Strange. I thought that a child din't even develop the cognitive capacity for long-term memory until age 3-4. If that's true, then can you really believe the testimony of someone who was two at the time?
Yeah, this is definitely fucked up. I feel sorry for your friend, and I hope that he gets cleared of all charges.
...predicted that "microtransactions" would lead to half-finished yet full-price games where the developer nickle-and-dimes you for content that should have been included in the game in the first place have been vindicated as of late. This whole thing is a PR disaster waiting to happen.
Need proof? Guitar Hero 1 had maybe 30-35 songs, and was priced at $40 for just the game. Guitar Hero 2 for the 360 has around 50 songs, and minus the cost of the controller, it's about $50 alone. That's about $1-$1.25/song, and even lower if you count the cost of the game "shell" itself; a pretty good deal, seeing as you own the rights to use the physical media for eternity.
But, $2/song? For just the songs? Where is the extra cost coming from?
"It always seemed wrong to me that you could blatently discriminate customers on the basis of their nationality[sic]."
Why, exactly? Don't you think that there could be a legitimate basis for charging someone a different price based upon one's place of residence? A country might possess high tariffs against a good or service, high taxes on that good or service, or it might not be as economically feasible to sell your product there due to any other number of factors. To suggest that such economically-sound decision-making is "discrimination," which I take to mean on the level of racism, is just silly.
"I understand why a marketeer would like to have different prices for different areas but it is just hampering price transparency and free trade."
On the contrary; free trade is just that - "free." In the sense that there are no laws regulating things like, you know... price.
Within the US would you be allowed to charge someone from, say, NY a different price than someone from NJ? (apart from tax & shipping?)
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that you could. Not that it would be a good decision to do so, and that's why nobody does it, but I believe you theoretically could.
Bad analogy. Very few artists strive for realism, especially in the modern day when the camera has (literally) made photo-realism a concrete reality, thus rendering the pursuit of photo-realism through analogue art obsolete. Even then, photo-realism was not an artistic goal, but a practical one, since there was no better substitute for accuracy in art until the camera. Art has always been about abstraction, to a greater or lesser degree, because without even a small amount of abstraction, art would not be art.
To put it another way: once technology can render complete photo-realism in games, would you continue calling photo-realism "good art direction"? Why?
While the graphics may be realistic, they're not all that attracive. Shades of brown, shiny, and bloom everywhere. Compare that with a colorful, artistic game like Okami or Viva Pinata and you'll see what I mean.
Regardless of what you think of TP's art direction, you have to admit that it's better than the "hey guys let's make everything shiny and put bloom EVERYWHERE" approach of GoW.
No doubt the game is deserving of many of those awards, but art direction when Okami and Twilight Princess were also in the running? Outstanding character performance (male) when Markus was sort of a bland army guy? I'm sure there was a better male character out there this year. And just what does outstanding achievement in visual engineering mean, anyway?
It looks to me like these guys just took one look at Gamerankings, saw that GoW had the best ranking for the year, and then decided to give half the awards to it on that basis alone.
Let me put it this way. Sony has a monopoly on all consoles with the name "Playstation 3" and the design thereof. This is no secret, nor is there anything wrong with it. However, Sony chooses to add a Blu-Ray drive to all of their Playstation 3 systems, thus inflating the price by a few hundred dollars.
Now, I, as a consumer, would gladly plunk down $300 for a PS3 sans Blu-Ray drive. However, Sony chooses not to produce any such consoles. Therefore, all things considered, I AM left with a choice, but it's Hobson's choice: buy any PS3 you want, as long as it has a Blu-Ray drive in it.
In other words, if I want to buy a PS3, I must either: (1) pay the extra money for a Blu-Ray drive I don't want, or (2) don't buy it at all. Thus my use of the word "forced." If I want to buy a PS3, I must pay that extra money.
I love how people always jump all over the word "forced" by stretching it to a completely illogical extreme.
The truth is, you see, I WILL be forced to pay hundreds of dollars extra for a Blu-Ray drive... IF I buy a PS3. There are no non-Blu-Ray PS3's. Thus my use of the word "forced."
Game designers did just fine when they had to put some games on 3-4 CDs in the PSX era. What's the problem with printing large games on 3-4 DVDs? The fact that the player will have to disc-swap a few times?
Blu-Ray IS a burden... on the consumer. We're forced to pay an extra $300 so that game dev's can be lazy with their compression methods.
Fine, but some artists do view an album as more than just a series of tracks.
Okay, given, but why should we care?
Art, music included, is not a pure expression of its creator, meant to be interpreted only as he/she sees fit, but instead how the viewer/listener/whatever sees that creation. Once a piece of art gets released to the general public, after all, it becomes, in part, the domain of that public body's imagination.
For example, if I like only two songs off of a Radiohead album, then why should the band dictate that I have to listen to all of the other songs on the album just to get to those two? What if I see those two songs as individually more enjoyable than the album as a whole? Is my preference any less important than the band's? And if so, how far are you willing to take it? Should we stop playing cuts from Dark Side of the Moon on the radio? Bundle songs into one huge (and annoying) track on a CD so that the listener can't skip anything?
So, frankly, I don't give two bollocks what the artist thinks. If they want to keep the precious "artistic integrity" of their work, then they can never release it to the public and keep it hidden in a vault somewhere. But if that's the band's only reason for not releasing already released albums on iTunes, then they should cave in and just do it, unless they're a bunch of pretentious wankers...
...oh, wait, this is Radiohead we're talking about...
When I was young, I was bullied. My school also had the same philosophy that you use in parenting - both parties are punished, no matter who's the victim. Well, one day, I was assaulted in class (a kid literally tried to strangle me to death) for the oh-so-terrible crime of being forced to sit in front of him in that particular class.
The teacher sent us to the principal's office. There, the principal immediately asked us why he shouldn't suspend us both. I tried to tell him that I didn't do anything, and that I didn't even fight back, but he would have none of it. He ended up letting us both off with a warning - the kid for trying to strangle me, and me for... being strangled.
You know what that taught my young, impressionable mind? Exactly the opposite of what your twisted logic thinks it should - fighting back is a Bad Thing, because you'll just get punished. Telling anyone about being bullied is a Bad Thing, because you'll just get punished. And, most of all, that it was my fault for being bullied; that I somehow DESERVED to be punished further for being the victim. I went through much of my teenage years in what can only be described as clinical depression, all the while thinking that I was a terrible person for attracting so much negative attention. It's only been in recent years that I've recovered and started to assert myself again, but what remains is a stark distrust of all authority figures and a good bit of social anxiety.
So, to sum up, you have NO IDEA what it's like to be on the wrong side of this so-called "justice." You think you're helping your kids, but you're only scarring them for life.
It's not just the innovative decks that people came up with, either...
-After Ice Age, WotC officially cemented their "one core set + two expansions every year" business model. This officially destroyed the random fun of crazy combinations like the Ice Age-Chronicles-Homelands-Alliances block.
-Whereas Ice Age (and Alliances) had fun game mechanics that were intrinsic to the "feel" of the set (snow-covered lands), Mirage and beyond... didn't. It's almost as though Ice Age were made to be a new sub-game in itself, and that, once Wizards realized this wasn't a viable business model, they just stopped caring and lumped everything together instead.
-The art... everything up to and including Alliances was amazing. Afterwards, aside from a few select artists, everything just looked so cartoony and standardized. (I like to jokingly blame the fact that Phil Foglio stopped doing card art after Alliances.)
Like your average geek, I used to play Magic: the Gathering. I also spent a ton of money on Magic: the Gathering. I played casually, sometimes in "serious" tournaments, went to pre-releases, busted open booster boxes to find cards I needed for my collection, the works.
And, what did I get out of it in the end?
The friends I made playing casually weren't interested in much else, and subsequently, I found that I wasn't much interested in them. Tournaments and pre-releases are filled with trash-talking, cheating, and rules-lawyering, making them decidedly unfun. And the money I spent on cards could have been better spent on something that's more fun, more social, and just as fitting to my geeky lifestyle (like, say, video games.)
In other words, I got nothing beneficial from it, aside from the occasional interesting friend, triumphant tourney moment, or excellent deal on old cards. Consequently, this summer I made the decision to sell my entire $2500 collection via CardShark. Now, I'm raking in a load of cash, which I'll probably re-invest in music or games (i.e. things that are actually fun), all for a bunch of pieces of cardboard.
And that's not even getting into my whole rant about how Wizards hasn't given a damn about the gamers since the Ice Age block. But that would be getting off-topic.
So, if you take one thing from this post, let it be that, if you're on the fence about quitting and selling your collection, do it. Your life and your pocketbook will be all the better for it.
Funny - I'm closer to your second example than the first, and I've been mistaken for a RL-female many times in online games, even by people who normally assume everyone playing is male.
I suppose I fall into this category as well. If there were a no-hassle way to become a woman, I'd be there in a second, but the mere thought of actually getting a sex-change operation makes me shudder.
Consequently, nearly all of my in-game avatars (even in online games) are female. It's a fun way to experience how the opposite sex is treated, especially if people don't make an issue of your RL gender. But when they start to, it's usually time to tell them the truth; too bad that things usually aren't the same once you cross the boundaries of anonymous internet avatar-ism and RL. I play games for escapism, after all; if I wanted to talk to people in a distinctly RL sense, I'd go hang out at a bar or coffee shop and actually talk.
But anyway... just a heads-up that you're not alone out there.
Think about it... how many games do you know of that have been made in the past few years that don't have a story? There's a handful of puzzlers, true, but the number of those pale in comparison to the myriad FPS's, RPGs, strategy games, etc. being released every year.
And what do they all have in commin? They have a story.
Everything these days - down to the deep-engrossing plot of Farenheit/Indigo Prophecy to the spiritual journey of Prey - has a story. Sports games have a story; see the "career mode" that most have. Open-ended games like GTA3 and Oblivion have a story, though it's skippable. Heck, even the "gameplay-based" games released for major consoles these days have one; they may be forgettable - who really remembers the premise for Katamari Damacy? - but they're at least there to give the character, and by extension the player, some motivation. They keep us playing, to an extent, because we have a reason for playing beyond beating our high score or getting the next uber weapon.
And while some may consider them an artificial or contrived way of doing so, they aren't any more than the plot to your favorite concept album is a contrived way of keeping you listening. Sure, "Operation: Mindcrime" is good music, but would people love it as much if the music wasn't framed around a story of the dangers of fanatical devotion to an ideology? Just so, would Half-Life, Warcraft 3, or Diablo II be the same if you removed the story behind them? Sure, they'd still be fun, but there would just be something missing.
So, yes, stories are important in modern games. (Note that I added the qualifier "modern" to pre-empt the usual reply of, "but games from 1982 didn't need stories!" Yeah, and they also didn't need more than four bits per scanline.)
Frankly, it doesn't look like Spore is going to be a game, so much as an interesting experiment in computer science. Good for people who like that sort of thing, but when I play a game, I want it to either test your reflexes in a fun way, make you think to overcome certain challenges, engross you in an intriguing story, or any combination of the three. It doesn't look like Spore will have any of these things, so I'll be saving my money come release day.
Unless I'm wrong, that is... can anyone sell me on this game on the basis of the above points?
Your analysis, unfortunately, is nothing more than Pascal's Wager applied to global warming. Therefore, the same main problem from Pascal's Wager applies here as well: replace "global warming" with anything else, and you can have "proof" that we must "work on" completely silly things.
For example: "I think the point is that, since rainstorms are either caused by A) water vapor in the atmosphere or B) aliens who want to drown us, we should start working on B in case it isn't A. If it's A and we work on B by creating a multi-billion-dollar network of space defense lasers, then we profit from being able to stay alive. If it's B and we assume A, then the aliens drown us all, take over our planet, and make it into a global resort/spa for the Pangalactic Federation."
Did they need "precautionary actions" the last time this happened 400-X000 years ago?
What about before that?
No? Hmmm...
There's no question in my mind that things like greenhouse gases and the decimation of the ozone layer are Bad Things, but I think there's more practical arguments that you can make for taking further measures against them than "ZOMG TEH EARTH WILL HEAT UP & KILL US ALL!"
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Yeah, this is definitely fucked up. I feel sorry for your friend, and I hope that he gets cleared of all charges.
Need proof? Guitar Hero 1 had maybe 30-35 songs, and was priced at $40 for just the game. Guitar Hero 2 for the 360 has around 50 songs, and minus the cost of the controller, it's about $50 alone. That's about $1-$1.25/song, and even lower if you count the cost of the game "shell" itself; a pretty good deal, seeing as you own the rights to use the physical media for eternity.
But, $2/song? For just the songs? Where is the extra cost coming from?
If I had to guess, the greedy developers.
Why, exactly? Don't you think that there could be a legitimate basis for charging someone a different price based upon one's place of residence? A country might possess high tariffs against a good or service, high taxes on that good or service, or it might not be as economically feasible to sell your product there due to any other number of factors. To suggest that such economically-sound decision-making is "discrimination," which I take to mean on the level of racism, is just silly.
"I understand why a marketeer would like to have different prices for different areas but it is just hampering price transparency and free trade."
On the contrary; free trade is just that - "free." In the sense that there are no laws regulating things like, you know... price.
Within the US would you be allowed to charge someone from, say, NY a different price than someone from NJ? (apart from tax & shipping?)
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that you could. Not that it would be a good decision to do so, and that's why nobody does it, but I believe you theoretically could.
Because, uh, these are kids we're talking about?
To put it another way: once technology can render complete photo-realism in games, would you continue calling photo-realism "good art direction"? Why?
While the graphics may be realistic, they're not all that attracive. Shades of brown, shiny, and bloom everywhere. Compare that with a colorful, artistic game like Okami or Viva Pinata and you'll see what I mean.
Regardless of what you think of TP's art direction, you have to admit that it's better than the "hey guys let's make everything shiny and put bloom EVERYWHERE" approach of GoW.
It looks to me like these guys just took one look at Gamerankings, saw that GoW had the best ranking for the year, and then decided to give half the awards to it on that basis alone.
Let me put it this way. Sony has a monopoly on all consoles with the name "Playstation 3" and the design thereof. This is no secret, nor is there anything wrong with it. However, Sony chooses to add a Blu-Ray drive to all of their Playstation 3 systems, thus inflating the price by a few hundred dollars.
Now, I, as a consumer, would gladly plunk down $300 for a PS3 sans Blu-Ray drive. However, Sony chooses not to produce any such consoles. Therefore, all things considered, I AM left with a choice, but it's Hobson's choice: buy any PS3 you want, as long as it has a Blu-Ray drive in it.
In other words, if I want to buy a PS3, I must either: (1) pay the extra money for a Blu-Ray drive I don't want, or (2) don't buy it at all. Thus my use of the word "forced." If I want to buy a PS3, I must pay that extra money.
Oh, I don't know; Microsoft seems to be doing the HD-using-DVD-media thing just fine without printing 7-DVD games. Why should Sony be any different?
The truth is, you see, I WILL be forced to pay hundreds of dollars extra for a Blu-Ray drive... IF I buy a PS3. There are no non-Blu-Ray PS3's. Thus my use of the word "forced."
Blu-Ray IS a burden... on the consumer. We're forced to pay an extra $300 so that game dev's can be lazy with their compression methods.
I mean, come on. Sliders without the original guy who played Quinn Mallory?
Okay, given, but why should we care?
Art, music included, is not a pure expression of its creator, meant to be interpreted only as he/she sees fit, but instead how the viewer/listener/whatever sees that creation. Once a piece of art gets released to the general public, after all, it becomes, in part, the domain of that public body's imagination.
For example, if I like only two songs off of a Radiohead album, then why should the band dictate that I have to listen to all of the other songs on the album just to get to those two? What if I see those two songs as individually more enjoyable than the album as a whole? Is my preference any less important than the band's? And if so, how far are you willing to take it? Should we stop playing cuts from Dark Side of the Moon on the radio? Bundle songs into one huge (and annoying) track on a CD so that the listener can't skip anything?
So, frankly, I don't give two bollocks what the artist thinks. If they want to keep the precious "artistic integrity" of their work, then they can never release it to the public and keep it hidden in a vault somewhere. But if that's the band's only reason for not releasing already released albums on iTunes, then they should cave in and just do it, unless they're a bunch of pretentious wankers...
...oh, wait, this is Radiohead we're talking about...
The teacher sent us to the principal's office. There, the principal immediately asked us why he shouldn't suspend us both. I tried to tell him that I didn't do anything, and that I didn't even fight back, but he would have none of it. He ended up letting us both off with a warning - the kid for trying to strangle me, and me for... being strangled.
You know what that taught my young, impressionable mind? Exactly the opposite of what your twisted logic thinks it should - fighting back is a Bad Thing, because you'll just get punished. Telling anyone about being bullied is a Bad Thing, because you'll just get punished. And, most of all, that it was my fault for being bullied; that I somehow DESERVED to be punished further for being the victim. I went through much of my teenage years in what can only be described as clinical depression, all the while thinking that I was a terrible person for attracting so much negative attention. It's only been in recent years that I've recovered and started to assert myself again, but what remains is a stark distrust of all authority figures and a good bit of social anxiety.
So, to sum up, you have NO IDEA what it's like to be on the wrong side of this so-called "justice." You think you're helping your kids, but you're only scarring them for life.
-After Ice Age, WotC officially cemented their "one core set + two expansions every year" business model. This officially destroyed the random fun of crazy combinations like the Ice Age-Chronicles-Homelands-Alliances block.
-Whereas Ice Age (and Alliances) had fun game mechanics that were intrinsic to the "feel" of the set (snow-covered lands), Mirage and beyond... didn't. It's almost as though Ice Age were made to be a new sub-game in itself, and that, once Wizards realized this wasn't a viable business model, they just stopped caring and lumped everything together instead.
-The art... everything up to and including Alliances was amazing. Afterwards, aside from a few select artists, everything just looked so cartoony and standardized. (I like to jokingly blame the fact that Phil Foglio stopped doing card art after Alliances.)
So, yep, it's a number of things.
And, what did I get out of it in the end?
The friends I made playing casually weren't interested in much else, and subsequently, I found that I wasn't much interested in them. Tournaments and pre-releases are filled with trash-talking, cheating, and rules-lawyering, making them decidedly unfun. And the money I spent on cards could have been better spent on something that's more fun, more social, and just as fitting to my geeky lifestyle (like, say, video games.)
In other words, I got nothing beneficial from it, aside from the occasional interesting friend, triumphant tourney moment, or excellent deal on old cards. Consequently, this summer I made the decision to sell my entire $2500 collection via CardShark. Now, I'm raking in a load of cash, which I'll probably re-invest in music or games (i.e. things that are actually fun), all for a bunch of pieces of cardboard.
And that's not even getting into my whole rant about how Wizards hasn't given a damn about the gamers since the Ice Age block. But that would be getting off-topic.
So, if you take one thing from this post, let it be that, if you're on the fence about quitting and selling your collection, do it. Your life and your pocketbook will be all the better for it.
Not all people fit into your stereotypes kthx. :)
Consequently, nearly all of my in-game avatars (even in online games) are female. It's a fun way to experience how the opposite sex is treated, especially if people don't make an issue of your RL gender. But when they start to, it's usually time to tell them the truth; too bad that things usually aren't the same once you cross the boundaries of anonymous internet avatar-ism and RL. I play games for escapism, after all; if I wanted to talk to people in a distinctly RL sense, I'd go hang out at a bar or coffee shop and actually talk.
But anyway... just a heads-up that you're not alone out there.
And what do they all have in commin? They have a story.
Everything these days - down to the deep-engrossing plot of Farenheit/Indigo Prophecy to the spiritual journey of Prey - has a story. Sports games have a story; see the "career mode" that most have. Open-ended games like GTA3 and Oblivion have a story, though it's skippable. Heck, even the "gameplay-based" games released for major consoles these days have one; they may be forgettable - who really remembers the premise for Katamari Damacy? - but they're at least there to give the character, and by extension the player, some motivation. They keep us playing, to an extent, because we have a reason for playing beyond beating our high score or getting the next uber weapon.
And while some may consider them an artificial or contrived way of doing so, they aren't any more than the plot to your favorite concept album is a contrived way of keeping you listening. Sure, "Operation: Mindcrime" is good music, but would people love it as much if the music wasn't framed around a story of the dangers of fanatical devotion to an ideology? Just so, would Half-Life, Warcraft 3, or Diablo II be the same if you removed the story behind them? Sure, they'd still be fun, but there would just be something missing.
So, yes, stories are important in modern games. (Note that I added the qualifier "modern" to pre-empt the usual reply of, "but games from 1982 didn't need stories!" Yeah, and they also didn't need more than four bits per scanline.)
Unless I'm wrong, that is... can anyone sell me on this game on the basis of the above points?
If all you're colliding with is other hardons, then I don't think it's the ladies you're impressing...
For example: "I think the point is that, since rainstorms are either caused by A) water vapor in the atmosphere or B) aliens who want to drown us, we should start working on B in case it isn't A. If it's A and we work on B by creating a multi-billion-dollar network of space defense lasers, then we profit from being able to stay alive. If it's B and we assume A, then the aliens drown us all, take over our planet, and make it into a global resort/spa for the Pangalactic Federation."
Did they need "precautionary actions" the last time this happened 400-X000 years ago?
What about before that?
No? Hmmm...
There's no question in my mind that things like greenhouse gases and the decimation of the ozone layer are Bad Things, but I think there's more practical arguments that you can make for taking further measures against them than "ZOMG TEH EARTH WILL HEAT UP & KILL US ALL!"
Heartburn!