In some sense, in a video game, the player is the performer and the author is the composer.
But I don't have any interest in being the "performer" in a video game. I lead a very creative life as it is. I'm a video producer by profession, I have a band and am a composer. I play games along side reading books, watching movies, and listening to other peoples' music.
It's not that I want to be lazy, but I want to be intellectually and emotionally stimulated. I want to take on the roll of "explorer" not "performer". When I go out driving, Biking, or walking in the country side, I don't complain that I can't recreate the countryside by my own will... what attracts me is slowly gaining an understanding of what's there, and figuring out all the relationships between various landmarks. When I meet an interesting person, I want to hear what they think and feel, and let that effect me.
I feel like I'm a fairly controlling person, but I'm always striving to become less so, to open myself up to just experiencing the world around me. I think that, often times, a strong desire to control things comes from the inability to fully open oneself up to the world. It's often a symptom of larger emotional issues. Video games have a wonderful ability to let us explore vast physical and emotional frameworks, and to think about the world differently. It can be a Zen-like experience where we fully open ourselves up and give in to what we are faced with.
Maybe there is room for both kinds of games out there. But I think that modern western society is distinctly lacking in openness and empathy as a whole, so I generally feel like sandboxy games are unhealthy because they promote even more disconnection an unempathetic thinking.
Try Ico or Shadow of the Colossus. Not a single cut scene in Ico, very few in SoC, two of the most powerful games ever made, both Japanese... and there are more examples like them. I think you're knowledge of Japanese games is extremely limited. I found that Portal had more in common with Japanese games than american ones, actually.
Ya know, I'm gonna start hatin' on films because they include music and drama. They aren't "pure", we should go back to silent films. It's just like video games that may include include bits of the *gasp* "cinematic medium" in the mix in order for the creators to express themselves. God forbid we combine media in varying degrees.
Seriously, all of these are different story telling devices. The fact that Portal is able to let you still move your character around while GladOS is talking is stupendously superficial. Portal isn't unique in the slightest in its narrative strategy, it's very similar to many games both American and foreign. What made it wonderful is that the content of the narrative was well written. People seem to point to Portal as some kind of breakthrough in a new style of narrative, when it's really no different from the kinds of things game develoeprs have been doing for decades... it's just better at it. I, personally, don't mind putting down the controller for a few bits of time here and there in order to hear what the creator(s) have to say. I love Metal Gear Solid, even though it has lots of cut scenes, because its narrative is (commonly) fairly strong and I love to hear what is being talked about... sure it gets a little pretentious here and there, but for the most part, it's wonderfully done.
The game does the boring work of filling in the details based on the previous experiences of the players.
Boring work? The details are where the ART is, in anything. That's where the creator gets to express themselves, and where they audience gets to connect with the creator. The details are what makes a work of narrative: human.
I see linear game play is an attempt by creators, fundamentally uncomfortable with the loss of control inherent in the new media, to shoehorn old story telling conventions into a new form.
Actually, I see non-linear game play as a form marketted to an audience of people who are so uncomfortable with human interaction, with such fragile egos that they are unable to cope with the traditional creator/audience relationship.
But the future of video games is most certainly closer to the art of improv than it is to the art of writing.
As a jazz musician and audience member, I think this couldn't be farther from the truth. Improvisation may turn over responsibility from composer to performer (to a varying degree), but there is still a very clear separation between audience and creator... it's just that the primary role of "creator" has shifted from composer to performer.
I think a closer analogy to improv is the roll of GM in a table-top RPG. In that case, a human is able to be present and interact with players. Offline videogames are incapable of having direct human action between players and creator. Therefor, they are really no different from any other narrative art form, except that the audience is able to move through the creator's world in any manner they see fit.
Call me old fashioned, but I want to feel the creator in any work I participate in. I want to know what they think and feel, I use narrative as a way of connecting with people who I think may have some pretty interesting things to say intellectually and emotionally. Games have this power like any other art form. I feel that what you are suggesting severs the very connection that I find the most fascinating about narrative.
I understand you completely, but I'm also appalled at this perspective, because it removes almost all of the human element from the creation of the plot. Great works of art/entertainment stem from the connection and interplay between creator and audience. What you are suggesting is an almost systematic removal of the creator from this paradigm. This is dangerous, IMO. Have humans become so incapable of empathy that we prefer to interact with purely mathmatical formule? I sure hope not. And I don't believe we do. That's why I think that a definitive human creator will always play a large roll in the emotional engagement of a video game, and why I'm not so opposed to linear gameplay.
And what's wrong with a game being linear anyway? All other narrative mediums since the beginning of time have been linear and have achieved breathtaking results. What makes makes games so inferior that they "can't work" with linearity? Some of the greatest games of all time are incredibly linear, and couldn't have been so great had they not been.
True, however be carefull about putting cliches down. Many wonderful characters have been created out of architypes and cliches. Most everyone you will meet in the world falls into one of about 5 different character architypes. Really, what's lacking is SUBTLETY in characters, not originality.
The very best, most memorable characters throughout history, are ones that are built off of traditional architypes, but which the creators then used to mould a very complex persona. Games that strive for completely ORIGINAL character personalities usually lack subtlety and elloquance. Think about it, most of the greatest litterary minds of all times create very simple stories with relatively architypical characters, but then spend all their time on really making those characters come to life in ways that really make us think and feel.
Hamlet, at his core, is simply just another angsty broken young man like a thousand others that have appearned in litterature, film, and games... but through him, Shakespear makes us think and feel about our world and our lives, and about his life, more vividly than hardly any other. Game makers could learn a lot from the great bard.
That's because large segments of the slashdot community act as if Nipponese games don't even exist. I'm always interested to see how long it takes for Nipponese gaming to be brought up anytime american game makers start scratching their heads over narrative pitfalls in modern videogaming.
See, the Nipponese don't have the same problems with narrative that US game makers have. They may have their own pitfalls, but I think there's much more acceptance of a creator expressing themselves through the game. Many westerners are highly intimidated by this. The US could gain a lot by learning from Nipponese game makers. I think Nipponese game makers are a lot freer to impose their own artistic visions than Americans are. American game makers are discouraged to impose their own vissions because there's a feeling that they are then taking over the game experience from the audience. But really, isn't that the job of a narrative creator? To be the architect, emotional guide, God, and to express their ideas?
Okami isn't probably the perfect example either. Don't get me wrong, Okami is one of my very favorite games, and has a pretty strong narrative, especially writing and dialog. However, what elevates Okami, specifically, above almost all other games is its art style (and I think that is very important to the overarching feel of the game) but it's different than narrative. You want great writing? Tales of the Abyss offers some really wonderful inter-character dialog. You want great story telling (from a non-litterary perspective)? Ico and Shadow of the Colossus offer intensely personal experiences with hardly any language.
Not perfect, but they've got a much better direction than the US.
Here's how I would describe it: The US is OBSESSED with unique complex plots with twists and turns everywhere, cliches are completely taboo. However, the storytelling is dry and purposefully attempts to extingish the idea of a creator. It's very post-modern in that respect, games really attempting to put the world into the hands of the player, and not give any emotional opportunity for the artist.
Japan, on the flipside, has no problem with a distinct separation of powers between creator and audience. Games are played from a more traditional artistic/entertainment standpoing: there is a creator who shares his/her thoughts and stories with an audience that genuinely engaged with them. Japenese storytelling may relly very heavily on architypes and cliches, but the details are all very original, with the creator's individuality coming through very strongly.
I truly feel that the USs post-modernist approach to game storytelling (ie: GTA, Mass Effect, Oblivion, ect.) will be shortlived and is doomed to inevitable extiction, for the same reason folks don't sit around the camp fire and listen to John Cage. This is a phase we're going through due to our current socio-political climate and fascination with the gadgetry of a new medium. It's sort of like the German expressionist film period. Eventually people will settle into video games being just another narrative medium like any other, with a distinct separation of powers between creator and audience. Obviously games will always provide a little more interaction than other mediums, but eventually that will be relegated to things like time frame (when and how you chose to interact with the story), and not in the actual creation of a story itself.
Most of the pleasure of a plot comes from not knowing what's going on, learning about the characters involved, and exploring the world that the creators have created for you. Something is very lost when the creator says things, "you create the characeters as you see fit", and "you create the structure as you see fit". and "the plot is yours to make". The enjoyment of LEARNING about the game-world is subtley but inexpicably lost.
This is a wholey american phinominon that is little more than a decade-or-so long passing phase. I think GTA IV or GTA V will see this come to a close. Things like Bioshock will probably be closer to what we'll see in the future, with set paths but subtle choices along the way.
Actually, I would say that hiring Steve Balmer was the greatest thing that happened to Bill, since, next to Balmer, Steve looks like an absolute saint. Because of this, he probably won't go down in history as a complete asshole, Steve will take most of the blame.
Well, excersize peripherals have been about as old as game consoles. The original NES used to have the running matt peripheral (my day care had one back when I was in grade school). Those were about as "dangerous" as it is now, so probably most of the legal stuff has already been worked out.
That's a total copout response. As a enjoyer of both classic and contemporary film, alike, I think it's pretty spineless and uninformed to generalize contemporary films the way you are doing so. That's the sort of knee-jerk reaction that practically everyone has had about every genre of anything in the history of mankind. "X is dead, it's become too high-tech and lost track of its roots." Ya know that people were saying the same thing about Fritz Lang, Orsen Wells, and Alfred Hitchcock?
The bottom line is that at any one time period there are movies that over-use the current technology of the day, that sacrifice good storytelling for cheap tricks, eye and ear candy. Older films are somewhat pre-filtered, as the good ones stand the test of the time, and the bad ones get left behind. With contemporary films, you have to be your own judge... go out and read reviews, make your own call about what films to watch. Yes, it's harder to find a good contemporary movie because they haven't been pre-viewed for your liking.
That said, some time periods haven't been all that great for films... at least certain genres of film. The 80s and early-90s were not very kind to the silver screen. However, the late 90s to present has arguably seen more creativity within cinema than any time since the 1920s. I can't be sure until we look back on it, but compared to the early 90s, it feels like we're currently living in a golden age... but I could be wrong.
Well, there's two sides to the arguement. One is that the voice actors in video games are doing just as much work as voice actors in other mediums: Film, TV, Radio. But the reality is, they're really not as important in video games as those mediums. There was little to no voice acting in games until around 2000, and still, a great number of games (probably still the majority) contains either no voice acting or only partial voice acting. Even most games that have voice acting (GTAIV included) have subtitles at the bottom of the screen, so TECHNICALLY voiceacting isn't neccessary.
I flat-out disagree with his claim that it's the actors who bring the characters to life. Many games have been made that have wonderful character portrayal with no voiceacting. Many Japanese RPGs, for instance, relly on various methods of getting across character emotion that build up incredibly subtle character personality over time. I first played FF6 back in 2002, and found it to be one of the most moving games I'd played to date, for instance... mostly due to the writing, but also due to the timing and character plot arcs. Sure, it was simplistic, but I really felt for those people. Sometimes, voice-acting brings the characters a bit too close to reality, and all the nuances get sort of lost within the jumble between voice and body language.
The single most important thing for the portrayal of humanality in video games is character animation/body language, and facial expression. The PS1 was almost completely dead in that department (even more so than the 16-bit era), the PS2 tried, but often came across either over-the-top or not quite correct. I'm starting to see quite a few titles that are able to portray character personality and emotion with the 360, Wii, PS3, and late PS2 titles... but I think this has to do less with hardware advancement than it does a realization that those things are incredibly important. That will probably be this generation's biggist legacy. GTAIV isn't perfect in this department, but it's getting better.
So in closing, it's a tough decision. It's like any other market, you have to balance the amount of work one has done with the neccessity and effect of their having done it. Some games couldn't possibly work without voice acting... you can't have an MGS without David Hayter, for instance, and in that case, he's probably almost as much a neccessity as a TV voice/film actor. But for GTA, of which voice acting is not as much a neccessity, and characters change from game to game, it's understandable that they make less.
Pliskin was a hell of a lot more dirivitive than Solid, John Carpenter can't write dialog to save his life, and whether or not it was the fault of Kurt Russell or bad directing, but the acting was so over-the-top that it didn't even qualify as "so bad it's good". David Hayter employs a lot more expression in his voice work, and the character of Solid Snake is just a hell of a lot more intricate, and draws on little personal traits. Sure, sometimes the plots get a bit self-indulgent, but overall, I would say that Solid Snake is a very interesting character. He may innitially rely on a dirivative architype, but he's become so much more than that.
Wait, one can be a car fanatic and still drive a 2003 Ford Focus, it's called BEING POOR. In his case, it's not money he lacks, but time. The interest is still there, the will to tinker is still there, but the time to actually do it is another thing.
The only thing that makes me question whether he still qualifies as a nerd is the fact that he has a kid... which means that he has had sex...with a woman... which is the biggest red flag in my mind:P
One thermonuke can practically vaporize a mountain... which is a lot bigger than 40m in diameter. And you're thinking it will take all the nukes in the world to simply CHANGE IT'S DIRECTION? You've got to be kidding me. The hard part is to figure out how to build a nuke with a specifically shaped charge in order to not destroy the object. Power output to steer the thing is hardly a problem. We probably don't even need to be talking Nuke's here. A decent amount of nitrogliscerine detonated in a controlled way should do the trick. Hell, it's worked for over a century with large scale mining operations.
At 40m? No way. Yes, for a convensional rocket engine, it would be a waste of energy, but a couple of brute force explosions should be able to send the beast in a particular direction, and then use some more precise explosions or a rocket engine to steer the rock. 40m of rock pales in comparison to the earth that a single mining operation can detonate in a day.
Remember, explosives aren't really all that expensive, but mechanisms for doing it controlably (like in a rocket engine) are very costly. Nukes are fairly cheap too. One should be more than enough to do it.
Matt Damon just doesn't look the part. He's just too much of a baby face. MacGyver's more "hunky" in the vein of David Hastlehoff. That's why I'd like to see Nathan Fillion, because I think he'd match the overall presentation of the part, but bring some quirkiness to a roll that's always struck me as a little flat.
Is that Rowling's series doesn't try to insert right-wing propoganda at every opportunity. Okay, so maybe that's mostly the Shadow series.
But as a fan of both series (not so much the Shadow Series... but Speaker fot the Dead was amazing), and having read them back to back, I can honestly say that there's as little similarity between them as you can get, outside of the fact that they're both novels in the fantasy/sci-fi genre.
This is sort of like saying, "I want a car that gets killer gas millage, is incredibly reliable and fairly compact... oh, and it must be made by GM"
No dipshit... buy a Toyota or a Honda.
What this couple needs is a console. Everything they've asked for fits more with the philosophies with console gaming. Price will be comparable to even slightly to a console's advantage. The only thing stopping them is some irrational love of PCs, or some irrational hatred of consoles. I'm sorry, but few are going to cater to this type of bullshit. This subsection of gamers is too small to waste money on.
This is sort of like saying, "I want a car that gets killer gas millage, is incredibly reliable and fairly compact... oh, and it must be made by GM"
No dipshit... buy a Toyota or a Honda.
What this couple needs is a console. Everything they've asked for fits more with the philosophies with console gaming. Price will be comparable to even slightly to a console's advantage. The only thing stopping them is some irrational love of PCs, or some irrational hatred of consoles. I'm sorry, but few are going to cater to this type of bullshit. This subsection of gamers is too small to waste money on.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, been reading a little too much Neal Stephenson as of late, I guess it just kinda came out there... I'm sure you can relate.
It's not that I want to be lazy, but I want to be intellectually and emotionally stimulated. I want to take on the roll of "explorer" not "performer". When I go out driving, Biking, or walking in the country side, I don't complain that I can't recreate the countryside by my own will... what attracts me is slowly gaining an understanding of what's there, and figuring out all the relationships between various landmarks. When I meet an interesting person, I want to hear what they think and feel, and let that effect me.
I feel like I'm a fairly controlling person, but I'm always striving to become less so, to open myself up to just experiencing the world around me. I think that, often times, a strong desire to control things comes from the inability to fully open oneself up to the world. It's often a symptom of larger emotional issues. Video games have a wonderful ability to let us explore vast physical and emotional frameworks, and to think about the world differently. It can be a Zen-like experience where we fully open ourselves up and give in to what we are faced with.
Maybe there is room for both kinds of games out there. But I think that modern western society is distinctly lacking in openness and empathy as a whole, so I generally feel like sandboxy games are unhealthy because they promote even more disconnection an unempathetic thinking.
Try Ico or Shadow of the Colossus. Not a single cut scene in Ico, very few in SoC, two of the most powerful games ever made, both Japanese... and there are more examples like them. I think you're knowledge of Japanese games is extremely limited. I found that Portal had more in common with Japanese games than american ones, actually.
Ya know, I'm gonna start hatin' on films because they include music and drama. They aren't "pure", we should go back to silent films. It's just like video games that may include include bits of the *gasp* "cinematic medium" in the mix in order for the creators to express themselves. God forbid we combine media in varying degrees.
Seriously, all of these are different story telling devices. The fact that Portal is able to let you still move your character around while GladOS is talking is stupendously superficial. Portal isn't unique in the slightest in its narrative strategy, it's very similar to many games both American and foreign. What made it wonderful is that the content of the narrative was well written. People seem to point to Portal as some kind of breakthrough in a new style of narrative, when it's really no different from the kinds of things game develoeprs have been doing for decades... it's just better at it. I, personally, don't mind putting down the controller for a few bits of time here and there in order to hear what the creator(s) have to say. I love Metal Gear Solid, even though it has lots of cut scenes, because its narrative is (commonly) fairly strong and I love to hear what is being talked about... sure it gets a little pretentious here and there, but for the most part, it's wonderfully done.
I think a closer analogy to improv is the roll of GM in a table-top RPG. In that case, a human is able to be present and interact with players. Offline videogames are incapable of having direct human action between players and creator. Therefor, they are really no different from any other narrative art form, except that the audience is able to move through the creator's world in any manner they see fit.
Call me old fashioned, but I want to feel the creator in any work I participate in. I want to know what they think and feel, I use narrative as a way of connecting with people who I think may have some pretty interesting things to say intellectually and emotionally. Games have this power like any other art form. I feel that what you are suggesting severs the very connection that I find the most fascinating about narrative.
I understand you completely, but I'm also appalled at this perspective, because it removes almost all of the human element from the creation of the plot. Great works of art/entertainment stem from the connection and interplay between creator and audience. What you are suggesting is an almost systematic removal of the creator from this paradigm. This is dangerous, IMO. Have humans become so incapable of empathy that we prefer to interact with purely mathmatical formule? I sure hope not. And I don't believe we do. That's why I think that a definitive human creator will always play a large roll in the emotional engagement of a video game, and why I'm not so opposed to linear gameplay.
And what's wrong with a game being linear anyway? All other narrative mediums since the beginning of time have been linear and have achieved breathtaking results. What makes makes games so inferior that they "can't work" with linearity? Some of the greatest games of all time are incredibly linear, and couldn't have been so great had they not been.
True, however be carefull about putting cliches down. Many wonderful characters have been created out of architypes and cliches. Most everyone you will meet in the world falls into one of about 5 different character architypes. Really, what's lacking is SUBTLETY in characters, not originality.
The very best, most memorable characters throughout history, are ones that are built off of traditional architypes, but which the creators then used to mould a very complex persona. Games that strive for completely ORIGINAL character personalities usually lack subtlety and elloquance. Think about it, most of the greatest litterary minds of all times create very simple stories with relatively architypical characters, but then spend all their time on really making those characters come to life in ways that really make us think and feel.
Hamlet, at his core, is simply just another angsty broken young man like a thousand others that have appearned in litterature, film, and games... but through him, Shakespear makes us think and feel about our world and our lives, and about his life, more vividly than hardly any other. Game makers could learn a lot from the great bard.
That's because large segments of the slashdot community act as if Nipponese games don't even exist. I'm always interested to see how long it takes for Nipponese gaming to be brought up anytime american game makers start scratching their heads over narrative pitfalls in modern videogaming.
See, the Nipponese don't have the same problems with narrative that US game makers have. They may have their own pitfalls, but I think there's much more acceptance of a creator expressing themselves through the game. Many westerners are highly intimidated by this. The US could gain a lot by learning from Nipponese game makers. I think Nipponese game makers are a lot freer to impose their own artistic visions than Americans are. American game makers are discouraged to impose their own vissions because there's a feeling that they are then taking over the game experience from the audience. But really, isn't that the job of a narrative creator? To be the architect, emotional guide, God, and to express their ideas?
Okami isn't probably the perfect example either. Don't get me wrong, Okami is one of my very favorite games, and has a pretty strong narrative, especially writing and dialog. However, what elevates Okami, specifically, above almost all other games is its art style (and I think that is very important to the overarching feel of the game) but it's different than narrative. You want great writing? Tales of the Abyss offers some really wonderful inter-character dialog. You want great story telling (from a non-litterary perspective)? Ico and Shadow of the Colossus offer intensely personal experiences with hardly any language.
Not perfect, but they've got a much better direction than the US.
Here's how I would describe it: The US is OBSESSED with unique complex plots with twists and turns everywhere, cliches are completely taboo. However, the storytelling is dry and purposefully attempts to extingish the idea of a creator. It's very post-modern in that respect, games really attempting to put the world into the hands of the player, and not give any emotional opportunity for the artist.
Japan, on the flipside, has no problem with a distinct separation of powers between creator and audience. Games are played from a more traditional artistic/entertainment standpoing: there is a creator who shares his/her thoughts and stories with an audience that genuinely engaged with them. Japenese storytelling may relly very heavily on architypes and cliches, but the details are all very original, with the creator's individuality coming through very strongly.
I truly feel that the USs post-modernist approach to game storytelling (ie: GTA, Mass Effect, Oblivion, ect.) will be shortlived and is doomed to inevitable extiction, for the same reason folks don't sit around the camp fire and listen to John Cage. This is a phase we're going through due to our current socio-political climate and fascination with the gadgetry of a new medium. It's sort of like the German expressionist film period. Eventually people will settle into video games being just another narrative medium like any other, with a distinct separation of powers between creator and audience. Obviously games will always provide a little more interaction than other mediums, but eventually that will be relegated to things like time frame (when and how you chose to interact with the story), and not in the actual creation of a story itself.
Most of the pleasure of a plot comes from not knowing what's going on, learning about the characters involved, and exploring the world that the creators have created for you. Something is very lost when the creator says things, "you create the characeters as you see fit", and "you create the structure as you see fit". and "the plot is yours to make". The enjoyment of LEARNING about the game-world is subtley but inexpicably lost.
This is a wholey american phinominon that is little more than a decade-or-so long passing phase. I think GTA IV or GTA V will see this come to a close. Things like Bioshock will probably be closer to what we'll see in the future, with set paths but subtle choices along the way.
Hello my baby,
Hello my darlin'
Hello my rag time gal!
Actually, I would say that hiring Steve Balmer was the greatest thing that happened to Bill, since, next to Balmer, Steve looks like an absolute saint. Because of this, he probably won't go down in history as a complete asshole, Steve will take most of the blame.
I just wish they would release a bluetooth GCN controller... call it the WiiBird
Well, excersize peripherals have been about as old as game consoles. The original NES used to have the running matt peripheral (my day care had one back when I was in grade school). Those were about as "dangerous" as it is now, so probably most of the legal stuff has already been worked out.
That's a total copout response. As a enjoyer of both classic and contemporary film, alike, I think it's pretty spineless and uninformed to generalize contemporary films the way you are doing so. That's the sort of knee-jerk reaction that practically everyone has had about every genre of anything in the history of mankind. "X is dead, it's become too high-tech and lost track of its roots." Ya know that people were saying the same thing about Fritz Lang, Orsen Wells, and Alfred Hitchcock?
The bottom line is that at any one time period there are movies that over-use the current technology of the day, that sacrifice good storytelling for cheap tricks, eye and ear candy. Older films are somewhat pre-filtered, as the good ones stand the test of the time, and the bad ones get left behind. With contemporary films, you have to be your own judge... go out and read reviews, make your own call about what films to watch. Yes, it's harder to find a good contemporary movie because they haven't been pre-viewed for your liking.
That said, some time periods haven't been all that great for films... at least certain genres of film. The 80s and early-90s were not very kind to the silver screen. However, the late 90s to present has arguably seen more creativity within cinema than any time since the 1920s. I can't be sure until we look back on it, but compared to the early 90s, it feels like we're currently living in a golden age... but I could be wrong.
Well, there's two sides to the arguement. One is that the voice actors in video games are doing just as much work as voice actors in other mediums: Film, TV, Radio. But the reality is, they're really not as important in video games as those mediums. There was little to no voice acting in games until around 2000, and still, a great number of games (probably still the majority) contains either no voice acting or only partial voice acting. Even most games that have voice acting (GTAIV included) have subtitles at the bottom of the screen, so TECHNICALLY voiceacting isn't neccessary.
I flat-out disagree with his claim that it's the actors who bring the characters to life. Many games have been made that have wonderful character portrayal with no voiceacting. Many Japanese RPGs, for instance, relly on various methods of getting across character emotion that build up incredibly subtle character personality over time. I first played FF6 back in 2002, and found it to be one of the most moving games I'd played to date, for instance... mostly due to the writing, but also due to the timing and character plot arcs. Sure, it was simplistic, but I really felt for those people. Sometimes, voice-acting brings the characters a bit too close to reality, and all the nuances get sort of lost within the jumble between voice and body language.
The single most important thing for the portrayal of humanality in video games is character animation/body language, and facial expression. The PS1 was almost completely dead in that department (even more so than the 16-bit era), the PS2 tried, but often came across either over-the-top or not quite correct. I'm starting to see quite a few titles that are able to portray character personality and emotion with the 360, Wii, PS3, and late PS2 titles... but I think this has to do less with hardware advancement than it does a realization that those things are incredibly important. That will probably be this generation's biggist legacy. GTAIV isn't perfect in this department, but it's getting better.
So in closing, it's a tough decision. It's like any other market, you have to balance the amount of work one has done with the neccessity and effect of their having done it. Some games couldn't possibly work without voice acting... you can't have an MGS without David Hayter, for instance, and in that case, he's probably almost as much a neccessity as a TV voice/film actor. But for GTA, of which voice acting is not as much a neccessity, and characters change from game to game, it's understandable that they make less.
You sir, are an asshole ;)
Pliskin was a hell of a lot more dirivitive than Solid, John Carpenter can't write dialog to save his life, and whether or not it was the fault of Kurt Russell or bad directing, but the acting was so over-the-top that it didn't even qualify as "so bad it's good". David Hayter employs a lot more expression in his voice work, and the character of Solid Snake is just a hell of a lot more intricate, and draws on little personal traits. Sure, sometimes the plots get a bit self-indulgent, but overall, I would say that Solid Snake is a very interesting character. He may innitially rely on a dirivative architype, but he's become so much more than that.
Wait, one can be a car fanatic and still drive a 2003 Ford Focus, it's called BEING POOR. In his case, it's not money he lacks, but time. The interest is still there, the will to tinker is still there, but the time to actually do it is another thing.
:P
The only thing that makes me question whether he still qualifies as a nerd is the fact that he has a kid... which means that he has had sex...with a woman... which is the biggest red flag in my mind
One thermonuke can practically vaporize a mountain... which is a lot bigger than 40m in diameter. And you're thinking it will take all the nukes in the world to simply CHANGE IT'S DIRECTION? You've got to be kidding me. The hard part is to figure out how to build a nuke with a specifically shaped charge in order to not destroy the object. Power output to steer the thing is hardly a problem. We probably don't even need to be talking Nuke's here. A decent amount of nitrogliscerine detonated in a controlled way should do the trick. Hell, it's worked for over a century with large scale mining operations.
At 40m? No way. Yes, for a convensional rocket engine, it would be a waste of energy, but a couple of brute force explosions should be able to send the beast in a particular direction, and then use some more precise explosions or a rocket engine to steer the rock. 40m of rock pales in comparison to the earth that a single mining operation can detonate in a day.
Remember, explosives aren't really all that expensive, but mechanisms for doing it controlably (like in a rocket engine) are very costly. Nukes are fairly cheap too. One should be more than enough to do it.
Matt Damon just doesn't look the part. He's just too much of a baby face. MacGyver's more "hunky" in the vein of David Hastlehoff. That's why I'd like to see Nathan Fillion, because I think he'd match the overall presentation of the part, but bring some quirkiness to a roll that's always struck me as a little flat.
Hey, why not? He sorta looks the part, and he has some of those similar rye facial expressions. I think he'd be perfect for the part.
Too bad ICQ was a steaming pile of screen-realestate-stealing crap, though. Laggy bitch too.
Is that Rowling's series doesn't try to insert right-wing propoganda at every opportunity. Okay, so maybe that's mostly the Shadow series.
But as a fan of both series (not so much the Shadow Series... but Speaker fot the Dead was amazing), and having read them back to back, I can honestly say that there's as little similarity between them as you can get, outside of the fact that they're both novels in the fantasy/sci-fi genre.
This is sort of like saying, "I want a car that gets killer gas millage, is incredibly reliable and fairly compact... oh, and it must be made by GM"
No dipshit... buy a Toyota or a Honda.
What this couple needs is a console. Everything they've asked for fits more with the philosophies with console gaming. Price will be comparable to even slightly to a console's advantage. The only thing stopping them is some irrational love of PCs, or some irrational hatred of consoles. I'm sorry, but few are going to cater to this type of bullshit. This subsection of gamers is too small to waste money on.
But it IS being served, by consoles!
This is sort of like saying, "I want a car that gets killer gas millage, is incredibly reliable and fairly compact... oh, and it must be made by GM"
No dipshit... buy a Toyota or a Honda.
What this couple needs is a console. Everything they've asked for fits more with the philosophies with console gaming. Price will be comparable to even slightly to a console's advantage. The only thing stopping them is some irrational love of PCs, or some irrational hatred of consoles. I'm sorry, but few are going to cater to this type of bullshit. This subsection of gamers is too small to waste money on.