I remember being horrified by what was being said of sierra's strategy in the book `hackers' (if my memory serves me correctly). They believed that games were effectively a product of mass production, that it was better to train up cheap novices than rely on talent. I remember wondering what would happen when that tactic `matured'. Now I know, a string of really crap games. If they did not have the good games they *distributed* it would be even clearer how bad their production has been.
And to think that ken williams mused about merging with blizzard (aaargh) a company which well represents the other extreme, rewarded by a string of quality titles.
On the other hand when management abandons the productive departments within a company you also know things are going to go downhill soon (and it won't be the managers loosing their jobs).
This makes the, unfounded, assumption that there is only a single pool of developers and that all applications overlap...this is probably not true.
The only way you will get a kernel hacker writing java is at gunpoint, it just has no relevance for what they want to do. One would imagine that this is the same in reverse for many groups.
Of course there will be projects that don't get sufficient interest to build a development team. That is expected, evolution in action. It also means that there is an opening for a commercial product here.
I guess any evolutionary system requires some products to fail the fitness test, but given the permanence of computer storage they live on as open source fossils (which can be revived should it be neccessary).
I think the lack of response is due to the fact that this sort of project has been frequently discussed. Until one of these projects has a working, usable and available machine for public consumption it is a fairly abstract/specialized interest.
btw. is anyone running linux on the palm? I know it's possible, but is it usable?
However, I must say that the conversations in this thread have been hilarious. A bunch of people me-tooing and whinging about how cool slashdot used to be in the `old' days...
btw^2. the first serious suggestion for this sort of thing I saw was http://www.mauve.demon.co.uk/index.html (of course it hasn't changed since that time:( I like his ideas for I/O though.
I like to buy and run good game software. For that reason I have bought a goodly powered PC, Voodoo2 and other such toys to enhance my game playing experience. I would very much like to play Zelda64 since I recognize it as a superior game.
Nintendo will not ever release for my platform of choice regardless of my willingness to purchase their software. They clearly wish to tie my play to their hardware, even though it is suspected that they make little money on the hardware.
This is equivalent to MS restricting its programs to run only on an MS operating system, it is market control without any benefit to the consumer. In both cases an emulator could give me some control over my environment.
The only problem is that `rippers' are so rare that it is probably easier for me to find pirate ROMS than it is to purchase the cartridge and ask for it to be transformed to an emulatable form.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember being horrified by what was being said of sierra's strategy in the book `hackers' (if my
memory serves me correctly). They believed that games were effectively a product of mass production,
that it was better to train up cheap novices than rely on talent. I remember wondering what would
happen when that tactic `matured'. Now I know, a string of really crap games. If they did not have
the good games they *distributed* it would be even clearer how bad their production has been.
And to think that ken williams mused about merging with blizzard (aaargh) a company which well represents
the other extreme, rewarded by a string of quality titles.
On the other hand when management abandons the productive departments within a company you also
know things are going to go downhill soon (and it won't be the managers loosing their jobs).
This makes the, unfounded, assumption that there is only a single pool of developers and that all
applications overlap...this is probably not true.
The only way you will get a kernel hacker writing java is at gunpoint, it just has no relevance for
what they want to do. One would imagine that this is the same in reverse for many groups.
Of course there will be projects that don't get sufficient interest to build a development team.
That is expected, evolution in action. It also means that there is an opening for a commercial
product here.
I guess any evolutionary system requires some products to fail the fitness test, but given the
permanence of computer storage they live on as open source fossils (which can be revived should
it be neccessary).
I think the lack of response is due to the fact that this sort of project has been frequently
:( I like his ideas for I/O though.
discussed. Until one of these projects has a working, usable and available machine for public
consumption it is a fairly abstract/specialized interest.
btw. is anyone running linux on the palm? I know it's possible, but is it usable?
However, I must say that the conversations in this thread have been hilarious.
A bunch of people me-tooing and whinging about how cool slashdot used to be in
the `old' days...
btw^2. the first serious suggestion for this sort of thing I saw was
http://www.mauve.demon.co.uk/index.html
(of course it hasn't changed since that time
I like to buy and run good game software. For that reason I have bought a goodly powered PC, Voodoo2
and other such toys to enhance my game playing experience. I would very much like to play Zelda64
since I recognize it as a superior game.
Nintendo will not ever release for my platform of choice regardless of my willingness to purchase
their software. They clearly wish to tie my play to their hardware, even though it is suspected
that they make little money on the hardware.
This is equivalent to MS restricting its programs to run only on an MS operating system, it is market
control without any benefit to the consumer. In both cases an emulator could give me some control
over my environment.
The only problem is that `rippers' are so rare that it is probably easier for me to find pirate ROMS
than it is to purchase the cartridge and ask for it to be transformed to an emulatable form.