The cost isn't going to go down for games with advertisements, but the game makers will have to be careful about making product placements and advertisements fit in with the game or at least not get in the way. For example, if your character has to drive a card for some action does it really matter whether you're in a Honda or a generic video game car? You probably don't care but the game maker who is getting a good chunk of cash from Honda to put the car in the game cares a great deal.
I agree that Jet Moto was a shining example of how to do in-game advertisement, but Jet Moto is a sports title and sports titles will always have easier times figuring out produce placement and advertisement becasue the real live sport (or sports in Jet Moto's case) that inspires such a game has already worked out advertising logistics.
Figuring out where to place products and advertisements in something like a new Alone in the Dark game or an Everquest game will probably be significantly harder. I can see those types of games taking the easy way out and resorting to commercials for advertising money.
The problems are really no different than the problems you would encounter when getting a neighborhood group or intramural group together to play. People might leave early. Enough people might not show up. People might show up late. The teams could be given options of what to do in those situations. They could play a man short, get to pick a player from the other team, etc. There could also be an option to sub in an AI player for a human as needed. The AI player could come out when a human wants to join in on the game as long as both teams agree on proper procedure.
The rules could be as laid back or as strict as the players dictate. You might have different substitution rules for a tournament than you do for an exhibition game.
It seems to me like every MMOG I've ever played is just the same MMORPG in a different setting. While change of scenery is nice, I'd like to see a little bit more variety than that. How about a MMO football or soccer game? I'd buy that in a second if it were at least decent. Maybe someone out could do a MMO casino. I think it would add a level of social interaction not found in the browser-based casino games. They probably wouldn't even have to charge a subscription for that one since the house should be taking enough in to pay for the servers.
Vivendi has closed the doors on Sierra, but Sierra ran itself into the ground years ago. I'd like to see a company acquire the Sierra line and make Sierra adventure games again. It's obvious that Vivendi had no intentions of doing that sort of thing anyways. I hope they let someone else give it a go. Maybe we could eventually see Space Quest 7. I've always wondered how they would work that considering a Space Quest 7 was already established in Space Quest 4.
If you want to virtually work, I can give you a virtual job with my dad building virtual houses in the virtually hot a$$ summer heat. Extrememly realistic environment and I won't even charge much for an 8 hour session.
If you're bored surfing then get youself a wakeboard and get pulled behind an internal combustion engine like God intended.
Seriously though, I like surfing but I don't mind waiting for the wave and I surf somewhere where waves don't come too often (coastal GA). I'm not too good a surfer though (I live inland) and usually spend my time contemplating what I did wrong last time.
It's a shame Fritz will be retiring. I just hope that Disney & Co don't buy off a representative that is more charismatic and knowledgeable to replace him or we might really be in trouble.
What uses more power, your PC Speaker (I mean the old school one tone PC Speaker) or a Sound Blaster? The reason the ring tones use up more power is because a more complicated system is powering them in the newer ring tones (like the ones that will take sound waves as input instead of just notes).
There are some newer phones that use less energy than their less advanced ancestors, but then it stands to reason that a newer phone with similar features to the older phone will use less battery power than than the stocked new one.
On the boat, it's usually 6AM to 8PM but sometimes we go boating down the river by day and camp by tent at night. Those trips are usually three to five days.