Re:Why is the GBA the center of portable gaming?
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GPS for GBA
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Um, you're being a bit of a defensive fanboy, because you aren't quite getting what mobile gaming is all about. It has nothing to do with the GBA or Nintedno.
It's not portable gaming - the GBA is current undisputed heavyweight, and the next wave will be either the DS or the PSP, no question - but rather it's about pervasive, connected gaming. In that field, things like the GO Game in the US are a lot closer to what we're talking about. Mobile gaming is mostly much bigger in Japan and is entirely cell-phone based, usually with an older crowd than the GBA scene. Check out Mogi as another interesting example.
Usually these are games on java-enabled phones. Nokia was really in a position to succeed here but they've made the error of going for the GBA market, as well as making egregious design errors in the first model. If they could wed the graphic power of the game-platform half of the N-Gage to the type of gaming represented by Mogi, they'd be in business.
It's three things: cost of living, cost of living, and cost of living. Until housing and such is as expensive in India and China as it is in the US and Europe, it will always be cheaper to employ people there, and always be impossible for labor in the US to compete on price.
The trouble is that the growing inequity in the US means that there isn't any downward pressure on prices in the US, either. The people who are making it can keep the prices afloat, and insofar as the primary equity for most American families is their homes, they sure as hell ain't gonna make the C.O.L. lower via reduced housing prices.
Too glib a distinction, at a certain point. I agree in general that this is self-censorship based on a vocal political bloc in US society punishing its enemies in the marketplace and PR spheres.
But individuals and corporations can effectively censor to the extent that they use what power they have as individuals and organizations to restrict the discourse of other around them. If I as an individual threaten to shoot you if you say something, I've censored you. If I as a corporation threated to begin a massive lawsuit if you publish an article critical of my product, and you can't afford the cost to you and your family of defending it, then I've effectively censored you (viz. SLAPP suits).
The boundary between "government" and "not government" is not anywhere as straightforward or clear as your definition seems to suggest, either.
You know, of the people I know who have for love or money had to work with C#, exactly zero of them have complaints about it. According to all accounts I've heard, it's a well-thought out language that's easy to work in.
D may be the next iteration, but let's give props where props are due.
There was a PC game that came out a few years ago, called The Neverhood. It was definitely Christian in its message (I had a brief email exchange with the game designer, who has since repudiated videogames entirely - he took umbrage with the fact that I found Gnostic Christian overtones in the game, and he said he meant it as a straightforwardly Christian game.) It was well done, fun, and visually clever, using claymation graphics.
What is interesting to me about this conference is that it is a group of people trying to use videogames to say something - that is more interesting to me that simply trying to make "family friendly" games. I think that anyone who takes games seriously and thinks that they have a potential to do more than just entertain and "educate" should take note of what happens at this conference.
There are some distortions of time - the flash-forward still-photo-sequences that show the future of characters she encounters on different "branches" - that could push this towards non-linearity.
Agree completely. And the fact that LucasArts has put the kabosh on not only Grim Fandango 2, but also the new version of Sam and Max, is a sign that I was a very bad person in my last life and have now reincarnated into hell.
Oh, fucking boy. Another Star Wars game. Yes, Mister Satan, I'll take another 100 years of torment, sirthankyousirmayihaveanother.
The best video-game-made-into-a-movie was never a video game. It was Run Lola Run, and it was built around the structures and logic of a game (multiple lives with learned rules; time limits; lots of running; "puzzles"; even some FPS action.)
There's an essay called "Run Lara Run" by Margit Grieb, a doctoral student out of the University Florida, published in the collection "ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces" that connects Run Lola Run with videogames.
Instead of trying to just stick videogame franchises into schlock pop cinema, it would be good if some brainier filmmakers continued to pluck the truly most compelling aspects of the videogame experience and translated them into film. But they won't - and it's mostly the fault of fan culture, I'm afraid.
Of course, because ideas are transmitted genetically, right?
If I don't have kids, but I write or produce something that affects 10,000 kids, my "genes" that I care most about will do a lot better than they would if I just biologically fathered 2 kids.
Leeching is downloading without sharing. The RIAA et al are going after the people who share - since, technically, they are violating copyright - not the people who download. If you haven't been clear on this very basic aspect of what's going on, then why the hell are you piping in about it?
The analogy is not flawed insofar as some people sell cookbooks, and the examples I gave were celebrity chefs with TV shows. Do they specify that you can only make their recipes if you've watched their show and watched the ads? No, they do not.
Music is a skill. It's performance. The added marginal work of musicians to allow someone to hear a copy of their music is zero - nada - nothing. It should be the burden of the musicians to make sure they are compensated before beginning to play, not to pretend that they are in a widget-making business.
How does my sharing my files equate to selfishness? If anything, it would be leeching that is selfish. And leeching is not being chased down: it's file sharing that is.
I don't think it's a matter of civil disobedience in the Rosa Parks sense of the term, because 1. the stakes aren't important enough for that sort of thing, and 2. people are already voting with their hard drives.
I think you know that you're defending an indefensible model.
Incidentally, I have a library of about 2000 cd's. The files I have of music that I don't have on CD are largely so that I can investigate new music, not to avoid supporting musicians. Technically, my M.O. may be illegal, but I have absolutely no problems with it.
The model is broken. The ability to listen to music isn't a good. It is no longer sensible to be treated as a good. The technology has changed it. Too many otherwise completely well-socialized, law-abiding people just naturally lend out their music now - just like if the book publishing industry tried to make it illegal for me to share my books and magazines.
Music needs to be re-understood and financed as a service, like cooking (did you know that recipes can't be copyrighted? If I get a hold of the recipes of the Iron Chef or James Beard, I'm free to use them, share them, or whatever. Funny, they still seem to be doing OK) or jokes.
Israel is not per se a theocracy, in that religious elites do not actively run the country. This is unlike Iran, in which the clerics themseles have considerable political clout - as noted elsewhere. (The recent election was an undemocratic turn, as the clerics invalidated the candidacy of most of the liberals.) Although the chief rabbi does have a high profile and can determine immigration and marriage policy, for the most part the government of Israel is secular. It has been expressively defined as a country to serve the interests of one ethno-religious group above all others, though.
They are both democracies in that policy is set and day to day affairs are run by elected officials in legislatures.
I was both more extreme and less serious with my voting suggestion: I mean that only post-grad-degree-earning polyglots be allowed to vote. But it's just a beautiful dream. I mean, a joke.
Because once you accept one absurd credo, any absurd credo is fair game. If you can deny evolution, then accepting ideas like the superiority of one race, or the damnation of all infidels, or such, is not a stretch. It's also evidence of some admixture of either extreme stubborness in the face of data, or poor education - both of which are already damning in a democracy.
Like I said, for me, it's already beyond the pale. Up there with talking to imaginary friends and believing the world is flat. At the point that we have a majority of the electorate not on the same page with basic - and I mean basic - principles of science, I pretty much despair of any sane democratic society. I'm not going to try to dissuade anybody of anything - like I said, I view the position as beneath discourse. I just don't count those people as being intellectually grown up yet.
Pretty much don't know where to start on that. I won't, 'cept to say that you pretty much step out of the circle of viable discourse if you look at all the evidence and still discount evolution. Ferchrissakes, we're all made of *meat.*
I don't think you can get too much mileage out of the "not a democracy, it's a republic" thing. Strictly speaking, there are no democracies in that sense (although the California state referendum and recall system gets close). I think that most of us agree that the US system is one type - a constitutional republic - of a super-set of democratic governments.
By current standards, Switzerland is homogenous, but it wasn't then - remember, it still has three official languages, and from the perspective of the 14th century, the cultural differences between french, italian, and german speakers were pretty substantial. I would argue that what makes those kinds of democracies viable is less ethnic homogeneity and more a sense of their being a dominant class - in Sweden, Switzerland, and Japan, all thriving, stable democracies - most everyone is in the same, middlish class (and, over the generations, start inter-marrying into a single ethnicity.) When groups of people start clumping into wildly different blocs of economic interest, things get uglier.
The founders of the US essentially screened participation and limited it to white, male property owners - ensuring an educated, but not exactly fair, electorate. Personally, I would limit participation in federal elections to individuals with graduate degrees who spoke more than one language.
I really don't get this "will of the people" thing.
The people are an ass. Half of the US population doesn't even believe in evolution. Racist, genocidal leaders have been voted into office throughout the world (Milosevicz is just one off the top of my mind, Mussolini was another.) With our collapsing public education system, I see democracy being even less viable as a form of government for anything more than local concerns.
A semi-educated population can't support a democracy. There are 2 democracies in the Middle East: one is an ethnic-religious state and the other a theocracy.
Well, it proves that you can make it through college. Which is exactly one big thing (with a lot of component little things) more than not making it through college.
If someone has a glittering CV and a portfolio of impressive work without any college, that's great - there are a hundred roads to the citidel of success, and you can't argue with good work. But when it comes to taking a chance on someone with relatively little background, I'll take a chance on someone who at least had a statistical possibility of having been exposed to a college education during the 4 years they were on a campus.
You squeezed in number 5 sub-elements that are actually the most important elements: what the going rate is, their perception of how many choices you have vs. how many choices they have, your mutual opportunity costs, etc.
In a saturated market, wages drop. Numbers 1 to 4 might have some impact relative to colleagues in the same place doing analogous jobs, but in absolute terms - and your housing, food, and transportation costs are, relative to the labor market for one position, absolute - it's all about number 5.
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Um, you're being a bit of a defensive fanboy, because you aren't quite getting what mobile gaming is all about. It has nothing to do with the GBA or Nintedno.
It's not portable gaming - the GBA is current undisputed heavyweight, and the next wave will be either the DS or the PSP, no question - but rather it's about pervasive, connected gaming. In that field, things like the GO Game in the US are a lot closer to what we're talking about. Mobile gaming is mostly much bigger in Japan and is entirely cell-phone based, usually with an older crowd than the GBA scene. Check out Mogi as another interesting example.
Usually these are games on java-enabled phones. Nokia was really in a position to succeed here but they've made the error of going for the GBA market, as well as making egregious design errors in the first model. If they could wed the graphic power of the game-platform half of the N-Gage to the type of gaming represented by Mogi, they'd be in business.
It's three things: cost of living, cost of living, and cost of living. Until housing and such is as expensive in India and China as it is in the US and Europe, it will always be cheaper to employ people there, and always be impossible for labor in the US to compete on price.
The trouble is that the growing inequity in the US means that there isn't any downward pressure on prices in the US, either. The people who are making it can keep the prices afloat, and insofar as the primary equity for most American families is their homes, they sure as hell ain't gonna make the C.O.L. lower via reduced housing prices.
Too glib a distinction, at a certain point. I agree in general that this is self-censorship based on a vocal political bloc in US society punishing its enemies in the marketplace and PR spheres.
But individuals and corporations can effectively censor to the extent that they use what power they have as individuals and organizations to restrict the discourse of other around them. If I as an individual threaten to shoot you if you say something, I've censored you. If I as a corporation threated to begin a massive lawsuit if you publish an article critical of my product, and you can't afford the cost to you and your family of defending it, then I've effectively censored you (viz. SLAPP suits).
The boundary between "government" and "not government" is not anywhere as straightforward or clear as your definition seems to suggest, either.
That was part of my point, the lack of longevity of videogames.
Simon was a brilliant game/toy.
I mean is: it's never gone out of production. Not a lot of videogames you can say that about, barring sequels.
If I'm going to be paying $699, *I'm* not going to be the one touching my 'joystick.'
You know, of the people I know who have for love or money had to work with C#, exactly zero of them have complaints about it. According to all accounts I've heard, it's a well-thought out language that's easy to work in.
D may be the next iteration, but let's give props where props are due.
There was a PC game that came out a few years ago, called The Neverhood. It was definitely Christian in its message (I had a brief email exchange with the game designer, who has since repudiated videogames entirely - he took umbrage with the fact that I found Gnostic Christian overtones in the game, and he said he meant it as a straightforwardly Christian game.) It was well done, fun, and visually clever, using claymation graphics.
What is interesting to me about this conference is that it is a group of people trying to use videogames to say something - that is more interesting to me that simply trying to make "family friendly" games. I think that anyone who takes games seriously and thinks that they have a potential to do more than just entertain and "educate" should take note of what happens at this conference.
There are some distortions of time - the flash-forward still-photo-sequences that show the future of characters she encounters on different "branches" - that could push this towards non-linearity.
Well, you would have super-powers, but couldn't win unless you didn't use them.
Agree completely. And the fact that LucasArts has put the kabosh on not only Grim Fandango 2, but also the new version of Sam and Max, is a sign that I was a very bad person in my last life and have now reincarnated into hell.
Oh, fucking boy. Another Star Wars game. Yes, Mister Satan, I'll take another 100 years of torment, sirthankyousirmayihaveanother.
The best video-game-made-into-a-movie was never a video game. It was Run Lola Run, and it was built around the structures and logic of a game (multiple lives with learned rules; time limits; lots of running; "puzzles"; even some FPS action.)
There's an essay called "Run Lara Run" by Margit Grieb, a doctoral student out of the University Florida, published in the collection "ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces" that connects Run Lola Run with videogames.
Other essays in the book are worth checking out. Also, people have described Matthew Barney's experimental films "The Cremaster Cycle" as videogame-inspired.
Instead of trying to just stick videogame franchises into schlock pop cinema, it would be good if some brainier filmmakers continued to pluck the truly most compelling aspects of the videogame experience and translated them into film. But they won't - and it's mostly the fault of fan culture, I'm afraid.
A big question I have is, how many of those subs are people who no longer play? Does it include lapsed memberships? Multiple memberships?
Of course, because ideas are transmitted genetically, right?
If I don't have kids, but I write or produce something that affects 10,000 kids, my "genes" that I care most about will do a lot better than they would if I just biologically fathered 2 kids.
Leeching is downloading without sharing. The RIAA et al are going after the people who share - since, technically, they are violating copyright - not the people who download. If you haven't been clear on this very basic aspect of what's going on, then why the hell are you piping in about it?
The analogy is not flawed insofar as some people sell cookbooks, and the examples I gave were celebrity chefs with TV shows. Do they specify that you can only make their recipes if you've watched their show and watched the ads? No, they do not.
Music is a skill. It's performance. The added marginal work of musicians to allow someone to hear a copy of their music is zero - nada - nothing. It should be the burden of the musicians to make sure they are compensated before beginning to play, not to pretend that they are in a widget-making business.
How does my sharing my files equate to selfishness? If anything, it would be leeching that is selfish. And leeching is not being chased down: it's file sharing that is.
I don't think it's a matter of civil disobedience in the Rosa Parks sense of the term, because 1. the stakes aren't important enough for that sort of thing, and 2. people are already voting with their hard drives.
I think you know that you're defending an indefensible model.
Incidentally, I have a library of about 2000 cd's. The files I have of music that I don't have on CD are largely so that I can investigate new music, not to avoid supporting musicians. Technically, my M.O. may be illegal, but I have absolutely no problems with it.
The model is broken. The ability to listen to music isn't a good. It is no longer sensible to be treated as a good. The technology has changed it. Too many otherwise completely well-socialized, law-abiding people just naturally lend out their music now - just like if the book publishing industry tried to make it illegal for me to share my books and magazines.
Music needs to be re-understood and financed as a service, like cooking (did you know that recipes can't be copyrighted? If I get a hold of the recipes of the Iron Chef or James Beard, I'm free to use them, share them, or whatever. Funny, they still seem to be doing OK) or jokes.
Israel is not per se a theocracy, in that religious elites do not actively run the country. This is unlike Iran, in which the clerics themseles have considerable political clout - as noted elsewhere. (The recent election was an undemocratic turn, as the clerics invalidated the candidacy of most of the liberals.) Although the chief rabbi does have a high profile and can determine immigration and marriage policy, for the most part the government of Israel is secular. It has been expressively defined as a country to serve the interests of one ethno-religious group above all others, though.
They are both democracies in that policy is set and day to day affairs are run by elected officials in legislatures.
I was both more extreme and less serious with my voting suggestion: I mean that only post-grad-degree-earning polyglots be allowed to vote. But it's just a beautiful dream. I mean, a joke.
Because once you accept one absurd credo, any absurd credo is fair game. If you can deny evolution, then accepting ideas like the superiority of one race, or the damnation of all infidels, or such, is not a stretch. It's also evidence of some admixture of either extreme stubborness in the face of data, or poor education - both of which are already damning in a democracy.
Like I said, for me, it's already beyond the pale. Up there with talking to imaginary friends and believing the world is flat. At the point that we have a majority of the electorate not on the same page with basic - and I mean basic - principles of science, I pretty much despair of any sane democratic society. I'm not going to try to dissuade anybody of anything - like I said, I view the position as beneath discourse. I just don't count those people as being intellectually grown up yet.
Pretty much don't know where to start on that. I won't, 'cept to say that you pretty much step out of the circle of viable discourse if you look at all the evidence and still discount evolution. Ferchrissakes, we're all made of *meat.*
I don't think you can get too much mileage out of the "not a democracy, it's a republic" thing. Strictly speaking, there are no democracies in that sense (although the California state referendum and recall system gets close). I think that most of us agree that the US system is one type - a constitutional republic - of a super-set of democratic governments.
By current standards, Switzerland is homogenous, but it wasn't then - remember, it still has three official languages, and from the perspective of the 14th century, the cultural differences between french, italian, and german speakers were pretty substantial. I would argue that what makes those kinds of democracies viable is less ethnic homogeneity and more a sense of their being a dominant class - in Sweden, Switzerland, and Japan, all thriving, stable democracies - most everyone is in the same, middlish class (and, over the generations, start inter-marrying into a single ethnicity.) When groups of people start clumping into wildly different blocs of economic interest, things get uglier.
The founders of the US essentially screened participation and limited it to white, male property owners - ensuring an educated, but not exactly fair, electorate. Personally, I would limit participation in federal elections to individuals with graduate degrees who spoke more than one language.
I really don't get this "will of the people" thing.
The people are an ass. Half of the US population doesn't even believe in evolution. Racist, genocidal leaders have been voted into office throughout the world (Milosevicz is just one off the top of my mind, Mussolini was another.) With our collapsing public education system, I see democracy being even less viable as a form of government for anything more than local concerns.
A semi-educated population can't support a democracy. There are 2 democracies in the Middle East: one is an ethnic-religious state and the other a theocracy.
Well, it proves that you can make it through college. Which is exactly one big thing (with a lot of component little things) more than not making it through college.
If someone has a glittering CV and a portfolio of impressive work without any college, that's great - there are a hundred roads to the citidel of success, and you can't argue with good work. But when it comes to taking a chance on someone with relatively little background, I'll take a chance on someone who at least had a statistical possibility of having been exposed to a college education during the 4 years they were on a campus.
You squeezed in number 5 sub-elements that are actually the most important elements: what the going rate is, their perception of how many choices you have vs. how many choices they have, your mutual opportunity costs, etc.
In a saturated market, wages drop. Numbers 1 to 4 might have some impact relative to colleagues in the same place doing analogous jobs, but in absolute terms - and your housing, food, and transportation costs are, relative to the labor market for one position, absolute - it's all about number 5.