For me there was something missing in the Christopher Eccleston Doctor. He wasn't the irrepresible, undaunted Doctor of the old days. That, and all the random pop culture getting thrown around didn't help.
Whether she is shocked/hurt/sad/upset/etc. is irrelevant to whether she has been effectively "labeled" as something in any meaningful (e.g., public) way.
So being shocked/hurt/sad/upset/etc. isn't meaningful in a private context?
Perhaps it's semantics, but a "label" exists whether it's public or private, official or unofficial. It doesn't matter if someone writes me a private letter calling me a nerd or places the label in a public address. The label has still been applied, and affects me.
The label contained in such a private letter won't reach into government databases, legal standings etc. The label of a public letter won't either. The point of my arguments isn't that a public or private label will have some "official" effect, but that it will affect the person.
The potential, personal consequence for the woman is meaningful whether or not MySpace publicly announces anything.
From a legal, government standpoint this is true. Reality is not so kind.
Consider the case of OJ Simpson. Bad taste in books to author aside, he's widely believed to have killed his own wife. From a government standpoint he's innocent and not a murderer as that was the outcome of the court case. This has done little to nothing to dissuade people from thinking otherwise.
Similarly, the fact that the government knows the woman in the article is not a sex offender is cold comfort when MySpace continually insists she is. While it's unlikely that her MySpace centric sex offender label will propagate outside of that sphere, her reputation and online identity within that area of the internet have been sullied.
People are not machines that do exactly what the government and society say they should do. Very often they callously judge first and ask questions later.
This woman was identified/branded/labeled as nothing.
This isn't an accurate statement. From a government standpoint, she hasn't been labeled anything. That is correct. However, this is not an issue of government at all.
When I am in high school and called a "nerd" I am identified, branded or labeled as such. It doesn't matter that the administration of the school doesn't recognize that my name now hashes to a pool of "nerds". What matters is that other people have labeled me, rightly or wrongly.
Similarly, if MySpace labels someone a sex offender the government's official registry is largely irrelevant to the fact that within the bounds of MySpace that person is now "branded" a sex offender. In legal terms, they're completely innocent and need not worry about being in some government database as one. In realistic terms they're baffled/confused/shocked/traumatized to discover that they've been labeled something they are not.
Don't underestimate the power of "unofficial" labels, brands, or identifications.
Microsoft and Sony showed lip service to casual games prior to launch. Assuming they started development of oodles of casual games 3 months post-Wii, we're still a good year or two away from seeing the fruits of that labor.
The people whom these games are aimed at already know "Wii". These are the same people who, given a management position in charge of a database, will stick to the same obsolete technology because that's what they're familiar with. They aren't going to be dropping their Wiimotes for PS3 or Xbox controllers (even if they can tell you what an xbox is). There isn't mental room for more than one system at a time for many of these people, and right now they and everyone they know have "Wii" sitting there.
To summarize this point, there aren't any games my uncle or aunt would want to play on a 360 or PS3, but my uncle did bruise his finger sinking a ball in WiiPlay because he exuberantly thrust his hand upwards into the ceiling fan.
Point 2: Price
Living in the US, I'm not well aware of the typical prices of the DS or PSP. Nor am I good at understanding the UK mindset or how much of a difference £30 makes (isn't that about $50?). I will agree that at analogous prices all systems and consoles stand on merit (and marketing).
The question: How long will it take the 360 and the PS3 to "marginalize" the price difference? Sony would have to slash its prices by almost half to reach parity with the Wii. Given their reluctance to slash prices at all, and the typical industry rate for price cuts, and we may see "never" as a possibility for PS3 prices matching the Wii. The 360 Core was close to the Wii, but has supposedly been cancelled in favor of Microsoft's online download strategy. Neither of these companies are positioning themselves to close the price gap.
It will probably happen someday, but the question is whether that day will come soon enough to effectively "beat" the Wii.
To add more buttons and analog sticks would defeat the purpose of simplifying gaming for the uninitiated. The Classic Controller is an easy way to support more traditional games without making a "Wall of Buttons and Dongles" the standard.
- when hold horizontal very uncomfortable - pointing sensor is useless in horizontal position
While not as comfortable as the normal position, I don't find the horizontal orientation to be uncomfortable. At this time I can't think of any game which would require the horizontal and the pointer simultaneously. In fact, Paper Mario works on the very principle that you don't have both.
However, I will say that in the horizontal position a number of buttons are in awkward positions to reach. This wouldn't be too big an issue except I haven't found a way on Virtual Console games to remap the controls. In Toejam and Earl, on of the functions I used least was mapped to either 1 or 2 (I can't remember which button) while the action button was mapped to A, making it extremely awkward to simultaneously use and steer.
- rumble only in the Wiimote, not the Nunchuck - rumble is rather weak
The first point is an interesting insight. I don't think it's a game breaking one, but it certainly seems odd.
As for the second point, I'm not sure that's a bad thing. A lot of my friends explicitly disliked the rumble on the GameCube and other consoles because it was overly strong. Most of the time they'd turn it off and go without. A weaker rumble, at least for them, might be a good thing.
- asymmetric design, the Nunchuck looks completly different in terms of shape and button placements then the Wiimote - only half wireless, you still need a cable for nunchuck or classic controller
I'm not sure assymetric design is necessarily bad. Within themselves the nunchuck and the Wiimote are symmetric and easy to understand. Combining them, from my perspective, only complicates matters insofar as getting used to using both at once.
The point of wireless is to untether the player from the console. With the "Dual Wield" setup, this isn't a problem. In the case of the classic controller, it is awkward because the Wiimote itself isn't used.
- no gyros to detect rotation independent from acceleration, making 1:1 mapping extremely limited
I haven't seen Spiderman 3 either, but that's more a function of laziness than anything else.
I gave up on the idea of all out boycotting. If a company is doing some things right and some things wrong, giving them up completely deprives them of feedback that might otherwise push them in the right direction.
That said, Sony hasn't done anything since the launch of the PS3 to push me to buy anything of theirs again.
Too many young'ns with Apple Powerbooks these days.
Back in the day if you wanted a game on your Mac you had very few options. Blizzard, Bungie, Maxis, Broderbund and MacSoft were about it. If you had a Mac back then and gamed you knew these names.
Even if a game was ported to the Mac by some other developer, it was usually horrendously buggy, slow, and you could only play with other Mac players (I'm looking at you Age of Kings).
These facts didn't really begin to change until the iMacs came out and Macs became "cool", or at least popular after some fashion. Of course, it sort of went hand in hand with the decline of PC gaming.
Firstly, Blizzard has a long history of supporting Macs. From the very first WarCraft to WoW, they've always released Mac versions. Given the small number of Mac developers in the old days, that earned Blizzard a place in the home of every Mac gamer.
Secondly, there simply wasn't competition. Blizzard didn't need to work hard on advertising because there was nothing else for people to buy. If you wanted an RTS on the Mac, you bought WarCraft or StarCraft. The other options were buggy, poorly ported, or otherwise incompatible with their PC brethren.
Lastly, they are very good at game design. It's easy for them to program in such a way that a Mac version is barely an effort, as most of the data and code is stored and written in such a way as to be platform inspecific. It's good practice to begin with, and Blizzard does a good job of it.
Looking at the game, it looks like the new units outnumber the old ones by a large amount, or did I not see the patch where Motherships, Phase Prisms, Warprays, Immortals, Phoenixes etc were added to the original?
There's nothing inherently bad about an explicitive. The problem is that there are a great many people who defile these and other words. "Why the fuck did WoW just crash?" is acceptable usage for me. "Y fucking cock fucker WoW fuckingdkfickkc damn fuck whore piss crash!:!:!>!!>" is a blight upon humanity.
Explicitives mean very little when you don't save them for when they're important. No one pays attention when someone know to litter their cusses with other words drops a "fuck" or two. When some pious grandmother who'd never hurt a fly or swear drops a "Damn it", it's noticed.
Why wait? I can submit the report and then forget about it. If I play for 6 hours, I'm there to give the GM more details. If I switch to an alt on the same server, the GM still finds me. If I log off, I get an e-mail explaining what the GM will do. No "waiting" is really involved unless you're going to sit there and do nothing until a GM talks to you.
Do I report "name callers"? No. I report bots, gold spammers, and people with offensive names. Reporting name callers would make my life tougher, as their choices in vocabulary simplify guild recruitment and grouping in general. Someone who strings together explicitives and slurs gives me the early warning signal to "get the hell out of Dodge".
You'll read stories about "Ye Olde Thymes" when testers were often able to pursue opportunities and become designers or "higher" positions in a video gaming organization. Given the larger requirements for positions, the necessity of degrees, and other factors it is not the best way to make your big break.
If you really want to design video games, the best thing you can do is make them yourself. You won't be able to make a super AAA title that way, but you'll have full creative control over your work and something to show for it in a portfolio.
Maybe I'm just weird, but I like my time to be used "efficiently". What I mean by that is, if I want to be doing X activity for some about of time T, I'd like to be able to do X for the entirity of T without interruptions I myself choose to make.
I do not watch TV because the ads interrupt the activity without me wanting them. I do not listen to anything but public radio, and only during non-pledge periods because everything else interrupts my activity with ads. I do not buy games with dynamic ads in them because they draw me out of the game, interrupting my activity.
Problem: GP doesn't like advertisements in video games he paid for. Proposed solution: Get a job. Solution benefits: Money, possible health and retirement plans. Solution detriments: Doesn't do anything about ads in video games the GP paid for. Conclusion: Proposed solution is completely irrelevant to the problem.
A lot of people assume Nolan Bushnell started it all, if only because his work was the catalyst that caused the industry to explode in size and value. Both Bushnell and Baer's roles were absolutely essential to birthing the industry.
However painful it may seem, most industries are born of one or more men inventing something truly interesting. However, their first growth spurt comes when someone else copies that invention and popularizes it. This is, in effect, the respective roles of Baer and Bushnell.
I'd encourage people to read the whole article, including the sidebars. It's a great history lesson for a subject dear to us all.
Sure, blame Web 2.0 for your horribly designed web pages.
The man in the article himself states clearly Web 2.0 is simply the "latest fad". It's simply the most recent in a long stream of red herrings chased by ignorant companies in an attempt to be web savvy.
The root of the problem is that the people who understand web design and make webpages are beholden unto managers, bosses, and other autorities who haven't the faintest idea what a good webpage does or looks like. The web designers bring prototypes, designs and nifty things to these people and get asked stupid questions such as "Is it Web 2.0". They want everything the internet has to offer in their webpage, whether or not it makes any sense for it to be there.
Web 2.0 is another potentially awesome facet of the internet being turned into a collective migraine for web designers.
Admittedly, I haven't checked lately, but the last time I saw membership stats they were below 100,000 in the USA.
The "power" of Scientology is not in how many people profess the "religion", but how much money those people have/had. Past tense included to indicate the trend for Scientology to strip people of all their money and then ditch them (something that would increase "power" while keeping membership small).
Compare their cash reserves and afluent membership now to the 70s or 90s, and we can have a better measure of the situation.
It's not completely off the mark actually, although it isn't entirely accurate either.
If you listen to the media, the PR jargon, and read the game reviews there is a constant presence of "HD". "HD" is all the rage, everyone is doing it, you must see this game in "HD" etc etc. It's highly reminiscent of the early Playstation/Saturn years, just subsitute "Polygons" for "HD".
You don't hear as much about advances in video game AI, or other aspects of what makes a video game complete. While that doesn't mean such things are missing, it does create a perception (which to some degree may be true) that companies are overly focussed on the "HD" portion of games, neglecting everything else.
However, the ideal situation is not one where we forsake graphics, but where graphics (or anything else for that matter) do not get in the way of other aspects of the game.
I remember watching my cousins play NCAA Football, and I was horrified. The game reminded me of half-baked shareware products on the PC, lacking strong artistic assets or polished gameplay. The initial menu was so horrifyingly poor in its artistic design I could hardly believe this was anything but a bargain bin game. However, it wasn't the graphics that were wrong with the game, it was everything.
And that's how it generally is with most of these games. Everything is bad. Occaisionally you'll find a bad game with a nice coat of paint, perpetuating the "ZOMG NO MOAR GRAFX" concept, but for the most part you simply have bad games and good games.
Slashdot Mirror
For me there was something missing in the Christopher Eccleston Doctor. He wasn't the irrepresible, undaunted Doctor of the old days. That, and all the random pop culture getting thrown around didn't help.
So being shocked/hurt/sad/upset/etc. isn't meaningful in a private context?
Perhaps it's semantics, but a "label" exists whether it's public or private, official or unofficial. It doesn't matter if someone writes me a private letter calling me a nerd or places the label in a public address. The label has still been applied, and affects me.
The label contained in such a private letter won't reach into government databases, legal standings etc. The label of a public letter won't either. The point of my arguments isn't that a public or private label will have some "official" effect, but that it will affect the person.
The potential, personal consequence for the woman is meaningful whether or not MySpace publicly announces anything.
From a legal, government standpoint this is true. Reality is not so kind.
Consider the case of OJ Simpson. Bad taste in books to author aside, he's widely believed to have killed his own wife. From a government standpoint he's innocent and not a murderer as that was the outcome of the court case. This has done little to nothing to dissuade people from thinking otherwise.
Similarly, the fact that the government knows the woman in the article is not a sex offender is cold comfort when MySpace continually insists she is. While it's unlikely that her MySpace centric sex offender label will propagate outside of that sphere, her reputation and online identity within that area of the internet have been sullied.
People are not machines that do exactly what the government and society say they should do. Very often they callously judge first and ask questions later.
This isn't an accurate statement. From a government standpoint, she hasn't been labeled anything. That is correct. However, this is not an issue of government at all.
When I am in high school and called a "nerd" I am identified, branded or labeled as such. It doesn't matter that the administration of the school doesn't recognize that my name now hashes to a pool of "nerds". What matters is that other people have labeled me, rightly or wrongly.
Similarly, if MySpace labels someone a sex offender the government's official registry is largely irrelevant to the fact that within the bounds of MySpace that person is now "branded" a sex offender. In legal terms, they're completely innocent and need not worry about being in some government database as one. In realistic terms they're baffled/confused/shocked/traumatized to discover that they've been labeled something they are not.
Don't underestimate the power of "unofficial" labels, brands, or identifications.
I'll second that. Excite Truck reminded me of Jet Moto 2, except with trucks and a cool controller.
Point 1: Casual Games
Microsoft and Sony showed lip service to casual games prior to launch. Assuming they started development of oodles of casual games 3 months post-Wii, we're still a good year or two away from seeing the fruits of that labor.
The people whom these games are aimed at already know "Wii". These are the same people who, given a management position in charge of a database, will stick to the same obsolete technology because that's what they're familiar with. They aren't going to be dropping their Wiimotes for PS3 or Xbox controllers (even if they can tell you what an xbox is). There isn't mental room for more than one system at a time for many of these people, and right now they and everyone they know have "Wii" sitting there.
To summarize this point, there aren't any games my uncle or aunt would want to play on a 360 or PS3, but my uncle did bruise his finger sinking a ball in WiiPlay because he exuberantly thrust his hand upwards into the ceiling fan.
Point 2: Price
Living in the US, I'm not well aware of the typical prices of the DS or PSP. Nor am I good at understanding the UK mindset or how much of a difference £30 makes (isn't that about $50?). I will agree that at analogous prices all systems and consoles stand on merit (and marketing).
The question: How long will it take the 360 and the PS3 to "marginalize" the price difference? Sony would have to slash its prices by almost half to reach parity with the Wii. Given their reluctance to slash prices at all, and the typical industry rate for price cuts, and we may see "never" as a possibility for PS3 prices matching the Wii. The 360 Core was close to the Wii, but has supposedly been cancelled in favor of Microsoft's online download strategy. Neither of these companies are positioning themselves to close the price gap.
It will probably happen someday, but the question is whether that day will come soon enough to effectively "beat" the Wii.
To add more buttons and analog sticks would defeat the purpose of simplifying gaming for the uninitiated. The Classic Controller is an easy way to support more traditional games without making a "Wall of Buttons and Dongles" the standard.
While not as comfortable as the normal position, I don't find the horizontal orientation to be uncomfortable. At this time I can't think of any game which would require the horizontal and the pointer simultaneously. In fact, Paper Mario works on the very principle that you don't have both.
However, I will say that in the horizontal position a number of buttons are in awkward positions to reach. This wouldn't be too big an issue except I haven't found a way on Virtual Console games to remap the controls. In Toejam and Earl, on of the functions I used least was mapped to either 1 or 2 (I can't remember which button) while the action button was mapped to A, making it extremely awkward to simultaneously use and steer.
The first point is an interesting insight. I don't think it's a game breaking one, but it certainly seems odd.
As for the second point, I'm not sure that's a bad thing. A lot of my friends explicitly disliked the rumble on the GameCube and other consoles because it was overly strong. Most of the time they'd turn it off and go without. A weaker rumble, at least for them, might be a good thing.
I'm not sure assymetric design is necessarily bad. Within themselves the nunchuck and the Wiimote are symmetric and easy to understand. Combining them, from my perspective, only complicates matters insofar as getting used to using both at once.
The point of wireless is to untether the player from the console. With the "Dual Wield" setup, this isn't a problem. In the case of the classic controller, it is awkward because the Wiimote itself isn't used.
Which rotation?
I haven't seen Spiderman 3 either, but that's more a function of laziness than anything else.
I gave up on the idea of all out boycotting. If a company is doing some things right and some things wrong, giving them up completely deprives them of feedback that might otherwise push them in the right direction.
That said, Sony hasn't done anything since the launch of the PS3 to push me to buy anything of theirs again.
Too many young'ns with Apple Powerbooks these days.
Back in the day if you wanted a game on your Mac you had very few options. Blizzard, Bungie, Maxis, Broderbund and MacSoft were about it. If you had a Mac back then and gamed you knew these names.
Even if a game was ported to the Mac by some other developer, it was usually horrendously buggy, slow, and you could only play with other Mac players (I'm looking at you Age of Kings).
These facts didn't really begin to change until the iMacs came out and Macs became "cool", or at least popular after some fashion. Of course, it sort of went hand in hand with the decline of PC gaming.
Anyway, get off my lawn.
Firstly, Blizzard has a long history of supporting Macs. From the very first WarCraft to WoW, they've always released Mac versions. Given the small number of Mac developers in the old days, that earned Blizzard a place in the home of every Mac gamer.
Secondly, there simply wasn't competition. Blizzard didn't need to work hard on advertising because there was nothing else for people to buy. If you wanted an RTS on the Mac, you bought WarCraft or StarCraft. The other options were buggy, poorly ported, or otherwise incompatible with their PC brethren.
Lastly, they are very good at game design. It's easy for them to program in such a way that a Mac version is barely an effort, as most of the data and code is stored and written in such a way as to be platform inspecific. It's good practice to begin with, and Blizzard does a good job of it.
I wouldn't wine about it if they didn't.
I personally was disappointed with SupCom not because of the graphics, but because I expected micro to not be important at all.
What I found was, at least in early game, if I didn't explicitly order individual units I'd lose every battle.
This was back in the beta, so maybe things changed.
"A few more units"?
Looking at the game, it looks like the new units outnumber the old ones by a large amount, or did I not see the patch where Motherships, Phase Prisms, Warprays, Immortals, Phoenixes etc were added to the original?
There's nothing inherently bad about an explicitive. The problem is that there are a great many people who defile these and other words. "Why the fuck did WoW just crash?" is acceptable usage for me. "Y fucking cock fucker WoW fuckingdkfickkc damn fuck whore piss crash!:!:!>!!>" is a blight upon humanity.
Explicitives mean very little when you don't save them for when they're important. No one pays attention when someone know to litter their cusses with other words drops a "fuck" or two. When some pious grandmother who'd never hurt a fly or swear drops a "Damn it", it's noticed.
Moderation in all things.
Why wait? I can submit the report and then forget about it. If I play for 6 hours, I'm there to give the GM more details. If I switch to an alt on the same server, the GM still finds me. If I log off, I get an e-mail explaining what the GM will do. No "waiting" is really involved unless you're going to sit there and do nothing until a GM talks to you.
Do I report "name callers"? No. I report bots, gold spammers, and people with offensive names. Reporting name callers would make my life tougher, as their choices in vocabulary simplify guild recruitment and grouping in general. Someone who strings together explicitives and slurs gives me the early warning signal to "get the hell out of Dodge".
...but does it run lin... er... WoW... I mean... nevermind.
You'll read stories about "Ye Olde Thymes" when testers were often able to pursue opportunities and become designers or "higher" positions in a video gaming organization. Given the larger requirements for positions, the necessity of degrees, and other factors it is not the best way to make your big break.
If you really want to design video games, the best thing you can do is make them yourself. You won't be able to make a super AAA title that way, but you'll have full creative control over your work and something to show for it in a portfolio.
I understand completely.
Maybe I'm just weird, but I like my time to be used "efficiently". What I mean by that is, if I want to be doing X activity for some about of time T, I'd like to be able to do X for the entirity of T without interruptions I myself choose to make.
I do not watch TV because the ads interrupt the activity without me wanting them.
I do not listen to anything but public radio, and only during non-pledge periods because everything else interrupts my activity with ads.
I do not buy games with dynamic ads in them because they draw me out of the game, interrupting my activity.
Problem: GP doesn't like advertisements in video games he paid for.
Proposed solution: Get a job.
Solution benefits: Money, possible health and retirement plans.
Solution detriments: Doesn't do anything about ads in video games the GP paid for.
Conclusion: Proposed solution is completely irrelevant to the problem.
At least you're "profound".
A lot of people assume Nolan Bushnell started it all, if only because his work was the catalyst that caused the industry to explode in size and value. Both Bushnell and Baer's roles were absolutely essential to birthing the industry.
However painful it may seem, most industries are born of one or more men inventing something truly interesting. However, their first growth spurt comes when someone else copies that invention and popularizes it. This is, in effect, the respective roles of Baer and Bushnell.
I'd encourage people to read the whole article, including the sidebars. It's a great history lesson for a subject dear to us all.
Sure, blame Web 2.0 for your horribly designed web pages.
The man in the article himself states clearly Web 2.0 is simply the "latest fad". It's simply the most recent in a long stream of red herrings chased by ignorant companies in an attempt to be web savvy.
The root of the problem is that the people who understand web design and make webpages are beholden unto managers, bosses, and other autorities who haven't the faintest idea what a good webpage does or looks like. The web designers bring prototypes, designs and nifty things to these people and get asked stupid questions such as "Is it Web 2.0". They want everything the internet has to offer in their webpage, whether or not it makes any sense for it to be there.
Web 2.0 is another potentially awesome facet of the internet being turned into a collective migraine for web designers.
The "power" of Scientology is not in how many people profess the "religion", but how much money those people have/had. Past tense included to indicate the trend for Scientology to strip people of all their money and then ditch them (something that would increase "power" while keeping membership small).
Compare their cash reserves and afluent membership now to the 70s or 90s, and we can have a better measure of the situation.
It's not completely off the mark actually, although it isn't entirely accurate either.
If you listen to the media, the PR jargon, and read the game reviews there is a constant presence of "HD". "HD" is all the rage, everyone is doing it, you must see this game in "HD" etc etc. It's highly reminiscent of the early Playstation/Saturn years, just subsitute "Polygons" for "HD".
You don't hear as much about advances in video game AI, or other aspects of what makes a video game complete. While that doesn't mean such things are missing, it does create a perception (which to some degree may be true) that companies are overly focussed on the "HD" portion of games, neglecting everything else.
However, the ideal situation is not one where we forsake graphics, but where graphics (or anything else for that matter) do not get in the way of other aspects of the game.
I remember watching my cousins play NCAA Football, and I was horrified. The game reminded me of half-baked shareware products on the PC, lacking strong artistic assets or polished gameplay. The initial menu was so horrifyingly poor in its artistic design I could hardly believe this was anything but a bargain bin game. However, it wasn't the graphics that were wrong with the game, it was everything.
And that's how it generally is with most of these games. Everything is bad. Occaisionally you'll find a bad game with a nice coat of paint, perpetuating the "ZOMG NO MOAR GRAFX" concept, but for the most part you simply have bad games and good games.
class PS3 throws ClockCycles {}
class Wii throws WiiMote {}