The smoothing only looks nice for a while, after that you realize that the filtering is ruining the look of the game by making shading harder (banding) and such. I've set all my emulators to use the original image instead of any filters because the game graphics tend to be designed for the regular output and get messed up by filters.
You still can't put a game out if Nintendo thinks it's not up to scratch, the hurdle is just that it has to be technically fine (doesn't crash much and doesn't damage the hardware) and supposedly some devs still have trouble meeting it. Looking at the NES it doesn't really seem like their quality standards were any higher back then though they may have had additional restrictions to the content.
From what I see most XBLA titles are dual-analog shooters or stuff like that and while the effects and such get more and more advanced the core gameplay just gets clunky. Then again I've only played the demos of most and those rarely get much past the tutorial. Seems to me like this upmarket trend here is just adding superficialities and needless complication.
That's only if you want specific games. If you don't have nearly enough time to play every great game that comes out you can just pick from the ones that are available.
Why, then, do certain game publishers keep pushing the limits of violent content?
Because they have no better ideas for making their games stand out from the crowd. Quality (writing/graphics/gameplay/etc) is expensive and can be hard to get, extreme violence and edgyness is fairly easy (i.e. consistently doable) to implement because there's no real way to get it wrong. Well, the wrong comes in later when it turns out that doesn't sell but hey, you got your media attention, right?
Sorry but everyone knows that violence is caused by underpants. All those killers wore underpants. I bet the 9/11 hijackers wore underpants too. Let me outline my master plan:
1. Steal underpants 2. Receive Nobel Peace Price 3. Profit!
I thought the only solution was to ban people from having kids without taking a license test? After all what the kid knows is mostly the result of parenting.
From what I hear about many modern games 6 hours is the regular game length except the games usually come with multiplayer modes that are the real point of the game.
Eh, it was a semi-decent C&C Generals clone (though infantry feels a bit too strong, maybe that's just because the AI doesn't counter it properly though) plus Nazi combat dirigibles are always fun so picking it up from the bargain bin was worth it overall... Oh, you mean having the words Turning Point first?
This is easy to fix. I ran into demos like that. The point is to give a taste, not a meal.
Just like a restuarant shouldn't stuff you with free appetizers if it wants to sell product.
However many demos are so short that they're off-putting. Examples: A Kingdom For Keflings quits somewhere in the tutorial after countless popups that you should buy it every time there is an archievement. Bionic Commando Rearmed contains two short sections of the first level interspersed with dialogue that tells you that you should buy the game, then ends (doesn't that game have like 16 levels? Why not let the player complete 1-2 of them?). War World quits a minute or two into the game or if you happen to hit any button that would trigger a powerup.
Often demos are the first level of the game, the problem is that that is usually the tutorial and tutorials are something that you usally want to get past ASAP to get to the fun part (I've read complaints that tutorials are one nail in gaming's coffin, that you have to "work" for 30 minutes to an hour to actually start having fun) so the demo gives you a horrible impression of the game.
Interesting. I've been grabbing any demo I came across but so far the only one that made a sale was Braid (because I was planning on buying that anyway). Especially the Arcade demos tend to be trainwrecks, so short that some don't even get through the tutorial, annoying messages to "buy now" whenever an archievement is reached (which happens very quickly in most games) and in many cases the text on the screen is so small that it's eye-straining to read. A demo shouldn't try to torture you into buying!
120$ a month can buy a lot more if you go bargain hunting instead of buying at relase. If you don't want more that money can go to other purposes. As for 20 hours per game, seems to me like the trend is towards more like 5 hours. Ever since the release of Unreal 2 I remember people complaining about every new blockbuster game being short.
Meh, other PS3 games sold better. I'll blame the quirky theme and focus on user-made content. Quirky stuff doesn't go down well in the market, never did. You can pretty much tell that a game isn't going to sell well if it has a niche design like that. Maybe gamers at large don't want quirky games and the internet subset and reviewers are just out of touch with them.
I've seen a study that found out that indie games sell better without a demo available (the page was randomly served with and without a demo download option, the one without the option showed more sales, I presume they used cookies to make sure they serve the same version to the same people or something) but I don't think the failure of these specific games is to blame on the demo. Mirror's Edge and Little Big Planet are stylized games with quirky game design (one is a first person jump&run, the other is a game about user created content). If we look at the history of critically lauded stylized games these tend to fail in the marketplace. In fact I'd say LBP was very successful for a title in its position (some time ago I saw a sales figure of 1.3 million, might have increased by now, games like that tend to be in the 200k-500k range) though that may have been related to the massive hype the game received ("the last game you'll ever need", the PS3's killer app that will catapult it to #1, advertising everywhere, even a console bundle for it) which niche titles like that usually lack.
Other examples in the article weren't exactly flops, of course the demos will get more players than the final game (costs nothing to grab a demo but the full versions of the games listed were 70€). I think complaints are only really warranted when a game fails to perform as expected, that free versions will outperform the paid-for ones is pretty much a duh.
Yes but a holographic universe is still real, it just has one dimension less than perceived. The article mentions a proof that a 5 dimensional universe can be a projection of a four-dimensional "plane" while retaining all of its physics (and with physics it's obviously not a static image).
There are hologram postcards in many department stores, too.
Your comparison with videogames, the Matrix and Star Trek implies that you are the one misunderstanding it. It's a hologram in the sense you described first, a 2d (or whatever) surface that projects to a 3d volume. That doesn't make it not real, just flatter.
"obverving" in quantum mechanics means interaction with larger objects, not conscious observation. Schrödinger's cat would not go into a superposition because it is too large.
Slashdot Mirror
The smoothing only looks nice for a while, after that you realize that the filtering is ruining the look of the game by making shading harder (banding) and such. I've set all my emulators to use the original image instead of any filters because the game graphics tend to be designed for the regular output and get messed up by filters.
You still can't put a game out if Nintendo thinks it's not up to scratch, the hurdle is just that it has to be technically fine (doesn't crash much and doesn't damage the hardware) and supposedly some devs still have trouble meeting it. Looking at the NES it doesn't really seem like their quality standards were any higher back then though they may have had additional restrictions to the content.
Who said anything about crap? Games get cheaper as time passes. They don't degrade in quality just from sitting on a store shelf.
From what I see most XBLA titles are dual-analog shooters or stuff like that and while the effects and such get more and more advanced the core gameplay just gets clunky. Then again I've only played the demos of most and those rarely get much past the tutorial. Seems to me like this upmarket trend here is just adding superficialities and needless complication.
That's only if you want specific games. If you don't have nearly enough time to play every great game that comes out you can just pick from the ones that are available.
Bloody? That's gotta be pretty furious then.
For your two hypothetical examples, the first one is probably pretty close to Manhunt, the second one was actually implemented by Neonazis.
The book Freakonomics claims that's due to the rise of abortion.
Why, then, do certain game publishers keep pushing the limits of violent content?
Because they have no better ideas for making their games stand out from the crowd. Quality (writing/graphics/gameplay/etc) is expensive and can be hard to get, extreme violence and edgyness is fairly easy (i.e. consistently doable) to implement because there's no real way to get it wrong. Well, the wrong comes in later when it turns out that doesn't sell but hey, you got your media attention, right?
Sorry but everyone knows that violence is caused by underpants. All those killers wore underpants. I bet the 9/11 hijackers wore underpants too. Let me outline my master plan:
1. Steal underpants
2. Receive Nobel Peace Price
3. Profit!
I thought the only solution was to ban people from having kids without taking a license test? After all what the kid knows is mostly the result of parenting.
From what I hear about many modern games 6 hours is the regular game length except the games usually come with multiplayer modes that are the real point of the game.
Eh, it was a semi-decent C&C Generals clone (though infantry feels a bit too strong, maybe that's just because the AI doesn't counter it properly though) plus Nazi combat dirigibles are always fun so picking it up from the bargain bin was worth it overall... Oh, you mean having the words Turning Point first?
This is easy to fix. I ran into demos like that. The point is to give a taste, not a meal.
Just like a restuarant shouldn't stuff you with free appetizers if it wants to sell product.
However many demos are so short that they're off-putting. Examples: A Kingdom For Keflings quits somewhere in the tutorial after countless popups that you should buy it every time there is an archievement. Bionic Commando Rearmed contains two short sections of the first level interspersed with dialogue that tells you that you should buy the game, then ends (doesn't that game have like 16 levels? Why not let the player complete 1-2 of them?). War World quits a minute or two into the game or if you happen to hit any button that would trigger a powerup.
Often demos are the first level of the game, the problem is that that is usually the tutorial and tutorials are something that you usally want to get past ASAP to get to the fun part (I've read complaints that tutorials are one nail in gaming's coffin, that you have to "work" for 30 minutes to an hour to actually start having fun) so the demo gives you a horrible impression of the game.
Or your game design...
Interesting. I've been grabbing any demo I came across but so far the only one that made a sale was Braid (because I was planning on buying that anyway). Especially the Arcade demos tend to be trainwrecks, so short that some don't even get through the tutorial, annoying messages to "buy now" whenever an archievement is reached (which happens very quickly in most games) and in many cases the text on the screen is so small that it's eye-straining to read. A demo shouldn't try to torture you into buying!
Well, sales depend on what people think before buying it, not after. A game that gives people the impression that it's not for them will fail to sell.
120$ a month can buy a lot more if you go bargain hunting instead of buying at relase. If you don't want more that money can go to other purposes. As for 20 hours per game, seems to me like the trend is towards more like 5 hours. Ever since the release of Unreal 2 I remember people complaining about every new blockbuster game being short.
Nintnedo claims that 99% of the year's revenue growth for the game industry was just them. Make of that what you want.
Meh, other PS3 games sold better. I'll blame the quirky theme and focus on user-made content. Quirky stuff doesn't go down well in the market, never did. You can pretty much tell that a game isn't going to sell well if it has a niche design like that. Maybe gamers at large don't want quirky games and the internet subset and reviewers are just out of touch with them.
I've seen a study that found out that indie games sell better without a demo available (the page was randomly served with and without a demo download option, the one without the option showed more sales, I presume they used cookies to make sure they serve the same version to the same people or something) but I don't think the failure of these specific games is to blame on the demo. Mirror's Edge and Little Big Planet are stylized games with quirky game design (one is a first person jump&run, the other is a game about user created content). If we look at the history of critically lauded stylized games these tend to fail in the marketplace. In fact I'd say LBP was very successful for a title in its position (some time ago I saw a sales figure of 1.3 million, might have increased by now, games like that tend to be in the 200k-500k range) though that may have been related to the massive hype the game received ("the last game you'll ever need", the PS3's killer app that will catapult it to #1, advertising everywhere, even a console bundle for it) which niche titles like that usually lack.
Other examples in the article weren't exactly flops, of course the demos will get more players than the final game (costs nothing to grab a demo but the full versions of the games listed were 70€). I think complaints are only really warranted when a game fails to perform as expected, that free versions will outperform the paid-for ones is pretty much a duh.
Yes but a holographic universe is still real, it just has one dimension less than perceived. The article mentions a proof that a 5 dimensional universe can be a projection of a four-dimensional "plane" while retaining all of its physics (and with physics it's obviously not a static image).
Speaking of Rei, that's a role that's tailor-made for him.
No, turtles all the way down was the answer to "what does the turtle stand on". Pratchett's answer was "it's a turtle, it swims!"
There are hologram postcards in many department stores, too.
Your comparison with videogames, the Matrix and Star Trek implies that you are the one misunderstanding it. It's a hologram in the sense you described first, a 2d (or whatever) surface that projects to a 3d volume. That doesn't make it not real, just flatter.
"obverving" in quantum mechanics means interaction with larger objects, not conscious observation. Schrödinger's cat would not go into a superposition because it is too large.