interesting point. Watch as movie theater revenues plummit and game sales sky rocket. Average movie length: 2 hours. Average game length: 30-50 hours. Which is the more ecconomical entertainment medium? Games, by a long shot. Less trips to Blockbuster or the Cinemaplex means less money wasted on gas.
Could be... or it could mean the 360 is just hacking into Sony's former mindshare. I think it's probably a combination of both, actually. The continued success of the Wii is probably the #1 indication that HDTV adoption (or should I say, SDTV abandonment) isn't going as planned.
However, GTA4 won't do it alone. I'm not sure why the article hinges on GTA4s success. GTA is a huge franchise, I'm not going to argue that, but no GTA game has outsold the Halo or Smash Bros franchises (which produced the #1 and #2 best selling games of last generation). Halo 3 saw release last year to enormous success, and so far Smash has been exceeding sales expectations this year. Combine Smash Brawl with GTA4, Mario Kart Wii, MGS4, and the remote possibility of a 2008 Final Fantasy US release (unlikely, but possible), and you have a good solid framework for 2008 sales. 2007 saw many huge things though, so I'm not sure it's as cut and dry as the article suggests, but there's a good possibility. And I'm not even going to dig into the huge Nintendo DS sales that simply defy all conventional explanation.
While some of your points are accurate, I have to put in my 2 cents. First of all, I absolutely dispise notebooks with more than one button. 2-button mice... I'm sold at hello, but the way you opperate a trackpad is ergonomically very different, and it's extremely awkward to move your thumb behind your hand to use a second button. And a mighty-mouse style trackpad button would be a disaster (I'm still not completely convinced of the mighty-mouse, even after I've had one for about 6 months, although I LOVE the scroll ball). No, I've learned to love using command-click for contextual menus, and I wouldn't want to go back.
Secondly, the dock is actually much more real-estate friendly than the taskbar because it doesn't have the text right beside the icon. One can only open about 7 windows in XP/Vista (that is, as long as you have the QuickStart on, and that is a must for me) before things start to get cluttered. You can also resize the dock to any size. The dock also has no separators or beveled buttons to get in the way. People just tend to keep the dock a bit taller than the task bar (not sure why), but if you size it down, it's much more efficient.
As for Safari, I agree that they should have anti-phishing built-in. But knowing Apple, after this, we'll see an update to it in about 3 weeks.
DST might cost a little more, but one of the main reasons it was put into effect is that it keeps people from having morning rush hour take place during the dark in higher latitudes (like Alaska, where I live). Lack of DST would be devistating up here, or in northern states.
So efficiency aside, it would be a bad arguement to stop DST. Also, it would royally screw up inter-state communications/trade if some areas had DST and some didn't... it's just best to keep it.
Compared to Vista, and even XP in some areas, it's definitely minimalist. The default icon size in Vista is HUGE, and there are so many beveled edges and circles everywhere that there's just an immense amount of wasted space.
I would say that MacOS X has generally become more minimalist in both its spacial and overall feel. Leopard had a few drawbacks (3D dock, transparent menus), but even then it toned down a lot of needless flair in other areas.
I would generally agree that MacOS X isn't exactly what I would call minimalist, but the trend seems to be moving in that direction, where-as Windows keeps getting more flashy with more "wow, jeepers!" appeal. And I would say that Windows has never been very good about screen realestate either. Menubars on every window? Give me a break.
Bingo. Also, I should mention that Apple DRM is unimportant anyway, since they already sell non-DRM version of most (all?) of their iTMS material. So why are we still fighting DRM? Oh, that's right, because we want everything to cost us nothing.
Basically, people had some kind of ethical case for fighting DRM back when Apple was DRM-only... but now that Apple has given in, it's just complaining that they want music for free. I have to draw the line there. Or are you suggesting that all media should be inherently free? That's rediculous and unjustified.
This really exposes media piracy for what it's always been, all along... people not wanting to pay for shit that they normally would have to. I'm sick of all the pretenses, fighting DRM was never about free speech, was it? It was about getting free shit. I actually believed their was a greater cause... I guess I was wrong.
Fuck it, from now on, I refuse to go to bat for anyone who pirates music, they're on their own.
That's exactly like learning to play an instrument. The instrument really becomes an extension of you. Obviously singing is the most automatic because we already have the hardware built-in to be able to do it, but that doesn't mean that everyone can sing exactly what they hear in their head... most people aren't tone deaf, but a large percentage of people can't manipulate their voice to match what they hear. Eventually, you train yourself to be able to use the instrument more effectively.
I used to play the trumpet in HS (I'm a keyboardist now, sorta by default), and I was able to hear a sound and just my body would do the neccessary things in order to produce what I wanted. That's really no different from neurofeedback (which I've also done at various times), you have to train your brain to manipulate itself in a certain way to produce the neccessary stimuli to match what you're thinking.
Currently, there is no way to program an EEG to play back music that you hear in your head, similary, there is no way to program an EEG to automatically respond to game commands like, "go left", "attack". Your brain has to do the translation, because we still don't know how to read that high level of functions. So, in a sense, there's really no difference between "playing with your brain" and "playing with your fingers".
In traditional gameplay... your brain has to be taught that when it thinks "move left", it translates that to "press left thumb toward the palm" (on a gamepad). With an EEG, your brain must be taught that when it thinks "move left", it translates that to "raise beta waves in frequency range X". The synapse reconstruction to train those two things are pretty similar. So there's not a huge gain in efficiency to play a game or an instrument with an EEG.
My degree is in electro-acoustic music composition, and I came very close to doing a project in trying to take an EEG and use it to build a midi instrument, but then I realized that it wouldn't be much different from learning to play any other physical instrument... it's simply a novelty. Until we can train computers to understand direct, high-level thought patterns, we're never going to be doing anything more than training our minds in similar ways than we train our bodies, and frankly... there's not a lot of benefits to that.
Add to this that our brains are used to training our bodies, day in and day out... we're relitively good at it. Our brains have no experience training brainwave patterns. Learning how to work an EEG is a lot more difficult than learning how to manipulate a keyboard or gamepad.
I disagree. Edutainment games that are rubish are rubish, but that's about it. I remember that one year during early high school, I recieved a game for christmas called "Journeyman Project 2: Burried in Time". I thought it was one of the coolest adventure games I'd played around that time (besides MYST). Only later did I notice that most places were filing it under "Edutainment", but when I thought about it, it had A LOT of historical things that I learned about, and were truly cemented in my mind because I had had to interact with them.
Plus, "facts" aren't what makes games excel in education, they can be used to teach things that are very difficult to teach otherwise. For instance, adventure games usually drill critical thinking and problem solving skills in ways that text books really can't. But unfortunately, our culture is so hooked on drilling facts instead of actually improving students' mental capabilities, that video games may always play second fiddle to other media, because they're best at teaching other things, things which I believe are more important than facts.
After attacking democrats for years, he finally gives in to pleading to a prominant corporate democrat for help. Boy, I love the sweet smell of irony in the morning.
The only difference, I guess, is that you could theoretically apply ID to alien's creating humans from test-tubes in a lab, instead of God. But, for 95% of people who believe in Intelligent Design, with maybe the exception of Tom Cruise, the "intelligence" refered to is God/Yahweh/Allah/Jahova/Brama/etc.
So while ID COULD, theoretically be different from creationism, in practice, it's simply a way of making creationism seem, somehow, accademic.
You play too many FPSs. He means "reload" as in "reset the game and restart". Outside of the FPS genre, "reload" has alwasy been used to describe reseting the game.
I've seen a lot of "let me raise my own kids, shutthefuckup!" kind of responses. I just want to remind you that while parenting is a very personal and deeply pride-inducing endevour, you're kids also have to interact with the rest society, including my kids. It takes a village... people, and that's more evident today than ever, with young adults unable to communicate effectively with each other and their managers, friends, and spouses.
You're kids aren't just your responsibility, they're ALL of ours. So, some semblence of commonality in our society might help our children to grow up to be more productive adults. If our entire culture is made up of hill-billys standing the driveways with shotguns yelling, "get off my lawn!", then we're never going to leave any kind of legacy; collectively, or individually.
What does good parenting have to do with being "up-to-date?" that's ludacris. Meat, Eggs, and Video Games haven't suddenly changed their neutritional value between this year and last. That's a really, and lazy, reason for de-valuing litterature. Many times, things that have been thought about and researched for a few years, is better information than soundbites and 5 minute interview transcripts. You're just trying to find an excuse to diss critical thinking.
Well, of course I could do that... if I wanted to sound like crap. Hell, I could set up a $20 computer microphone in a room and record it, too, wouldn't that make for a great album? Seriously, I may do things a bit on the cheap, dude, but there is a point where you really do "get what you pay for". A TASCAM 8-channel USB interface is going to sound like a TASCAM 8-channel USB interface... ie: crap. And mics like that are going to sound rediculously tinny and noisy.
Mixers are very important, because the pre-amp quality will make a tremendous difference in audio quality. Now, Presonus has a few $600 8-channel mixers that look very appealing right now, but they're known for making fairly high-quality pre-amps (at least for that price range). Mackie, Tascam, Behringer... are not.
Condenser mics are also very important, you don't want to skimp on condensers. The very least I expect to pay for a low-end condenser is $150... and that's pushing it.
For dynamics, you can get away with $80 SM57s, which are still found on many major recordings.
I'll say this: there are expenses that simply save time and effort, but don't boost quality. TDM-enabled boards, for instance, offer increased versatility with computer plugins and processing... but you get can get away without one and still make a top-notch recording, it just may take a bit more effort. However, for mics and preamps, once you've got a bad recording, there's no way to make it sound as good as a good recording.
Obviously, it all comes down to what level of recording you're aiming at. My degree is in electronic music composition and production (though these days I tend to do more rock and orchestral work), although I don't have a lot of money. But since I'm still aiming at a fairly high quality of audio, I'm willing to sacrifice time and convenience for that. Currently, I'm using an old MBox with Focusrite preamps... 2 in/out. It's inconvenient as hell, but the preamps are pretty damn good. I can't do drum recording on it, obviously, but I'll burn that bridge when I come to it (I recently got a live drummer... up until now I've been using softsynths).
Well, there's a difference between a recording studio, and a good home recording setup. A recording studio needs to have hardware/software for all different kinds of music/instruments/situations. If you're writing and recording yourself, you can cut that cost by about ten fold, getting only thing things that are relivant for your kind of work. Also, you can spend more time (since it's not costing you) tweaking to make a relatively low budget recording sound really good.
For rock, you can build a decent home recording studio for 5K. Where-as creating a recording studio as a business is going to cost you upwards 50K (12K is nothing... most TDM mixing boards start at around 30K, alone).
However, I could be up and running, and with some work, churn out a better album than I'm going to in a local recording studio if I dropped about 2.5K more onto what I've got:
- $800 for an 8-channel digital mixer (non-TDM) - $1000 for two good condenser mics and a few more dynamics (SM81s would be my choice... and they make great vocal mics too) - $650 for a good set of post-production plugins (non-TDM)... probably Waves, since I've always liked their stuff
Also, since everything's going software these days, recording is becoming a lot cheaper than it used to be.
Sure, if I was doing hip-hop or electronica. But I fucking hate hiphop and would much rather record with real musicians. If you want to do anything but midi sequencing, it costs money. I'm talking about complex progrock compositions here.
Miking drums, alone, is a good $1000 enterprise.
And for the record, I'm not saying that I'm not producing. In fact, I'm producing quite a bit right now. But when I record, I'm going into a studio. So nothing's holding me back.
You're asking me to spend time and money to produce an album, and then give it away? I'm all about the spread of the arts and aesthetics, but producing a good album takes A LOT of money, and time.
I do a lot of music composition and production, myself. I spent $2500 this year on a new mac pro, upgrades to the latest versions of Digital Performer, Native Instruments Kontakt, EWQLSO Gold. I bought a bearbones Digidesign interface for $400, own a $1500 synthesizer, and two $100 microphones, and I'm NOWHERE NEAR capable of producing a rock/pop album. For that, I'd need to spend another $1000 on a 8-channel audio interface, $400 in decent overhead mics for drums, and probably a few more SM57s. On top of that, a good set of mixing plugins for my DAW (like Waves), is a good $800. To build a recording studio capable of providing even the most MINIMAL of recording environments is upwards $8000, and that's with cutting a lot of corners.
No, while I have the potential to record and produce keys, guitars, and vocals, I'm taking drums to a studio, where I'm going to pay a couple $100 an hour.
And then you ask me to give it away? Fuck you. That's not "free", that's negative. Even to do music for the joy of it, money's gotta come from somewhere.
The fact that PTC isn't actually what they say they are. They're not a "child friendly" group trying to work with the game industry to get concensus on gaming... they're an anti-video game lobby group who thinks that video games are evil and are out to destroy the industry. They remind me of religious pro-abstinance groups who masquerade as birth-control education.
I'm personally fairly opposed to video game violence, as I am with TV and cinema... I don't think it's healthy for our culture in general (regardless of age, actually). But I'm also in favor of consensus building, and different interests working together toward the common good. The PTC has shown that they are not trying to build a better game industry, they are trying to tear it apart completely.
Basically, this gesture says "We can lobby, but they can't, because they're inherently evil". At that point, no reasoning or compromise can be made, we're now in the realm of idiology and theology. Basically, PTC has just declared financial holy war on the game industry.
I consider myself a pacifist... but in this case, let the war begin.
Actually, yes, if I remember correctly, Star Trek gets around that by basically moving your atoms into a sort of "energy plane" and then moving them from one place to another, so technically, you're conscious throughout the entire procedure (which explains all the weird Barkley episodes where he ends up moving around and doing shit mid-transportation).
Still, I would NEVER use teleportation the way it probably could ACTUALLY be done: it's simply death and rebirth. It would be great for inanimate objects though... PERFECT for internet shopping. I remember a game called Journeyman's Project 2: buried in Time, in which you could by stuff off the internet, and it would materialize right there in front of you, perfect!
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe all combined, but I was talking single games. Halo 2 and Smash Bros Mele were the best selling games of last generation.
interesting point. Watch as movie theater revenues plummit and game sales sky rocket. Average movie length: 2 hours. Average game length: 30-50 hours. Which is the more ecconomical entertainment medium? Games, by a long shot. Less trips to Blockbuster or the Cinemaplex means less money wasted on gas.
Could be... or it could mean the 360 is just hacking into Sony's former mindshare. I think it's probably a combination of both, actually. The continued success of the Wii is probably the #1 indication that HDTV adoption (or should I say, SDTV abandonment) isn't going as planned.
However, GTA4 won't do it alone. I'm not sure why the article hinges on GTA4s success. GTA is a huge franchise, I'm not going to argue that, but no GTA game has outsold the Halo or Smash Bros franchises (which produced the #1 and #2 best selling games of last generation). Halo 3 saw release last year to enormous success, and so far Smash has been exceeding sales expectations this year. Combine Smash Brawl with GTA4, Mario Kart Wii, MGS4, and the remote possibility of a 2008 Final Fantasy US release (unlikely, but possible), and you have a good solid framework for 2008 sales. 2007 saw many huge things though, so I'm not sure it's as cut and dry as the article suggests, but there's a good possibility. And I'm not even going to dig into the huge Nintendo DS sales that simply defy all conventional explanation.
While some of your points are accurate, I have to put in my 2 cents. First of all, I absolutely dispise notebooks with more than one button. 2-button mice... I'm sold at hello, but the way you opperate a trackpad is ergonomically very different, and it's extremely awkward to move your thumb behind your hand to use a second button. And a mighty-mouse style trackpad button would be a disaster (I'm still not completely convinced of the mighty-mouse, even after I've had one for about 6 months, although I LOVE the scroll ball). No, I've learned to love using command-click for contextual menus, and I wouldn't want to go back.
Secondly, the dock is actually much more real-estate friendly than the taskbar because it doesn't have the text right beside the icon. One can only open about 7 windows in XP/Vista (that is, as long as you have the QuickStart on, and that is a must for me) before things start to get cluttered. You can also resize the dock to any size. The dock also has no separators or beveled buttons to get in the way. People just tend to keep the dock a bit taller than the task bar (not sure why), but if you size it down, it's much more efficient.
As for Safari, I agree that they should have anti-phishing built-in. But knowing Apple, after this, we'll see an update to it in about 3 weeks.
DST might cost a little more, but one of the main reasons it was put into effect is that it keeps people from having morning rush hour take place during the dark in higher latitudes (like Alaska, where I live). Lack of DST would be devistating up here, or in northern states.
So efficiency aside, it would be a bad arguement to stop DST. Also, it would royally screw up inter-state communications/trade if some areas had DST and some didn't... it's just best to keep it.
Compared to Vista, and even XP in some areas, it's definitely minimalist. The default icon size in Vista is HUGE, and there are so many beveled edges and circles everywhere that there's just an immense amount of wasted space.
I would say that MacOS X has generally become more minimalist in both its spacial and overall feel. Leopard had a few drawbacks (3D dock, transparent menus), but even then it toned down a lot of needless flair in other areas.
I would generally agree that MacOS X isn't exactly what I would call minimalist, but the trend seems to be moving in that direction, where-as Windows keeps getting more flashy with more "wow, jeepers!" appeal. And I would say that Windows has never been very good about screen realestate either. Menubars on every window? Give me a break.
Bingo. Also, I should mention that Apple DRM is unimportant anyway, since they already sell non-DRM version of most (all?) of their iTMS material. So why are we still fighting DRM? Oh, that's right, because we want everything to cost us nothing.
Basically, people had some kind of ethical case for fighting DRM back when Apple was DRM-only... but now that Apple has given in, it's just complaining that they want music for free. I have to draw the line there. Or are you suggesting that all media should be inherently free? That's rediculous and unjustified.
This really exposes media piracy for what it's always been, all along... people not wanting to pay for shit that they normally would have to. I'm sick of all the pretenses, fighting DRM was never about free speech, was it? It was about getting free shit. I actually believed their was a greater cause... I guess I was wrong.
Fuck it, from now on, I refuse to go to bat for anyone who pirates music, they're on their own.
That's exactly like learning to play an instrument. The instrument really becomes an extension of you. Obviously singing is the most automatic because we already have the hardware built-in to be able to do it, but that doesn't mean that everyone can sing exactly what they hear in their head... most people aren't tone deaf, but a large percentage of people can't manipulate their voice to match what they hear. Eventually, you train yourself to be able to use the instrument more effectively.
I used to play the trumpet in HS (I'm a keyboardist now, sorta by default), and I was able to hear a sound and just my body would do the neccessary things in order to produce what I wanted. That's really no different from neurofeedback (which I've also done at various times), you have to train your brain to manipulate itself in a certain way to produce the neccessary stimuli to match what you're thinking.
Currently, there is no way to program an EEG to play back music that you hear in your head, similary, there is no way to program an EEG to automatically respond to game commands like, "go left", "attack". Your brain has to do the translation, because we still don't know how to read that high level of functions. So, in a sense, there's really no difference between "playing with your brain" and "playing with your fingers".
In traditional gameplay... your brain has to be taught that when it thinks "move left", it translates that to "press left thumb toward the palm" (on a gamepad). With an EEG, your brain must be taught that when it thinks "move left", it translates that to "raise beta waves in frequency range X". The synapse reconstruction to train those two things are pretty similar. So there's not a huge gain in efficiency to play a game or an instrument with an EEG.
My degree is in electro-acoustic music composition, and I came very close to doing a project in trying to take an EEG and use it to build a midi instrument, but then I realized that it wouldn't be much different from learning to play any other physical instrument... it's simply a novelty. Until we can train computers to understand direct, high-level thought patterns, we're never going to be doing anything more than training our minds in similar ways than we train our bodies, and frankly... there's not a lot of benefits to that.
Add to this that our brains are used to training our bodies, day in and day out... we're relitively good at it. Our brains have no experience training brainwave patterns. Learning how to work an EEG is a lot more difficult than learning how to manipulate a keyboard or gamepad.
I disagree. Edutainment games that are rubish are rubish, but that's about it. I remember that one year during early high school, I recieved a game for christmas called "Journeyman Project 2: Burried in Time". I thought it was one of the coolest adventure games I'd played around that time (besides MYST). Only later did I notice that most places were filing it under "Edutainment", but when I thought about it, it had A LOT of historical things that I learned about, and were truly cemented in my mind because I had had to interact with them.
Plus, "facts" aren't what makes games excel in education, they can be used to teach things that are very difficult to teach otherwise. For instance, adventure games usually drill critical thinking and problem solving skills in ways that text books really can't. But unfortunately, our culture is so hooked on drilling facts instead of actually improving students' mental capabilities, that video games may always play second fiddle to other media, because they're best at teaching other things, things which I believe are more important than facts.
HAHAHAHA!
After attacking democrats for years, he finally gives in to pleading to a prominant corporate democrat for help. Boy, I love the sweet smell of irony in the morning.
The only difference, I guess, is that you could theoretically apply ID to alien's creating humans from test-tubes in a lab, instead of God. But, for 95% of people who believe in Intelligent Design, with maybe the exception of Tom Cruise, the "intelligence" refered to is God/Yahweh/Allah/Jahova/Brama/etc.
So while ID COULD, theoretically be different from creationism, in practice, it's simply a way of making creationism seem, somehow, accademic.
You play too many FPSs. He means "reload" as in "reset the game and restart". Outside of the FPS genre, "reload" has alwasy been used to describe reseting the game.
Where the fuck are you? I'm up here in Fairbanks, Alaska, and I can get an iPhone with Cellular One (now AT&T).
EWQL Symphony Orchestral Gold
Good, I'm interested in their software. Now, release it for a console, and I'll be sure to pick it up.
I've seen a lot of "let me raise my own kids, shutthefuckup!" kind of responses. I just want to remind you that while parenting is a very personal and deeply pride-inducing endevour, you're kids also have to interact with the rest society, including my kids. It takes a village... people, and that's more evident today than ever, with young adults unable to communicate effectively with each other and their managers, friends, and spouses.
You're kids aren't just your responsibility, they're ALL of ours. So, some semblence of commonality in our society might help our children to grow up to be more productive adults. If our entire culture is made up of hill-billys standing the driveways with shotguns yelling, "get off my lawn!", then we're never going to leave any kind of legacy; collectively, or individually.
What does good parenting have to do with being "up-to-date?" that's ludacris. Meat, Eggs, and Video Games haven't suddenly changed their neutritional value between this year and last. That's a really, and lazy, reason for de-valuing litterature. Many times, things that have been thought about and researched for a few years, is better information than soundbites and 5 minute interview transcripts. You're just trying to find an excuse to diss critical thinking.
Well, of course I could do that... if I wanted to sound like crap. Hell, I could set up a $20 computer microphone in a room and record it, too, wouldn't that make for a great album? Seriously, I may do things a bit on the cheap, dude, but there is a point where you really do "get what you pay for". A TASCAM 8-channel USB interface is going to sound like a TASCAM 8-channel USB interface... ie: crap. And mics like that are going to sound rediculously tinny and noisy.
Mixers are very important, because the pre-amp quality will make a tremendous difference in audio quality. Now, Presonus has a few $600 8-channel mixers that look very appealing right now, but they're known for making fairly high-quality pre-amps (at least for that price range). Mackie, Tascam, Behringer... are not.
Condenser mics are also very important, you don't want to skimp on condensers. The very least I expect to pay for a low-end condenser is $150... and that's pushing it.
For dynamics, you can get away with $80 SM57s, which are still found on many major recordings.
I'll say this: there are expenses that simply save time and effort, but don't boost quality. TDM-enabled boards, for instance, offer increased versatility with computer plugins and processing... but you get can get away without one and still make a top-notch recording, it just may take a bit more effort. However, for mics and preamps, once you've got a bad recording, there's no way to make it sound as good as a good recording.
Obviously, it all comes down to what level of recording you're aiming at. My degree is in electronic music composition and production (though these days I tend to do more rock and orchestral work), although I don't have a lot of money. But since I'm still aiming at a fairly high quality of audio, I'm willing to sacrifice time and convenience for that. Currently, I'm using an old MBox with Focusrite preamps... 2 in/out. It's inconvenient as hell, but the preamps are pretty damn good. I can't do drum recording on it, obviously, but I'll burn that bridge when I come to it (I recently got a live drummer... up until now I've been using softsynths).
Well, there's a difference between a recording studio, and a good home recording setup. A recording studio needs to have hardware/software for all different kinds of music/instruments/situations. If you're writing and recording yourself, you can cut that cost by about ten fold, getting only thing things that are relivant for your kind of work. Also, you can spend more time (since it's not costing you) tweaking to make a relatively low budget recording sound really good.
For rock, you can build a decent home recording studio for 5K. Where-as creating a recording studio as a business is going to cost you upwards 50K (12K is nothing... most TDM mixing boards start at around 30K, alone).
However, I could be up and running, and with some work, churn out a better album than I'm going to in a local recording studio if I dropped about 2.5K more onto what I've got:
- $800 for an 8-channel digital mixer (non-TDM)
- $1000 for two good condenser mics and a few more dynamics (SM81s would be my choice... and they make great vocal mics too)
- $650 for a good set of post-production plugins (non-TDM)... probably Waves, since I've always liked their stuff
Also, since everything's going software these days, recording is becoming a lot cheaper than it used to be.
Sure, if I was doing hip-hop or electronica. But I fucking hate hiphop and would much rather record with real musicians. If you want to do anything but midi sequencing, it costs money. I'm talking about complex progrock compositions here.
Miking drums, alone, is a good $1000 enterprise.
And for the record, I'm not saying that I'm not producing. In fact, I'm producing quite a bit right now. But when I record, I'm going into a studio. So nothing's holding me back.
You're asking me to spend time and money to produce an album, and then give it away? I'm all about the spread of the arts and aesthetics, but producing a good album takes A LOT of money, and time.
I do a lot of music composition and production, myself. I spent $2500 this year on a new mac pro, upgrades to the latest versions of Digital Performer, Native Instruments Kontakt, EWQLSO Gold. I bought a bearbones Digidesign interface for $400, own a $1500 synthesizer, and two $100 microphones, and I'm NOWHERE NEAR capable of producing a rock/pop album. For that, I'd need to spend another $1000 on a 8-channel audio interface, $400 in decent overhead mics for drums, and probably a few more SM57s. On top of that, a good set of mixing plugins for my DAW (like Waves), is a good $800. To build a recording studio capable of providing even the most MINIMAL of recording environments is upwards $8000, and that's with cutting a lot of corners.
No, while I have the potential to record and produce keys, guitars, and vocals, I'm taking drums to a studio, where I'm going to pay a couple $100 an hour.
And then you ask me to give it away? Fuck you. That's not "free", that's negative. Even to do music for the joy of it, money's gotta come from somewhere.
The fact that PTC isn't actually what they say they are. They're not a "child friendly" group trying to work with the game industry to get concensus on gaming... they're an anti-video game lobby group who thinks that video games are evil and are out to destroy the industry. They remind me of religious pro-abstinance groups who masquerade as birth-control education.
I'm personally fairly opposed to video game violence, as I am with TV and cinema... I don't think it's healthy for our culture in general (regardless of age, actually). But I'm also in favor of consensus building, and different interests working together toward the common good. The PTC has shown that they are not trying to build a better game industry, they are trying to tear it apart completely.
Basically, this gesture says "We can lobby, but they can't, because they're inherently evil". At that point, no reasoning or compromise can be made, we're now in the realm of idiology and theology. Basically, PTC has just declared financial holy war on the game industry.
I consider myself a pacifist... but in this case, let the war begin.
Holy shit, I just spewed brain cum!
Actually, yes, if I remember correctly, Star Trek gets around that by basically moving your atoms into a sort of "energy plane" and then moving them from one place to another, so technically, you're conscious throughout the entire procedure (which explains all the weird Barkley episodes where he ends up moving around and doing shit mid-transportation).
Still, I would NEVER use teleportation the way it probably could ACTUALLY be done: it's simply death and rebirth. It would be great for inanimate objects though... PERFECT for internet shopping. I remember a game called Journeyman's Project 2: buried in Time, in which you could by stuff off the internet, and it would materialize right there in front of you, perfect!