I actually wouldn't mind seeing games like that. Simply telling people that racism is bad isn't nearly as effective as showing them why it's bad. I'm not talking about making a game where Nazis and slavers are genericly evil and cackle madly as they go about their (no doubt nefarious) business, I'm talking about something where they're just people doing what they believe is right... and ignoring the suffering around them that is obvious to the player of the game.
If we're going to address painful issues, we need to actually address them, not gloss over them, not ignore them, and certainly not refuse to touch them because they're still to "sensitive."
Given that I already have to use Windows for gaming, if they ever copy Linux's stability, security, and command-line-driven power, I certainly won't be complaining.
Also keep in mind that this isn't exactly the first time that Nintendo's been ripped off -- it has a history of leading gaming trends. However, if the Wii does become the leader of a trend rather than just a unique and quirky console, we're going to get more competition, and Nintendo will be forced to come up with even more interesting and fun ideas to give itself an edge.
I'm not a fan of Linux or Nintendo because of the brand name, I'm a fan of the ideas that they embody and their ability to keep on innovating even after one of their ideas is "stolen." I'm a fan because I feel confident that Nintendo will take this opportunity to pour even more money into research and development instead of riding the Wii in its current form and clinging to its patents.
Something tells me that people will be even more scared if I try and tell them that I got all that exercise playing with my Wii... especially since I'm a girl.
I actually think this could be a good thing. I mean, I'm a Nintendo fangirl through and through, but I can't deny that Microsoft and Sony are extremely good at making graphically powerful machines and pulling very talented third-party developers on board. Realistic graphics and pure Nintendo-style fun don't necessarily need to be at odds, and if the next iteration of the Xbox or Playstation can rip off some of Nintendo's good ideas, I think we'll all be better for it.
I think that's one place where the Wii's oddly-shaped controller will actually help -- to the average consumer, even if both have motion sensitivity, they're clearly completely different objects. Even if people are turned off motion sensitivity by the PS3, there's still a fair chance that they'll look at the Wii and think "Hey, that looks like fun!" rather than "Oh, I tried one of those before and it sucked."
As I understand it, polar bears are huntable in the arctic at least in part because they eat people. They're extremely dangerous animals -- apparently, they're known for showing no fear around humans and having no qualms about eating human flesh, so there are parts of Canada where you actually do have to go around armed in case one comes by looking for dinner.
I'm still not a big fan of shooting them, but I can see why it might be allowed, especially near human settlements.
Rockstar North is presently developing a new GTA that will be simultaneously released for the 360 and the PS3, and Rockstar Vancouver remains hard at work on Bully, one of Mr. Thompson's favourite targets.
If one of Rockstar's major "murder simulator" dev studios was shut down, I could see it as a victory for Mr. Thompson, but Rockstar Vienna was known for mere "Xbox conversion."
The official site only had the Playstation 3 logo at the bottom last time I checked, but that doesn't necessarily mean it won't be ported to other consoles. It does, however, strongly suggest that it may well be a PS3 exclusive, no matter what they've promised in the past.
I think I got a guy at EB in trouble for making dirty jokes about the Wii one time... we were amusing ourselves by complaining about the name and giggling at the concept of showing someone our Wii, playing with a friend's Wii, etc. when the guy's boss came over, looked very serious, and asked to talk to him at the back of the store.
So far, though, I've managed to resist the temptation to run around yelling "Wiiiiii!" -- I was able to resist the urge to shout "Viva la Revolution!" at MS/Sony fanboys, so this isn't too different:)
I tried to design something like that for a friend's MUD -- unfortunately, though, it never went anywhere, and I crashed his computer a couple of times trying to get my scripts to work. My plan was to have a little ecosystem going on where the monster population would always be replenished if necessary from some other source. I'm not talking about "spawns", per se, merely a naturally reproducing population that is in some way safe from the players.
The idea comes from basic ecology: if you have a closed system with predators that can feasibly kill the prey faster than they can reproduce, the prey go extinct... unless they have somewhere to hide. If at least some of the prey can go into their dens at the first sign of danger, the population has a chance of stablizing, and similarly, if you always have fresh waves of immigration from some external "safe" place, you can get the same effect. You could even make that safe place visible to players to add realism -- for example, it could be at the top or bottom of a cliff that's too steep to scale, but the players might still see the baby monsters peering down at them and occasionally making their way to the unsafe areas en masse.
Another alternative is just to link the reproductive/spawn rate to the rate at which the players kill the monsters -- if they're killing 'em fast, each couple should spawn many baby monsters, but if the players are neglecting that area, the breeding pairs can be a lot less *ahem* prolific.
My point is that you can use real world ideas in games; you just have to do them right. Simplification is ok (and indeed necessary in many cases), but oversimplification (eg. ignoring current ecological theories on population control when designing a "realistic" spawn system) is often even worse than just having monsters on timers appearing in midair.
In Japan, they released two shades of blue about a week after the white. I suspect that they'll do something similar in North America, especially when you consider how successful that strategy was in Japan.
Personally, I'll be getting a white one -- I have a regular blue DS right now, so I want something a little different:)
Well... yes and no. It is a cheap way of acquiring content, but for a relatively unknown band, this could also be the chance of a lifetime. Free advertising in the sequel to an extremely popular game is not something to take lightly. Whereas a photographer contributing to a calender would just another essentially anonymous source in yet another generic wildlife calender, the band that wins this contest is actually going to stand out.
The site says it's like "We". So yes, you are going to have to walk into a store and ask for something that sounds like a synonym for piss if you want this system.
... can we, as gamers, keep the name "Revolution" in use? I mean, Nintendo can officially change the name of the system, but they can't force people to actually call it that. I'd feel embarrassed asking for a Nintendo "Wii", but I have no problem buying a "Revolution"... so certainly hope that stores continue to recognize the previous name.
Heh, I agree. I'm a single female nerd, but I'm only single by choice. Ever since I left highschool, I haven't had any problems finding dates. There are a lot of guys who find me at least conceptually hot purely because I like long, romantic walks through Ironforge as my level 55 undead rogue.
Unfortunately, it is indeed the whole "hoping" for a woman bit that makes it hard for a lot of nerdy guys to find a real life female nerd -- a lot of us (myself excluded at present) are busy "hoping" for a hot male nerd to come along too, so if nobody makes the first move, nothing can happen.
Hmmm... I actually had a co-worker randomly come up to me today and ask if I had my DS with me so he could play TetrisDS with me. I've played DS games via download play with total strangers on buses too, and nobody even gave me a weird look. I haven't noticed any normal people (with the obvious exception of Jack Thompson and his ilk) labelling me negatively just for playing games, but then again, I currently work as a co-op programmer at a game company, so I'm surrounded by fellow geeks and gamers most of the time:)
How exactly were Roberta's games not girl-friendly? As a proud owner of not one, but two X chromosomes, I devoted many hours of my ill-spent youth to puzzling my way through King's Quest and other such games. There were no "Boys Only" stickers on the box, and I never found any puzzle that required either the use of a penis or any intimate knowledge of the male psyche. Seriously, they were pretty gender neutral as far as I could tell, and there really wasn't anything about them that might discourage a girl from playing. Well, nothing that wouldn't equally discourage a guy anyway:)
A female character doesn't make sense in every game. Many of the army sim games, for example, are based on a reality in which women don't serve on the front lines.
Also, in single-player games, the protagonist is often meant to be one specific person rather than a fully customizable hero. I don't see people begging for the option to play a male version of Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, so why should there be a female option in other, similar games?
I mean, I like being able to choose the gender of my character if it makes sense in the context of the game, but if it doesn't, I don't want a perfectly good story ruined purely for the sake of political correctness.
I'm the only female programmer (technically just a co-op, but I'm on a work term as a programmer) at a small game company, but we're still just a startup, and quite honestly, I generally don't even notice that I'm in the minority unless somebody points it out.
I obviously can't speak for other girls, but I'm in this field because I like it. I get to dress casually (long skirts, tall socks, and comfy shoes!), play with code, and game or read Slashdot during breaks. I won't claim to be a particularly good coder -- hey, I'm still a student here -- but I've never found myself thinking that having a little something extra between my legs would make my job faster or easier.
It does, however, irk me when people (not you specifically, but far too many others) repeatedly bemoan or otherwise find occasion to rant about how few women there are in IT. If more women want to get into the field, they're welcome, but going on and on about how terrible it is for us poor little girls who actually have to *gasp* work with or even *double gasp* talk to male colleagues is just going to scare people of both genders away. Why not just shut up about it? Why not just let people choose what they want to do and leave them to it? A few more pairs of breasts around the office may be a welcome sight to the average guy, but if the girls don't want to be there, maybe they shouldn't be.
I agree. I come from Ottawa, where smoking was banned in bars a few years back. I'm a non-smoker, and I hate the smell of smoke enough that I simply refuse to go to any bar that allows smoking. The stench clings to my hair and skin, requiring excessive scrubbing when I get home, and I simply can't hold my breath long enough to enjoy an evening in such a place. After the ban, however, I started going out to bars and clubs with friends. Pretty much every establishment that I visited or walked past was packed too, so if any of them have been harmed by the smoking ban, it certainly isn't showing.
Er... just because speech isn't protected, that doesn't mean that covering it up or otherwise silencing it isn't censorship. It may be legal, it may even be something that you agree with, but it's still censorship. The word does not take into account the legality or morality of the material being censored, although it could be argued that it does in fact imply that said material is being suppressed for either legal or moral reasons.
Hmm... I'm a 21-year-old woman, and I own a DS. Oddly enough, in my travels to and from work, I don't think I've ever seen anyone UNDER 20 carrying one, and plenty of guys that I've played Mario Kart with on the bus have got to be at least 30. Admittedly, I live in an area dominated by game companies (especially EA, which has a studio near my usual bus route that specializes in PSP/DS ports), so there are a lot of adult professionals around who are interested in games, but even so. For games that are supposedly "childish", there are a hell of a lot of adults playing them. Isn't it possible that some adults don't require excessive blood, gore and sex to enjoy a game? I mean, I know I can legally look at that kind of stuff, but that doesn't mean I want to all the time. It gets boring after a while, and when you can just walk into any adult video store and rent a porno flick, even the most elaborately-textured pixel boobs just aren't enough to hide the embarrassingly bad gameplay that so often goes with them.
Also... the whole games-are-for-kids thing doesn't hold true everywhere in the world. The DS in particular has made significant headway in the Japanese middle-aged woman market (thanks to games like Nintendogs), and really, Japan is where Nintendo makes a lot of its money. I've read about thousands and thousands of people from all walks of life lining up for at least a day to get a blue DS lite... and this was the week after the regular white DS lite launched. Sure, a few thousand people in Japan is still the minority, but that still beats the hell out of the XBox 360 launch.
Personally, I play Nintendo games because I find them fun. If I want something realistic, I play on my PC, but for a handheld I want something that's bright, colourful and entertaining. Realism doesn't work very well on any kind of handheld these days (yes, I know the PSP has better graphics, but they're not that good), so Nintendo's cutesy cartoony style works well. Realistic racing or fighting games don't work very well either -- you're too limited by the controls, and the game has to be severely simplified to fit in such a small amount of space. Nintendo just fills a different niche than the other platforms, and it does a damn good job of it.
My plan is to just get a used/price-reduced PS2 this fall when the PS3 finally comes out. I'm not a big fan of Sony either, but if I can get the game system cheap enough, I don't think I'll feel bad about buying it for just one game:)
Is it to get more men to be homosexual or find and support the boys who already are that way? I know plenty of gay guys who are happy to support confused/bullied young homosexuals, but I have never known or heard of any gay people trying to "recruit" straights. All of the gay guys (and girls, for that matter) that I know seem to hold the belief that if they can't even convince themselves to be straight, the odds of them convincing somebody else to spontaneously become gay are vanishingly slim.
Well, I suppose there are probably some who try, just as there are some straight people who try and "recruit" gays... but unless the victim in question happens to be bisexual, very confused about what love is, or a very good actor, it's unlikely to work very well.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually wouldn't mind seeing games like that. Simply telling people that racism is bad isn't nearly as effective as showing them why it's bad. I'm not talking about making a game where Nazis and slavers are genericly evil and cackle madly as they go about their (no doubt nefarious) business, I'm talking about something where they're just people doing what they believe is right... and ignoring the suffering around them that is obvious to the player of the game.
If we're going to address painful issues, we need to actually address them, not gloss over them, not ignore them, and certainly not refuse to touch them because they're still to "sensitive."
Given that I already have to use Windows for gaming, if they ever copy Linux's stability, security, and command-line-driven power, I certainly won't be complaining.
Also keep in mind that this isn't exactly the first time that Nintendo's been ripped off -- it has a history of leading gaming trends. However, if the Wii does become the leader of a trend rather than just a unique and quirky console, we're going to get more competition, and Nintendo will be forced to come up with even more interesting and fun ideas to give itself an edge.
I'm not a fan of Linux or Nintendo because of the brand name, I'm a fan of the ideas that they embody and their ability to keep on innovating even after one of their ideas is "stolen." I'm a fan because I feel confident that Nintendo will take this opportunity to pour even more money into research and development instead of riding the Wii in its current form and clinging to its patents.
Something tells me that people will be even more scared if I try and tell them that I got all that exercise playing with my Wii... especially since I'm a girl.
I actually think this could be a good thing. I mean, I'm a Nintendo fangirl through and through, but I can't deny that Microsoft and Sony are extremely good at making graphically powerful machines and pulling very talented third-party developers on board. Realistic graphics and pure Nintendo-style fun don't necessarily need to be at odds, and if the next iteration of the Xbox or Playstation can rip off some of Nintendo's good ideas, I think we'll all be better for it.
I think that's one place where the Wii's oddly-shaped controller will actually help -- to the average consumer, even if both have motion sensitivity, they're clearly completely different objects. Even if people are turned off motion sensitivity by the PS3, there's still a fair chance that they'll look at the Wii and think "Hey, that looks like fun!" rather than "Oh, I tried one of those before and it sucked."
As I understand it, polar bears are huntable in the arctic at least in part because they eat people. They're extremely dangerous animals -- apparently, they're known for showing no fear around humans and having no qualms about eating human flesh, so there are parts of Canada where you actually do have to go around armed in case one comes by looking for dinner.
I'm still not a big fan of shooting them, but I can see why it might be allowed, especially near human settlements.
No.
Rockstar North is presently developing a new GTA that will be simultaneously released for the 360 and the PS3, and Rockstar Vancouver remains hard at work on Bully, one of Mr. Thompson's favourite targets.
If one of Rockstar's major "murder simulator" dev studios was shut down, I could see it as a victory for Mr. Thompson, but Rockstar Vienna was known for mere "Xbox conversion."
The official site only had the Playstation 3 logo at the bottom last time I checked, but that doesn't necessarily mean it won't be ported to other consoles. It does, however, strongly suggest that it may well be a PS3 exclusive, no matter what they've promised in the past.
I think I got a guy at EB in trouble for making dirty jokes about the Wii one time... we were amusing ourselves by complaining about the name and giggling at the concept of showing someone our Wii, playing with a friend's Wii, etc. when the guy's boss came over, looked very serious, and asked to talk to him at the back of the store.
:)
So far, though, I've managed to resist the temptation to run around yelling "Wiiiiii!" -- I was able to resist the urge to shout "Viva la Revolution!" at MS/Sony fanboys, so this isn't too different
I tried to design something like that for a friend's MUD -- unfortunately, though, it never went anywhere, and I crashed his computer a couple of times trying to get my scripts to work. My plan was to have a little ecosystem going on where the monster population would always be replenished if necessary from some other source. I'm not talking about "spawns", per se, merely a naturally reproducing population that is in some way safe from the players.
The idea comes from basic ecology: if you have a closed system with predators that can feasibly kill the prey faster than they can reproduce, the prey go extinct... unless they have somewhere to hide. If at least some of the prey can go into their dens at the first sign of danger, the population has a chance of stablizing, and similarly, if you always have fresh waves of immigration from some external "safe" place, you can get the same effect. You could even make that safe place visible to players to add realism -- for example, it could be at the top or bottom of a cliff that's too steep to scale, but the players might still see the baby monsters peering down at them and occasionally making their way to the unsafe areas en masse.
Another alternative is just to link the reproductive/spawn rate to the rate at which the players kill the monsters -- if they're killing 'em fast, each couple should spawn many baby monsters, but if the players are neglecting that area, the breeding pairs can be a lot less *ahem* prolific.
My point is that you can use real world ideas in games; you just have to do them right. Simplification is ok (and indeed necessary in many cases), but oversimplification (eg. ignoring current ecological theories on population control when designing a "realistic" spawn system) is often even worse than just having monsters on timers appearing in midair.
In Japan, they released two shades of blue about a week after the white. I suspect that they'll do something similar in North America, especially when you consider how successful that strategy was in Japan.
:)
Personally, I'll be getting a white one -- I have a regular blue DS right now, so I want something a little different
Well... yes and no. It is a cheap way of acquiring content, but for a relatively unknown band, this could also be the chance of a lifetime. Free advertising in the sequel to an extremely popular game is not something to take lightly. Whereas a photographer contributing to a calender would just another essentially anonymous source in yet another generic wildlife calender, the band that wins this contest is actually going to stand out.
The site says it's like "We". So yes, you are going to have to walk into a store and ask for something that sounds like a synonym for piss if you want this system.
... can we, as gamers, keep the name "Revolution" in use? I mean, Nintendo can officially change the name of the system, but they can't force people to actually call it that. I'd feel embarrassed asking for a Nintendo "Wii", but I have no problem buying a "Revolution"... so certainly hope that stores continue to recognize the previous name.
Heh, I agree. I'm a single female nerd, but I'm only single by choice. Ever since I left highschool, I haven't had any problems finding dates. There are a lot of guys who find me at least conceptually hot purely because I like long, romantic walks through Ironforge as my level 55 undead rogue.
Unfortunately, it is indeed the whole "hoping" for a woman bit that makes it hard for a lot of nerdy guys to find a real life female nerd -- a lot of us (myself excluded at present) are busy "hoping" for a hot male nerd to come along too, so if nobody makes the first move, nothing can happen.
Hmmm... I actually had a co-worker randomly come up to me today and ask if I had my DS with me so he could play TetrisDS with me. I've played DS games via download play with total strangers on buses too, and nobody even gave me a weird look. I haven't noticed any normal people (with the obvious exception of Jack Thompson and his ilk) labelling me negatively just for playing games, but then again, I currently work as a co-op programmer at a game company, so I'm surrounded by fellow geeks and gamers most of the time :)
How exactly were Roberta's games not girl-friendly? As a proud owner of not one, but two X chromosomes, I devoted many hours of my ill-spent youth to puzzling my way through King's Quest and other such games. There were no "Boys Only" stickers on the box, and I never found any puzzle that required either the use of a penis or any intimate knowledge of the male psyche. Seriously, they were pretty gender neutral as far as I could tell, and there really wasn't anything about them that might discourage a girl from playing. Well, nothing that wouldn't equally discourage a guy anyway :)
A female character doesn't make sense in every game. Many of the army sim games, for example, are based on a reality in which women don't serve on the front lines.
Also, in single-player games, the protagonist is often meant to be one specific person rather than a fully customizable hero. I don't see people begging for the option to play a male version of Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, so why should there be a female option in other, similar games?
I mean, I like being able to choose the gender of my character if it makes sense in the context of the game, but if it doesn't, I don't want a perfectly good story ruined purely for the sake of political correctness.
I'm the only female programmer (technically just a co-op, but I'm on a work term as a programmer) at a small game company, but we're still just a startup, and quite honestly, I generally don't even notice that I'm in the minority unless somebody points it out.
I obviously can't speak for other girls, but I'm in this field because I like it. I get to dress casually (long skirts, tall socks, and comfy shoes!), play with code, and game or read Slashdot during breaks. I won't claim to be a particularly good coder -- hey, I'm still a student here -- but I've never found myself thinking that having a little something extra between my legs would make my job faster or easier.
It does, however, irk me when people (not you specifically, but far too many others) repeatedly bemoan or otherwise find occasion to rant about how few women there are in IT. If more women want to get into the field, they're welcome, but going on and on about how terrible it is for us poor little girls who actually have to *gasp* work with or even *double gasp* talk to male colleagues is just going to scare people of both genders away. Why not just shut up about it? Why not just let people choose what they want to do and leave them to it? A few more pairs of breasts around the office may be a welcome sight to the average guy, but if the girls don't want to be there, maybe they shouldn't be.
I agree. I come from Ottawa, where smoking was banned in bars a few years back. I'm a non-smoker, and I hate the smell of smoke enough that I simply refuse to go to any bar that allows smoking. The stench clings to my hair and skin, requiring excessive scrubbing when I get home, and I simply can't hold my breath long enough to enjoy an evening in such a place. After the ban, however, I started going out to bars and clubs with friends. Pretty much every establishment that I visited or walked past was packed too, so if any of them have been harmed by the smoking ban, it certainly isn't showing.
Er... just because speech isn't protected, that doesn't mean that covering it up or otherwise silencing it isn't censorship. It may be legal, it may even be something that you agree with, but it's still censorship. The word does not take into account the legality or morality of the material being censored, although it could be argued that it does in fact imply that said material is being suppressed for either legal or moral reasons.
Hmm... I'm a 21-year-old woman, and I own a DS. Oddly enough, in my travels to and from work, I don't think I've ever seen anyone UNDER 20 carrying one, and plenty of guys that I've played Mario Kart with on the bus have got to be at least 30. Admittedly, I live in an area dominated by game companies (especially EA, which has a studio near my usual bus route that specializes in PSP/DS ports), so there are a lot of adult professionals around who are interested in games, but even so. For games that are supposedly "childish", there are a hell of a lot of adults playing them. Isn't it possible that some adults don't require excessive blood, gore and sex to enjoy a game? I mean, I know I can legally look at that kind of stuff, but that doesn't mean I want to all the time. It gets boring after a while, and when you can just walk into any adult video store and rent a porno flick, even the most elaborately-textured pixel boobs just aren't enough to hide the embarrassingly bad gameplay that so often goes with them.
Also... the whole games-are-for-kids thing doesn't hold true everywhere in the world. The DS in particular has made significant headway in the Japanese middle-aged woman market (thanks to games like Nintendogs), and really, Japan is where Nintendo makes a lot of its money. I've read about thousands and thousands of people from all walks of life lining up for at least a day to get a blue DS lite... and this was the week after the regular white DS lite launched. Sure, a few thousand people in Japan is still the minority, but that still beats the hell out of the XBox 360 launch.
Personally, I play Nintendo games because I find them fun. If I want something realistic, I play on my PC, but for a handheld I want something that's bright, colourful and entertaining. Realism doesn't work very well on any kind of handheld these days (yes, I know the PSP has better graphics, but they're not that good), so Nintendo's cutesy cartoony style works well. Realistic racing or fighting games don't work very well either -- you're too limited by the controls, and the game has to be severely simplified to fit in such a small amount of space. Nintendo just fills a different niche than the other platforms, and it does a damn good job of it.
My plan is to just get a used/price-reduced PS2 this fall when the PS3 finally comes out. I'm not a big fan of Sony either, but if I can get the game system cheap enough, I don't think I'll feel bad about buying it for just one game :)
In the firm grip of one of His Noodly Appendages?
Is it to get more men to be homosexual or find and support the boys who already are that way? I know plenty of gay guys who are happy to support confused/bullied young homosexuals, but I have never known or heard of any gay people trying to "recruit" straights. All of the gay guys (and girls, for that matter) that I know seem to hold the belief that if they can't even convince themselves to be straight, the odds of them convincing somebody else to spontaneously become gay are vanishingly slim.
Well, I suppose there are probably some who try, just as there are some straight people who try and "recruit" gays... but unless the victim in question happens to be bisexual, very confused about what love is, or a very good actor, it's unlikely to work very well.