I've only seen one episode, but it was the one about Lizzy Borden. The episode was, essentially, a bunch of fat, sweaty guys yelling at an empty room. It was sublime.
Not very scientific, however - so probably not good advice for you. Unless you videotape it and put it on youtube. Then it would definitely be the right way to go.
Oh, I definitely agree that non-linear play (as long as it can be done well and contributes to an overall coherent and interesting world to play in) is huge. And in MMOs the problem in a lot of cases is that building that content is really difficult and time consuming; as someone who has built mods for various games, even the most rudimentary mods take substantial amounts of time and effort - MMO quests and storylines and events are certainly not just "oh I took two minutes to throw something together." So, if you have hundreds of potentially different paths a player can take through the leveling up process - that's a LOT of work, and for the most part it feels like many MMOs out there half-ass it with a random quest generator ala CoH.
To put things in perspective, when COH opened up their mission designer architect system, in something like 24 hours there were more missions built by players than had been designed in the entire history of that game by the dev team. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those designed missions were really poorly done, buggy or exploitative, or just more of the same kinds of things that went on in the game already. Even worse, they *absolutely* didn't matter as far as the story or game world went because the way the missions were put into the world was basically "Hey! It's a virtual reality simulator for your hero to relax in!" Meh.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that WoW has a HUGE library of quests now, some of them *extremely* polished and just incredible. Many of them are really interesting and fun. And almost all of them (now) are better than "Hey, I don't like boars. Go kill 10 of them for me." Even more, there's stuff for players to do once they've leveled - you can do raiding or just casual dungeoneering, you can do PVP in battlefields or in arenas. You can do crafty things and try to dominate the economy. You can go wander the world trying to get weird achievements. You can roleplay with others. Oh, and you can switch, very quickly, from doing one of those things to another if you get bored. I don't know of any extant mmo that actually has an endgame even a 10th as rich as what WoW has.
Granted, WoW didn't have all that at launch. Actually, I think, if the goal were to release a game as good or slightly better than WoW was at launch, Bioware could absolutely do it. The problem they have though is that any game that comes to market now will have to compete *at launch* (which is incredibly difficult to do) with that huge, rich world where there's all that stuff for players to do - and unless they have a truly ridiculous development budget, an incredibly huge staff of insanely talented scenario designers who can create really high quality stuff very quickly, and the ability to truly say "we'll release it when it's done" they will likely fail. People will come in from WoW, have a blast ripping through the extant content and then say "Huh, well, guess I'll cancel since there's nothing left to do." It kind of seems like Bioware can focus on there being a LOT of (mediocre, repetitive, boring) content so that players always have something to do until the dev team can update and add stuff, or they can focus on a spectacular, but unfortunately fairly linear experience that will show the potential of the game but will have to last until they can bring more content. Or, I suppose, they can find a way to make the gameplay so incredibly fantastic and fun that people just wanna play for a while simply to enjoy the mechanics (I have a friend who has played CoH for 4 years now and her favorite thing is using various builds to make herself bounce, fly and run like a bat out of hell through the gamespace - she finds it just plain fun).
The world is there, as you say - but they need to gamify it and have it there when the launch crowd gets their hot little hands on it.
Star Wars is a HUGE world full of stuff that can be really great content for games. But Bioware needs to bring that world to the game. It's not enough to put some particle effects on a baseball bat and call it a lightsaber - they need to immerse the player in the world that the films, books, tv shows, and other games have created.
For an example of someone taking that whole incredibly huge world of Star Wars and making it seem empty, look no further than the previously mentioned Star Wars: Galaxies. You had GIGANTIC planets with... pretty much nothing on them that the players didn't create. You had canonical characters sitting around doing... nothing at all. You had theme parks like Jabba's Palace where you... did a couple of quests to kill animal lairs, and maybe you got a couple hundred credits (when you probably had millions in the bank) as a reward. It was basically like an empty room that someone threw a couple of random Star Wars toys into and said "Hey! Look! We got us a yoda!"
It was so bad that one of the central parts of the Star Wars universe - omnipresent and useful droids *everywhere* - wasn't even implemented at the start of the game. Yet, weirdly, things like creature handlers (which I believe we only saw in one scene) were well fleshed out. As a (departed) friend of mine said, the devs on that game spent more time fleshing out *fishing* as a mini-game than they did thinking about iconic things like droids, bounty hunters and jedi combined.
Bioware has a huge universe to draw from when making their game. But if they launch with the quests being mainly "Hey there, young Padawan, I've got a pest control problem, why don't you go beat up some womp rats for an hour" they will have failed to bring that universe to life in their game.
Mind you, I think Bioware is the company that *could* do it, but they have their work cut out for them. When WoW launched it was 6 years ago, and even the woefully crippled (in comparison to today's WoW) game they launched was MASSIVELY better, bigger, more immersive than anything that's really come out since (though maybe LOTR is close to what WoW was then, content-wise). But Bioware has to compete with WoW as it is now - a game that has had 6 years of post-launch development with a dev team that has learned a LOT about how to make this game better with a HUGE playerbase that is pretty loyal.
I want Bioware to succeed, but they're going to have to create a *living* world that the players can dive into - they can't just have bunches of Star Wars themed things wrapped around mundane, been-there, done-that stuff.
I don't disagree that Star Wars' expanded universe has a LOT of lore - the problem with that in game terms is: will Bioware actually *use it*? Will that world come alive?
When SOE made Star Wars: Galaxies, they also had that whole universe to play in, and yet they miserably failed to take advantage of it. Bioware has a better reputation for making good (single player) RPGs than SOE, but just having that world does not automatically mean they'll flesh out the game well enough.
And, really, in the context of this story - can it compete with WoW - it can't just be "oh, cool, they put in lots of lore" because that isn't enough. It's got to be packed enough with lore that even the Star Wars nerds feel like they're seeing something new AND the lore has to exist in such a way that the players are completely immersed into it. That's REALLY going to be hard to do.
Remember - when WoW launched, there was no WoW for people to compare it to, and so it had SO MUCH MORE stuff going on than any other game out at the time. When this new Star Wars game launches, they are going to have to start off really close to what WoW has now if they want to have any hope of rivaling it, and they will have to quickly *surpass* WoW in order to keep people coming in and staying in.
Don't forget that there are many quests that have various mechanics gimmicks in them. During the lead up to Cataclysm, for example, there was the whole "Retaking Gnomergon!" questline (as well as the one for the filthy trolls to take back their home) as well as the cultist questline. A whole bunch of random, fun and interesting gimmicks made the quests a bit more than kill x, retrieve y bear asses, etc.
Within Cataclysm itself there are quests that have some really fun mechanics. In one storyline you get to hear from a character about how he did something (rather unbelievable), and instead of just listening to his story, you take control of him and go through the past and actually do that (rather unbelievable) thing. There are lots of little gimmicky quests going on like that, and they are pretty neat.
I guess, basically, the *typical* questline in WoW is comparable (and often better) than the BEST quest/mission/story arcs in any other MMO. I really do want this new Star Wars game to be great (after all, why wouldn't I, as a gamer, want more awesome MMOs out there?) but it sounds like they didn't learn the one lesson that WoW should have taught the industry: Content matters. MMOs are not FPSs.
It's the story, stupid. When WoW came out, the majority of MMOs were horrible at telling stories. For example:
Star Wars: Galaxies - there were what, 2, 3 possible "raids"? There were theme parks where you ran a bunch of random quests that kind of told a story, but at the end of it, nothing changed, nothing was unlocked, nothing was different for your character to do, and your rewards were pitiful for doing it. The "missions" in the game were literally, run up to a machine, it says "Hey, (some random SW type person) wants you to go and kill a bunch of animals! Do that!" and you ran out to kill a bunch of animals. The only interesting thing about that game was the rather amazing player based economy, but SOE completely wrecked that when they changed the underlying mechanics of the game.
City of Heroes - this game actually had some really interesting things going on, in that you had storylines to do (though they were grindy as hell and *incredibly* repetitive through *incredibly* repetitive environments, and were *incredibly* stupid for superheroes to be doing). But the whole "repetitive" thing and the whole "dumb for superheroes" thing made it wretched - why, for example, would Spider-Man be asked by (some random person) to deliver something halfway across town? The game mechanics were fun (and the base game still can be from time to time) but it can't really draw the crowds in because once you've run 4-5 missions, you really have done most of what that game has to offer, from a "seeing new and interesting things" standpoint.
And then there is WoW. When it launched, the normal quests you were given lots of were the equivalent of most other MMOs *major* storylines as far as complexity. It was rough around the edges as far as player friendliness went (I remember running around for a couple of hours trying to find someone to turn a quest into - the text said "north of here" but it really meant "way on the whole other side of the world and all the way north as far as you can go") but there was a story, and you were a part of it. There were dungeons to go to - and some of them were jaw-dropping ("Holy shit, a PIRATE SHIP, in a MINE?!") even if they were annoying at times. For every little mechanical nit or bugged event or other complaint, there was stuff to do. And, even with all of the flaws at the time, it was *still* the most polished game around.
In the meantime it's only gotten more polished, and the already way more intricate quests and storyline has been added to massively. There are dozens of dungeons to go to at various points in your playing life and quite a few raids (though some of the older stuff is ignored). They've added tons of features to improve gameplay. And, with the latest expansion, even at very low levels, your character feels, despite being one of millions, *important*. And you can change the world through your actions - as you complete quests, the world around you changes to reflect that in many ways. On top of that, they've really done a good job of making the player feel like their character is important, but at the same time that they are part of something larger.
WoW doesn't have the shiniest engine - it's actually really dated, and I'm often surprised when I play newer games at just how dated it is - but that's not really important. The biggest asset WoW has (aside from a huge playerbase drawing people in) is that there's TONS of stuff to do, tons of stories to follow.
And now we have Bioware's new game and... Oh, look, quests that would have been amazing 6 years ago but WoW's from 4 years ago were better. A shiny new engine but not, seemingly, a lot to do with it. So kind of like a lot of the other games out there. I played Champions Online - and it actually had some interesting stuff going on (and seems like it's gotten more to do so I might try it again). I got Star Trek - which really was pretty interesting to play, but I quickly got bored of repeating pretty much the same 5 missions over and over when I ran out of story arcs to do.
This isn't about a weaker kid getting beat up by a bigger kid.
This is about sociopathic "adults" who get their kicks trying to drive kids they took a dislike to to suicide because they can, and who impersonate someone the kid wants to earn the approval of in order to do it and avoid being held personally responsible.
I don't know if you ever got picked on by adults when you were a kid - even when they're doing it openly (rather than hiding behind a false persona, or maybe especially so) it can be a complete mind-fuck. I don't know if this law is the best way to go about it, but I would say that yes, there definitely should be some laws in place to cover sick fucks going after kids like that, and clearly the existing ones didn't work, given that a woman who drove a girl to suicide got off scott free (other than being permanently known as damaged goods) because there wasn't anything in place to hold her accountable.
I'm not saying "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" but more "things have changed since you were a kid." When I was young, if an adult tried to abuse a kid they had to do it themselves; I actually remember my father beating the shit out of a guy down my block because the guy called my brother a "retard" and then spit at him. My brother came home crying (he is, in fact, somewhat developmentally delayed), and dad went ballistic. But what if the guy could have pretended to be a kid at my brother's school, someone who wanted to be friends? What if he spent time cultivating that friendship with a vulnerable kid who *desperately* wanted to have a friend and then yanked the rug out, and said "You suck, why don't you kill yourself, you retard?"
No law against that. And I can tell you that there damn well should be.
Ever since I've had a pda I've done things like this.
Every evening 30, 15 and then 5 minutes before I usually leave the office, I get a meeting reminder: "Maybe you can walk home today instead of taking the bus?" Maybe half the time I say "Oh, yeah, good idea."
I wrote a pretty simple application that will send me an email before I leave work; the email contains a suggestion for a meal based on recipes I've collected over the year with the ingredients broken out into a shopping list. A few times a week I'll detour to the market to make that meal rather than go home and do delivery.
When I quit smoking some years back, I put my cash and credit cards into a ziplock baggie with "Remember: You quit smoking" on it because, after smoking for years, it was simply my habit to walk to the store and get a pack, and I'd find myself doing it by rote without thinking about it. The baggie and the note made me stop and say "Oh, yeah, duh, why am I here?" and break out of my routine.
Little nudges can help loads. You might disregard them sometimes, or even most of the time, but they can help you start to do healthier things.
A traveller came upon a village and asked a man by the gate what the people ithe nside were like. The man asked, "What were the people like where you came from?" The traveller replied, "They were mean spirited, petty and cruel." And the man said, "You will find them much the same here."
Some time later another traveller came to that same man and same village and asked about the people inside. Asked about the people where he came from, the traveller replied, "They were kind, honest folk, and always friendly." The man replied, "You'll find them much the same here."
The point being you will find what you expect. When I play these games I usually meet friendly, helpful and fun people. Oh, I'm sure there are jerks but I just don't pay them much attention since I'm having fun with the others. It works for me, and means I don't have to miss out on things that are fun because some people suck.
The original Star Wars: Galaxies (pre-CU) had this kind of economy. It was *amazing* - and pretty much the ONLY thing the devs managed to get right, primarily because they didn't have anything to do with it.
NPCs didn't sell anything, I think. Players would start off and pick a general profession, like "Crafter" which would let them make very basic weapons or devices like mineral harvesters. The crafter would start off by prospecting until they found a good source of whatever material they needed and then they would scrabble in the dirt to get a few. Eventually they'd get enough resources to make a few guns or whatever, which would give them crafting xp, and let them build more complex stuff. You'd eventually be able to build small harvesters that you could place atop a source of resources and you could have up to 10 of those. At some point you could specialize, and if you became an architect, for example, you could build factories and huge structures etc.
Crafters would often hire other players to get them materials - in my case, I had maybe 20 people on my "galaxy" (server) who would go out and hunt animals and bring me their bones, meat and leather. They'd also rent me their "lots" so I could have more than 10 buildings. I also wound up doing server trades with people, where I would make a character on their galaxy and let them have my lots, and in exchange they'd do the same for me. At one point, I wound up having over 300 different people directly in my supply-chain - resource gatherers, lot renters, people who would make sub-components for me to make big items or hunt up rare components to be used in special requests. And some of those people had people working for them - I'd place an order for 1,000,000 units of a specific type of copper and they'd find a way to get it to me. There were even entire player built cities that would spring up with different abilities - some were better for crafters, some for people wanting to hunt monsters, some for PVP. You'd even have different players buying and re-selling wares. I wound up supplying some of the best armor on my galaxy directly, while I would sell my mass produced (and somewhat worse) armor in bulk to merchants who would sell it near big areas where fighting happened.
Everyone in the game was participating in this economy at some level or another, and it was really, really glorious. Of course, SOE being SOE, they completely wrecked it, but it was incredible while it lasted.
This is why there were "idea incubators" at the height of the.com era - people who had ideas could get involved with these groups and have access to everything. In exchange, the incubators would get cash & options, with the idea that eventually it would pan out.
I worked for a firm like this in the late 90's - we had a dozen groups or so that would provide everything a start-up could need from human resources & facilities management to development & design. Fun work, but ultimately doomed since we were hellishly expensive & demanded something like 25% equity in any idea we helped bring about on top of it.
While there have been numerous studies showing that there is a statistically significant difference between women and men in regards 3D thinking, that statistically significant difference turns out to not be particularly meaningful when taken out of the lab and applied to real-world activities. It's the same for the studies that prove that women have a statistically significant edge over men when it comes to processing language - women have the edge in controlled experiments, but when brought into the real world the edge is lessened.
What's interesting, however, is that this difference translates in many cases to a preference to engage in activities that utilize each sex's advantage. Men will frequently gravitate towards areas where the mental manipulation of 3D is done, women to areas where communications are important. This increased exposure over time leads to advantages that, over time, become both statistically significant AND meaningful.
On a side note, another interesting factor that comes into play in the experiments is that when people are told, prior to taking the tests in the experiments, "Your gender is really bad at this stuff, so don't feel bad if you have difficulty," there is a negative effect on performance - but it's only a significant (and meaningful) effect with women. On the flip side, when women are told "Women are really good at this stuff, so you shouldn't have any trouble at all," women performed just as well as their male counterparts! Men, when told they have a better natural facility, tended to not improve much.
How much of that seeming immunity to social expectation is natural in men, vs. learned? How much of the ability to be greatly affected by expectations is natural in women, vs. learned? It's hard to say - experiments trying to figure that out are rather hard to design, since by the time we're able to communicate such concepts people have already been greatly socialized.
The takeaway from all of this is that while there are differences between the genders in their natural aptitudes, those differences, outside of reinforcement through life experience, are not meaningful. It's the life experience that builds on natural advantages that makes things different as well as the social environment surrounding individuals in that environment.
An environment where one group is continually told, even in jest, that they are bad at certain tasks or likely to find them difficult because of our gender can actually over time lead to rather skewed demographics. It also makes it understandable why you'll often hear "But I was only joking!" from guys when women are taking those jokes seriously - guys performance is less affected by social expectations, so jokes about those expectations can have less of an impact.
Full disclosure: I'm a woman and a research scientist, reasonably facile with maths, and because I've been an avid gamer since I was about 6 and my folks brought home an Apple ][, my spatial reasoning and mental 3D manipulation abilities are pretty decent when working in the abstract. Yet, funny enough, I am absolutely the WORST driver on the planet, and my colleagues know to give me an extra 10 minutes when attending meetings on East Campus because I still manage to get lost in the maze of nearly identical buildings over there.
I'd say that if anything is holding back gaming it's the fact that AAA titles are so freaking expensive and are so huge an investment that they need to be incredibly safe.
But gaming is not being held back. There's PUH-LENTY of innovation going on, it's just happening outside the glare of the major developers. The economic factors that force AAA titles to play it safe make it a no-brainer to take risks and try to innovate with less expensive games.
You're basically advocating turning consoles into PCs which is kind of pointless. Consoles are consoles - they have a generally fixed hardware target, don't require any real thinking about configurations or choices on the part of consumers, and now are firmly the platform of choice for casual gamers. PCs are PCs - they have wildly varying hardware configurations that do involve some thought as to what you want to put in them and most consumers really REALLY don't want to dick around making those choices.
Gaming *IS* progressing quite nicely - it's just that it's the casual gaming market (and thus, console, whether hand-held or living-room) that's what's taking off. I'm trying to think of the last truly innovative title I saw that required cutting edge hardware to run and I'm drawing a complete blank, but I can think of a dozen games off the top of my head that have really neat and innovative gameplay that'll run on much older hardware without a problem.
My prediction is that the difference between PC gamers and Console gamers will widen, and future consoles will be engineered around that fact.
Consoles will likely focus more on the idea of gaming as a social activity with other players in the same room - think more party games and family gaming nights. Consoles will also be more about DLC and incremental addons and upgrades to games - new songs, or new mini-games for existing titles, etc. Casual markets are exploding now, and I definitely see consoles, with their set hardware configuration, reasonably low cost and generally lowest-common-denominator interface, being the non-mobile platform for consuming casual games. Nobody really cares how many polys are being thrown around when they play Rock Band - they just wanna rock out with their friends. People aren't demanding photo-realism when they play games like Dance Central or Wii Sports - they just want the games to be fun.
PCs will continue to be for more "serious" gamers, with better graphics and (likely) deeper gameplay. They'll also start doing more with DLC than is done now, of course.
What you said - there are just so many paradoxes in the gaming industry right now that actually I think we might just see a swing back to creative concepts driving games because of that super-long development cycle.
Right now, an AAA title takes 3+ years to develop, requires an investment of tens of millions and can make or break a development studio. As a result, AAA titles MUST BE SAFE! Pretty much by definition now they can't be innovative.
But "lesser" titles with lower production values won't necessarily take nearly as long (they can reuse older engines) and have lower costs to develop, so they can take more risks and don't need to be nearly as safe, and the successful gameplay elements can be incorporated into AAA titles.
I'm psyched to see what'll happen with Kinect once the independent devs can start working their magic. So far I really like Dance Central, Kinect Sports & Your Shape, and I think Kinect Adventures has some good ideas, though it needs a bit of refinement. I do wish DC let multiple dancers play simultaneously, and I'm sure future versions will. Kinect Sports is fun - nothing earthshaking, but definitely more fun for me than Wii Sports. As the developers get more familiar I'm looking for some good stuff! And the thing that I notice is this: none of those titles really has graphics that are all that great, but the graphics aren't the point.
Overall I'm really glad to see that this current generation of consoles is turning out to be more about trying to find innovative/interesting control schemes than just about pushing more polys. If I want insane graphics I'll play games on my PC; for my consoles I want my social games to be more fun. Looks like I'm getting my wish!
I think that when we have uber-intelligent computers that they'll basically just be a part of us, rather than some separate entity in competition with us. We'll "evolve" (well, engineer ourselves) to include artificial parts to do what the meat doesn't do well, and the tech will "evolve" to rely on the meat for the stuff the metal can't yet handle.
At some point in the future, it wouldn't surprise me if we did find a way to do away with the meat all together and that some meatless "humans" buggered off, but I would be INCREDIBLY surprised if your scenario, with the two life forms being entirely separate, actually happened.
Why is arguing against homosexuals being able to openly serve their country so important to you?
I mean, I know a lot of people who are kinda icked out by gay folks, but none of them go to any kind of effort to search out documentation to back up their being icked out or anything; it just isn't THAT important to them. In fact, most of the ones who I know who would preface things like "well, it kinda icks me out" or anything like that are actually in favor of same-sex marriages and repealing don't ask don't tell because they don't really think that would hurt them in any way.
So when I run across someone who seems to really be up in arms about it, I have to ask: why is it important to you?
Full disclosure for me: I work in a major university doing social psychology research and behavioral interventions aimed at reducing sexual risk-taking behavior amongst primarily LGBTQ youth; one of the key things we've found is that LGBTQ youth who are in environments that are less stigmatizing of their orientation and identity tend to behave in ways that are much less risky; I want the kids to play safe, so for me, actively trying to make the world more accepting will help accomplish this. What's your story?
No, this is evidence that "people with mental health issues" shouldn't be given access to confidential materials. It has NOTHING to do with don't ask don't tell and EVERYTHING to do with someone who is (for whatever reason) likely mentally ill.
Gender Identity Disorder *can* lead to erratic behavior and other issues that would make someone unfit for military service. However, so could any number of other issues that have nothing to do with sexual orientation or gender identity. There are many people who are gender dysphoric, yet have robust mental health and who, with treatment that addresses the issue (usually transitioning to their target gender/social presentation) don't have more issues than many people have from any number of other issues.
Ditto for sexual orientation - in fact, I'll say that a culture that demonizes people just because of the gender of the consenting adults they are attracted to probably makes things RATHER worse. I can't imagine what it would be like to have to lie about who I am (swap the gender pronoun of my partners, for example) or hide who I am - but I can bet that it must be incredibly fucking difficult.
Frankly, the fact that you frame your entire argument as if it supports don't ask don't tell says to me that you have an axe to grind with homosexuals serving in the military, period and this is just more grist for that particular mill of yours.
Anyway, the idea is that people who are unreliable - for WHATEVER underlying reason - should not be put into positions where that can be an issue. The place where we disagree is that you seem to think that being homosexual or transgender in and of itself makes someone unreliable, and I think that's absolute horseshit.
Except you didn't come up with an implementation. You extended your idea slightly, but an actual implementation is not in evidence. My point in my post is that *everyone* has ideas, but not everyone makes them happen. It's the making it happen part that's the trick, not the having the idea in the first place.
So, again, congratulations on having an idea, exactly like most every other person on the planet. And discongratulations on failing to do *anything* about it other than spitball a little, also exactly like most every other person on the planet. Maybe this experience of getting scooped by Microsoft will goad you into actually trying to make something happen the next time you have an idea. Or not.
I think it's "necessary" for me to live as long as I feel like, until I choose not to exist any more.
Current population growth is *hardly* heading for a disaster, and we in fact produce *more* food than is needed - we're just shit at transporting and distributing it. Our MAIN energy source is actually the sun (indirectly, but hopefully soon rather directly), and within 100 years, hopefully we'll be able to have miniature suns providing energy as well. Our climate has always gone through changes (some rather more dramatic than what we're going through now) and if some of the worst short-term predictions are true, then we'll not have to worry about over-population due to a die-off. As far as resource utilization, we're getting more efficient in the manufacture & recycling of materials, and there are some extremely promising technologies also in development that might make resource scarcity functionally irrelevant.
As to the idea of living forever - it's only a nightmare if you are *incredibly* stupid and unimaginative. Do you think that people would be literally UNABLE to die? Ever? And be forced to continue to exist (somehow) long after the heat death of the universe? Do you imagine that they'd just continue to decay and suffer but never actually die?
I intend to live until I'm ready to die, however long that is. Maybe I won't get a choice in the matter, but I'd sure as hell like one, because for all the things I want to do, 100 years, +/- 20, doesn't seem like a hell of a lot.
Or heck, even just "living in an isolated small town with maybe, at best, 1000 neighbors, for your entire life" - which is basically what most human beings have done for the entirety of human history.
But this is beside the point. By the time we could create a craft capable of keeping even a single human being alive with even spartan living conditions, for over a century of space-travel, we would have had to develop so many other technologies that this kind of thing simply wouldn't be that challenging to handle. Hell, by the time we could even create a probe capable of lasting for 100 years with basic *computer* systems on board and the propulsion necessary to get it to go to wherever it is we'd be sending humans on 100+ year trips, we'd have beaten so many problems that this would simply be an extra check-mark on our to-do list.
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I've only seen one episode, but it was the one about Lizzy Borden. The episode was, essentially, a bunch of fat, sweaty guys yelling at an empty room. It was sublime.
Not very scientific, however - so probably not good advice for you. Unless you videotape it and put it on youtube. Then it would definitely be the right way to go.
Oh, I definitely agree that non-linear play (as long as it can be done well and contributes to an overall coherent and interesting world to play in) is huge. And in MMOs the problem in a lot of cases is that building that content is really difficult and time consuming; as someone who has built mods for various games, even the most rudimentary mods take substantial amounts of time and effort - MMO quests and storylines and events are certainly not just "oh I took two minutes to throw something together." So, if you have hundreds of potentially different paths a player can take through the leveling up process - that's a LOT of work, and for the most part it feels like many MMOs out there half-ass it with a random quest generator ala CoH.
To put things in perspective, when COH opened up their mission designer architect system, in something like 24 hours there were more missions built by players than had been designed in the entire history of that game by the dev team. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those designed missions were really poorly done, buggy or exploitative, or just more of the same kinds of things that went on in the game already. Even worse, they *absolutely* didn't matter as far as the story or game world went because the way the missions were put into the world was basically "Hey! It's a virtual reality simulator for your hero to relax in!" Meh.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that WoW has a HUGE library of quests now, some of them *extremely* polished and just incredible. Many of them are really interesting and fun. And almost all of them (now) are better than "Hey, I don't like boars. Go kill 10 of them for me." Even more, there's stuff for players to do once they've leveled - you can do raiding or just casual dungeoneering, you can do PVP in battlefields or in arenas. You can do crafty things and try to dominate the economy. You can go wander the world trying to get weird achievements. You can roleplay with others. Oh, and you can switch, very quickly, from doing one of those things to another if you get bored. I don't know of any extant mmo that actually has an endgame even a 10th as rich as what WoW has.
Granted, WoW didn't have all that at launch. Actually, I think, if the goal were to release a game as good or slightly better than WoW was at launch, Bioware could absolutely do it. The problem they have though is that any game that comes to market now will have to compete *at launch* (which is incredibly difficult to do) with that huge, rich world where there's all that stuff for players to do - and unless they have a truly ridiculous development budget, an incredibly huge staff of insanely talented scenario designers who can create really high quality stuff very quickly, and the ability to truly say "we'll release it when it's done" they will likely fail. People will come in from WoW, have a blast ripping through the extant content and then say "Huh, well, guess I'll cancel since there's nothing left to do." It kind of seems like Bioware can focus on there being a LOT of (mediocre, repetitive, boring) content so that players always have something to do until the dev team can update and add stuff, or they can focus on a spectacular, but unfortunately fairly linear experience that will show the potential of the game but will have to last until they can bring more content. Or, I suppose, they can find a way to make the gameplay so incredibly fantastic and fun that people just wanna play for a while simply to enjoy the mechanics (I have a friend who has played CoH for 4 years now and her favorite thing is using various builds to make herself bounce, fly and run like a bat out of hell through the gamespace - she finds it just plain fun).
The world is there, as you say - but they need to gamify it and have it there when the launch crowd gets their hot little hands on it.
I wasn't clear, so let me restate:
Star Wars is a HUGE world full of stuff that can be really great content for games. But Bioware needs to bring that world to the game. It's not enough to put some particle effects on a baseball bat and call it a lightsaber - they need to immerse the player in the world that the films, books, tv shows, and other games have created.
For an example of someone taking that whole incredibly huge world of Star Wars and making it seem empty, look no further than the previously mentioned Star Wars: Galaxies. You had GIGANTIC planets with... pretty much nothing on them that the players didn't create. You had canonical characters sitting around doing... nothing at all. You had theme parks like Jabba's Palace where you... did a couple of quests to kill animal lairs, and maybe you got a couple hundred credits (when you probably had millions in the bank) as a reward. It was basically like an empty room that someone threw a couple of random Star Wars toys into and said "Hey! Look! We got us a yoda!"
It was so bad that one of the central parts of the Star Wars universe - omnipresent and useful droids *everywhere* - wasn't even implemented at the start of the game. Yet, weirdly, things like creature handlers (which I believe we only saw in one scene) were well fleshed out. As a (departed) friend of mine said, the devs on that game spent more time fleshing out *fishing* as a mini-game than they did thinking about iconic things like droids, bounty hunters and jedi combined.
Bioware has a huge universe to draw from when making their game. But if they launch with the quests being mainly "Hey there, young Padawan, I've got a pest control problem, why don't you go beat up some womp rats for an hour" they will have failed to bring that universe to life in their game.
Mind you, I think Bioware is the company that *could* do it, but they have their work cut out for them. When WoW launched it was 6 years ago, and even the woefully crippled (in comparison to today's WoW) game they launched was MASSIVELY better, bigger, more immersive than anything that's really come out since (though maybe LOTR is close to what WoW was then, content-wise). But Bioware has to compete with WoW as it is now - a game that has had 6 years of post-launch development with a dev team that has learned a LOT about how to make this game better with a HUGE playerbase that is pretty loyal.
I want Bioware to succeed, but they're going to have to create a *living* world that the players can dive into - they can't just have bunches of Star Wars themed things wrapped around mundane, been-there, done-that stuff.
More clear?
I don't disagree that Star Wars' expanded universe has a LOT of lore - the problem with that in game terms is: will Bioware actually *use it*? Will that world come alive?
When SOE made Star Wars: Galaxies, they also had that whole universe to play in, and yet they miserably failed to take advantage of it. Bioware has a better reputation for making good (single player) RPGs than SOE, but just having that world does not automatically mean they'll flesh out the game well enough.
And, really, in the context of this story - can it compete with WoW - it can't just be "oh, cool, they put in lots of lore" because that isn't enough. It's got to be packed enough with lore that even the Star Wars nerds feel like they're seeing something new AND the lore has to exist in such a way that the players are completely immersed into it. That's REALLY going to be hard to do.
Remember - when WoW launched, there was no WoW for people to compare it to, and so it had SO MUCH MORE stuff going on than any other game out at the time. When this new Star Wars game launches, they are going to have to start off really close to what WoW has now if they want to have any hope of rivaling it, and they will have to quickly *surpass* WoW in order to keep people coming in and staying in.
That's really hard.
Don't forget that there are many quests that have various mechanics gimmicks in them. During the lead up to Cataclysm, for example, there was the whole "Retaking Gnomergon!" questline (as well as the one for the filthy trolls to take back their home) as well as the cultist questline. A whole bunch of random, fun and interesting gimmicks made the quests a bit more than kill x, retrieve y bear asses, etc.
Within Cataclysm itself there are quests that have some really fun mechanics. In one storyline you get to hear from a character about how he did something (rather unbelievable), and instead of just listening to his story, you take control of him and go through the past and actually do that (rather unbelievable) thing. There are lots of little gimmicky quests going on like that, and they are pretty neat.
I guess, basically, the *typical* questline in WoW is comparable (and often better) than the BEST quest/mission/story arcs in any other MMO. I really do want this new Star Wars game to be great (after all, why wouldn't I, as a gamer, want more awesome MMOs out there?) but it sounds like they didn't learn the one lesson that WoW should have taught the industry: Content matters. MMOs are not FPSs.
It's the story, stupid. When WoW came out, the majority of MMOs were horrible at telling stories. For example:
Star Wars: Galaxies - there were what, 2, 3 possible "raids"? There were theme parks where you ran a bunch of random quests that kind of told a story, but at the end of it, nothing changed, nothing was unlocked, nothing was different for your character to do, and your rewards were pitiful for doing it. The "missions" in the game were literally, run up to a machine, it says "Hey, (some random SW type person) wants you to go and kill a bunch of animals! Do that!" and you ran out to kill a bunch of animals. The only interesting thing about that game was the rather amazing player based economy, but SOE completely wrecked that when they changed the underlying mechanics of the game.
City of Heroes - this game actually had some really interesting things going on, in that you had storylines to do (though they were grindy as hell and *incredibly* repetitive through *incredibly* repetitive environments, and were *incredibly* stupid for superheroes to be doing). But the whole "repetitive" thing and the whole "dumb for superheroes" thing made it wretched - why, for example, would Spider-Man be asked by (some random person) to deliver something halfway across town? The game mechanics were fun (and the base game still can be from time to time) but it can't really draw the crowds in because once you've run 4-5 missions, you really have done most of what that game has to offer, from a "seeing new and interesting things" standpoint.
And then there is WoW. When it launched, the normal quests you were given lots of were the equivalent of most other MMOs *major* storylines as far as complexity. It was rough around the edges as far as player friendliness went (I remember running around for a couple of hours trying to find someone to turn a quest into - the text said "north of here" but it really meant "way on the whole other side of the world and all the way north as far as you can go") but there was a story, and you were a part of it. There were dungeons to go to - and some of them were jaw-dropping ("Holy shit, a PIRATE SHIP, in a MINE?!") even if they were annoying at times. For every little mechanical nit or bugged event or other complaint, there was stuff to do. And, even with all of the flaws at the time, it was *still* the most polished game around.
In the meantime it's only gotten more polished, and the already way more intricate quests and storyline has been added to massively. There are dozens of dungeons to go to at various points in your playing life and quite a few raids (though some of the older stuff is ignored). They've added tons of features to improve gameplay. And, with the latest expansion, even at very low levels, your character feels, despite being one of millions, *important*. And you can change the world through your actions - as you complete quests, the world around you changes to reflect that in many ways. On top of that, they've really done a good job of making the player feel like their character is important, but at the same time that they are part of something larger.
WoW doesn't have the shiniest engine - it's actually really dated, and I'm often surprised when I play newer games at just how dated it is - but that's not really important. The biggest asset WoW has (aside from a huge playerbase drawing people in) is that there's TONS of stuff to do, tons of stories to follow.
And now we have Bioware's new game and... Oh, look, quests that would have been amazing 6 years ago but WoW's from 4 years ago were better. A shiny new engine but not, seemingly, a lot to do with it. So kind of like a lot of the other games out there. I played Champions Online - and it actually had some interesting stuff going on (and seems like it's gotten more to do so I might try it again). I got Star Trek - which really was pretty interesting to play, but I quickly got bored of repeating pretty much the same 5 missions over and over when I ran out of story arcs to do.
If people want t
This isn't about a weaker kid getting beat up by a bigger kid.
This is about sociopathic "adults" who get their kicks trying to drive kids they took a dislike to to suicide because they can, and who impersonate someone the kid wants to earn the approval of in order to do it and avoid being held personally responsible.
I don't know if you ever got picked on by adults when you were a kid - even when they're doing it openly (rather than hiding behind a false persona, or maybe especially so) it can be a complete mind-fuck. I don't know if this law is the best way to go about it, but I would say that yes, there definitely should be some laws in place to cover sick fucks going after kids like that, and clearly the existing ones didn't work, given that a woman who drove a girl to suicide got off scott free (other than being permanently known as damaged goods) because there wasn't anything in place to hold her accountable.
I'm not saying "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" but more "things have changed since you were a kid." When I was young, if an adult tried to abuse a kid they had to do it themselves; I actually remember my father beating the shit out of a guy down my block because the guy called my brother a "retard" and then spit at him. My brother came home crying (he is, in fact, somewhat developmentally delayed), and dad went ballistic. But what if the guy could have pretended to be a kid at my brother's school, someone who wanted to be friends? What if he spent time cultivating that friendship with a vulnerable kid who *desperately* wanted to have a friend and then yanked the rug out, and said "You suck, why don't you kill yourself, you retard?"
No law against that. And I can tell you that there damn well should be.
Ever since I've had a pda I've done things like this.
Every evening 30, 15 and then 5 minutes before I usually leave the office, I get a meeting reminder: "Maybe you can walk home today instead of taking the bus?" Maybe half the time I say "Oh, yeah, good idea."
I wrote a pretty simple application that will send me an email before I leave work; the email contains a suggestion for a meal based on recipes I've collected over the year with the ingredients broken out into a shopping list. A few times a week I'll detour to the market to make that meal rather than go home and do delivery.
When I quit smoking some years back, I put my cash and credit cards into a ziplock baggie with "Remember: You quit smoking" on it because, after smoking for years, it was simply my habit to walk to the store and get a pack, and I'd find myself doing it by rote without thinking about it. The baggie and the note made me stop and say "Oh, yeah, duh, why am I here?" and break out of my routine.
Little nudges can help loads. You might disregard them sometimes, or even most of the time, but they can help you start to do healthier things.
A traveller came upon a village and asked a man by the gate what the people ithe nside were like. The man asked, "What were the people like where you came from?"
The traveller replied, "They were mean spirited, petty and cruel." And the man said, "You will find them much the same here."
Some time later another traveller came to that same man and same village and asked about the people inside. Asked about the people where he came from, the traveller replied, "They were kind, honest folk, and always friendly." The man replied, "You'll find them much the same here."
The point being you will find what you expect. When I play these games I usually meet friendly, helpful and fun people. Oh, I'm sure there are jerks but I just don't pay them much attention since I'm having fun with the others. It works for me, and means I don't have to miss out on things that are fun because some people suck.
The original Star Wars: Galaxies (pre-CU) had this kind of economy. It was *amazing* - and pretty much the ONLY thing the devs managed to get right, primarily because they didn't have anything to do with it.
NPCs didn't sell anything, I think. Players would start off and pick a general profession, like "Crafter" which would let them make very basic weapons or devices like mineral harvesters. The crafter would start off by prospecting until they found a good source of whatever material they needed and then they would scrabble in the dirt to get a few. Eventually they'd get enough resources to make a few guns or whatever, which would give them crafting xp, and let them build more complex stuff. You'd eventually be able to build small harvesters that you could place atop a source of resources and you could have up to 10 of those. At some point you could specialize, and if you became an architect, for example, you could build factories and huge structures etc.
Crafters would often hire other players to get them materials - in my case, I had maybe 20 people on my "galaxy" (server) who would go out and hunt animals and bring me their bones, meat and leather. They'd also rent me their "lots" so I could have more than 10 buildings. I also wound up doing server trades with people, where I would make a character on their galaxy and let them have my lots, and in exchange they'd do the same for me. At one point, I wound up having over 300 different people directly in my supply-chain - resource gatherers, lot renters, people who would make sub-components for me to make big items or hunt up rare components to be used in special requests. And some of those people had people working for them - I'd place an order for 1,000,000 units of a specific type of copper and they'd find a way to get it to me. There were even entire player built cities that would spring up with different abilities - some were better for crafters, some for people wanting to hunt monsters, some for PVP. You'd even have different players buying and re-selling wares. I wound up supplying some of the best armor on my galaxy directly, while I would sell my mass produced (and somewhat worse) armor in bulk to merchants who would sell it near big areas where fighting happened.
Everyone in the game was participating in this economy at some level or another, and it was really, really glorious. Of course, SOE being SOE, they completely wrecked it, but it was incredible while it lasted.
This is why there were "idea incubators" at the height of the .com era - people who had ideas could get involved with these groups and have access to everything. In exchange, the incubators would get cash & options, with the idea that eventually it would pan out.
I worked for a firm like this in the late 90's - we had a dozen groups or so that would provide everything a start-up could need from human resources & facilities management to development & design. Fun work, but ultimately doomed since we were hellishly expensive & demanded something like 25% equity in any idea we helped bring about on top of it.
It's always nice to read a sincere compliment, regardless of the venue. Thanks :)
While there have been numerous studies showing that there is a statistically significant difference between women and men in regards 3D thinking, that statistically significant difference turns out to not be particularly meaningful when taken out of the lab and applied to real-world activities. It's the same for the studies that prove that women have a statistically significant edge over men when it comes to processing language - women have the edge in controlled experiments, but when brought into the real world the edge is lessened.
What's interesting, however, is that this difference translates in many cases to a preference to engage in activities that utilize each sex's advantage. Men will frequently gravitate towards areas where the mental manipulation of 3D is done, women to areas where communications are important. This increased exposure over time leads to advantages that, over time, become both statistically significant AND meaningful.
On a side note, another interesting factor that comes into play in the experiments is that when people are told, prior to taking the tests in the experiments, "Your gender is really bad at this stuff, so don't feel bad if you have difficulty," there is a negative effect on performance - but it's only a significant (and meaningful) effect with women. On the flip side, when women are told "Women are really good at this stuff, so you shouldn't have any trouble at all," women performed just as well as their male counterparts! Men, when told they have a better natural facility, tended to not improve much.
How much of that seeming immunity to social expectation is natural in men, vs. learned? How much of the ability to be greatly affected by expectations is natural in women, vs. learned? It's hard to say - experiments trying to figure that out are rather hard to design, since by the time we're able to communicate such concepts people have already been greatly socialized.
The takeaway from all of this is that while there are differences between the genders in their natural aptitudes, those differences, outside of reinforcement through life experience, are not meaningful. It's the life experience that builds on natural advantages that makes things different as well as the social environment surrounding individuals in that environment.
An environment where one group is continually told, even in jest, that they are bad at certain tasks or likely to find them difficult because of our gender can actually over time lead to rather skewed demographics. It also makes it understandable why you'll often hear "But I was only joking!" from guys when women are taking those jokes seriously - guys performance is less affected by social expectations, so jokes about those expectations can have less of an impact.
Full disclosure: I'm a woman and a research scientist, reasonably facile with maths, and because I've been an avid gamer since I was about 6 and my folks brought home an Apple ][, my spatial reasoning and mental 3D manipulation abilities are pretty decent when working in the abstract. Yet, funny enough, I am absolutely the WORST driver on the planet, and my colleagues know to give me an extra 10 minutes when attending meetings on East Campus because I still manage to get lost in the maze of nearly identical buildings over there.
Spectroscopy showing a celestial body (or bodies) is in a state of chemical disequilibrium considered to be suggestive of life.
And a really neat one at that - I can't wait to see what indy developers can do with it.
Graphics are not the same as gaming.
I'd say that if anything is holding back gaming it's the fact that AAA titles are so freaking expensive and are so huge an investment that they need to be incredibly safe.
But gaming is not being held back. There's PUH-LENTY of innovation going on, it's just happening outside the glare of the major developers. The economic factors that force AAA titles to play it safe make it a no-brainer to take risks and try to innovate with less expensive games.
You're basically advocating turning consoles into PCs which is kind of pointless. Consoles are consoles - they have a generally fixed hardware target, don't require any real thinking about configurations or choices on the part of consumers, and now are firmly the platform of choice for casual gamers. PCs are PCs - they have wildly varying hardware configurations that do involve some thought as to what you want to put in them and most consumers really REALLY don't want to dick around making those choices.
Gaming *IS* progressing quite nicely - it's just that it's the casual gaming market (and thus, console, whether hand-held or living-room) that's what's taking off. I'm trying to think of the last truly innovative title I saw that required cutting edge hardware to run and I'm drawing a complete blank, but I can think of a dozen games off the top of my head that have really neat and innovative gameplay that'll run on much older hardware without a problem.
My prediction is that the difference between PC gamers and Console gamers will widen, and future consoles will be engineered around that fact.
Consoles will likely focus more on the idea of gaming as a social activity with other players in the same room - think more party games and family gaming nights. Consoles will also be more about DLC and incremental addons and upgrades to games - new songs, or new mini-games for existing titles, etc. Casual markets are exploding now, and I definitely see consoles, with their set hardware configuration, reasonably low cost and generally lowest-common-denominator interface, being the non-mobile platform for consuming casual games. Nobody really cares how many polys are being thrown around when they play Rock Band - they just wanna rock out with their friends. People aren't demanding photo-realism when they play games like Dance Central or Wii Sports - they just want the games to be fun.
PCs will continue to be for more "serious" gamers, with better graphics and (likely) deeper gameplay. They'll also start doing more with DLC than is done now, of course.
What you said - there are just so many paradoxes in the gaming industry right now that actually I think we might just see a swing back to creative concepts driving games because of that super-long development cycle.
Right now, an AAA title takes 3+ years to develop, requires an investment of tens of millions and can make or break a development studio. As a result, AAA titles MUST BE SAFE! Pretty much by definition now they can't be innovative.
But "lesser" titles with lower production values won't necessarily take nearly as long (they can reuse older engines) and have lower costs to develop, so they can take more risks and don't need to be nearly as safe, and the successful gameplay elements can be incorporated into AAA titles.
I'm psyched to see what'll happen with Kinect once the independent devs can start working their magic. So far I really like Dance Central, Kinect Sports & Your Shape, and I think Kinect Adventures has some good ideas, though it needs a bit of refinement. I do wish DC let multiple dancers play simultaneously, and I'm sure future versions will. Kinect Sports is fun - nothing earthshaking, but definitely more fun for me than Wii Sports. As the developers get more familiar I'm looking for some good stuff! And the thing that I notice is this: none of those titles really has graphics that are all that great, but the graphics aren't the point.
Overall I'm really glad to see that this current generation of consoles is turning out to be more about trying to find innovative/interesting control schemes than just about pushing more polys. If I want insane graphics I'll play games on my PC; for my consoles I want my social games to be more fun. Looks like I'm getting my wish!
I think that when we have uber-intelligent computers that they'll basically just be a part of us, rather than some separate entity in competition with us. We'll "evolve" (well, engineer ourselves) to include artificial parts to do what the meat doesn't do well, and the tech will "evolve" to rely on the meat for the stuff the metal can't yet handle.
At some point in the future, it wouldn't surprise me if we did find a way to do away with the meat all together and that some meatless "humans" buggered off, but I would be INCREDIBLY surprised if your scenario, with the two life forms being entirely separate, actually happened.
Why is arguing against homosexuals being able to openly serve their country so important to you?
I mean, I know a lot of people who are kinda icked out by gay folks, but none of them go to any kind of effort to search out documentation to back up their being icked out or anything; it just isn't THAT important to them. In fact, most of the ones who I know who would preface things like "well, it kinda icks me out" or anything like that are actually in favor of same-sex marriages and repealing don't ask don't tell because they don't really think that would hurt them in any way.
So when I run across someone who seems to really be up in arms about it, I have to ask: why is it important to you?
Full disclosure for me: I work in a major university doing social psychology research and behavioral interventions aimed at reducing sexual risk-taking behavior amongst primarily LGBTQ youth; one of the key things we've found is that LGBTQ youth who are in environments that are less stigmatizing of their orientation and identity tend to behave in ways that are much less risky; I want the kids to play safe, so for me, actively trying to make the world more accepting will help accomplish this. What's your story?
No, this is evidence that "people with mental health issues" shouldn't be given access to confidential materials. It has NOTHING to do with don't ask don't tell and EVERYTHING to do with someone who is (for whatever reason) likely mentally ill.
Gender Identity Disorder *can* lead to erratic behavior and other issues that would make someone unfit for military service. However, so could any number of other issues that have nothing to do with sexual orientation or gender identity. There are many people who are gender dysphoric, yet have robust mental health and who, with treatment that addresses the issue (usually transitioning to their target gender/social presentation) don't have more issues than many people have from any number of other issues.
Ditto for sexual orientation - in fact, I'll say that a culture that demonizes people just because of the gender of the consenting adults they are attracted to probably makes things RATHER worse. I can't imagine what it would be like to have to lie about who I am (swap the gender pronoun of my partners, for example) or hide who I am - but I can bet that it must be incredibly fucking difficult.
Frankly, the fact that you frame your entire argument as if it supports don't ask don't tell says to me that you have an axe to grind with homosexuals serving in the military, period and this is just more grist for that particular mill of yours.
Anyway, the idea is that people who are unreliable - for WHATEVER underlying reason - should not be put into positions where that can be an issue. The place where we disagree is that you seem to think that being homosexual or transgender in and of itself makes someone unreliable, and I think that's absolute horseshit.
Except you didn't come up with an implementation. You extended your idea slightly, but an actual implementation is not in evidence. My point in my post is that *everyone* has ideas, but not everyone makes them happen. It's the making it happen part that's the trick, not the having the idea in the first place.
So, again, congratulations on having an idea, exactly like most every other person on the planet. And discongratulations on failing to do *anything* about it other than spitball a little, also exactly like most every other person on the planet. Maybe this experience of getting scooped by Microsoft will goad you into actually trying to make something happen the next time you have an idea. Or not.
I think it's "necessary" for me to live as long as I feel like, until I choose not to exist any more.
Current population growth is *hardly* heading for a disaster, and we in fact produce *more* food than is needed - we're just shit at transporting and distributing it. Our MAIN energy source is actually the sun (indirectly, but hopefully soon rather directly), and within 100 years, hopefully we'll be able to have miniature suns providing energy as well. Our climate has always gone through changes (some rather more dramatic than what we're going through now) and if some of the worst short-term predictions are true, then we'll not have to worry about over-population due to a die-off. As far as resource utilization, we're getting more efficient in the manufacture & recycling of materials, and there are some extremely promising technologies also in development that might make resource scarcity functionally irrelevant.
As to the idea of living forever - it's only a nightmare if you are *incredibly* stupid and unimaginative. Do you think that people would be literally UNABLE to die? Ever? And be forced to continue to exist (somehow) long after the heat death of the universe? Do you imagine that they'd just continue to decay and suffer but never actually die?
I intend to live until I'm ready to die, however long that is. Maybe I won't get a choice in the matter, but I'd sure as hell like one, because for all the things I want to do, 100 years, +/- 20, doesn't seem like a hell of a lot.
Or heck, even just "living in an isolated small town with maybe, at best, 1000 neighbors, for your entire life" - which is basically what most human beings have done for the entirety of human history.
But this is beside the point. By the time we could create a craft capable of keeping even a single human being alive with even spartan living conditions, for over a century of space-travel, we would have had to develop so many other technologies that this kind of thing simply wouldn't be that challenging to handle. Hell, by the time we could even create a probe capable of lasting for 100 years with basic *computer* systems on board and the propulsion necessary to get it to go to wherever it is we'd be sending humans on 100+ year trips, we'd have beaten so many problems that this would simply be an extra check-mark on our to-do list.