"Same with Quake 3 Arena: just ditched the single-player entirely, and did very well."
Except umm you're wrong! The opposite is actually true, this is why Quake 4 had singleplayer again. iD even publicly stated the numbers for Quake 3 were not as great for previous games. Some games like counterstrike get away with it, but take a look at the flop called Demigod. Or the online #'s for Supreme commander 1 + 2, there multiplayer turnout was no more then 10%.
"Sure classical HDD will soon reach 5TB but do we need always more space ?"
Yes. Games are between 15-25GB today and getting larger, that's roughly 5 Games per 100GB. The amount of video content both raw (DVD/Blu-ray) and compressed is growing in size as higher resolutions become available. As storage grows applications eventually take advantage.
No doubt about it, my real point is that human beings don't care about logical inconsistencies in their views. The human mind is pathetically bad at being clear in it's own thinking at all levels everyday. It takes effort to bring clarity to the murkiness of ones own thoughts.
When one speaks of the concept of god one is speaking of specific instances of that particular concept defined by human beings.
I already know about the omnipotence and failure paradox, if you are omnipotent you cannot fail by definition in your intent.
"Atheists often think that Christian == fundamentalist, which simply isn't true"
Except liberal christianity is not christianity at all, without sin there is no death, and no purpose to christianity. Therefore atheists never take non-fundamentalists seriously since they are essentially non christians by the bibles own standards.
Romans 5:12 -- Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned--
In an evolutionary world, sin doesn't exist, hence christ has no purpose hence Christianity is false. Period
It's not that there is "no skill" it's that console games have dumbed down the FPS genre, PC gamers get pissed because they get lazy ports no development effort goes into tailoring the experience for the PC. Compare Battlefield 2 vs ANY fps on the console and you'll know what I mean.
"However the problem is that it's really hard to tell if that first game will be successful, that's where all the other developers come in, even though the majority of innovative developers will go bankrupt a number of them will find new and interesting game mechanics that the business developers will use to make better games, if noone did that the game industry as a whole would be worse off."
I agree with some of what you say no doubt about it, but the real issue is game developers have created more work and more cost because of their technolust. This means they lack business sense. It's not "just making money" it's - the lack of asking hard questions like - is what we're doing going to make the game better vs the time invested? Most of the gaming market today focuses on graphics and that is where the majority of their costs come from so too much money is spent developing shallow forgettable games that don't last. Can anyone really name a game in the last 5 years that has the gameplay staying power of civilization? Probably not.
The game industries model is fundamentally broken. You have console companies forcing new hardware products out the door in order to create pseudo-monopolies. The PS2 had a very long lifespan and decent chunk of good games on inferior hardware to the xbox and Gamecube. The lesson was not learned though - that costs matter game quality matter. Much of the PS2's game library was utter garbage, the real issue is that many developers simply have made their costs so high in certain aspects of development, not enough money goes into the meat and potatoes of the game.
I'd say right now gaming as a whole is pretty mediocre and it's going to take decades to trim development costs to a point where they can focus on gameplay again.
We're seeing really high quality graphics but shallow games. Transformers : War for cybertron comes to mind, a game that could have been been a true classic but didn't bake long enough in development, so it just ended up feeling like a gears of war reskin minus gears fully implemented cover system.
"The problem is, I'm not convinced that the prediction is actually wrong, and this article despite what it says, seems to fail to demonstrate that."
Unfortunately for you, not being a PC gamer never noticed that the game quality of many PC developers games declined. Epic's unreal 3 was not better then UT2004 and they had the balls to complain about sales when they had been releasing the same game for years on end. There is something called franchise fatigue. With Unreal 3 they moved to consoles and released gears and then had the nerve to blame the lack of sales on piracy? Many game developers and publishers are run by incredibly inane and stupid people.
To put it another way - if you can't compete on the PC you go to console where anyone will buy your pap. Many console games have been getting worse over time. I used to buy and play final fantasy series religiously but over time they kept taking more and more of the fun aspects out of it and just making it all cinema and flash.
The real issue is the game industries technolust drove their costs for development up. Game developers business sense is almost non existent. Look at the lack of market research by Psychonauts developer or Planescape torment. Both of these developers wanted to blame gamers for why their games were flops, the truth is they were developing "art" games - games for themselves rather then what gamers wanted.
Being a game developer means that you're developing games _for others_ not for yourself, and too many developers never get this through their heads and wonder why they are such failures at the business end.
"This business model reduces their profession to amateur hour"
All professionals begin as amateurs remember this please, do we tell our kids to give up when just starting a journey to develop skills? Professionals tend to over-rate the value of what they produce, we all know how "professional" many people are in their respective industry when you are actually working - that is not very. Take a look at the game industry - cutting corners reducing the value of their products while whining about piracy.
The truth is most people are self-obsessed idiots who over-estimate their worth.
... the cost of 20PK of 25GB discs (500GB) is the same as a 750GB-1GB hard disk, with 2TB hard disks going for $99. The media for blu-ray is not cost competitive with hard disks any longer they better hurry up since by the time blu-ray discs become cost competitive so hard disks no longer offer more bang for the buck there will be new Hard drives out.
I still think after a certain point persistence and hardwork matter more then raw potential. A genius that doesn't apply himself will won't get very far.
He likes to toot his own horn about his own IQ but if you look at how he lived his life, he hasn't really applied himself. Also the excuse he comes up with for what he didn't do seems like a cop out.
If you look at most great and accomplished people, they were truly absorbed in what they did and many were work-a-holics.
Assassin's creed is Prince of persia in different clothing with some modifications, AC1 was horrible. AC2 was what AC1 should have been. But AC and PoP have a lot of cross over.
Re:Kids need people, not robots
on
Teaching With Robots
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"Kids need people, not robots"
Going by apathy and inherent degeneracy of of many people today... most people are robots in one way or another - robots of ideology, political robots, robots of all types in society. Human beings are just "robots" made of meat. That may sound insulting but consider how poor most human thinking is on the whole and how long we've taken to even have progress in the most basic tasks of getting along with one another.
Quite frankly human beings over-estimate their importance in the large scheme of things, human beings have had millions of years to solve some of the most basic of problems that many of the good nerds(tm) on slashdot know of of not being prejudiced towards others and understanding the importance of subconscious biological processes that determine peoples fates, what they can perceive and even think about. Once you get deep into neurological science and biology of the nervous system you start to really develop a deep appreciation of how little human beings are in control of themselves and how automatic and "robotic", mindless and predictable a lot of their behavior really is.
"there's no practical difference between 24 fps and 60 fps"
Except you are incorrect, in computer terms _there is_ a practical difference _the amount of detail that can be rendered will be faster on a 60fps card. This is what FPS really is measuring. It's an abstraction to be able to render more detail at a decent clip.
And it's not framerate so much that matters as it is the _minimum_ fps at a level or games most taxing points for a video card.
I don't buy that for a second, I think google's problem is underestimating the $ required to actually _do anything_ suggested by the 150,000+ people that makes those things they suggested worthwhile.
What I mean is are casual gamers a consistent and reliable revenue stream for gaming companies? This is what I mean by people being *invested* and interested enough in games that they will actually *spend money* on them. It's one thing for casual gamers and former hardcore gamers as adults that they want games x/y/z it's another thing if they rent them and don't consistently pay for them (on release) and wait until they are bargain bin titles. That's what it comes down to in the end.
But what you just said basically means these people are effectively _non gamers_. They've "grown out" of games and have *more important* things to be involved in. My whole point revolves around the level of involvement.
I don't think just because you play games x period of time means your "hardcore", you can play only one game (wow) a lot and that doesn't make you "hardcore" IMHO since your gaming breadth is nill.
The GP basically is saying he's lost interest in videogames, which is the whole point - you're not invested enough to make the commitment therefore one wonders if one could even qualify as a "gamer" at that level of involvement and whether there is solid long term revenue stream for gaming companies from such people.
"As someone who used to be hardcore into ID Software FPS titles"
But this statement is proof you are already invested in games themselves, you are still invested. Technically you aren't a casual gamer because you're invested already in games.
By invested in games I mean *interested enough* that it would take a lot to make your interest in games peter out.
No, it's not going to be a repeat of 1983 but I think what they are going to find over the long term is that casual gamers aren't invested in *gaming* as a whole and after they've had their fun are going to find something else to do. I don't really think anyone keep the casual market long term it remains to be seen if current Wii owners that are primarily "casuals" and effectively non gamers for instance will want to buy wii 2.
... casual gamers just aren't that interested in gaming to begin with? There doesn't need to be more "intermediate" games where casuals "graduate up" the gaming ladder. The truth is you are either invested in games or you are not, period.
Quite frankly I see this whole casual craze as a bubble that's going to pop.
... because there are so many other alternatives to tracking users and users being too stupid to know about them. i.e. flash. There are all sorts of ways of figuring out who is browsing which, you should look at the number of you're loading data from/sending data to with noscript on. Data degradation would not do anything to stop techniques and companies who collect the same or more data under the radar through "legitimate" means.
"Assuming they are properly labeled. Unfortunately, the free market only works in a 100% informed populace that can weigh the costs and benefits"
What you're ignoring is the cost to weight this information, it's simply mathematically impossible for people to way information about every product that exists today, not only that but manufacturing for many products is often extremely complicated network of products that no one could ever keep informed about.
There is also the problem that many companies do their damndest to have control of the government and legal system because they _don't_ want customers to be informed. Ignorance and vice is VERY profitable and you can be certain we'd here fud out of any industry who was having a negative effect on people of it is going to hurt their profits.
Slashdot Mirror
"Same with Quake 3 Arena: just ditched the single-player entirely, and did very well."
Except umm you're wrong! The opposite is actually true, this is why Quake 4 had singleplayer again. iD even publicly stated the numbers for Quake 3 were not as great for previous games. Some games like counterstrike get away with it, but take a look at the flop called Demigod. Or the online #'s for Supreme commander 1 + 2, there multiplayer turnout was no more then 10%.
"Sure classical HDD will soon reach 5TB but do we need always more space ?"
Yes. Games are between 15-25GB today and getting larger, that's roughly 5 Games per 100GB. The amount of video content both raw (DVD/Blu-ray) and compressed is growing in size as higher resolutions become available. As storage grows applications eventually take advantage.
No doubt about it, my real point is that human beings don't care about logical inconsistencies in their views. The human mind is pathetically bad at being clear in it's own thinking at all levels everyday. It takes effort to bring clarity to the murkiness of ones own thoughts.
When one speaks of the concept of god one is speaking of specific instances of that particular concept defined by human beings.
I already know about the omnipotence and failure paradox, if you are omnipotent you cannot fail by definition in your intent.
"Atheists often think that Christian == fundamentalist, which simply isn't true"
Except liberal christianity is not christianity at all, without sin there is no death, and no purpose to christianity. Therefore atheists never take non-fundamentalists seriously since they are essentially non christians by the bibles own standards.
Romans 5:12 -- Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned--
In an evolutionary world, sin doesn't exist, hence christ has no purpose hence Christianity is false. Period
"little-to-no skill involved in console shooters"
It's not that there is "no skill" it's that console games have dumbed down the FPS genre, PC gamers get pissed because they get lazy ports no development effort goes into tailoring the experience for the PC. Compare Battlefield 2 vs ANY fps on the console and you'll know what I mean.
Canada
http://www.pricecanada.com/p.php/Seagate-Barracuda-720012-2TB-SATA2-32MB-ST32000542AS-611652/
US
http://www.ncixus.com/hotdeals/
"However the problem is that it's really hard to tell if that first game will be successful, that's where all the other developers come in, even though the majority of innovative developers will go bankrupt a number of them will find new and interesting game mechanics that the business developers will use to make better games, if noone did that the game industry as a whole would be worse off."
I agree with some of what you say no doubt about it, but the real issue is game developers have created more work and more cost because of their technolust. This means they lack business sense. It's not "just making money" it's - the lack of asking hard questions like - is what we're doing going to make the game better vs the time invested? Most of the gaming market today focuses on graphics and that is where the majority of their costs come from so too much money is spent developing shallow forgettable games that don't last. Can anyone really name a game in the last 5 years that has the gameplay staying power of civilization? Probably not.
The game industries model is fundamentally broken. You have console companies forcing new hardware products out the door in order to create pseudo-monopolies. The PS2 had a very long lifespan and decent chunk of good games on inferior hardware to the xbox and Gamecube. The lesson was not learned though - that costs matter game quality matter. Much of the PS2's game library was utter garbage, the real issue is that many developers simply have made their costs so high in certain aspects of development, not enough money goes into the meat and potatoes of the game.
I'd say right now gaming as a whole is pretty mediocre and it's going to take decades to trim development costs to a point where they can focus on gameplay again.
We're seeing really high quality graphics but shallow games. Transformers : War for cybertron comes to mind, a game that could have been been a true classic but didn't bake long enough in development, so it just ended up feeling like a gears of war reskin minus gears fully implemented cover system.
"The problem is, I'm not convinced that the prediction is actually wrong, and this article despite what it says, seems to fail to demonstrate that."
Unfortunately for you, not being a PC gamer never noticed that the game quality of many PC developers games declined. Epic's unreal 3 was not better then UT2004 and they had the balls to complain about sales when they had been releasing the same game for years on end. There is something called franchise fatigue. With Unreal 3 they moved to consoles and released gears and then had the nerve to blame the lack of sales on piracy? Many game developers and publishers are run by incredibly inane and stupid people.
To put it another way - if you can't compete on the PC you go to console where anyone will buy your pap. Many console games have been getting worse over time. I used to buy and play final fantasy series religiously but over time they kept taking more and more of the fun aspects out of it and just making it all cinema and flash.
The real issue is the game industries technolust drove their costs for development up. Game developers business sense is almost non existent. Look at the lack of market research by Psychonauts developer or Planescape torment. Both of these developers wanted to blame gamers for why their games were flops, the truth is they were developing "art" games - games for themselves rather then what gamers wanted.
Being a game developer means that you're developing games _for others_ not for yourself, and too many developers never get this through their heads and wonder why they are such failures at the business end.
"This business model reduces their profession to amateur hour"
All professionals begin as amateurs remember this please, do we tell our kids to give up when just starting a journey to develop skills? Professionals tend to over-rate the value of what they produce, we all know how "professional" many people are in their respective industry when you are actually working - that is not very. Take a look at the game industry - cutting corners reducing the value of their products while whining about piracy.
The truth is most people are self-obsessed idiots who over-estimate their worth.
... the cost of 20PK of 25GB discs (500GB) is the same as a 750GB-1GB hard disk, with 2TB hard disks going for $99. The media for blu-ray is not cost competitive with hard disks any longer they better hurry up since by the time blu-ray discs become cost competitive so hard disks no longer offer more bang for the buck there will be new Hard drives out.
I still think after a certain point persistence and hardwork matter more then raw potential. A genius that doesn't apply himself will won't get very far.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ak5Lr3qkW0
He likes to toot his own horn about his own IQ but if you look at how he lived his life, he hasn't really applied himself. Also the excuse he comes up with for what he didn't do seems like a cop out.
If you look at most great and accomplished people, they were truly absorbed in what they did and many were work-a-holics.
... the only thing WoW teaches anybody is to learn how to waste money on a game that's less of a game then single player RPG's of years past.
Assassin's creed is Prince of persia in different clothing with some modifications, AC1 was horrible. AC2 was what AC1 should have been. But AC and PoP have a lot of cross over.
"Kids need people, not robots"
Going by apathy and inherent degeneracy of of many people today... most people are robots in one way or another - robots of ideology, political robots, robots of all types in society. Human beings are just "robots" made of meat. That may sound insulting but consider how poor most human thinking is on the whole and how long we've taken to even have progress in the most basic tasks of getting along with one another.
Quite frankly human beings over-estimate their importance in the large scheme of things, human beings have had millions of years to solve some of the most basic of problems that many of the good nerds(tm) on slashdot know of of not being prejudiced towards others and understanding the importance of subconscious biological processes that determine peoples fates, what they can perceive and even think about. Once you get deep into neurological science and biology of the nervous system you start to really develop a deep appreciation of how little human beings are in control of themselves and how automatic and "robotic", mindless and predictable a lot of their behavior really is.
"there's no practical difference between 24 fps and 60 fps"
Except you are incorrect, in computer terms _there is_ a practical difference _the amount of detail that can be rendered will be faster on a 60fps card. This is what FPS really is measuring. It's an abstraction to be able to render more detail at a decent clip.
And it's not framerate so much that matters as it is the _minimum_ fps at a level or games most taxing points for a video card.
I don't buy that for a second, I think google's problem is underestimating the $ required to actually _do anything_ suggested by the 150,000+ people that makes those things they suggested worthwhile.
What I mean is are casual gamers a consistent and reliable revenue stream for gaming companies? This is what I mean by people being *invested* and interested enough in games that they will actually *spend money* on them. It's one thing for casual gamers and former hardcore gamers as adults that they want games x/y/z it's another thing if they rent them and don't consistently pay for them (on release) and wait until they are bargain bin titles. That's what it comes down to in the end.
But what you just said basically means these people are effectively _non gamers_. They've "grown out" of games and have *more important* things to be involved in. My whole point revolves around the level of involvement.
I don't think just because you play games x period of time means your "hardcore", you can play only one game (wow) a lot and that doesn't make you "hardcore" IMHO since your gaming breadth is nill.
The GP basically is saying he's lost interest in videogames, which is the whole point - you're not invested enough to make the commitment therefore one wonders if one could even qualify as a "gamer" at that level of involvement and whether there is solid long term revenue stream for gaming companies from such people.
"Geeks often dismiss new technologies."
You mean like the Sega CD, the 32X, the SNES Zapper, the power glove, virtual boy and R.O.B.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.O.B.
Not all technologies pan out. The Virtual boy was 3D and the original Gameboy was a black and white lcd.
"As someone who used to be hardcore into ID Software FPS titles"
But this statement is proof you are already invested in games themselves, you are still invested. Technically you aren't a casual gamer because you're invested already in games.
By invested in games I mean *interested enough* that it would take a lot to make your interest in games peter out.
"Repeat of 1983?"
No, it's not going to be a repeat of 1983 but I think what they are going to find over the long term is that casual gamers aren't invested in *gaming* as a whole and after they've had their fun are going to find something else to do. I don't really think anyone keep the casual market long term it remains to be seen if current Wii owners that are primarily "casuals" and effectively non gamers for instance will want to buy wii 2.
" Study after study show that using technology often hurts, instead of helps, student performance"
I believe this has to do with the lack of GOOD quality education software. Check this out for instance... we desperately need more projects like this.
http://www.fas.org/immuneattack/
... casual gamers just aren't that interested in gaming to begin with? There doesn't need to be more "intermediate" games where casuals "graduate up" the gaming ladder. The truth is you are either invested in games or you are not, period.
Quite frankly I see this whole casual craze as a bubble that's going to pop.
... because there are so many other alternatives to tracking users and users being too stupid to know about them. i.e. flash. There are all sorts of ways of figuring out who is browsing which, you should look at the number of you're loading data from/sending data to with noscript on. Data degradation would not do anything to stop techniques and companies who collect the same or more data under the radar through "legitimate" means.
"Assuming they are properly labeled. Unfortunately, the free market only works in a 100% informed populace that can weigh the costs and benefits"
What you're ignoring is the cost to weight this information, it's simply mathematically impossible for people to way information about every product that exists today, not only that but manufacturing for many products is often extremely complicated network of products that no one could ever keep informed about.
There is also the problem that many companies do their damndest to have control of the government and legal system because they _don't_ want customers to be informed. Ignorance and vice is VERY profitable and you can be certain we'd here fud out of any industry who was having a negative effect on people of it is going to hurt their profits.