I don't know why people make such a big deal over MOO3. Sure, it wasn't as good as the other two, but I can think of a more disappointing game that came out in the same year, forget about "all-time."
There is a vast difference between technical quirks in some products and a systematic approach that kills all competition through annoucnemnents and buyouts.
Kind of funny how when Google does it it's "technical quirks in some products," but when Microsoft does it it's the imminent destruction of the Internet by DDOSsing viruses or something like that.
Anyway, you're right, there is a big difference. The difference is that one is a lot more insidious than the other. Everyone knows that Microsoft likes the hostile takeover, but people are generally ignorant (willfully or otherwise) to Google's flaws. Because hey, they say "Do no evil," and everything on the Internet is true, right?
I'll bet people that wrote those links above still use Goole to search for things
I use Google as my primary search engine. I also use Windows XP as my primary operating system and Internet Explorer as my primary web browser. What the hell's your point?
(perhaps not the second guy as he sound irrationally peeved just because they are large and successful)
Considering the fact that that guy's livelihood is almost entirely dependent on the 60000-user forum that he runs, the same forum that was opened to the public by Google Web Accelerator, I'd hardly say that he's "irrationally peeved."
The media is notorious for reporting things like this completely incorrectly.
The thing I most want to know is whether or not there were controls in place to weed out the influence of children who are more likely to be violent anyway (e.g. kids from broken homes). If not, then there's no way to separate causation from correlation.
I also have to wonder about possible bias. The APA funded this study, and it wouldn't exactly be surprising if an association of psychologists (i.e. people who get paid to cure insanity) wanted to suggest that a fairly popular hobby like playing video games turns children into sociopaths.
Oh, and what video games did they play? The GTA series most certainly portrays consequences for violent behavior, for instance.
Oh, get over yourself. The problem with this article isn't that it's crass, it's that it's really, really nerdy. But far be it for I, a/. user, to complain overly much about that.
So blacks and Hispanics play video games more often than whites, but what games do they play? Do they play a wide variety of games, or do they just play the latest editions of Madden and NBA Live? This is important because the people who tend to go into game development tend to be the people who are buffs of the whole medium, not just certain games.
Somebody already mentioned the infinite exponential growth problem, so let me run the rest of them down really quick:
3. One big problem: It's not John's Bonebiter. Everything in your standard MMORPG is owned by the developer, and stealing anything within it would be impossible because all you're doing is transferring bits from one part of the server to another. Then there's the fact that anyone who would take an MMORPG weapon that seriously needs to rethink his priorities.
4. The difference between MMORPG money and real money is that people who value MMORPG money are idiots. Idiocy is not a good basis for an economy.
7. OK, now it's just getting silly, though I'm sure that there will probably be a scant few people that disconnected from reality (and it's really just Darwin in action in that case).
9. How do you know that these jobs will "pay a fortune in virtual gold"? How do you know that the situation in the virtual world will not be just the same as the one in the real world?
Some have said that this is totally tongue-in-cheek, which is probably true. That doesn't make it particularly funny, and there are surely a number of MMORPG addicts out there who actually believe that these arguments are valid.
Didn't most people always think that the second screen was the more gimmicky of the two (it is called the Nintendo DS after all)? I personally thought that it was, even though I also thought that the touchscreen was more gimmicky then than I do now (I figured that the complex games that tend to use mice like RTSes and computer RPGs wouldn't appear on the DS, not realizing that you can make much simpler games like this and Warioware that can also make good use out of the touchscreen).
single player is the only way to truly enjoy an RPG
I wouldn't say that. I would say that the stereotypical MMORPG has got it completely wrong, though. They emphasize power-leveling and teaming up just to scour a dungeon instead of fostering more interesting interaction between the players. And it would be possible to make an MMORPG with an interesting story, but most developers don't want to put forth the effort.
The Japanese have no xenophobia towards westerners.
Except that they do (though it is beginning to die out along with the older generations of set-in-their-ways Japanese, as is their traditionally conformist culture). They might like some of our products, but that doesn't mean that even a majority of them like us as a people. As for how nicely they treat Americans? That's called "politeness," something that the Japanese are very good at. The Japanese aren't nearly as xenophobic as they were 50 years ago, but to say that they aren't xenophobic at all towards Westerners is simply absurd.
I doubt that this relates all that much to the showing of the XBox in Japan, though. The simple fact is that the Japanese in general do not like Western games. Even if Microsoft had made something smaller than the Gamecube with a higher reliability than the PS2, it wouldn't have mattered, unless doing so would've attracted Japanese game developers (an interesting question in itself).
While I am not knocking their capabilities of offering state-of-the-art 3D gaming engines, do we really NEED a Quake 4?... I think id should stick to making game engines, and let other, more creative companies designe the game content
Interestingly enough, that's what id is doing with Quake 4. The game design responsibilities are being handled by Raven Software, the guys who did Jedi Knight 2 and Elite Force.
Doom 3 is a tech demo for Carmack's engine just like most of his games are. Nothing's changed to make id's prestige go any higher or lower than it always has been.
I read the first two books; I got that far because of how unintentionally funny the whole thing was. But I suspect (and this is borne out by the sales) that the people who would buy Christian books in the first place would enjoy this series a lot. Not so with Christian video games; those are so bad that I don't think most people would play them even if they had nothing else to play.
BTW, Creed was just a "Christian" band (i.e. they tried really hard to act like they weren't, but they so obviously were). Real Christian bands are not only open about their faith, they also make it a very explicit part of their music (yes, even more explicit than Creed did).
Did...did you just say that Christian rock and the Left Behind series are higher quality?
Than Christian video games? I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who's tried all of those who wouldn't agree with me. As corny and weak as that music and those books are, they're still far better than crap like what Wisdom Tree puts out.
Where's my video game that simulates the Buddhist wheel of life and my character's struggle to wake up from it and break the chains that bind?
I think this might be something like what you're looking for.
Bible Adventures, the game that could be found in every Christian household with a video-gaming child at that point in time. I don't remember having a problem with keeping the animals in the ark, though. I think you were just supposed to press Up to enter it while still carrying the animal.
How do you explain the sales of Christian rock (as the/. blurb mentioned)?
Do most of these teenagers listen to Christian rock because that's all they're allowed? Probably, but you could say the same thing about video games. No, the reason why Christian video games go nowhere is because they're horrible. Even Christian rock, Left Behind, and so forth are of much higher quality, especially when compared to the mainstream music and books that most people like now-a-days anyway.
By "but the video game industry has so far ignored the topic of religion," the submitter obviously meant "but the video game industry has so far ignored the topic of serious Christianity (as opposed to the silliness found in Xenogears et al.)." And of course that's incorrect too, if you consider such examples as Wisdom Tree (which was actually mentioned in the article).
All of these people who thought that Katamari Damacy was so awesome because it was innovative and broke the trend of sequelitis are now defending We Love Katamari because innovation is risky and it's better to make a good game that's more of the same than to make a bad game that's innovative.
Not that I'm not looking forward to this sequel; it's just that I find this funny.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know why people make such a big deal over MOO3. Sure, it wasn't as good as the other two, but I can think of a more disappointing game that came out in the same year, forget about "all-time."
Rob
There is a vast difference between technical quirks in some products and a systematic approach that kills all competition through annoucnemnents and buyouts.
Kind of funny how when Google does it it's "technical quirks in some products," but when Microsoft does it it's the imminent destruction of the Internet by DDOSsing viruses or something like that.
Anyway, you're right, there is a big difference. The difference is that one is a lot more insidious than the other. Everyone knows that Microsoft likes the hostile takeover, but people are generally ignorant (willfully or otherwise) to Google's flaws. Because hey, they say "Do no evil," and everything on the Internet is true, right?
I'll bet people that wrote those links above still use Goole to search for things
I use Google as my primary search engine. I also use Windows XP as my primary operating system and Internet Explorer as my primary web browser. What the hell's your point?
(perhaps not the second guy as he sound irrationally peeved just because they are large and successful)
Considering the fact that that guy's livelihood is almost entirely dependent on the 60000-user forum that he runs, the same forum that was opened to the public by Google Web Accelerator, I'd hardly say that he's "irrationally peeved."
Rob
Come on, the only people that are thinking Google is evil are other companies that have to compete with them.
t m_ fix_blog_noise/
Actually, there is a growing number of people who think that Google is evil, but it has nothing to do with how much it pays its employees.
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/betagroups.h
http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2858
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/05/09/google_to
That last one was from two years ago, and Google still hasn't fixed that problem.
Rob
The other side of the coin is that computers weren't able to replicate a great platformer like Sonic for a long time after Doom.
Oh, really?
Rob
The media is notorious for reporting things like this completely incorrectly.
The thing I most want to know is whether or not there were controls in place to weed out the influence of children who are more likely to be violent anyway (e.g. kids from broken homes). If not, then there's no way to separate causation from correlation.
I also have to wonder about possible bias. The APA funded this study, and it wouldn't exactly be surprising if an association of psychologists (i.e. people who get paid to cure insanity) wanted to suggest that a fairly popular hobby like playing video games turns children into sociopaths.
Oh, and what video games did they play? The GTA series most certainly portrays consequences for violent behavior, for instance.
Rob
Uh.. going nuts over an article that merely goes straight to the point isn't nerdy?
Yes, that was part of my point.
Rob
We don't give a shit. Just stop posting and try not to let the homepage hit you on the way out.
Rob (I agree that we need to get rid of Zonk, though)
Oh, get over yourself. The problem with this article isn't that it's crass, it's that it's really, really nerdy. But far be it for I, a /. user, to complain overly much about that.
Rob
So blacks and Hispanics play video games more often than whites, but what games do they play? Do they play a wide variety of games, or do they just play the latest editions of Madden and NBA Live? This is important because the people who tend to go into game development tend to be the people who are buffs of the whole medium, not just certain games.
Rob
Somebody already mentioned the infinite exponential growth problem, so let me run the rest of them down really quick:
3. One big problem: It's not John's Bonebiter. Everything in your standard MMORPG is owned by the developer, and stealing anything within it would be impossible because all you're doing is transferring bits from one part of the server to another. Then there's the fact that anyone who would take an MMORPG weapon that seriously needs to rethink his priorities.
4. The difference between MMORPG money and real money is that people who value MMORPG money are idiots. Idiocy is not a good basis for an economy.
7. OK, now it's just getting silly, though I'm sure that there will probably be a scant few people that disconnected from reality (and it's really just Darwin in action in that case).
9. How do you know that these jobs will "pay a fortune in virtual gold"? How do you know that the situation in the virtual world will not be just the same as the one in the real world?
Some have said that this is totally tongue-in-cheek, which is probably true. That doesn't make it particularly funny, and there are surely a number of MMORPG addicts out there who actually believe that these arguments are valid.
Rob
It was a hugely successfuly game that put Squaresoft on the map in America.
No, that was FF7. FF6 was only popular among hardcore gamers here.
Rob
Didn't most people always think that the second screen was the more gimmicky of the two (it is called the Nintendo DS after all)? I personally thought that it was, even though I also thought that the touchscreen was more gimmicky then than I do now (I figured that the complex games that tend to use mice like RTSes and computer RPGs wouldn't appear on the DS, not realizing that you can make much simpler games like this and Warioware that can also make good use out of the touchscreen).
Rob
single player is the only way to truly enjoy an RPG
I wouldn't say that. I would say that the stereotypical MMORPG has got it completely wrong, though. They emphasize power-leveling and teaming up just to scour a dungeon instead of fostering more interesting interaction between the players. And it would be possible to make an MMORPG with an interesting story, but most developers don't want to put forth the effort.
Rob
The Japanese have no xenophobia towards westerners.
Except that they do (though it is beginning to die out along with the older generations of set-in-their-ways Japanese, as is their traditionally conformist culture). They might like some of our products, but that doesn't mean that even a majority of them like us as a people. As for how nicely they treat Americans? That's called "politeness," something that the Japanese are very good at. The Japanese aren't nearly as xenophobic as they were 50 years ago, but to say that they aren't xenophobic at all towards Westerners is simply absurd.
I doubt that this relates all that much to the showing of the XBox in Japan, though. The simple fact is that the Japanese in general do not like Western games. Even if Microsoft had made something smaller than the Gamecube with a higher reliability than the PS2, it wouldn't have mattered, unless doing so would've attracted Japanese game developers (an interesting question in itself).
Rob
While I am not knocking their capabilities of offering state-of-the-art 3D gaming engines, do we really NEED a Quake 4? ...
I think id should stick to making game engines, and let other, more creative companies designe the game content
Interestingly enough, that's what id is doing with Quake 4. The game design responsibilities are being handled by Raven Software, the guys who did Jedi Knight 2 and Elite Force.
Rob
Doom 3 is a tech demo for Carmack's engine just like most of his games are. Nothing's changed to make id's prestige go any higher or lower than it always has been.
Rob
Problem solved.
Rob
It already has been, in those very RPGs you describe. Try playing through the "crucifixion" scene in Xenogears with a straight face.
Rob
I read the first two books; I got that far because of how unintentionally funny the whole thing was. But I suspect (and this is borne out by the sales) that the people who would buy Christian books in the first place would enjoy this series a lot. Not so with Christian video games; those are so bad that I don't think most people would play them even if they had nothing else to play.
Rob
Stryper, maybe?
BTW, Creed was just a "Christian" band (i.e. they tried really hard to act like they weren't, but they so obviously were). Real Christian bands are not only open about their faith, they also make it a very explicit part of their music (yes, even more explicit than Creed did).
Rob
Did...did you just say that Christian rock and the Left Behind series are higher quality?
Than Christian video games? I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who's tried all of those who wouldn't agree with me. As corny and weak as that music and those books are, they're still far better than crap like what Wisdom Tree puts out.
Where's my video game that simulates the Buddhist wheel of life and my character's struggle to wake up from it and break the chains that bind?
I think this might be something like what you're looking for.
Rob
Bible Adventures, the game that could be found in every Christian household with a video-gaming child at that point in time. I don't remember having a problem with keeping the animals in the ark, though. I think you were just supposed to press Up to enter it while still carrying the animal.
Rob
How do you explain the sales of Christian rock (as the /. blurb mentioned)?
Do most of these teenagers listen to Christian rock because that's all they're allowed? Probably, but you could say the same thing about video games. No, the reason why Christian video games go nowhere is because they're horrible. Even Christian rock, Left Behind, and so forth are of much higher quality, especially when compared to the mainstream music and books that most people like now-a-days anyway.
Rob
By "but the video game industry has so far ignored the topic of religion," the submitter obviously meant "but the video game industry has so far ignored the topic of serious Christianity (as opposed to the silliness found in Xenogears et al.)." And of course that's incorrect too, if you consider such examples as Wisdom Tree (which was actually mentioned in the article).
Rob
All of these people who thought that Katamari Damacy was so awesome because it was innovative and broke the trend of sequelitis are now defending We Love Katamari because innovation is risky and it's better to make a good game that's more of the same than to make a bad game that's innovative.
Not that I'm not looking forward to this sequel; it's just that I find this funny.
Rob