Nothing in this post indicates that these issues apply only to multiplayer games. Uninformed readers might assume that what's being discussed applies to ALL video games. Many gamers avoid multiplayer games - particularly online multiplayer games - in favour of the single player experience. Why? In part to avoid the problems outlined in this article. Too often playing an online multiplayer game is like entering a world of loudmouthed, abusive, sociopathic children.
[1] The XBox 360 was designed to use standard COTS, OEM DVD drives with custom firmware.
[2] Some COTS DVD drives are better than others. One way in which they differ is in the extent to which a loaded disc can move without coming into contact with some kind of padding. Some drives are designed to avoid this issue by clamping the disc into place firmly. Drives that do not prevent the disc from lifting out of the tray in some fashion or prevent discs from making contact with hard internal surfaces are 100% certain to cause scratches if the drive is rotated/rolled while the disc is spinning and the laser head is positioned over the disc.
[3] A disc spinning in a DVD drive can be made to lift or tilt out of the disc tray in a variety of ways. Clearly, rolling or rotating the drive is the most straightforward way to do this. But almost any type of movement has a chance to cause the disc to tilt slightly. Worse yet, many game discs have a lot of silk-screened graphics on their top surfaces. If the graphics are not distributed evenly across the surface of the disc, this means the disc will be slightly unbalanced. Spin such a disc up to full speed, and the result is wobbling. If the wobbling gets bad enough, the disc can tilt up high enough to come into contact with hard internal surfaces such as the laser head.
[4] Some 360s were manufactured with DVD drives that do not properly limit the movement of discs. Products like the 360 are manufactured in batches, with parts (like DVD drives) purchased from other manufacturers in large lots. For each given manufacturing run, the manufacturer and model of DVD drive used depends on current availability and price, so it tends to vary.
[5] When an XBox 360 game is running, the game disc is always spinning. The main reason for this is that the 360 must load game content from the game disc during play, and if the disc was allowed to spin down, there would be long pauses in game play while the disc spins up whenever new game content is loaded. Just how often game content is loaded from the disc depends on the game, but it's typically frequent. So rather than allow such delays, Microsoft decided to keep game discs spinning. This situation finally changed with the November 2008 XBox 360 update, which now allows users to copy a game's content to the 360's hard drive, allowing the game to load game content from the hard drive instead of the DVD during play, which in turn allows the game disc to spin down during play.
[6] The COTS DVD drives used in the XBox 360 were and are used in other computer products, most commonly desktop computers.
[7] A DVD drive without sufficient disc movement restriction, if used in a desktop PC, nevertheless has only a small chance of scratching discs, compared with an XBox 360. That's because a) desktop PCs are much less likely to be moved during use than game consoles, and b) there are very few desktop PC applications that require a disc to remain spinning for extended periods of time. PC games do not run from the disc but are installed onto the hard drive, so they spin for perhaps five minutes during installation, then for a few seconds each time the game starts after that. Even burning a large amount of data to a DVD is likely to keep the disc spinning for only 10 to 20 minutes at the most.
Put all this together and what you have is an unfortunate but understandable mistake on the part of Microsoft that led to some 360s - when moved or used with certain game discs - scratching discs. I was unlucky enough to purchase one of those 360s and although I never used the 360 in a vertical position and was extremely careful not to move the 360 while it was running, it scratched several of my discs badly. The worst scratches were on a sports title from EA that has heavy silk-screening on the upper surface, mostly on one side of the disc. These scratches occurred within a few hours of purchasing the game. When I contacted Microsoft, the person I spoke to was sympathetic, but clearly she was using a script
Ever try to fly a chopper with a mouse or keyboard? Or dogfight in a Spitfire without a rudder? Anyone who flies regularly in PC games probably uses a joystick. I use a joystick in the Battlefield series (BF1942, BF Vietnam, BF2, BF2142), in flight sims (Falcon 4.0), space sims (Freespace series) and the Mech Warrior series, where having a rudder is enormously important. Unless all of these kinds of games disappear, there will always be a market for joysticks.
What he describes sounds a lot like my experience with iTunes on Windows. It includes at least one useless service. Stop the service and it restarts by itself. Remove it and it comes back. Plenty of phone home activity. Messes up the ability to burn discs. And so on. Barf. If it wasn't so handy, I'd reformat and never install it again.
Good point - it would probably save a lot of work. I'm going to run this idea past my legal advisor to see what he thinks. Perhaps I was being pessimistic in wondering whether there were enough lawyers willing to do this gratis. After all, there are plenty of lawyers working for good causes. And I think this is a good cause, if somewhat dull. If it were done properly and there was enough participation, the software companies might start to take notice. We've known for a while that much of what's in most EULAs is effectively unenforceable.
Here's how I imagine this would work: a web site to which anyone can post a EULA they've encountered, and a group of lawyers who volunteer time to analyze each EULA and translate it into language anyone can understand. Inconsistencies, gotchas and other noteworthy problems would be highlighted, and the overall validity of each EULA assessed. Hopefully there would be enough buy-in that a large database of EULA analyses would be built up. One problem: are there enough lawyers out there who would be willing to donate their time and expertise?
I've enjoyed reading Dvorak's stuff over the years, but this time he's way off. I never pegged him as lacking imagination, but that's the only explanation that makes sense.
> I can't see how people will keep shelling out $50 or so for a video > game when the games have hardly changed
But clearly they ARE still shelling out $50 per game despite Dvorak's claim. And that's despite the fact that games are ridiculously overpriced.
> I complain to my kids about this, and they insist that things have > changed markedly.
Perhaps Dvorak's kids aren't experts in this area.
> There are four or five simple game categories and nothing really new > or different.
Yep, same old categories. And yet people keep buying the next big shooter. Why is that? Mainly, because it's new. A new game, particularly if it's well designed, is like a new world to explore.
> When my kids show me a game, I usually say that it's nothing but the > same old running-jumping-kicking-shooting with a new background. They > leave in a huff.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion. Clearly Dvorak isn't interested in most games. Does it make sense to assume that if he doesn't like something, nobody does? Plenty of people are buying games.
> Iwata mentioned that in almost all the big games, the so-called boss > characters are all beginning to be pretty much the same: big, creepy > monsters.
Not sure exactly what Dvorak is looking for in a boss, but a big, creepy monster sounds good to me. It appears that Dvorak has no appreciation for the incredible artwork that goes into games these days.
> If you want to see exactly how inane this is, go out and rent the > brain-dead Paul Verhoeven film, Starship Troopers....it shows you > just how lame these games actually are.
A movie that shows how lame games are? I don't get it. I agree that movie was lame. The game that was made from it was also lame. How Dvorak is able to generalize this to all games is beyond me.
> The other idea that Iwata presented is music-making software that > creates tunes on the DS. This sort of thing appeared on the Macintosh > years ago
So what if it's an old idea? If it's good, people will buy it.
> None of this will save a doomed industry. The business is going to > attempt to sustain growth and creativity by making game players buy > newer and newer machines. Computer gaming has always been sustained by > never-ending improvements in resolution and realism. But once > we get > to photorealism, what is going to sustain growth?
Dvorak has this backwards! It's been obvious for years that it's the game industry that drives the PC hardware industry. How much of a market would there be for 3D graphics cards if PC games didn't exist? Zilch.
> All this will do is make the visuals more lifelike and the blood and > gore more realistic and nauseating. While the kids who are used to > this "progress" may not be put off by it, newcomers may be > repulsed > and skip these new generations of machines altogether.
Dvorak's premise here seems to be that people will stop buying game machines once the graphics get "too realistic." I don't even know where to start - this is just plain silly. If someone doesn't like gory games, they can simply avoid those games.
Consider:
[1] People replay games they've already played numerous times, even if the action in those games is scripted. Finding alternate paths, improving scores and times, or just having fun with an old friend explain this behaviour.
[2] Occasionally, an old classic is upgraded with new graphic detail. This always generates a lot of interest. Take any good game and upgrade it with better sound and graphics and although the appeal will be limited, people will play it.
Firefox is making me crazy. I like it, but it's not a good browser for those few of us who still use the keyboard. And it has other problems. I've checked the official bug list, and these issues are listed, but when will 1.1 come out?
These are the main things that are bugging me (note that ALL of them are resolved by restoring the Firefox window, then maximizing it again):
[1] Bookmarks toolbar weirdness: sometimes all the bookmarks are off-screen.
[2] Keyboard not working for page navigation, form field editing, address editing, etc.
[3] Right-click on page not showing correct context menu.
[4] Right-click on address not showing correct context menu.
[5] Single quote keypress brings up the search bar.
I diligently went through the troubleshooting steps, which are a pain in the ass and actually took a while, ending with uninstalling and reinstalling Steam. Along the way, also checked the status of the Steam servers. According to the procedure I was following, the servers seemed to be fine. Nothing helped. Fed up, I uninstalled the damn thing. It was my second time through the single player game anyway. When will they learn? Copy protection doesn't hinder pirates - all it does is annoy and frustrate legitimate customers.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing in this post indicates that these issues apply only to multiplayer games. Uninformed readers might assume that what's being discussed applies to ALL video games. Many gamers avoid multiplayer games - particularly online multiplayer games - in favour of the single player experience. Why? In part to avoid the problems outlined in this article. Too often playing an online multiplayer game is like entering a world of loudmouthed, abusive, sociopathic children.
The facts:
[1] The XBox 360 was designed to use standard COTS, OEM DVD drives with custom firmware.
[2] Some COTS DVD drives are better than others. One way in which they differ is in the extent to which a loaded disc can move without coming into contact with some kind of padding. Some drives are designed to avoid this issue by clamping the disc into place firmly. Drives that do not prevent the disc from lifting out of the tray in some fashion or prevent discs from making contact with hard internal surfaces are 100% certain to cause scratches if the drive is rotated/rolled while the disc is spinning and the laser head is positioned over the disc.
[3] A disc spinning in a DVD drive can be made to lift or tilt out of the disc tray in a variety of ways. Clearly, rolling or rotating the drive is the most straightforward way to do this. But almost any type of movement has a chance to cause the disc to tilt slightly. Worse yet, many game discs have a lot of silk-screened graphics on their top surfaces. If the graphics are not distributed evenly across the surface of the disc, this means the disc will be slightly unbalanced. Spin such a disc up to full speed, and the result is wobbling. If the wobbling gets bad enough, the disc can tilt up high enough to come into contact with hard internal surfaces such as the laser head.
[4] Some 360s were manufactured with DVD drives that do not properly limit the movement of discs. Products like the 360 are manufactured in batches, with parts (like DVD drives) purchased from other manufacturers in large lots. For each given manufacturing run, the manufacturer and model of DVD drive used depends on current availability and price, so it tends to vary.
[5] When an XBox 360 game is running, the game disc is always spinning. The main reason for this is that the 360 must load game content from the game disc during play, and if the disc was allowed to spin down, there would be long pauses in game play while the disc spins up whenever new game content is loaded. Just how often game content is loaded from the disc depends on the game, but it's typically frequent. So rather than allow such delays, Microsoft decided to keep game discs spinning. This situation finally changed with the November 2008 XBox 360 update, which now allows users to copy a game's content to the 360's hard drive, allowing the game to load game content from the hard drive instead of the DVD during play, which in turn allows the game disc to spin down during play.
[6] The COTS DVD drives used in the XBox 360 were and are used in other computer products, most commonly desktop computers.
[7] A DVD drive without sufficient disc movement restriction, if used in a desktop PC, nevertheless has only a small chance of scratching discs, compared with an XBox 360. That's because a) desktop PCs are much less likely to be moved during use than game consoles, and b) there are very few desktop PC applications that require a disc to remain spinning for extended periods of time. PC games do not run from the disc but are installed onto the hard drive, so they spin for perhaps five minutes during installation, then for a few seconds each time the game starts after that. Even burning a large amount of data to a DVD is likely to keep the disc spinning for only 10 to 20 minutes at the most.
Put all this together and what you have is an unfortunate but understandable mistake on the part of Microsoft that led to some 360s - when moved or used with certain game discs - scratching discs. I was unlucky enough to purchase one of those 360s and although I never used the 360 in a vertical position and was extremely careful not to move the 360 while it was running, it scratched several of my discs badly. The worst scratches were on a sports title from EA that has heavy silk-screening on the upper surface, mostly on one side of the disc. These scratches occurred within a few hours of purchasing the game. When I contacted Microsoft, the person I spoke to was sympathetic, but clearly she was using a script
> at least i have the balls to post under my name.
Hmmm. "Eat Here Get Gas" sure is an interesting name. Your parents must have been comedians.
Ever try to fly a chopper with a mouse or keyboard? Or dogfight in a Spitfire without a rudder? Anyone who flies regularly in PC games probably uses a joystick. I use a joystick in the Battlefield series (BF1942, BF Vietnam, BF2, BF2142), in flight sims (Falcon 4.0), space sims (Freespace series) and the Mech Warrior series, where having a rudder is enormously important. Unless all of these kinds of games disappear, there will always be a market for joysticks.
What he describes sounds a lot like my experience with iTunes on Windows. It includes at least one useless service. Stop the service and it restarts by itself. Remove it and it comes back. Plenty of phone home activity. Messes up the ability to burn discs. And so on. Barf. If it wasn't so handy, I'd reformat and never install it again.
Good point - it would probably save a lot of work. I'm going to run this idea past my legal advisor to see what he thinks. Perhaps I was being pessimistic in wondering whether there were enough lawyers willing to do this gratis. After all, there are plenty of lawyers working for good causes. And I think this is a good cause, if somewhat dull. If it were done properly and there was enough participation, the software companies might start to take notice. We've known for a while that much of what's in most EULAs is effectively unenforceable.
Here's how I imagine this would work: a web site to which anyone can post a EULA they've encountered, and a group of lawyers who volunteer time to analyze each EULA and translate it into language anyone can understand. Inconsistencies, gotchas and other noteworthy problems would be highlighted, and the overall validity of each EULA assessed. Hopefully there would be enough buy-in that a large database of EULA analyses would be built up. One problem: are there enough lawyers out there who would be willing to donate their time and expertise?
Hey, they forgot Gort's tank-melting eye-beam in "The Day The Earth Stood Still."
I've enjoyed reading Dvorak's stuff over the years, but this time he's way off. I never pegged him as lacking imagination, but that's the only explanation that makes sense.
...it shows you
> I can't see how people will keep shelling out $50 or so for a video
> game when the games have hardly changed
But clearly they ARE still shelling out $50 per game despite Dvorak's claim. And that's despite the fact that games are ridiculously overpriced.
> I complain to my kids about this, and they insist that things have
> changed markedly.
Perhaps Dvorak's kids aren't experts in this area.
> There are four or five simple game categories and nothing really new
> or different.
Yep, same old categories. And yet people keep buying the next big shooter. Why is that? Mainly, because it's new. A new game, particularly if it's well designed, is like a new world to explore.
> When my kids show me a game, I usually say that it's nothing but the
> same old running-jumping-kicking-shooting with a new background. They
> leave in a huff.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion. Clearly Dvorak isn't interested in most games. Does it make sense to assume that if he doesn't like something, nobody does? Plenty of people are buying games.
> Iwata mentioned that in almost all the big games, the so-called boss
> characters are all beginning to be pretty much the same: big, creepy
> monsters.
Not sure exactly what Dvorak is looking for in a boss, but a big, creepy monster sounds good to me. It appears that Dvorak has no appreciation for the incredible artwork that goes into games these days.
> If you want to see exactly how inane this is, go out and rent the
> brain-dead Paul Verhoeven film, Starship Troopers.
> just how lame these games actually are.
A movie that shows how lame games are? I don't get it. I agree that movie was lame. The game that was made from it was also lame. How Dvorak is able to generalize this to all games is beyond me.
> The other idea that Iwata presented is music-making software that
> creates tunes on the DS. This sort of thing appeared on the Macintosh
> years ago
So what if it's an old idea? If it's good, people will buy it.
> None of this will save a doomed industry. The business is going to
> attempt to sustain growth and creativity by making game players buy
> newer and newer machines. Computer gaming has always been sustained by
> never-ending improvements in resolution and realism. But once > we get
> to photorealism, what is going to sustain growth?
Dvorak has this backwards! It's been obvious for years that it's the game industry that drives the PC hardware industry. How much of a market would there be for 3D graphics cards if PC games didn't exist? Zilch.
> All this will do is make the visuals more lifelike and the blood and
> gore more realistic and nauseating. While the kids who are used to
> this "progress" may not be put off by it, newcomers may be > repulsed
> and skip these new generations of machines altogether.
Dvorak's premise here seems to be that people will stop buying game machines once the graphics get "too realistic." I don't even know where to start - this is just plain silly. If someone doesn't like gory games, they can simply avoid those games.
Consider:
[1] People replay games they've already played numerous times, even if the action in those games is scripted. Finding alternate paths, improving scores and times, or just having fun with an old friend explain this behaviour.
[2] Occasionally, an old classic is upgraded with new graphic detail. This always generates a lot of interest. Take any good game and upgrade it with better sound and graphics and although the appeal will be limited, people will play it.
[3] Now create new levels/missions with an old
Firefox is making me crazy. I like it, but it's not a good browser for those few of us who still use the keyboard. And it has other problems. I've checked the official bug list, and these issues are listed, but when will 1.1 come out? These are the main things that are bugging me (note that ALL of them are resolved by restoring the Firefox window, then maximizing it again): [1] Bookmarks toolbar weirdness: sometimes all the bookmarks are off-screen. [2] Keyboard not working for page navigation, form field editing, address editing, etc. [3] Right-click on page not showing correct context menu. [4] Right-click on address not showing correct context menu. [5] Single quote keypress brings up the search bar.
I diligently went through the troubleshooting steps, which are a pain in the ass and actually took a while, ending with uninstalling and reinstalling Steam. Along the way, also checked the status of the Steam servers. According to the procedure I was following, the servers seemed to be fine. Nothing helped. Fed up, I uninstalled the damn thing. It was my second time through the single player game anyway. When will they learn? Copy protection doesn't hinder pirates - all it does is annoy and frustrate legitimate customers.