"Hopefully I have just had bad luck in my experiences with Americans, and what you describe is the norm."
You have, in a sense. You've met the people around you.
I'm sure everyone here is aware that any sufficiently large group of people loses homogeneity. When you applying it to the entirety of the American population you're going to end up touching on pretty much the entire spectrum of possible characters. Even united with what may seem like a common idealogy, Christianity ranges from frothing-at-the-mouth hatemongers, to socially liberal love-for-everything folks. The group is still a composition of individuals, each with their own schema for value judgement. In any country you have criminals. They are not representative of the larger whole. You also have exceptionally generous, quality people, who are also by definition not representative of the larger whole.
It's the reason stereotypes are frowned upon. While some may be correct in identifying a larger trend, individual variation makes stereotypes inaccurate until it's functionally useless.
You have no idea what happened. Nor do you understand that punishment after punishment has been meted is not justice. It is vindictiveness that corrupts the punisher. An eye for an eye, not both eyes and your friend's eye for an eye. Punishment must fit the crime, and must not exceed it, or a new injustice has been created.
John Carmack actually figured out how to DO it, and even implemented it in Doom 3.
John hasn't got a chance to win so instead he agrees to include Creative and EAX in Doom 3 even though he intended to just leave it out since the engine itself can already do audio environment. He'd already announced as much that the soundcard is unnecessary. He prefers open formats, hence Doom 3 supporting OpenGL, and not needing EAX. Anyway, he had to agree to put EAX in instead of bucking the trend.
So Spore's tech would still be safe since they don't need to actually produce anything, just come up with the idea first.
I used to use my debit card, but then it ran dry and I bought gum, a burger, paper, and some other small item for around 5 bucks. The overdraft charge? Around 50 bucks EACH for about 200 dollars total. Each purchase is hit with a big fee regardless of the size of the purchase.
Why the charge? Why not just invalidate the purchase and let me know that the card is dry and I should be paying some other way? Because they don't get the fee that way. That enormous charge is for providing credit on the debit card automatically(i.e unasked for). Paying for what you can't afford and incurring huge fees as a result? That's the reason you're supposed to fear credit cards, it's just as true on your debit card.
Pretty bullshit stuff. I only pay with credit now, and just pay in full at the end of the month.
Denying them the ability to release for the console is silly, though obviously within their rights. I wish they would reconsider, because that's a kick in the balls after so much money, time, and effort has been sunk by developers to create this.
I expect the developer to leverage the power of their other games to convince these companies to relax this AO-ban on their consoles in order for them to at least recoup some of the costs of making Manhunt II.
That said, Manhunt was a terrible game. I'm a gamer, not a violencer. I'm entertained by the gameplay not the violence. It was a severely dumbed down Splintercell, but instead of grabbing and incapacitating guards, it tried to sell itself by incapacitating them with snuff-film kills. Whoop-de-freaking-doo, it adds up to the same thing. The violence doesn't excite me, nor does it repulse me. It -nothings- me, and since that was the main draw of this game, it is filled with mainly nothing. I'm still open to the idea that Manhunt II could improve on this formula, but its predecessor leaves me with little confidence. I'd be more upset about this game not getting released if the first wasn't so boring.
It happens, but you wouldn't know it from the internet or media. The survival of information on the internet is dependent in part on "Who cares?". An objective and well-reasoned response is something you can read and and forget. A foaming madman spouting off insanity and filth baits responses. Who is most likely to respond? The insightful and reasonable person? Or the foaming madman's counterpart?
A very simple example of this is a forum. Flame wars bump topics endlessly. A reasoned post considering both sides of the issue fairly leaves little left to be said. Reasonable people don't feel the need to post more on a subject if both sides have been fairly treated. The thread won't be bumped and it will fall by the wayside while flamewars blaze on. The same occurs in other mediums.
It's the highly inflammatory material that makes waves and gets seen. There are plenty who don't feel any urges to express themselves in this manner, and as such are quickly drowned out in the noise.
Most media don't transfer well from Medium X to Medium Y because they weren't created towards Medium Y. Books don't match the story you saw in your head when they go to the big screen. Less time to cover everything. Movies have a great deal of detail. A book can also convey the same amount of detail but not in the same time span without becoming dull, a picture's worth a thousand words. Both can accomplish similar goals but they need to bend the advantages of the medium towards that end.
Games have a very different set of advantages and face the same problems in adaptation.
I came upon the movie already in favor of Universal healthcare, and it still makes me feel slimy for having laid my eyes upon it. Still, I can't resist the cultural draw of polarizing media like this, sort of like watching Star Wars Episodes 1-3 even after waves of people tell you how terrible the movies are.
China will have search capability. And unless China's government allows uncensored internet access, China won't have uncensored internet access.
I didn't refer to either company because they're only marginally relevant. If they aren't there, someone else will fill the gap, search engines are plentiful. One may be more convenient than others, but most of them are "good enough" at getting results a user can use. Let's say all the existing search engines choose to boycott China.
China has money, they can make their own national search engine and give everybody else, including their own citizens, the bird. It doesn't have to be better than the other engines, it doesn't even have to be good, but if they find it necessary to have one, acquiring one is trivial.
I'm not going to say that Yahoo and Google are evil if they go, or good if they don't. What I'm saying is that whether or not they do won't change the result. These companies are not significant enough to influence a government on its own. There/are/ companies that are significant enough to influence a government. Slashdot is well aware of this. But for software like this that's so easily substituted, they have no leverage.
I've seen asshole people and nice people. I've seen asshole cops and nice cops. They're people with good sides and bad sides, just like everybody else.
A cop helped me push my broken-down car off the road into a diner parking lot nearby. In a separate occasion, after my car was hit by an SUV, the cop gave me a lift. A cop escorted my pregnant mother to the hospital. Get a grip, I have no doubt that there are police who abuse their power, but to say that they're somehow inherently evil is simply ridiculous.
I believe there's two definitions, one based on the interpretation of the words composing "hardcore gamer" and one based on the popular usage.
CelticWhisper's matches up with the words much better, but the more popular usage is competitive, violent, big-name titles. Generally FPS, though sometimes RTS. The primary facet is the competition part. There could be a better name for this sort of concept, but "Hardcore Gamer" is what has been assigned to it.
Simply based on the term itself I would think of CelticWhisper's explanation as well. I would go further to say that a Hardcore gamer would be more likely to play both the violent competitive titles and the family oriented G-rated titles. Because he's into gaming itself, the hardcore gamer would be willing to accept different clothes on the games if it means he can access wider varieties of quality gameplay. The hardcore gamer would want to enjoy a game rather than find reasons not to enjoy it, and would even accept certain levels of turn-offs to get at the gameplay meat. They wouldn't give a goddamn which console "wins" because all they want to do is play, and would want them all so they can do just that.
There was a lot of people excited about the Wii on the internet. And as such, it was hard to tell if all the excitement is from just a dense distribution in that particular niche of the web, or real excitement in the market. I also noticed that there wasn't very much advertising for either the Wii or the PS3. None at all until just a week or two before the consoles launched in stores.
I do however find myself running into Xbox360 ads everywhere I turn, on TV, in movie theatres, posters, etc. etc.
Wii commercials have grown to be commonplace now, featuring those two polite little japanese guys hauling fun around the country.
PS3 commercials feature a PS3 console. Of the 3-4 that I've seen on TV, 3 of them just feature a box admist some freakish surreal chaos without much explanation for what it has to do with the PS3(Presumably to create enough curiousity to push consumers to inquire for more). A baby doll crying tears of blood with images of armageddon reflecting in its eyes...pan out to...a PS3?
Only one actually attempted to describe why the PS3 is good, and actually using words. I've also seen the European advertising campaign, "This is living". I really have no freaking clue what the hell any of the clips have to do with the PS3. However, I will say that the mercenary "Kovac" gave a/superb/ performance in his clip, though it seems he was really just advertising for a bar of chocolate.
The blonde advertised that copying others is lame and originality should always be pursued(which isn't something you should advertise about motion-sensing and six-axis...). The blonde also had breasts and was sitting on a toilet.
Black guy tapdanced on a desk and sweated.
Soccer/football guy wearing only a jockstrap fapped to a soccer/football game (I am not kidding or exaggerating, go watch for yourself).
I think the PS3 would have done better if Sony had tried to make some of their own hype with a competent advertising campaign. Theirs has been creatively bad, it must have taken a great deal of effort to make something so terrible, I doubt it could have been achieved simply by accident.
I see a lot of talk about whether or not it's ok to kill christians/muslims?
This ISN'T a game about killing christians OR killing muslims.
This is a game about being a badass assassin who climbs walls and wtfpwnz guys that never see it coming. Then flips out and kills all the guards with slick swordplay. The context is interchangable and unimportant, and hints have already been leaked that the context is exactly that. The game is rumored to be set in the future and this is all just VR training, with sequels set in other locales. The game is about being a "ninja" but in the middle-east(and not japanese:P).
I don't think anybody wants to play this for any other reason? I have yet to see a response to a preview of this game along the lines of, "Awesome! I've been looking for a game where I can kill christian/muslims for awhile now! Sweet!"
This all might be more relevant if you were walking up to your targets with bombvests, but that's not the case here. Assasination isn't even a new type of game.
I believe R6:Vegas also runs on PC, but that is still a rough comparison since R6:Vegas is much less ambitious in terms of graphics and is also a crappy PC port
I think American History X did a good job of presenting controversial material in a balanced manner.
American History X overall message was put forward in an Abraham Lincoln quote, 'We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.'
But the movie doesn't try to bullshit you that there aren't reasons for hating minorities and immigrants. It's trying to say that you shouldn't let those reasons outweigh the reasons against hating minorities and immigrants. The Neo-Nazi main character is portrayed in a positive light and as being justified in many portions of the movie. His arguments are not contradicted within the film, it's just that in the latter half of the movie they present opposing arguments.
They don't argue that black criminals don't kill whites often. Instead they showed an innocent black guy saving the nazi, and also a black guy killing his little brother.
So even if the game settles on one side of an issue, it can at least portray pros and cons from both sides fairly so that it can minimize the negative impact on audiences that disagree.
"In nuclear war, things are not as they seem to be. Those defensive missiles could be considered offensive weapons.
Suppose you deploy a missile defense system that can be used against Russia/Iran/Whoever. Although it seems a defensive action, it can be considered offensive, because after the system is installed, the USA can attack that country without fear of being nuked in response."
The appropriate retaliation is to improve their own defensive capability. A Cold War in defensive capabilities results in nobody getting missiles through to anyone else, peace by ineffectiveness. A Cold War in offensive capability results in either peace by intimidation, or peace by MAD.
Slashdot Mirror
"Hopefully I have just had bad luck in my experiences with Americans, and what you describe is the norm."
You have, in a sense. You've met the people around you.
I'm sure everyone here is aware that any sufficiently large group of people loses homogeneity. When you applying it to the entirety of the American population you're going to end up touching on pretty much the entire spectrum of possible characters. Even united with what may seem like a common idealogy, Christianity ranges from frothing-at-the-mouth hatemongers, to socially liberal love-for-everything folks. The group is still a composition of individuals, each with their own schema for value judgement. In any country you have criminals. They are not representative of the larger whole. You also have exceptionally generous, quality people, who are also by definition not representative of the larger whole.
It's the reason stereotypes are frowned upon. While some may be correct in identifying a larger trend, individual variation makes stereotypes inaccurate until it's functionally useless.
You have no idea what happened. Nor do you understand that punishment after punishment has been meted is not justice. It is vindictiveness that corrupts the punisher. An eye for an eye, not both eyes and your friend's eye for an eye. Punishment must fit the crime, and must not exceed it, or a new injustice has been created.
It's pretty open and shut.
Creative patented a method of shadow rendering.
John Carmack actually figured out how to DO it, and even implemented it in Doom 3.
John hasn't got a chance to win so instead he agrees to include Creative and EAX in Doom 3 even though he intended to just leave it out since the engine itself can already do audio environment. He'd already announced as much that the soundcard is unnecessary. He prefers open formats, hence Doom 3 supporting OpenGL, and not needing EAX. Anyway, he had to agree to put EAX in instead of bucking the trend.
So Spore's tech would still be safe since they don't need to actually produce anything, just come up with the idea first.
I used to use my debit card, but then it ran dry and I bought gum, a burger, paper, and some other small item for around 5 bucks. The overdraft charge? Around 50 bucks EACH for about 200 dollars total. Each purchase is hit with a big fee regardless of the size of the purchase.
Why the charge? Why not just invalidate the purchase and let me know that the card is dry and I should be paying some other way? Because they don't get the fee that way. That enormous charge is for providing credit on the debit card automatically(i.e unasked for). Paying for what you can't afford and incurring huge fees as a result? That's the reason you're supposed to fear credit cards, it's just as true on your debit card.
Pretty bullshit stuff. I only pay with credit now, and just pay in full at the end of the month.
Mcdonalds does bad shit to 3rd world countries. Let's go to the local drive-through and harass the teller(You know spanish right?)
It's protest at the wrong people with the wrong means.
Who pays for the IRS?
The AO rating is appropriate.
Denying them the ability to release for the console is silly, though obviously within their rights. I wish they would reconsider, because that's a kick in the balls after so much money, time, and effort has been sunk by developers to create this.
I expect the developer to leverage the power of their other games to convince these companies to relax this AO-ban on their consoles in order for them to at least recoup some of the costs of making Manhunt II.
That said, Manhunt was a terrible game. I'm a gamer, not a violencer. I'm entertained by the gameplay not the violence. It was a severely dumbed down Splintercell, but instead of grabbing and incapacitating guards, it tried to sell itself by incapacitating them with snuff-film kills. Whoop-de-freaking-doo, it adds up to the same thing. The violence doesn't excite me, nor does it repulse me. It -nothings- me, and since that was the main draw of this game, it is filled with mainly nothing. I'm still open to the idea that Manhunt II could improve on this formula, but its predecessor leaves me with little confidence. I'd be more upset about this game not getting released if the first wasn't so boring.
It happens, but you wouldn't know it from the internet or media. The survival of information on the internet is dependent in part on "Who cares?". An objective and well-reasoned response is something you can read and and forget. A foaming madman spouting off insanity and filth baits responses. Who is most likely to respond? The insightful and reasonable person? Or the foaming madman's counterpart?
A very simple example of this is a forum. Flame wars bump topics endlessly. A reasoned post considering both sides of the issue fairly leaves little left to be said. Reasonable people don't feel the need to post more on a subject if both sides have been fairly treated. The thread won't be bumped and it will fall by the wayside while flamewars blaze on. The same occurs in other mediums.
It's the highly inflammatory material that makes waves and gets seen. There are plenty who don't feel any urges to express themselves in this manner, and as such are quickly drowned out in the noise.
Most media don't transfer well from Medium X to Medium Y because they weren't created towards Medium Y. Books don't match the story you saw in your head when they go to the big screen. Less time to cover everything. Movies have a great deal of detail. A book can also convey the same amount of detail but not in the same time span without becoming dull, a picture's worth a thousand words. Both can accomplish similar goals but they need to bend the advantages of the medium towards that end.
Games have a very different set of advantages and face the same problems in adaptation.
I came upon the movie already in favor of Universal healthcare, and it still makes me feel slimy for having laid my eyes upon it. Still, I can't resist the cultural draw of polarizing media like this, sort of like watching Star Wars Episodes 1-3 even after waves of people tell you how terrible the movies are.
"Women will date, dream of, and marry men. They do none of those to boys."
Yeah, those are the ones they get party with and #%&$ instead.
Translation: "I, for one, welcome the extinction of the human race and the introduction of our _________ overlords."
Why not go first?
The rest of us will go about our business as usual and follow along later if we change our minds.
They could outsource the data to Google China then send it back to post for Europe.
China will have search capability. And unless China's government allows uncensored internet access, China won't have uncensored internet access.
/are/ companies that are significant enough to influence a government. Slashdot is well aware of this. But for software like this that's so easily substituted, they have no leverage.
I didn't refer to either company because they're only marginally relevant. If they aren't there, someone else will fill the gap, search engines are plentiful. One may be more convenient than others, but most of them are "good enough" at getting results a user can use. Let's say all the existing search engines choose to boycott China.
China has money, they can make their own national search engine and give everybody else, including their own citizens, the bird. It doesn't have to be better than the other engines, it doesn't even have to be good, but if they find it necessary to have one, acquiring one is trivial.
I'm not going to say that Yahoo and Google are evil if they go, or good if they don't. What I'm saying is that whether or not they do won't change the result. These companies are not significant enough to influence a government on its own. There
...How many police do you know?
I've seen asshole people and nice people. I've seen asshole cops and nice cops. They're people with good sides and bad sides, just like everybody else.
A cop helped me push my broken-down car off the road into a diner parking lot nearby. In a separate occasion, after my car was hit by an SUV, the cop gave me a lift. A cop escorted my pregnant mother to the hospital. Get a grip, I have no doubt that there are police who abuse their power, but to say that they're somehow inherently evil is simply ridiculous.
I had to smile reading that "50 weirdest moments in gaming" article.
Cloud having to crossdress to get into a club and being picked over the girls as the playmate for the night...
Just creepy beyond words.
I believe there's two definitions, one based on the interpretation of the words composing "hardcore gamer" and one based on the popular usage.
CelticWhisper's matches up with the words much better, but the more popular usage is competitive, violent, big-name titles. Generally FPS, though sometimes RTS. The primary facet is the competition part. There could be a better name for this sort of concept, but "Hardcore Gamer" is what has been assigned to it.
Simply based on the term itself I would think of CelticWhisper's explanation as well. I would go further to say that a Hardcore gamer would be more likely to play both the violent competitive titles and the family oriented G-rated titles. Because he's into gaming itself, the hardcore gamer would be willing to accept different clothes on the games if it means he can access wider varieties of quality gameplay. The hardcore gamer would want to enjoy a game rather than find reasons not to enjoy it, and would even accept certain levels of turn-offs to get at the gameplay meat. They wouldn't give a goddamn which console "wins" because all they want to do is play, and would want them all so they can do just that.
Also, no sitting nude on a bed except for a jockstrap while masturbating to a soccer/football game. (See Sony's "This is Living" ad)
There was a lot of people excited about the Wii on the internet. And as such, it was hard to tell if all the excitement is from just a dense distribution in that particular niche of the web, or real excitement in the market. I also noticed that there wasn't very much advertising for either the Wii or the PS3. None at all until just a week or two before the consoles launched in stores.
/superb/ performance in his clip, though it seems he was really just advertising for a bar of chocolate.
I do however find myself running into Xbox360 ads everywhere I turn, on TV, in movie theatres, posters, etc. etc.
Wii commercials have grown to be commonplace now, featuring those two polite little japanese guys hauling fun around the country.
PS3 commercials feature a PS3 console. Of the 3-4 that I've seen on TV, 3 of them just feature a box admist some freakish surreal chaos without much explanation for what it has to do with the PS3(Presumably to create enough curiousity to push consumers to inquire for more). A baby doll crying tears of blood with images of armageddon reflecting in its eyes...pan out to...a PS3?
Only one actually attempted to describe why the PS3 is good, and actually using words. I've also seen the European advertising campaign, "This is living". I really have no freaking clue what the hell any of the clips have to do with the PS3. However, I will say that the mercenary "Kovac" gave a
The blonde advertised that copying others is lame and originality should always be pursued(which isn't something you should advertise about motion-sensing and six-axis...). The blonde also had breasts and was sitting on a toilet.
Black guy tapdanced on a desk and sweated.
Soccer/football guy wearing only a jockstrap fapped to a soccer/football game (I am not kidding or exaggerating, go watch for yourself).
I think the PS3 would have done better if Sony had tried to make some of their own hype with a competent advertising campaign. Theirs has been creatively bad, it must have taken a great deal of effort to make something so terrible, I doubt it could have been achieved simply by accident.
I see a lot of talk about whether or not it's ok to kill christians/muslims?
This ISN'T a game about killing christians OR killing muslims.
This is a game about being a badass assassin who climbs walls and wtfpwnz guys that never see it coming. Then flips out and kills all the guards with slick swordplay. The context is interchangable and unimportant, and hints have already been leaked that the context is exactly that. The game is rumored to be set in the future and this is all just VR training, with sequels set in other locales. The game is about being a "ninja" but in the middle-east(and not japanese:P).
I don't think anybody wants to play this for any other reason? I have yet to see a response to a preview of this game along the lines of, "Awesome! I've been looking for a game where I can kill christian/muslims for awhile now! Sweet!"
This all might be more relevant if you were walking up to your targets with bombvests, but that's not the case here. Assasination isn't even a new type of game.
But...the kittens!
I believe R6:Vegas also runs on PC, but that is still a rough comparison since R6:Vegas is much less ambitious in terms of graphics and is also a crappy PC port
I think American History X did a good job of presenting controversial material in a balanced manner.
American History X overall message was put forward in an Abraham Lincoln quote, 'We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.'
But the movie doesn't try to bullshit you that there aren't reasons for hating minorities and immigrants. It's trying to say that you shouldn't let those reasons outweigh the reasons against hating minorities and immigrants. The Neo-Nazi main character is portrayed in a positive light and as being justified in many portions of the movie. His arguments are not contradicted within the film, it's just that in the latter half of the movie they present opposing arguments.
They don't argue that black criminals don't kill whites often. Instead they showed an innocent black guy saving the nazi, and also a black guy killing his little brother.
So even if the game settles on one side of an issue, it can at least portray pros and cons from both sides fairly so that it can minimize the negative impact on audiences that disagree.
Sado-Masochism Bros.
The sequel you didn't play, and don't want support for.
"In nuclear war, things are not as they seem to be. Those defensive missiles could be considered offensive weapons.
Suppose you deploy a missile defense system that can be used against Russia/Iran/Whoever. Although it seems a defensive action, it can be considered offensive, because after the system is installed, the USA can attack that country without fear of being nuked in response."
The appropriate retaliation is to improve their own defensive capability. A Cold War in defensive capabilities results in nobody getting missiles through to anyone else, peace by ineffectiveness. A Cold War in offensive capability results in either peace by intimidation, or peace by MAD.