I believe that it's mainly due to the inherent need of science to justify how something works. I always find it interesting how a Sci-Fi MMORPG is going to explain healing, buffing, shape-changing, etc. While no one seems bothered by the limited range of spells, I'm sure you'll hear people complain that said gun should be able to shoot for hundreds of meters.
Personally, I understand the need for gameplay to overshadow realism, but maybe the sci-fi crowd needs the scientific justifications to enjoy the game. Before this article, I've always believed that sci-fi MMORPGs were going to suffer due to this situation.
I agree with you. I look out the window from my building and most of the people on the Houston mass transit system are definitely in the lower income bracket. Most my friends have tried doing the bus thing at one time or another, but it never worked out. Besides, I'm IT, and you know that your work schedule can get whacked at any time when there is an "issue" at work. Once you miss the last bus, it's call-your-spouse time to come pick you up.
I have read many posts about taxing gas and having people live closer to their places of work. Well, I work in downtown Houston, and you're not going to be living closer to work due to the cost of living. Even if you find an affordable home close to the city, it's most likely going to be in a bad part of town. So, taxing gas isn't going to change where I live, it's just going to hurt me more since I'm going to be driving no matter how much the price of gas will rise. More than likely, I'll start driving my wife's 4-cylinder car to work and leave her the mini-van. Yes, I bought a mini-van since I refused getting an SUV for the very reason we're discussing this issue, however the mini-van still sucks gas at 19MPG (most likely less due to the traffic in the morning/evening).
Seriously, you would think that they would realize they are facing an uphill battle to convert everyone over to a new format. It seems the goal would be to make it as backward-compatible as possible to win over the fence-sitters (me) and early adopters of then-costly HDTVs, or in my case, a really expensive plasma TV that I sure as hell won't be replacing anytime soon.
Forgive me if this has been posted already, but I find the problem mainly being availability. I recently purchased a PS2 and started looking for some of the recommended games from friends, co-workers, and gamerankings.com.
I can tell you that it is nearly impossible to find a copy of Disgaea, new or used, anywhere in a retail store. Most of the games I'm looking for can only be purchased on Ebay. Why? Retail stores will only stock recent or high-selling titles. Now, with that in mind, go walk over to the Movie DVD section and you can still find movies that were released twenty or more years ago. Personally, I find that old console games are even worse to locate than old PC games, even though consoles reportedly sell way more units of games, hence the "decline of PC gaming" we've been recently reading about. I'm even having trouble locating PS2 games barely six months old.
I'm one of those weird people who usually like to have a new item because I generally take really good care of my possessions. If stores would offer the games I wanted to the same extent I can find most movies, I probably wouldn't have to buy them used. It'd be nice to be able to walk into Best Buy/Fry's/Circuit City and be able to pick up Final Fantasy VII or X-Com, but given their age, it's Ebay or no way.
I have also lived with my father while working a few crappy jobs, but it was to save money for graduate school since I realized a little too late that I wanted to do IT (yeah, I know). However, it was the ONLY way I was ever going to be able to save the money required to go back to school without needing a full-time job. So, after 3.5 years, I had saved 22K (and, that was starting at 24K/yr. and investing in my 401K). I'd heartily recommend moving in with your parents to free yourself of such a craptastic job since you will not be able to do that in the future. I won't lie that it was hard to take the jokes from friends when they asked what I'd say to women: "Your place or my dad's?". However, those friends are still at the shitty company I hated after college and it still sucks from what I understand and now they have houses, cars, etc. that will never let them leave easily.
We are very similar in our past gaming history. I left the Atari console behind and never looked back. I've been C=64/PC-centric since I was 14, however I will disagree that there are no good games for consoles. Personally, I think your and my problem was not looking at the PS2. Recently, I saw a demo for Shadow of the Colossus, and that hooked me right then and there. Then, I discovered the RPGs for PS2. I'll always play RTS and FPS on the PC, but RPGs are really good for the PS2. Given that it takes ages to finish one, it's nice to be able to sit back in a recliner and use the gamepad to play in a relaxing position.
I could understand someone purchasing a large amount of land in an incredibly popular game like World of Warcraft for that price, but not in Project Entropia.
I would consider myself a fairly hardcore gamer, but I'll honestly admit that I had been under the impression this game had been killed before release. So, if I consider myself a knowledgeable gamer, how is this game still in existence when even a serious gamer hasn't heard much about it?
Okay, so who wants to bet on how long it takes someone to create a "prison simulator" mod utilizing GTA's engine that would allow Jack to be sodomized and sold for packs of smokes?
So, he thinks we weren't bright enough to realize his "satire"? Well, at least we're bright enough to know the difference between video game violence and real-life violence. Otherwise, we'd be bunny-hopping our BMX bikes over his front yard fence and blowing him away with my machine gun.
Ah, I remember being invited to a group in EQ on Rallos Zek (PVP server). So, after arriving at the specified location, I was immediately jumped by my new-found friends.
Of course, as a cleric, I just cast my spell of one-minute invulnerability while I bagged my things, but it was still humiliating.
Trust me, the US is a drop in the bucket compared to Asia-Pacific.
I've been to Kuala Lumpur and they had multiple-level malls that were selling any and all software imaginable for roughly $1.25. And, it didn't matter how much the software package itself had cost, but how many CDs were used. So, it was 2 CDs, you paid $2.50. Of course, this doesn't even include the movies and music that were being sold.
Personally, I think if III is pretty good, I'll just consider I & II non-existant in my universe and start the story there.
Seriously, what would you really miss from I & II other than Anakin and Amidala meeting and some political stuff with Palpatine, the Separatists, and the Clone Army? Goodbye Jedi blood condition, immaculate conception, and crappy romantic dialogue.
Hah! I had the same thought as you. I guess the series fizzled after Alternate Reality: The Dungeon. At one point, they were working on a new game, but it also died.
What we really need to have are results of outsourcing. Sure, we've heard of Dell and a few other companies pulling work back to the US, but I doubt we'll ever hear of the failures or, for that matter, how bad it failed in terms of money and effort. I find it amazing that no investigative work has been done on reporting about the real effectiveness of outsourcing.
My friend works for an IT recruiting company and they were told that Chase and another bank were quietly restaffing their US workers after moving most of their work overseas. The recruitment is for 4,000 workers for Chase alone. After the effort, move, and training, it turns out that they were getting the work at the same price, but now the quality sucked and were getting complaints from customers.
Frankly, I have no fear of globalization except that no one is making my house, car, and other living expenses cheaper.
Since it's given that I can only reduce my wages so far before I can't pay for my house and car, I will not be able to compete against the Indian/Chinese/. Of course, that doesn't even take into account that whole saving for retirement, rainy day, healthcare, and college for my kids. And, before someone says "Hey, you didn't need to buy a nice car or house!", I bought a house where my wife and I don't have to both be working to afford it and my car was quite conservative.
Now, if there would be a plan to reduce my home mortgage as income starts to flatten out, then I wouldn't worry so much about globalization. Somehow, though, I doubt the banks/government will help us out on that and I seriously don't think the businesses of the world will reduce the price of their goods to allow us to afford them again.
If anything, I would say that SWG possibly drove people away from the genre. I avoided this game since my co-worker, who shares most of my views on MMORPGs, warned me far away from this one due to the odd mechanics and general lack of "fun".
Unless you are breaking out into new territory (City of Heroes), I find that there are too many similar MMORPGs in the market. I believe CoH to be the only MMORPG since the original EQ that has been able to draw new players into the market.
It may just be me, but most of the people I know that play MMORPGs are the same ones who play the new games when they arrive. So, you have a nomadic tribe of people moving from EQ, to DAoC, then to Horizons, and most likely to EQ2. I've stopped playing them altogether due to the time committment of work and a new baby, however, I still only played one at a time.
So, until companies figure out how to maintain a user base and keep the game fresh, I think most MMORPGs will eventually tank due to people leaving to other games, which takes away the income necessary to making patches, updates, new content, etc.
I'm guilty of the buying more games that I get to finish. However, I've also suffered from waiting so long to get to a certain game, that said game disappears off the market and winds up on Ebay for way more than you would have paid for it. Go look up Final Fantasy VII or Freespace 2 on Ebay and look at those crazy prices.
On a final note, I do have a unique perspective. I did go back to college to get a Master's degree in MIS. I put my life on hold, drove an old, beat-up Pontiac, and managed to save about 22K in a 3.5 year period.
Now that I have a house, wife, and child on the way, there's no freaking way I'll ever be able to pull that off again. For once, I can authoritatively say that "retraining" America is unrealistic at best and impossible for most unless you can have someone support you while you go back to school.
Damn, I actually meant to ask the originator of the post and I guess I wasn't paying attention. I'm always curious about what the "quit whining" crowd work on since they don't seem very concerned.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that it's mainly due to the inherent need of science to justify how something works. I always find it interesting how a Sci-Fi MMORPG is going to explain healing, buffing, shape-changing, etc. While no one seems bothered by the limited range of spells, I'm sure you'll hear people complain that said gun should be able to shoot for hundreds of meters. Personally, I understand the need for gameplay to overshadow realism, but maybe the sci-fi crowd needs the scientific justifications to enjoy the game. Before this article, I've always believed that sci-fi MMORPGs were going to suffer due to this situation.
I agree with you. I look out the window from my building and most of the people on the Houston mass transit system are definitely in the lower income bracket. Most my friends have tried doing the bus thing at one time or another, but it never worked out. Besides, I'm IT, and you know that your work schedule can get whacked at any time when there is an "issue" at work. Once you miss the last bus, it's call-your-spouse time to come pick you up.
I have read many posts about taxing gas and having people live closer to their places of work. Well, I work in downtown Houston, and you're not going to be living closer to work due to the cost of living. Even if you find an affordable home close to the city, it's most likely going to be in a bad part of town. So, taxing gas isn't going to change where I live, it's just going to hurt me more since I'm going to be driving no matter how much the price of gas will rise. More than likely, I'll start driving my wife's 4-cylinder car to work and leave her the mini-van. Yes, I bought a mini-van since I refused getting an SUV for the very reason we're discussing this issue, however the mini-van still sucks gas at 19MPG (most likely less due to the traffic in the morning/evening).
Seriously, you would think that they would realize they are facing an uphill battle to convert everyone over to a new format. It seems the goal would be to make it as backward-compatible as possible to win over the fence-sitters (me) and early adopters of then-costly HDTVs, or in my case, a really expensive plasma TV that I sure as hell won't be replacing anytime soon.
Forgive me if this has been posted already, but I find the problem mainly being availability. I recently purchased a PS2 and started looking for some of the recommended games from friends, co-workers, and gamerankings.com.
I can tell you that it is nearly impossible to find a copy of Disgaea, new or used, anywhere in a retail store. Most of the games I'm looking for can only be purchased on Ebay. Why? Retail stores will only stock recent or high-selling titles. Now, with that in mind, go walk over to the Movie DVD section and you can still find movies that were released twenty or more years ago. Personally, I find that old console games are even worse to locate than old PC games, even though consoles reportedly sell way more units of games, hence the "decline of PC gaming" we've been recently reading about. I'm even having trouble locating PS2 games barely six months old.
I'm one of those weird people who usually like to have a new item because I generally take really good care of my possessions. If stores would offer the games I wanted to the same extent I can find most movies, I probably wouldn't have to buy them used. It'd be nice to be able to walk into Best Buy/Fry's/Circuit City and be able to pick up Final Fantasy VII or X-Com, but given their age, it's Ebay or no way.
I have also lived with my father while working a few crappy jobs, but it was to save money for graduate school since I realized a little too late that I wanted to do IT (yeah, I know). However, it was the ONLY way I was ever going to be able to save the money required to go back to school without needing a full-time job. So, after 3.5 years, I had saved 22K (and, that was starting at 24K/yr. and investing in my 401K). I'd heartily recommend moving in with your parents to free yourself of such a craptastic job since you will not be able to do that in the future. I won't lie that it was hard to take the jokes from friends when they asked what I'd say to women: "Your place or my dad's?". However, those friends are still at the shitty company I hated after college and it still sucks from what I understand and now they have houses, cars, etc. that will never let them leave easily.
We are very similar in our past gaming history. I left the Atari console behind and never looked back. I've been C=64/PC-centric since I was 14, however I will disagree that there are no good games for consoles. Personally, I think your and my problem was not looking at the PS2. Recently, I saw a demo for Shadow of the Colossus, and that hooked me right then and there. Then, I discovered the RPGs for PS2. I'll always play RTS and FPS on the PC, but RPGs are really good for the PS2. Given that it takes ages to finish one, it's nice to be able to sit back in a recliner and use the gamepad to play in a relaxing position.
Plus, it's hard to admit that you just got your ass kicked by an asterisk.
I could understand someone purchasing a large amount of land in an incredibly popular game like World of Warcraft for that price, but not in Project Entropia. I would consider myself a fairly hardcore gamer, but I'll honestly admit that I had been under the impression this game had been killed before release. So, if I consider myself a knowledgeable gamer, how is this game still in existence when even a serious gamer hasn't heard much about it?
Okay, so who wants to bet on how long it takes someone to create a "prison simulator" mod utilizing GTA's engine that would allow Jack to be sodomized and sold for packs of smokes?
Yeah, I realized my grammatical error after I posted. Damn singular/plural pronoun conjugation!
So, he thinks we weren't bright enough to realize his "satire"? Well, at least we're bright enough to know the difference between video game violence and real-life violence. Otherwise, we'd be bunny-hopping our BMX bikes over his front yard fence and blowing him away with my machine gun.
Ah, I remember being invited to a group in EQ on Rallos Zek (PVP server). So, after arriving at the specified location, I was immediately jumped by my new-found friends. Of course, as a cleric, I just cast my spell of one-minute invulnerability while I bagged my things, but it was still humiliating.
Trust me, the US is a drop in the bucket compared to Asia-Pacific. I've been to Kuala Lumpur and they had multiple-level malls that were selling any and all software imaginable for roughly $1.25. And, it didn't matter how much the software package itself had cost, but how many CDs were used. So, it was 2 CDs, you paid $2.50. Of course, this doesn't even include the movies and music that were being sold.
Personally, I think if III is pretty good, I'll just consider I & II non-existant in my universe and start the story there. Seriously, what would you really miss from I & II other than Anakin and Amidala meeting and some political stuff with Palpatine, the Separatists, and the Clone Army? Goodbye Jedi blood condition, immaculate conception, and crappy romantic dialogue.
Oh, please tell me those stories were of a sexual nature.
Hah! I had the same thought as you. I guess the series fizzled after Alternate Reality: The Dungeon. At one point, they were working on a new game, but it also died.
What we really need to have are results of outsourcing. Sure, we've heard of Dell and a few other companies pulling work back to the US, but I doubt we'll ever hear of the failures or, for that matter, how bad it failed in terms of money and effort. I find it amazing that no investigative work has been done on reporting about the real effectiveness of outsourcing. My friend works for an IT recruiting company and they were told that Chase and another bank were quietly restaffing their US workers after moving most of their work overseas. The recruitment is for 4,000 workers for Chase alone. After the effort, move, and training, it turns out that they were getting the work at the same price, but now the quality sucked and were getting complaints from customers.
Frankly, I have no fear of globalization except that no one is making my house, car, and other living expenses cheaper. Since it's given that I can only reduce my wages so far before I can't pay for my house and car, I will not be able to compete against the Indian/Chinese/. Of course, that doesn't even take into account that whole saving for retirement, rainy day, healthcare, and college for my kids. And, before someone says "Hey, you didn't need to buy a nice car or house!", I bought a house where my wife and I don't have to both be working to afford it and my car was quite conservative. Now, if there would be a plan to reduce my home mortgage as income starts to flatten out, then I wouldn't worry so much about globalization. Somehow, though, I doubt the banks/government will help us out on that and I seriously don't think the businesses of the world will reduce the price of their goods to allow us to afford them again.
If anything, I would say that SWG possibly drove people away from the genre. I avoided this game since my co-worker, who shares most of my views on MMORPGs, warned me far away from this one due to the odd mechanics and general lack of "fun".
It may just be me, but most of the people I know that play MMORPGs are the same ones who play the new games when they arrive. So, you have a nomadic tribe of people moving from EQ, to DAoC, then to Horizons, and most likely to EQ2. I've stopped playing them altogether due to the time committment of work and a new baby, however, I still only played one at a time.
So, until companies figure out how to maintain a user base and keep the game fresh, I think most MMORPGs will eventually tank due to people leaving to other games, which takes away the income necessary to making patches, updates, new content, etc.
I'm guilty of the buying more games that I get to finish. However, I've also suffered from waiting so long to get to a certain game, that said game disappears off the market and winds up on Ebay for way more than you would have paid for it. Go look up Final Fantasy VII or Freespace 2 on Ebay and look at those crazy prices.
I can just imagine the look on people's faces when I say, "I crashed my Ferrari".
Now that I have a house, wife, and child on the way, there's no freaking way I'll ever be able to pull that off again. For once, I can authoritatively say that "retraining" America is unrealistic at best and impossible for most unless you can have someone support you while you go back to school.
Damn, I actually meant to ask the originator of the post and I guess I wasn't paying attention. I'm always curious about what the "quit whining" crowd work on since they don't seem very concerned.