That applies to stories but the "beat evil guy, save princess" story is applied by many different games that play completely different (e.g. Super Mario Bros. and Zelda). The innovation of a game is not in the story but in the way the game plays. A game can be innovative in many ways, it doesn't have to play completely unlike anything before it, the experience has to be significantly different, though. No game is without any "prior art" for its features but the way they combine and play out can greatly alter the gameplay experience. In the same vein, a game can appear vastly different from anything before it on the surface but the game experience can still feel the same as it does with other games.
I think there are more basic archetypes of games than basic archetypes of stories though that doesn't mean much, you can abstract away from something until you reach the conclusion that a bunny is like a table but in the end these things are vastly different because what we see is not just the abstract description that uses maybe three out of a hundred plot points present in a story to categorize it. Sure it's easy to reduce everything to archetypes if you ignore enough differences. Hey, why not introduce the archetype "includes consonants"? That sure proves everything is derivative!
That's Circle of the Moon. Most people agree that Aria of Sorrow is better (available together with the less great but still very fun Harmony of Dissonance for 20$ these days). Aos and HoD changed the physics somewhat so you don't have to double tap to run at a decent pace anymore.
What % of the user base do you even think has seen the inside of Naxx? [..] If it were as easy as all of you old EQ elitists say that number should be pretty damn near 100... right?
Keep in mind that difficulty is not the only thing that can prevent a player from reaching the endgame. WoW is hardly a 5 minute game.
Also keep in mind that it's not the hardest part of a game that defines its difficulty, it's the average difficulty. A few hard parts at the end don't make a difficult game if the day to day combat isn't difficult.
Sorry, but I don't want to play Mario Bros skinned into an MMO.
Oh, if only...
MMORPG combat is mind numbingly boring and involves no actual challenge at all. Sure, you can die from not using enough healing items or approaching an enemy the wrong way but just because it's possible to fail doesn't mean it's challenging. PvE requires close to zero ability, from what I heard it doesn't get interesting in most games until you've spent a double digit amount of hours and I get bored of these games a long time before then. Challenging means to me that it requires something that's hard to pull off and may require a lot of training (for the player, not the character stats) to do successfully, I haven't encountered anything like that in an MMORPG. Super Mario Bros is a lot more challenging than any MMORPG I've played, even the ones that make you die every third battle.
Realistically, would China keep paying you if the part of the contract they care about got removed or would they just say "tough luck" and stop paying you or even arrest you for breaking local laws (this censorship is based in chinese law, after all, not just random contracts)?
The US represents 50% or more of the market most corporations deal with in addition to containing large parts of the corporate struicture on its soil, withdrawing from there is not an option. Stop pretending companies hold the country hostage.
What our culture deems acceptable is not acceptable in the view of other cultures and forcing our views on them isn't going to make them like us. We should respect the right of other countries to form their laws around their own moral values.
Pointing something out is one thing but making laws and trying to apply them to sovereign nations is highly arrogant. This kind of arrogance is what a lot of people think of when they think of the US, no matter how common it actually is. Its the source of all the anti-US sentiment throughout the world, we see the US act like they are the ruler of the world and obviously we don't like that conduct. Currently the US has the power to bully many countries around but they really need to hold onto it because if they were to lose it they'd be left with few friends.
Those are means, not a purpose. The one and only purpose of a government is to make the society it governs work. If that society would work better with regulated business business gets regulated. Besides, regulating businesses falls under passing and enforcing laws.
Heh, imagine the EU prevented trade with countries that ignore human rights. By the EU definition that includes the USA. I think the USA's definition of free speech would also prevent trade with the EU.
But all contracts have a "separability clause" that says that anything in the contract that violates the law is automatically declared void without effecting the rest of the contract.
The problem is that the action would be illegal in some other country but not the one you have the contract with. As such China can require you to follow their laws without giving a fuck about what laws the US has.
Err, sorry, I don't follow this logic... American companies' ability to bend China's oppressive laws should contribute to, rather than detriment from the freedom of ordinary Chinese...
However it decreases the freedom of the country as a whole to make its own laws on subjects their culture might disagree with the US on. Imagine the EU decided to make it illegal for companies to do business in areas where capital punishment exists. Different people, different cultures, different laws. By attempting to interfere with the laws in other countries you create a lot of negative sentiment, the kind that political leaders use to make people fly planes into skyscrapers.
Slashdot Mirror
Funnily GTA San Andreas just topped the weekly charts in Japan by a fair margin.
"What it's like to jump on Bowser's head repeatedly"
Is there any Mario game where that isn't fatal?
Yes but both failed to provide the same level of interactivity. In Tamagochi you pretty much just push the right buttons to restore certain statuses.
Of course if you define fantasy as involving elves, orcs and magic you can't really complain that all fantasy includes orcs, elves and magic.
Splinter Cell is made by Ubisoft. EA hasn't bought them yet.
That applies to stories but the "beat evil guy, save princess" story is applied by many different games that play completely different (e.g. Super Mario Bros. and Zelda). The innovation of a game is not in the story but in the way the game plays. A game can be innovative in many ways, it doesn't have to play completely unlike anything before it, the experience has to be significantly different, though. No game is without any "prior art" for its features but the way they combine and play out can greatly alter the gameplay experience. In the same vein, a game can appear vastly different from anything before it on the surface but the game experience can still feel the same as it does with other games.
I think there are more basic archetypes of games than basic archetypes of stories though that doesn't mean much, you can abstract away from something until you reach the conclusion that a bunny is like a table but in the end these things are vastly different because what we see is not just the abstract description that uses maybe three out of a hundred plot points present in a story to categorize it. Sure it's easy to reduce everything to archetypes if you ignore enough differences. Hey, why not introduce the archetype "includes consonants"? That sure proves everything is derivative!
That's Circle of the Moon. Most people agree that Aria of Sorrow is better (available together with the less great but still very fun Harmony of Dissonance for 20$ these days). Aos and HoD changed the physics somewhat so you don't have to double tap to run at a decent pace anymore.
What % of the user base do you even think has seen the inside of Naxx? [..] If it were as easy as all of you old EQ elitists say that number should be pretty damn near 100... right?
Keep in mind that difficulty is not the only thing that can prevent a player from reaching the endgame. WoW is hardly a 5 minute game.
Also keep in mind that it's not the hardest part of a game that defines its difficulty, it's the average difficulty. A few hard parts at the end don't make a difficult game if the day to day combat isn't difficult.
Sorry, but I don't want to play Mario Bros skinned into an MMO.
Oh, if only...
MMORPG combat is mind numbingly boring and involves no actual challenge at all. Sure, you can die from not using enough healing items or approaching an enemy the wrong way but just because it's possible to fail doesn't mean it's challenging. PvE requires close to zero ability, from what I heard it doesn't get interesting in most games until you've spent a double digit amount of hours and I get bored of these games a long time before then. Challenging means to me that it requires something that's hard to pull off and may require a lot of training (for the player, not the character stats) to do successfully, I haven't encountered anything like that in an MMORPG. Super Mario Bros is a lot more challenging than any MMORPG I've played, even the ones that make you die every third battle.
Realistically, would China keep paying you if the part of the contract they care about got removed or would they just say "tough luck" and stop paying you or even arrest you for breaking local laws (this censorship is based in chinese law, after all, not just random contracts)?
Life and liberty can be taken by the law (death penalty and jail time, respectively), why would freedom of speech be any different?
Can you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-s-y?
Don't worry, the next generation won't be able to spell any word with more than two syllables with all these cuts to the education budget.
The US represents 50% or more of the market most corporations deal with in addition to containing large parts of the corporate struicture on its soil, withdrawing from there is not an option. Stop pretending companies hold the country hostage.
The EU is already complaining about the online gambling ban and may go to the WTO with it.
What our culture deems acceptable is not acceptable in the view of other cultures and forcing our views on them isn't going to make them like us. We should respect the right of other countries to form their laws around their own moral values.
Pointing something out is one thing but making laws and trying to apply them to sovereign nations is highly arrogant. This kind of arrogance is what a lot of people think of when they think of the US, no matter how common it actually is. Its the source of all the anti-US sentiment throughout the world, we see the US act like they are the ruler of the world and obviously we don't like that conduct. Currently the US has the power to bully many countries around but they really need to hold onto it because if they were to lose it they'd be left with few friends.
if I sold a million dollars worth of gas chambers to nazi germany, that would be immoral
But what if you sold them to the US?
Those are means, not a purpose. The one and only purpose of a government is to make the society it governs work. If that society would work better with regulated business business gets regulated. Besides, regulating businesses falls under passing and enforcing laws.
Sounds vaguely like something out of 'The Matrix'.
No, sounds like something out of pretty much every socialist dictatorship, probably the fascist ones as well.
The US is the only place where you can buy legal copies of any given software/music/video at the corner market.
The rest of the western world would like to remind you of its existence.
Yes but if you grab anyone in the process that may just have been spreading propaganda you violate this law.
Heh, imagine the EU prevented trade with countries that ignore human rights. By the EU definition that includes the USA. I think the USA's definition of free speech would also prevent trade with the EU.
But all contracts have a "separability clause" that says that anything in the contract that violates the law is automatically declared void without effecting the rest of the contract.
The problem is that the action would be illegal in some other country but not the one you have the contract with. As such China can require you to follow their laws without giving a fuck about what laws the US has.
Step two is embargos on any publicly traded company that is not subject to a similar system.
Err, sorry, I don't follow this logic... American companies' ability to bend China's oppressive laws should contribute to, rather than detriment from the freedom of ordinary Chinese...
However it decreases the freedom of the country as a whole to make its own laws on subjects their culture might disagree with the US on. Imagine the EU decided to make it illegal for companies to do business in areas where capital punishment exists. Different people, different cultures, different laws. By attempting to interfere with the laws in other countries you create a lot of negative sentiment, the kind that political leaders use to make people fly planes into skyscrapers.