there is no logical reason why I should pay to hear a recording again and again to a purchased CD, which are exorbitantly priced to begin with. That's why it is proposed as an alternative. Instead of buying a CD with 15 songs now people are buying the one or two songs they want. If you extend that why should somebody pay the same amount for a song they listen to once, as they do for one they listen to 100 times? Companies can switch to single use licensing, rather than an infinite license model. You could have wi-fi enabled player where you log into a service (like a cell phone call) which you buy individual plays that stream from a database. The music companies would get to charge people each time they listen, and people would only have to pay for each listening.
But i guess that discovery of "I wrote kernell module ABC in C.V.s is worth gold when applying for job" is bit outdated. Well if an empoyer asks "Can you do X," not only can you explain how to do it, you have an actual implementation of that skill to point to source code and all. It's not necessarily just what comes up in a job application, its the new skills developed overall. Plus it does not explain why people share THAT much - it not about tangible resources (average filesharer uses most of his bw for dowloading/uploading even if it means discomfort while surfing net, considerable place on hd is blocked by shared files. and there are always risks of it being sued for it.) I would say average filesharer cares more about his downloads than uploads. They accept slower internet surfing because they are getting their new anime rip. Typically they are also too lazy to move things from the sharing folder, so end up uploading. Everyone has his own nano-factory that could easily produce anythig he has blueprints for. I wonder if such world will still hold to p2p sharing of plans, opensource i.e. caffe machines, etc... There probably will be small communities developing and sharing things like that. Just as there are talented programmers, there are talented mechanical designers, and we probably will see a surge in innovation given with those kinds of tools in place. People already share ideas like Altoids MP3 player and other things online, though such communities haven't thrived because making the items is difficult.
The problem is unlike information the distribution method is non trivial. For sharing to occur you need to have excess resources and a means to distribute with negligable cost. Yes there is extra space, but the cost to get homeless people there, maintain the building, ensure those people do not do things that would disrupt during business hours, is quite high. The same reason there is excess food, yet people starve. The cost to get the food to the starving people becomes prohibitive in some areas.
It seems to me that it just described that way it is without some worthwhile analyis what motivates people to share or why should be people reading economiast concerned
If you read the article it describes that people are acting their own self interest. Donation of time and intellectual resources are not purely charitable, people do them for personal gain (fame and recognition by peers, experience that increases their value in paying jobs, and enjoyment) "The reason often seems to be that writing open-source software increases the authors' prestige among their peers or gains them experience that might help them in the job market, not to mention that they also find it fun." It also describes that people are willing to share tangible resources if they have an over abundanace (bandwidth, clock cycles) and a means to distribute with negligable costs (internet). This sharing hasn't translated over to other goods and services outside of IT because either the goods are not abundant enough (cars), or the cost of distribution is too high (food)
yeah, right. people whose lives have been rendered absolutely irrelevant by their de-humanizing culture. no thanks. People will find ways to entertain themselves, whether its stories, kicking a ball around, people want to be doing something. People used to stare at stars and make out patterns in them and tell stories about the scorpion or fish they saw. whether you have 'chosen' or not, its still a complete and utter waste of time. decadence, consumerican style. You propose people must not have free time to enjoy life, they must always working or sleeping? Sports, music, video games, art, reading (for entertainment), posting on slashdot, are all wastes of time.
I know that most people would laugh at your suggestion that someone should be paid every time they listen to their CDs. CD is just a compromise, since they can't charge you everytime you listen to a song, they charge you alot to have unlimited listenings. I was proposing an alternate payment method, rather than paying $15 for a CD you can pay a small amount everytime you listen to a song. Ultimately that would be a closer model to charge based on how we use things. If you listen to a song only a few times, the companies get only a small amount of money, if you listen to it alot, they get alot. Years ago people would have laughed at a per-song model for selling, so a 1 cent per play service isn't out of the realm of reason, as we become more connected. There should be a fair compromise, and eventually you work should enter the public domain, but ultimately the Government and society owns your work once you submit it. I agree that is why I am against extensions of copyright, and in fact think that as the speed of change has increased, the time given for copyright and patent protections should be reduced to 5-10 years. Also, such protections should require yearly registration/taxation, so people don't sit on ideas without developing them for society.
you get nothing out of video games. You get entertainment which is soemthing that is very important to people. You get to move mentally from one place to another, get to explore situations that you otherwise could never experience, you get to think and solve problems, and most importantly people don't like boredom (at least most dont). "games as entertainment" is only selling you the chance to wander mentally in a realm of little more than smoke and mirrors, nothing less.. Yeah and going to a Britanny Spears concert is listening to horrific sounds while being mezmorized by blinking lights and smoke. Everybody has a different idea of what is entertaining. as for whether its entertainment, i dunno. i consider the mass-popularization of idealized death, mayhem, and destruction, to be relatively fascist, no matter what 'pretty stories' and 'well-described pixelry' its dressed up in.. but i guess it is entertainment, in the same way the colloseums of rome were entertaining too, yeah.. There is something about those themes that historically draw people, ultimately we as a society have chosen to "enjoy" those primal interests through virtual methods, movies, games, even books.
You keep equivocating property to IP and anything that has the word property in it. Perhaps you should read the discussion I had with mOdQuArK. We had a long discussion about the issue. Ultimately we agreed that our disagreement came down to the philisopical view of the best way to treat ideas to serve society. One of the keys is that we as society define what property is. Ideas can be defined as property, they can also not be defined as property, it depends on the stance of society. If tomorrow the laws changed to eliminate copyrights, ideas cease to be property. There are in fact people who claim you cannot own undeveloped land. The claim to undeveloped land is that you put 4 stakes in the ground, you did not create it nor do anything special with it. You have the ability to sit on it forever, and prevent anybody from using it to advance the cause of society. However we have as a society determined that you can own land, whether or not you developed it. Society defines property, if you don't like the current legal definition, change the law Different forms of property are treated differently.
Yes, intellectual property is treated different, that is why unlike your car you can only own a patent for 20 years, or own a tradmark under certain provisions. So then, are you steeling when you breathe air? You're consuming without contributing. Someone is not getting paid for the service of free air. It's a crime wave! No. Because nobody contributed air to the resource pool for society, nobody needs to be compensated. Ideas are a unique contribution to the resources of society, they are something that didn't exist before, but upon their creation they are added to the resource pool of society which advances us. Through trade people are compensated by receiving resources from the pool in accordance with what they have added.
There are bad buys in the real world too. That's why you check with your guild and on web boards to see if someone else made a bad buy before you go and buy the same stuff, just like people who hang out on real-life epinions.com. Making bad purchases isn't part of the goal of life, like skill advancement is in a game. Perhaps a better analogy (since this applies to skills) is you would not want to get a drivers license and find out cars are worse than walking, or a gun license to find out you can throw rocks that do more damage. Recorded music is a macro. A movie is a macro. But you can tell the difference between a live performance and a movie or recorded music. Also, the creation of a movie or music is engaging; perhaps future RPGs with entertainers could allow people to design their own moves and give them advancement based on how many CDs they sell, and earn extra xp for their live performances
Video Game companies *WANT* you to be trapped in their world, forever playing.. its their profit, and *YOUR LOSS*. I didn't realize WoW was like Tron. Do we have to take down Master Control to stop playing once we start? I pay the game companies money, and in return I am entertained; same as going to a movie, football game, or out drinking. Yes, damn right, they *WANT YOU TO WASTE YOUR LIFE AWAY WITH THEIR PRODUCT*. And restaurants want you to eat your life away, and cell phone companies want you to chat your life away, and hotels/airlines want you to travel your life away with their services/products.
The point of a game (for most people) is to escape the realities of life. To exist in a world where you make a difference, or at least feel like you are accomplishing something grand. What's the risk/reward ratio for adventuring in real life? That's why people play games, so they can take risks they otherwise never would, and gain the feeling of greatness they could never experience. Not too many people single handedly have saved the world in real life, but being "the one", the hero who saves the galaxy/kingdom/world is the premise of most games; that's what people want out of a game. In real life as well, you use what works. Not every situation calls for bleeding edge technology. People want to work towards something bigger and better. You don't wanna save up 100k to buy a Porsche and find out it runs like a Gremlin. You try being a professional entertainer in real life. It's not as glamorous as Viacom makes it out to be on MTV Besides Milli Vanilli and Ashlee Simpson, not many entertainers can go/AFK and macro their way to stardom. In each of these cases, the plausibility of the scenario increases the immersion factor. If you want a game heavy on adventuring, go play a smaller-scale multiplayer RPG such as NWN. This is why I would call SWG more of an online social experiment than a game. I think it's interesting what sorts of decisions they made to make it feel like living in a world; but ultimately they failed to be "fun." How much fun would NFL2k be if you had to spend 30 hours before each game doing repititious drills. Most people don't want reality, they want an entertaining "reality-lite" all the fun stuff with everything else taken out.
No it wasn't fun from the beginning. Aside from the game's bugginess, there were several core design problems. I would call SWG more of an experiment than a game. - HAM system - an experimental alternative to the typical HP/Mana systems of most RPGs. Both the penalties of specials (using specials injured you) and the arbitrary nature of damage (rifle damage injured "Mind" not health) just made it overly complicated and unintuitive. - Player run economy - interesting system, which I think worked well in some respects (gave the "feel" of a real economy). Unfortunately the breakdown occurred because risk/reward system was not in place for adventuring types. If the best stuff was made by players what was the use of taking risks adventuring. - Housing/building system was nice, though not completely new, it was I think one of the best implementations, though the downside was extreme lag in certain locations - Skill Structure - bland, and not particularly valuable. Getting higher skills in some respects would give you access to technology that you wouldn't use because there were better lower level alternatives - Mentorship - interesting, but not particularly valuable, and later became more of an annoyance. - Entertainers - once again interesting, but not engaging in terms of gameplay. I think I could have lived with the bugs, in the end I did not like the game due to intentional failures of design decisions. Overall it is something that could be learned from for future game designs. (ie. Discovering that many people wanted to be entertainers, so now how can you make an entertainer class engaging)
Re:Sequels are *ALWAYS* less creative. No exceptio
on
Creativity in Game Sequels
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· Score: 5, Insightful
GTA3, Dune 2, Mechwarrior 2, Star Control 2 come to mind as more innovative than their predecessors.
I agree there are bugs that aren't properly risk assessed, but these are game designs. It's not that the program was acting in a way that was undesired, these are intentional designs that were bad. One of the designers really needed to step up and say the HAM system sucked. You shoot somebody with a rifle and it causes "Mind damage" (so in starwars apparently rifles give you a bad headache, they don't actually injure your health). What's worse you take the same sort of damage when you use a special attack. Talk about a clunky unintuitive system.
Technology has progressed quickly over the past 15 years. It might make more sense to spend that money on a new satellite, with better computers, instruments, cameras, detectors, and it might even turn out to be cheaper.
Shouldn't these issues have been caught during the design aspect of the game. Some of these things are so stupid, it shouldn't have taken a year and a half after launch to fix. - Separate special action costs from damage - no more dying from using your special actions! - Tough NPCs and creatures will require groups to take them down. - Counter-move and Recovery effects - You now have ways to recover from attacks - no more one sided combat!
I too enjoyed the thought provoking discussion. I think we both agree the system isn't working as it is. The difference we have is more philisophical, whether we need to change the system, or if the system is fundamentally flawed.
I agree, the use of gnomes as a symbol for the downtrodden just shows how much anti-gnome racism there is. Gnomes are consistantly ridiculed, mocked, taunted, and punted. To use them to put forward the agenda of nerfed warriors, without addressing the real community issues that lead to gnome bashing is the greatest travesty. Gnomes cannot even be clerics, even the Gods of Blizzard hate gnomes and ignore their prayers! -Squishi the Gnome Warrior
Slashdot is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play Shall we play a game?
Love to. How about Slashdot Fanboy Flame War Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess? Later. Right now let's play Slashdot Fanboy Flame War Fine.
Apple First Strike - WINNER NONE
Microsoft First Strike - WINNER NONE
Apple vs. IBM Hardware Scenario - WINNER NONE
OSX vs Windows Software Scenario - WINNER NONE APPLE-AMD Alliance Scenario - WINNER NONE European Amiga Uprising - WINNER NONE Transmeta offensive - WINNER NONE MS-AMD Pact - WINNER NONE Opensource theater wide uprising - WINNER NONE Grammar Nazi hostility escalation - WINNER NONE IBM-SCO counterstrike - WINNER NONE Sun product announcement surprise - WINNER NONE Amazon One-Click Conflict - WINNER NONE DRM limited war - WINNER NONE Internet Explorer quick strike - WINNER NONE P2P crackdown - WINNER NONE Worm assault on Firefox - WINNER NONE Swedish viral attack on Windows - WINNER NONE China-India Outsource Pact - WINNER NONE Torvalds-Gates peace accords - WINNER NONE ATI Graphics card Domination - WINNER NONE BSD survival - WINNER NONE All out format war - WINNER NONE Programming Language Preference Battle - WINNER NONE Browser standards confrontation - WINNER NONE OpenOffice GPL dissention - WINNER NONE Missing Poll Option Discord - WINNER NONE Off-topic political rivalry - WINNER NONE
No, he was just fired, his staff canned, the entire news organization replaced with more Bush-friendly types Wow I can't believe they fired him yet he's still on the air. Did somebody forget to tell him? They fired the people's whose job was oversight, the producers, a producers chief aid, and a VP. NO ONE will take on on Bush's people, else they get the Wilson/Rather treatment The press isn't afraid to take on the president. I'm sure most of them would love to, as it would cement them in history. But they do need to be armed with something more concrete than questionable documents. It's not like these are "he said-she said" type questions, its fundamental problems with the evidence; unused typefaces, rarely used character proportions, wrong report format (if you think that scene in office space is bad, the military is worse about that kind of stuff). Who needs government censorship when corporate censorship works so much better? Yes, because I'm sure CBS would love to be considered tabloid news. You know the stuff people don't take seriously because most of it is false, or at best questionable in credibility. Credibility is everything in news. After the embarassment of 2000, just look at how cautious the networks were in something as trivial as calling the winner of the election in 2004.
you're right, though I'm sure if you asked people how long it takes the moon to go around the earth, you'd get everything from a day to a year, heck you'd probably get somebody saying it goes around the sun.
Now, your first reaction is going to be that this is an invalid comparison - after all, the freedoms of religion and speech are rights, not illegal drug use Actually the comparison is invalid because the 1st amendment states:Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof Your comparison would only work if pot smoking was legal but goverment could not promote its use. So, by allowing a _legal_ activity to continue on school grounds or at school activities, the school would be seen as condoning something many, if not most, adults would not want condoned.
would you be happy if Jewish students were also allowed to openly pray in class?
What about Muslims? Do you believe that schools should prevent a muslim girl from wearing a headscarf? Or a jewish child wearing a yamaka? Or a christian wearing a cross? By your interpretation inaction by the school allowing them to express their religion openly is an affirmation of those religions. A school should not be able to set aside a "prayer time" or lead a school prayer, nor should it prevent an indivdual from wearing a religious symbol or praying on their own. You can't please everybody, any action promoting a religion is unfair, as is any action restricting a religion is unfair. That is why the 1st amendment was written such that goverment can only take the stance of inaction.
It's when it becomes organized and school sponsered that it becomes a problem. The problem comes in the definition of sponsored. There are easy cases where the school schedules a prayer. Then there are difficult cases where the school gives somebody a forum for speech (ie Valedictorian speeches) or kids use school grounds to gather and pray. In neither case does the school directly influence what will be said, however, the school could be seen as sponsoring the speech through inaction. It should never be about keeping religion in or out of school, once you make that decision you've chosen a side. The problem is when people view inaction as an action in the affirmative. (ie not stopping somebody from praying over their food means the school is sponsoring the child praying) My personal belief is to err on the side of freedom and interpret the first amendment is the state should always take the stance of inaction.
One thing to take note, is that we are a nation in crisis and confusion We have been for over 200 years, people are mostly uneducated, uniformed, and uninterested, this is nothing new.
Slashdot Mirror
I already have a laptop like that, it's called an abacus.
there is no logical reason why I should pay to hear a recording again and again to a purchased CD, which are exorbitantly priced to begin with.
That's why it is proposed as an alternative. Instead of buying a CD with 15 songs now people are buying the one or two songs they want. If you extend that why should somebody pay the same amount for a song they listen to once, as they do for one they listen to 100 times?
Companies can switch to single use licensing, rather than an infinite license model. You could have wi-fi enabled player where you log into a service (like a cell phone call) which you buy individual plays that stream from a database. The music companies would get to charge people each time they listen, and people would only have to pay for each listening.
But i guess that discovery of "I wrote kernell module ABC in C.V.s is worth gold when applying for job" is bit outdated. ...
Well if an empoyer asks "Can you do X," not only can you explain how to do it, you have an actual implementation of that skill to point to source code and all. It's not necessarily just what comes up in a job application, its the new skills developed overall.
Plus it does not explain why people share THAT much - it not about tangible resources (average filesharer uses most of his bw for dowloading/uploading even if it means discomfort while surfing net, considerable place on hd is blocked by shared files. and there are always risks of it being sued for it.)
I would say average filesharer cares more about his downloads than uploads. They accept slower internet surfing because they are getting their new anime rip. Typically they are also too lazy to move things from the sharing folder, so end up uploading.
Everyone has his own nano-factory that could easily produce anythig he has blueprints for. I wonder if such world will still hold to p2p sharing of plans, opensource i.e. caffe machines, etc
There probably will be small communities developing and sharing things like that. Just as there are talented programmers, there are talented mechanical designers, and we probably will see a surge in innovation given with those kinds of tools in place. People already share ideas like Altoids MP3 player and other things online, though such communities haven't thrived because making the items is difficult.
The problem is unlike information the distribution method is non trivial. For sharing to occur you need to have excess resources and a means to distribute with negligable cost.
Yes there is extra space, but the cost to get homeless people there, maintain the building, ensure those people do not do things that would disrupt during business hours, is quite high. The same reason there is excess food, yet people starve. The cost to get the food to the starving people becomes prohibitive in some areas.
It seems to me that it just described that way it is without some worthwhile analyis what motivates people to share or why should be people reading economiast concerned
If you read the article it describes that people are acting their own self interest. Donation of time and intellectual resources are not purely charitable, people do them for personal gain (fame and recognition by peers, experience that increases their value in paying jobs, and enjoyment)
"The reason often seems to be that writing open-source software increases the authors' prestige among their peers or gains them experience that might help them in the job market, not to mention that they also find it fun."
It also describes that people are willing to share tangible resources if they have an over abundanace (bandwidth, clock cycles) and a means to distribute with negligable costs (internet).
This sharing hasn't translated over to other goods and services outside of IT because either the goods are not abundant enough (cars), or the cost of distribution is too high (food)
yeah, right. people whose lives have been rendered absolutely irrelevant by their de-humanizing culture. no thanks.
People will find ways to entertain themselves, whether its stories, kicking a ball around, people want to be doing something. People used to stare at stars and make out patterns in them and tell stories about the scorpion or fish they saw.
whether you have 'chosen' or not, its still a complete and utter waste of time. decadence, consumerican style.
You propose people must not have free time to enjoy life, they must always working or sleeping? Sports, music, video games, art, reading (for entertainment), posting on slashdot, are all wastes of time.
I know that most people would laugh at your suggestion that someone should be paid every time they listen to their CDs.
CD is just a compromise, since they can't charge you everytime you listen to a song, they charge you alot to have unlimited listenings. I was proposing an alternate payment method, rather than paying $15 for a CD you can pay a small amount everytime you listen to a song. Ultimately that would be a closer model to charge based on how we use things. If you listen to a song only a few times, the companies get only a small amount of money, if you listen to it alot, they get alot.
Years ago people would have laughed at a per-song model for selling, so a 1 cent per play service isn't out of the realm of reason, as we become more connected.
There should be a fair compromise, and eventually you work should enter the public domain, but ultimately the Government and society owns your work once you submit it.
I agree that is why I am against extensions of copyright, and in fact think that as the speed of change has increased, the time given for copyright and patent protections should be reduced to 5-10 years. Also, such protections should require yearly registration/taxation, so people don't sit on ideas without developing them for society.
you get nothing out of video games. .. but i guess it is entertainment, in the same way the colloseums of rome were entertaining too, yeah ..
You get entertainment which is soemthing that is very important to people. You get to move mentally from one place to another, get to explore situations that you otherwise could never experience, you get to think and solve problems, and most importantly people don't like boredom (at least most dont).
"games as entertainment" is only selling you the chance to wander mentally in a realm of little more than smoke and mirrors, nothing less..
Yeah and going to a Britanny Spears concert is listening to horrific sounds while being mezmorized by blinking lights and smoke. Everybody has a different idea of what is entertaining.
as for whether its entertainment, i dunno. i consider the mass-popularization of idealized death, mayhem, and destruction, to be relatively fascist, no matter what 'pretty stories' and 'well-described pixelry' its dressed up in
There is something about those themes that historically draw people, ultimately we as a society have chosen to "enjoy" those primal interests through virtual methods, movies, games, even books.
You keep equivocating property to IP and anything that has the word property in it.
Perhaps you should read the discussion I had with mOdQuArK. We had a long discussion about the issue. Ultimately we agreed that our disagreement came down to the philisopical view of the best way to treat ideas to serve society.
One of the keys is that we as society define what property is. Ideas can be defined as property, they can also not be defined as property, it depends on the stance of society. If tomorrow the laws changed to eliminate copyrights, ideas cease to be property.
There are in fact people who claim you cannot own undeveloped land. The claim to undeveloped land is that you put 4 stakes in the ground, you did not create it nor do anything special with it. You have the ability to sit on it forever, and prevent anybody from using it to advance the cause of society. However we have as a society determined that you can own land, whether or not you developed it.
Society defines property, if you don't like the current legal definition, change the law
Different forms of property are treated differently.
Yes, intellectual property is treated different, that is why unlike your car you can only own a patent for 20 years, or own a tradmark under certain provisions.
So then, are you steeling when you breathe air? You're consuming without contributing. Someone is not getting paid for the service of free air. It's a crime wave!
No. Because nobody contributed air to the resource pool for society, nobody needs to be compensated. Ideas are a unique contribution to the resources of society, they are something that didn't exist before, but upon their creation they are added to the resource pool of society which advances us. Through trade people are compensated by receiving resources from the pool in accordance with what they have added.
There are bad buys in the real world too. That's why you check with your guild and on web boards to see if someone else made a bad buy before you go and buy the same stuff, just like people who hang out on real-life epinions.com.
Making bad purchases isn't part of the goal of life, like skill advancement is in a game. Perhaps a better analogy (since this applies to skills) is you would not want to get a drivers license and find out cars are worse than walking, or a gun license to find out you can throw rocks that do more damage.
Recorded music is a macro. A movie is a macro.
But you can tell the difference between a live performance and a movie or recorded music. Also, the creation of a movie or music is engaging; perhaps future RPGs with entertainers could allow people to design their own moves and give them advancement based on how many CDs they sell, and earn extra xp for their live performances
Video Game companies *WANT* you to be trapped in their world, forever playing.. its their profit, and *YOUR LOSS*.
I didn't realize WoW was like Tron. Do we have to take down Master Control to stop playing once we start?
I pay the game companies money, and in return I am entertained; same as going to a movie, football game, or out drinking.
Yes, damn right, they *WANT YOU TO WASTE YOUR LIFE AWAY WITH THEIR PRODUCT*.
And restaurants want you to eat your life away, and cell phone companies want you to chat your life away, and hotels/airlines want you to travel your life away with their services/products.
The point of a game (for most people) is to escape the realities of life. To exist in a world where you make a difference, or at least feel like you are accomplishing something grand. /AFK and macro their way to stardom.
What's the risk/reward ratio for adventuring in real life?
That's why people play games, so they can take risks they otherwise never would, and gain the feeling of greatness they could never experience. Not too many people single handedly have saved the world in real life, but being "the one", the hero who saves the galaxy/kingdom/world is the premise of most games; that's what people want out of a game.
In real life as well, you use what works. Not every situation calls for bleeding edge technology.
People want to work towards something bigger and better. You don't wanna save up 100k to buy a Porsche and find out it runs like a Gremlin.
You try being a professional entertainer in real life. It's not as glamorous as Viacom makes it out to be on MTV
Besides Milli Vanilli and Ashlee Simpson, not many entertainers can go
In each of these cases, the plausibility of the scenario increases the immersion factor. If you want a game heavy on adventuring, go play a smaller-scale multiplayer RPG such as NWN.
This is why I would call SWG more of an online social experiment than a game. I think it's interesting what sorts of decisions they made to make it feel like living in a world; but ultimately they failed to be "fun."
How much fun would NFL2k be if you had to spend 30 hours before each game doing repititious drills. Most people don't want reality, they want an entertaining "reality-lite" all the fun stuff with everything else taken out.
No it wasn't fun from the beginning. Aside from the game's bugginess, there were several core design problems. I would call SWG more of an experiment than a game.
- HAM system - an experimental alternative to the typical HP/Mana systems of most RPGs. Both the penalties of specials (using specials injured you) and the arbitrary nature of damage (rifle damage injured "Mind" not health) just made it overly complicated and unintuitive.
- Player run economy - interesting system, which I think worked well in some respects (gave the "feel" of a real economy). Unfortunately the breakdown occurred because risk/reward system was not in place for adventuring types. If the best stuff was made by players what was the use of taking risks adventuring.
- Housing/building system was nice, though not completely new, it was I think one of the best implementations, though the downside was extreme lag in certain locations
- Skill Structure - bland, and not particularly valuable. Getting higher skills in some respects would give you access to technology that you wouldn't use because there were better lower level alternatives
- Mentorship - interesting, but not particularly valuable, and later became more of an annoyance.
- Entertainers - once again interesting, but not engaging in terms of gameplay.
I think I could have lived with the bugs, in the end I did not like the game due to intentional failures of design decisions. Overall it is something that could be learned from for future game designs. (ie. Discovering that many people wanted to be entertainers, so now how can you make an entertainer class engaging)
GTA3, Dune 2, Mechwarrior 2, Star Control 2 come to mind as more innovative than their predecessors.
I agree there are bugs that aren't properly risk assessed, but these are game designs. It's not that the program was acting in a way that was undesired, these are intentional designs that were bad.
One of the designers really needed to step up and say the HAM system sucked. You shoot somebody with a rifle and it causes "Mind damage" (so in starwars apparently rifles give you a bad headache, they don't actually injure your health). What's worse you take the same sort of damage when you use a special attack.
Talk about a clunky unintuitive system.
Technology has progressed quickly over the past 15 years. It might make more sense to spend that money on a new satellite, with better computers, instruments, cameras, detectors, and it might even turn out to be cheaper.
Shouldn't these issues have been caught during the design aspect of the game. Some of these things are so stupid, it shouldn't have taken a year and a half after launch to fix.
- Separate special action costs from damage - no more dying from using your special actions!
- Tough NPCs and creatures will require groups to take them down.
- Counter-move and Recovery effects - You now have ways to recover from attacks - no more one sided combat!
I too enjoyed the thought provoking discussion.
I think we both agree the system isn't working as it is. The difference we have is more philisophical, whether we need to change the system, or if the system is fundamentally flawed.
I agree, the use of gnomes as a symbol for the downtrodden just shows how much anti-gnome racism there is.
Gnomes are consistantly ridiculed, mocked, taunted, and punted. To use them to put forward the agenda of nerfed warriors, without addressing the real community issues that lead to gnome bashing is the greatest travesty.
Gnomes cannot even be clerics, even the Gods of Blizzard hate gnomes and ignore their prayers!
-Squishi the Gnome Warrior
Slashdot is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play
Shall we play a game?
Love to. How about Slashdot Fanboy Flame War
Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?
Later. Right now let's play Slashdot Fanboy Flame War
Fine.
Apple First Strike - WINNER NONE
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No, he was just fired, his staff canned, the entire news organization replaced with more Bush-friendly types
Wow I can't believe they fired him yet he's still on the air. Did somebody forget to tell him?
They fired the people's whose job was oversight, the producers, a producers chief aid, and a VP.
NO ONE will take on on Bush's people, else they get the Wilson/Rather treatment
The press isn't afraid to take on the president. I'm sure most of them would love to, as it would cement them in history. But they do need to be armed with something more concrete than questionable documents. It's not like these are "he said-she said" type questions, its fundamental problems with the evidence; unused typefaces, rarely used character proportions, wrong report format (if you think that scene in office space is bad, the military is worse about that kind of stuff).
Who needs government censorship when corporate censorship works so much better?
Yes, because I'm sure CBS would love to be considered tabloid news. You know the stuff people don't take seriously because most of it is false, or at best questionable in credibility. Credibility is everything in news. After the embarassment of 2000, just look at how cautious the networks were in something as trivial as calling the winner of the election in 2004.
you're right, though I'm sure if you asked people how long it takes the moon to go around the earth, you'd get everything from a day to a year, heck you'd probably get somebody saying it goes around the sun.
Now, your first reaction is going to be that this is an invalid comparison - after all, the freedoms of religion and speech are rights, not illegal drug use
Actually the comparison is invalid because the 1st amendment states:Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
Your comparison would only work if pot smoking was legal but goverment could not promote its use.
So, by allowing a _legal_ activity to continue on school grounds or at school activities, the school would be seen as condoning something many, if not most, adults would not want condoned.
would you be happy if Jewish students were also allowed to openly pray in class? What about Muslims?
Do you believe that schools should prevent a muslim girl from wearing a headscarf? Or a jewish child wearing a yamaka? Or a christian wearing a cross? By your interpretation inaction by the school allowing them to express their religion openly is an affirmation of those religions.
A school should not be able to set aside a "prayer time" or lead a school prayer, nor should it prevent an indivdual from wearing a religious symbol or praying on their own.
You can't please everybody, any action promoting a religion is unfair, as is any action restricting a religion is unfair. That is why the 1st amendment was written such that goverment can only take the stance of inaction.
It's when it becomes organized and school sponsered that it becomes a problem.
The problem comes in the definition of sponsored. There are easy cases where the school schedules a prayer. Then there are difficult cases where the school gives somebody a forum for speech (ie Valedictorian speeches) or kids use school grounds to gather and pray. In neither case does the school directly influence what will be said, however, the school could be seen as sponsoring the speech through inaction.
It should never be about keeping religion in or out of school, once you make that decision you've chosen a side. The problem is when people view inaction as an action in the affirmative. (ie not stopping somebody from praying over their food means the school is sponsoring the child praying) My personal belief is to err on the side of freedom and interpret the first amendment is the state should always take the stance of inaction.
One thing to take note, is that we are a nation in crisis and confusion
We have been for over 200 years, people are mostly uneducated, uniformed, and uninterested, this is nothing new.