>> Plus added to the fact that this is an honest to >> goodness mod , and was not included by the >> developers in the original package and had >> nothing to do with it , which just serves to >> drive this to ludicrous proportions.
if you are talking about gta:sa - it was not an 'honest to goodness mod' - that's the whole reason for the changed rating by the esrb
if you are talking about the sim2 - then yes this is indeed a whole seperate mod that must be installed seperately.
for that matter, there was already 'nude sims' mods for the original 'best selling game in the world' sims 1 game that didn't seem to cause any problems because they are only appealing to the 0.01% of the gaming population that are THAT retarded as to actually install the freakin thing.
let alone the fact that there is a whole game of 'sim nudes' called playboy:the mansion which has gangs of half-naked women walking around which is supposedly the normal behavior for women (so it's portrayed in the game).
there are also 'nude mod's for pretty much every single major gaming title - why? because gamers are pathetic nerds that will go out of their way airbrushing textures just to see that extra pixel of skin tone...
not to mention the playboy 'screenshots' of bloodrayne etc that were published a while back.
this whole thing is just pathetic. you can have women that are 99% naked on massive building-tall billboards all around the city, on every magazine cover, selling everything from toothpaste to floorpolish to dishwashing detergent and it's just 'doing business' - but god forbid you have a highly-pixelated, absolutely unappealing mini-game hidden in your game and everyone's up in arms...
i mean seriously, with all of the shit that is going on in the US with the patriot act, haliburton pilfering billions of dollars from the american people - and THIS is what they want congress to investigate? You have to be fucking kidding me.
Another thing I've noticed (more recently) is that consoles are much more 'group' friendly - whether it's from multi-screen play (less so in this regard) or from simple gameplay functionality.
When you want to sit down and slug away for 50 hours on an RPG - PC's can't be beat.
But when you have a couple of buddies over and want to have a game that you can do 'pass the controller' with, console games (at least some of them) are easier to adopt into this type of gameplay.
This isn't entirely from the living room positioning of the games, but also from the simple style of games that are available on the console.
Whether it's doing Halo co-op, driving games, games like 'amped' (or similar) and so on, playing with multiple people is infinitely easier than everyone huddling around a PC...
Even games like GTA lend themselves towards this kind of gaming situation - you can have 'get the most stars' or simply ripping around until you die gaming marathons with numerous people - things that you would never do with your PC gaming buddies is so much easier to do with a console for some reason.
I'd have to say that this is the case with most things in life - you never know where things will take you.
i started my 'official' game industry career (as opposed to my 15 hobby years of programming games starting on the vic20 on up) by participating in an open-source game engine project many years ago as 'user # 3' using the engine...
2 years later suddenly i was hosting & designing the website & forum, 2 years after that i became project lead organizing the community & planning features, roadmaps etc...
which all led to me and my business partner incorporating and launching our game company a little over 2 years ago...and we now have 10 employees, 2 game engines, just finishing a mobile title for a very large publisher and a number of large contracts under our belts going forwards...
all of which came from me donating thousands of hours helping & donating to an open source community and project.
the trick is - if you want to do something like 'becoming a game designer', then go out there and design games - there are hundreds of free / open source engines available and thousands of people looking to make games...organize yourself and the rest will follow.
what's the quote?
'free your mind and your ass will follow'
You can't look at the immediate financial benefit to start - look to the long-term goal and you will reach it...one baby step at a time.
There are many case studies, books and articles that confirm what you have mentioned.
The #1 thing that will stop someone from 'climbing the ranks' past the basic grunt labour force (whether the grunt labour in question is 3d modeling, programming code, ditch digging or slinging coffee's at starbucks) is NOT the person's technical ability.
You can be the most gifted programmer or 3d modeler in the world, but you will be relegated to 'programmer hell' forever if you cannot communicate & articulate your ideas AND play nice with others
This includes being willing to work with the 'suits' that pay your salary, whether a boss or publisher.
It isn't about 'selling out' - anyone that says this has given up essentially...It's about being willing to compromise and potentially reword or rework the idea that you are trying to get across so that the person on the other side of the conversation understands it.
If your 'brilliant idea' involves concept A, but the publisher wants you to implement concept B, then you either need to be able to explain it to them so that they understand and can buy into the idea, or you need to be able to compromise and find a middle ground.
The best creativity and innovation does not come through getting what you want 100% of the time - this is how Jar Jar Binks was created - too many 'yes men' saying 'yeah thats a great idea george'
The best creativity and innovation comes through conflict and compromise. Just because a publisher or boss it telling you that your idea isn't the best for the game/movie/tvshow/whatever doesn't mean that it should be given up on - perhaps there is a way to tweak or adjust the concept or idea to take the criticism into account.
Until you try it, you never know.
This is why the best music & bands always have 2 or more creative people that potentially hate each others guts - it's the conflict and coming to terms with that conflict where brilliance, innovation and evolution emerges...
LOL, what you mean - doing ANYTHING useful with MFC involves massive amounts of creativity...
what is truly creative is having your bosses tell you that you MUST use MFC (having heard a buzz word somewhere about RAD development) and then coding the entire thing without using a line of mfc...
then they come around with VC blathering the latest buzzwords, your boss is happy and you can sleep at night knowing your code won't blow up in your face;P
>>i'd like to wonder if the nba live team in EA is >>the same as the nhl or nfl progrmaming folks.
the idea of 'teams' at EA is a questionable one - yes there are teams working on specific projects, but EA as a company is more like Ford's production line than a typical game company.
Teams are more divided up according to specialty than a specific title, which is why the end result is less than innovative or interesting.
If you are a 'modeler' at EA, you are likely doing one specific type of modeling - there are entire teams of people that JUST do the mapping of faces onto heads for the sports games.
There is a whole other team of people that is responsible for taking the motion captured data and mapping/cleaning it up for animations (for all games).
The EA programming side is divided up into 'tech / tools', which basically produces libraries of code that all EA games use (which is being phased into the Renderware product line to standardize things even more)...
and so on.
the dramatic thing with EA is that even with this kind of 'assembly line' mentality, the company still produces hideous variants of content, where you end up with 2 or 3 models of characters from the same game that are dramatically different than each other - which can end up because there literally was a different team of developers working on some of the characters than the others and so on...
Add to this the difficulty of integrating companies that EA swallows up - you have the main EA company trying to standardize technology & processes, and then dozens of smaller companies that were bought in the latest round of borg-style absorption, and the EA virus slowly infects the newly bought company sucking any life or innovation that was in the company out until it is a part of the borg and stops producing anything innovative...
As an example, pay attention to what happens (is hapening) at DICE since the EA buyout.
Pre-buyout / EA publishes BF:1942 - one of the most innovative multiplayer games in a LONG time
Pre-buyout / EA publishes second game (ie has more influence, DICE slowly gets addicted to the EA nipple) - produces BF:Vietnam - still a fun game, but hardly innovative anymore and pushed out the door before it's ready, full of bugs
EA buys DICE - ships BF:2, a steaming pile of buggy crap, although still startlingly fun to play ONCE you get in-game and IF you don't run into one of the many bugs or lag that hits most servers once they get beyond a certain level.
the next dice game is almost guaranteed to stink.
-------------
With this said, i've been in the game industry for a while and i have only ever met ONE 'real' game designer - and this person was more of a creative producer - ie the person that comes up with the cool idea & high-level spec, but then must also sell the game to the publishers / finance people as well.
I teach game design at Colleges and this is the first thing (and hardest thing) to get through wanna-be designers heads - they think that there is still this mystical 'game designer' role that every game company has - like we are just waiting to hire them because they have some idea and write up a spec for the idea...
Unfortunately smaller companies that actually produce games don't need or want people with IDEAS, we want people that can actually produce games from their ideas...ideas are like assholes, everybody's got them...once you have the idea, the 'real' work comes - and if you are ONLY a game designer, you aren't very valuable to my company...
hence why there are only a few well-known game designers in the industry - the rest are 3d modelers or programmers or producers that come up with the idea but then have tangible skills that can actually make the game (or a significant piece of it).
If you want a game designer position, you NEED a real skill - ie programming or 3d modeling or animation - and can prove to a company that you are a valuable asset and n
i guess the online gaming experience that i usually had was alot more a conscious decision.
with counter-strike, i never played on anything but our own servers pretty much from day one - me and a couple buddies started our own clan (which is still going long after i stopped playing & participating) - guaranteed low-pings, guaranteed friendly players, and guaranteed challenging gameplay due to the skill-level from everyone involved.
counter-strike didn't need much more than a 150 machine when it first started out - we had people in our clan running in software mode at 320x240 on pentium 300's that kicked our asses regularly...even on dialup against our cable...we never understood it until we started having meets & actually seeing the other guys play in person.
the clan has grown from 3 people to over 50 people that travel from all around the country for gatherings (which usually involve lots of paintball etc)...pretty interesting how you can 'grow' a community of your own, without having one force-fed to you by the game.
i'll agree, i haven't used xboxlive, played a couple games on xbox and they just seemed very unsatisfactory to me...but voice chat is voice chat as far as i'm concerned...
most of the time i don't WANT to listen to the morons on the other end of the game...
i personally prefered the counter-strike system of 'triggered' voice commands - it's amazing how well it works for communications between squad members when you get fast on the keys;}
FTA: >> Halo 2 especially takes online multiplayer to a >> new level of fun because of the integrated voice >> chat of Xbox Live.
Perhaps he actually means: by ripping off ideas that were possible 10 years previously in pc games (i mean i was using roger wilco to play delta force 2 with 50 player servers back before hardware accelerated video cards existed...)
half-life 1 had integrated voice chat 5 years (or more) before halo2 - AND had multiplayer (gameplay & weapons & community) that kicked ass over halo's (the continued popularity of cs proves this)...
I still don't get why people would pay money for xbox live, when you can get all of this and much more on a pc...
then there's the new 'HD' craze that the console manufacturers are trying to promote with the new round of consoles...
yippee-freakin do - my console can now do resolutions that computers do 10 years ago - without hardware acceleration...weee
current-gen consoles can only go as high (resolution-wise) as standard ntsc video resolution, which is the equivalent of what quake1 in software mode could do (320×482 approx)
now, suddenly consoles can do 'hd' resolutions, which are basically what we've had on PC's for the past 7-8 years:
is this really 'that' interesting? i mean 1920x1080 isn't something to scoff at, but by the time the consoles are out and people actually have tv's that can display this kind of resolution, computers will be running dual & triple display games at 2 to 3 times this resolutions, not to mention SLI video cards, dual core 64 bit processors and other PC-only enhancements that are coming down the pipeline...
(sure some of the consoles will have dual-core processors, but they are still nowhere near the processor speed of what we will be targetting as our lowest-end gaming machine in few years...)
consoles are pure marketing bs...mind you, as a developer they provide a single, stable hardware platform to develop games for, so IN THEORY, we can optimize game performance more for the consoles...
you think that 30 grand per suit is going to be considered a downside to an Army that already spends thousands of dollars for a Shovel or Canteen (in 2005-halliburton-adjusted dollars)?
Especially considering that the average US Footsoldier is expected to carry between 70-100 lbs of gear into combat, including laptop computers and countless other techno-devices...
If i was a grunt in the army, i'd want one of these just so i didn't HAVE to actually lug all that crap into battle - at least not exerting 100% of my energy in simply carry my kit...
I read that the new US combat rifle is supposed to cost around 7,000 per rifle - what's another 30 for an armoured suit for the soldiers...and since it already helps adjust for the weight being carried - adding kevlar armour and a super-robo cop infrared/nightvision helmet synced up via gps & awacs situational intelligence isn't too far off...
No one i know has a land line - after Fido started providing fixed rate local calling, pretty much everyone in Vancouver (BC, Canada) that I talk to ditched their local phones.
Telus (the local crap-ass telco monopoly) has the absolute worst service ever, and most people didn't need much motivation to get rid of their land lines.
Mind you, at least with celphones you can dial 911...
Ran into this not even 2 weeks ago - needed to dial 911 from my house, don't have a landline, only the VoIP vonage phone and ran into the '911 service is not available from this phone' message.
Had to call a friend and get THEM to call 911 for me...real useful.
Even my IT friends that are all gung-ho about VoIP service (to the point of setting up their own linux-based machines to provide their VoIP service) didn't know about.
Sony on Friday announced that it would investigate claims by a former US military official that parts from its Playstation 2 video game console are being tested in military equipment for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oh, and check out the 'goarmy.com' website - yet another example of blatant promotion of how the army is a 'great place for a young citizen to start their career'.
While hiding the real details of what it is like to be in a nightmare like Iraq (or any warzone).
Not to mention that the US Army has actually licensed the Sony Playstation controllers for their next-generation of armoured personnel carriers and tanks because they are 'easier to use' for newer soldiers - ie they have already been 'trained' by playing video games their entire lives, and can be more easily thrown into combat.
Learning those complicated tank controls is such a drag, why can't it all be like x-box live & halo after all?
You obviously weren't at E3 in 2004 - the US Army came in on a half dozen blackhawks and rappelled down outside the conference center as a part of their grand 'entrance' to the game expo.
Inside the conference, there was a MASSIVE booth with huge screens displaying the 'snipers eye view' of soldiers placed around buildings around the conference center...you got to see the solders, out of sight, aiming & zooming in on random civilians walking around the LA conference center, oblivious...
All as a part of their multi-million dollar 'Americas Army' marketing campaign - for a GAME that is specifically designed to brainwash kids into thinking that going into the Army is fun and something that is 'Cool' to do.
As a canadian down for the conference, these scenes were very disturbing, particularly as I noted the rest of the conference attendees reaction (or lack thereof) to this blatant display of military propaganda.
When the US Army is flying in and running around 'playing army' for a bunch of geeked out gamers, there is something VERY wrong with the way that the game industry is going.
I can't see how this could possibly be anything BUT glorifying war.
If there was a game out there telling the 'other side of the story' of the current situation in Iraq, you can guarantee that the US media would be up in arms horrified, but no, we can make all the games in the world about bombing foreign countries, dropping bombs on their citizens, and make them 'Rated E for Everyone'.
The SOLE reason for the US Army to make their current round of games is marketing & propaganda - even says so on their website & marketing material for the games. They are trying to brainwash people into enlisting, plain and simple.
And by providing sanitized, video game images of what 'being in the army is like', it both does the soldiers that are actually in these situations a grave injustice, but also continues the cycle of hatred and intolerance that has gotten the US into it's most hated nation status around the world.
considering that the BF:Vietnam server browser was completely broken in the shipping version, and the fact that every single DICE game since BF:1942 has had the worst menu & server browser systems EVER, i would hazard a guess that it's a DICE problem, not EA...
BF:Vietnams 'sort by ping' feature was flat-out BROKEN - how did this get past EA's mighty quality assurance - seriously HOW?
Quite possibly the MOST used server browser feature - aside from perhaps the 'update' button, which barely worked at the best of times...this kind of bs quality assurance has been pretty much the death of DICE's reputation as a quality developer...
considering how good BF:1942 was - in just about every way - this is truly sad...And of course BF:2's release complete's DICE's fall into the depths of the dark side...
alas i digress...
Steam and EA are a perfect match...the only better publisher could possibly be microsoft...and considering the Valve are a bunch of ex-microsofties, this would be a truly perfect match...
but perhaps even Valve couldn't swallow the fact that after leaving MS to start Valve, all they did was end up being Microsoft employees once again...
indeed - i recall shitting bricks the first time i watched it...of course now it's just hilarious, but it definitely was terrifying when seen as a 15 year old with WAY to active of an imagination
Re:What a sad week for gamers
on
EA's Busy Week
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· Score: 1
i'm disappointed it took this long for someone to point this out.
mohaa was probably the last truly great ea game i've played...
i also bought bf1942 - loved it...the mod's were even great, revolutionary gameplay...
bought bf:vietnam because i hoped it would be as good as 1942...it was a fun game, loved the chopper flying etc...but was hampered by some major bugs and incredible instability in the menu system & server browser...basically stopped playing - not because the game wasn't fun, but GETTING to the game was so freakin annoying (menu system / server browser).
and now dice has completed their fall into EA developer hell by releasing the steaming pile that is BF2...
tried the demo for about 5 minutes, except it took me 2 hours to get my machine configured, get the game installed and finally working to try the game out for those 5 minutes...
and developers wonder why the mystical 'mass market' is so unachieveable...it's not rocket science.
I have an idea - how about a post on how the horrific spelling on slashdot can harm a career?
Seriously, the spelling and grammar on this thread is either indicative of how riled up people are about this topic OR it is a sign of how slashdot use can seriously harm your brain...
All certifications are is a way for companies to bilk a lot of yearly money out of people looking for jobs...you go through all of the 10,000 dollars it takes for your win2k certs and then suddenly ms releases their winxp certs, which means you have to start from scratch, etc...
if you are working for a company worth working for, they will realize that certs are a never-ending 'upgrade path' that forces the company & potential employees to pay endless amounts of money for information that is non-hands on, not useful in the actual day to day working environment.
doesn't matter if it's an msce, redhat, solaris, oracle or (insert your favorite cert here) certification - if your employer wants you to have the skills in that particular application / platform / etc then they will be willing to pay for it as well.
if not and they insist that it's a requirement, then you probably want to get a different job with a company that actually respects on the job training and 'realworld' skills.
I am (as an employer looking to hire) less interested in certs than I am in quantifiable skills working with and/or shipping products for the platforms in particular.
The better programmer is the one that got it done ahead of schedule and according to spec.
This kind of argument (using 'advanced features of a programming language') is the downfall of most programmers and applications in the long run.
Using advanced features of a language means typically that you are relying on non-portable, compiler-specific features that will cause countless problems when (inevitably) you try to port and/or someone else is maintaining the code long after it was originally written.
For our development, the programmers that we hire are specifically instructed to NOT use so-called 'advanced features' of languages for this very reason.
Additionally things like proper function and variable naming (ie human-readable) and proper commenting are so much more important than 'advanced features' of any language.
We've been running AVG for the past 3 years and it is a perfect solution for people looking to actually have a virus protection system that works.
www.grisoft.com
It will find a LOT of viruses/trojans etc that the 'big' software won't and is completely free for personal use (including updates, no subscriptions etc).
AVG is one of the 3 main applications (along with zonealarm & firefox) that get put down on any machine that i'm called in 'to fix' - which happens on a weekly basis...average people think that because their computer came with norton or macafee that they should use it, but these programs do nothing but give a false sense of security, take up significant processor & memory resources and are basically useless in actually finding or preventing viruses etc from getting onto their machines.
Slashdot Mirror
>> Plus added to the fact that this is an honest to .
>> goodness mod , and was not included by the
>> developers in the original package and had
>> nothing to do with it , which just serves to
>> drive this to ludicrous proportions
if you are talking about gta:sa - it was not an 'honest to goodness mod' - that's the whole reason for the changed rating by the esrb
if you are talking about the sim2 - then yes this is indeed a whole seperate mod that must be installed seperately.
for that matter, there was already 'nude sims' mods for the original 'best selling game in the world' sims 1 game that didn't seem to cause any problems because they are only appealing to the 0.01% of the gaming population that are THAT retarded as to actually install the freakin thing.
let alone the fact that there is a whole game of 'sim nudes' called playboy:the mansion which has gangs of half-naked women walking around which is supposedly the normal behavior for women (so it's portrayed in the game).
there are also 'nude mod's for pretty much every single major gaming title - why? because gamers are pathetic nerds that will go out of their way airbrushing textures just to see that extra pixel of skin tone...
not to mention the playboy 'screenshots' of bloodrayne etc that were published a while back.
this whole thing is just pathetic. you can have women that are 99% naked on massive building-tall billboards all around the city, on every magazine cover, selling everything from toothpaste to floorpolish to dishwashing detergent and it's just 'doing business' - but god forbid you have a highly-pixelated, absolutely unappealing mini-game hidden in your game and everyone's up in arms...
i mean seriously, with all of the shit that is going on in the US with the patriot act, haliburton pilfering billions of dollars from the american people - and THIS is what they want congress to investigate? You have to be fucking kidding me.
Another thing I've noticed (more recently) is that consoles are much more 'group' friendly - whether it's from multi-screen play (less so in this regard) or from simple gameplay functionality.
When you want to sit down and slug away for 50 hours on an RPG - PC's can't be beat.
But when you have a couple of buddies over and want to have a game that you can do 'pass the controller' with, console games (at least some of them) are easier to adopt into this type of gameplay.
This isn't entirely from the living room positioning of the games, but also from the simple style of games that are available on the console.
Whether it's doing Halo co-op, driving games, games like 'amped' (or similar) and so on, playing with multiple people is infinitely easier than everyone huddling around a PC...
Even games like GTA lend themselves towards this kind of gaming situation - you can have 'get the most stars' or simply ripping around until you die gaming marathons with numerous people - things that you would never do with your PC gaming buddies is so much easier to do with a console for some reason.
yeah half-life had easy muting of idiots as well.
;}
as much as i don't like to admit it - microsoft does seem to have thought out the xbox live system fairly well
i've heard alot of good reviews of it.
I'd have to say that this is the case with most things in life - you never know where things will take you.
i started my 'official' game industry career (as opposed to my 15 hobby years of programming games starting on the vic20 on up) by participating in an open-source game engine project many years ago as 'user # 3' using the engine...
2 years later suddenly i was hosting & designing the website & forum, 2 years after that i became project lead organizing the community & planning features, roadmaps etc...
which all led to me and my business partner incorporating and launching our game company a little over 2 years ago...and we now have 10 employees, 2 game engines, just finishing a mobile title for a very large publisher and a number of large contracts under our belts going forwards...
all of which came from me donating thousands of hours helping & donating to an open source community and project.
the trick is - if you want to do something like 'becoming a game designer', then go out there and design games - there are hundreds of free / open source engines available and thousands of people looking to make games...organize yourself and the rest will follow.
what's the quote?
'free your mind and your ass will follow'
You can't look at the immediate financial benefit to start - look to the long-term goal and you will reach it...one baby step at a time.
There are many case studies, books and articles that confirm what you have mentioned.
The #1 thing that will stop someone from 'climbing the ranks' past the basic grunt labour force (whether the grunt labour in question is 3d modeling, programming code, ditch digging or slinging coffee's at starbucks) is NOT the person's technical ability.
You can be the most gifted programmer or 3d modeler in the world, but you will be relegated to 'programmer hell' forever if you cannot communicate & articulate your ideas AND play nice with others
This includes being willing to work with the 'suits' that pay your salary, whether a boss or publisher.
It isn't about 'selling out' - anyone that says this has given up essentially...It's about being willing to compromise and potentially reword or rework the idea that you are trying to get across so that the person on the other side of the conversation understands it.
If your 'brilliant idea' involves concept A, but the publisher wants you to implement concept B, then you either need to be able to explain it to them so that they understand and can buy into the idea, or you need to be able to compromise and find a middle ground.
The best creativity and innovation does not come through getting what you want 100% of the time - this is how Jar Jar Binks was created - too many 'yes men' saying 'yeah thats a great idea george'
The best creativity and innovation comes through conflict and compromise. Just because a publisher or boss it telling you that your idea isn't the best for the game/movie/tvshow/whatever doesn't mean that it should be given up on - perhaps there is a way to tweak or adjust the concept or idea to take the criticism into account.
Until you try it, you never know.
This is why the best music & bands always have 2 or more creative people that potentially hate each others guts - it's the conflict and coming to terms with that conflict where brilliance, innovation and evolution emerges...
LOL, what you mean - doing ANYTHING useful with MFC involves massive amounts of creativity...
;P
what is truly creative is having your bosses tell you that you MUST use MFC (having heard a buzz word somewhere about RAD development) and then coding the entire thing without using a line of mfc...
then they come around with VC blathering the latest buzzwords, your boss is happy and you can sleep at night knowing your code won't blow up in your face
>>i'd like to wonder if the nba live team in EA is
>>the same as the nhl or nfl progrmaming folks.
the idea of 'teams' at EA is a questionable one - yes there are teams working on specific projects, but EA as a company is more like Ford's production line than a typical game company.
Teams are more divided up according to specialty than a specific title, which is why the end result is less than innovative or interesting.
If you are a 'modeler' at EA, you are likely doing one specific type of modeling - there are entire teams of people that JUST do the mapping of faces onto heads for the sports games.
There is a whole other team of people that is responsible for taking the motion captured data and mapping/cleaning it up for animations (for all games).
The EA programming side is divided up into 'tech / tools', which basically produces libraries of code that all EA games use (which is being phased into the Renderware product line to standardize things even more)...
and so on.
the dramatic thing with EA is that even with this kind of 'assembly line' mentality, the company still produces hideous variants of content, where you end up with 2 or 3 models of characters from the same game that are dramatically different than each other - which can end up because there literally was a different team of developers working on some of the characters than the others and so on...
Add to this the difficulty of integrating companies that EA swallows up - you have the main EA company trying to standardize technology & processes, and then dozens of smaller companies that were bought in the latest round of borg-style absorption, and the EA virus slowly infects the newly bought company sucking any life or innovation that was in the company out until it is a part of the borg and stops producing anything innovative...
As an example, pay attention to what happens (is hapening) at DICE since the EA buyout.
Pre-buyout / EA publishes BF:1942 - one of the most innovative multiplayer games in a LONG time
Pre-buyout / EA publishes second game (ie has more influence, DICE slowly gets addicted to the EA nipple) - produces BF:Vietnam - still a fun game, but hardly innovative anymore and pushed out the door before it's ready, full of bugs
EA buys DICE - ships BF:2, a steaming pile of buggy crap, although still startlingly fun to play ONCE you get in-game and IF you don't run into one of the many bugs or lag that hits most servers once they get beyond a certain level.
the next dice game is almost guaranteed to stink.
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With this said, i've been in the game industry for a while and i have only ever met ONE 'real' game designer - and this person was more of a creative producer - ie the person that comes up with the cool idea & high-level spec, but then must also sell the game to the publishers / finance people as well.
I teach game design at Colleges and this is the first thing (and hardest thing) to get through wanna-be designers heads - they think that there is still this mystical 'game designer' role that every game company has - like we are just waiting to hire them because they have some idea and write up a spec for the idea...
Unfortunately smaller companies that actually produce games don't need or want people with IDEAS, we want people that can actually produce games from their ideas...ideas are like assholes, everybody's got them...once you have the idea, the 'real' work comes - and if you are ONLY a game designer, you aren't very valuable to my company...
hence why there are only a few well-known game designers in the industry - the rest are 3d modelers or programmers or producers that come up with the idea but then have tangible skills that can actually make the game (or a significant piece of it).
If you want a game designer position, you NEED a real skill - ie programming or 3d modeling or animation - and can prove to a company that you are a valuable asset and n
i guess the online gaming experience that i usually had was alot more a conscious decision.
;}
with counter-strike, i never played on anything but our own servers pretty much from day one - me and a couple buddies started our own clan (which is still going long after i stopped playing & participating) - guaranteed low-pings, guaranteed friendly players, and guaranteed challenging gameplay due to the skill-level from everyone involved.
counter-strike didn't need much more than a 150 machine when it first started out - we had people in our clan running in software mode at 320x240 on pentium 300's that kicked our asses regularly...even on dialup against our cable...we never understood it until we started having meets & actually seeing the other guys play in person.
the clan has grown from 3 people to over 50 people that travel from all around the country for gatherings (which usually involve lots of paintball etc)...pretty interesting how you can 'grow' a community of your own, without having one force-fed to you by the game.
i'll agree, i haven't used xboxlive, played a couple games on xbox and they just seemed very unsatisfactory to me...but voice chat is voice chat as far as i'm concerned...
most of the time i don't WANT to listen to the morons on the other end of the game...
i personally prefered the counter-strike system of 'triggered' voice commands - it's amazing how well it works for communications between squad members when you get fast on the keys
at least for starters - they would carry the heavy gear - much like the heavy weapons specialists currently...
things like mortars and anti-tank (anti-robot) weaponry and so on
FTA :
>> Halo 2 especially takes online multiplayer to a
>> new level of fun because of the integrated voice
>> chat of Xbox Live.
Perhaps he actually means: by ripping off ideas that were possible 10 years previously in pc games (i mean i was using roger wilco to play delta force 2 with 50 player servers back before hardware accelerated video cards existed...)
half-life 1 had integrated voice chat 5 years (or more) before halo2 - AND had multiplayer (gameplay & weapons & community) that kicked ass over halo's (the continued popularity of cs proves this)...
I still don't get why people would pay money for xbox live, when you can get all of this and much more on a pc...
then there's the new 'HD' craze that the console manufacturers are trying to promote with the new round of consoles...
yippee-freakin do - my console can now do resolutions that computers do 10 years ago - without hardware acceleration...weee
current-gen consoles can only go as high (resolution-wise) as standard ntsc video resolution, which is the equivalent of what quake1 in software mode could do (320×482 approx)
now, suddenly consoles can do 'hd' resolutions, which are basically what we've had on PC's for the past 7-8 years:
HDTV 1080i 1920×1080 (16:9)
HDTV 720p 1280×720 (16:9)
EDTV 480p 704×480
(source: wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_resolution )
is this really 'that' interesting? i mean 1920x1080 isn't something to scoff at, but by the time the consoles are out and people actually have tv's that can display this kind of resolution, computers will be running dual & triple display games at 2 to 3 times this resolutions, not to mention SLI video cards, dual core 64 bit processors and other PC-only enhancements that are coming down the pipeline...
(sure some of the consoles will have dual-core processors, but they are still nowhere near the processor speed of what we will be targetting as our lowest-end gaming machine in few years...)
consoles are pure marketing bs...mind you, as a developer they provide a single, stable hardware platform to develop games for, so IN THEORY, we can optimize game performance more for the consoles...
you think that 30 grand per suit is going to be considered a downside to an Army that already spends thousands of dollars for a Shovel or Canteen (in 2005-halliburton-adjusted dollars)?
Especially considering that the average US Footsoldier is expected to carry between 70-100 lbs of gear into combat, including laptop computers and countless other techno-devices...
If i was a grunt in the army, i'd want one of these just so i didn't HAVE to actually lug all that crap into battle - at least not exerting 100% of my energy in simply carry my kit...
I read that the new US combat rifle is supposed to cost around 7,000 per rifle - what's another 30 for an armoured suit for the soldiers...and since it already helps adjust for the weight being carried - adding kevlar armour and a super-robo cop infrared/nightvision helmet synced up via gps & awacs situational intelligence isn't too far off...
scary...
No one i know has a land line - after Fido started providing fixed rate local calling, pretty much everyone in Vancouver (BC, Canada) that I talk to ditched their local phones.
Telus (the local crap-ass telco monopoly) has the absolute worst service ever, and most people didn't need much motivation to get rid of their land lines.
Mind you, at least with celphones you can dial 911...
Ran into this not even 2 weeks ago - needed to dial 911 from my house, don't have a landline, only the VoIP vonage phone and ran into the '911 service is not available from this phone' message.
Had to call a friend and get THEM to call 911 for me...real useful.
Even my IT friends that are all gung-ho about VoIP service (to the point of setting up their own linux-based machines to provide their VoIP service) didn't know about.
http://www.liquidgeneration.com/rumormill/playstat ion_army.html
link for the playstation controller comment fyi:
Sony on Friday announced that it would investigate claims by a former US military official that parts from its Playstation 2 video game console are being tested in military equipment for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oh, and check out the 'goarmy.com' website - yet another example of blatant promotion of how the army is a 'great place for a young citizen to start their career'.
While hiding the real details of what it is like to be in a nightmare like Iraq (or any warzone).
Not to mention that the US Army has actually licensed the Sony Playstation controllers for their next-generation of armoured personnel carriers and tanks because they are 'easier to use' for newer soldiers - ie they have already been 'trained' by playing video games their entire lives, and can be more easily thrown into combat.
Learning those complicated tank controls is such a drag, why can't it all be like x-box live & halo after all?
You obviously weren't at E3 in 2004 - the US Army came in on a half dozen blackhawks and rappelled down outside the conference center as a part of their grand 'entrance' to the game expo.
Inside the conference, there was a MASSIVE booth with huge screens displaying the 'snipers eye view' of soldiers placed around buildings around the conference center...you got to see the solders, out of sight, aiming & zooming in on random civilians walking around the LA conference center, oblivious...
All as a part of their multi-million dollar 'Americas Army' marketing campaign - for a GAME that is specifically designed to brainwash kids into thinking that going into the Army is fun and something that is 'Cool' to do.
As a canadian down for the conference, these scenes were very disturbing, particularly as I noted the rest of the conference attendees reaction (or lack thereof) to this blatant display of military propaganda.
When the US Army is flying in and running around 'playing army' for a bunch of geeked out gamers, there is something VERY wrong with the way that the game industry is going.
I can't see how this could possibly be anything BUT glorifying war.
If there was a game out there telling the 'other side of the story' of the current situation in Iraq, you can guarantee that the US media would be up in arms horrified, but no, we can make all the games in the world about bombing foreign countries, dropping bombs on their citizens, and make them 'Rated E for Everyone'.
The SOLE reason for the US Army to make their current round of games is marketing & propaganda - even says so on their website & marketing material for the games. They are trying to brainwash people into enlisting, plain and simple.
And by providing sanitized, video game images of what 'being in the army is like', it both does the soldiers that are actually in these situations a grave injustice, but also continues the cycle of hatred and intolerance that has gotten the US into it's most hated nation status around the world.
considering that the BF:Vietnam server browser was completely broken in the shipping version, and the fact that every single DICE game since BF:1942 has had the worst menu & server browser systems EVER, i would hazard a guess that it's a DICE problem, not EA...
BF:Vietnams 'sort by ping' feature was flat-out BROKEN - how did this get past EA's mighty quality assurance - seriously HOW?
Quite possibly the MOST used server browser feature - aside from perhaps the 'update' button, which barely worked at the best of times...this kind of bs quality assurance has been pretty much the death of DICE's reputation as a quality developer...
considering how good BF:1942 was - in just about every way - this is truly sad...And of course BF:2's release complete's DICE's fall into the depths of the dark side...
alas i digress...
Steam and EA are a perfect match...the only better publisher could possibly be microsoft...and considering the Valve are a bunch of ex-microsofties, this would be a truly perfect match...
but perhaps even Valve couldn't swallow the fact that after leaving MS to start Valve, all they did was end up being Microsoft employees once again...
too bad the omm site seems to have just gone away...was pretty funny 'back in the good old days'...
damn i'm old
indeed - i recall shitting bricks the first time i watched it...of course now it's just hilarious, but it definitely was terrifying when seen as a 15 year old with WAY to active of an imagination
i'm disappointed it took this long for someone to point this out.
mohaa was probably the last truly great ea game i've played...
i also bought bf1942 - loved it...the mod's were even great, revolutionary gameplay...
bought bf:vietnam because i hoped it would be as good as 1942...it was a fun game, loved the chopper flying etc...but was hampered by some major bugs and incredible instability in the menu system & server browser...basically stopped playing - not because the game wasn't fun, but GETTING to the game was so freakin annoying (menu system / server browser).
and now dice has completed their fall into EA developer hell by releasing the steaming pile that is BF2...
tried the demo for about 5 minutes, except it took me 2 hours to get my machine configured, get the game installed and finally working to try the game out for those 5 minutes...
and developers wonder why the mystical 'mass market' is so unachieveable...it's not rocket science.
you'd think that the slash system would do auto-dupe checking for them at the rate that they are coming out these days...
i smell a feature request...
I have an idea - how about a post on how the horrific spelling on slashdot can harm a career?
Seriously, the spelling and grammar on this thread is either indicative of how riled up people are about this topic OR it is a sign of how slashdot use can seriously harm your brain...
It's IDEOLOGY, not 'idiology' people - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology
Perhaps they meant 'idiot-ology'...a common ailment of slashdot users...
Ugh...it's amazing how mad people can get while flaming others on a forum while making themselves look like complete idiots...
no problem, with the US in control, it will probably be outsourced to india or another country before too long...
All certifications are is a way for companies to bilk a lot of yearly money out of people looking for jobs...you go through all of the 10,000 dollars it takes for your win2k certs and then suddenly ms releases their winxp certs, which means you have to start from scratch, etc...
if you are working for a company worth working for, they will realize that certs are a never-ending 'upgrade path' that forces the company & potential employees to pay endless amounts of money for information that is non-hands on, not useful in the actual day to day working environment.
doesn't matter if it's an msce, redhat, solaris, oracle or (insert your favorite cert here) certification - if your employer wants you to have the skills in that particular application / platform / etc then they will be willing to pay for it as well.
if not and they insist that it's a requirement, then you probably want to get a different job with a company that actually respects on the job training and 'realworld' skills.
I am (as an employer looking to hire) less interested in certs than I am in quantifiable skills working with and/or shipping products for the platforms in particular.
The better programmer is the one that got it done ahead of schedule and according to spec.
This kind of argument (using 'advanced features of a programming language') is the downfall of most programmers and applications in the long run.
Using advanced features of a language means typically that you are relying on non-portable, compiler-specific features that will cause countless problems when (inevitably) you try to port and/or someone else is maintaining the code long after it was originally written.
For our development, the programmers that we hire are specifically instructed to NOT use so-called 'advanced features' of languages for this very reason.
Additionally things like proper function and variable naming (ie human-readable) and proper commenting are so much more important than 'advanced features' of any language.
We've been running AVG for the past 3 years and it is a perfect solution for people looking to actually have a virus protection system that works.
www.grisoft.com
It will find a LOT of viruses/trojans etc that the 'big' software won't and is completely free for personal use (including updates, no subscriptions etc).
AVG is one of the 3 main applications (along with zonealarm & firefox) that get put down on any machine that i'm called in 'to fix' - which happens on a weekly basis...average people think that because their computer came with norton or macafee that they should use it, but these programs do nothing but give a false sense of security, take up significant processor & memory resources and are basically useless in actually finding or preventing viruses etc from getting onto their machines.