And if these values are really important, people ought not tie them to a crisis (imagined or real) in the state of the environment, which I believe will some day (though not in any of our lifetimes) will be made utterly insignificant by technology.
You're right, the environmentalists' unquestioning belief in the future crisis of humanity is indeed very much like the religious movement. I'm glad the futurists can set us straight on the logical path, toward our inevitable technological salvation.
Hold up a white sign with a big black "0" painted on it. Record a frame of the sign with a movie camera onto archival-grade film stock.
Next, hold up a white sign with a big black "1" painted on it and record a frame.
Repeat several trillion times, alternating between the two signs with varying frequencies, and you can rest assured that your digital films may be safely preserved in their original high-definition quality while still using the traditional film archival techniques.
However, be warned that even this archival method is several orders of magnitude less secure than the tried and true monkey media storage systems that have effectively preserved great literary works that date as far back as the English Renaissance.
you guys are all delusional i don't have any problem with comcast's service in fact i'm downloading 5 torrents from my comcast modem righyu{#`%${%&`+ '${`%&NO CARRIER
I have to say (and I know I'm putting my karma in front of the firing squad here), this kdawson guy really knows how to pick em...honestly, it seems that every time an off-topic, ridiculous, or horribly misleading tagline enters the front page, all I need to do is look up from the painful summary paragraph and there is good ol' posted by kdawson, smiling down from above.
I just took the hardware survey through my Ubuntu desktop a few days ago, and got lumped together in the Vista category since that's the Windows version my Wine config reports to Steam. Considering Steam doesn't include a Linux option in their survey, anyone running Steam through Wine (which works very well btw) will be reported as whatever version they have chosen. (I tried setting my config to Windows 2.0 to fill out the survey, but Steam refused to start...) Of course it's probably not too significant of a number overall, but it does need to be mentioned that there was no way to specify that you were running under a different OS than automatically detected. I would guess that Wine users would skew the Vista percentage upwards compared to the XP results, if they are anywhere near evenly split (I forget the default Windows version setting in Winecfg but I think it might have been Vista).
Apple's iPhone is a single, phone that's very well-designed and includes a slick interface. Oh yeah, and it has the Apple brand (and the corresponding price tag). Reports are that Apple's phone managed to successfully establish itself a niche in the mobile phone world, but that they failed to sell as many as they had hoped.
Google's Android platform, on the other hand, is more than just a single gPhone, as they like to say it's 'thousands of phones', made by dozens of companies, spanning the super high-end iPhone killers to the low-end cheap free-after-rebates you get with your carrier subscription. The operations that Google has set into motion - departing from the traditional JCP standards process, releasing a new non-Sun Java-like Virtual Machine - these moves have a huge potential to transform the entire mobile phone industry as a whole - and, though it's still early to say for sure, the transformation will more than likely be for the better.
So Apple's iPhone is a great, very well-designed product for a few people, but it is overall much less significant than the potential Android has to seriously shake up and inject innovation into the mobile industry. The two are honestly nothing alike, as much as the media would like them to be.
Java is the entrenched standard for mobile development. Google isn't pushing Java here, they're trying to maximize their reach to existing mobile developers.
(2) It's eclipse-centric.
As mentioned on their site, Google's developers use a mix of Eclipse, IntelliJ, and NetBeans for development, which is pretty much the standard in Java development. They've probably released an Eclipse plugin first because it had the broadest reach and perhaps it was the easiest environment to create a plugin for. I doubt this means that Google is pushing Eclipse, however, I would expect tutorials and documentation (if not additional plugins) to be released for the other environments soon enough.
(3) Code layout.
Code layout in package directories is pretty much a Java thing, again pretty standard.
(4) I have an iPhone.
iPhone is a single phone. Android will support a whole platform of upcoming phones. This is a big enough difference to be interested in the Android SDK at the very least, if not both. Plus, you can check out the Android SDK now while you'll have to wait until February for teh iPhone SDK.
(5) It appears to come with an emulator, which is very cool!
Yeah, it is very cool! This is also pretty standard for wireless toolkits (WTK), since development on the devices themselves is usually difficult and time-consuming. My company's suite of game development tools includes a similar universal emulator, which I love using. It's pretty much a must for mobile development.
I'm also looking very forward to playing around with the SDK. Hope some great things can come from these developments in the mobile world.
"a custom Java Bytecode interpreter that is highly specialized for the CPU" - Kind of hard to do that in an emulator on a PC. What CPU is this optimized for? (Guessing ARM... Still, to evaluate performance you need real hardware.)
The "custom Java Bytecode interpreter" probably means a Jazelle JVM or variant. These are specialized CPU/JVM combinations that execute Java bytecode in hardware. This technology is used on many of the Java phones already in the market.
No. Most of the phones on the market today use Java for graphics and applications, including pretty much all of the popular cell phones in Japan that make any phones in the Western world look childish by comparison. The problem is that there is an impression among standard Windows developers that Java is necessarily slow, which is absolutely not true. Sure, the early PC JVMs, the Swing toolkit and the applet model were resource-hungry abominations, but Java on cellphones is lean, mean, and it's already pretty much everywhere.
Some friends and I have started a discussion forum for independent developers at ohadev.com, please stop by and leave some comments if you're interested in getting in touch with some independent Android enthusiasts.
I'm a mobile phone game developer that has ported commercial games to over 200 handsets across all of the major Western carriers. This includes lots of crappy phones that could barely eke out 1fps, and lots of phones that hit 40-50fps without missing a beat. Overall though, I have a MUCH easier time porting for Java devices than for BREW, because Java is simply much easier to develop stable programs for, which means less bugs to waste time tracking down, which means you can make better quality software.
And as far as Java being slow, bloated, etc., maybe all that was true back in the 90's, but today it's perfectly fine for development on any modern machine, all of our in-house development tools are written in Java and work perfectly. And J2me, the subset of Java that you find on the phones, is particularly lightweight and speedy - most mobile JVMs compile rather than interpret the Java bytecode, and some ARM cell phone processor architectures actually execute the straight J2me bytecode directly in hardware. What varies performance most is not usually the choice of Java vs BREW for running applications, but the speed of the phone's processor and its ability to paint to the screen quickly, and in my experience these vary regardless of whether a phone is using Java or BREW. A good Java phone will be entirely indistinguishable from, if not even more capable than, a good BREW phone in terms of its game-playing ability.
If Java is ported to the iPhone, it would let existing game developers easily target their games for the iPhone during the standard porting process, and they could spend the extra time perfecting interfaces and controls to take best advantage of the iPhone's capabilities. This would mean an instant library of hundreds of quality commercial games each year, with a fast-growing library of independently-developed mobile games as well (that is, if AT&T grants its contract holders access to them). Otherwise, without a Java port it would mean a much more expensive porting process to a separate, proprietary SDK, which few mobile game companies with enough development resources will be able to profitably accomplish. So you'll probably get EA Tetris for your iPhone and little else, oh joy.
Very well said, I agree with AC's thoughts entirely. I'm sick of the same old, tired, thoughtless discussions surrounding the 'can games make you cry?' topic. Good video games have been provoking powerful, meaningful, life-changing emotions in games since the beginning of their existence - not just 'omgz this is fun'. The reason your standard media journalists and filmmaker types can't seem to understand that is because they typically only understand 'emotion' in a strictly cinematic or narrative (ie, passive) sense, keep trying to 'read' games as typical story-driven movies or novels. The whole innovative potential of videogames is for the player to create his own emotional moments through actions that generate epiphany and aporia, success and failure.
Sure, you can keep clamoring for more immersive, story-driven 'emotion' in games, and the game studios will keep cranking it out for the masses who still depend on a passive, linear, developer-babysitter experience because they can't generate emotion for themselves through their own creative play.
Games don't make you feel ashamed about something you've done? Surely this guy must have heard of hentai games? (snicker)
Seriously though, because games depend on player action, they tend to provoke emotions that correspond to the real world rather than a fictional fantasy. Take your typical multiplayer game-world, there are tons of ways to lie, cheat, steal, hack, or just generally be harmful and even hurtful to other players. While getting a teammate kicked out of a guild forcing him to find a new group of friends to play with isn't quite as horrid as slaughtering innocent children, the former actually happens in real life while the latter is simply a harmless fiction.
If the games this guy plays always end up making him feel 'good', then he's probably just wasting money on mindless mass-market entertainment, you can easily read pulp fiction or watch hollywood blockbusters and get the same result there. If a game manages to transform your experience of the world, of others, or of yourself and your own real emotions, then you don't need a storyline to tell you what to think or how to act, you're already truly at play.
I've translated the corporate-speak into English that's a little less TLDR, while still trying to keep a neutral tone:
Q: Is this whole 'ask question' thing just a marketing ploy?
A: Of course it is, but we also really do care about our mission which is to put a bright light on RMT.
Q: Isn't this against WoW's rules, won't your "customers" get banned?
A: Here's how we see it: Blizz doesn't have the right to tell legitimate gamers that they can't trade real money outside the game. We're trying to change the whole system to acknowledge this, but until then we can only warn people of the risk of getting banned.
Q: How do you intend to avoid a lawsuit from Blizzard?
A: Reasons we don't think we'll get sued: (1) Blizz realizes that they don't have the right to ban people for deals that happen outside of the game. (2) Blizz would be screwed if they lost in court so they wouldn't take the risk. (3) Blizz knows lawsuits aren't the solution anyway, it'll only keep the businesses out of the US jurisdiction.
Q: How will you stop professional gold farmers from selling gold using your service instead of 'legitimate' gamers?
A: We can't prevent them outright because we have no way of tracking them (Blizz should help us out here!), but our service will give real gamers a chance to compete in a fair market.
Q: How are you going to convince the MMO big-wigs that RMT is okay?
A: We're trying to convince them that the shady aspects of grey-market gold-farming (such as 'spamming, bot farming, hacking and duping') that are usually associated with RMT don't need to be.
Q: How will you protect sellers who get scammed by lying buyers?
A: Our first goal is to protect the buyer. All we can do to lying buyers is look for obvious scammers and ban them from our service (Blizz should help us out here!).
Q: How will you stop the middleman exploiting the workers? What about the goldfarming sweatshops?
A: Since anyone can sell gold through our service directly, gamers can go into business for themselves easier. And the whole 'sweatshop' thing is blown out of proportion, gold farmers are usually voluntary workers that are paid competitive wages compared to other jobs available in rural China, nobody is being unfairly exploited.
Q: What "state-of-the-art technology" are you using to stop fraud?
A: Umm, we ban people who we are pretty sure are scamming.
Q: Can I convert currency between games? How will you protect against a single person controlling the market?
A: You can't convert directly, but you can (obviously) sell one currency and buy another in USD. The "control of the market" question is pointless in a game where more gold can always be farmed.
Q: What about taxes? Is the IRS going to come knocking in the future?
A: We can't give official tax advice, and the issue of online taxes goes far beyond MMORPGs. But think of a gamer selling a bit of gold through our service like someone selling an item on eBay.
The myth that the video game industry is larger in profits than the movie industry is not only bogus, but it has been thrown around for ages.
From a somewhat reputable source: "The confusion as to the actual size of the gaming industry is widespread. Since the early eighties, claims has been made that games outsell movies. Nevertheless, it appears not to be so."
The claim has been around ever since 1982, when the Atari era was at its peak.
What's so bad about this? Other than "It's not fair"
What's bad about this basically stems from what it means to be a "game" and not an extension of the real life economic market, and how the uncontrolled influence of real-world money into the picture destroys this separation.
For those of you who can't seem to follow the logical link from "it's not fair" to "it's wrong," think about the reasons why purchasing services from game players using real-world money leads inevitably to corruption and is not tolerated and strictly regulated in any game.
I strongly support Blizzard's attempt to keep World of Warcraft a place where people can continue to play and have fun without competing with sweatshop workers trying to make a living.
Sony should offer players a free copy of Viewtiful Joe 2, which according to GameSpy has an official release date of today 12/7. They shouldn't pass up a chance for such perfect irony.
And why the hell cheat in a gane you have to pay to play for!.
Because with companies like IGE that buy and sell accounts and virtual currency/items, effectively creating real-world exchange rates for virtual money, people can make real profits off of cheats, exploits or techniques that improve their efficiency relative to the rest of the players.
Considering that the Wizard was not much more than a low-budget multimedia marketing campaign for the unreleased Super Mario Bros. 3, a game which then went on to be the best selling standalone videogame of all time, you might say that it was a crappy movie but you can't say that it went wrong for Nintendo.
Slashdot Mirror
And if these values are really important, people ought not tie them to a crisis (imagined or real) in the state of the environment, which I believe will some day (though not in any of our lifetimes) will be made utterly insignificant by technology.
You're right, the environmentalists' unquestioning belief in the future crisis of humanity is indeed very much like the religious movement. I'm glad the futurists can set us straight on the logical path, toward our inevitable technological salvation.
Hold up a white sign with a big black "0" painted on it. Record a frame of the sign with a movie camera onto archival-grade film stock.
Next, hold up a white sign with a big black "1" painted on it and record a frame.
Repeat several trillion times, alternating between the two signs with varying frequencies, and you can rest assured that your digital films may be safely preserved in their original high-definition quality while still using the traditional film archival techniques.
However, be warned that even this archival method is several orders of magnitude less secure than the tried and true monkey media storage systems that have effectively preserved great literary works that date as far back as the English Renaissance.
Definitely stuff that matters, too. Or rather, materializes.
you guys are all delusional i don't have any problem with comcast's service in fact i'm downloading 5 torrents from my comcast modem righyu{#`%${%&`+
'${`%&NO CARRIER
I have to say (and I know I'm putting my karma in front of the firing squad here), this kdawson guy really knows how to pick em...honestly, it seems that every time an off-topic, ridiculous, or horribly misleading tagline enters the front page, all I need to do is look up from the painful summary paragraph and there is good ol' posted by kdawson, smiling down from above.
Yes.
What was the question again?
I just took the hardware survey through my Ubuntu desktop a few days ago, and got lumped together in the Vista category since that's the Windows version my Wine config reports to Steam. Considering Steam doesn't include a Linux option in their survey, anyone running Steam through Wine (which works very well btw) will be reported as whatever version they have chosen. (I tried setting my config to Windows 2.0 to fill out the survey, but Steam refused to start...) Of course it's probably not too significant of a number overall, but it does need to be mentioned that there was no way to specify that you were running under a different OS than automatically detected. I would guess that Wine users would skew the Vista percentage upwards compared to the XP results, if they are anywhere near evenly split (I forget the default Windows version setting in Winecfg but I think it might have been Vista).
Apple's iPhone is a single, phone that's very well-designed and includes a slick interface. Oh yeah, and it has the Apple brand (and the corresponding price tag). Reports are that Apple's phone managed to successfully establish itself a niche in the mobile phone world, but that they failed to sell as many as they had hoped.
Google's Android platform, on the other hand, is more than just a single gPhone, as they like to say it's 'thousands of phones', made by dozens of companies, spanning the super high-end iPhone killers to the low-end cheap free-after-rebates you get with your carrier subscription. The operations that Google has set into motion - departing from the traditional JCP standards process, releasing a new non-Sun Java-like Virtual Machine - these moves have a huge potential to transform the entire mobile phone industry as a whole - and, though it's still early to say for sure, the transformation will more than likely be for the better.
So Apple's iPhone is a great, very well-designed product for a few people, but it is overall much less significant than the potential Android has to seriously shake up and inject innovation into the mobile industry. The two are honestly nothing alike, as much as the media would like them to be.
-Will
Some responses to your points:
(1) It's Java.
Java is the entrenched standard for mobile development. Google isn't pushing Java here, they're trying to maximize their reach to existing mobile developers.
(2) It's eclipse-centric.
As mentioned on their site, Google's developers use a mix of Eclipse, IntelliJ, and NetBeans for development, which is pretty much the standard in Java development. They've probably released an Eclipse plugin first because it had the broadest reach and perhaps it was the easiest environment to create a plugin for. I doubt this means that Google is pushing Eclipse, however, I would expect tutorials and documentation (if not additional plugins) to be released for the other environments soon enough.
(3) Code layout.
Code layout in package directories is pretty much a Java thing, again pretty standard.
(4) I have an iPhone.
iPhone is a single phone. Android will support a whole platform of upcoming phones. This is a big enough difference to be interested in the Android SDK at the very least, if not both. Plus, you can check out the Android SDK now while you'll have to wait until February for teh iPhone SDK.
(5) It appears to come with an emulator, which is very cool!
Yeah, it is very cool! This is also pretty standard for wireless toolkits (WTK), since development on the devices themselves is usually difficult and time-consuming. My company's suite of game development tools includes a similar universal emulator, which I love using. It's pretty much a must for mobile development.
I'm also looking very forward to playing around with the SDK. Hope some great things can come from these developments in the mobile world.
-Will
"a custom Java Bytecode interpreter that is highly specialized for the CPU" - Kind of hard to do that in an emulator on a PC. What CPU is this optimized for? (Guessing ARM... Still, to evaluate performance you need real hardware.)
The "custom Java Bytecode interpreter" probably means a Jazelle JVM or variant. These are specialized CPU/JVM combinations that execute Java bytecode in hardware. This technology is used on many of the Java phones already in the market.
-WillReal slow phones.
No. Most of the phones on the market today use Java for graphics and applications, including pretty much all of the popular cell phones in Japan that make any phones in the Western world look childish by comparison. The problem is that there is an impression among standard Windows developers that Java is necessarily slow, which is absolutely not true. Sure, the early PC JVMs, the Swing toolkit and the applet model were resource-hungry abominations, but Java on cellphones is lean, mean, and it's already pretty much everywhere.
Some friends and I have started a discussion forum for independent developers at ohadev.com, please stop by and leave some comments if you're interested in getting in touch with some independent Android enthusiasts.
Shouldn't this point to the official repository at http://code.google.com/android/ instead of http://code.google.com/p/android, which just looks like some ad-hoc mirror?
I'm a mobile phone game developer that has ported commercial games to over 200 handsets across all of the major Western carriers. This includes lots of crappy phones that could barely eke out 1fps, and lots of phones that hit 40-50fps without missing a beat. Overall though, I have a MUCH easier time porting for Java devices than for BREW, because Java is simply much easier to develop stable programs for, which means less bugs to waste time tracking down, which means you can make better quality software.
And as far as Java being slow, bloated, etc., maybe all that was true back in the 90's, but today it's perfectly fine for development on any modern machine, all of our in-house development tools are written in Java and work perfectly. And J2me, the subset of Java that you find on the phones, is particularly lightweight and speedy - most mobile JVMs compile rather than interpret the Java bytecode, and some ARM cell phone processor architectures actually execute the straight J2me bytecode directly in hardware. What varies performance most is not usually the choice of Java vs BREW for running applications, but the speed of the phone's processor and its ability to paint to the screen quickly, and in my experience these vary regardless of whether a phone is using Java or BREW. A good Java phone will be entirely indistinguishable from, if not even more capable than, a good BREW phone in terms of its game-playing ability.
If Java is ported to the iPhone, it would let existing game developers easily target their games for the iPhone during the standard porting process, and they could spend the extra time perfecting interfaces and controls to take best advantage of the iPhone's capabilities. This would mean an instant library of hundreds of quality commercial games each year, with a fast-growing library of independently-developed mobile games as well (that is, if AT&T grants its contract holders access to them). Otherwise, without a Java port it would mean a much more expensive porting process to a separate, proprietary SDK, which few mobile game companies with enough development resources will be able to profitably accomplish. So you'll probably get EA Tetris for your iPhone and little else, oh joy.
Very well said, I agree with AC's thoughts entirely. I'm sick of the same old, tired, thoughtless discussions surrounding the 'can games make you cry?' topic. Good video games have been provoking powerful, meaningful, life-changing emotions in games since the beginning of their existence - not just 'omgz this is fun'. The reason your standard media journalists and filmmaker types can't seem to understand that is because they typically only understand 'emotion' in a strictly cinematic or narrative (ie, passive) sense, keep trying to 'read' games as typical story-driven movies or novels. The whole innovative potential of videogames is for the player to create his own emotional moments through actions that generate epiphany and aporia, success and failure.
Sure, you can keep clamoring for more immersive, story-driven 'emotion' in games, and the game studios will keep cranking it out for the masses who still depend on a passive, linear, developer-babysitter experience because they can't generate emotion for themselves through their own creative play.
Games don't make you feel ashamed about something you've done? Surely this guy must have heard of hentai games? (snicker)
Seriously though, because games depend on player action, they tend to provoke emotions that correspond to the real world rather than a fictional fantasy. Take your typical multiplayer game-world, there are tons of ways to lie, cheat, steal, hack, or just generally be harmful and even hurtful to other players. While getting a teammate kicked out of a guild forcing him to find a new group of friends to play with isn't quite as horrid as slaughtering innocent children, the former actually happens in real life while the latter is simply a harmless fiction.
If the games this guy plays always end up making him feel 'good', then he's probably just wasting money on mindless mass-market entertainment, you can easily read pulp fiction or watch hollywood blockbusters and get the same result there. If a game manages to transform your experience of the world, of others, or of yourself and your own real emotions, then you don't need a storyline to tell you what to think or how to act, you're already truly at play.
I've translated the corporate-speak into English that's a little less TLDR, while still trying to keep a neutral tone:
Q: Is this whole 'ask question' thing just a marketing ploy?
A: Of course it is, but we also really do care about our mission which is to put a bright light on RMT.
Q: Isn't this against WoW's rules, won't your "customers" get banned?
A: Here's how we see it: Blizz doesn't have the right to tell legitimate gamers that they can't trade real money outside the game. We're trying to change the whole system to acknowledge this, but until then we can only warn people of the risk of getting banned.
Q: How do you intend to avoid a lawsuit from Blizzard?
A: Reasons we don't think we'll get sued: (1) Blizz realizes that they don't have the right to ban people for deals that happen outside of the game. (2) Blizz would be screwed if they lost in court so they wouldn't take the risk. (3) Blizz knows lawsuits aren't the solution anyway, it'll only keep the businesses out of the US jurisdiction.
Q: How will you stop professional gold farmers from selling gold using your service instead of 'legitimate' gamers?
A: We can't prevent them outright because we have no way of tracking them (Blizz should help us out here!), but our service will give real gamers a chance to compete in a fair market.
Q: How are you going to convince the MMO big-wigs that RMT is okay?
A: We're trying to convince them that the shady aspects of grey-market gold-farming (such as 'spamming, bot farming, hacking and duping') that are usually associated with RMT don't need to be.
Q: How will you protect sellers who get scammed by lying buyers?
A: Our first goal is to protect the buyer. All we can do to lying buyers is look for obvious scammers and ban them from our service (Blizz should help us out here!).
Q: How will you stop the middleman exploiting the workers? What about the goldfarming sweatshops?
A: Since anyone can sell gold through our service directly, gamers can go into business for themselves easier. And the whole 'sweatshop' thing is blown out of proportion, gold farmers are usually voluntary workers that are paid competitive wages compared to other jobs available in rural China, nobody is being unfairly exploited.
Q: What "state-of-the-art technology" are you using to stop fraud?
A: Umm, we ban people who we are pretty sure are scamming.
Q: Can I convert currency between games? How will you protect against a single person controlling the market?
A: You can't convert directly, but you can (obviously) sell one currency and buy another in USD. The "control of the market" question is pointless in a game where more gold can always be farmed.
Q: What about taxes? Is the IRS going to come knocking in the future?
A: We can't give official tax advice, and the issue of online taxes goes far beyond MMORPGs. But think of a gamer selling a bit of gold through our service like someone selling an item on eBay.
Why is Pac-Mondrian attracting more art types than gaming types? Maybe it's because Pac-Mondrian is just plain boring as hell to actually play.
Anyone else think that psychotic-looking teddy bear looks kind of like our favorite sadistic lagomorph from Sam 'n Max Hit the Road?
The myth that the video game industry is larger in profits than the movie industry is not only bogus, but it has been thrown around for ages.
From a somewhat reputable source:
"The confusion as to the actual size of the gaming industry is widespread. Since the early eighties, claims has been made that games outsell movies. Nevertheless, it appears not to be so."
The claim has been around ever since 1982, when the Atari era was at its peak.
What's so bad about this?
Other than "It's not fair"
What's bad about this basically stems from what it means to be a "game" and not an extension of the real life economic market, and how the uncontrolled influence of real-world money into the picture destroys this separation.
For those of you who can't seem to follow the logical link from "it's not fair" to "it's wrong," think about the reasons why purchasing services from game players using real-world money leads inevitably to corruption and is not tolerated and strictly regulated in any game.
I strongly support Blizzard's attempt to keep World of Warcraft a place where people can continue to play and have fun without competing with sweatshop workers trying to make a living.
Sony should offer players a free copy of Viewtiful Joe 2, which according to GameSpy has an official release date of today 12/7. They shouldn't pass up a chance for such perfect irony.
Why don't they make games like DOTT anymore? and I don't mean sequels.
Day of the Tentacle was a sequel to Maniac Mansion.
And why the hell cheat in a gane you have to pay to play for!.
Because with companies like IGE that buy and sell accounts and virtual currency/items, effectively creating real-world exchange rates for virtual money, people can make real profits off of cheats, exploits or techniques that improve their efficiency relative to the rest of the players.
Damn kids and their speed hacks... and makeout parties...
These 'damn kids' get their kicks by making their gnome avatars perform goofy animated dances on command. Speed hacks is pretty much it.
Considering that the Wizard was not much more than a low-budget multimedia marketing campaign for the unreleased Super Mario Bros. 3, a game which then went on to be the best selling standalone videogame of all time, you might say that it was a crappy movie but you can't say that it went wrong for Nintendo.