no evidence that games are constructive forms of either recreation or learning
I hope there's evidence that TV is constructive for recreation or learning. Obviously they have to lump all of TV programming together, as they have video games. I learned typing through some of the typing games from yesteryear. And playing online games hasn't hurt my typing. Except that I feel obligated to type "teh" a lot.
I will say, to the authors credit, at least they picked a bi-partisan bunch of ill-informed politicians. Kind of refreshing to see in todays world.
Companies are selling out to the highest bidder, and tailoring their content to be as favorable as possible to the people that back them financially!
Honestly, I didn't realize this was anything new. I always assumed that video game rags were pretty much like every other magazine out there. You throw some money around, get the coverage you want and ride the wave to profit. Just like pretty much every other publication out there. I'm sure we've all heard stories about reviewers coming clean about getting a lot of swag from game publishers that helps up their review a bit. Why would the magazine really be any different?
The days of being able to realistically expect unbiased reporting from anywhere are pretty much long gone.
Sure... Except that Cryptic Studios and NCSoft both at least have offices stateside. The race card rarely flies in todays world.
I'll agree that Marvel thought they had a case, and that (despite what they say) it's all about the money. But I don't think it was racism. There's no need to get more basic than greed to find a cause for the case here.
The political focus remains on the marketing and sale of adult content to minors and the integrity of the ratings system:
Which is all fine until you get into specifics. What constitutes graphic violent content? The titles that are already rated Mature? Why center on video games, and not movies or TV? Because Hollywood helps pay your bills, and the games industry doesn't?
Most retailers refuse to sell AO rated games already (I don't know of a major chain that sells them, and none of the smaller stores in town do either). The rest have some policies in place that restrict the sale of rated "M" games to adults. Very similar to what movie theaters do to restrict admission into "R" rated movies. Codifing some sort of restriction on what video games can be sold to who only serves to help add another layer of buerocracy into our government.
If she wants to empower parents to control what their kids are playing, perhaps she should spend her time encouraging parents to take the time to parent their children?
What constitutes art for one person may be a stack of scrap iron to another. I don't think we should care much about whether Ebert thinks video games are art. What difference would it make anyway? Last I heard the video game industry isn't so strapped for cash they're looking for NEA money.
Except that Jack Thompson isn't a senator. He's a crackpot lawyer looking for a way to make his name in the world, or a quick buck, or whatever it is he's after. When Jack Thompson says something, we can all safely ignore him as a crackpot. When real law makers start talking, we have to pay some attention. It was enough to slap warning labels on our music in the late 80's, early 90's to protect the childrenz...but we've already got the warning labels on video games. If something can actually happen as a result of this, besides squandering untold amounts of tax dollars, we have a vested interest in keeping an eye on it.
I don't mind some sequels, when there's some genuinely new developments in game mechanics or a good story line to go with it. I don't mind add-ons, as long as they hit the same criteria. A lot of sequels do seem to just bank on the success of the prior game, and might have slightly different enemies/graphics. Those don't do it for me, and movie tie-ins don't do it for the same reason. I'm not going to play a mediocore game because someone slaps "Star Wars" in the title any more than I'm likely to pick up GTA:That One City Just South of the US-84 Interchange because I happened to enjoy the original. Especially if GTA:TOCJSOTU84I is just like GTA:TOCJNOTU84I with slightly different cars.
Bloggers tend to link to the work of real reporters, then offer comments, or worse, just repeat rumors as fact. At best, they are information scavengers, feeding on the facts hunted down by others.
Is that different than when real journalists just re-hash everything from a press conference? Or when journalists pick and choose which expert testimony they want to go forward with if they have dissenting testimony?
Don't put journalists on a pedestal. The days where journalists did hard digging to get out the truth seems to be long gone, at least in this country. A blogger has just as much right to put their spin on the facts as the journalists that writes it in a paper.
I haven't worried about Final Fantasy in a while. I played FFX, and got tired and bore of the whole thing. A long gaming experience shouldn't be that way because one has to walk mindlessly through the one path available for number of hours. FFXI was better in terms of a game experience, but then it has to be because it's a MMORPG. If FFXII is going to be the worst of both worlds, I don't need it. Without more information, I just don't care.
It's probably great if that's the kind of game you like to play, but I like the illusion of having some choices on how to proceed in a game.
On some level, I'm not necessarily opposed to allowing people to spend real money on gear and xp/levels. If you can crank out a MMORPG and make if free because you expect enough revenue from people buy gear, that's ok. As long as you don't essentially mandate the spending of real money to have any chance of accomplishing anything in the game. There will likely always be people willing to spend money to get ahead in a game, and if it's done in more controlled circumstances it might keep things from spiralling out of control economically speaking (or at least make it a more controlled spiral). On the other hand, if I had to pick a company to be able to do it right, SOE wouldn't be tops on my list.
The one thing I always ask myself, though, is that if a game is so boring or tedious that you'd spend real money to get ahead (as opposed to playing the game) why do you even both logging in?
Don't compare it to alcohol, compare it to buying music with those explicit lyrics tags...or allowing underage kids to buy R-rated movies.
Frankly, it doesn't sound all that different. Except that I'm not positive if there are fines involved with allowing minors to walk off with Sin City or the latest DMX album. I know they were talking about fining movie theaters that allowed minors into R-rated movies, but I don't know whether that went anywhere.
The "video games are evil" craze isn't really that different from the good ol' days of the PMRC and "explicit music is evil." Gotta love people desperate to protect the childrens!
What it is designed to be is a feature packed phone that doesn't mind compromising on the ergonomics to pack in every last bit of functionality you could ever want on a camera phone."
The only functionality I want in my cell phone is that it make and receive calls fairly reliably. I don't want a camera, PDA, games, personal theme music...none of that. I'd rather have individual devices that do all these things well, rather than one device that doesn't really do justice to any of the features.
The movie industry has no problem throwing most of their good offerings in the same time frame. Movies don't appeal to everybody, so you throw a lot out there and see what hits. The same story is probably true with games. I don't care if the latest sports game ships or not, but I keep my eyes open for new FPS's and RPG's. I'm sure it's the case for a lot of people. Sequels and expansions probably have it relatively easy, people that like them are going to be watching for the new stuff anyway. New games have to have something special to offer to get me to buy them. Throwing a Star Wars skin on Battlefront isn't going to get me to buy it, regardless of how much marketing goes into it. If, as a developer, you deliver good story lines I'll probably buy it regardless of season.
I would think a motorcycle apparel company would be more than happy to point out how fuel efficient most motorcycles are while talking about "going green." I realize there are some monster bikes out there that aren't all about efficiency, but ~50MPG seems to be the average for the bikers I know. I'll admit it's not viable for hauling groceries and things like that, but for a work commute vehicle... Where I live most people that drive cars don't look for motorcycles so commutes tend to be interesting while on a bike. But that would be much improved if more people used them/got used to being aware of them.
What you need to know is the fact that betas are infiltrated by those that want sneak peaks at the game. Definitely not by those that truly wish to test the product.
They're hardly being "infiltrated" by anybody. If you pre-order most games these days, you get guaranteed beta access which oddly coincides with when they're ramping up their stress tests. If you already subscribe to an online game the company is running, you tend to get beta access to their new stuff as well (whether or not you fork out cash). It's an easy way to generate word of mouth prior to release, and to make some people that over-value being part of a Beta test to get some snobbery points ("Yeah, I've been playing since Beta 2!").
You gotta figure that, given the people they're recruiting, the application process is a bit much. It's far easier to provide your email address and check a box saying you've beta tested before (and perhaps provide a timezone), and then get picked by a RNG. By the time public betas open, they don't care as much about different hardware configs. And I've seen people kicked from betas for making some exploits public in restricted forums. Never made sense to me, you plan on getting character wipes occasionally anyway so having someone publish the information shouldn't be too terrible. If you wanted to truly beta test the product, in my opinion you'd let people get developer-like access. Let some people xp/skill up the old fashioned way, let others generate their characters at the high-end of what's available in the game. Get every aspect of the play tested. That's also my problem with test servers a lot of companies make available for patch testing. It does no good to have a patch server where you'd have to level from scratch if all the changes impact the high-end game. But that's into other beefs of mine with MMORPGS...
The more extreme he goes, the more orginizations and politicians will distance themselves from him. Filing charges against sites like Penny Arcade should hasten his fall to obscurity. Or at least I can dream.
I wonder how information like this, assuming even half of it is true, plays into larger corporations attempts at legitimizing the behavior (like SOE recently did for EQ2)? I've always argued that if the game play is boring or tedious enough that someone would consider paying real money for some advancement, it's time to consider another game. As an avid MMORPG gamer at one point, I can say that I suffered through bad game play for the social aspect of it. Now that I'm sort of off that, I tend to get bored with more MMORPGs rather quickly. I don't need l337 items that badly, and I don't like playing an easy game forever to achieve some level or other bonus.
Can't you get a debit card as soon as you open a bank account nowadays? Are these systems sophisticated enough to care whether it's a debit card or credit card, or are they pretty straight-forward (i.e. with that information I was able to put a one cent charge and reverse it)?
We want to get started on a worldwide basis, we want to do the right thing for gamers, for our publishers and for consumers."
The right thing for gamers and consumers isn't to release something with a shortage of available machines. Part of me wonders if it's an artificial shortage... Hype it up, make people want it, then make sure everybody knows there aren't enough of them to go around world-wide. Hope that the people on the fence will rush out to get it, just in case there aren't many of them available. But then, I'm cynical.
The right thing for everybody would be to accurately scope the demand for your product, and make sure you can meet that demand. If you have enough systems to guarantee Pepsi can give out 120+ a day, chances are you can tap some sort of reserve for the parts. Get them to everybody, stop talking about the massive shortage you expect.
Skeptics say the practice distracts CEOs from more-pressing work -- and extends already long workdays
But it's ok for the employees that get stuff out the door to be required to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to participate in a conference call with some people across the globe? Or for employees to spend all day answering emails and then start actually working round about 5? Don't expect me to cry a river for CEO's any time soon.
It sounds like it has the potential to be ambiguous enough to include games that get rated "Teen." After all "violent" games can teens and it gets a little fuzzy. I doubt repurcusions would get all the way to game publishers though (except from companies not wanting to handle the liability of Mature games), after all Hollywood doesn't get dinged when someone underage makes it into a theater. Or when someone underage buys alcohol. But the tides do seem to be against game publishers these days, and some places are still trying to sue firearms manufacturers for stuff that third-parties do with their guns. Time'll tell, but I hope it falls flat.
We are talking about the state that had Too Live Crew arrested though.
In the 80's, it was the PMRC under Tipper Gore that was leading children away from the path of suicide and darkness brought on by music. Easy target, musicians don't tend to contribute as much to political campaigns as Hollywood types. Life was good. Then the "extreme" music of the day became more normal, and all we've got is some warning labels. Aside from Lieberman during the 2000 elections, I don't know of any politicians really speaking out on it these days.
New target possibilities? Lessee... Video games. They're easy. P2P technologies... That has the bonus of getting your Hollywood and corporate buddies to apprieciate you more AND gives you something that doesn't require a lot of money or work on your part. Ain't politics grand?
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no evidence that games are constructive forms of either recreation or learning
I hope there's evidence that TV is constructive for recreation or learning. Obviously they have to lump all of TV programming together, as they have video games. I learned typing through some of the typing games from yesteryear. And playing online games hasn't hurt my typing. Except that I feel obligated to type "teh" a lot.
I will say, to the authors credit, at least they picked a bi-partisan bunch of ill-informed politicians. Kind of refreshing to see in todays world.
I knew my wife did something my collection. Who would've thought game magazines would do so well in space?
Companies are selling out to the highest bidder, and tailoring their content to be as favorable as possible to the people that back them financially!
Honestly, I didn't realize this was anything new. I always assumed that video game rags were pretty much like every other magazine out there. You throw some money around, get the coverage you want and ride the wave to profit. Just like pretty much every other publication out there. I'm sure we've all heard stories about reviewers coming clean about getting a lot of swag from game publishers that helps up their review a bit. Why would the magazine really be any different?
The days of being able to realistically expect unbiased reporting from anywhere are pretty much long gone.
Sure... Except that Cryptic Studios and NCSoft both at least have offices stateside. The race card rarely flies in todays world.
I'll agree that Marvel thought they had a case, and that (despite what they say) it's all about the money. But I don't think it was racism. There's no need to get more basic than greed to find a cause for the case here.
The political focus remains on the marketing and sale of adult content to minors and the integrity of the ratings system:
Which is all fine until you get into specifics. What constitutes graphic violent content? The titles that are already rated Mature? Why center on video games, and not movies or TV? Because Hollywood helps pay your bills, and the games industry doesn't?
Most retailers refuse to sell AO rated games already (I don't know of a major chain that sells them, and none of the smaller stores in town do either). The rest have some policies in place that restrict the sale of rated "M" games to adults. Very similar to what movie theaters do to restrict admission into "R" rated movies. Codifing some sort of restriction on what video games can be sold to who only serves to help add another layer of buerocracy into our government.
If she wants to empower parents to control what their kids are playing, perhaps she should spend her time encouraging parents to take the time to parent their children?
What constitutes art for one person may be a stack of scrap iron to another. I don't think we should care much about whether Ebert thinks video games are art. What difference would it make anyway? Last I heard the video game industry isn't so strapped for cash they're looking for NEA money.
Remember, one-man armies are bad! Armies of one are good!
Except that Jack Thompson isn't a senator. He's a crackpot lawyer looking for a way to make his name in the world, or a quick buck, or whatever it is he's after. When Jack Thompson says something, we can all safely ignore him as a crackpot. When real law makers start talking, we have to pay some attention. It was enough to slap warning labels on our music in the late 80's, early 90's to protect the childrenz...but we've already got the warning labels on video games. If something can actually happen as a result of this, besides squandering untold amounts of tax dollars, we have a vested interest in keeping an eye on it.
I don't mind some sequels, when there's some genuinely new developments in game mechanics or a good story line to go with it. I don't mind add-ons, as long as they hit the same criteria. A lot of sequels do seem to just bank on the success of the prior game, and might have slightly different enemies/graphics. Those don't do it for me, and movie tie-ins don't do it for the same reason. I'm not going to play a mediocore game because someone slaps "Star Wars" in the title any more than I'm likely to pick up GTA:That One City Just South of the US-84 Interchange because I happened to enjoy the original. Especially if GTA:TOCJSOTU84I is just like GTA:TOCJNOTU84I with slightly different cars.
Bloggers tend to link to the work of real reporters, then offer comments, or worse, just repeat rumors as fact. At best, they are information scavengers, feeding on the facts hunted down by others.
Is that different than when real journalists just re-hash everything from a press conference? Or when journalists pick and choose which expert testimony they want to go forward with if they have dissenting testimony?
Don't put journalists on a pedestal. The days where journalists did hard digging to get out the truth seems to be long gone, at least in this country. A blogger has just as much right to put their spin on the facts as the journalists that writes it in a paper.
I haven't worried about Final Fantasy in a while. I played FFX, and got tired and bore of the whole thing. A long gaming experience shouldn't be that way because one has to walk mindlessly through the one path available for number of hours. FFXI was better in terms of a game experience, but then it has to be because it's a MMORPG. If FFXII is going to be the worst of both worlds, I don't need it. Without more information, I just don't care.
It's probably great if that's the kind of game you like to play, but I like the illusion of having some choices on how to proceed in a game.
On some level, I'm not necessarily opposed to allowing people to spend real money on gear and xp/levels. If you can crank out a MMORPG and make if free because you expect enough revenue from people buy gear, that's ok. As long as you don't essentially mandate the spending of real money to have any chance of accomplishing anything in the game. There will likely always be people willing to spend money to get ahead in a game, and if it's done in more controlled circumstances it might keep things from spiralling out of control economically speaking (or at least make it a more controlled spiral). On the other hand, if I had to pick a company to be able to do it right, SOE wouldn't be tops on my list.
The one thing I always ask myself, though, is that if a game is so boring or tedious that you'd spend real money to get ahead (as opposed to playing the game) why do you even both logging in?
Don't compare it to alcohol, compare it to buying music with those explicit lyrics tags...or allowing underage kids to buy R-rated movies.
Frankly, it doesn't sound all that different. Except that I'm not positive if there are fines involved with allowing minors to walk off with Sin City or the latest DMX album. I know they were talking about fining movie theaters that allowed minors into R-rated movies, but I don't know whether that went anywhere.
The "video games are evil" craze isn't really that different from the good ol' days of the PMRC and "explicit music is evil." Gotta love people desperate to protect the childrens!
What it is designed to be is a feature packed phone that doesn't mind compromising on the ergonomics to pack in every last bit of functionality you could ever want on a camera phone."
The only functionality I want in my cell phone is that it make and receive calls fairly reliably. I don't want a camera, PDA, games, personal theme music...none of that. I'd rather have individual devices that do all these things well, rather than one device that doesn't really do justice to any of the features.
The movie industry has no problem throwing most of their good offerings in the same time frame. Movies don't appeal to everybody, so you throw a lot out there and see what hits. The same story is probably true with games. I don't care if the latest sports game ships or not, but I keep my eyes open for new FPS's and RPG's. I'm sure it's the case for a lot of people. Sequels and expansions probably have it relatively easy, people that like them are going to be watching for the new stuff anyway. New games have to have something special to offer to get me to buy them. Throwing a Star Wars skin on Battlefront isn't going to get me to buy it, regardless of how much marketing goes into it. If, as a developer, you deliver good story lines I'll probably buy it regardless of season.
I would think a motorcycle apparel company would be more than happy to point out how fuel efficient most motorcycles are while talking about "going green." I realize there are some monster bikes out there that aren't all about efficiency, but ~50MPG seems to be the average for the bikers I know. I'll admit it's not viable for hauling groceries and things like that, but for a work commute vehicle... Where I live most people that drive cars don't look for motorcycles so commutes tend to be interesting while on a bike. But that would be much improved if more people used them/got used to being aware of them.
What you need to know is the fact that betas are infiltrated by those that want sneak peaks at the game. Definitely not by those that truly wish to test the product.
They're hardly being "infiltrated" by anybody. If you pre-order most games these days, you get guaranteed beta access which oddly coincides with when they're ramping up their stress tests. If you already subscribe to an online game the company is running, you tend to get beta access to their new stuff as well (whether or not you fork out cash). It's an easy way to generate word of mouth prior to release, and to make some people that over-value being part of a Beta test to get some snobbery points ("Yeah, I've been playing since Beta 2!").
You gotta figure that, given the people they're recruiting, the application process is a bit much. It's far easier to provide your email address and check a box saying you've beta tested before (and perhaps provide a timezone), and then get picked by a RNG. By the time public betas open, they don't care as much about different hardware configs. And I've seen people kicked from betas for making some exploits public in restricted forums. Never made sense to me, you plan on getting character wipes occasionally anyway so having someone publish the information shouldn't be too terrible. If you wanted to truly beta test the product, in my opinion you'd let people get developer-like access. Let some people xp/skill up the old fashioned way, let others generate their characters at the high-end of what's available in the game. Get every aspect of the play tested. That's also my problem with test servers a lot of companies make available for patch testing. It does no good to have a patch server where you'd have to level from scratch if all the changes impact the high-end game. But that's into other beefs of mine with MMORPGS...
The more extreme he goes, the more orginizations and politicians will distance themselves from him. Filing charges against sites like Penny Arcade should hasten his fall to obscurity. Or at least I can dream.
I wonder how information like this, assuming even half of it is true, plays into larger corporations attempts at legitimizing the behavior (like SOE recently did for EQ2)? I've always argued that if the game play is boring or tedious enough that someone would consider paying real money for some advancement, it's time to consider another game. As an avid MMORPG gamer at one point, I can say that I suffered through bad game play for the social aspect of it. Now that I'm sort of off that, I tend to get bored with more MMORPGs rather quickly. I don't need l337 items that badly, and I don't like playing an easy game forever to achieve some level or other bonus.
Can't you get a debit card as soon as you open a bank account nowadays? Are these systems sophisticated enough to care whether it's a debit card or credit card, or are they pretty straight-forward (i.e. with that information I was able to put a one cent charge and reverse it)?
We want to get started on a worldwide basis, we want to do the right thing for gamers, for our publishers and for consumers."
The right thing for gamers and consumers isn't to release something with a shortage of available machines. Part of me wonders if it's an artificial shortage... Hype it up, make people want it, then make sure everybody knows there aren't enough of them to go around world-wide. Hope that the people on the fence will rush out to get it, just in case there aren't many of them available. But then, I'm cynical.
The right thing for everybody would be to accurately scope the demand for your product, and make sure you can meet that demand. If you have enough systems to guarantee Pepsi can give out 120+ a day, chances are you can tap some sort of reserve for the parts. Get them to everybody, stop talking about the massive shortage you expect.
Skeptics say the practice distracts CEOs from more-pressing work -- and extends already long workdays
But it's ok for the employees that get stuff out the door to be required to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to participate in a conference call with some people across the globe? Or for employees to spend all day answering emails and then start actually working round about 5? Don't expect me to cry a river for CEO's any time soon.
Can we pre-order it along with our Phantom game console? That would be awesome!
It sounds like it has the potential to be ambiguous enough to include games that get rated "Teen." After all "violent" games can teens and it gets a little fuzzy. I doubt repurcusions would get all the way to game publishers though (except from companies not wanting to handle the liability of Mature games), after all Hollywood doesn't get dinged when someone underage makes it into a theater. Or when someone underage buys alcohol. But the tides do seem to be against game publishers these days, and some places are still trying to sue firearms manufacturers for stuff that third-parties do with their guns. Time'll tell, but I hope it falls flat.
We are talking about the state that had Too Live Crew arrested though.
In the 80's, it was the PMRC under Tipper Gore that was leading children away from the path of suicide and darkness brought on by music. Easy target, musicians don't tend to contribute as much to political campaigns as Hollywood types. Life was good. Then the "extreme" music of the day became more normal, and all we've got is some warning labels. Aside from Lieberman during the 2000 elections, I don't know of any politicians really speaking out on it these days.
New target possibilities? Lessee... Video games. They're easy. P2P technologies... That has the bonus of getting your Hollywood and corporate buddies to apprieciate you more AND gives you something that doesn't require a lot of money or work on your part. Ain't politics grand?