Even Starcraft, a game that is remarkably balanced, isn't fully so. Because the races are so different, there are many situations that give the enemy the upper hand. This is why the professional players in Korea do not play on Blizzard's maps, but specially crafted ones to make sure that the playing field is as fair as possible.
Blizzard's own maps are terribly imbalanced, and in this day and age with the knowledge players have, there is no way a fair game can be played on any of them. Maps with ledges over bases favor Terran. Maps with large or no choke points favor zerg. Maps with no natural expansion or one with no gas penalizes zerg. Maps with island expansions favor terran. Etc. Etc.
The races are so vastly different, yet on properly designed maps players of high skill can compete as equals, somewhat amazingly.
As far as Boxer goes whom you mention, modern professional SC is dramatically different than when he was in his prime. Boxer won by clever tricks and unit micromanagement. This won't win you games anymore as a Terran, and Boxer's strategies and build orders don't work against modern opponents very often. Playstyle is always changing, and players are able to adapt to that and keep the game fresh and new. This is in part to the imbalance of the races.
What's good about Starcraft is that since the races are not necessarily balanced, it's nearly impossible to determine the optimal playstyle or strategy, since those differences allow for amazing flexibility. Thus, the game is vastly different now, than even 2 years ago before things like the Bisu Build. This makes a game fun and interesting.
It's different though. it doesn't take any more effort to frame a shot with a cheapo camera versus an expensive one, and writing a story is the same for everyone. Independent film has fewer limitations that independent gaming. Advances in game design are technology driven, so you need to have access to the latest software and cutting edge developers in order to harness that. This takes money, so independent games tend to go for simpler designs more reminiscent of older games. However, most gamers want an increasing in the sophistication of game design, which is why I believe that the indie scene has rightfully been largely ignored. Talented people are producing good games, that unfortunately are below standard fare for today in terms of complexity. After all, it took Valve to get Portal off the ground. How much of an impact did narbacular drop make again?
I really have yet to see an indie game that seriously pushes game design forward. I have seen many indie films push storytelling and filmmaking forward.
Have you ever seen 2001 in a theatre? I'll bet you haven't. It's a totally different experience. People who do not get the movie are the ones that have not seen it in a theatre. When the image is so huge and the sound so good, the emptiness of the frames engulfs you and shows the smallness of man against space. There are some films that are absolutely a totally different experience in the theatre, but those are fewer and farther between nowadays.
What you described is art, but that is not the art of a video game. Everything you list is a category of its own. No, the art in videogames comes from having a stimulating and challenging system, that flows and rewards players at high levels of play. Completing Metal Slug 3 without dying, dodging bullets in Ikaruga, running a speedrun in Mirror's edge, it's the games that get the player into the zone with a hard and intense flow that are art. This cannot be duplicated in any other medium. Everything on your list can. The art is in the interaction.
Not going to happen. I realize that most people don't like to admit that technology has limitations, but the fact remains that the human brain processes information in both a representational, and non representational way, while computers are limited to representational data processing. First of all, a lot of human "knowledge" is embodied knowledge, solidified in the brain by a continuous feedback between it and our environment through means of our bodies. Computer don't have bodies, and can't have embodied knowledge. You cannot simply program a 'fake' body either, because the shaping of the neural pathways is cumulative and precisely dependent on the body. It would be like putting Roger Fedderer's brain in Rosie Odonell's body. I will guarantee you that he could not play tennis after that. He probably couldn't play with Pete Sampress' body either. Computer games are as much a motor skill as they are an intellectual exercise , so unless your program has access to a human body, it can never play like a human, because motor skills are developed through years of feedback between the environment and the body, and cannot be broken down into rule based axioms.
They also take into account the seriousness of the situation. If you are in dire circumstances, you will be higher on the transplant list. Things like drugs and alcohol use are also considered, and they do not typically give livers to those whose livers were damaged by excessive alcohol use.
Why is this insightful? It's just wrong. With Ford, you can buy a large SUV, a pickup, or a fuel efficient four door. I'm driving a 2009 focus right now and got 42MPG driving from LA to Phoenix, despite being rated 35mpg. Ford is also going to be bringing their KA line and the Verve small car to the US soon.
This backlash again US automakers is totally unfounded. There may have been a lapse in quality years ago, but now the quality is measurably better than companies like Toyota in terms of reliability, if Auto Guide and consumer reports are to be believed.
Anything other than the prius will have a comparable american counterpart when it comes to fuel economy. The reason that cars sold in foreign markets tend to get better milage, is that US safety regulations are the most strict (and people expect that here). These safety features like reinforced roll bars and side airbags ad weight to cars, and in fact many of Ford's european models could not be sold in the States because they would not pass safety regulations.
Not really. It's not like what actors do has any correspondence to how real people behave. You don't turn your back to someone and stare out the window, while someone talks to you from behind. You don't take nice turns speaking, with pauses in just the right places for dramatic effect. I mean, look at films from the golden age of hollywood, the diction and the actor's physical movements are exaggerated to be more stage-like. People in noir films spout dialogue rapidly, and it's entirely unlike reality.
Why then does everybody gush about heath ledger, when his performance in the Dark Knight was the biggest "Hey look at me I'm ACTING' performance I've seen in a long time, whereas Christian Bale's decidedly harder and more subtle performance goes unnoticed? You are wrong.
"As far as galactic collisions are concerned, we are in no immediate danger. 2-3 Gy vs 5 is an academic exercise, as the Sun will most likely increase its output sufficiently by then to boil off the Earth's oceans anyway,"
True. I've heard estimates that predict in about 900 million years, the oceans will have boiled due to the increased energy output from the sun. Between that, and whatever else we could do to doom ourselves, it kind of wants to make you get into space as quickly as possible, no?
Video games are about interactivity. That's what separates them from say, film as a medium. When you are interacting, by definition the story cannot progress, since the story is a non interactive element presented to you. In your example, yes, you could be looking around at the scenery of the coast, but the story is at a standstill during that time. Games cannot have a sense of pacing because of this, and tend to tell their stories in 3 second bursts (half life 2) or in cutscenes. If all you care about is the story, then why are you PLAYING a game? By watching a movie, you can get a directed story, with pacing. You absolutely cannot have the same pacing in a videogame: it's a fundamental limitation of the medium.
Arcade type games, like streets of rage or metal slug do it right: when you die you lose a life, but respawn right away. You're punished, because you have fewer lives and can therefore not progress as far in the game, but you don't lose any time because you pick up exactly where you left off. Unfortunately the idea of 'lives' seems to be taboo now for video game developers, so this wonderful mechanic is pretty much dead.
Well I drive a full size car too. A 2009 Ford Focus. I just went 421 miles on slightly over 10 gallons of 87 octane gasoline this thanksgiving. So not only did I just meet your fuel economy, but I did it while releasing fewer pollutants into the air.
"More fuel-efficient cars, even just to European standards, should be an initial goal. Very little needed - in fact they could start by just selling European GM and Ford models, instant plus without all the time, money, effort and energy requirements of starting from scratch with manufacture of new technology."
No, they can't. These cars do not meet US safety standards. That's why ford is redesigning the KA for a US release.
A while ago fox put a transmitter inside the puck, which would make it glow brightly on TV so that people could see it. The response was overwhelmingly negative, that they removed it (it was amazingly distracting and ugly). Most people can see the puck just fine, maybe you just need to sit closer.
f you sell me a parachute I expect it to work in every state, on any day of the week, and from any kind of airplane, no matter what clothes I'm wearing or not wearing. After you sold it to me, it's simply criminal to then say it only works if you are wearing green, or skydiving on a day of the week that begins with a T
Interestingly enough, parachute manufacturers do not guarantee their parachutes will work at all. You buy it as-is-you-take-the-risk-jumping-it. Otherwise, the would get sued when a malfunction occurs. That's why I believe the fine print says 'UP TO' 10Mbps from the cable company, and why they haven't been sued for false advertising.
Interestingly though, when a new game is about to come out in a series, people ask "I wonder what will happen next", not "I wonder what I'll be able to do next".
The reason old games can be so compelling was indeed the lack of spectacle. We couldn't be wowed by a scripted sequence or cinematic effect, so the gameplay had to. This is what's missing from games nowadays: the gameplay being interesting for its own sake, and the game demanding your constant attention and input. Developers now are all about creating this quasi-cinematic experience that doesn't feel like a movie, and doesn't feel like a game either. It's really doing a disservice to the medium, which is ironic because all of it is being done precisely to give games artistic legitimacy.
Pretty much 20 minutes into the video, it describes how a poll worker can simulate activating the machine so that everybody in the room believes it is active, and the voter will notice nothing suspicious, yet the vote cast is not counted. The activation chirp is played, and the correct light display when the voter picks the candidate, and even says "vote counted thanks you", when in reality, no vote has been cast. Unbelievable. It's obvious that a malicious poll worker could absolutely use this to his or her advantage and deny people votes.
Slashdot Mirror
Even Starcraft, a game that is remarkably balanced, isn't fully so. Because the races are so different, there are many situations that give the enemy the upper hand. This is why the professional players in Korea do not play on Blizzard's maps, but specially crafted ones to make sure that the playing field is as fair as possible.
Blizzard's own maps are terribly imbalanced, and in this day and age with the knowledge players have, there is no way a fair game can be played on any of them. Maps with ledges over bases favor Terran. Maps with large or no choke points favor zerg. Maps with no natural expansion or one with no gas penalizes zerg. Maps with island expansions favor terran. Etc. Etc.
The races are so vastly different, yet on properly designed maps players of high skill can compete as equals, somewhat amazingly.
As far as Boxer goes whom you mention, modern professional SC is dramatically different than when he was in his prime. Boxer won by clever tricks and unit micromanagement. This won't win you games anymore as a Terran, and Boxer's strategies and build orders don't work against modern opponents very often. Playstyle is always changing, and players are able to adapt to that and keep the game fresh and new. This is in part to the imbalance of the races.
What's good about Starcraft is that since the races are not necessarily balanced, it's nearly impossible to determine the optimal playstyle or strategy, since those differences allow for amazing flexibility. Thus, the game is vastly different now, than even 2 years ago before things like the Bisu Build. This makes a game fun and interesting.
It's different though. it doesn't take any more effort to frame a shot with a cheapo camera versus an expensive one, and writing a story is the same for everyone. Independent film has fewer limitations that independent gaming. Advances in game design are technology driven, so you need to have access to the latest software and cutting edge developers in order to harness that. This takes money, so independent games tend to go for simpler designs more reminiscent of older games. However, most gamers want an increasing in the sophistication of game design, which is why I believe that the indie scene has rightfully been largely ignored. Talented people are producing good games, that unfortunately are below standard fare for today in terms of complexity. After all, it took Valve to get Portal off the ground. How much of an impact did narbacular drop make again? I really have yet to see an indie game that seriously pushes game design forward. I have seen many indie films push storytelling and filmmaking forward.
Have you ever seen 2001 in a theatre? I'll bet you haven't. It's a totally different experience. People who do not get the movie are the ones that have not seen it in a theatre. When the image is so huge and the sound so good, the emptiness of the frames engulfs you and shows the smallness of man against space. There are some films that are absolutely a totally different experience in the theatre, but those are fewer and farther between nowadays.
What you described is art, but that is not the art of a video game. Everything you list is a category of its own. No, the art in videogames comes from having a stimulating and challenging system, that flows and rewards players at high levels of play. Completing Metal Slug 3 without dying, dodging bullets in Ikaruga, running a speedrun in Mirror's edge, it's the games that get the player into the zone with a hard and intense flow that are art. This cannot be duplicated in any other medium. Everything on your list can. The art is in the interaction.
Not going to happen. I realize that most people don't like to admit that technology has limitations, but the fact remains that the human brain processes information in both a representational, and non representational way, while computers are limited to representational data processing. First of all, a lot of human "knowledge" is embodied knowledge, solidified in the brain by a continuous feedback between it and our environment through means of our bodies. Computer don't have bodies, and can't have embodied knowledge. You cannot simply program a 'fake' body either, because the shaping of the neural pathways is cumulative and precisely dependent on the body. It would be like putting Roger Fedderer's brain in Rosie Odonell's body. I will guarantee you that he could not play tennis after that. He probably couldn't play with Pete Sampress' body either. Computer games are as much a motor skill as they are an intellectual exercise , so unless your program has access to a human body, it can never play like a human, because motor skills are developed through years of feedback between the environment and the body, and cannot be broken down into rule based axioms.
They also take into account the seriousness of the situation. If you are in dire circumstances, you will be higher on the transplant list. Things like drugs and alcohol use are also considered, and they do not typically give livers to those whose livers were damaged by excessive alcohol use.
The DRM in Spyro the Dragon kept the game from being pirated for literally months. There is an article at gamasutra about how they managed this. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011017/dodd_01.htm
Why is this insightful? It's just wrong. With Ford, you can buy a large SUV, a pickup, or a fuel efficient four door. I'm driving a 2009 focus right now and got 42MPG driving from LA to Phoenix, despite being rated 35mpg. Ford is also going to be bringing their KA line and the Verve small car to the US soon.
This backlash again US automakers is totally unfounded. There may have been a lapse in quality years ago, but now the quality is measurably better than companies like Toyota in terms of reliability, if Auto Guide and consumer reports are to be believed.
Anything other than the prius will have a comparable american counterpart when it comes to fuel economy. The reason that cars sold in foreign markets tend to get better milage, is that US safety regulations are the most strict (and people expect that here). These safety features like reinforced roll bars and side airbags ad weight to cars, and in fact many of Ford's european models could not be sold in the States because they would not pass safety regulations.
Not really. It's not like what actors do has any correspondence to how real people behave. You don't turn your back to someone and stare out the window, while someone talks to you from behind. You don't take nice turns speaking, with pauses in just the right places for dramatic effect. I mean, look at films from the golden age of hollywood, the diction and the actor's physical movements are exaggerated to be more stage-like. People in noir films spout dialogue rapidly, and it's entirely unlike reality. Why then does everybody gush about heath ledger, when his performance in the Dark Knight was the biggest "Hey look at me I'm ACTING' performance I've seen in a long time, whereas Christian Bale's decidedly harder and more subtle performance goes unnoticed? You are wrong.
"As far as galactic collisions are concerned, we are in no immediate danger. 2-3 Gy vs 5 is an academic exercise, as the Sun will most likely increase its output sufficiently by then to boil off the Earth's oceans anyway,"
True. I've heard estimates that predict in about 900 million years, the oceans will have boiled due to the increased energy output from the sun. Between that, and whatever else we could do to doom ourselves, it kind of wants to make you get into space as quickly as possible, no?
Video games are about interactivity. That's what separates them from say, film as a medium. When you are interacting, by definition the story cannot progress, since the story is a non interactive element presented to you. In your example, yes, you could be looking around at the scenery of the coast, but the story is at a standstill during that time. Games cannot have a sense of pacing because of this, and tend to tell their stories in 3 second bursts (half life 2) or in cutscenes. If all you care about is the story, then why are you PLAYING a game? By watching a movie, you can get a directed story, with pacing. You absolutely cannot have the same pacing in a videogame: it's a fundamental limitation of the medium.
Arcade type games, like streets of rage or metal slug do it right: when you die you lose a life, but respawn right away. You're punished, because you have fewer lives and can therefore not progress as far in the game, but you don't lose any time because you pick up exactly where you left off. Unfortunately the idea of 'lives' seems to be taboo now for video game developers, so this wonderful mechanic is pretty much dead.
Well I drive a full size car too. A 2009 Ford Focus. I just went 421 miles on slightly over 10 gallons of 87 octane gasoline this thanksgiving. So not only did I just meet your fuel economy, but I did it while releasing fewer pollutants into the air.
"More fuel-efficient cars, even just to European standards, should be an initial goal. Very little needed - in fact they could start by just selling European GM and Ford models, instant plus without all the time, money, effort and energy requirements of starting from scratch with manufacture of new technology."
No, they can't. These cars do not meet US safety standards. That's why ford is redesigning the KA for a US release.
A while ago fox put a transmitter inside the puck, which would make it glow brightly on TV so that people could see it. The response was overwhelmingly negative, that they removed it (it was amazingly distracting and ugly). Most people can see the puck just fine, maybe you just need to sit closer.
I think you mean 2.2 megapixels as being equivalent to film. That would be 2K resolution, which is the defined minimum for 35mm film work.
Well, try using those HDR photo techniques with a motion picture camera and let me know how that goes.
f you sell me a parachute I expect it to work in every state, on any day of the week, and from any kind of airplane, no matter what clothes I'm wearing or not wearing. After you sold it to me, it's simply criminal to then say it only works if you are wearing green, or skydiving on a day of the week that begins with a T
Interestingly enough, parachute manufacturers do not guarantee their parachutes will work at all. You buy it as-is-you-take-the-risk-jumping-it. Otherwise, the would get sued when a malfunction occurs. That's why I believe the fine print says 'UP TO' 10Mbps from the cable company, and why they haven't been sued for false advertising.
Interestingly though, when a new game is about to come out in a series, people ask "I wonder what will happen next", not "I wonder what I'll be able to do next".
It's in my massive muscular physique!
The dynamic range is 11 stops.
The reason old games can be so compelling was indeed the lack of spectacle. We couldn't be wowed by a scripted sequence or cinematic effect, so the gameplay had to. This is what's missing from games nowadays: the gameplay being interesting for its own sake, and the game demanding your constant attention and input. Developers now are all about creating this quasi-cinematic experience that doesn't feel like a movie, and doesn't feel like a game either. It's really doing a disservice to the medium, which is ironic because all of it is being done precisely to give games artistic legitimacy.
Pretty much 20 minutes into the video, it describes how a poll worker can simulate activating the machine so that everybody in the room believes it is active, and the voter will notice nothing suspicious, yet the vote cast is not counted. The activation chirp is played, and the correct light display when the voter picks the candidate, and even says "vote counted thanks you", when in reality, no vote has been cast. Unbelievable. It's obvious that a malicious poll worker could absolutely use this to his or her advantage and deny people votes.
I'm on a mac you insensitive clod! It's command-z for us!
Yes, there are areas in Montana have no speed limit in the daytime.