I respect that people have diffrent taste... but my tastes are for a very diffrent kind of FPS.
It's not that I haven't tried to like Halo for the sake of Co-Op and competitive play with my friends but I always feel like I am playing in a vat of Jello.
After playing the great PC first person shooters growing up I guess I have higher standards.
This is a big part of the reason I don't want a 360... like the Xbox it has very few games that appeal to my taste that are not ports.
On one hand more money for poor schools is a good thing.
On the other video games are a luxury item and many other luxury items are taxed.
I'm fine with this and I don't think it is incramentalism, after all they are taxing all games not just the "bad" ones.
Re:Is this the root of EA's problems?
on
EA Spouse Outed
·
· Score: 1
You know I don't think I would be so quick to call EA's managment stupid they are after all one of the biggest recreational software publishing houses on the planet right now and that does not happen through shear dumb luck.
What they are doing is second guessing themselves and relying on focus groups to do there thinking and that is a huge mistake, "market testing" seems to be yealding fewer and fewer hits lately and I don't think the answer to that is more market testing.
Re:Is this the root of EA's problems?
on
EA Spouse Outed
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I thought about that while I was typing my message here is what I think...
I think there are two types of creativity here the ability to do great things with small resources, or the ablity to freely create. When being icreative in the first way I think most people think "how can I accomplish my goals with what I have" and "what goals can I change to meet my situation". With more free creativity you end up with less compromising over goals but also less progress over time.
What really is needed is a good balance of the two, without a deadline nothing would get done but deadlines that come too soon often make products rushed, compromised in other ways or both.
name me one major hollywood movie with more realistic IT in it.
Hackers.
Thank you for putting a smile on my face... but Hacker was just as bad as many movies with computers in them from that era.
Is this the root of EA's problems?
on
EA Spouse Outed
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Sleep deprived cranky game developers can't possibly be very creative, can they?
Also unrealistic deadlines have a negitave effect on creativity. EA is a victim of it's size... they have a huge pressure to be sucessfull so huge in fact that they lose sight of what really makes games (and all art) great.
Great inventive games do not always sell a lot of copies and that is the real crime here... EA wouldn't make crap if people didn't buy crap and then complain about it (but not return it because the big chains have made quality of product not a reason for a refund... but that is a diffrent rant.)
Demand quality and don't settle for buggy incomplete games and this "problem" of overworked developers might just solve itself... or at least save gameing from a slow painfull death.
Yes but Spiderman the game (any of them pre movie) would have made a bad movie....I wonder how a Spiderman movie based on the Spiderman games that where based on the Spiderman movies would do?
Well this is the one thing that XP can't do in my experince... but I have been where you are before.
What I did was take an inventory find out how many of each model I had, then I found out which models would take the image I had (even if not compleatly) and cleaned those up to create a new image for that model. on system that where too diffrent I upgraded to XP (to maintain as many settings and apps as I could) and used that with some cleaning as a base for an image for those model.
At first my boss wanted me to use sysprep and maintain one image (like he had done with 2000 before I came) but after about a week of experimenting it became clear that creating an universal image would take way to long if it was even possible.
I know that this isn't the cleanest or shortest process but last I heard they are still using my images so I must have done something right.
There is still a diffrence... again I can't speek to Guild Wars but I can comment on City of Heroes as I do play it and CoH does use instancing but it is more like WoW's raid instance implementation where almost every mssion is instanced... with an interactive shared "overworld" and not a colection of meeting places much like a more traditonal MMO.
CoH has been called barely an MMO in the past... I think this is mostly because it doesn't have a loot system... this is also why many prefer it to fatasy MMOs.
Again Guild War is essentaly the next logical step for games like Diablo... that is not a bad thing.
That would be like adding Diablo 1 and 2 to this this chart.
None of these games are MMOs, and if you like Guild Wars beter than MMOs so be it... but you can't make it an MMO by comparing it to World of Warcraft and Everquest.
I am not judgeing GW because I have never played it (I hear it is fun) all I am saying is that it fits in to a very diffrent catigory of online games and tends to attract a diffrent type of gamer.
IANAD (I Am Not A Developer) but I have some experience with testing software for desktop use.
To have a truly fair test you need to replicate the exact (or as close as you can get) environment the end user will deal with, so it does little good to test in WINE or VMWare (less so but still) because you can't say conclusively "X will run on a windows box" because you have never done it, even if you are 99.9% sure it will.
And anyway at $.50 a gig or less and drives up to 500GB in size... what is the big deal with 40 or so gigs of windows siting there minding it's own business?
It's a bit like commercial TV, where advertisers are the customers and viewers are the product.
Hum... never thought of it that way... makes sense... I wonder if this retards or promotes creativity?
I would guess the former, seems like everyone is playing it safe and going for "sure things" right now rather than making an effort to inovate which is how the "sure thing" was thought up in the first place.
Ok good point, how is that diffrent from anything else?
It isn't, that is my point.
Video games are no diffrent than TV, movies, books, magazines or any other kind of media. They all have the same potental for harm as well as good. Just having a parent care about the wellbeing of there child and do something about it (personaly, not try to make others do it for them) is a step in the right direction, and leting your child behave like the dominant member of the relationship at a young age is a big leap in the wrong direction.
Anyone else see it as a good thing that the kids can't get these games without parental permission?
I could care less what people do to rase there own kids but it should be there choice. If a kid can only buy an M-rated game with a parent present then it is no ones responsability but the parent.
Selective parental apathy is the biggest "ill of scociety" in my opinion... if you don't care to control your childs purchaseing you don't get to try to get "violent" video games ban for the sake of your children.
You know... this isn't redundant per say... more "tinfoil hat-y" but I guess you can't mod for that.
On the other hand DRM does have that added "advantage" for some companies (mostly Sony) specificaly but we can all see how it is turning out with the UMD busness and the rootkit lawsuit, in the end Sony will alienate all of there content customers and continue to make desperate changes to there services to mantain profitablity... SWG anyone?
Oh and on a more serious note... when is the Digital Responsability Managment, because if the **AA want rights they need to take the resposabilites that come with them.
Slashdot Mirror
I respect that people have diffrent taste... but my tastes are for a very diffrent kind of FPS.
It's not that I haven't tried to like Halo for the sake of Co-Op and competitive play with my friends but I always feel like I am playing in a vat of Jello.
After playing the great PC first person shooters growing up I guess I have higher standards.
This is a big part of the reason I don't want a 360... like the Xbox it has very few games that appeal to my taste that are not ports.
On one hand more money for poor schools is a good thing.
On the other video games are a luxury item and many other luxury items are taxed.
I'm fine with this and I don't think it is incramentalism, after all they are taxing all games not just the "bad" ones.
You know I don't think I would be so quick to call EA's managment stupid they are after all one of the biggest recreational software publishing houses on the planet right now and that does not happen through shear dumb luck.
What they are doing is second guessing themselves and relying on focus groups to do there thinking and that is a huge mistake, "market testing" seems to be yealding fewer and fewer hits lately and I don't think the answer to that is more market testing.
I thought about that while I was typing my message here is what I think... I think there are two types of creativity here the ability to do great things with small resources, or the ablity to freely create. When being icreative in the first way I think most people think "how can I accomplish my goals with what I have" and "what goals can I change to meet my situation". With more free creativity you end up with less compromising over goals but also less progress over time. What really is needed is a good balance of the two, without a deadline nothing would get done but deadlines that come too soon often make products rushed, compromised in other ways or both.
Yeah... nether is perfect but one produces tangeble results for a company at much less cost... I wonde why the corperations favor it?
Thank you for putting a smile on my face... but Hacker was just as bad as many movies with computers in them from that era.
Sleep deprived cranky game developers can't possibly be very creative, can they?
Also unrealistic deadlines have a negitave effect on creativity.
EA is a victim of it's size... they have a huge pressure to be sucessfull so huge in fact that they lose sight of what really makes games (and all art) great.
Great inventive games do not always sell a lot of copies and that is the real crime here... EA wouldn't make crap if people didn't buy crap and then complain about it (but not return it because the big chains have made quality of product not a reason for a refund... but that is a diffrent rant.)
Demand quality and don't settle for buggy incomplete games and this "problem" of overworked developers might just solve itself... or at least save gameing from a slow painfull death.
Yes but Spiderman the game (any of them pre movie) would have made a bad movie. ...I wonder how a Spiderman movie based on the Spiderman games that where based on the Spiderman movies would do?
A comment modded funny that actualy made me laugh... Wow this moderation thing may actualy work.
Well this is the one thing that XP can't do in my experince... but I have been where you are before.
What I did was take an inventory find out how many of each model I had, then I found out which models would take the image I had (even if not compleatly) and cleaned those up to create a new image for that model. on system that where too diffrent I upgraded to XP (to maintain as many settings and apps as I could) and used that with some cleaning as a base for an image for those model.
At first my boss wanted me to use sysprep and maintain one image (like he had done with 2000 before I came) but after about a week of experimenting it became clear that creating an universal image would take way to long if it was even possible.
I know that this isn't the cleanest or shortest process but last I heard they are still using my images so I must have done something right.
Hope that helps.
There is still a diffrence... again I can't speek to Guild Wars but I can comment on City of Heroes as I do play it and CoH does use instancing but it is more like WoW's raid instance implementation where almost every mssion is instanced... with an interactive shared "overworld" and not a colection of meeting places much like a more traditonal MMO. CoH has been called barely an MMO in the past... I think this is mostly because it doesn't have a loot system... this is also why many prefer it to fatasy MMOs. Again Guild War is essentaly the next logical step for games like Diablo... that is not a bad thing.
That would be like adding Diablo 1 and 2 to this this chart.
None of these games are MMOs, and if you like Guild Wars beter than MMOs so be it... but you can't make it an MMO by comparing it to World of Warcraft and Everquest.
I am not judgeing GW because I have never played it (I hear it is fun) all I am saying is that it fits in to a very diffrent catigory of online games and tends to attract a diffrent type of gamer.
What are they smokeing...
Oh well... USA hasn't exactly had there finger on the pulse of anything but daytime reruns for years.
A fool and his money are soon parted I guess.
It should be "Improve hearing with glasses"...
I normaly don't do this but this one really bugs me
I'm sorry but MS calls what the do interoperability? It's more like "make the other guy make it work and then break it occasonaly" honestly.
IANAD (I Am Not A Developer) but I have some experience with testing software for desktop use.
To have a truly fair test you need to replicate the exact (or as close as you can get) environment the end user will deal with, so it does little good to test in WINE or VMWare (less so but still) because you can't say conclusively "X will run on a windows box" because you have never done it, even if you are 99.9% sure it will.
And anyway at $.50 a gig or less and drives up to 500GB in size... what is the big deal with 40 or so gigs of windows siting there minding it's own business?
That actualy mad me chuckle... good one.
Hum... never thought of it that way... makes sense... I wonder if this retards or promotes creativity?
I would guess the former, seems like everyone is playing it safe and going for "sure things" right now rather than making an effort to inovate which is how the "sure thing" was thought up in the first place.
Ok good point, how is that diffrent from anything else?
It isn't, that is my point.
Video games are no diffrent than TV, movies, books, magazines or any other kind of media. They all have the same potental for harm as well as good. Just having a parent care about the wellbeing of there child and do something about it (personaly, not try to make others do it for them) is a step in the right direction, and leting your child behave like the dominant member of the relationship at a young age is a big leap in the wrong direction.
Anyone else see it as a good thing that the kids can't get these games without parental permission?
I could care less what people do to rase there own kids but it should be there choice. If a kid can only buy an M-rated game with a parent present then it is no ones responsability but the parent.
Selective parental apathy is the biggest "ill of scociety" in my opinion... if you don't care to control your childs purchaseing you don't get to try to get "violent" video games ban for the sake of your children.
You know... this isn't redundant per say... more "tinfoil hat-y" but I guess you can't mod for that. On the other hand DRM does have that added "advantage" for some companies (mostly Sony) specificaly but we can all see how it is turning out with the UMD busness and the rootkit lawsuit, in the end Sony will alienate all of there content customers and continue to make desperate changes to there services to mantain profitablity... SWG anyone?
I dont think most /.ers can handle that...
Oh and on a more serious note... when is the Digital Responsability Managment, because if the **AA want rights they need to take the resposabilites that come with them.
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=189&application=firefox
here you go... it's not a google product but it does add this functionality to Firefox.
Hum... Canned UAV hunts? Naw... that would never work.
Biopiracy? doesn't that imply theft? how are they getting this genetic material? O.o