You're right, but I don't know that I'd refer to them as easter eggs since they were all pretty obvious or barely hidden in the level but without the need for cheating. The O.J. Simpson ("Innocent?" "Guilty!") statement was there just by turning around when the game starts. The statement about "you're not supposed to be here" could only be seen by using the cheats. There was no possible way to get there without the cheats, unlike all of the other refrences that you mention.
Not trying to be pedantic. Just trying to point out the differences.:)
I remember one from DNE (yes, the original version that actually existed) where you fight in a canyon area. At one point, you have to avoid a minimizing energy blast that is sent every five seconds or so from across the canyon to your position.
If you activate the god and fly cheats and fly to the opening where those blasts were coming from, you see a message saying the equivalent of "You're not supposed to be here" on the wall of the chamber.
(A) He did an illegal (as in "breach of contract") act by violating his EULA because of using bots.
(B) He then logged on again after having violated hs EULA in order to sell the item that he had obtained though illegal means.
If he sold the item after a legitimate defeat of his opponent, there would be no issues. The method of the defeat, however, was through a breach of contract and the continued logging in was illegal use of a service that he was no longer licensed to use due to violating the EULA. Because of those two situations, I don't consider this to be a non-event.
But you've missed the point that he did so after violating the EULA by using the bot. Once he violated his EULA, which IS subject to real-world law, he then was committing a crime by continuing to play and selling the item. (He had to log in and give the item to the other player, after all.) So from a purely technical perspective, he sold the item, which was obtained while performing an illegal act, while performing a second illegal act by logging on again after he had violated his EULA.
Now, tell me how that's not subject to Japanese law?
Unfortunately, in-game theft is allowed by the game engine, otherwise the "thief" class would be pretty pointless.
Completely valid point; however, the only thing about that that might punch a hole in your statement is that he was not acting under the normal rules that would be applied. He violated his EULA by performing the virtual theft in the matter that he did. He then, technically, had no rights to anything further with the game. After having violated his EULA, which is subject to law, he then gained financial benefits by selling an item under unlawful terms.
Again, I don't see this as being the virtual/real-world, black/white issue that so many people on this thread seem to make it out to be.
The monster is not controlled by a human on the other end and is therefore 100% virtual.
Regardless, the action that this guy did might have been virtual, but the final result was real-world and therefore might be subject to real-world laws. Had he kept his actions completely in Lineage, I would agree with you completely. But he didn't and he was able to enrich his bank account by selling something that - virtually or not - did not belong to him.
Again, the ramifications are for the Japanese court system to decide.
This should not be a matter for the law to get involved in, plain and simple. At worst, the guy is breaking the game's TOS (in which case it's an issue for the GMs).
The guy sold the virtual stolen items for real-world money. That makes the whole thing no longer purely virtual as it had real-world ramifications. That means that the real-world cash was earned by taking something without authorization from someone else, virtual or not.
If he simply took the item and left it with his character, I would agree with you 100%. However, he did not do that. He brought his virtual theft into the real world by getting real money. I don't see how real laws are not applicable in some way. It's now up to the Japanese court system to determine how/if real world laws can be applied.
Look, we are now in a society where our virtual "possessions" can garner real-world cash. If I own something in a virtual world, and someone offers me $500 in real-world cash to "sell" it to him virtually, does that now make the transaction a virtual one or a legal one? I believe that it now makes it legal because actual money was involved.
Let say that a +2 jewelled sword of ogre beheading in the virtual world goes for $500 on eBay. The agreement is that after the payment takes place, your virtual buyer meet up in the virtual world and you give your virtual sword to the virtual buyer and virtually part ways. But you still have real-world $500 in your bank or PayPal account.
Someone else sees that transaction on eBay and decides to sell his +4 jewelled sword of ogre beheading. But before he can do that, some asshole comes in and steals that sword virtually. If in the real world that sword could have fetched $750, then stealing that sword virtually might be accountable as theft in the real-world because there is now a real-world precedence (of at least $500) that virtual items cost real money.
When someone steals something in real life, a crime has been committed and insurance will pay for it based on its market value. If that virtual item has real-world, market value, is it still strictly a virtual value because there was no physical, tangible item? The theft of those items could have cost their "owners" real-world cash if they decided to sell.
That's really what the Japanese court needs to decide. The thief did sell for real-world money, after all, so the whole theft is the theft truly virtual? I would say that once it was sold for cold, hard cash, it lost its "virtual" status and was then subject to applicable laws - in this case Japanese laws and possibly the laws of the country where the victim resides.
Just my two cents. Convert that into your currency as necessary.
Depending on how it's implemented, I see no reason why games can't be developed that either (A) require a printout when a student completes a level/course to prove that it was done or (B) reports back to central repository so that the teacher can determine if the work was done.
So, for example, a student plays a game that deals with the multiplication tables. The game is entertaining and informative at the same time, so the kid enjoys playing it. Once the "work" level has been "won", out goes a signal (or a report) stating that little Johnny has completed the work. The teacher has proof that the game was played and little Johnny had fun with it to the point that he looks forward to the next assignment. I don't see this as being difficult to achieve, nor to I believe that this is something that is unattainable as TFA suggests.
Obviously, there are technical issues with this (being cynical geeks we can always find flaws), but I don't see any reason why this could not be done to the point that video games, classwork, homework, and education are synonymous.
So, let's see. A boring book or a complete multimedia experience. Gee, which one do you think the kids will want more? Apparently, the cynics here have not heard of the still-popular Reader Rabbit series.
And give Taco some slack. After years of having to deal with "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" derivative posts on Slashdot, it was only a matter of time before that type of fractured grammar became a part of the Slashdot mentality.:)
I think people are missing the point that this isn't just about deathmatches and Everquest. He's talking about a shift in distribution much like digital music.
Okay, you do have a point. Statements like "people want to get online and play" can be misconstrued. He certainly could mean "they want to get online [to download the program] and play", but this is not the first time that people in the industry have blustered <TED KENNEDY>Hello? People want to play online! They want to play with other humans! They don't want single-player games! Hello?</TED KENNEDY> We've been getting hit with the "online is the way to go" dogma so much lately that it's easy to assume intent.
Back to multiplayer games, if they require a connection to play anyway, there are really only two reasons to sell the base game on CD. The first is size: If it takes 12 hours to download the client, people would rather drive down to Best Buy, plunk down the cash, and be back home in 30 minutes. The second is visibility: You expect to find games at GameStop. Both reasons are becoming less important, though. If your connection is fast enough, there's nothing to discourage you from downloading a 500MB installer. And as you get used to finding games online, you're as likely to look there as you are to look at the local mall.
I see a few issues with that, however.
No resale value. With a box and a disc, you can sell it on eBay whenever you're tired of it. Most facilities won't let you do that with a CD-R or DVD-R, even if you legally downloaded the contents and you are absolving yourself of all material related to the game.
No real incentive for "extas". A lot of games lately have been coming with "collectable" material - DVDs, t-shirts, and so forth. You can't do that on-line.
Most games come on multiple CDs and in some cases multiple DVDs. Even with a broadband connection, that will take a long time.
Some ISPs cap downloads. If you start to download a game that takes up 2 DVDs and you go over your monthly allocation, you're going to get hit with a fee (if not a temporary disconnection) for using too much bandwidth even though you did so legally.
On-line means that you have to go to the web site. In-store means that you can see a game right in front of you that you never knew existed. So, keeping games on-line might mean higher advertising costs for the game companies to let people know about the game. Will that balance out the material (shipping, printing, media) costs? I don't know, but it certainly could limit exposure to the general public. There have been a number of games from independent publishers that looked good enough on the shelf for me to buy them whereas I never would have thought to look for them if the game was only distributed on-line.
Now, admittedly, none of these individually will be of a significant impact, but combined they could have a significant impact on whether or not people decide to buy online as opposed to in-store. It's still much easier for my to impulse-shop at a store instead of on-line.
This is exactly what we've been hearing for how many years now? In fact, this whole statement is a dupe from a different source than a thread from a few months ago, but it's still the same topic. And to this thread I wil say again...
Yes, multiplayer will be the death of single player games. God knows that the Thief, Splinter Cell, and Half-Life series were crushed with dismal sales due to their total lack of on-line gameplay. Splinter Cell has been hit particularly hard to the point that it's last game was sold in the oh-so-distant past of... about one-half years ago, and Theif III came out in the distant past of less than a year ago. </SARCASM>
This whole attitude of online being the next plateau of gaming has been talked about for years, and game sales will do not support that number, particularly on the PC level. And, no, a game that has some on-line features does not count if its main audience is the single-player fan.
Personally, I'd be more willing to play on-line if
(A) game companies would stop acting like all that we want is human-vs-human deathmatch -- bullshit, I prefer team vs. bots to fill in the gaps when necessary, particularly on LAN games; (B) there were ways to filter out "I'm only 13 and we lost so you guys sux0rs and I rulez" (which is the main reason why I gave up on the standalone RtCW:ET); (C) game companies didn't charge me like crazy every month for the privilege (WoW); (D) the game gives me a decent single-player version in the event that for whatever reason the network is down or the servers are overwhelmed *coughBlizzardcough*.
Sometimes I'm just in the mood to immerse myself in a good, single-player, all-by-myself, first-person, graphical novel, like Theif or Splinter Cell. Sometimes I'm in the mood for just laughing with games like Sam and Max or Armed and Dangerous. The notion that I might need to do that on-line and only on-line is preposterous.
How does this relate to OS/2 like my subject indicates? It was only recently that IBM killed it after a decade of people predicting that it would die less than a year after each prediction. Single-player games have been getting the same treatment from editors and "insiders" for years now. Fortunately, the heads of the gaming companies don't seem to be nearly as tunnel-visioned as Lou Gerstner, and I think that recent sales numbers of games with single-player strengths prove that. Sorry, but I don't see MMO replacing single-player. Balancing it out, perhaps. Shifting primarily to MMO? I don't see it.
So, no, Mr. Roper. ALL players (as inferred by your statement) don't want to get online an play. SOME players want to get online and play. Put away your broad brush, s'il vous plait!
Wow. At least 12 posts made it in front of your "frsit psot" and yet you want to post a demo of it. The speed you're involved with would seem to be the chemical type, not technological type.
Go ahead and post your speed demo. Are there DEA workers on/.?:)
Okay, first off, who is this group to think that they have some kind of moral obligation to place demands on Rockstar that must be answered within five days? What are they going to do if Rockstar ignores them, as I hope they will? Stage another protest with even more demands?
Secondly, I want to congratulate them for increasing by an order of magnitude my desire to purchase both Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Bully when available, even though I will probably let them sit on my shelf unopened, as amy way of showing support for Rockstar.
These people need to realize that we gamers are a much more powerful force, financially speaking, than they are with their holier-than-thou moralism. They're giving Rockstar more advertising than they could have possibly imagined. If only such arrogance and desire to force their morality could be harnessed...
Listen, Peaceoholics, you are more than welcome to create your own gaming company that offers a line of products that are much more rooted in your personal morals. I have no doubt that you will sell millions of games, as long as they're entertaining and of a marketable value. Until that time, Rockstar that the right to sell whatever products the core gaming populous (males aged 18-35) want to purchase. Deal with it.
And why is that more advantageous than selling the item on your own then using that as a down payment for other used items at that store? At least with this alternative, you could both get something useful out of the deal.
Now that I think about it, this would make three people happier: you for getting something else that you wanted, the person you sold the console to, and the store owner because you still took that money from the sale to help to keep them in business.
So you can still sell your console to a different person and help to keep your local store in business.
There is a rule of thumb to which I strictly adhere: Nothing is obsolete until it no longer suits your purpose
When it comes to the question of trading in consoles, there is no blanket answer. Some people will say, "Yeah, I'll sell it for $90". Others will say, "Well, I'd rather give it to a friend or relative who would not be able to otherwise afford it, thus saving them $90 while giving me a feel-good moment." Which one is a better deal? More importantly, who am I to give an answer for your particular situation?
The problem with questions such as this is that worth is completely relative. Someone might see absolutely no value whatsoever in a product whereas someone else might put a huge value on it. Case-in-point, on eBay I sold a used optical drive with shrink-wrapped media of 1.2 GB each that I was given - trash interception, as it were. I expected it to go for maybe $50. That was my expected value based on my perception of this unit compared to the price of new DVD drives and blank media, which holds 3x as much as the opticals that I was selling. The drive sold for more than six times my percieved value after a bidding war ensued at the last moment. Obviously, someone else's value was completely different from mine.
In contrast, I've sold items that I thought were of a much higer value than the final price, but the highest bidder (and therefore everyone who bid less) thought otherwise.
So, the whole question of "Is it worth it?" is specious and subjective at best. The only person who can determine if a console (or any item) is worth trading in is the person in the mirror.
$300 for a console? $60 per game? See, this is why I love my PC gaming. The games are more often than not less than $50 for a PC that I already own. Even then, most new games can often be found on-line for less than that. But $60 for a game and $300 for a console?? Puh-lease. I'll never pay it.
Hey, cool! The newest NVidia card is going for about $500 and the collector's edition of game ABC is only $70, but it comes with a cool T-shirt of only mediocre quality! Oh, hell, I have to get those!! Where's my credit card?
The parent is indeed 100% on-topic; however, I will give the mod who knocked it with "offtopic" the benefit of the doubt that he is from outside of the U.S. Let's face it. What would someone in the U.K. or Australia really know about a Verizon Wireless series of adverts that are run in the U.S.?
For those who don't understand, Verizon Wireless (as in mobile/cellular phone, not WiFi network) has been running a series of commercials where in order to test the strength of Verizon's signals a Verizon technician will go into the most bizarre locations and say "Can you hear me now? Good!" The idea is that no matter where he goes, he can get a clear signal and can be heard by whoever is on the other end.
Hence why the parent post is actually 100% on-topic and funny.
(Now watch this post get hit with offtopic instead of Informative. No good deed goes unpunished on Slashdot.)
...as well as those mods who not only don't have a sense of humor but also think that anyone who dares to criticize mods who don't have a sense of humor is worthy of flamebait. So, I ask again... What's your point? >:)
Somebody explains to me how a second post, with the first post being just "first post", can be redundant...
It's because the concept of humor is wa-a-a-a-y beyond the grasp of most Slashdot mods. You can check just about any thread and you'll find statements that are at the very least humourous enough to put a smile on your face, not necessarily an all-out laugh, and some humorless mod gave it an overrated, redundant, or off-topic when it should have been given a +1 Funny or at worst left alone unmodded.
Besides, "redundant" doesn't just mean "repetition". It can also mean "unwanted" or "excessive". Apparently, too many Slashdot mods feel that humor is unwanted and excessive in this world. I guess that's an indication of what kind of people they are. They're apparently not very happy people. Life is too short to be like that as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, well. That's enough philosophy on a Friday morning. I'll just sit back now and wait for the "overrated", "offtopic", "troll", and "flamebait" modifications to come rolling in, thus proving my point.
And of course a totally clueless and humorless mod slaps you with an "Overrated" when, as an audiophile who still has plenty of LPs and remembers (barely) the days of the 8" floppy drives, I found it to be quite humorous, particularly the "scratching" comment.
When is Slashdot going to add a litmus test to getting moderation points that if you don't have a sense of humor, you don't qualify to be a moderator?
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, but I don't know that I'd refer to them as easter eggs since they were all pretty obvious or barely hidden in the level but without the need for cheating. The O.J. Simpson ("Innocent?" "Guilty!") statement was there just by turning around when the game starts. The statement about "you're not supposed to be here" could only be seen by using the cheats. There was no possible way to get there without the cheats, unlike all of the other refrences that you mention.
:)
Not trying to be pedantic. Just trying to point out the differences.
I remember one from DNE (yes, the original version that actually existed) where you fight in a canyon area. At one point, you have to avoid a minimizing energy blast that is sent every five seconds or so from across the canyon to your position.
If you activate the god and fly cheats and fly to the opening where those blasts were coming from, you see a message saying the equivalent of "You're not supposed to be here" on the wall of the chamber.
(A) He did an illegal (as in "breach of contract") act by violating his EULA because of using bots.
(B) He then logged on again after having violated hs EULA in order to sell the item that he had obtained though illegal means.
If he sold the item after a legitimate defeat of his opponent, there would be no issues. The method of the defeat, however, was through a breach of contract and the continued logging in was illegal use of a service that he was no longer licensed to use due to violating the EULA. Because of those two situations, I don't consider this to be a non-event.
But you've missed the point that he did so after violating the EULA by using the bot. Once he violated his EULA, which IS subject to real-world law, he then was committing a crime by continuing to play and selling the item. (He had to log in and give the item to the other player, after all.) So from a purely technical perspective, he sold the item, which was obtained while performing an illegal act, while performing a second illegal act by logging on again after he had violated his EULA.
Now, tell me how that's not subject to Japanese law?
Unfortunately, in-game theft is allowed by the game engine, otherwise the "thief" class would be pretty pointless.
Completely valid point; however, the only thing about that that might punch a hole in your statement is that he was not acting under the normal rules that would be applied. He violated his EULA by performing the virtual theft in the matter that he did. He then, technically, had no rights to anything further with the game. After having violated his EULA, which is subject to law, he then gained financial benefits by selling an item under unlawful terms.
Again, I don't see this as being the virtual/real-world, black/white issue that so many people on this thread seem to make it out to be.
The monster is not controlled by a human on the other end and is therefore 100% virtual.
Regardless, the action that this guy did might have been virtual, but the final result was real-world and therefore might be subject to real-world laws. Had he kept his actions completely in Lineage, I would agree with you completely. But he didn't and he was able to enrich his bank account by selling something that - virtually or not - did not belong to him.
Again, the ramifications are for the Japanese court system to decide.
This should not be a matter for the law to get involved in, plain and simple. At worst, the guy is breaking the game's TOS (in which case it's an issue for the GMs).
The guy sold the virtual stolen items for real-world money. That makes the whole thing no longer purely virtual as it had real-world ramifications. That means that the real-world cash was earned by taking something without authorization from someone else, virtual or not.
If he simply took the item and left it with his character, I would agree with you 100%. However, he did not do that. He brought his virtual theft into the real world by getting real money. I don't see how real laws are not applicable in some way. It's now up to the Japanese court system to determine how/if real world laws can be applied.
Look, we are now in a society where our virtual "possessions" can garner real-world cash. If I own something in a virtual world, and someone offers me $500 in real-world cash to "sell" it to him virtually, does that now make the transaction a virtual one or a legal one? I believe that it now makes it legal because actual money was involved.
Let say that a +2 jewelled sword of ogre beheading in the virtual world goes for $500 on eBay. The agreement is that after the payment takes place, your virtual buyer meet up in the virtual world and you give your virtual sword to the virtual buyer and virtually part ways. But you still have real-world $500 in your bank or PayPal account.
Someone else sees that transaction on eBay and decides to sell his +4 jewelled sword of ogre beheading. But before he can do that, some asshole comes in and steals that sword virtually. If in the real world that sword could have fetched $750, then stealing that sword virtually might be accountable as theft in the real-world because there is now a real-world precedence (of at least $500) that virtual items cost real money.
When someone steals something in real life, a crime has been committed and insurance will pay for it based on its market value. If that virtual item has real-world, market value, is it still strictly a virtual value because there was no physical, tangible item? The theft of those items could have cost their "owners" real-world cash if they decided to sell.
That's really what the Japanese court needs to decide. The thief did sell for real-world money, after all, so the whole theft is the theft truly virtual? I would say that once it was sold for cold, hard cash, it lost its "virtual" status and was then subject to applicable laws - in this case Japanese laws and possibly the laws of the country where the victim resides.
Just my two cents. Convert that into your currency as necessary.
Depending on how it's implemented, I see no reason why games can't be developed that either (A) require a printout when a student completes a level/course to prove that it was done or (B) reports back to central repository so that the teacher can determine if the work was done.
:)
So, for example, a student plays a game that deals with the multiplication tables. The game is entertaining and informative at the same time, so the kid enjoys playing it. Once the "work" level has been "won", out goes a signal (or a report) stating that little Johnny has completed the work. The teacher has proof that the game was played and little Johnny had fun with it to the point that he looks forward to the next assignment. I don't see this as being difficult to achieve, nor to I believe that this is something that is unattainable as TFA suggests.
Obviously, there are technical issues with this (being cynical geeks we can always find flaws), but I don't see any reason why this could not be done to the point that video games, classwork, homework, and education are synonymous.
So, let's see. A boring book or a complete multimedia experience. Gee, which one do you think the kids will want more? Apparently, the cynics here have not heard of the still-popular Reader Rabbit series.
And give Taco some slack. After years of having to deal with "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" derivative posts on Slashdot, it was only a matter of time before that type of fractured grammar became a part of the Slashdot mentality.
Okay, you do have a point. Statements like "people want to get online and play" can be misconstrued. He certainly could mean "they want to get online [to download the program] and play", but this is not the first time that people in the industry have blustered <TED KENNEDY>Hello? People want to play online! They want to play with other humans! They don't want single-player games! Hello?</TED KENNEDY> We've been getting hit with the "online is the way to go" dogma so much lately that it's easy to assume intent.
Back to multiplayer games, if they require a connection to play anyway, there are really only two reasons to sell the base game on CD. The first is size: If it takes 12 hours to download the client, people would rather drive down to Best Buy, plunk down the cash, and be back home in 30 minutes. The second is visibility: You expect to find games at GameStop. Both reasons are becoming less important, though. If your connection is fast enough, there's nothing to discourage you from downloading a 500MB installer. And as you get used to finding games online, you're as likely to look there as you are to look at the local mall.
I see a few issues with that, however.
- No resale value. With a box and a disc, you can sell it on eBay whenever you're tired of it. Most facilities won't let you do that with a CD-R or DVD-R, even if you legally downloaded the contents and you are absolving yourself of all material related to the game.
- No real incentive for "extas". A lot of games lately have been coming with "collectable" material - DVDs, t-shirts, and so forth. You can't do that on-line.
- Most games come on multiple CDs and in some cases multiple DVDs. Even with a broadband connection, that will take a long time.
- Some ISPs cap downloads. If you start to download a game that takes up 2 DVDs and you go over your monthly allocation, you're going to get hit with a fee (if not a temporary disconnection) for using too much bandwidth even though you did so legally.
- On-line means that you have to go to the web site. In-store means that you can see a game right in front of you that you never knew existed. So, keeping games on-line might mean higher advertising costs for the game companies to let people know about the game. Will that balance out the material (shipping, printing, media) costs? I don't know, but it certainly could limit exposure to the general public. There have been a number of games from independent publishers that looked good enough on the shelf for me to buy them whereas I never would have thought to look for them if the game was only distributed on-line.
Now, admittedly, none of these individually will be of a significant impact, but combined they could have a significant impact on whether or not people decide to buy online as opposed to in-store. It's still much easier for my to impulse-shop at a store instead of on-line.This is exactly what we've been hearing for how many years now? In fact, this whole statement is a dupe from a different source than a thread from a few months ago, but it's still the same topic. And to this thread I wil say again...
... about one-half years ago, and Theif III came out in the distant past of less than a year ago. </SARCASM>
Yes, multiplayer will be the death of single player games. God knows that the Thief, Splinter Cell, and Half-Life series were crushed with dismal sales due to their total lack of on-line gameplay. Splinter Cell has been hit particularly hard to the point that it's last game was sold in the oh-so-distant past of
This whole attitude of online being the next plateau of gaming has been talked about for years, and game sales will do not support that number, particularly on the PC level. And, no, a game that has some on-line features does not count if its main audience is the single-player fan.
Personally, I'd be more willing to play on-line if (A) game companies would stop acting like all that we want is human-vs-human deathmatch -- bullshit, I prefer team vs. bots to fill in the gaps when necessary, particularly on LAN games; (B) there were ways to filter out "I'm only 13 and we lost so you guys sux0rs and I rulez" (which is the main reason why I gave up on the standalone RtCW:ET); (C) game companies didn't charge me like crazy every month for the privilege (WoW); (D) the game gives me a decent single-player version in the event that for whatever reason the network is down or the servers are overwhelmed *coughBlizzardcough*.
Sometimes I'm just in the mood to immerse myself in a good, single-player, all-by-myself, first-person, graphical novel, like Theif or Splinter Cell. Sometimes I'm in the mood for just laughing with games like Sam and Max or Armed and Dangerous. The notion that I might need to do that on-line and only on-line is preposterous.
How does this relate to OS/2 like my subject indicates? It was only recently that IBM killed it after a decade of people predicting that it would die less than a year after each prediction. Single-player games have been getting the same treatment from editors and "insiders" for years now. Fortunately, the heads of the gaming companies don't seem to be nearly as tunnel-visioned as Lou Gerstner, and I think that recent sales numbers of games with single-player strengths prove that. Sorry, but I don't see MMO replacing single-player. Balancing it out, perhaps. Shifting primarily to MMO? I don't see it.
So, no, Mr. Roper. ALL players (as inferred by your statement) don't want to get online an play. SOME players want to get online and play. Put away your broad brush, s'il vous plait!
Wow. At least 12 posts made it in front of your "frsit psot" and yet you want to post a demo of it. The speed you're involved with would seem to be the chemical type, not technological type.
/.? :)
Go ahead and post your speed demo. Are there DEA workers on
{ applause }
The following is a public service announcement from Slashdot.
Don't feed the trolls.
I thought it was because YOU PEOPLE CAN'T FUCKING DRIVE!
Well, the "It's Never My Fault" people probably will blame that on Grand Theft Auto and Rockstar, too, if given the chance!
Karma be damned! I'm pissed now!
Okay, first off, who is this group to think that they have some kind of moral obligation to place demands on Rockstar that must be answered within five days? What are they going to do if Rockstar ignores them, as I hope they will? Stage another protest with even more demands?
Secondly, I want to congratulate them for increasing by an order of magnitude my desire to purchase both Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Bully when available, even though I will probably let them sit on my shelf unopened, as amy way of showing support for Rockstar.
These people need to realize that we gamers are a much more powerful force, financially speaking, than they are with their holier-than-thou moralism. They're giving Rockstar more advertising than they could have possibly imagined. If only such arrogance and desire to force their morality could be harnessed...
Listen, Peaceoholics, you are more than welcome to create your own gaming company that offers a line of products that are much more rooted in your personal morals. I have no doubt that you will sell millions of games, as long as they're entertaining and of a marketable value. Until that time, Rockstar that the right to sell whatever products the core gaming populous (males aged 18-35) want to purchase. Deal with it.
And why is that more advantageous than selling the item on your own then using that as a down payment for other used items at that store? At least with this alternative, you could both get something useful out of the deal.
Now that I think about it, this would make three people happier: you for getting something else that you wanted, the person you sold the console to, and the store owner because you still took that money from the sale to help to keep them in business.
So you can still sell your console to a different person and help to keep your local store in business.
There is a rule of thumb to which I strictly adhere: Nothing is obsolete until it no longer suits your purpose
When it comes to the question of trading in consoles, there is no blanket answer. Some people will say, "Yeah, I'll sell it for $90". Others will say, "Well, I'd rather give it to a friend or relative who would not be able to otherwise afford it, thus saving them $90 while giving me a feel-good moment." Which one is a better deal? More importantly, who am I to give an answer for your particular situation?
The problem with questions such as this is that worth is completely relative. Someone might see absolutely no value whatsoever in a product whereas someone else might put a huge value on it. Case-in-point, on eBay I sold a used optical drive with shrink-wrapped media of 1.2 GB each that I was given - trash interception, as it were. I expected it to go for maybe $50. That was my expected value based on my perception of this unit compared to the price of new DVD drives and blank media, which holds 3x as much as the opticals that I was selling. The drive sold for more than six times my percieved value after a bidding war ensued at the last moment. Obviously, someone else's value was completely different from mine.
In contrast, I've sold items that I thought were of a much higer value than the final price, but the highest bidder (and therefore everyone who bid less) thought otherwise.
So, the whole question of "Is it worth it?" is specious and subjective at best. The only person who can determine if a console (or any item) is worth trading in is the person in the mirror.
$300 for a console? $60 per game? See, this is why I love my PC gaming. The games are more often than not less than $50 for a PC that I already own. Even then, most new games can often be found on-line for less than that. But $60 for a game and $300 for a console?? Puh-lease. I'll never pay it.
;)
Hey, cool! The newest NVidia card is going for about $500 and the collector's edition of game ABC is only $70, but it comes with a cool T-shirt of only mediocre quality! Oh, hell, I have to get those!! Where's my credit card?
The parent is indeed 100% on-topic; however, I will give the mod who knocked it with "offtopic" the benefit of the doubt that he is from outside of the U.S. Let's face it. What would someone in the U.K. or Australia really know about a Verizon Wireless series of adverts that are run in the U.S.?
For those who don't understand, Verizon Wireless (as in mobile/cellular phone, not WiFi network) has been running a series of commercials where in order to test the strength of Verizon's signals a Verizon technician will go into the most bizarre locations and say "Can you hear me now? Good!" The idea is that no matter where he goes, he can get a clear signal and can be heard by whoever is on the other end.
Hence why the parent post is actually 100% on-topic and funny.
(Now watch this post get hit with offtopic instead of Informative. No good deed goes unpunished on Slashdot.)
Re:Broken Link, Naming Contest. (Score:1, Flamebait)
...as well as those mods who not only don't have a sense of humor but also think that anyone who dares to criticize mods who don't have a sense of humor is worthy of flamebait. So, I ask again ... What's your point? >:)
I feel the humorless mods ruin Slashdot
I feel the explanation ruins the humor
I feel the humorless mods ruin Slashdot. What's your point? >:)
(Planet X is soooo Gen X...)
... Planet X ... that's where we need to get our next supply of Illudium Phosdex, the shaving cream atom.
But
I saw it in a highly-scientific production that was made about 60 years ago.
(Yes, humorless mods, that's a joke. If you don't understand it, you need to watch classic, WB cartoons from the 1940s and 50s.)
Somebody explains to me how a second post, with the first post being just "first post", can be redundant...
It's because the concept of humor is wa-a-a-a-y beyond the grasp of most Slashdot mods. You can check just about any thread and you'll find statements that are at the very least humourous enough to put a smile on your face, not necessarily an all-out laugh, and some humorless mod gave it an overrated, redundant, or off-topic when it should have been given a +1 Funny or at worst left alone unmodded.
Besides, "redundant" doesn't just mean "repetition". It can also mean "unwanted" or "excessive". Apparently, too many Slashdot mods feel that humor is unwanted and excessive in this world. I guess that's an indication of what kind of people they are. They're apparently not very happy people. Life is too short to be like that as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, well. That's enough philosophy on a Friday morning. I'll just sit back now and wait for the "overrated", "offtopic", "troll", and "flamebait" modifications to come rolling in, thus proving my point.
And of course a totally clueless and humorless mod slaps you with an "Overrated" when, as an audiophile who still has plenty of LPs and remembers (barely) the days of the 8" floppy drives, I found it to be quite humorous, particularly the "scratching" comment.
When is Slashdot going to add a litmus test to getting moderation points that if you don't have a sense of humor, you don't qualify to be a moderator?