Generally, in science fiction, this sort of thing serves a dystopic purpose. It is basically intended to disgust you. It's hardly an optimistic vision of the future.
Distinctions between AAA and "lesser" games.
on
The Path to AAA Games
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I've actually had more fun recently with games that aren't AAA titles than I have with the Latest and Greatest. Sure, I loved HL2, but that's basically the only one. La Pucelle and Disgaea have been some of the best games I've played recently, and the three Ratchet & Clank games were excellent. Last year's Chris Sawyer's Locomotion was flawed, but fun. Depending on how you differentiate between the "top tier" and other games, the Silent Hill series might also count. I think these games succeed by worrying more about the game mechanics and storyline than the graphics and "innovations" like physics. Those are basically black holes for money and development time, and I think designers need to remember that more people play chess, go, and checkers/draughts than any video game...
It seems that all MMORPGs have a voluptuous woman who appears as the main character in all of their advertisements and posters. See: Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, PlanetSide, World of Warcraft, Lineage II, and now Tabula Rasa. Amazing.
Christianity is the dominant philosophical influence on our culture. Yes, Christianity originated in the Middle East, but it has long been seen as the religion of Europe. Christianity itself has been influenced by other religions--Catholicism, especially--and by preexisting culture, but I honestly would have to argue with you if you think the Norse and Celtic religions have been as significant as Christianity. It's even a strain to claim that for the Greek myths, and those are fairly pervasive.
In many ways, yes, in that Christianity is the basis for most of our history and culture, like it or not. "Christian myths" have affected your worldview extensively and consistently, even if you don't realize it. Understanding that and being aware of it requires familiarity with the religion, even if you aren't an adherent yourself.
Well, that's okay then. I was thinking you were one of those people who trumpets their ignorance as a sort of mark of pride. "I don't know anything about the religion which shaped and dominated my culture! Now listen to me as I talk with starry eyes about Buddhism," you know what I'm saying?
If you don't know enough about Christianity to spot the Christian parallels in Narnia, you are ignorant. They are obvious, they are intentional, and Narnia is still one of the best fantasy series ever written.
In all fairness, the UNC system is pretty cheap. I'm sure the bandwidth (and there's lots of it; see ibiblio.org) is pretty heavily subsidized by taxes.
The original Team Fortress was really a horrible hack. A great mod, yes, but a horrible hack anyway. Quake could barely handle some of the maps, like canalzon. It's also quite ugly without doing some serious engine customizations, and it's open to hacks and cheats. Furthermore, the Quake engine itself is clunky. I still play custom Quake maps, but there are some really bizarre problems: try strafing while moving forward, for example.
I prefer TFC to ETF and Q3F, though. It just feels more professional--and it's by the people who created Team Fortress to begin with.
Buh... what? The reason German, Spanish, Italian and French aren't spoken here--and they are, in small enclaves--is that the British, you know, won the wars and bought the land. Then America beat the British, but remained firmly a postcolonial nation. We began as Britons and thus our country uses English as its language. The death of the Native American languages is an uglier story, but has little to do with English and a lot to do with disease and campaigns of murder.
The reason so few Americans speak foreign languages is not English, either. It's because our country is huge. If every state spoke a different language, we'd learn several languages in order to communicate. All the states use English, though, so we use English. As an example, there are more bilingual people in the American Southwest and Louisiana than in the Southeast. Why? Because there are significant minority populations which speak other languages in those areas--Spanish and French, specifically.
Regarding culture... well. Popular culture is an atrocity, but don't blame that on English, either. Shakespeare wrote in English. So did Dickens, Nabokov, Faulkner, Joyce, Bradbury, Orwell, O'Connor, and so on. You could list authors forever. They've certainly done English proud, and, in fact, they usually lose something in translation.
Please--before you knock English as a language, know what you're talking about.
Havok isn't an engine; it's the physics system. Source is the engine, and was, in fact, created from scratch. (Painkiller is another game that uses Havok physics, but not as effectively as Half-Life 2.)
Let's step outside the boundaries of the tech sector for a moment. On my bookshelf, I see books by:
Penguin
Bantam
Aspect
Vintage
I have a copy of The New Yorker here; let's look through some of the ads.
Lands' End
Fujifilm
The Clearing
Sideways
Fox
Bookmarks and "The Dial Press"
Waterworks
SentientJet
Hippie
In addition, you have some other, possibly more familiar brands:
Ford
Dodge
Mercury
...
It goes on and on. All of these are words, and they are trademarked. I don't see DaimlerChrysler suing you when you say you "dodged a bullet," and Penguin Putnam doesn't sue the Discovery Channel very often for infringement.
I'm a little confused about where, exactly, you are thinking about. I'm a North Carolinian (from the rural back-country), and, well, none of it really applies.
Though you're not likely to find a small town with "world-class" healthcare providers, I live in a town of 200 within 50 miles of two pretty decent large hospitals, and within the helicopter radius of more. (Remember, since there is a lower population density, a hospital can serve a larger area.) In addition, private practice doctors really aren't that much different in small towns.
Local libraries and other cultural things do tend to suck. However, you can use interlibrary loan and the like to get items you want, and, in my case, Charlotte and Asheville both offer decent cultural experiences.
Shopping can be surprisingly varied. People come from all over the world to the furniture outlets in Morganton, North Carolina, for instance. Broyhill and the like. There are also good stationers' shops that I know of, some decent bookstores (though Barnes & Noble have killed most of them), and so forth. In addition, as always, there are cities of respectable size within an hour's travel.
In the South, at least, the minority population is significant. North Carolina is about 23% African-American, I believe. Don't judge the region by stereotypes, either; the communities are more integrated and comfortable than you might think.
No need to get stuck in traffic jams trying to get places, either. It takes 20 minutes to drive 20 miles, not an hour. You can get from my hometown to Charlotte in 45-60 minutes.
The quality of life can be quite high in the country; don't underestimate it.
I'm in NC, too... honestly, I feel that the pollsters may have overestimated the Republican hold on this state. Many people I know are voting democrat--and several die-hard Republicans are declining to vote, because they don't like Bush and don't want to vote for Kerry.
Erskine Bowles, at least, should have a good chance.
I've seen it several times. Generally, the text is rendered over the sidebar menus. Currently, though, I use the light HTML option, so that everything is in plaintext; it wouldn't be my first choice, but it's less annoying.
The game industry isn't struggling. At all. Recently Interplay has gone under, and Acclaim is bankrupt, and Atari looks shaky, but these are by no means general indicators of weakness in the market. Think of it as the "crap games tax."
Well, somehow--despite the "crapflooding" that everyone seems to pin on PS2/PSX--Sony managed to produce more good games in the PSX generation than Nintendo did in the Nintendo 64 generation; and PS2 has more good games than both GameCube and XBox, even now. The XBox lineup seems particularly weak; there are almost no exclusives, and barring some stand-outs (Ninja Gaiden), the exclusive games that do exist are largely mediocre. Compare the XBox exclusive Blinx to the PS2 exclusive series Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, and Sly Cooper.
GameCube is doing better, IMHO, in terms of average quality, but the best PS2 and XBox games are easily as good as GameCube's best, and they have a lot more "acceptably good" games than GCN does. I'm looking forward to Metroid Prime 2 and the new Legend of Zelda, though.
Well, different publishers have different personalities. Some like to meddle in the games they publish; "This content is unsuitable," "We demand that this game get a T rating," and so forth. Others don't. Some promote games extremely well, others don't. Still others are notable for their technical choices. Atari, for instance, likes copy protection, even when it affects legitimate buyers negatively (see Unreal Tournament 2004).
Slashdot Mirror
Generally, in science fiction, this sort of thing serves a dystopic purpose. It is basically intended to disgust you. It's hardly an optimistic vision of the future.
I've actually had more fun recently with games that aren't AAA titles than I have with the Latest and Greatest. Sure, I loved HL2, but that's basically the only one. La Pucelle and Disgaea have been some of the best games I've played recently, and the three Ratchet & Clank games were excellent. Last year's Chris Sawyer's Locomotion was flawed, but fun. Depending on how you differentiate between the "top tier" and other games, the Silent Hill series might also count. I think these games succeed by worrying more about the game mechanics and storyline than the graphics and "innovations" like physics. Those are basically black holes for money and development time, and I think designers need to remember that more people play chess, go, and checkers/draughts than any video game...
I'm not sure what indy movies you're watching. I must have missed that, too.
I wonder if she'll dance like Alizée, too?
Christianity is the dominant philosophical influence on our culture. Yes, Christianity originated in the Middle East, but it has long been seen as the religion of Europe. Christianity itself has been influenced by other religions--Catholicism, especially--and by preexisting culture, but I honestly would have to argue with you if you think the Norse and Celtic religions have been as significant as Christianity. It's even a strain to claim that for the Greek myths, and those are fairly pervasive.
In many ways, yes, in that Christianity is the basis for most of our history and culture, like it or not. "Christian myths" have affected your worldview extensively and consistently, even if you don't realize it. Understanding that and being aware of it requires familiarity with the religion, even if you aren't an adherent yourself.
Apologies.
Just sayin'.
In all fairness, the UNC system is pretty cheap. I'm sure the bandwidth (and there's lots of it; see ibiblio.org) is pretty heavily subsidized by taxes.
emacs, plus LaTeX, plus pdflatex.
Because spanking is inherently bad.
The original Team Fortress was really a horrible hack. A great mod, yes, but a horrible hack anyway. Quake could barely handle some of the maps, like canalzon. It's also quite ugly without doing some serious engine customizations, and it's open to hacks and cheats. Furthermore, the Quake engine itself is clunky. I still play custom Quake maps, but there are some really bizarre problems: try strafing while moving forward, for example. I prefer TFC to ETF and Q3F, though. It just feels more professional--and it's by the people who created Team Fortress to begin with.
Dickens, Nabokov, Faulkner, Joyce, Bradbury, Orwell, and O'Connor wrote in modern English. They're all 19th and 20th Century authors.
The reason so few Americans speak foreign languages is not English, either. It's because our country is huge. If every state spoke a different language, we'd learn several languages in order to communicate. All the states use English, though, so we use English. As an example, there are more bilingual people in the American Southwest and Louisiana than in the Southeast. Why? Because there are significant minority populations which speak other languages in those areas--Spanish and French, specifically.
Regarding culture... well. Popular culture is an atrocity, but don't blame that on English, either. Shakespeare wrote in English. So did Dickens, Nabokov, Faulkner, Joyce, Bradbury, Orwell, O'Connor, and so on. You could list authors forever. They've certainly done English proud, and, in fact, they usually lose something in translation.
Please--before you knock English as a language, know what you're talking about.
Several of these games are actually decent. I suspect there will be a lot more people selecting Jak 2 and Sly Cooper 2 than the others, though.
Havok isn't an engine; it's the physics system. Source is the engine, and was, in fact, created from scratch. (Painkiller is another game that uses Havok physics, but not as effectively as Half-Life 2.)
- Penguin
- Bantam
- Aspect
- Vintage
I have a copy of The New Yorker here; let's look through some of the ads.- Lands' End
- Fujifilm
- The Clearing
- Sideways
- Fox
- Bookmarks and "The Dial Press"
- Waterworks
- SentientJet
- Hippie
In addition, you have some other, possibly more familiar brands:- Ford
- Dodge
- Mercury
- ...
It goes on and on. All of these are words, and they are trademarked. I don't see DaimlerChrysler suing you when you say you "dodged a bullet," and Penguin Putnam doesn't sue the Discovery Channel very often for infringement.- Though you're not likely to find a small town with "world-class" healthcare providers, I live in a town of 200 within 50 miles of two pretty decent large hospitals, and within the helicopter radius of more. (Remember, since there is a lower population density, a hospital can serve a larger area.) In addition, private practice doctors really aren't that much different in small towns.
- Local libraries and other cultural things do tend to suck. However, you can use interlibrary loan and the like to get items you want, and, in my case, Charlotte and Asheville both offer decent cultural experiences.
- Shopping can be surprisingly varied. People come from all over the world to the furniture outlets in Morganton, North Carolina, for instance. Broyhill and the like. There are also good stationers' shops that I know of, some decent bookstores (though Barnes & Noble have killed most of them), and so forth. In addition, as always, there are cities of respectable size within an hour's travel.
- In the South, at least, the minority population is significant. North Carolina is about 23% African-American, I believe. Don't judge the region by stereotypes, either; the communities are more integrated and comfortable than you might think.
- No need to get stuck in traffic jams trying to get places, either. It takes 20 minutes to drive 20 miles, not an hour. You can get from my hometown to Charlotte in 45-60 minutes.
The quality of life can be quite high in the country; don't underestimate it.I'm in NC, too... honestly, I feel that the pollsters may have overestimated the Republican hold on this state. Many people I know are voting democrat--and several die-hard Republicans are declining to vote, because they don't like Bush and don't want to vote for Kerry. Erskine Bowles, at least, should have a good chance.
I've seen it several times. Generally, the text is rendered over the sidebar menus. Currently, though, I use the light HTML option, so that everything is in plaintext; it wouldn't be my first choice, but it's less annoying.
I didn't know Stone Cold Steve Austin was an environmentalist.
The game industry isn't struggling. At all. Recently Interplay has gone under, and Acclaim is bankrupt, and Atari looks shaky, but these are by no means general indicators of weakness in the market. Think of it as the "crap games tax."
It's been a long time since I took French, and I never claimed to be fluent... but that man's last name means Son-Love. I find that disturbing.
GameCube is doing better, IMHO, in terms of average quality, but the best PS2 and XBox games are easily as good as GameCube's best, and they have a lot more "acceptably good" games than GCN does. I'm looking forward to Metroid Prime 2 and the new Legend of Zelda, though.
Well, different publishers have different personalities. Some like to meddle in the games they publish; "This content is unsuitable," "We demand that this game get a T rating," and so forth. Others don't. Some promote games extremely well, others don't. Still others are notable for their technical choices. Atari, for instance, likes copy protection, even when it affects legitimate buyers negatively (see Unreal Tournament 2004).