Honestly, does this really mean anything to anyone?
Let's face facts. Those who must play Halo 2 either already have an XBox 360 or plan on getting one. I played the original Halo port for the PC and I was unimpressed. The graphics were quite nice; the story was interesting; but compared to the plethora of first-person shooters, I did not think that Halo was all that great. And from what I've been reading, most PC people believe the same. I understand that a game like Halo was somewhat of a revolution for a console; but for a PC it was a lot of "been there, done that."
I'm sure that some people will use this as an excuse to upgrade to Vista, like those idiots who line up at midnight at Wal-Mart for the latest Windows OS; but - as a PC gamer who plays mostly FPS games - just because a game has the "Halo" title is not enough to make me (or any PC person with at least half a brain) to want to go through what is traditionally a painful, Windows upgrade cycle. Not to mention that I'm not going to pay over $200 (game + Vista) to play one game.
Solaris has had this same type of function for almost ten years. snoop [-d device] -a would divert network traffic to/dev/audio. The more noise you heard, the more network traffic was going off that particular interface. I remember playing with this with an old SPARCstation 10 in the mid-1990s.
No, it wasn't as complex as what this one does with chords and so forth, but the idea of using audio to listen to network traffic is nothing particularly new.
Now, if it could be customized so that specific sounds play when problems are detected, that would be cool.
High contention/high traffic: "Cap'n, me engines can't take much more o' this!"
Attempted hack: "Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!"
Feel free to continue the list. My brain hasn't had its morning load of caffeine yet.
Probably the two greatest examples of sequels that were done right are Ultima (before EA got their hands on it anyway) and Final Fantasy. But even with series like Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, and Theif, at least they had improvements on each iteration that made each game the series work well.
Splinter Cell might not have had a lot of gameplay diffrence between the various versions, but the storyline, graphics, and level designs all came together so well that each version kept me interested without feeling like "Oh, man! I did this same thing in the last game!"
Rainbow Six kept adding great new levels and weaponry. The space shuttle launch pad was always a fun addition, and I remember all of my R6 network/LAN friends drooling with anticipation over the 747 rescue mission.
The Thief series always kept the perfect atmosphere to make each sequel better than the last. I defy anyone who has played Thief 3 to admit that they weren't scared shitless in the hospital/asylum level or that it comes close to the intensity of any level in the two prequels. (Okay, the blue "warp doors" were hokey, but I can live with those.) That's the kind of thing that makes sequels good.
No One Lives Forever 2 is another example of a well-done sequel, particularly in the area of well-done humor.
I think that a lot of people are applying a broad brush that "sequel == lack of originality". Maybe for the majority of games that's true, like with the [enter any "Don Madden" or similar sports title here] series; but there are quite a number of them that don't deserve to be scorned just because they're sequels. If it's nothing more than a rehash of a previous version, however, then no one should be surprised if it doesn't sell well. But if a sequel is done right, it won't even feel like a sequel. Yes, I'm probably being Captain Obvious by saying that, but it seems that "sequel" is being given a bad name, and that's not really fair.
I don't think that sequels are causing a sales slow down. It's the plethora of poorly done sequels that are the problem children, particularly those "sequels" that feel more like expansion packs.
Just my two cents. Convert that to your currency as necessary.
Hey, come on! It wasn't all that bad! At least with The A-Team, people could get blown up, rolled over in a vehicle that did fifty flips, get shot at but never hit even after an entire ammunition factory lost their inventory in one battle -- and no one died! They all got up, brushed off their fatigues, then got pummelled by B.A. and the rest of the gang!
And when did anyone get shot in The Greatest American Hero? Okay, he flew into a building or had a really bad landing in every episode, but that's different.
Sheesh. You make it sound like 80s TV shows were loaded with senseless, bloody, gun violence. Nice broad brush.
**Sitting back, waiting to see who actually takes this post seriously...**
I still hold that a marketing department that asks advice of a promotional department, which is just a variant of a marketing department, is still the equivalent of asking in-house and therefore still gives an insanely biased point-of-view. Marketing and promotion do the same thing: try to get visibility of their product out in front of the public. You work for the adversiting section of your company. They're not dissimilar.
I was just posting this here so you can get an inside on what the opinions are of the game-developers who this company works for are
You admitted that you are in promotions, not development. Just because you work in the same company does not mean that you automatically can categorize yourself as knowing what developers think. You can't tell me that the developers want that stuff in there. I'm sure that management does because it helps to reduce their costs, but developers are our brothers and sisters in that they're geeks, too. They know VERY WELL how we will respond to things like blatant advertisements, but I'm sure that they dare not bring it up to the non-geek managers because they know it will be ignored, given a guilt trip, or probably put their job at risk.
I'm still debating whether your posts deserves "troll" or "flamebait" status, because as far as I'm concerned it easily qualifies for both.
In the end, they emailed us and said that 8 out of 11 of the projects we're working with right now are going to have in-game advertising at a maximum level.
Oh, there's a shock. No, we like lots of advertising in games... (because it helps to keep us employed.) An in-house request for opinions is far and away one of the most biased actions that your management could have done, which is probably exactly why they did it. See if they have the balls to do that on the Internet where anyone can freely voice their opinion about in-game advertising. I guarantee you'll get a very different answer.
So, seems like ya might have to get used to it.
That is one of the most arrogant statements I have seen and is the epitome of why people do NOT like advertisers! Why not just come out directly and say, "F*ck you, gamers! We're shoving this in your face whether you f*cking like it or not!"
You apparently underestimate the gaming community and the connectivity/news source that is the Internet. If in-game advertising gets too intrusive, gamers will not buy the game or they will develop hacks that will overwrite the ads, even if that's in violation of EULAs. And thank to the Internet, information like advertising content within a game and how disruptive it can be in a game can be known immediately throughout the world. Our ability to prevent people from buying the game because of intrusive advertisements is greater than your ability to force us to buy a game that has too much or inappropriate advertisements.
So, kindly keep your "here's your KY jelly/bend over and grab your ankles" attitude to yourself.
Seriously, why should we pay for products that aren't exciting or don't completely work. It's funny how companies like Bioware are doing just fine. Perhaps they just know how to do it correctly.
Exactly. I have NO problems with a company holding a product back if it's done for quality control purposes. After the huge Ultima: Ascension debacle in 1999 and 2000 when EA just gave up trying to fix all of the bugs that the game had, I had no problems with Blizzard holding back the release of Diablo 2. I still play that game on occasion and it NEVER crashed on me, even straight out of the box. Since you mentioned Bioware, I'll glady throw NeverWinter Nights into the "Never Crashed Even Out-Of-The-Box" category for me.
Sadly, it seems that EA still suffers from the "We'll release it with bugs but patch it later" mode. I submit as evidence BattleField 2.
Try playing a 10 years old game on your current PC:-)
That's why I have a separate Pentium 233 with PC-DOS 7, WFW 3.11, and a CPU slowdown utility. Those 10 year old games run just fine.:)
There are also a number of freeware projects out there, like DOSbox and SCUMMVM, to let people play those old games on newer hardware. Believe it or not, they've actually done a fairly good job at letting you play those older games.
As far as I'm concerned, there are a lot of different reasons why the games industry will shrink, but honestly I think that it's no more than a normal correction.
No doubt that the 360 and anticipation for the PS3 and Revolution are major factors. Considering that the consoles are several hundred dollars, it's completely natural and should be expected that gamers will be holding onto their cash in order to get one of those sytems. Let's see -- start saving up at least $400 to get a console plus games adn accessories, or buy 8 $50 games for a current system that I might not play as much in less than a year, while still needing to come up with an additional $400 for the next console. I think the answer to that one is pretty obvious.
A lot of games have become almost parodies of themselves. Look at how many games came out that were cookie-cutter games to try to catch onto a "guaranteed" genre or are nothing but uninspired sequels to existing titles only to fizzle out. Then compare that with the surprisingly small number of completely original games. Even with sequel games, very few were really original and worth playing, even on the PC side of things.
When it comes to PCs, we're really starting to get fed up with games that (A) were released long before they should have been, (B) suffer from consolitis where the PC version is nothing more than a port from the console version, which turns a lot of PC gamers off, (C) are nothing more than variations on a theme, or (D) have some kind of "Big Brother" aspect to them that make even legal owners wonder if they're being treated as suspects.
There also seems to be a growing unfriendliness to something that a lot of gamers like - multiplay with bots, even in a LAN environment. This used to be a staple of the network gaming industry, and now it's not even considered under the guise of being "too difficult to implement", which I don't buy for a second. If the enemy can work in single-player with one target (the player), how is it so unbelievably difficult to implement the same algoritm for multiple players, and why has it become so difficult only in the past few years?
When you put all of these together and then realize that the prices of games are still quite high, especially when more games don't even come with decent manuals any more, is it any wonder that the games industry is shrinking?
But that also brings to mind a question -- is shrinkage about the gaming industry as a whole or just the gaming industry by the big boys (EA, Vivendi, etc.)? It seems to be that independent games are getting a lot of press and fans lately. The games industry might be shrinking for the major players, but I think that the industry is ripe for a growth explosion in the independent gaming sector.
Want a couple of examples? I don't mind my son playing Tomb Raider, but I don't want him applying the nude patch so he can watch Lara Croft's titties bouncing around on the screen.
And exactly how does that have anything to do with giving me examples of getting the game "to work properly"? The game is working exactly like the patch told it to work. It's not what you wanted it to do, but it is without question working... and working properly at that.
And by the way, it's called "parenting". If you give your kid a computer in a room where you can't see what he's doing *and* he has the administrative rights to modify files that you don't want him to modify, that's not the PC's fault.
Oh, and you might want to look around and read about how people are getting fed up with the cheats that are happening through XBox Live. You know, a console? One that you are implying is invulnerable to hacks because it's a console?
Sounds more like you simply took advantage of any excuse to do a bit of PC bashing.
God, I despise when people try to compare the dollar values!!
If my PC did only games, then I would have no excuse at balking when there is the discussion of buying a console and your comparison would be complete valid. But you know very well that $$$ for consoles cannot be compared to $$$ for PCs because different people have different percieved values out of each!
My PC does a ton of other things: video editing, audio editing, web surfing, helping me to maintain my web pages, filing my tax returns, printing off coloring pages for the kids, graphics manipulation, pr0n -- whoops! -- word processing, desktop publishing, buying and selling on eBay, ripping CDs, DVD authoring, and so on and so on. The VALUE that I get out of my PC far exceeds anything that a console can do! This is why I'm pleased to hear that titles that are normally reserved for consoles are coming out for PCs. That increases my PC's value to me.
Now, conversely, if you spend more time with your console and you get more enjoyment from your console, then the value that you get out of it probably exceeds the value that you get out of your PC. In that case I would expect you to be willing to put more money into consoles than into your PC.
But until such time as people can get the SAME functions and values out of both consoles and PC so that both are on a more level playing field (no pun intended), comparing dollars between the two is blindy arrogant and worst and ludicrous at best!
I'm not against getting a GameCube, particularly with Nintendo's primary push towards the kinds of games that I would let my daughter play. However, in my opinion (which I know will be taken totally the wrong way by console fan-boys) a console is just a console. Yes, I know, that's what it's meant to be. But my PC is far, far more than just a gaming machine, which is why I prefer to dump my geek cash into that. And because I have enough systems laying around (minimum of 1.4 GHz) for every member of my family and more, another piece of hardware is difficult to justify. Unfortunately, saying anything not 100% positive towards consoles has a tendency to bring out the venom in a lot of Slashdotters, which is why I normally drift away from console/PC transition stories.
And I don't know about anyone else, but I am fed up wrestling with PC games to get them to work correctly.
I really need an explanation to that one. I haven't had to wrestle with PC games to get them to work since the days of DOS and Windows 95. Either you're talking out of an orifice that isn't meant to engage in speech, or you have a really low level of tolerance. If you're referring to hardware problems, there are a ton of reasons why that would be a problem, not the least of which is buying non-standardized hardware or looking at price above all else. Sorry, but that's just the way it's been in the PC world for over a decade. Don't know if that the case with you, but that's been my experience over the past 17 years that I've been building PCs.
Personally, I'm very pleased to hear this. I spend 95% of my gaming time on a PC. Only recently have I been able to go back to consoles, but that's strictly to appease my five-year-old daughter who loves Mario Kart 64. I'm sorry, but I would rather buy a new video card (sub-$200) than plunk down twice that for a new PS2, accessories, and games. The used console market might help to swing that in the future, though.
There are a number of really cool console games that I'd love to play, but I'm not going to buy an entire console just for a single game. I wouldn't even force myself to upgrade my PC if it was just for a single game. So, to see good console games like Onimusha 3 and (drool) Resident Evil 4 being released for the PC is very welcome.
As to StarForce, Ubi is just the distributor, not the developer. I know that StarForce games like most recent Splinter Cell were developed by Ubi. They had more to lose by piracy of their games. If Capcom is the actual developer, does Ubi have any real say as distributors? Besides, after the crap that has recently happened with Sony's rootkit, I would think that fewer and fewer people would be willing to tolerate suddenly losing devices due to the StarForce protection. Ubi should tread lightly when it comes to that.
No, no! You misunderstand. I'm not talking about including bot gameplay with the rankings. I mean just regular, LAN, or at least non-ranked servers. Yikes!! Bots on ranked servers is a recipe for disaster... but at least bots don't give the arrogant "you guyz sUxOrz" from egotistical teenagers.
I'm talking about allowing bots in games that are separate from ranked systems, like a LAN or in my case when you have friends from all over the country. Every weekend, my nephew, a friend from North Carolina, and I do team "Ghost Recon" of us vs. the bad guys for several hours. It's all password protected and it's started as a LAN game, but I allow the ports to be directed to my system at the firewall. So, when by friend from NC connects, my system just happily allows him entry to the server.
One of the biggest dissapointments that I have with most modern FPS games is that bots are nowadays an afterthought whereas before they were just about required.
It boggles my mind when I hear developers talk about how difficult it is to implenet bots in multiplayer. Well, what the hell would you consider the enemy to be during single-player games? How are they not "bots"?! They react to my character as a threat and react accordingly/ Games like F.E.A.R push the enveolpe on bot AI! Would it really be so difficult to modify that to allow the same reactions to multiple targets instead of just me? Somehow, I doubt it but that seems to be the going excuse.
I don't know what bots you dealt with in BF2's single-player mode, but they proved to be quite intelligent and accurate in the games I played.
As for miltiplayer, you can get bots on BF2 relatively easily, but it would be best served in a LAN environment or a system with all of those ridiculously large numbers of server ports open. (Something like 15 different port ranges? What the F*CK was EA thinking!?)
The single player is actually a type of 127.0.0.1 server with you connected in via the client. So, even a single-player game is a multiplayer game with you and bots. (When you start, note that it says "Connecting to server" even for a single-player game.) Once the server/game is running, anyone who attaches to the system via the Internet -> Connect-to-IP function can replace a bot in the game.
The main drawback to this is that you are restricted to the single-player, 16-player maps. There are hacks out there to activate 32-player maps, but I don't know how stable the game is after that. There are also stability problems even in the 16-player maps. I don't know if it's due to how bug-laden the out-of-the-box version was, or if it was because of instability caused by multiple players logged into the "single player" game. But I do know that my nephew and I were able to get this to work on multiple occasions.
But I fully agree with the overall sentiment. It's completely ridiculous to not include bots. There has been plenty of AI code written for many, many years to allow bots. So, the idea that AI needs to be re-thought to allow bots in every game is disingenuous. Sure, it might need to be integrated into the engine, but that doesn't mean that it has to be done completly from scratch.
Additionally, the idea that gamers only want to blow away other humans (virtually, Mr. Thompson, you moron!) is ludicrous and highly arrogant. Bullshit! If I have friends over and my Internet connection goes down or I just don't want to deal with the infantile complainers on the Net, it's always nice to know that I can fire up a multiplayer game and we can still blow away bots together! Sadly, this ability has been rapidly diminishing, and I for one am sick of it.
Oh, how very mature of you. Yes, you certainly beat me with your intellect, oh boy. "Big floppy cock." Wow. You can't get better than that. Nope. Now, go ahead and continue your statements about iocane powder and Australia.
I did not IN ANY WAY defend either the Reagan or Bush administrations. In fact, I defy you to find ANY quote of mine that defended either administration.
You were so determined to show your hatred - and, yes, it is hatred - for Republican administrations that you oh-so-unsubtly just skipped over just as corrupt an administration because it was convenient for you to do so.
The point, that you so arrogantly decided to ignore, is that ALL administrations are corrupt. Just because Clinton was clearly your boy does not make him som kind of martyr who never did any wrong. He did a hell of a lot of things wrong, not the least of which include lying under oath, raising our taxes, allowing his wife to try to further turn this country into a socialist state, and developing Echelon, which was his version of the Bush wiretappings. Unlike you, however, I do not condemn his entire administration as totally corrupt. There were many points about the Clinton administration that I *do* agree with. There are many points about the current administration that I despise. I'm not going to bother to point them out because you obviously wouldn't believe me anyway.
You're so filled with anti-Republican vitriol that I'm not even going to bother responding to anything else. A brick wall would be better conversation. So, you go ahead and fill your ego with the last word. It's clear that your ego and venom won't accept anything less, so have at it. I'm not going to help you to continue your unbearably biased rant any more. We have enough uninformed trolls on Slashdot as it is.
Looks like you're aiming for a -1 Troll moderation now. Challenger *was* a huge deal. It was not *made* into a huge deal. When the Challenger was destroyed, the American Century started to be destroyed with it. Our sense of infalibility, superiority, and incredible technology was irreparably damaged by what happened.
The Shuttle was a source of pride for many Americans, regardless of one's political affiliation. The number of incident-free shuttle launches enforced that position every time the shuttle returned safely to the point that safe shuttle launches and landings were taken for granted. Even the media was proof of this. Whereas every news outlet carried the shuttle launches live in the beginning of the shuttle program, only CNN carried it live on that fateful day. It was assumed that all would be well by every news outlet, so why bother showing a live launch? We'll just report yet another successful launch on the 6 o'clock news. The Challenger disaster caught us completely off guard and was a major blow to the American psyche. Not only had we lost our astronauts, we lost a chunk of our pride with it.
No, you are the one who deserves a "-5 Totally Informed". At the very least a "-5 Trying To Still Politicize Something That Happened Two Decades Ago Because I Didn't Like The Reagan Administration" should apply. You have karma that you're trying to burn, I assume.
Typical Slashdot moderation. Post an anti-Republican, TROLL statement like yours and it gets modded as insightful just because it's anti-Republican.
If you think that the Clinton years were any less FUD, you must be the proud owner of a very strong pair of prescription, rose-colored glasses. EVERY Presidency is about FUD to one extent or the other regardless of whether or not that president happens to be of your political party or not. That's partly what politicking is all about.
No, sir, your extremist view ("I have decided for everyone that you're part of the problem because I don't like how you voted!") is the real problem, regardless of which political party is being demeaned or defended.
Yes, I remember getting whacked on that ending the first time.
For those who don't know, if you walked up to the princess (I believe that she was a princess anyway), you would have been in an attack stance and she killed you in one kick. You had to run into her arms. The real kicker (pun intended): there was no "save game" feature and it could have taken hours to get to the ending. Play for hours, walk up, receive kick, die, start all over again. Desire to beat the sh!t out of the programmers at Broderbund ensues.
The average age of the people in this poll is 37 years old. So, assuming the Bell curve applies, the majority of respondents would be between 30 and 45. These people, whom I call the "first video game generation", grew up during the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 years. Assuming that the majority of these people had children when they were in their early 20s, such children would be anywhere between 10-25 years old, planting them squarely in what I would call the "second video game generation", and chances are that the "first video game generation" parents are still gamers because that's what they grew up doing. My wife and I are first gen gamers who still play video games just about every night. So it should be no surprise to anyone that our daughter is turning into a gamer as well.
The 35% result should be of no surprise to anyone.
This poll is practically useless because...
on
35% Of Parents Game
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· Score: 1
It does not break out the percentile ages of those who took the polls or their definition of "gamer", and those are of critical importance. Yes, it does say that the average is 37 years old, but an average could mean anything from 50% were exactly 50 years old and 50% were exactly 24 years old. I'm going to extremes, I know, but it still makes an important point. By definition, when you have a child, you are a parent regardless of your age. So, just saying "x% of parents" means nothing in and of itself.
I just turned what I prefer to refer to as "six-squared". I grew up on the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and PC. I've been a gamer since the very early 1980s. That's a very different demographic than, for example, someone who is 55 and therefore did not grow up with video games. I've been a gamer for almost 30 years and still am a heavy PC gamer -- in usage, not physical weight - just wanted to point that out.:) I play BF2 regularly and my wife is addicted to games like Zuma. So, it's only natural that my 5 year old is of course also enjoying video games. I would not expect a parent who did not grow up with video games to be playing video games now, but I am not surprised that those same parents know how to get around the Internet and fill out a survey.
But as to the numbers themselves, an average of 37 means that roughly 50% of those who responded were younger than 37 -- in other words, the first video game generation. If 2/3 of them responded, "I am a gamer", which would not be surprising, and few of the "older than 37" groups were gamers, that would still give the 35% in the poll. So, is it really any surprise to any of us that the number is what it is?
Another thought... what constitutes a "gaming parent"? I don't consider a "gaming parent" to be someone who fires up a Flash or RealArcade game once every few days, but others might. To me a real "gamer", whether a parent or not, is someone who plays on a regular basis, at least several times a weeks, puts in several hours per week, and suffers from the "just one more level" syndrome. And, sorry, but I don't consider someone who plays Mahjongg to be a gamer.:) So, different perspectives on what constitutes a "gaming parent" could skew these results as well.
This poll really needs to be more detailed to make these results more credible and interesting. I'd be far more impressed to see results like "64% of parents over the age of 45 are gamers who play 20 hours a week or more whereas 15% of parents below the age of 30 are gamers who play less than two hours a week." Whoa! That would be a statistic worth reporting because it would certainly not be what I or I think any of us would have expected. But without some kind of detailed breakdown of the results, I can't see why this number is either surprising or deserving of a Slashdot front page.
The two passages you quoted from my OP were intended as tongue-in-cheek. It's truly troubling how many Slashdotters are congenitally unable to detect sarcasm. Some really should set up a foundation to help these poor souls.
I think that you need to go back and look at some your posts. You have in the past been poignant in attributing negative adjectives or criticism to those who hold a different view from yours, particularly in the realms of politics and evolution/ID. Considering how vocal you have been against detractors in the past, especially in the realm of Intelligent Design, it should not be any wonder that your statements were not taken in the context that you expected.
Now, in your defense no one should never expect any messge to be appropriately interpreted when displayed in a two-dimensional medium like Slashdot, Usenet, blogs, etc. Anyone who takes a message post at face value is foolish.
As for Intelligent Design, take a look at humanity and the human body and you'll quickly find that "intelligent design" is an oxymoron. An excrucitaingly fragile integument, a birth process that is about as close to death as women can get (not including Caesarean, of course), susceptiblity to all kinds of diseases and viruses, continuing love for Disney On Ice and NASCAR, and baldness:) (from which I'm glad that I don't suffer) are just a small set of points that convince me that there is nothing intelligent about our design...but it doesn't say much for how we've evolved either.:)
In the meantime, I guess I'll go back to making things painfully obvious by appending those little anime smilies that seem to enrage so many of my detractors. To the legions of faceless AC trolls out there who cannot seem to stomach a few carets and an underscore, remember: it's now officially your own fault.
That is unbelievably childish. Whereas everyone likes to tick off detractors on occasion, please stop contributing to the trolling with this ridiculous smile that you use. Knowing that people hate it then spitefully annoucing that you're just going to use it more is nothing more than the immature escalation of an already unnecessary squabble. People already complain about Slashdot going downhill;and between the GNAA and FP idiots we have enough trolls as it is. Kindly swallow your pride and don't feed any more trolls. No one will think less of you for it. In fact, considering that you have as you say "legions of faceless AC trolls" people will probably think better of you for it.
Really, though. Is this newsworthy? Look at what we got in 2005:
Faster Internet access in more and more homes
Increasing dislike for DRM and copy protection
Fewer games of any real interest that were not sequels
Fewer games that were driven by story and plot or were of respectable over all quality
Increasing sales of consoles and console games
Increasing popularity of MMORPGs
Okay, faster Internet can lead to increased downloading. That in conjunction with the continued use of copy protection can certainly make it more appealing to just download the game rather than purchase it out-right, particularly when downloading a game can take less time than running out and buying it. I do not put the blame for a decrease in sales on these factors, however. I think these are minor, although I'm sure that the developers would love to make faster downloading the scapegoat.
For me, the main reason (besides lack of time due the wife giving birth to another urchin) was that with few exceptions the games in 2005 sucked. Even games like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, F.E.A.R, and Battlefield 2 really had nothing unique to them, but - damn - they're fun and I gladly bought all of them. Unfortunately, they're in the minority. The majority of PC games just were not worth putting down my money. That's all there is to that.
The skyrocketing popularity of games like World of Warcraft certainly would not have helped. Look at how many people are so engrossed by their favorite MMORPGs. Given the choice of playing another game or utilizing the MMORPG that often includes a monthly fee, I'm sure that most people figured that they might as well play the MMORPG that they're paying for rather than buy another game. Hell, I'm paying for it! I might as well just keep playing it!
The simple fact is that 2005 just didn't have a whole hell of a lot of PC games that were worth buying. History shows that if a game has mass appeal, it will sell and sell very well. The number of PC games that were released in 2005 is lackluster at best.
Funny thing about PC games and movies. Release crap and then be shocked when sales are down; so blame anything else other than the quality (or lack thereof) of the games and movies. Damn pirates! They prevented the gaming industry from releasing games worth buying -- apparently.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, does this really mean anything to anyone?
Let's face facts. Those who must play Halo 2 either already have an XBox 360 or plan on getting one. I played the original Halo port for the PC and I was unimpressed. The graphics were quite nice; the story was interesting; but compared to the plethora of first-person shooters, I did not think that Halo was all that great. And from what I've been reading, most PC people believe the same. I understand that a game like Halo was somewhat of a revolution for a console; but for a PC it was a lot of "been there, done that."
I'm sure that some people will use this as an excuse to upgrade to Vista, like those idiots who line up at midnight at Wal-Mart for the latest Windows OS; but - as a PC gamer who plays mostly FPS games - just because a game has the "Halo" title is not enough to make me (or any PC person with at least half a brain) to want to go through what is traditionally a painful, Windows upgrade cycle. Not to mention that I'm not going to pay over $200 (game + Vista) to play one game.
Just my two cents.
Solaris has had this same type of function for almost ten years. snoop [-d device] -a would divert network traffic to /dev/audio. The more noise you heard, the more network traffic was going off that particular interface. I remember playing with this with an old SPARCstation 10 in the mid-1990s.
No, it wasn't as complex as what this one does with chords and so forth, but the idea of using audio to listen to network traffic is nothing particularly new.
Now, if it could be customized so that specific sounds play when problems are detected, that would be cool.
High contention/high traffic: "Cap'n, me engines can't take much more o' this!"
Attempted hack: "Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!"
Feel free to continue the list. My brain hasn't had its morning load of caffeine yet.
Probably the two greatest examples of sequels that were done right are Ultima (before EA got their hands on it anyway) and Final Fantasy. But even with series like Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, and Theif, at least they had improvements on each iteration that made each game the series work well.
Splinter Cell might not have had a lot of gameplay diffrence between the various versions, but the storyline, graphics, and level designs all came together so well that each version kept me interested without feeling like "Oh, man! I did this same thing in the last game!"
Rainbow Six kept adding great new levels and weaponry. The space shuttle launch pad was always a fun addition, and I remember all of my R6 network/LAN friends drooling with anticipation over the 747 rescue mission.
The Thief series always kept the perfect atmosphere to make each sequel better than the last. I defy anyone who has played Thief 3 to admit that they weren't scared shitless in the hospital/asylum level or that it comes close to the intensity of any level in the two prequels. (Okay, the blue "warp doors" were hokey, but I can live with those.) That's the kind of thing that makes sequels good.
No One Lives Forever 2 is another example of a well-done sequel, particularly in the area of well-done humor.
I think that a lot of people are applying a broad brush that "sequel == lack of originality". Maybe for the majority of games that's true, like with the [enter any "Don Madden" or similar sports title here] series; but there are quite a number of them that don't deserve to be scorned just because they're sequels. If it's nothing more than a rehash of a previous version, however, then no one should be surprised if it doesn't sell well. But if a sequel is done right, it won't even feel like a sequel. Yes, I'm probably being Captain Obvious by saying that, but it seems that "sequel" is being given a bad name, and that's not really fair.
I don't think that sequels are causing a sales slow down. It's the plethora of poorly done sequels that are the problem children, particularly those "sequels" that feel more like expansion packs.
Just my two cents. Convert that to your currency as necessary.
Hey, come on! It wasn't all that bad! At least with The A-Team, people could get blown up, rolled over in a vehicle that did fifty flips, get shot at but never hit even after an entire ammunition factory lost their inventory in one battle -- and no one died! They all got up, brushed off their fatigues, then got pummelled by B.A. and the rest of the gang!
And when did anyone get shot in The Greatest American Hero? Okay, he flew into a building or had a really bad landing in every episode, but that's different.
Sheesh. You make it sound like 80s TV shows were loaded with senseless, bloody, gun violence. Nice broad brush.
**Sitting back, waiting to see who actually takes this post seriously...**
I do NOT work for an advertising company.
I still hold that a marketing department that asks advice of a promotional department, which is just a variant of a marketing department, is still the equivalent of asking in-house and therefore still gives an insanely biased point-of-view. Marketing and promotion do the same thing: try to get visibility of their product out in front of the public. You work for the adversiting section of your company. They're not dissimilar.
I was just posting this here so you can get an inside on what the opinions are of the game-developers who this company works for are
You admitted that you are in promotions, not development. Just because you work in the same company does not mean that you automatically can categorize yourself as knowing what developers think. You can't tell me that the developers want that stuff in there. I'm sure that management does because it helps to reduce their costs, but developers are our brothers and sisters in that they're geeks, too. They know VERY WELL how we will respond to things like blatant advertisements, but I'm sure that they dare not bring it up to the non-geek managers because they know it will be ignored, given a guilt trip, or probably put their job at risk.
I'm still debating whether your posts deserves "troll" or "flamebait" status, because as far as I'm concerned it easily qualifies for both.
... (because it helps to keep us employed.) An in-house request for opinions is far and away one of the most biased actions that your management could have done, which is probably exactly why they did it. See if they have the balls to do that on the Internet where anyone can freely voice their opinion about in-game advertising. I guarantee you'll get a very different answer.
In the end, they emailed us and said that 8 out of 11 of the projects we're working with right now are going to have in-game advertising at a maximum level.
Oh, there's a shock. No, we like lots of advertising in games
So, seems like ya might have to get used to it.
That is one of the most arrogant statements I have seen and is the epitome of why people do NOT like advertisers! Why not just come out directly and say, "F*ck you, gamers! We're shoving this in your face whether you f*cking like it or not!"
You apparently underestimate the gaming community and the connectivity/news source that is the Internet. If in-game advertising gets too intrusive, gamers will not buy the game or they will develop hacks that will overwrite the ads, even if that's in violation of EULAs. And thank to the Internet, information like advertising content within a game and how disruptive it can be in a game can be known immediately throughout the world. Our ability to prevent people from buying the game because of intrusive advertisements is greater than your ability to force us to buy a game that has too much or inappropriate advertisements.
So, kindly keep your "here's your KY jelly/bend over and grab your ankles" attitude to yourself.
Seriously, why should we pay for products that aren't exciting or don't completely work. It's funny how companies like Bioware are doing just fine. Perhaps they just know how to do it correctly.
Exactly. I have NO problems with a company holding a product back if it's done for quality control purposes. After the huge Ultima: Ascension debacle in 1999 and 2000 when EA just gave up trying to fix all of the bugs that the game had, I had no problems with Blizzard holding back the release of Diablo 2. I still play that game on occasion and it NEVER crashed on me, even straight out of the box. Since you mentioned Bioware, I'll glady throw NeverWinter Nights into the "Never Crashed Even Out-Of-The-Box" category for me.
Sadly, it seems that EA still suffers from the "We'll release it with bugs but patch it later" mode. I submit as evidence BattleField 2.
Try playing a 10 years old game on your current PC :-)
:)
That's why I have a separate Pentium 233 with PC-DOS 7, WFW 3.11, and a CPU slowdown utility. Those 10 year old games run just fine.
There are also a number of freeware projects out there, like DOSbox and SCUMMVM, to let people play those old games on newer hardware. Believe it or not, they've actually done a fairly good job at letting you play those older games.
As far as I'm concerned, there are a lot of different reasons why the games industry will shrink, but honestly I think that it's no more than a normal correction.
No doubt that the 360 and anticipation for the PS3 and Revolution are major factors. Considering that the consoles are several hundred dollars, it's completely natural and should be expected that gamers will be holding onto their cash in order to get one of those sytems. Let's see -- start saving up at least $400 to get a console plus games adn accessories, or buy 8 $50 games for a current system that I might not play as much in less than a year, while still needing to come up with an additional $400 for the next console. I think the answer to that one is pretty obvious.
A lot of games have become almost parodies of themselves. Look at how many games came out that were cookie-cutter games to try to catch onto a "guaranteed" genre or are nothing but uninspired sequels to existing titles only to fizzle out. Then compare that with the surprisingly small number of completely original games. Even with sequel games, very few were really original and worth playing, even on the PC side of things.
When it comes to PCs, we're really starting to get fed up with games that (A) were released long before they should have been, (B) suffer from consolitis where the PC version is nothing more than a port from the console version, which turns a lot of PC gamers off, (C) are nothing more than variations on a theme, or (D) have some kind of "Big Brother" aspect to them that make even legal owners wonder if they're being treated as suspects.
There also seems to be a growing unfriendliness to something that a lot of gamers like - multiplay with bots, even in a LAN environment. This used to be a staple of the network gaming industry, and now it's not even considered under the guise of being "too difficult to implement", which I don't buy for a second. If the enemy can work in single-player with one target (the player), how is it so unbelievably difficult to implement the same algoritm for multiple players, and why has it become so difficult only in the past few years?
When you put all of these together and then realize that the prices of games are still quite high, especially when more games don't even come with decent manuals any more, is it any wonder that the games industry is shrinking?
But that also brings to mind a question -- is shrinkage about the gaming industry as a whole or just the gaming industry by the big boys (EA, Vivendi, etc.)? It seems to be that independent games are getting a lot of press and fans lately. The games industry might be shrinking for the major players, but I think that the industry is ripe for a growth explosion in the independent gaming sector.
Want a couple of examples? I don't mind my son playing Tomb Raider, but I don't want him applying the nude patch so he can watch Lara Croft's titties bouncing around on the screen.
... and working properly at that.
And exactly how does that have anything to do with giving me examples of getting the game "to work properly"? The game is working exactly like the patch told it to work. It's not what you wanted it to do, but it is without question working
And by the way, it's called "parenting". If you give your kid a computer in a room where you can't see what he's doing *and* he has the administrative rights to modify files that you don't want him to modify, that's not the PC's fault.
Oh, and you might want to look around and read about how people are getting fed up with the cheats that are happening through XBox Live. You know, a console? One that you are implying is invulnerable to hacks because it's a console?
Sounds more like you simply took advantage of any excuse to do a bit of PC bashing.
God, I despise when people try to compare the dollar values!!
If my PC did only games, then I would have no excuse at balking when there is the discussion of buying a console and your comparison would be complete valid. But you know very well that $$$ for consoles cannot be compared to $$$ for PCs because different people have different percieved values out of each!
My PC does a ton of other things: video editing, audio editing, web surfing, helping me to maintain my web pages, filing my tax returns, printing off coloring pages for the kids, graphics manipulation, pr0n -- whoops! -- word processing, desktop publishing, buying and selling on eBay, ripping CDs, DVD authoring, and so on and so on. The VALUE that I get out of my PC far exceeds anything that a console can do! This is why I'm pleased to hear that titles that are normally reserved for consoles are coming out for PCs. That increases my PC's value to me.
Now, conversely, if you spend more time with your console and you get more enjoyment from your console, then the value that you get out of it probably exceeds the value that you get out of your PC. In that case I would expect you to be willing to put more money into consoles than into your PC.
But until such time as people can get the SAME functions and values out of both consoles and PC so that both are on a more level playing field (no pun intended), comparing dollars between the two is blindy arrogant and worst and ludicrous at best!
I'm not against getting a GameCube, particularly with Nintendo's primary push towards the kinds of games that I would let my daughter play. However, in my opinion (which I know will be taken totally the wrong way by console fan-boys) a console is just a console. Yes, I know, that's what it's meant to be. But my PC is far, far more than just a gaming machine, which is why I prefer to dump my geek cash into that. And because I have enough systems laying around (minimum of 1.4 GHz) for every member of my family and more, another piece of hardware is difficult to justify. Unfortunately, saying anything not 100% positive towards consoles has a tendency to bring out the venom in a lot of Slashdotters, which is why I normally drift away from console/PC transition stories.
And I don't know about anyone else, but I am fed up wrestling with PC games to get them to work correctly.
I really need an explanation to that one. I haven't had to wrestle with PC games to get them to work since the days of DOS and Windows 95. Either you're talking out of an orifice that isn't meant to engage in speech, or you have a really low level of tolerance. If you're referring to hardware problems, there are a ton of reasons why that would be a problem, not the least of which is buying non-standardized hardware or looking at price above all else. Sorry, but that's just the way it's been in the PC world for over a decade. Don't know if that the case with you, but that's been my experience over the past 17 years that I've been building PCs.
Personally, I'm very pleased to hear this. I spend 95% of my gaming time on a PC. Only recently have I been able to go back to consoles, but that's strictly to appease my five-year-old daughter who loves Mario Kart 64. I'm sorry, but I would rather buy a new video card (sub-$200) than plunk down twice that for a new PS2, accessories, and games. The used console market might help to swing that in the future, though.
There are a number of really cool console games that I'd love to play, but I'm not going to buy an entire console just for a single game. I wouldn't even force myself to upgrade my PC if it was just for a single game. So, to see good console games like Onimusha 3 and (drool) Resident Evil 4 being released for the PC is very welcome.
As to StarForce, Ubi is just the distributor, not the developer. I know that StarForce games like most recent Splinter Cell were developed by Ubi. They had more to lose by piracy of their games. If Capcom is the actual developer, does Ubi have any real say as distributors? Besides, after the crap that has recently happened with Sony's rootkit, I would think that fewer and fewer people would be willing to tolerate suddenly losing devices due to the StarForce protection. Ubi should tread lightly when it comes to that.
No, no! You misunderstand. I'm not talking about including bot gameplay with the rankings. I mean just regular, LAN, or at least non-ranked servers. Yikes!! Bots on ranked servers is a recipe for disaster ... but at least bots don't give the arrogant "you guyz sUxOrz" from egotistical teenagers.
I'm talking about allowing bots in games that are separate from ranked systems, like a LAN or in my case when you have friends from all over the country. Every weekend, my nephew, a friend from North Carolina, and I do team "Ghost Recon" of us vs. the bad guys for several hours. It's all password protected and it's started as a LAN game, but I allow the ports to be directed to my system at the firewall. So, when by friend from NC connects, my system just happily allows him entry to the server.
One of the biggest dissapointments that I have with most modern FPS games is that bots are nowadays an afterthought whereas before they were just about required.
It boggles my mind when I hear developers talk about how difficult it is to implenet bots in multiplayer. Well, what the hell would you consider the enemy to be during single-player games? How are they not "bots"?! They react to my character as a threat and react accordingly/ Games like F.E.A.R push the enveolpe on bot AI! Would it really be so difficult to modify that to allow the same reactions to multiple targets instead of just me? Somehow, I doubt it but that seems to be the going excuse.
I don't know what bots you dealt with in BF2's single-player mode, but they proved to be quite intelligent and accurate in the games I played.
As for miltiplayer, you can get bots on BF2 relatively easily, but it would be best served in a LAN environment or a system with all of those ridiculously large numbers of server ports open. (Something like 15 different port ranges? What the F*CK was EA thinking!?)
The single player is actually a type of 127.0.0.1 server with you connected in via the client. So, even a single-player game is a multiplayer game with you and bots. (When you start, note that it says "Connecting to server" even for a single-player game.) Once the server/game is running, anyone who attaches to the system via the Internet -> Connect-to-IP function can replace a bot in the game.
The main drawback to this is that you are restricted to the single-player, 16-player maps. There are hacks out there to activate 32-player maps, but I don't know how stable the game is after that. There are also stability problems even in the 16-player maps. I don't know if it's due to how bug-laden the out-of-the-box version was, or if it was because of instability caused by multiple players logged into the "single player" game. But I do know that my nephew and I were able to get this to work on multiple occasions.
But I fully agree with the overall sentiment. It's completely ridiculous to not include bots. There has been plenty of AI code written for many, many years to allow bots. So, the idea that AI needs to be re-thought to allow bots in every game is disingenuous. Sure, it might need to be integrated into the engine, but that doesn't mean that it has to be done completly from scratch.
Additionally, the idea that gamers only want to blow away other humans (virtually, Mr. Thompson, you moron!) is ludicrous and highly arrogant. Bullshit! If I have friends over and my Internet connection goes down or I just don't want to deal with the infantile complainers on the Net, it's always nice to know that I can fire up a multiplayer game and we can still blow away bots together! Sadly, this ability has been rapidly diminishing, and I for one am sick of it.
You, my friend, are a big floppy cock.
Oh, how very mature of you. Yes, you certainly beat me with your intellect, oh boy. "Big floppy cock." Wow. You can't get better than that. Nope. Now, go ahead and continue your statements about iocane powder and Australia.
I did not IN ANY WAY defend either the Reagan or Bush administrations. In fact, I defy you to find ANY quote of mine that defended either administration.
You were so determined to show your hatred - and, yes, it is hatred - for Republican administrations that you oh-so-unsubtly just skipped over just as corrupt an administration because it was convenient for you to do so.
The point, that you so arrogantly decided to ignore, is that ALL administrations are corrupt. Just because Clinton was clearly your boy does not make him som kind of martyr who never did any wrong. He did a hell of a lot of things wrong, not the least of which include lying under oath, raising our taxes, allowing his wife to try to further turn this country into a socialist state, and developing Echelon, which was his version of the Bush wiretappings. Unlike you, however, I do not condemn his entire administration as totally corrupt. There were many points about the Clinton administration that I *do* agree with. There are many points about the current administration that I despise. I'm not going to bother to point them out because you obviously wouldn't believe me anyway.
You're so filled with anti-Republican vitriol that I'm not even going to bother responding to anything else. A brick wall would be better conversation. So, you go ahead and fill your ego with the last word. It's clear that your ego and venom won't accept anything less, so have at it. I'm not going to help you to continue your unbearably biased rant any more. We have enough uninformed trolls on Slashdot as it is.
Looks like you're aiming for a -1 Troll moderation now. Challenger *was* a huge deal. It was not *made* into a huge deal. When the Challenger was destroyed, the American Century started to be destroyed with it. Our sense of infalibility, superiority, and incredible technology was irreparably damaged by what happened.
The Shuttle was a source of pride for many Americans, regardless of one's political affiliation. The number of incident-free shuttle launches enforced that position every time the shuttle returned safely to the point that safe shuttle launches and landings were taken for granted. Even the media was proof of this. Whereas every news outlet carried the shuttle launches live in the beginning of the shuttle program, only CNN carried it live on that fateful day. It was assumed that all would be well by every news outlet, so why bother showing a live launch? We'll just report yet another successful launch on the 6 o'clock news. The Challenger disaster caught us completely off guard and was a major blow to the American psyche. Not only had we lost our astronauts, we lost a chunk of our pride with it.
No, you are the one who deserves a "-5 Totally Informed". At the very least a "-5 Trying To Still Politicize Something That Happened Two Decades Ago Because I Didn't Like The Reagan Administration" should apply. You have karma that you're trying to burn, I assume.
Typical Slashdot moderation. Post an anti-Republican, TROLL statement like yours and it gets modded as insightful just because it's anti-Republican.
If you think that the Clinton years were any less FUD, you must be the proud owner of a very strong pair of prescription, rose-colored glasses. EVERY Presidency is about FUD to one extent or the other regardless of whether or not that president happens to be of your political party or not. That's partly what politicking is all about.
No, sir, your extremist view ("I have decided for everyone that you're part of the problem because I don't like how you voted!") is the real problem, regardless of which political party is being demeaned or defended.
Yes, I remember getting whacked on that ending the first time.
For those who don't know, if you walked up to the princess (I believe that she was a princess anyway), you would have been in an attack stance and she killed you in one kick. You had to run into her arms. The real kicker (pun intended): there was no "save game" feature and it could have taken hours to get to the ending. Play for hours, walk up, receive kick, die, start all over again. Desire to beat the sh!t out of the programmers at Broderbund ensues.
Here is the correct link for Starfox.
Personally, I wish that they didn't restrict themselves to consoles. There were a lot of Commodore, Amiga, and early PC games that had great endings.
The average age of the people in this poll is 37 years old. So, assuming the Bell curve applies, the majority of respondents would be between 30 and 45. These people, whom I call the "first video game generation", grew up during the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 years. Assuming that the majority of these people had children when they were in their early 20s, such children would be anywhere between 10-25 years old, planting them squarely in what I would call the "second video game generation", and chances are that the "first video game generation" parents are still gamers because that's what they grew up doing. My wife and I are first gen gamers who still play video games just about every night. So it should be no surprise to anyone that our daughter is turning into a gamer as well.
The 35% result should be of no surprise to anyone.
It does not break out the percentile ages of those who took the polls or their definition of "gamer", and those are of critical importance. Yes, it does say that the average is 37 years old, but an average could mean anything from 50% were exactly 50 years old and 50% were exactly 24 years old. I'm going to extremes, I know, but it still makes an important point. By definition, when you have a child, you are a parent regardless of your age. So, just saying "x% of parents" means nothing in and of itself.
:) I play BF2 regularly and my wife is addicted to games like Zuma. So, it's only natural that my 5 year old is of course also enjoying video games. I would not expect a parent who did not grow up with video games to be playing video games now, but I am not surprised that those same parents know how to get around the Internet and fill out a survey.
... what constitutes a "gaming parent"? I don't consider a "gaming parent" to be someone who fires up a Flash or RealArcade game once every few days, but others might. To me a real "gamer", whether a parent or not, is someone who plays on a regular basis, at least several times a weeks, puts in several hours per week, and suffers from the "just one more level" syndrome. And, sorry, but I don't consider someone who plays Mahjongg to be a gamer. :) So, different perspectives on what constitutes a "gaming parent" could skew these results as well.
I just turned what I prefer to refer to as "six-squared". I grew up on the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and PC. I've been a gamer since the very early 1980s. That's a very different demographic than, for example, someone who is 55 and therefore did not grow up with video games. I've been a gamer for almost 30 years and still am a heavy PC gamer -- in usage, not physical weight - just wanted to point that out.
But as to the numbers themselves, an average of 37 means that roughly 50% of those who responded were younger than 37 -- in other words, the first video game generation. If 2/3 of them responded, "I am a gamer", which would not be surprising, and few of the "older than 37" groups were gamers, that would still give the 35% in the poll. So, is it really any surprise to any of us that the number is what it is?
Another thought
This poll really needs to be more detailed to make these results more credible and interesting. I'd be far more impressed to see results like "64% of parents over the age of 45 are gamers who play 20 hours a week or more whereas 15% of parents below the age of 30 are gamers who play less than two hours a week." Whoa! That would be a statistic worth reporting because it would certainly not be what I or I think any of us would have expected. But without some kind of detailed breakdown of the results, I can't see why this number is either surprising or deserving of a Slashdot front page.
The two passages you quoted from my OP were intended as tongue-in-cheek. It's truly troubling how many Slashdotters are congenitally unable to detect sarcasm. Some really should set up a foundation to help these poor souls.
:) (from which I'm glad that I don't suffer) are just a small set of points that convince me that there is nothing intelligent about our design...but it doesn't say much for how we've evolved either. :)
I think that you need to go back and look at some your posts. You have in the past been poignant in attributing negative adjectives or criticism to those who hold a different view from yours, particularly in the realms of politics and evolution/ID. Considering how vocal you have been against detractors in the past, especially in the realm of Intelligent Design, it should not be any wonder that your statements were not taken in the context that you expected.
Now, in your defense no one should never expect any messge to be appropriately interpreted when displayed in a two-dimensional medium like Slashdot, Usenet, blogs, etc. Anyone who takes a message post at face value is foolish.
As for Intelligent Design, take a look at humanity and the human body and you'll quickly find that "intelligent design" is an oxymoron. An excrucitaingly fragile integument, a birth process that is about as close to death as women can get (not including Caesarean, of course), susceptiblity to all kinds of diseases and viruses, continuing love for Disney On Ice and NASCAR, and baldness
In the meantime, I guess I'll go back to making things painfully obvious by appending those little anime smilies that seem to enrage so many of my detractors. To the legions of faceless AC trolls out there who cannot seem to stomach a few carets and an underscore, remember: it's now officially your own fault.
That is unbelievably childish. Whereas everyone likes to tick off detractors on occasion, please stop contributing to the trolling with this ridiculous smile that you use. Knowing that people hate it then spitefully annoucing that you're just going to use it more is nothing more than the immature escalation of an already unnecessary squabble. People already complain about Slashdot going downhill;and between the GNAA and FP idiots we have enough trolls as it is. Kindly swallow your pride and don't feed any more trolls. No one will think less of you for it. In fact, considering that you have as you say "legions of faceless AC trolls" people will probably think better of you for it.
Okay, faster Internet can lead to increased downloading. That in conjunction with the continued use of copy protection can certainly make it more appealing to just download the game rather than purchase it out-right, particularly when downloading a game can take less time than running out and buying it. I do not put the blame for a decrease in sales on these factors, however. I think these are minor, although I'm sure that the developers would love to make faster downloading the scapegoat.
For me, the main reason (besides lack of time due the wife giving birth to another urchin) was that with few exceptions the games in 2005 sucked. Even games like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, F.E.A.R, and Battlefield 2 really had nothing unique to them, but - damn - they're fun and I gladly bought all of them. Unfortunately, they're in the minority. The majority of PC games just were not worth putting down my money. That's all there is to that.
The skyrocketing popularity of games like World of Warcraft certainly would not have helped. Look at how many people are so engrossed by their favorite MMORPGs. Given the choice of playing another game or utilizing the MMORPG that often includes a monthly fee, I'm sure that most people figured that they might as well play the MMORPG that they're paying for rather than buy another game. Hell, I'm paying for it! I might as well just keep playing it!
The simple fact is that 2005 just didn't have a whole hell of a lot of PC games that were worth buying. History shows that if a game has mass appeal, it will sell and sell very well. The number of PC games that were released in 2005 is lackluster at best.
Funny thing about PC games and movies. Release crap and then be shocked when sales are down; so blame anything else other than the quality (or lack thereof) of the games and movies. Damn pirates! They prevented the gaming industry from releasing games worth buying -- apparently.