Except that some pretty good ideas came from Robotech/Macross/Star Trek (generalization). In other words, some fantastic ideas are put forth in sci-fi. Those fantastic ideas spurn imagination. Imagination spurns dreams to research to creating. And then... we have actual tri-corder like devices or push button intercoms or robotic appendages or cutaneous injections or wristwatch communicators (with video). Sure, some of the ideas put forth in sci-fi are impractical as described like a wristwatch with a video communicator... but we do have iPhones and Android devices with the ability to do videochat.
I do agree with your sentiment, though. After you've got some imagination, some ideas, put down the playthings and be productive.
First of all "videogames" is now a synonym for "FPS". ... If you carefully and methodically fold yourself into a tiny boring little cardboard box, don't act all insightful at the observation a decade or two later that you're now really bored and surrounded by tasteless cardboard.
Um, yeah, about that cardboard box. I'm a computer gamer, so my range of "videogames" is far larger than FPS, which include RTS, MMO RTS, RPG, MMO RPG, MMO FPS, action games, sports games, simulator games (Ars Technica had a good article series on this recently), and a bunch of other genre and cross genre types.
But even if you take a look at the console system and the landscape of games there that would be considered by a majority of people as "videogames", sure you have a lot of FPS titles, but I also see games like Oblivion (RPG), World of Warcraft (MMO RPG), Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, racing games, flight games, sports games, etc. To say that "videogames" is synonymous for "FPS" paints you into the box, or you need to get out and find more friends and acquaintances. Heck, to me, a FPS like Team Fortress 2 is a casual game, because I can pick it up for an hour and put it down again
And more for this point of a good story. A game like Half-Life has a decent story line, but you are roped into following a defined path. You're at A, you need to get to B (the actual path between these points may have several different lines). However, Valve does a good job at the mix between story telling and letting you be the character. A good story line will allow developers to create tangential story lines as one off games while the next "book" in the series is being created (HL: Blue Shift, et al).
I think a good role playing game should allow a more free flow gameplay, but still need a decent story to engage the player. The Elder Scrolls series, Morrowind and Oblivion, are good examples. I've heard Neverwinter Nights 2 was far better than the first (I'm just bummed I missed it at $6.99 during the Steam Summer Sale). And, certainly, MMOs allow all sorts of freedom to do whatever - in that, there really doesn't need to be much of a story because the character player can create their own. And, yet, there is still a storyline in most MMOs.
Heck, even a game like Need for Speed 2: Underground roped you into a story-line that one didn't necessarily have to follow (okay, I'm stretching there). Granted, you need to follow the story enough to unlock the better parts and cars, but sometimes I'll just kick on that game to have a wreckless dash around the city at high rates of speed through heavy traffic that I know would be burning up gas faster than a wallet could handle.
That's what wholesaling is all about... Do you really think that Amazon produces the stuff they sell, do you think they even sell all the items listed on their pages? No, they have a large number of B&M stores and other small businesses pushing their wares through the Amazon store. There is nothing wrong with that (and is actually a decent way, with the right product, to get a small business off the ground.) My little venture failed - as do most little ventures. Did I consider Borders or B&N? Nope, they wouldn't have carried my product. Did I consider other places? Sure did - craigslist turned out to be the best method for my situation.
Sure, you get net, but when the net price to the publisher is I tried to sell some different items. Both eBay and Amazon had a huge take in the line of item I was selling (17+%). I couldn't compete with the other sellers as they were offering free shipping and pricing $10 below what I even purchased these items in bulk. (Yep, I was stuck with a lot of product after that little venture.) If I really wanted to dump the items, I'd have to take serious losses. (I ended up holding on to the items, selling them locally, slowly, and only ended up with some loss, not huge loss.)
5. From a more casual consumer point of view, the features aren't that great. The camera is at a crappy 3MP and the resulting images are blocky to smeared.
6. The screen is smaller and there is only the physical keyboard. On the plus side, it is a smaller device than an iOS or Android phone. Still, I'd rather have the screen size.
I don't have to do the battery pull trick too, often, but it does happen. My screen, within the first week, got smudges on the underside of the plastic. How that happened, I don't know, and I tried cleaning it to no avail. The latest OS for my blackberry (Curve 8530) seems to have sped things up, reduced battery pull lock ups, etc.
Only reason I went with Blackberry? Cost. When getting my current plan, the BB was $50 and the Android phones available were in the $150+ range and didn't impress me with features. (I'll never own anything made by Apple.) The next time around - costs be damned, I'm getting an Android phone.
I agree that the mother over reacted by calling the police. Marching up to the guy and giving a major scolding is more likely effective. If he then tried to kiss me, a good decking and then call the police.
But seriously? A sustained hack attack against your neighbors because they confused your cultural greeting with pedophilia - especially retaliating in such a way that will mark you as a pedophile is not very smart at all.
Sadly, I agree. EA has had a large number of buy-out failures - that is, they buy a successful games maker with proven franchises, then release expected sequels to pitiful reviews and purchases. Granted, most of your examples was also during the whole "Letter from EA employee's wives" episode. EA took major hits from that. It seems that recently, they've been trying to reverse that culture and/or their public face about employee mistreatment and games that just don't shine.
Oh sure - I post this comment in the two articles that don't make the front page. Well, here it is anyway:
This is a harsh jump, especially for this long time subscriber. I remember when they went from $9.99 to $7.99 for single disk renters. They threw on the streaming for free. Only recently they jumped back up to $9.99. These are nice easy steps. For reference, I don't like paying over $13 for an MMO monthly registration (Everquest, World of Warcraft) and this Netflix cost jump is not insignificant - it's a 60% increase in cost!
I imagine their disk mailers will be virtually non-existent. I know I will be dropping that service. My kids are enjoying the streaming videos too much that I would not get away from dropping that service. They watch an untold number of hours watching the children's shows (educational types and other fun stuff). But I appreciated having the disks of movies that hadn't quite made it to the streaming list.
Perhaps they are trying to send a message to the MPAA studios? Are the studios trying to twist Netflix' arm? What is going on in the industry? I know who is going to get hurt from this: The US Postal Service! I would say it is also the subscribers, but the extra features are stripped from rental DVDs now - so there is very little difference between the streaming and a physical disk.
Question for Netflix: What is the rental rate on BluRay disks? How bad is it for BD? I don't own a BD system and likely never will. If I did own BluRay, that would be my only reason for hanging on to the mailer.
Gold farmers who sell for actual cash would like to disagree. To you and I, their profit per hour may not be that great, but it's what they choose to do with their game (if they can get away with it.)
And, for those technically able to do so:
1. Own domain - $10/year
2. Setup IMAP mail server in a headless virtual machine - $0 (add time commitment)
3....
4. Profit.
The obvious point is obvious. If the company is in such desperate need if his services to spend $300 on a 30 minute phone call, then they must think it is serious enough he should be contacted. In such case, he would welcome the call (and probably be quite surprised by it.)
I'll be surprised if the PlayStation franchise lasts for 2 more years under current conditions. The recent hacking that showed how lax they were with security and the continual trying to mess with the customer is going to wear them down.
The problem with "longer online lifespan" is that there are some companies who do not want their games to have a long shelf life. They would rather you go out and buy MAJOR SPORTS FRANCHISE 20XX, etc. Now, I'm not limiting this to sports franchises, Need For Speed Underground 2 is a game I thoroughly enjoyed. But once I finished it, the replay value was in configuring new cars to go up against the same AI opponents (which either cheat or are too easy to beat) - not terribly exciting. Yes, there was an online component to the game, but finding players is difficult. Getting fresh content meant purchasing Need For Speed Shift (or whatever the next game was) - there was no online modding community to give us more tracks or to expand on the existing terrain.
With the current business models as they are, most companies see games like Half-Life a detriment, because mods like Counter-Strike, which are released for free do not have recurring payments (except for generating more sales, but those are one time purchases.) Of course, Valve has figured out people like hats for Team Fortress 2 and are able to keep a steady supply of income from microtransactions.
My wife and I discussed the issue of trying to harness power from lightning (having recently watched an episode about lightning). Of the various problems I mentioned, energy storage was one of them.
Yep - that's the same for me, too. Since I'm still a Linux newb, it's "figure out how to purge Evolution and Empathy, figure out how to integrate Thunderbird".
I agree. I think BB may be going the way of Palm. Palm had a great product and I loved being able to 1-stroke write my letters. They then split their software and hardware divisions and lost Grafitti. Grafitti 2 was atrocious (why they thought 2-stroke writing is easier than 1-stroke...)
In any case, I see a similar thing happening with BB. They are focusing on hardware and forgetting to upgrade/update the software to be more developer friendly. But even on the hardware side, there is very little exciting about it. The camera is 2MP, not 3 or 4 like Android or iPhone phones. There is not as much internal memory. At least you can replace the battery and swap micro-SD cards.
No, the NBA was looking for its next Wilt Chamberlain or Dr. J and instead got Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. The NBA didn't have to wait long before a type of Dr. J replacement came along in Michael Jordan. After Jordan, the league was trying to find its next Jordan. It is still looking, but in that time it got Shaq and a host of other wannabees.
In the NFL, they had Johnny Unitas and Roger Staubach, but even for them they didn't have to wait long to find their replacement of superstar QBs, but none of them were ever Johnny U or Staubach.
The next Bill Gates won't be Bill Gates. It might be the team of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It might be Zuckerberg. It could have been Linus Torvalds. But none of these are Bill Gates. Even going behind Microsoft, Microsoft isn't IBM. IBM isn't Ford or any of the other massive corporations of the late 1800s or early 1900s. But all of these are powerhouses in their own right and time.
I can see how the Hammer editor is cumbersome or missing a feature or two in places, but I seem to do pretty well building my future "dream" houses and walking around in it. Are there other, better solutions to use than the Hammer editor for Source games? (I am curious as to what they may update with this release.)
They recently announced that Portal 2 hit sales of 3 million units. At $49.99 a pop, that only gives them $150 million in just a few months time. I think that'll float their boat for awhile.
I wonder if they're sort of feeling sorry for selling a 10 hour game for such a high price. (Mind you, it is a very worthy game and fairly evenly paced - once you start thinking, what?! another test room? they move you out of it.)
Slashdot Mirror
Which is why Google+ has a flood of subscribers. They make what we really want to do easy.
Apparently, all Gmail users are now able to use Google+. They'll need to activate that service, though.
Except that some pretty good ideas came from Robotech/Macross/Star Trek (generalization). In other words, some fantastic ideas are put forth in sci-fi. Those fantastic ideas spurn imagination. Imagination spurns dreams to research to creating. And then... we have actual tri-corder like devices or push button intercoms or robotic appendages or cutaneous injections or wristwatch communicators (with video). Sure, some of the ideas put forth in sci-fi are impractical as described like a wristwatch with a video communicator... but we do have iPhones and Android devices with the ability to do videochat.
I do agree with your sentiment, though. After you've got some imagination, some ideas, put down the playthings and be productive.
By these definitions, I can definitively prove that your great-great grandparents never existed.
First of all "videogames" is now a synonym for "FPS".
...
If you carefully and methodically fold yourself into a tiny boring little cardboard box, don't act all insightful at the observation a decade or two later that you're now really bored and surrounded by tasteless cardboard.
Um, yeah, about that cardboard box. I'm a computer gamer, so my range of "videogames" is far larger than FPS, which include RTS, MMO RTS, RPG, MMO RPG, MMO FPS, action games, sports games, simulator games (Ars Technica had a good article series on this recently), and a bunch of other genre and cross genre types.
But even if you take a look at the console system and the landscape of games there that would be considered by a majority of people as "videogames", sure you have a lot of FPS titles, but I also see games like Oblivion (RPG), World of Warcraft (MMO RPG), Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, racing games, flight games, sports games, etc. To say that "videogames" is synonymous for "FPS" paints you into the box, or you need to get out and find more friends and acquaintances. Heck, to me, a FPS like Team Fortress 2 is a casual game, because I can pick it up for an hour and put it down again
And more for this point of a good story. A game like Half-Life has a decent story line, but you are roped into following a defined path. You're at A, you need to get to B (the actual path between these points may have several different lines). However, Valve does a good job at the mix between story telling and letting you be the character. A good story line will allow developers to create tangential story lines as one off games while the next "book" in the series is being created (HL: Blue Shift, et al).
I think a good role playing game should allow a more free flow gameplay, but still need a decent story to engage the player. The Elder Scrolls series, Morrowind and Oblivion, are good examples. I've heard Neverwinter Nights 2 was far better than the first (I'm just bummed I missed it at $6.99 during the Steam Summer Sale). And, certainly, MMOs allow all sorts of freedom to do whatever - in that, there really doesn't need to be much of a story because the character player can create their own. And, yet, there is still a storyline in most MMOs.
Heck, even a game like Need for Speed 2: Underground roped you into a story-line that one didn't necessarily have to follow (okay, I'm stretching there). Granted, you need to follow the story enough to unlock the better parts and cars, but sometimes I'll just kick on that game to have a wreckless dash around the city at high rates of speed through heavy traffic that I know would be burning up gas faster than a wallet could handle.
That's what wholesaling is all about... Do you really think that Amazon produces the stuff they sell, do you think they even sell all the items listed on their pages? No, they have a large number of B&M stores and other small businesses pushing their wares through the Amazon store. There is nothing wrong with that (and is actually a decent way, with the right product, to get a small business off the ground.) My little venture failed - as do most little ventures. Did I consider Borders or B&N? Nope, they wouldn't have carried my product. Did I consider other places? Sure did - craigslist turned out to be the best method for my situation.
Sure, you get net, but when the net price to the publisher is
I tried to sell some different items. Both eBay and Amazon had a huge take in the line of item I was selling (17+%). I couldn't compete with the other sellers as they were offering free shipping and pricing $10 below what I even purchased these items in bulk. (Yep, I was stuck with a lot of product after that little venture.) If I really wanted to dump the items, I'd have to take serious losses. (I ended up holding on to the items, selling them locally, slowly, and only ended up with some loss, not huge loss.)
5. From a more casual consumer point of view, the features aren't that great. The camera is at a crappy 3MP and the resulting images are blocky to smeared.
6. The screen is smaller and there is only the physical keyboard. On the plus side, it is a smaller device than an iOS or Android phone. Still, I'd rather have the screen size.
I don't have to do the battery pull trick too, often, but it does happen. My screen, within the first week, got smudges on the underside of the plastic. How that happened, I don't know, and I tried cleaning it to no avail. The latest OS for my blackberry (Curve 8530) seems to have sped things up, reduced battery pull lock ups, etc. Only reason I went with Blackberry? Cost. When getting my current plan, the BB was $50 and the Android phones available were in the $150+ range and didn't impress me with features. (I'll never own anything made by Apple.) The next time around - costs be damned, I'm getting an Android phone.
I agree that the mother over reacted by calling the police. Marching up to the guy and giving a major scolding is more likely effective. If he then tried to kiss me, a good decking and then call the police. But seriously? A sustained hack attack against your neighbors because they confused your cultural greeting with pedophilia - especially retaliating in such a way that will mark you as a pedophile is not very smart at all.
Sadly, I agree. EA has had a large number of buy-out failures - that is, they buy a successful games maker with proven franchises, then release expected sequels to pitiful reviews and purchases. Granted, most of your examples was also during the whole "Letter from EA employee's wives" episode. EA took major hits from that. It seems that recently, they've been trying to reverse that culture and/or their public face about employee mistreatment and games that just don't shine.
Oh sure - I post this comment in the two articles that don't make the front page. Well, here it is anyway:
This is a harsh jump, especially for this long time subscriber. I remember when they went from $9.99 to $7.99 for single disk renters. They threw on the streaming for free. Only recently they jumped back up to $9.99. These are nice easy steps. For reference, I don't like paying over $13 for an MMO monthly registration (Everquest, World of Warcraft) and this Netflix cost jump is not insignificant - it's a 60% increase in cost!
I imagine their disk mailers will be virtually non-existent. I know I will be dropping that service. My kids are enjoying the streaming videos too much that I would not get away from dropping that service. They watch an untold number of hours watching the children's shows (educational types and other fun stuff). But I appreciated having the disks of movies that hadn't quite made it to the streaming list.
Perhaps they are trying to send a message to the MPAA studios? Are the studios trying to twist Netflix' arm? What is going on in the industry? I know who is going to get hurt from this: The US Postal Service! I would say it is also the subscribers, but the extra features are stripped from rental DVDs now - so there is very little difference between the streaming and a physical disk.
Question for Netflix: What is the rental rate on BluRay disks? How bad is it for BD? I don't own a BD system and likely never will. If I did own BluRay, that would be my only reason for hanging on to the mailer.
Gold farmers who sell for actual cash would like to disagree. To you and I, their profit per hour may not be that great, but it's what they choose to do with their game (if they can get away with it.)
And, for those technically able to do so: ...
1. Own domain - $10/year
2. Setup IMAP mail server in a headless virtual machine - $0 (add time commitment)
3.
4. Profit.
The obvious point is obvious. If the company is in such desperate need if his services to spend $300 on a 30 minute phone call, then they must think it is serious enough he should be contacted. In such case, he would welcome the call (and probably be quite surprised by it.)
I'll be surprised if the PlayStation franchise lasts for 2 more years under current conditions. The recent hacking that showed how lax they were with security and the continual trying to mess with the customer is going to wear them down.
Yea! Darn Steam Sales!!!! I've already spent too much on that thing - granted I have a lot of games to show for it, too.
The problem with "longer online lifespan" is that there are some companies who do not want their games to have a long shelf life. They would rather you go out and buy MAJOR SPORTS FRANCHISE 20XX, etc. Now, I'm not limiting this to sports franchises, Need For Speed Underground 2 is a game I thoroughly enjoyed. But once I finished it, the replay value was in configuring new cars to go up against the same AI opponents (which either cheat or are too easy to beat) - not terribly exciting. Yes, there was an online component to the game, but finding players is difficult. Getting fresh content meant purchasing Need For Speed Shift (or whatever the next game was) - there was no online modding community to give us more tracks or to expand on the existing terrain.
With the current business models as they are, most companies see games like Half-Life a detriment, because mods like Counter-Strike, which are released for free do not have recurring payments (except for generating more sales, but those are one time purchases.) Of course, Valve has figured out people like hats for Team Fortress 2 and are able to keep a steady supply of income from microtransactions.
/end rambling... sorry.
My wife and I discussed the issue of trying to harness power from lightning (having recently watched an episode about lightning). Of the various problems I mentioned, energy storage was one of them.
Yep - that's the same for me, too. Since I'm still a Linux newb, it's "figure out how to purge Evolution and Empathy, figure out how to integrate Thunderbird".
I agree. I think BB may be going the way of Palm. Palm had a great product and I loved being able to 1-stroke write my letters. They then split their software and hardware divisions and lost Grafitti. Grafitti 2 was atrocious (why they thought 2-stroke writing is easier than 1-stroke...)
In any case, I see a similar thing happening with BB. They are focusing on hardware and forgetting to upgrade/update the software to be more developer friendly. But even on the hardware side, there is very little exciting about it. The camera is 2MP, not 3 or 4 like Android or iPhone phones. There is not as much internal memory. At least you can replace the battery and swap micro-SD cards.
No, the NBA was looking for its next Wilt Chamberlain or Dr. J and instead got Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. The NBA didn't have to wait long before a type of Dr. J replacement came along in Michael Jordan. After Jordan, the league was trying to find its next Jordan. It is still looking, but in that time it got Shaq and a host of other wannabees.
In the NFL, they had Johnny Unitas and Roger Staubach, but even for them they didn't have to wait long to find their replacement of superstar QBs, but none of them were ever Johnny U or Staubach.
The next Bill Gates won't be Bill Gates. It might be the team of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It might be Zuckerberg. It could have been Linus Torvalds. But none of these are Bill Gates. Even going behind Microsoft, Microsoft isn't IBM. IBM isn't Ford or any of the other massive corporations of the late 1800s or early 1900s. But all of these are powerhouses in their own right and time.
Yes, but where does this rule fall in the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition?
I can see how the Hammer editor is cumbersome or missing a feature or two in places, but I seem to do pretty well building my future "dream" houses and walking around in it. Are there other, better solutions to use than the Hammer editor for Source games? (I am curious as to what they may update with this release.)
They recently announced that Portal 2 hit sales of 3 million units. At $49.99 a pop, that only gives them $150 million in just a few months time. I think that'll float their boat for awhile.
I wonder if they're sort of feeling sorry for selling a 10 hour game for such a high price. (Mind you, it is a very worthy game and fairly evenly paced - once you start thinking, what?! another test room? they move you out of it.)