Why did the framers of the Constitution feel the need for the Bill of Rights? No laws where being violated so they could have left it all open and take this course of action (or inaction). Fixing the right to council, free association, etc after they've been "violated" is of little use who got stuck with it.
Other places have neutrality laws and while they aren't aren't "uptopian" they aren't screwed up either. If these telcos want to act as a common carrier and get that protection and benefit then they need to figure out if this is the buisness they want to be in.
Specifically, the Humans are very fractured. Unlike some of the other races (there is no questioning the authority of Thrall as the leader of the Orcs), Humans are fractured and scattered and are presented in game as having complex political issues. There is no Human leader even though there is a "king" (but the reagent runs things, who seems like a level headed nice guy) there are very few who pay anything more than lip service to their leader (the Priests claim they should be running the spirtual things, Mages claim they should be running the magical things, etc). Even the most acliamed and popular Humans like Jaina Proudmore couldn't get people to rally around her in this situation. It is in this climate that Onxyia could sneak and do her stuff.
The Humans nor The Alliance aren't evil or corrupt. They are just driven to excell (human nature?) and unfortunately don't agree on how to do it.
And I agree with the general conclusions on the topic:
- In game advertising won't reduce the price of the game. No one should have any illusions that if a $60 game has paid advertising in game that it will come down to $20. Producers will just pocket the extra revenue.
- In game advertising makes sense in some places and is in fact expected while others it sticks out like a sore thumb. For a game like Grand Turismo, sponsorship is a part of the racing experience. You should see logos and other other stuff trying to get them to notice their car products. This is tolerated and even expected. However if you are playing in World of Warcraft and you see an advertisement for "Buy a Burger King Whopper and wash it down with a cool Pepsi because PVP is hard work!" that seems to offend people.
- In game advertising is not "traditional advertising" so one shouldn't treat it as such. If in game advertising is a "necessary evil", then do something fun with it. Instead of having a static image on a billboard as you drive around in the game, do something fun with it. In sand box games Grand Theft Auto, instead of just putting billboards around the city that say "Eat Burger King Whoppers!", how about actually putting Burger King stores in the game? This might be risky to the corperate suits but it might pay off well if they can work closely with the game designers.
I think the author didn't do enough research because if you actually play in the game you quickly see that neither side is "evil" and that there are many factions that cross the lines. Tuarens and Night Elves who don't care much for The Horde who put the natural world first are in Centarian Circle. There are evil Dwarves and Orcs up to their own monkey buisness (they are evil because the goal of their monkey buisness is entirely *evil*) that will attack Horde or Alliance characters with equal hatred. Argent Dawn is a collection of both Alliance and Horde that consider the threat from the Scourge a much bigger problem than the petty Horde vs Alliance squabble.
Ignoring the author, there is an interesting sociological angle to the world Blizzard has setup. You have two factions who are at perminate odds and who have been saddled extreme problems "understanding" each other (it is hard to communicate, impossible to help, or otherwise interact with them in anything but a hostile manner). If one jumps into the game and studies the players interacting with each other they'll find all sorts of interesting things that can be studied. How players will rationalize attacking another player. How a player will automatically, and possibily, subconciously "demoting" the other side's status as players (those guys are idiots, stupid *insert class here* they have the easy mode!), and scarily how players will be in glee in misery over the angony of another. There is fertile stuff here to study some dark behavior found in humans.
Another point of interest, World of Warcraft is clearly a "Western Centric" game. The cultural and symbolic references are familiar to Western Civilization, specifically in North America. As already noted, Bliz uses familiar cultural references to add flavor to the game. Dwarves are Celtic (to me, the men sound Scottish while the women sound Irish). Trolls are Jamacian, maybe more of a blend of Carribean Island. Tuaren are presented like Native Americans. This is a bit of a stretch but the Forsaken are presented more like "goths" outsiders who don't fit well anywhere. These make sense to me as a guy who lives in North America. The question on my mind is how does this present itself in other countries outside of North America? Heck are any of the audio cues and dialog changed? How in the heck does one do a Scottish accent in Chinese anyway? I'm wondering what other countries make of this "flavoring" in the game.
1. The whole thing with Immersion itself trying to sue the pants off of anything that rumbles. Sony didn't pay and was defeated in court so they "question" why the PS3 doesn't have rumble? Yeah...
2. If the controler itself has a "motion sensor" itself, ie the tilt functionality showcased in Warhawk, then having a controler that vibrated might interfere with it reporting correct user input. It isn't that the controler is delicate but the way tilt is measured is thrown off by extra forces like vibration. Feedback is "interesting" but "tilt" might be more interesting
My feeling is that Sony should offer *both* "tilt" and "rumble" if it is merly a technical issue. If it a paten issue, I'm quite happy to have them leave it out.
No matter what your opinion of E3 or Sony, Sony isn't going just "destruct". The worst that seems to happen at this point in time is that Sony doesn't dominate as hard as they used to which IMHO *is the best place to be*. When Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo compete against each other we reap the benifits. Some of the most exciting and inventive games to come out in quite awhile will be appearing in 2007 and 2008. All because all three of these companies think the market is up for grabs.
So why the doom and gloom? I say bring it on! Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all need to be humbled at regular intervals anyway to service us.
I predict there will be a show on The Colbert Report where he complains that the "media blackout" on this event is because he was speaking the plain and honest truth. The reason why this show as well as The Daily Show are funny is because of stuff like this: Could he be right??
I've seen the video and some of the barbs aren't particularlly funny by themselves but when put in the context of the event, a dinner where the President and some of his closer allies couldn't just kick him out or walk away, it becomes a very potent jab.
Wikipedia isn't supposed to be biased for (and here is the part many miss) or against. Hence the "NPOV stance" they try to enforce. If citing buisness stats and other corporate information is "bias" then they have a skewed definition of bias. After reading the article, it seems that any information about Wal-Mart that isn't a critism as automatically biased and suspect. That is just as bad a POV as being a "sunshine and rainbow fanboy".
In short, Wikipedia is not the place to have a diatribe on the goods or evils of any topic, even the much vaunted Wal-Mart. I simply don't see what the complaint is here. Are they disappointed they can't argue about Wal-Mart on Wikipedia? Well Wikipedia isn't the place to do that. That has nothing to do with bowing to presure from Wal-Mart. Chaning a link from "Wal-Mart Corporate Communication Page" to "Wal-Mart Propaganda Site" is not a legitamite edit nor is it NPOV.
Ignoring some of the other elements of KH2 I feel the most distinctive thing in this game is the "brawling" action. There are some parts of the game where you are surrounded by hundreds of opponents that all want to take their portion out of you. Now granted they aren't as burly and strong as you are but that is still a lot of opponents to square off against especially if surrounded with no escape.
This game shows a refinement of the idea of mass brawling which seems to be a cathartic experience found in many movies and TV shows anyway. The Hero is surrounded by The Bad Guys and some how he fights his way out. Who wouldn't want to play this roll? Hopefully Ninty-Nine Nights and a possible KH3 will refine the idea even farther. The fights in KH2 aren't a "gimme" but I feel with some tweaking it would turn from a "fighting off the mindless horde of attackers" to a more pitched battle which feels more exciting and satisfying.
Someone at Microsoft thought it was a good idea to somehow, one product is all anyone needs. Although a lofty goal, it is entirely unrealistic. It is like assuming a car manufacture can build "one car" that will satisfy all needs.
It seems mostly unreasonable that one can try sell (or repackage) the same products and technology to home users (grandma), buisness users (enterprise), and data center (data services). The problem is that the technology and use case senarios for each of the situations is dramatically different. When you try to unify these products you end up with the "swiss army knife" product that barely covers the basic features between the segment instead of a robust product that each can be happy with.
Why does grandma need the ACL and the other domain/Active Directory control behavior? One can claim it is for security but it seems that the security threat and security model for home users is different than the enterprise level which is where these tools belong. Why does hundreds of computers that are used for ERP need Direct X? It is yet more configuration and software that can possibly diviate if not break across hundreds of installations. Why does a server in a cluster configuration need Outlook?? Trying to support these pieces of oddball software in all three of these examples is hard. I wonder what advantage MS has by continually sticking to this. Is it really the so called "look" that they think they are getting value out of? If they stepped back and looked at the feature sets of just these three use cases, there is very little in common between them.
I've always said that Microsoft would be better served if they focused down their products. If they had a *true* home version that setup in minutes and only included the things necessary to web surf and play games that would be some great value. If they had a *true* enterprise version that offered a bunch of services that hook into enterprise control that would be some great value. If they had a *true* server that installed what is needed to do high performance cluster and balancing that would be some great value. Trying to create Windows version that has sprinklings of all of this is a beast. It is like trying to car that has the features of a sedan, a SUV, and limo. The "car" you end up turns out to be something that is none of them.
I appreciate that Microsoft wants to sell products in these spaces. In fact I encourage them to do so. However I don't encourage trying to make their products all behave like each other because they simply aren't deployed that way. This article is an effect of this misplaced endevor. The firewall configuration for home users should be dramatically differen than the one offered to enterprise configuration anyway. Ideally we shouldn't be freaking out about changes to the enterprise sofware will effect other installations (like home and servers) but we are forced too.
On the other hand, if current trends continue for mobile computing then you want your email on a machine you can access anywhere. Since most people can't afford to host their own email server, this is where Gmail and the like come in. They'll host it for you to access from anywhere.
Its all well and good to say "its in expensive, better, whatever to use your own mail storage" it doesn't mean a lot to many people if they can't look check it while standing in a line at Starbucks. Whether or not trends in mobile computing are good is a discussion for another day but to dismiss centralize storage is "backwards" is misplaced and at worse "tinfoil hat"-ish since email was never meant as a secured means of communication any more than a postcard is secured (read: if one believes they have super important information that needs to stay super secret they aren't touching email as a transport anyway). There are good reasons to centralize and disperse storage where both schemes have their bonus and drawbacks.
The best solution is to have both. One should have some email addresses that are only accessible from home and others from anywhere and give out email appropriately.
I guess all those games by Bethesda, Bioware, etc. don't exist?
Okay list them.:) Asking this question doesn't automatically make the argument invalid.
In case you haven't noticed, the "single slayer, PC RPG" genre has been all but dead for years. They morphed into something that is found mostly in its current MMOG form (think World of Warcraft) or something more "hybrid" (for instance RTS games with RPG elements).
So here is an excirse: go to the store to pick up a brand new copy of Oblivion but also look around to see what other single player RPGs are current on the self. Chances are there is Morrowind. There will also probably be Knights of the Old Republic 2 which is a pale shadow of its predicessor and not to mention a very shollow RPG. If you want to count things like Grand Theft Auto I suppose these could be RPGs and even closer to "a sandbox" that is found in Oblivion but again it is a very shallow if not an outright adventure game (Zelda is an action/adventure game even thought it has many themes common to RPGs).
So where are all of these Bethesda and Bioware games? Compared to the stuff online, compared to the sports games, compared to the movie franchise games, the fact that producers buckled down for Oblivion is a miracle. Just like Myst style "hot spot adventure games" went out of style so is the "single player RPG". On the console, there may still be refuge there for the "single player RPG" but who knows how long that will last as consoles gravitate to look more like PCs....
For the near future, I see Neverwinter Nights 2 and Gothic 3 and I suspect one of them wants to desperately have some sort of online play feature....
I'm inclined to believe it is just a BS comment made from the hip. To actually believe an executive officer of any company would "order" his kids to do anything flies in the face of marketing and parenting conventions. For marketing, you've drawn attention to some positives about using the competition's product: that it irritates Ballmer. For parenting, at a certain age telling your kids to not do something without guidence is one of the surest ways to have them do it.
If it is or isn't true isn't the issue. The fact he said it indicates something of his thought processes on marketing and strategy. It seems to suggest that instead of concentrating on the quality of their product, or the quality of the competition's product, that the thing he would do is supress information about the other product. This isn't automatically a bad marketing strategy but is spooky on its own especially told in this parable. Even if the idea is made up, the idea is that Ballmer isn't interested in either his product or the competition but in control. If you are an investor this is what you should take away from the comment and use this tidbit of insight to help direct where your next investments should go.
For such a visible face for Microsoft, he sure picked some *aweful* metaphors to discuss their strategy and products. He should recognize this and either chose his words more carefully or let others handle this stuff. He left us all with the implication he is an aweful person or that he is oblivious to consumer tastes.
I've seen the Gambit system in action and its one of the best ideas to come out of RPGs let alone console RPGs in a long while. Compared to the archaic systems like Dragon Quest 8, Gambits make the fights move much faster in a franetic fashion that makes it move more like how you'd think a fight scene in a movie would go without the pestering you. Not the whole Xenosaga thing where you are watching the "movie of the game" but it is controlable. Considering that the game tries to present the other people in your group as "real", unless the activity is tedious or requires exacting precision why should I tell my party or subordinates each and everything thing they should be doing? I should be saying "We are going over here, kill that first" and instead of directing each minute detail of my side of the battle.
I really don't understand some of the bitching FF12 is getting. Some people are going "oh its the same old Final Fantasy". Have we been playing the same games? Ignoring the setting choices they use (and the name), each Final Fantasy is fairly unique and tries some experimental things that are not often reused (which is good and bad). Very few parts of this engine are from any other game so what about this is the same old FF "The game is too automatic! I want to push the buttons!" are probably the same people who thought Dragon Quest 8 was a great game but ignore the fact its a boring, if not flagulation of a game.
I don't think FF12 is the "best game ever!" but it does have interesting ideas and features that make it stand out and heck even recommendable for playing. Heck FF is actually gravitating towards making the player notice the story more than the combat engine. How is this a bad thing??
I'm not saying that having IE written in full managed code isn't a good idea but it won't help with security. A good chunk of the problems come from the ambiguous uses of various technology in IE (Active X, jscript, etc). Many of these are functioning exactly as designed but still having undesirable side effects such as completely unsecured. These are problems that would exist reguardless of the language binding used to build IE upon because logical problems are still logical problems reguardless if they are in C or Perl or C#. Rewriting a poorly designed, insecure system in C# does not automatically create a secured system (although it might make it more obscured).
Besides, the.Net Framework itself has yet another security tool that needs to be configured and can subsequently misconfigured. It is another "confusing to the nominal user" setting that most laymen are likely to ignore than pay attention too.
That's akin to saying the cure to a virus isn't hiding in a level 4 contamination suit.
Wrong analogy. By hiding the exploit and announcement, it is more akin to denying that the illness exists at all and therefore they will be safer. It is bogus and backwards logic that ignorance is the best course of action. Warning people about the exploit is giving them a chance to don the "level 4 contamination suit" instead of continuing to play with fire.
Trying to get a super fantastic MMOG onto a cell phone is probably a pipe dream with current technology but that doesn't mean one can't make cell phone games work.
Considering how a cell phone has a different human interface than a PSP and a DS, creating a game that is fun to play *and* is sane to control is a challenge but it is possible. This means that games like Battlefield 2 are probably not the best to put on a cell phone. However something more akin to Rub Rabbits, Wario Ware, or even Puzzle Pirates might be a better choice. A game that you can start simply by pulling our your phone in a place where you can't do much of anything else (picture a train or a bus), easily find another person close by to play, play a little, and then kill them game without much fuss (say someone's stop is close, having one person drop from the game should not kill the entire game for the others).
One thing Google nor any other search engine is good at is these generic searches. What are you looking for when you Google for 'failure'? Seriously: What searches are good results for 'failure'? Failuring in cooking? Failure in engineering? If you wanted to find a specific failure, why not be more specific with your search? Google nor any other search engine can read one's mind.
Given a lack of anything more specific, it does a 'guess' on what people generally consider a failure. Sampling from many sources shows what many places across the internet consider that to be. If the result makes one uncomfortable it isn't Google's fault.
Blogs are fine to index. They hold a lot of relevancy especially on current topics. To ignore them seems to be a big mistake. Just because something is opinionated doesn't mean its worthless to index or include in searches. If one wants an unbias search result, refine your search to make it unbias.
One of the first and primary rules of Software Design is simply this:
All features are designed
Although it is clear from the response, Microsoft is serious about improving their security their methodology is seriously flawed. Creating a product by rigorous design is good but inserting a seperate security check at some later time is tantimount to writing software that is "hopefully secure". If security is a feature you design as a feature from the start. Anything else you will get somthing less than desirable. Simply put: If you wait till some later stage to check if the system is secure, chances are it won't be or if it is has some exotic side effects that are undesirable.
Very few features that are not designed end up working correctly. It is too costly to write software by hoping features show up out of the blue. This is why you try to design things. If I read this right, Mike Nash believes that one can write software and then apply a "security process" at some later date which seems to fly in the face of everything I've learned about software design.
I'm not going to disagree with your assessed opinions but many bemoan the fact most of these games are "standard". That is their only claim to fame or why anyone noticed these games at all is that they were on the XBox 360 first.
Going from the PSX to the Dreamcast or PS2 was jaw dropping. Both of PS2 and Dreamcast had release games that said "look how much better over the old hardware we are". The XBox 360 didn't leverage this much at all except for the HDTVness. What the XBox 360 got was some "interesting" games that all could have been easily presented in the same way for the XBox. Many on the sidelines are waiting for a real game that is worth shelling out the money for an XBox 360 instead of being satisfied with rehashed games that could have easily ended up on the XBox (or worse, PS2 or Gamecube).
Inagural games are often just advertising for the system. When people are having more fun in the XBox Live Arcade than their supposedly flagship games that should singal something.
There are generally two disinct styles of RPG like games: Classless and Classed Systems. Neither one is better but they are different and have some serious drawbacks. A lot of what is good and bad about Classed Systems is already covered in the article so I won't bother to go over that. Read the article if you want to see what is good and bad about a ridgid class system.
So what about Classless systesm? A classic example of a Classless setup is something like Final Fantasy 7. No one is a fighter. No one is a caster. They are, at their cores, just baseline characters. FF7 does put limitations on these characters only by weapondry beyond that there is nothting to say any character has to stick with any particular archtype. This wasn't really a bad thing for FF7 because there was little reason for class enforcement (what skills were offered where given to all, there was very little leveraging of any skills). In a Classless system is supposed to bring out "player skills" since all "character skills" are theroetically offered to all, it is the actual active decisions the player makes instead of things like "passive class bonuses" that determin the success or failure.
The problem with a Classless System is that given open choices, a majority gravitates to the same structure. If one doesn't build up their character like the competitive majority, you can't compete at all. In FF7 everyone was a "fighter/caster" with very little deviation. This meant that unless you needed a specific trick a character offered you really could bring out any combination of characters you want and succeed in the same manner. You also saw this in Ultima Online. As soon as something changed about the game, everyone gravitated towards it. This isn't necessarily bad but it does make for a bland experience. At a particular stratta of the game, like "end game", all of the players start looking the same, performing the same, and desiring the same thing. Your groups and the game in general ended up with very little variation because everyone was offered and is striving for the same "perfection". In a system that has ridgid classes, the "perfection" for a warrior type is far removed from the goals of the caster type.
There are for sure problems with Class based systems but there are also problems with Classless systems as well. I haven't see a Classless system that has done it right yet where they can avoid the same bland nature. But then again, if everyone is really "the same" is it not just a reflection that everyone who is serious chooses the same things?
Various games have been trying a "Hybrid System" where it starts open like a Classless system but utlimately forces one to choose a class role like a Classed system. I'm not convinced these are correct either but this seems to be more flexible than both for the early parts of any game.
Shameless stolen from myself from last year's story:
Yes if Disney bought Pixar they would receive a company full of talented, driven artists but that is only half of the reason why Pixar movies do so well. The other half is that management and producers protects the production. The classic story about Toy Story is that Disney fronted the money and was unhappy about the "juvenile" nature of the story and wanted to make it "modern", edgy, or whatever kids call being "cool" these day, they proceeded to hack it up. The result was crappy, no one liked it, everyone was unhappy, and Disney was moments from pulling the plug. It wasn't until Lasseter stepped in and said 'enough is enough' and fixed it by going back to their way that the project showed promise. The rest is history. Award winning history no less.
So unless Disney takes a hands off approach if they buy up Pixar (I still doubt this would happen...would Job's ego allow it?) it will go the way of their ill fated Disney Orlando Animation Studio (which made Lilo). It isn't that Pixar has talented people (go figure...Disney has them too). It is the fact that the rank and file management all the way up to Lasseter understands they need to "protect the baby". Reguardless of whether or the story is stellar, interferrence will definately rob it any chances it had of being so.
Nothing has changed from when I originally wrote that. If Disney takes over Pixar and run its as ruthless as they have their other buisness units they'll proceed to gut it. In fact it makes more sense for Job to run Disney than to have Diseny run Pixar.
Anyone who has been using computers for awhile knows keyboards are filthy, disgusting things. Fingers are the most dirty things on the human body and here is a device you have to touch millions a time a day. It is by design a dirty thing.
I've always wondered why no one builds keyboards that are "dishwasher safe". The actual bits that are electronic and sensitive are quite small compared to the other mechanical components. Just build them to tolerate the hot water of a dishwasher and make those parts "pop out". Toss the keyboard without the eletronic bits into the dishwasher, throw in some lemon detergent and you'd have a pretty clean device. It would probably do a world of good for all of our health and leave the desk in a much cleaner state.
Gold, although in demand, isn't the thing that is really valuable. It is time. To buy some valuable item requires a good chunk of in game time to accumulate gold. The problem often is that this amount of time is prohibitive if you do anything else in the real world (oh say...like have a profressional job).
At this point one is faced with this if one wants to stay competitive:
- Spend as much time in game as you do as you spend at work to stay competitive (turning a game into a second job). - Or pay someone else to keep you competitive - Quit
If you pick the last one, all discussion becomes moot so ignore it. The first one is *hard*. Working two jobs was already hard if they weren't professional so doing it while one is extra tricky where other aspects your life suffers for it (as if playing the game already wasn't a detriment enough:) ). The second option actually seems quite sane and reasonable. If you need 1000 gold and know it will take months to accumulate with your current play style how unreasonable is it to just spend $ to get it done with? Many people have no qualms about trading "months of play" for "$ today". I don't condone buying from gold farmers but I understand there are very logical reasons for doing so.
As a note on the original topic of "Chinese Gold Farmers": Bleh, what a horrible racist term born of envy. For all we know a good chunk aren't Chinese at all but since they do a task deemed dirty its time to pull out the derogatory crap.
If you take a look at CD Japan and look at how much new region 2 disks are to the Japanese and do your own conversions into Euro/Dollars/Whatever, we are getting a deal. Fate/stay night 1 [Limited Edition] (which is HOT at the moment), is episode 1-3 listed 6190 Yen so it will probably end up being between $55-$50US. Sometime next year, Gennon will release it in the US for about $30 for the same 3 episodes with other goodies (like a box). We are not only getting shows that are filtered (the less popular shows are not offered, material on DVD is often revised and reedited), we are getting it cheaper.
The fact of the matter is that they are charging exactly how much the market seems to support. Anime is now and probably always will be a "fringe element of a fringe element". To make money at the sales rate they support they have to charge this much, which it seems the market is willing pay. In any event, if they are making money now at what is deemed "expensive" what incentive do they have to lower? It is all market forces.
BTW, if you an entire series that seems too cheap, it is probably a bootleg (there are exception but few and far between). Buy it if you wish but realize almost almost nil of any of that money is going back to the talent or producers.
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Why did the framers of the Constitution feel the need for the Bill of Rights? No laws where being violated so they could have left it all open and take this course of action (or inaction). Fixing the right to council, free association, etc after they've been "violated" is of little use who got stuck with it.
Other places have neutrality laws and while they aren't aren't "uptopian" they aren't screwed up either. If these telcos want to act as a common carrier and get that protection and benefit then they need to figure out if this is the buisness they want to be in.
Specifically, the Humans are very fractured. Unlike some of the other races (there is no questioning the authority of Thrall as the leader of the Orcs), Humans are fractured and scattered and are presented in game as having complex political issues. There is no Human leader even though there is a "king" (but the reagent runs things, who seems like a level headed nice guy) there are very few who pay anything more than lip service to their leader (the Priests claim they should be running the spirtual things, Mages claim they should be running the magical things, etc). Even the most acliamed and popular Humans like Jaina Proudmore couldn't get people to rally around her in this situation. It is in this climate that Onxyia could sneak and do her stuff.
The Humans nor The Alliance aren't evil or corrupt. They are just driven to excell (human nature?) and unfortunately don't agree on how to do it.
And I agree with the general conclusions on the topic:
- In game advertising won't reduce the price of the game.
No one should have any illusions that if a $60 game has paid advertising in game that it will come down to $20. Producers will just pocket the extra revenue.
- In game advertising makes sense in some places and is in fact expected while others it sticks out like a sore thumb.
For a game like Grand Turismo, sponsorship is a part of the racing experience. You should see logos and other other stuff trying to get them to notice their car products. This is tolerated and even expected. However if you are playing in World of Warcraft and you see an advertisement for "Buy a Burger King Whopper and wash it down with a cool Pepsi because PVP is hard work!" that seems to offend people.
- In game advertising is not "traditional advertising" so one shouldn't treat it as such.
If in game advertising is a "necessary evil", then do something fun with it. Instead of having a static image on a billboard as you drive around in the game, do something fun with it. In sand box games Grand Theft Auto, instead of just putting billboards around the city that say "Eat Burger King Whoppers!", how about actually putting Burger King stores in the game? This might be risky to the corperate suits but it might pay off well if they can work closely with the game designers.
I think the author didn't do enough research because if you actually play in the game you quickly see that neither side is "evil" and that there are many factions that cross the lines. Tuarens and Night Elves who don't care much for The Horde who put the natural world first are in Centarian Circle. There are evil Dwarves and Orcs up to their own monkey buisness (they are evil because the goal of their monkey buisness is entirely *evil*) that will attack Horde or Alliance characters with equal hatred. Argent Dawn is a collection of both Alliance and Horde that consider the threat from the Scourge a much bigger problem than the petty Horde vs Alliance squabble.
Ignoring the author, there is an interesting sociological angle to the world Blizzard has setup. You have two factions who are at perminate odds and who have been saddled extreme problems "understanding" each other (it is hard to communicate, impossible to help, or otherwise interact with them in anything but a hostile manner). If one jumps into the game and studies the players interacting with each other they'll find all sorts of interesting things that can be studied. How players will rationalize attacking another player. How a player will automatically, and possibily, subconciously "demoting" the other side's status as players (those guys are idiots, stupid *insert class here* they have the easy mode!), and scarily how players will be in glee in misery over the angony of another. There is fertile stuff here to study some dark behavior found in humans.
Another point of interest, World of Warcraft is clearly a "Western Centric" game. The cultural and symbolic references are familiar to Western Civilization, specifically in North America. As already noted, Bliz uses familiar cultural references to add flavor to the game. Dwarves are Celtic (to me, the men sound Scottish while the women sound Irish). Trolls are Jamacian, maybe more of a blend of Carribean Island. Tuaren are presented like Native Americans. This is a bit of a stretch but the Forsaken are presented more like "goths" outsiders who don't fit well anywhere. These make sense to me as a guy who lives in North America. The question on my mind is how does this present itself in other countries outside of North America? Heck are any of the audio cues and dialog changed? How in the heck does one do a Scottish accent in Chinese anyway? I'm wondering what other countries make of this "flavoring" in the game.
1. The whole thing with Immersion itself trying to sue the pants off of anything that rumbles. Sony didn't pay and was defeated in court so they "question" why the PS3 doesn't have rumble? Yeah...
2. If the controler itself has a "motion sensor" itself, ie the tilt functionality showcased in Warhawk, then having a controler that vibrated might interfere with it reporting correct user input. It isn't that the controler is delicate but the way tilt is measured is thrown off by extra forces like vibration. Feedback is "interesting" but "tilt" might be more interesting
My feeling is that Sony should offer *both* "tilt" and "rumble" if it is merly a technical issue. If it a paten issue, I'm quite happy to have them leave it out.
No matter what your opinion of E3 or Sony, Sony isn't going just "destruct". The worst that seems to happen at this point in time is that Sony doesn't dominate as hard as they used to which IMHO *is the best place to be*. When Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo compete against each other we reap the benifits. Some of the most exciting and inventive games to come out in quite awhile will be appearing in 2007 and 2008. All because all three of these companies think the market is up for grabs.
So why the doom and gloom? I say bring it on! Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all need to be humbled at regular intervals anyway to service us.
I predict there will be a show on The Colbert Report where he complains that the "media blackout" on this event is because he was speaking the plain and honest truth. The reason why this show as well as The Daily Show are funny is because of stuff like this: Could he be right??
I've seen the video and some of the barbs aren't particularlly funny by themselves but when put in the context of the event, a dinner where the President and some of his closer allies couldn't just kick him out or walk away, it becomes a very potent jab.
Wikipedia isn't supposed to be biased for (and here is the part many miss) or against. Hence the "NPOV stance" they try to enforce. If citing buisness stats and other corporate information is "bias" then they have a skewed definition of bias. After reading the article, it seems that any information about Wal-Mart that isn't a critism as automatically biased and suspect. That is just as bad a POV as being a "sunshine and rainbow fanboy".
In short, Wikipedia is not the place to have a diatribe on the goods or evils of any topic, even the much vaunted Wal-Mart. I simply don't see what the complaint is here. Are they disappointed they can't argue about Wal-Mart on Wikipedia? Well Wikipedia isn't the place to do that. That has nothing to do with bowing to presure from Wal-Mart. Chaning a link from "Wal-Mart Corporate Communication Page" to "Wal-Mart Propaganda Site" is not a legitamite edit nor is it NPOV.
Ignoring some of the other elements of KH2 I feel the most distinctive thing in this game is the "brawling" action. There are some parts of the game where you are surrounded by hundreds of opponents that all want to take their portion out of you. Now granted they aren't as burly and strong as you are but that is still a lot of opponents to square off against especially if surrounded with no escape.
This game shows a refinement of the idea of mass brawling which seems to be a cathartic experience found in many movies and TV shows anyway. The Hero is surrounded by The Bad Guys and some how he fights his way out. Who wouldn't want to play this roll? Hopefully Ninty-Nine Nights and a possible KH3 will refine the idea even farther. The fights in KH2 aren't a "gimme" but I feel with some tweaking it would turn from a "fighting off the mindless horde of attackers" to a more pitched battle which feels more exciting and satisfying.
Someone at Microsoft thought it was a good idea to somehow, one product is all anyone needs. Although a lofty goal, it is entirely unrealistic. It is like assuming a car manufacture can build "one car" that will satisfy all needs.
It seems mostly unreasonable that one can try sell (or repackage) the same products and technology to home users (grandma), buisness users (enterprise), and data center (data services). The problem is that the technology and use case senarios for each of the situations is dramatically different. When you try to unify these products you end up with the "swiss army knife" product that barely covers the basic features between the segment instead of a robust product that each can be happy with.
Why does grandma need the ACL and the other domain/Active Directory control behavior? One can claim it is for security but it seems that the security threat and security model for home users is different than the enterprise level which is where these tools belong. Why does hundreds of computers that are used for ERP need Direct X? It is yet more configuration and software that can possibly diviate if not break across hundreds of installations. Why does a server in a cluster configuration need Outlook?? Trying to support these pieces of oddball software in all three of these examples is hard. I wonder what advantage MS has by continually sticking to this. Is it really the so called "look" that they think they are getting value out of? If they stepped back and looked at the feature sets of just these three use cases, there is very little in common between them.
I've always said that Microsoft would be better served if they focused down their products. If they had a *true* home version that setup in minutes and only included the things necessary to web surf and play games that would be some great value. If they had a *true* enterprise version that offered a bunch of services that hook into enterprise control that would be some great value. If they had a *true* server that installed what is needed to do high performance cluster and balancing that would be some great value. Trying to create Windows version that has sprinklings of all of this is a beast. It is like trying to car that has the features of a sedan, a SUV, and limo. The "car" you end up turns out to be something that is none of them.
I appreciate that Microsoft wants to sell products in these spaces. In fact I encourage them to do so. However I don't encourage trying to make their products all behave like each other because they simply aren't deployed that way. This article is an effect of this misplaced endevor. The firewall configuration for home users should be dramatically differen than the one offered to enterprise configuration anyway. Ideally we shouldn't be freaking out about changes to the enterprise sofware will effect other installations (like home and servers) but we are forced too.
On the other hand, if current trends continue for mobile computing then you want your email on a machine you can access anywhere. Since most people can't afford to host their own email server, this is where Gmail and the like come in. They'll host it for you to access from anywhere.
Its all well and good to say "its in expensive, better, whatever to use your own mail storage" it doesn't mean a lot to many people if they can't look check it while standing in a line at Starbucks. Whether or not trends in mobile computing are good is a discussion for another day but to dismiss centralize storage is "backwards" is misplaced and at worse "tinfoil hat"-ish since email was never meant as a secured means of communication any more than a postcard is secured (read: if one believes they have super important information that needs to stay super secret they aren't touching email as a transport anyway). There are good reasons to centralize and disperse storage where both schemes have their bonus and drawbacks.
The best solution is to have both. One should have some email addresses that are only accessible from home and others from anywhere and give out email appropriately.
Okay list them.
In case you haven't noticed, the "single slayer, PC RPG" genre has been all but dead for years. They morphed into something that is found mostly in its current MMOG form (think World of Warcraft) or something more "hybrid" (for instance RTS games with RPG elements).
So here is an excirse: go to the store to pick up a brand new copy of Oblivion but also look around to see what other single player RPGs are current on the self. Chances are there is Morrowind. There will also probably be Knights of the Old Republic 2 which is a pale shadow of its predicessor and not to mention a very shollow RPG. If you want to count things like Grand Theft Auto I suppose these could be RPGs and even closer to "a sandbox" that is found in Oblivion but again it is a very shallow if not an outright adventure game (Zelda is an action/adventure game even thought it has many themes common to RPGs).
So where are all of these Bethesda and Bioware games? Compared to the stuff online, compared to the sports games, compared to the movie franchise games, the fact that producers buckled down for Oblivion is a miracle. Just like Myst style "hot spot adventure games" went out of style so is the "single player RPG". On the console, there may still be refuge there for the "single player RPG" but who knows how long that will last as consoles gravitate to look more like PCs....
For the near future, I see Neverwinter Nights 2 and Gothic 3 and I suspect one of them wants to desperately have some sort of online play feature....
I'm inclined to believe it is just a BS comment made from the hip. To actually believe an executive officer of any company would "order" his kids to do anything flies in the face of marketing and parenting conventions. For marketing, you've drawn attention to some positives about using the competition's product: that it irritates Ballmer. For parenting, at a certain age telling your kids to not do something without guidence is one of the surest ways to have them do it.
If it is or isn't true isn't the issue. The fact he said it indicates something of his thought processes on marketing and strategy. It seems to suggest that instead of concentrating on the quality of their product, or the quality of the competition's product, that the thing he would do is supress information about the other product. This isn't automatically a bad marketing strategy but is spooky on its own especially told in this parable. Even if the idea is made up, the idea is that Ballmer isn't interested in either his product or the competition but in control. If you are an investor this is what you should take away from the comment and use this tidbit of insight to help direct where your next investments should go.
For such a visible face for Microsoft, he sure picked some *aweful* metaphors to discuss their strategy and products. He should recognize this and either chose his words more carefully or let others handle this stuff. He left us all with the implication he is an aweful person or that he is oblivious to consumer tastes.
I've seen the Gambit system in action and its one of the best ideas to come out of RPGs let alone console RPGs in a long while. Compared to the archaic systems like Dragon Quest 8, Gambits make the fights move much faster in a franetic fashion that makes it move more like how you'd think a fight scene in a movie would go without the pestering you. Not the whole Xenosaga thing where you are watching the "movie of the game" but it is controlable. Considering that the game tries to present the other people in your group as "real", unless the activity is tedious or requires exacting precision why should I tell my party or subordinates each and everything thing they should be doing? I should be saying "We are going over here, kill that first" and instead of directing each minute detail of my side of the battle.
I really don't understand some of the bitching FF12 is getting. Some people are going "oh its the same old Final Fantasy". Have we been playing the same games? Ignoring the setting choices they use (and the name), each Final Fantasy is fairly unique and tries some experimental things that are not often reused (which is good and bad). Very few parts of this engine are from any other game so what about this is the same old FF "The game is too automatic! I want to push the buttons!" are probably the same people who thought Dragon Quest 8 was a great game but ignore the fact its a boring, if not flagulation of a game.
I don't think FF12 is the "best game ever!" but it does have interesting ideas and features that make it stand out and heck even recommendable for playing. Heck FF is actually gravitating towards making the player notice the story more than the combat engine. How is this a bad thing??
I'm not saying that having IE written in full managed code isn't a good idea but it won't help with security. A good chunk of the problems come from the ambiguous uses of various technology in IE (Active X, jscript, etc). Many of these are functioning exactly as designed but still having undesirable side effects such as completely unsecured. These are problems that would exist reguardless of the language binding used to build IE upon because logical problems are still logical problems reguardless if they are in C or Perl or C#. Rewriting a poorly designed, insecure system in C# does not automatically create a secured system (although it might make it more obscured).
.Net Framework itself has yet another security tool that needs to be configured and can subsequently misconfigured. It is another "confusing to the nominal user" setting that most laymen are likely to ignore than pay attention too.
Besides, the
Wrong analogy. By hiding the exploit and announcement, it is more akin to denying that the illness exists at all and therefore they will be safer. It is bogus and backwards logic that ignorance is the best course of action. Warning people about the exploit is giving them a chance to don the "level 4 contamination suit" instead of continuing to play with fire.
Trying to get a super fantastic MMOG onto a cell phone is probably a pipe dream with current technology but that doesn't mean one can't make cell phone games work.
Considering how a cell phone has a different human interface than a PSP and a DS, creating a game that is fun to play *and* is sane to control is a challenge but it is possible. This means that games like Battlefield 2 are probably not the best to put on a cell phone. However something more akin to Rub Rabbits, Wario Ware, or even Puzzle Pirates might be a better choice. A game that you can start simply by pulling our your phone in a place where you can't do much of anything else (picture a train or a bus), easily find another person close by to play, play a little, and then kill them game without much fuss (say someone's stop is close, having one person drop from the game should not kill the entire game for the others).
One thing Google nor any other search engine is good at is these generic searches. What are you looking for when you Google for 'failure'? Seriously: What searches are good results for 'failure'? Failuring in cooking? Failure in engineering? If you wanted to find a specific failure, why not be more specific with your search? Google nor any other search engine can read one's mind.
Given a lack of anything more specific, it does a 'guess' on what people generally consider a failure. Sampling from many sources shows what many places across the internet consider that to be. If the result makes one uncomfortable it isn't Google's fault.
Blogs are fine to index. They hold a lot of relevancy especially on current topics. To ignore them seems to be a big mistake. Just because something is opinionated doesn't mean its worthless to index or include in searches. If one wants an unbias search result, refine your search to make it unbias.
Although it is clear from the response, Microsoft is serious about improving their security their methodology is seriously flawed. Creating a product by rigorous design is good but inserting a seperate security check at some later time is tantimount to writing software that is "hopefully secure". If security is a feature you design as a feature from the start. Anything else you will get somthing less than desirable. Simply put: If you wait till some later stage to check if the system is secure, chances are it won't be or if it is has some exotic side effects that are undesirable.
Very few features that are not designed end up working correctly. It is too costly to write software by hoping features show up out of the blue. This is why you try to design things. If I read this right, Mike Nash believes that one can write software and then apply a "security process" at some later date which seems to fly in the face of everything I've learned about software design.
I'm not going to disagree with your assessed opinions but many bemoan the fact most of these games are "standard". That is their only claim to fame or why anyone noticed these games at all is that they were on the XBox 360 first.
Going from the PSX to the Dreamcast or PS2 was jaw dropping. Both of PS2 and Dreamcast had release games that said "look how much better over the old hardware we are". The XBox 360 didn't leverage this much at all except for the HDTVness. What the XBox 360 got was some "interesting" games that all could have been easily presented in the same way for the XBox. Many on the sidelines are waiting for a real game that is worth shelling out the money for an XBox 360 instead of being satisfied with rehashed games that could have easily ended up on the XBox (or worse, PS2 or Gamecube).
Inagural games are often just advertising for the system. When people are having more fun in the XBox Live Arcade than their supposedly flagship games that should singal something.
There are generally two disinct styles of RPG like games: Classless and Classed Systems. Neither one is better but they are different and have some serious drawbacks. A lot of what is good and bad about Classed Systems is already covered in the article so I won't bother to go over that. Read the article if you want to see what is good and bad about a ridgid class system.
So what about Classless systesm? A classic example of a Classless setup is something like Final Fantasy 7. No one is a fighter. No one is a caster. They are, at their cores, just baseline characters. FF7 does put limitations on these characters only by weapondry beyond that there is nothting to say any character has to stick with any particular archtype. This wasn't really a bad thing for FF7 because there was little reason for class enforcement (what skills were offered where given to all, there was very little leveraging of any skills). In a Classless system is supposed to bring out "player skills" since all "character skills" are theroetically offered to all, it is the actual active decisions the player makes instead of things like "passive class bonuses" that determin the success or failure.
The problem with a Classless System is that given open choices, a majority gravitates to the same structure. If one doesn't build up their character like the competitive majority, you can't compete at all. In FF7 everyone was a "fighter/caster" with very little deviation. This meant that unless you needed a specific trick a character offered you really could bring out any combination of characters you want and succeed in the same manner. You also saw this in Ultima Online. As soon as something changed about the game, everyone gravitated towards it. This isn't necessarily bad but it does make for a bland experience. At a particular stratta of the game, like "end game", all of the players start looking the same, performing the same, and desiring the same thing. Your groups and the game in general ended up with very little variation because everyone was offered and is striving for the same "perfection". In a system that has ridgid classes, the "perfection" for a warrior type is far removed from the goals of the caster type.
There are for sure problems with Class based systems but there are also problems with Classless systems as well. I haven't see a Classless system that has done it right yet where they can avoid the same bland nature. But then again, if everyone is really "the same" is it not just a reflection that everyone who is serious chooses the same things?
Various games have been trying a "Hybrid System" where it starts open like a Classless system but utlimately forces one to choose a class role like a Classed system. I'm not convinced these are correct either but this seems to be more flexible than both for the early parts of any game.
Nothing has changed from when I originally wrote that. If Disney takes over Pixar and run its as ruthless as they have their other buisness units they'll proceed to gut it. In fact it makes more sense for Job to run Disney than to have Diseny run Pixar.
Anyone who has been using computers for awhile knows keyboards are filthy, disgusting things. Fingers are the most dirty things on the human body and here is a device you have to touch millions a time a day. It is by design a dirty thing.
I've always wondered why no one builds keyboards that are "dishwasher safe". The actual bits that are electronic and sensitive are quite small compared to the other mechanical components. Just build them to tolerate the hot water of a dishwasher and make those parts "pop out". Toss the keyboard without the eletronic bits into the dishwasher, throw in some lemon detergent and you'd have a pretty clean device. It would probably do a world of good for all of our health and leave the desk in a much cleaner state.
Gold, although in demand, isn't the thing that is really valuable. It is time. To buy some valuable item requires a good chunk of in game time to accumulate gold. The problem often is that this amount of time is prohibitive if you do anything else in the real world (oh say...like have a profressional job).
:) ). The second option actually seems quite sane and reasonable. If you need 1000 gold and know it will take months to accumulate with your current play style how unreasonable is it to just spend $ to get it done with? Many people have no qualms about trading "months of play" for "$ today". I don't condone buying from gold farmers but I understand there are very logical reasons for doing so.
At this point one is faced with this if one wants to stay competitive:
- Spend as much time in game as you do as you spend at work to stay competitive (turning a game into a second job).
- Or pay someone else to keep you competitive
- Quit
If you pick the last one, all discussion becomes moot so ignore it. The first one is *hard*. Working two jobs was already hard if they weren't professional so doing it while one is extra tricky where other aspects your life suffers for it (as if playing the game already wasn't a detriment enough
As a note on the original topic of "Chinese Gold Farmers": Bleh, what a horrible racist term born of envy. For all we know a good chunk aren't Chinese at all but since they do a task deemed dirty its time to pull out the derogatory crap.
If you take a look at CD Japan and look at how much new region 2 disks are to the Japanese and do your own conversions into Euro/Dollars/Whatever, we are getting a deal. Fate/stay night 1 [Limited Edition] (which is HOT at the moment), is episode 1-3 listed 6190 Yen so it will probably end up being between $55-$50US. Sometime next year, Gennon will release it in the US for about $30 for the same 3 episodes with other goodies (like a box). We are not only getting shows that are filtered (the less popular shows are not offered, material on DVD is often revised and reedited), we are getting it cheaper.
The fact of the matter is that they are charging exactly how much the market seems to support. Anime is now and probably always will be a "fringe element of a fringe element". To make money at the sales rate they support they have to charge this much, which it seems the market is willing pay. In any event, if they are making money now at what is deemed "expensive" what incentive do they have to lower? It is all market forces.
BTW, if you an entire series that seems too cheap, it is probably a bootleg (there are exception but few and far between). Buy it if you wish but realize almost almost nil of any of that money is going back to the talent or producers.