The reason why RPGs seem linear is because they are. The industry fails to learn from RPGs at the pinnacle of storytelling, instead churning out more and more Final Fantasy clones for easy sales with brand name recognition and marketting. As the consumer base and budgets grow bigger and bigger the video game industry resembles Hollywood more and more. Too much risk deviating from the tried and true rehash.
The flash memory-based system, controlled through voice commands and buttons on the steering wheel, is based on a Microsoft Corp. operating system for cars.
This old email joke doesn't seem quite as funny now.
If Microsoft made cars 1. A particular model year of car wouldn't be available until AFTER that year, instead of before. 2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you'd have to buy a new car. 3. Occasionally your car would just die for no reason, you'd have to restart it. For some strange reason, you would just accept this. 4. You could only have one person at a time in your car, unless you bought a car '95 or a car NT, but then you'd have to buy more seats. 5. You would be constantly pressured to upgrade your car. Wait a sec, it's that way NOW! 6. Sun Motorsystems would make a car that was solar powered, twice as reliable, 5 times as fast, but only ran on 5% of the roads. 7. The oil, alternator, gas, engine warning lights would be replaced with a single "General Car Fault" warning light. 8. People would get excited about the "new" features in Microsoft cars, forgetting completely that they had been available in other brands for years. 9. We would still be waiting on the "6000 sux 58'" model to come out. 10. We'd all have to switch to Microsoft Gas (tm). 11. Lee Iacocca would be hired-on as Bill G.'s chauffeur. 12. The US government would be GETTING subsidies from an automaker, instead of giving them. 13. New seats will force everyone to have the same size ass. 14. Ford, General Motors and Chrysler would all be complaining because Microsoft was putting a radio in all its models.
It is news here, because this is Slashdot. Their icon for Windows is a broken Windows icon, and their icon for Microsoft is of Bill Gates photoshopped to look like the Borg. Their agenda is so glaringly obvious you can't miss it.
Let it never be said that slashdotters don't love hyperbole.
I agree with all of you when you talk about completely ignoring your children; spending all of your time miserly saving every penny like Scrooge to the total detriment of your loved ones. I was being a little more reasonable my statement, however. As crazy as some of you find my statement I find it equally absurd to say that your children's attention is infinitely more important than any possible business you may do, no matter how minuscule the child's need at the time or how large the deal. Moderation in all things and all that, you know.
Re:You are always setting an example for your kids
on
The BlackBerry Orphans
·
· Score: 1
Something I've slowly realized as a parent is this - "You are always setting an example for your kids." Whether you like it or not, 24/7, wherever you go, whatever you do, if your kids are there you are setting an example. Whether it's a good example or a bad example is up to you. But, "do as I say, not as I do" is not going to work. I hear that a lot, but don't necessarily agree with it. Children are not drones. They do not mindlessly copy anything and everything they see a parent do, thinking it is perfectly acceptable. Hell, I can think of lots of behavior I saw in my parents almost every day that I don't copy today.
How many of the blackberry addicts would answer their blackberry if they were with an important customer? What are you saying about your family when you don't extend them the same respect? If a family member gets upset you can always talk to them later that day. If an important client gets upset you could lose business deals and contracts worth millions of dollars.
First, please prove that there will be measurable detriment. You have until comments are closed on this story to make some shit up. Thank you. I think the problem with most Linux fanatics is that they seem to be detached from the reality of the end-user. The overwhelming majority of the business world uses Windows OS and related Windows applications. If you train people entirely on a different OS using different applications then they don't look very attractive to the vast majority of employers, do they?
And this isn't even touching on the more technical things such as driver support, application support, cost of ownership, etc.
``Way to set them up for computer litterate jobs in the real world.:rolleyes:''
You mean like system administration, web development, software development, high performance computing, physics simulation, embedded systems development, etc. etc.?
I and others seem to have no problems getting and performing these jobs with our *nix experience. What would you figure those people are? Maybe one percent of one percent of the students? Less than that most likely? Does it seem like a good idea from any possible angle to empower that extremely tiny percentage of the population at the detriment of the other 99%+?
I've said it before and I'll say it again; businesses will do whatever consumers let them get away with.
If this type of packaging bothers people that much then they should let the companies know in the only language they understand, money. Buy an alternative product which uses a more sane packaging method.
I paid for my cellphone so I get to use it when I want. Personal cell phone jammers should never be allowed.
I paid for my cell phone jammer so I should get to use it when I want.
But (as a guess) anyone who was paying close enough attention to WoW before its release to know this would probably be pretty hard-core.
You are damn right I would fall into the "hardcore" category.;) I have played practically every major MMO to be released in America, and I would gladly play a game that found the magical solution to zero grind while preserving long-term playability. Being realistic, however, I think we are more likely to transmute iron to gold first.
Obviously there is no way to quantify how much of the outcry was from your "hardcore players" and how much was from the "average masses" as you put them. Regardless, Blizzard is a business and saw enough of a demand that they felt it was in their best interest to make the change.
FYI, the entire reason World of Warcraft is so insanely successful is because they do not pander to the hardcore minority. From its simplified gameplay to the fastest leveling time of any MMO ever released, WoW is the most casual-friendly MMO ever released.
It is funny you mention that. I played every Ultima, and was a huge fan of the series. I got in on the early beta tests for UO as soon as I heard about it and played ravenously for many years after release.
While that is one of the few MMOs to abandon the legacy D&D level grind, it still had just as much a grind in the form of skills.
This idea is exactly how WoW was originally planned. Once players got wind of this there was so much outcry that Blizzard changed the system to one of positive reinforcement with an experience bonus for not playing as much, as opposed to a penalty for playing too much.
The grind is not attractive in any way. Going and killing the same dragon over and over again is not something I want to do. There are lots of different ways to encourage players to move forward. Simply putting more weight on storytelling experience points is a good way to do that.
As much gamers complain about "the grind", you can't have a successful MMO without one grind or another. It is unrealistic to expect developers to design, implement, test, and release fresh new content at anywhere near the rate that players can and will consume it. That means you need to have players repeating the same actions ad nauseam to progress, otherwise they will reach the "top" and have nothing left to do. Bored players quit the game, and that will hardly bring the business any money, now will it?
You can put me on record as saying there is absolutely no way to design an MMO without some form of mindless repetition.
Once in mass production I'm sure it wouldn't raise the cost of a CPU by that much, but then again how much does it really cost to add an onboard graphics chip to a motherboard? It seems like a lot of research, development, and production money for little gain. Maybe I'm missing some bigger picture here?
I agree with what you are saying, but the root of the problem does not lie with the game, rather the players.
For an MMO to be successful it must play to the lower common denominator. If a game requires any significant amount of player skill in order to succeed then it will crash and burn, as the average player simply isn't that good when you are talking about games with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and especially millions of players.
Geographically, a single US state is as big or bigger than a lot of those countries. For example, Texas alone is 691,030 sq km, while the entire country of Japan weighs in at 377,835 sq km.
I'm sure implementing a powerful network infrastructure would be quite a lot faster, cheaper, and easier, if everyone in America lived in Texas.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't compare the non-interactive storylines of a book or movie to a video game, which is by its very nature meant to involve the player.
The reason why RPGs seem linear is because they are. The industry fails to learn from RPGs at the pinnacle of storytelling, instead churning out more and more Final Fantasy clones for easy sales with brand name recognition and marketting. As the consumer base and budgets grow bigger and bigger the video game industry resembles Hollywood more and more. Too much risk deviating from the tried and true rehash.
Of course #4 is out of date, I explicitly stated in my only sentence in that post that it was an old joke.
A quick google brought this up on the first page of results.
I don't think I have ever been more frustrated by a game in my life than I was with Devil May Cry 3.
It is news here, because this is Slashdot. Their icon for Windows is a broken Windows icon, and their icon for Microsoft is of Bill Gates photoshopped to look like the Borg. Their agenda is so glaringly obvious you can't miss it.
Let it never be said that slashdotters don't love hyperbole.
I agree with all of you when you talk about completely ignoring your children; spending all of your time miserly saving every penny like Scrooge to the total detriment of your loved ones. I was being a little more reasonable my statement, however. As crazy as some of you find my statement I find it equally absurd to say that your children's attention is infinitely more important than any possible business you may do, no matter how minuscule the child's need at the time or how large the deal. Moderation in all things and all that, you know.
Will Wright's About To Make You His Bitch.
And this isn't even touching on the more technical things such as driver support, application support, cost of ownership, etc.
I've said it before and I'll say it again; businesses will do whatever consumers let them get away with.
If this type of packaging bothers people that much then they should let the companies know in the only language they understand, money. Buy an alternative product which uses a more sane packaging method.
I paid for my cell phone jammer so I should get to use it when I want.
But (as a guess) anyone who was paying close enough attention to WoW before its release to know this would probably be pretty hard-core. ;) I have played practically every major MMO to be released in America, and I would gladly play a game that found the magical solution to zero grind while preserving long-term playability. Being realistic, however, I think we are more likely to transmute iron to gold first.
You are damn right I would fall into the "hardcore" category.
Obviously there is no way to quantify how much of the outcry was from your "hardcore players" and how much was from the "average masses" as you put them. Regardless, Blizzard is a business and saw enough of a demand that they felt it was in their best interest to make the change.
FYI, the entire reason World of Warcraft is so insanely successful is because they do not pander to the hardcore minority. From its simplified gameplay to the fastest leveling time of any MMO ever released, WoW is the most casual-friendly MMO ever released.
It is funny you mention that. I played every Ultima, and was a huge fan of the series. I got in on the early beta tests for UO as soon as I heard about it and played ravenously for many years after release.
While that is one of the few MMOs to abandon the legacy D&D level grind, it still had just as much a grind in the form of skills.
This idea is exactly how WoW was originally planned. Once players got wind of this there was so much outcry that Blizzard changed the system to one of positive reinforcement with an experience bonus for not playing as much, as opposed to a penalty for playing too much.
The grind is not attractive in any way. Going and killing the same dragon over and over again is not something I want to do. There are lots of different ways to encourage players to move forward. Simply putting more weight on storytelling experience points is a good way to do that.
As much gamers complain about "the grind", you can't have a successful MMO without one grind or another. It is unrealistic to expect developers to design, implement, test, and release fresh new content at anywhere near the rate that players can and will consume it. That means you need to have players repeating the same actions ad nauseam to progress, otherwise they will reach the "top" and have nothing left to do. Bored players quit the game, and that will hardly bring the business any money, now will it?
You can put me on record as saying there is absolutely no way to design an MMO without some form of mindless repetition.
The obvious answer to your question is that they don't have to. Big businesses do whatever the customers will let them get away with.
Once in mass production I'm sure it wouldn't raise the cost of a CPU by that much, but then again how much does it really cost to add an onboard graphics chip to a motherboard? It seems like a lot of research, development, and production money for little gain. Maybe I'm missing some bigger picture here?
I agree with what you are saying, but the root of the problem does not lie with the game, rather the players.
For an MMO to be successful it must play to the lower common denominator. If a game requires any significant amount of player skill in order to succeed then it will crash and burn, as the average player simply isn't that good when you are talking about games with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and especially millions of players.
Geographically, a single US state is as big or bigger than a lot of those countries. For example, Texas alone is 691,030 sq km, while the entire country of Japan weighs in at 377,835 sq km.
I'm sure implementing a powerful network infrastructure would be quite a lot faster, cheaper, and easier, if everyone in America lived in Texas.
MAP08: Tricks and Traps
Level design: Sandy Petersen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_II/