Don't expect them to get rid of a common prevention measure so easily. There may not be region coding as we currently know it, but any regional restrictions will likely be incorporated into the oh so consumer loving DRM of the disc or hardware.
So...is the gov gonna fine itself for all the times teenagers/kids download America's Army? Let's all move to Michigan and see if we can bankrupt a gov branch.
All EA is doing is distributing the game through very well established channels to the retailers. The game will probably get prime space on the shelves/kiosks, and sell more copies...good for players and good for valve.
This actually has the potential to be the first EA news that/. can think positively of...yeah, what the hell was I thinking.
Re:What a sad week for gamers
on
EA's Busy Week
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· Score: 1
Well, you and I have similar thoughts on this overall. Couple things about Maxis, I'm pretty sure Maxis was about to go under when EA bought into their Sims game so they somewhat saved the company. Fast forward to today, Maxis is responsible for designing the Sims games. They have a product that millions of consumers enjoy. Given its success, you'd be shooting yourself in the foot and disappointing fans if you radically changed what they love.
For the other companies bought up, they too are responsible for the game designs, art, etc...I find it hard to believe that a public company would say, you have a great product, let's spend millions to destroy it. Perhaps some of the companies would have fizzled on their own, who knows. Look at other entertainment industries and all their one hit wonders.
With such a creative and risky industry, the public corp is probably not the best model for all game companies, but it does work for some. I'd hate to see Sporz in da' Ci-tay 2 (hahaha) as well. But if Will wants it that way, who knows. My 2 cents.
Re:What a sad week for gamers
on
EA's Busy Week
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· Score: 1
The first priority of a public company is its shareholders who only care about the profit. Their concern is not with innovative gameplay unless it rakes in the money.
EA has pretty much always been a mass market game company. No sense in typing about how they don't "innovate" (unless perhaps you're talking about Spore). It's not their goal. Don't know why people keep expecting this of them.
It's too bad the designs don't seem to allow much customizing of the case. I'm sure legal/warranty issues could come into play, but I would feel much more inclined to buy a console if the case was easy to modify...perhaps not "recommended", but was manufactured in a way that makes it easy none the less.
Different colors are nice, but lose their luster when you go to a friend saying, "Hey, I got the blue one" and they reply "hey, me too."
Many people like to customize and show what they can do. Let the users market the console and show what they can do with it.
Either way, mine are all going in the cabinet since wireless makes them that much easier to hide. The TV will continue to be the living room centerpiece of gaming regardless of console design.
The headline should be "The uneasy relationship between CONSOLE gaming and gender"
I can't help but get the feeling this article was to rile up readers and not provide any positive insight. After reading this, I thought in regards to female gamers, how can this not even mention The Sims, Civ, Pogo, Yahoo Games, or some of the MMOs that have a wide audience? Could have sworn games have made improvements.
majority of players have been coasting along infrastructure-related-problem-free, basically since launch
It's good to hear that things have greatly improved since the horror stories usually associated with WoW. Player's pay for the service and in return should receive a playable game with minimal issues.
You're a few months late for this kind of post...caught onto the problem with your post and delete it right then.
That's a nice snap judgment and all, but you're missing the point. Here's a quick summary:
Wait queues are a patch for game design that is difficult to scale. Consumers lose out, acknowledged in your post. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wait queues surfaced around launch and now with the expansion. Let's hope for your sake this doesn't happen with every new popular feature.
Crashing servers is worse than wait queues, but they both point to Blizzard not being prepared, which was the purpose of the post. You paid for a complete game and you should get one. This goes for all MMOs, not specifically WoW.
since you have no experience with it, what is the value of your post
The value is that 2 million people have bought and a game that has design features to intentionally stop the user from playing normally accessible areas. In addition, you pay for it monthly. Maybe some people enjoy traffic jams. Perhaps it builds anticipation.
I suppose all the years I spent working in the game industry have been for nothing. Not being prepared for a user base and actively making them wait based on demand is a good thing. Seeing the success of WoW, that's why I ask if it's good for the player.
He's right, a "killer app" is a game that you want to play so badly, you purchase new hardware to do so. Maybe describing it in terms of consoles will provide a better picture. Take Halo 2, exclusive to xbox. The game is considered so good that people bought xboxs over other consoles just to play that game.
For PCs, it's not that a killer app game can't be played on an old computer, but the masses would need to go out and buy new computers(or parts)to play it to make it one. It can be seen that a killer app raises the technology standard because it has a new advanced design, graphics, or whatever IMO. Personally, I've never played WoW and I find nothing inspiring about it. The graphics style is nice though. Otherwise, WoW seems like a cookie cutter MMO.
The first thing that should concern people who play WoW is that Blizzard was surprised and caught off guard by it's success. I've never played the game, but would wonder if the design scales to this size player base. Also sounds like their infrastructure is shaky at best and I can't believe you are paying for a game that makes you wait (how long?) to play it. If anything, this feels like WoW lowered the standard on MMOs out there in terms of service.
However, if you find the game fun, by all means play it. I can't help but think expanding the market will bring on more localization/design/infrastructure work that will be passed on as delays to the customer in some form. Blizzard is being rewarded financially for this so they are happy. Just hope that other companies don't follow suit. I can go without such innovations as wait queues in games, especially MMOs.
An MMO will not be nicely balanced as long as the overall design relies on rigid character skills. The balance needs to come from the player's creativity utilizing skill mixtures.
Now, I know there are a lot of people who don't like FFXI for whatever reason. But the game design gives the player some of the most flexible design I've seen in a popular MMO. A single character can not only play every job in the game, but can combine any job with any other job for some very interesting mixing of abilities/traits. This allows the player to configure their character for different situations like PvE, PvP, farming, soloing, different balancing of parties...etc.
Distract the player with PvP priority. Many MMOs take the FPS style of PvP. Of course this will be unbalanced and somewhat frustrating to be the underdog class. Camelot distracted the player with an objective (multiple keeps/relics) that caused players to band together for a greater goal which helped to avoid 1 on 1 encounters. FFXI has Ballista which seems like a brutal team based PvP rugby. Again, unusual combinations of jobs/skills and use of items (such as poisoning yourself to break sleep spells) create a dynamic environment.
Aside from an occasional balancing mistake (CoH: Device blasters with the original smoke grenade = ~100% reduction in enemy accuracy)it seems like many MMORPGs are trying to adopt designs that don't scale to the size of MMOs today. From the sound of it, WoW is suffering from the similar class issues as DAoC. Let the player customize the skill combinations. Please stop creating MMOs with such rigid characters.
On a side note, how much fun would StarCraft be if you had to choose a single unit for the entire game?
It's a new medium, nothing else. You can walk into just about any store that sells magazines and buy porn mags there. Kids have been sneaking/hiding porn mags for prob about as long as they have existed. Porn is all over the internet, on TV, magazines, books, DVDs, games...most of which kids are smart enough to get their hands on if they want.
Hate to break it to all those adults people out there, but aside from medical treatments or some miracle...sex is a requirement to have kids. OMG!!
Dear god, what has happened to this world. This is as impossible as nerds being sexy, or apple using intel chips.
I would think it's an impossibility for a casual gamer to be hardcore since the term "Hardcore" is generally a measurement of intensity. You could have any number of people playing a game for any number of hours. There will always be someone who takes it one step further and that person in comparison to the others is hardcore.
Probably putting too much thought to this article, but it sounds like a PR spin for the game portals. Hey, all you Hardcore gamers...you're still hardcore if you play our flash games. Look, here's a bunch of link to try in order of how much they paid for the article...yeah...too much thought.
It seems almost inevitable that the wealthy ad powerhouses are going to elbow their way into our games, most likely in a fashion we don't like. Independent review sites should create a new criteria for annoyance or intrusion of ads while playing the game.
I would love to know how obvious/distracting game ads are prior to spending $50 on a game. Word of mouth can be extremly powerful and I would happily not purchases a game if advertisers are going to distract us from our fun.
Wow...those are some frightening assumptions mixed with what I hope is sarcasm. Gonna go out on a limb here and assume 1. you've never been involved with a global release of software or hardware and 2. you're making comments off the top of your head.
Couple things to consider:
- There's a history of hardware shortages for game consoles. Next gen consoles have more processors and more custom components, some of which may be common between MS, Nintendo, and Sony. So there may be a pool of suppliers who still need to keep up demand for other products as well.
- EA alone had revenue in the US of about 1.7 billion and about 1.4 billion outside the US. They don't exactly sell well in Japan, so where do you think the rest came from? Yeah, obviously no reason to consider Europe for games.
- Microsoft is a public company. How may lawsuits would they have if they said, OH, we're gonna release *arbitrary number* of consoles, and then fall short at the last minute without warning. Would be law suit central for inaccurate statements.
To flat out assume this is 100% hype is just ignorant.
We won't be able to produce as many consoles as previously expected.
MS is still new to the industry and hasn't produced a game console like this with custom components before. Taking into consideration the early launch date and they need enough consoles to spread around the world...that's a pretty tall order.
The older game crowd is probably already sold on buying on of these (which Nintendo profits off of unlike MS and Sony who subsidize). Many may have kids who will be able to experience the same games you grew up with (can we say family bonding?....DAAAAAD, I'm stuck on the second quest of zelda...*dad drops everything and runs to the rescue*).
Sure, independent games may suck for the most part, but what about the prospects of educational software combined with low dev costs? How many schools would be able to customize software for (probably) a relatively small fee and a $200 system? There's a reason why the Sony dev kit is called a T-10k (think price here). Can't see public schools shelling out for one of those. And you can't buy a half decent computer for $200-ish.
Give it a while and Mario may be teaching your kids to count, spell, type, and hack into gov computers. OOOOO kids LOOK! Numbers...gotta catch'em all...and beat other players at it online as well.
Anyone actually look at this guy's experience before flying off the handle?
Since 2002 he has been designing websites for various clients, often utilizing animated interfaces in Flash and Shockwave or creating branded 3D-animated logos. He is also currently working on several small indepenent animation projects.
Not exactly an expert or valued opinion in my book. Scary that one independent animators opinion on a few games he didn't like would spark everyone so much. Got a bad feeling this is the future of web marketing...
Paying $50 for the same game with updated rosters and minor new features each year isn't enough now, now the typical yearly upgrade will cost $60.
So the question would be, who is it that decides what is enough for a new release? Certainly not consumers. Some changes may also not be blatantly apparent to the user. When working with 500k to 1 million lines of code, seemingly simple changes can take a while to perfect.
...CEO has control of the direction of the company.
Agreed that the CEO determines the direction of the company, but at a very high level. I would be very surprised if a CEO of a mid-large corporation has much knowledge of the inner workings.
... developers...over-worked and underpaid
The industry is very cyclical, just like college. One day you're out having fun, the next you're cramming 24/7 for a final. If things are so bad, enough people will leave EA rendering it unable to produce games. Seeing that doesn't seem to be the case, there must be a reason why EA can still produce games. Personally I take most dramatic news with a grain of salt since to get some attention, one needs to make a really big bang.
But lawsuits are the specific remedy our society provides for the redress of grievances
It may be effective in some manor, but that doesn't make it the best solution. Employees are people managed by people. Reason combine with processes(usually with some office politics or spinning) can make a change in how things are done. Personally, I don't know too many developers who are especially adept at this skill. It's usually the manager who is good at this which can create a difficult situation.
True, games probably will go up to $60. New things are apparently a great way to justify raising prices for just about any product.
imo, the core (meaning mission critical) of a game company would be its heart (dev and artists). Without them, the head would have nothing. No point in being a CEO if you don't have employees who make your products.
Pinpointing a single game company is a bit narrow minded when it comes to business. Not that this justifies the process, but most products go through small or miniscule upgrades before being re-released. Some cars use the same engines as 5 years ago or more. Then again, the PS3/Xbox360/Rev are far more advanced than the last gen. But what gamer wants to wait 4 or so years for a new product to be released?
Perhaps I should have clarified the "at will" comment. It was basically, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. I don't advocate poor treatment of employees or insane hours, but until the industry matures and develops efficient processes, this will probably be the case. Too many people just go along with the way things are instead of pushing for reasonable change. Lawsuits or some kind of lash back will just make this worse.
Here's a thought...everyone is probably more tired of reading the same EA flame postings than you think players are of buying sports games each year. At least the players game 1 new feature.
Remember, at the core of every game company are developers, artists, qa, production members, etc... who love making games. It's very competitive within the industry and some people are willing to devote their lives to their work. When they set the working standard, there are bound to be people who can't or don't want to keep up.
Three words create a very fine line...Employment At Will.
Lack of Emotional Connection
on
Morpheus is Dead
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· Score: 2, Insightful
A good start to a meaningful character death is to have the players actually care...surprise helps too. Seeing Morpheus got himself into enough trouble and relied on Neo getting him out, this was bound to happen sooner or later without the savior. Besides, yeah, he had a cool jacket, but there's just no emotional attachment...another shell lost.
Now, take the death of Aeris in FF7. That's a way to kill a char that gets everyones blood boiling.
Broaden the term to broaden the audience. Gamers are most likely to buy it anyway. It's the people who know nothing about video games who will say "Oh, it's an entertainment machine to go with my entertainment system/center."
Does have some interesting potential though. Combined with bullet time style video recording style and some kind of Tivo, the system probably has enough power to allow the user to pan the camera and explore a TV show/sports event while watching it. Or allow some level of interactive (non-game) entertainment.
F celebrities who thrive on status and F the people who base their lives off them. Like this world needs another status divide. They probably already have a domain that costs $30,000 a month to put your A list blog there. Only reason most it's created is to suck their money away.
Sad that only cataclysmic events seem to give everyone a reality check as to what's important. Too bad memories are short.
Re:We all win, what is genuinely important follows
on
PS3 vs. Xbox 360
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· Score: 1
Basing a demographic and intellectual assumption on a company name abbreviation is a dangerous level of ignorance. Your assumption couldn't be further from reality. I truly hope you're more of a bitter anomaly than a glimpse into the future of video games being adopted by the mass markets.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't expect them to get rid of a common prevention measure so easily. There may not be region coding as we currently know it, but any regional restrictions will likely be incorporated into the oh so consumer loving DRM of the disc or hardware.
So...is the gov gonna fine itself for all the times teenagers/kids download America's Army? Let's all move to Michigan and see if we can bankrupt a gov branch.
This actually has the potential to be the first EA news that /. can think positively of...yeah, what the hell was I thinking.
For the other companies bought up, they too are responsible for the game designs, art, etc...I find it hard to believe that a public company would say, you have a great product, let's spend millions to destroy it. Perhaps some of the companies would have fizzled on their own, who knows. Look at other entertainment industries and all their one hit wonders.
With such a creative and risky industry, the public corp is probably not the best model for all game companies, but it does work for some. I'd hate to see Sporz in da' Ci-tay 2 (hahaha) as well. But if Will wants it that way, who knows. My 2 cents.
The first priority of a public company is its shareholders who only care about the profit. Their concern is not with innovative gameplay unless it rakes in the money.
EA has pretty much always been a mass market game company. No sense in typing about how they don't "innovate" (unless perhaps you're talking about Spore). It's not their goal. Don't know why people keep expecting this of them.
It's too bad the designs don't seem to allow much customizing of the case. I'm sure legal/warranty issues could come into play, but I would feel much more inclined to buy a console if the case was easy to modify...perhaps not "recommended", but was manufactured in a way that makes it easy none the less.
Different colors are nice, but lose their luster when you go to a friend saying, "Hey, I got the blue one" and they reply "hey, me too." Many people like to customize and show what they can do. Let the users market the console and show what they can do with it.
Either way, mine are all going in the cabinet since wireless makes them that much easier to hide. The TV will continue to be the living room centerpiece of gaming regardless of console design.
I can't help but get the feeling this article was to rile up readers and not provide any positive insight. After reading this, I thought in regards to female gamers, how can this not even mention The Sims, Civ, Pogo, Yahoo Games, or some of the MMOs that have a wide audience? Could have sworn games have made improvements.
It's good to hear that things have greatly improved since the horror stories usually associated with WoW. Player's pay for the service and in return should receive a playable game with minimal issues.
You're a few months late for this kind of post...caught onto the problem with your post and delete it right then.
That's a nice snap judgment and all, but you're missing the point. Here's a quick summary:
Wait queues are a patch for game design that is difficult to scale. Consumers lose out, acknowledged in your post. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wait queues surfaced around launch and now with the expansion. Let's hope for your sake this doesn't happen with every new popular feature.
Crashing servers is worse than wait queues, but they both point to Blizzard not being prepared, which was the purpose of the post. You paid for a complete game and you should get one. This goes for all MMOs, not specifically WoW.
since you have no experience with it, what is the value of your post
The value is that 2 million people have bought and a game that has design features to intentionally stop the user from playing normally accessible areas. In addition, you pay for it monthly. Maybe some people enjoy traffic jams. Perhaps it builds anticipation.
I suppose all the years I spent working in the game industry have been for nothing. Not being prepared for a user base and actively making them wait based on demand is a good thing. Seeing the success of WoW, that's why I ask if it's good for the player.
He's right, a "killer app" is a game that you want to play so badly, you purchase new hardware to do so. Maybe describing it in terms of consoles will provide a better picture. Take Halo 2, exclusive to xbox. The game is considered so good that people bought xboxs over other consoles just to play that game.
For PCs, it's not that a killer app game can't be played on an old computer, but the masses would need to go out and buy new computers(or parts)to play it to make it one. It can be seen that a killer app raises the technology standard because it has a new advanced design, graphics, or whatever IMO. Personally, I've never played WoW and I find nothing inspiring about it. The graphics style is nice though. Otherwise, WoW seems like a cookie cutter MMO.
The first thing that should concern people who play WoW is that Blizzard was surprised and caught off guard by it's success. I've never played the game, but would wonder if the design scales to this size player base. Also sounds like their infrastructure is shaky at best and I can't believe you are paying for a game that makes you wait (how long?) to play it. If anything, this feels like WoW lowered the standard on MMOs out there in terms of service.
However, if you find the game fun, by all means play it. I can't help but think expanding the market will bring on more localization/design/infrastructure work that will be passed on as delays to the customer in some form. Blizzard is being rewarded financially for this so they are happy. Just hope that other companies don't follow suit. I can go without such innovations as wait queues in games, especially MMOs.
Now, I know there are a lot of people who don't like FFXI for whatever reason. But the game design gives the player some of the most flexible design I've seen in a popular MMO. A single character can not only play every job in the game, but can combine any job with any other job for some very interesting mixing of abilities/traits. This allows the player to configure their character for different situations like PvE, PvP, farming, soloing, different balancing of parties...etc.
Distract the player with PvP priority. Many MMOs take the FPS style of PvP. Of course this will be unbalanced and somewhat frustrating to be the underdog class. Camelot distracted the player with an objective (multiple keeps/relics) that caused players to band together for a greater goal which helped to avoid 1 on 1 encounters. FFXI has Ballista which seems like a brutal team based PvP rugby. Again, unusual combinations of jobs/skills and use of items (such as poisoning yourself to break sleep spells) create a dynamic environment.
Aside from an occasional balancing mistake (CoH: Device blasters with the original smoke grenade = ~100% reduction in enemy accuracy)it seems like many MMORPGs are trying to adopt designs that don't scale to the size of MMOs today. From the sound of it, WoW is suffering from the similar class issues as DAoC. Let the player customize the skill combinations. Please stop creating MMOs with such rigid characters.
On a side note, how much fun would StarCraft be if you had to choose a single unit for the entire game?
It's a new medium, nothing else. You can walk into just about any store that sells magazines and buy porn mags there. Kids have been sneaking/hiding porn mags for prob about as long as they have existed. Porn is all over the internet, on TV, magazines, books, DVDs, games...most of which kids are smart enough to get their hands on if they want.
Hate to break it to all those adults people out there, but aside from medical treatments or some miracle...sex is a requirement to have kids. OMG!!
Dear god, what has happened to this world. This is as impossible as nerds being sexy, or apple using intel chips.
Probably putting too much thought to this article, but it sounds like a PR spin for the game portals. Hey, all you Hardcore gamers...you're still hardcore if you play our flash games. Look, here's a bunch of link to try in order of how much they paid for the article...yeah...too much thought.
I would love to know how obvious/distracting game ads are prior to spending $50 on a game. Word of mouth can be extremly powerful and I would happily not purchases a game if advertisers are going to distract us from our fun.
Couple things to consider:
- There's a history of hardware shortages for game consoles. Next gen consoles have more processors and more custom components, some of which may be common between MS, Nintendo, and Sony. So there may be a pool of suppliers who still need to keep up demand for other products as well.
- EA alone had revenue in the US of about 1.7 billion and about 1.4 billion outside the US. They don't exactly sell well in Japan, so where do you think the rest came from? Yeah, obviously no reason to consider Europe for games.
- Microsoft is a public company. How may lawsuits would they have if they said, OH, we're gonna release *arbitrary number* of consoles, and then fall short at the last minute without warning. Would be law suit central for inaccurate statements.
To flat out assume this is 100% hype is just ignorant.
MS is still new to the industry and hasn't produced a game console like this with custom components before. Taking into consideration the early launch date and they need enough consoles to spread around the world...that's a pretty tall order.
Sure, independent games may suck for the most part, but what about the prospects of educational software combined with low dev costs? How many schools would be able to customize software for (probably) a relatively small fee and a $200 system? There's a reason why the Sony dev kit is called a T-10k (think price here). Can't see public schools shelling out for one of those. And you can't buy a half decent computer for $200-ish.
Give it a while and Mario may be teaching your kids to count, spell, type, and hack into gov computers. OOOOO kids LOOK! Numbers...gotta catch'em all...and beat other players at it online as well.
Since 2002 he has been designing websites for various clients, often utilizing animated interfaces in Flash and Shockwave or creating branded 3D-animated logos. He is also currently working on several small indepenent animation projects.
Not exactly an expert or valued opinion in my book. Scary that one independent animators opinion on a few games he didn't like would spark everyone so much. Got a bad feeling this is the future of web marketing...
So the question would be, who is it that decides what is enough for a new release? Certainly not consumers. Some changes may also not be blatantly apparent to the user. When working with 500k to 1 million lines of code, seemingly simple changes can take a while to perfect.
Agreed that the CEO determines the direction of the company, but at a very high level. I would be very surprised if a CEO of a mid-large corporation has much knowledge of the inner workings.
The industry is very cyclical, just like college. One day you're out having fun, the next you're cramming 24/7 for a final. If things are so bad, enough people will leave EA rendering it unable to produce games. Seeing that doesn't seem to be the case, there must be a reason why EA can still produce games. Personally I take most dramatic news with a grain of salt since to get some attention, one needs to make a really big bang.
But lawsuits are the specific remedy our society provides for the redress of grievances
It may be effective in some manor, but that doesn't make it the best solution. Employees are people managed by people. Reason combine with processes(usually with some office politics or spinning) can make a change in how things are done. Personally, I don't know too many developers who are especially adept at this skill. It's usually the manager who is good at this which can create a difficult situation.
imo, the core (meaning mission critical) of a game company would be its heart (dev and artists). Without them, the head would have nothing. No point in being a CEO if you don't have employees who make your products.
Pinpointing a single game company is a bit narrow minded when it comes to business. Not that this justifies the process, but most products go through small or miniscule upgrades before being re-released. Some cars use the same engines as 5 years ago or more. Then again, the PS3/Xbox360/Rev are far more advanced than the last gen. But what gamer wants to wait 4 or so years for a new product to be released?
Perhaps I should have clarified the "at will" comment. It was basically, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. I don't advocate poor treatment of employees or insane hours, but until the industry matures and develops efficient processes, this will probably be the case. Too many people just go along with the way things are instead of pushing for reasonable change. Lawsuits or some kind of lash back will just make this worse.
Remember, at the core of every game company are developers, artists, qa, production members, etc... who love making games. It's very competitive within the industry and some people are willing to devote their lives to their work. When they set the working standard, there are bound to be people who can't or don't want to keep up.
Three words create a very fine line...Employment At Will.
Now, take the death of Aeris in FF7. That's a way to kill a char that gets everyones blood boiling.
Does have some interesting potential though. Combined with bullet time style video recording style and some kind of Tivo, the system probably has enough power to allow the user to pan the camera and explore a TV show/sports event while watching it. Or allow some level of interactive (non-game) entertainment.
Sad that only cataclysmic events seem to give everyone a reality check as to what's important. Too bad memories are short.
Basing a demographic and intellectual assumption on a company name abbreviation is a dangerous level of ignorance. Your assumption couldn't be further from reality. I truly hope you're more of a bitter anomaly than a glimpse into the future of video games being adopted by the mass markets.