Well if legislators have any sense they'll just laugh at them when they try to take away yet more rights of fair use from the public...but unfortunately, a large portion of Slashdotters (self included) live in America where we aren't so fortunate.
I think the idea here is that after Link dies, you continue the game playing as another character...possibly Zelda or that weird guy that rides werewolf Link?
Ok, so this is slightly unrelated...but wouldn't it be awesome if you got to play this epic 100+ hour long Zelda with a party, and turn-based combat? I know alot of the fanboys will call it sacrelige, but with FF12 announced as a real-time combat game, who knows? Anyway...here's a little mock up a made a few weeks ago;)
"Disagree? Make a list of which games you would put in a museum and hang them on the wall for people to play hundreds of years from now. Divide by the number of games that exist. I rest my case."
But that same problem falls upon movies, music, and books too. "What is art?" has always been a long going discussion, and unfortunately, then games of today or the last couple decades that really were art, won't be decided till many many years from now once they've stood the test of time.
Re:Wasn't this one of the point Ebert made?
on
Why Ebert Was Right
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· Score: 1
Still, for every good show that comes out there are 30 awful ones released too. That's not a very good ratio (even if I did just pull it out of my ass);)
Seriously though, when I played Final Fantasy VI (FF3 in the US) for the first time, I realized what a great possiblity there is for gaming to become the ultimate art form one day. It takes all prior art forms, rolls them into one, and then lets you interact with it.
Wasn't this one of the point Ebert made?
on
Why Ebert Was Right
·
· Score: 1
That's one of the problems though...how do you determine who's qualified to rate anything. I'd say 90% of the reviewers who work for print mags and 99% of online ones aren't qualified to rate games either. Just because you play games doesn't mean you are qualified to tell other people whether they are good or not. A reviewers job should be, ideally, to filter out the bad from the good for the people who dont' want to have to dig through all the garbage to find the good stuff. Unfortunately most reviewers just give glowing reviews of all the over marketed, over hyped garbage while completely ignoring the interesting titles out there. And don't bring up Katamari....that was a fluke. Go to one of the major game sites one day and look through the news and such for that day, and look at how many of those games are produced by a small/indie developer? Hell just look at the ratio of original titles to sequels...it's sickening. Yet these "critics" keep giving these lack luster games great ratings.
Back to my point... just because I've watched a few movies before, does that make me an credible film critic? Hell no... To be a good game reviewer you need to go out and play every game you can possibly find, even the ones you know are gonna suck. Then you write articles on the games that fall through the cracks, the ones that really do go beyond being just a game and are actually pieces of art. Madden 200X will never be a piece of art...so quit wasting our time reviewing it...they've got enough advertising already as it is! What makes a game art has been discussed numerous time on/. so I won't bother again here...please, don't bother me with replies on that either...it's off topic;)
Still at the end of the day, Ebert needs to point the finger at his own industry first... all the entertainment mediums are going to shit right now, and probably due to people being more concerned with hype and sales rather than artistic merit.
The problem isn't with gaming as an artistic medium like Ebert suggests, it's with almost all media made today. Nobody cares about artistic merit anymore...all people really care about is sales, including consumers...most people won't go see a movie if it's doing poorly at the box office, or won't listen/buy a CD unless it's already in the Billboard top 200. Sure there are a few of us who care, but the vast majority don't...and that's the real problem.
Yes, in a completely free society, people can do whatever they want. Only problem is that in reality you need to make sure these people or companies doing whatever they like are not hurting any one else. When you have control of over 90% of the market, you're gonna have to make some ammends for it. Is it even Microsoft's fault? Well yes....yes it is. Can you play any modern, open formats in windows media player out of the box? No.... Mpeg/MP3 just don't cut it anymore...and if they aren't computer literate enough to install new codecs they'll ever watch/listen to are going to be Mpeg stuff or Windows Media stuff.... The content providers are just as much to blame though. If more places would release their content in open formats only then market demand would force MS to include support for them. It's slowly starting to happen in the browser realm, but how long will it take for a real backlash to ensue over media formats? A big enough one for Microsoft to care that is...
I've been telling people this for years....Apple's no better than Microsoft. They're both massive corporations...they both only care about their bottom line.
Windows without a media player and internet explorer solves nothing...hell, even Gnome comes with a built in media player and browser now. Just as the grandparent said, the real problem is the file formats. If WMP played all the open (ie...no charge to Microsoft besides implementing them) file formats right off the bat, and wasn't so obsessed with spreading WMA/V, then it wouldn't be as big a deal. The problem is that since so many Windows users never install new codecs or new players, all they can play besides windows media files are mpeg and other old standards. So now all the media providers encode everything in WMA/V so they don't have to explain to these people how to install codecs and such. But then non windows users, are screwed because they can not legaly play MS's proprietary formats. Quicktime/iTunes is no better either....
IE's the same thing, if they ditched ActiveX and fully supported real standards, then it wouldn't be as big a problem. The bottom line is that their little differences from the W3C standards and use of "windows media" files help them to lock people into their operating system, and that's the whole reason for the anti-trust cases.
It may not be the best business move...but perhaps it would be better morally? If people had to pay more for playing the game excessively maybe we wouldn't see as many people getting addicted to MMOs. When they see...damn, I play $100 worth of game time this past month maybe they'll think, "Damn...I need to cut back."
I too have always wished they offered a "metered" pay version as well as I would probably play no more than 10 hours a week, if that even...so I can barely justify paying $10 a month, let alone the regular $12-15.
Perhaps the best solution would be to just offer both;)
As while I see your point, survival is very important, it's going to end up hurting future companies. The bigger these companies and their budgets swell, the harder it is going to be for any new companies to even have a shot against these juggernauts. Then again, it may be for the best in the long run as all these uber-developers start churning out more and more cookie cutter crap as the trends are already starting to show;)
I don't think it's very good. If Take-two wants to regularly invest (and thus) profit off the games Firaxis makes, then that's fine. If they want to sign an agreement for them to do a certain number of games this way...that's fine. But, there's no reason for all these publishers to keep gobbling up all the developers. We're gonna get to a point where there are very few companies that autonomously create games, and thus less innovation I'm afraid.
I have been running a GeForce 5200 for about the last 2 years or so myself... I can't play Doom3 just fine (avg 25fps, all shaders on, 1024x768, no AA though);)
Far Cry is the only game that's ever given me trouble on it.
Actually, the real first intentions for Penny Arcade was to submit two sample strips to Next Generation (or perhaps it was different mag?), then when they didn't win the contest, they decided to keep making strips and that's when Loonygames started hosting them. I've been reading PA since their 4th strip was ever released;)
I doubt they'll go that far... They just want it to look like their system is sooooo popular that everyone sold out of it the first day. This is no different than the bullsh*t Sony pulled when they released the PS2. Shortages my ass...
Slashdot Mirror
Well if legislators have any sense they'll just laugh at them when they try to take away yet more rights of fair use from the public...but unfortunately, a large portion of Slashdotters (self included) live in America where we aren't so fortunate.
Exactly. If "publishers" were releasing good games at reasonable prices (more like $20-30 rather than $50-60) then this wouldn't even be an issue.
I think the idea here is that after Link dies, you continue the game playing as another character...possibly Zelda or that weird guy that rides werewolf Link?
Ok, so this is slightly unrelated...but wouldn't it be awesome if you got to play this epic 100+ hour long Zelda with a party, and turn-based combat? I know alot of the fanboys will call it sacrelige, but with FF12 announced as a real-time combat game, who knows? Anyway...here's a little mock up a made a few weeks ago ;)
addendum: You don't have to, but it'll make things easier ;)
PS. Which boss? I didn't do any extra leveling and remember having a pretty hard time with Yunalesca
FYI, you don't have to level up in Final Fantasy games...that's optional. I don't ;)
Yeah, but isn't this just preaching to the choir by posting on Slashdot? ;)
"Disagree? Make a list of which games you would put in a museum and hang them on the wall for people to play hundreds of years from now. Divide by the number of games that exist. I rest my case."
But that same problem falls upon movies, music, and books too. "What is art?" has always been a long going discussion, and unfortunately, then games of today or the last couple decades that really were art, won't be decided till many many years from now once they've stood the test of time.
Still, for every good show that comes out there are 30 awful ones released too. That's not a very good ratio (even if I did just pull it out of my ass) ;)
Squaresoft? ;)
Seriously though, when I played Final Fantasy VI (FF3 in the US) for the first time, I realized what a great possiblity there is for gaming to become the ultimate art form one day. It takes all prior art forms, rolls them into one, and then lets you interact with it.
That's one of the problems though...how do you determine who's qualified to rate anything. I'd say 90% of the reviewers who work for print mags and 99% of online ones aren't qualified to rate games either. Just because you play games doesn't mean you are qualified to tell other people whether they are good or not. A reviewers job should be, ideally, to filter out the bad from the good for the people who dont' want to have to dig through all the garbage to find the good stuff. Unfortunately most reviewers just give glowing reviews of all the over marketed, over hyped garbage while completely ignoring the interesting titles out there. And don't bring up Katamari....that was a fluke. Go to one of the major game sites one day and look through the news and such for that day, and look at how many of those games are produced by a small/indie developer? Hell just look at the ratio of original titles to sequels...it's sickening. Yet these "critics" keep giving these lack luster games great ratings.
/. so I won't bother again here...please, don't bother me with replies on that either...it's off topic ;)
Back to my point... just because I've watched a few movies before, does that make me an credible film critic? Hell no... To be a good game reviewer you need to go out and play every game you can possibly find, even the ones you know are gonna suck. Then you write articles on the games that fall through the cracks, the ones that really do go beyond being just a game and are actually pieces of art. Madden 200X will never be a piece of art...so quit wasting our time reviewing it...they've got enough advertising already as it is! What makes a game art has been discussed numerous time on
Still at the end of the day, Ebert needs to point the finger at his own industry first... all the entertainment mediums are going to shit right now, and probably due to people being more concerned with hype and sales rather than artistic merit.
</rant>
The problem isn't with gaming as an artistic medium like Ebert suggests, it's with almost all media made today. Nobody cares about artistic merit anymore...all people really care about is sales, including consumers...most people won't go see a movie if it's doing poorly at the box office, or won't listen/buy a CD unless it's already in the Billboard top 200. Sure there are a few of us who care, but the vast majority don't...and that's the real problem.
Thus why I don't pay any MMOs ;)
Yes, in a completely free society, people can do whatever they want. Only problem is that in reality you need to make sure these people or companies doing whatever they like are not hurting any one else. When you have control of over 90% of the market, you're gonna have to make some ammends for it. Is it even Microsoft's fault? Well yes....yes it is. Can you play any modern, open formats in windows media player out of the box? No.... Mpeg/MP3 just don't cut it anymore...and if they aren't computer literate enough to install new codecs they'll ever watch/listen to are going to be Mpeg stuff or Windows Media stuff.... The content providers are just as much to blame though. If more places would release their content in open formats only then market demand would force MS to include support for them. It's slowly starting to happen in the browser realm, but how long will it take for a real backlash to ensue over media formats? A big enough one for Microsoft to care that is...
I've been telling people this for years....Apple's no better than Microsoft. They're both massive corporations...they both only care about their bottom line.
Windows without a media player and internet explorer solves nothing...hell, even Gnome comes with a built in media player and browser now. Just as the grandparent said, the real problem is the file formats. If WMP played all the open (ie...no charge to Microsoft besides implementing them) file formats right off the bat, and wasn't so obsessed with spreading WMA/V, then it wouldn't be as big a deal. The problem is that since so many Windows users never install new codecs or new players, all they can play besides windows media files are mpeg and other old standards. So now all the media providers encode everything in WMA/V so they don't have to explain to these people how to install codecs and such. But then non windows users, are screwed because they can not legaly play MS's proprietary formats. Quicktime/iTunes is no better either.... IE's the same thing, if they ditched ActiveX and fully supported real standards, then it wouldn't be as big a problem. The bottom line is that their little differences from the W3C standards and use of "windows media" files help them to lock people into their operating system, and that's the whole reason for the anti-trust cases.
It may not be the best business move...but perhaps it would be better morally? If people had to pay more for playing the game excessively maybe we wouldn't see as many people getting addicted to MMOs. When they see...damn, I play $100 worth of game time this past month maybe they'll think, "Damn...I need to cut back."
;)
I too have always wished they offered a "metered" pay version as well as I would probably play no more than 10 hours a week, if that even...so I can barely justify paying $10 a month, let alone the regular $12-15.
Perhaps the best solution would be to just offer both
You ain't joking there..... If you've ever refreshed Slashdot after reading it less than 5 minutes ago, you've got a problem ;)
You can also buy music from stores that sell their music in DRM-Free MP3 and Ogg formats like AudioLunchbox, Mindawn, or MP3Tunes ;)
As while I see your point, survival is very important, it's going to end up hurting future companies. The bigger these companies and their budgets swell, the harder it is going to be for any new companies to even have a shot against these juggernauts. Then again, it may be for the best in the long run as all these uber-developers start churning out more and more cookie cutter crap as the trends are already starting to show ;)
I don't think it's very good. If Take-two wants to regularly invest (and thus) profit off the games Firaxis makes, then that's fine. If they want to sign an agreement for them to do a certain number of games this way...that's fine. But, there's no reason for all these publishers to keep gobbling up all the developers. We're gonna get to a point where there are very few companies that autonomously create games, and thus less innovation I'm afraid.
oops, can't should have been can... :P
I have been running a GeForce 5200 for about the last 2 years or so myself... I can't play Doom3 just fine (avg 25fps, all shaders on, 1024x768, no AA though) ;)
Far Cry is the only game that's ever given me trouble on it.
Actually, the real first intentions for Penny Arcade was to submit two sample strips to Next Generation (or perhaps it was different mag?), then when they didn't win the contest, they decided to keep making strips and that's when Loonygames started hosting them. I've been reading PA since their 4th strip was ever released ;)
I doubt they'll go that far... They just want it to look like their system is sooooo popular that everyone sold out of it the first day. This is no different than the bullsh*t Sony pulled when they released the PS2. Shortages my ass...