I personally went through hell in school, and it was only by the grace of a pair of devoted parents and one extremely awesome best friend that I'm not neurotic, emotionally unstable, or bearing any of the typical horrific scars others in my position graduated the public school system with.
At the same time, what I went through was nothing compared to what I saw other people go through.
School is exactly like the world. Everyday there's hell on earth, but most of the people who can do anything about it are either ignorant or simply don't care so long as it doesn't affect them.
I don't endorse blaming others for your own problems, but it can be infuriating when people in a position to do something don't help you. It doesn't make it right to hate or blame them, but it can certainly motivate someone to do so.
I'm not attempting to shift the blame. I'm only attempting to show how it's possible for someone else to have come to blame and hate others so strongly as to do something like this.
While succinct and perhaps insightful, your statements are the kind of reactions I mentioned in my post. They don't help people who can't already help themselves.
I wonder about that. I never let myself be satisfied with blaming others. Instead, I turned to my faith in God. He's the reason I would credit for my being able to hang on to humanity in dark times.
Ditto. I'm not the person I detailed, and I can't claim to have gone through something quite so hellish, but I went through some tough times in school. If I didn't have supportive and strong parents, and God, I'd probably have gone nuts.
Some people go through hell and come out normal people. Some people come out scarred. Some people come out psychotic. Of the last group, some small subset takes it out on everyone else through violence.
I don't blame the school, its students, or anyone but the shooter for what happened, but it's possible the shooter did.
I think it's proper to forbid such tasteless jokes.
Even if it's targeted at the shooter, it's trivializing his actions. Whether intended or not, you're sending a message to anyone affected by these horrific events that this terrible experience they're going through doesn't matter.
That's not a message I think we should want to send.
I can't speak for all school shootings, but the shooters in the Columbine Massacre were not of age to buy arms. They certainly didn't get guns while sane and then lose it later.
There's nothing wrong with discussing what's going on, it's perfectly natural human behaviour. When 9/11 happend, first thing I did was sit down with friends in the cafeteria and talked. Granted, it was largely about how shocked we were, how we knew people there, and how horrible it was.
It's the political schilling, the jokes, and the "OMGMEDIA" that's horrifying.
There are any number of reasons, and they are all very real.
For example, imagine that suddenly your dear and loving parents split apart violently. Your once placid and happy life is sundered apart. Instead of caring, your friends (if you're lucky enough have any) shrug it off. They might have gone through divorce and think it's much ado about nothing or perhaps they simply don't understand.
Meanwhile life only gets worse. It isn't just that no one understands, no one wants to. No one makes the effort to connect and communicate, or not enough people do. You only get to watch as everyone around them appears happy and complacent. They're having fun, playing games, living normal lives and crying about silly things like how their boyfriend dumped them. Boohoo, your soul is only tearing itself apart and no one notices.
The wound festers, and before long you hate everyone and everything. They're is so happy like sheep, ignorant and uncaring about the injustices that go on around them. They don't fucking care, so long as they get to have their stupid, superficial relationships and screw each other while others suffer. They're more than willing to spend $15 a month on some remote child in africa but to actually lift a finger themselves, too hard for the bastards.
Demons all of them. They're talking about you behind your back. They're pointing you out, you're the weirdo. The anti-social ass who chased away all those fuckers who were your "friends". No one wants anything to do with you, or doesn't know you're unclean. You practically don't even exist in the feeble minds of these bitches. Some socially disfigured leper.
Damn those fuckers to hell. You play nice, you're a "primadonna" because you had a nervous breakdown when your parents split. You play rough, and you're a lowlife scumfuck without the sophistication to breed. Fuck'em all and their social games. They'll see. You'll wake them up and they'll see. They'll see themselves for the compassionless, stupid fucks they are. Yeah, it'll be sweet.
Is that how this happened? Probably not. However, it's suprising how quickly good people can go bad when there's no one willing or able to support them.
When Spring '08 comes around this question will have been answered, and likely in the same fashion as the DS. That's about how long it took for the DS to come unto its own, and I expect it will take a similar amount of time for the Wii.
My sources are the official forums, which have almost daily posts about players quitting and all their friends quitting, and also from in game friends on 3 different servers.
Those kinds of posts have been seen on the forums since the game released. It's nothing new.
Infact there was a forum post that was 25 pages long post about this not too long ago. This might be the old timers who are now bored of it, but I'm sure that represents a hefty chunk of the pie.
You're making a fundamental assumption that the official forums represent any significant portion of the pie to begin with. While active, I'd hardly say any significant fraction of the playerbase posts on the forums consistantly. Additionally, the forums are not necessarily representative of the actual demographics and beliefs of the larger player base. People more often complain than they do compliment.
The Blizzard statistics also seem to contradict themselves, give their account numbers as totaling 7 million, while their headline proclaims 8.5 million play the game. If you want me to quote official figures, sorry I don't work for Blizzard and I doubt Blizzard will ever post a PR with "WoW account subscribers down by 1 million since March!".
Where did you get the first number there? I'm aware Blizzard recently announced hitting 8.5 million players, but you aren't clear on where the first number came from.
Above and beyond all of that, you make the fundamental assumption that because people play WoW, they will not buy or play other PC games. A lot of people take this view. However, consider many of those who play WoW are the same kind of people who would play Starcraft, Diablo, or any other single game [i]exclusively[/i] anyway. I know these people, because my friends and I are those kinds of people. For my entire freshman year of College, the only PC game I played was Diablo 2, and I'd already played that for a year. Sophomore year, it was more Diablo 2. I played Age of Wonders II Junior year (borrowed from a friend), and more Diablo 2. Then my Senior year I went to Japan, then came back and picked up WoW. A year later, I'm still playing WoW and now have the expansion. Somewhere in there I picked up Warcraft III and it's expansion, but the first disconnect hack killed the game for me.
In 6 years of PC gaming I bought 3 games and 3 expansion packs. That's one measley $50 purchase per year. Thanks to WoW, I'm spending three times that a year. More if you factor in that I paid for my brother's copy and subscription, and subsequently the subscriptions for friends of mine as well. I'm a Wowvangelist of sorts.
People like me are not all there is to PC gaming, but we do make up a significant number of the people supposedly spending less money on PC gaming.
People should consider art in both the "Now" and "Then" capacities. Otherwise we'd slam a lot of books such as Uncle Tom's Cabin and Huckleberry Fin for racist content.
Compared to games today, SMB is certainly archaic and even lacking in features. However, examining it against its competition at the time reveals a game that was head and shoulders above the competition. To my knowledge, side-scrolling platformers hadn't been done before that point.
It's also rather telling when children today are often found enjoying games that are sport even fewer features, worse graphics, and horrific control on flash portals.
You might be interested in Age of Wonders. It's a very good game, and even now as I look at the logo again I remember the hours I spent upon it. My WoW addiction quakes in fear that I might take this game up once more.
It is important to note that at this moment console systems take in greater revenue than PCs, at least according to the article.
I'm somewhat skeptical about it, because the chart at the end is based of a analyst report from approximately one month after the launches of the PS3 and Wii. While the report itself is not suspect, you'd think there'd be a similarly credible and more up to date analysis and projection after 6 months.
It also seems to be weird citing a report that places a large emphasis on success for Microsoft and Sony's systems in an article alluding to an industry crash.
I really wish this "next-gen" term would die, it only obfuscates meaning. It's an "in word", something only "insiders" understand and "get". Even then, what does it actually mean? It seems to be used for both the current generation of systems (That's right, current. They've been released, it's not "next" anymore) and sometimes to talk about HD.
There will be no Video Games Industry Crash. However, we may see a dramatic shift in the industry.
What we are seeing is the end of hardcore dominance of the industry, nothing more or less. The perceived demands of the hardcore are insustainable, driving companies to make consoles that lose them money in order to gain some ill-defined future benefit. Whether it is the companies or the hardcore themselves that are to blame for the previously shrinking industry is uncertain and largely irrelevant.
What we are seeing is the introduction of video games as a true form of mass media. Talk to anyone on the street and you will be hard pressed to find someone in this nation who hasn't read a book, watching a movie, or viewed a painting or photograph. What's more, each of these forms of media has subsections that cater to particular tastes. Video games have not been mass media because they didn't reach everyone, only an elite few who knew what was going on. Now the "casual" gamers and even those who do not game at all have been targeted, and they will be the driving force in the future.
Right we are in transition, and it's confusing people. Depending on the person, some hardcore gamers are afraid that the Wii and DS are the harbingers of the end. Will games like Guilty Gear, Counter-Strike, and Armored Core survive in an industry focused on the majority? Having been catered to for decades, the prospect of losing attention is frightening. However, the fear is unwarranted. Despite the fact that games like the Sims, Bejeweled and all manner of "casual" games have invaded and perhaps dominated the PC, we still see games such as Supreme Commander, Hellgate: London, and the odd MMORPG tax video cards in SLI and quad-core CPUs.
In the future, the majority of games will be like summer blockbuster films. This is not bad, because the volume of games will increase such that we will still see the same number of "hardcore" titles, including AAA ones.
There will be no crash, but there will be a paradigm shift/revolution.
I actually did that about a month ago. My PS2 completely crapped out. For a moment I considered getting a PS3, but then I realized all I wanted to do was play Azure Dreams. $600 vs ~$100 was a no brainer.
I don't think you understand the implications of that book.
Nintendo restricted the number of titles a developer could release in a single year to 5. That seems a rather large number now, but then developement cycles were much faster. The measure was taken to combat the "shovelware" which had been a major factor in the industry crash.
Not everything Nintendo did in those days was benevolent or good, but artificially creating shortages of systems was not one of their activities. They didn't produce as many copies of games as many developers wanted, but that isn't analogous to holding back on system production.
Citing that book as proof that Nintendo is underproducing Wiis on purpose is a bad argument. Even if the book was definitive proof of past artificial shortages (owning a copy myself I am certain it is not) that is all it proves. Just as proving that Joe Schmoe robbed a bank in the past doesn't prove that he robbed a bank recently.
I may be have forgotten an important passage in the book, so if there is something I missed please reference the chapter or page.
My only problem with Trauma center is that damn star. Their coding for that is infuriating. Rather than drawing brush style, you have that crazy "When is it going to figure out I changed directions?" line drawing technique. I find myself constantly drawing strange symbols I don't understand, because it doesn't understand what I'm doing.
Bots are considered cheating because they allow players to bypass game content. They exempt players from the rules of the game. Everyone has to deal with the time investment required to advance, except people who bot. That is unfair, and against EULA.
I have to disagree with the RIAA comparison. Blizzard would have to be going after the individual players responsible for botting rather than the root of the actual program for that to be a fair analogy.
That and they aren't being extortionists. They're trying to shut down the program first and foremost.
Training dogs for the blind is cheating. They can use their own eyes. Subtitle news & films for the deaf is cheating. They can use their own ears. Making law making sure that people on wheelchair can go in shop, public buldings & so on is cheating. They can use their own legs. Yes life isn't fair... Using bot because you don't have the time to grind is cheating. Take your time to grind.
The bot isn't the same as the others. Training dogs, ramps, and subtitles are required so that those with handicaps can have the same opportunities as everyone else. Whether they have the time or the will to pursue them is a different matter.
As a WoW player, you have all the same opportunities as everyone else. Your life may be structured in such a way that you do not want to commit as much of it to the game, but that is your choice.
It may not seem fair to the 9-5 adults who have to care for families, but the opportunity is there. It may require more of you that you're willing to give, but that doesn't mean you couldn't possibly do it. If that's a problem and interferes with your enjoyment of the game, you might want to find a different game to play.
Now, I start to think about canceling my account (or perhaps not), but in a more fun way. By not just playing the game, but by playing with the game. This by writing an IA who can play the game. If I am bad at it, Wizard will cancel my account it is fair play, and if I am not so bad at it, the bot will play WoW and I will play and have a lot of fun programming and extending my bot:)
The problem is your bot is fun at the expense of others. Both casual and hardcore players are hurt by bots like yours. They mess up the economy, interfere with other people's playing, and only serve to greater emphasize the importance of time invested. This causes players to stop playing, Blizzard to cancel accounts, and generally creates hassle on all sides that only serves one person.
Programming the bot might be a fun experiment, and something I can understand wanting to try. However, actually using it or distributing it I can not endorse.
While designing your game to minimize the ability to cheat is a nice notion, I'm not sure it's one I can endorse in terms of outright game design (actual code is a different matter).
Quite simply, any number of interesting and fun concepts might be killed just because one could cheat or make bots. While I dislike cheaters, I think there are better ways to fight them than to ruin the game because of a small number of jerks.
Slashdot Mirror
I personally went through hell in school, and it was only by the grace of a pair of devoted parents and one extremely awesome best friend that I'm not neurotic, emotionally unstable, or bearing any of the typical horrific scars others in my position graduated the public school system with.
At the same time, what I went through was nothing compared to what I saw other people go through.
School is exactly like the world. Everyday there's hell on earth, but most of the people who can do anything about it are either ignorant or simply don't care so long as it doesn't affect them.
I don't endorse blaming others for your own problems, but it can be infuriating when people in a position to do something don't help you. It doesn't make it right to hate or blame them, but it can certainly motivate someone to do so.
I'm not attempting to shift the blame. I'm only attempting to show how it's possible for someone else to have come to blame and hate others so strongly as to do something like this.
While succinct and perhaps insightful, your statements are the kind of reactions I mentioned in my post. They don't help people who can't already help themselves.
Ditto. I'm not the person I detailed, and I can't claim to have gone through something quite so hellish, but I went through some tough times in school. If I didn't have supportive and strong parents, and God, I'd probably have gone nuts.
Some people go through hell and come out normal people. Some people come out scarred. Some people come out psychotic. Of the last group, some small subset takes it out on everyone else through violence.
I don't blame the school, its students, or anyone but the shooter for what happened, but it's possible the shooter did.
This is not funny, and tasteless given the circumstances. It should not have been modded up.
I think it's proper to forbid such tasteless jokes.
Even if it's targeted at the shooter, it's trivializing his actions. Whether intended or not, you're sending a message to anyone affected by these horrific events that this terrible experience they're going through doesn't matter.
That's not a message I think we should want to send.
I can't speak for all school shootings, but the shooters in the Columbine Massacre were not of age to buy arms. They certainly didn't get guns while sane and then lose it later.
There's nothing wrong with discussing what's going on, it's perfectly natural human behaviour. When 9/11 happend, first thing I did was sit down with friends in the cafeteria and talked. Granted, it was largely about how shocked we were, how we knew people there, and how horrible it was.
It's the political schilling, the jokes, and the "OMGMEDIA" that's horrifying.
There are any number of reasons, and they are all very real.
For example, imagine that suddenly your dear and loving parents split apart violently. Your once placid and happy life is sundered apart. Instead of caring, your friends (if you're lucky enough have any) shrug it off. They might have gone through divorce and think it's much ado about nothing or perhaps they simply don't understand.
Meanwhile life only gets worse. It isn't just that no one understands, no one wants to. No one makes the effort to connect and communicate, or not enough people do. You only get to watch as everyone around them appears happy and complacent. They're having fun, playing games, living normal lives and crying about silly things like how their boyfriend dumped them. Boohoo, your soul is only tearing itself apart and no one notices.
The wound festers, and before long you hate everyone and everything. They're is so happy like sheep, ignorant and uncaring about the injustices that go on around them. They don't fucking care, so long as they get to have their stupid, superficial relationships and screw each other while others suffer. They're more than willing to spend $15 a month on some remote child in africa but to actually lift a finger themselves, too hard for the bastards.
Demons all of them. They're talking about you behind your back. They're pointing you out, you're the weirdo. The anti-social ass who chased away all those fuckers who were your "friends". No one wants anything to do with you, or doesn't know you're unclean. You practically don't even exist in the feeble minds of these bitches. Some socially disfigured leper.
Damn those fuckers to hell. You play nice, you're a "primadonna" because you had a nervous breakdown when your parents split. You play rough, and you're a lowlife scumfuck without the sophistication to breed. Fuck'em all and their social games. They'll see. You'll wake them up and they'll see. They'll see themselves for the compassionless, stupid fucks they are. Yeah, it'll be sweet.
Is that how this happened? Probably not. However, it's suprising how quickly good people can go bad when there's no one willing or able to support them.
I'm going to call DS on this one.
When Spring '08 comes around this question will have been answered, and likely in the same fashion as the DS. That's about how long it took for the DS to come unto its own, and I expect it will take a similar amount of time for the Wii.
Those kinds of posts have been seen on the forums since the game released. It's nothing new.
You're making a fundamental assumption that the official forums represent any significant portion of the pie to begin with. While active, I'd hardly say any significant fraction of the playerbase posts on the forums consistantly. Additionally, the forums are not necessarily representative of the actual demographics and beliefs of the larger player base. People more often complain than they do compliment.
Where did you get the first number there? I'm aware Blizzard recently announced hitting 8.5 million players, but you aren't clear on where the first number came from.
Above and beyond all of that, you make the fundamental assumption that because people play WoW, they will not buy or play other PC games. A lot of people take this view. However, consider many of those who play WoW are the same kind of people who would play Starcraft, Diablo, or any other single game [i]exclusively[/i] anyway. I know these people, because my friends and I are those kinds of people. For my entire freshman year of College, the only PC game I played was Diablo 2, and I'd already played that for a year. Sophomore year, it was more Diablo 2. I played Age of Wonders II Junior year (borrowed from a friend), and more Diablo 2. Then my Senior year I went to Japan, then came back and picked up WoW. A year later, I'm still playing WoW and now have the expansion. Somewhere in there I picked up Warcraft III and it's expansion, but the first disconnect hack killed the game for me.
In 6 years of PC gaming I bought 3 games and 3 expansion packs. That's one measley $50 purchase per year. Thanks to WoW, I'm spending three times that a year. More if you factor in that I paid for my brother's copy and subscription, and subsequently the subscriptions for friends of mine as well. I'm a Wowvangelist of sorts.
People like me are not all there is to PC gaming, but we do make up a significant number of the people supposedly spending less money on PC gaming.
Make it a networkable game?
Make it an emulatable NES/SNES/N64/TGFX16 rom?
Get the necessary papers?
Stalk Miyamoto?
People should consider art in both the "Now" and "Then" capacities. Otherwise we'd slam a lot of books such as Uncle Tom's Cabin and Huckleberry Fin for racist content.
Compared to games today, SMB is certainly archaic and even lacking in features. However, examining it against its competition at the time reveals a game that was head and shoulders above the competition. To my knowledge, side-scrolling platformers hadn't been done before that point.
It's also rather telling when children today are often found enjoying games that are sport even fewer features, worse graphics, and horrific control on flash portals.
You might be interested in Age of Wonders. It's a very good game, and even now as I look at the logo again I remember the hours I spent upon it. My WoW addiction quakes in fear that I might take this game up once more.
It is important to note that at this moment console systems take in greater revenue than PCs, at least according to the article.
I'm somewhat skeptical about it, because the chart at the end is based of a analyst report from approximately one month after the launches of the PS3 and Wii. While the report itself is not suspect, you'd think there'd be a similarly credible and more up to date analysis and projection after 6 months.
It also seems to be weird citing a report that places a large emphasis on success for Microsoft and Sony's systems in an article alluding to an industry crash.
You mean like Mario Andretti Racing?
It's not Paper Mario 2. That was Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door for the Gamecube.
The Paper Mario game on the Wii is either Paper Mario 3, or it's own game (given that it's primarily a Platformer rather than an RPG).
And yes, it is good. Although I've found myself longing for another Paper Mario game in a pure RPG fashion.
So they're talking about the PS4 and Xbox 720?
I really wish this "next-gen" term would die, it only obfuscates meaning. It's an "in word", something only "insiders" understand and "get". Even then, what does it actually mean? It seems to be used for both the current generation of systems (That's right, current. They've been released, it's not "next" anymore) and sometimes to talk about HD.
I've personally come to loath the term.
There will be no Video Games Industry Crash. However, we may see a dramatic shift in the industry.
What we are seeing is the end of hardcore dominance of the industry, nothing more or less. The perceived demands of the hardcore are insustainable, driving companies to make consoles that lose them money in order to gain some ill-defined future benefit. Whether it is the companies or the hardcore themselves that are to blame for the previously shrinking industry is uncertain and largely irrelevant.
What we are seeing is the introduction of video games as a true form of mass media. Talk to anyone on the street and you will be hard pressed to find someone in this nation who hasn't read a book, watching a movie, or viewed a painting or photograph. What's more, each of these forms of media has subsections that cater to particular tastes. Video games have not been mass media because they didn't reach everyone, only an elite few who knew what was going on. Now the "casual" gamers and even those who do not game at all have been targeted, and they will be the driving force in the future.
Right we are in transition, and it's confusing people. Depending on the person, some hardcore gamers are afraid that the Wii and DS are the harbingers of the end. Will games like Guilty Gear, Counter-Strike, and Armored Core survive in an industry focused on the majority? Having been catered to for decades, the prospect of losing attention is frightening. However, the fear is unwarranted. Despite the fact that games like the Sims, Bejeweled and all manner of "casual" games have invaded and perhaps dominated the PC, we still see games such as Supreme Commander, Hellgate: London, and the odd MMORPG tax video cards in SLI and quad-core CPUs.
In the future, the majority of games will be like summer blockbuster films. This is not bad, because the volume of games will increase such that we will still see the same number of "hardcore" titles, including AAA ones.
There will be no crash, but there will be a paradigm shift/revolution.
I actually did that about a month ago. My PS2 completely crapped out. For a moment I considered getting a PS3, but then I realized all I wanted to do was play Azure Dreams. $600 vs ~$100 was a no brainer.
I don't think you understand the implications of that book.
Nintendo restricted the number of titles a developer could release in a single year to 5. That seems a rather large number now, but then developement cycles were much faster. The measure was taken to combat the "shovelware" which had been a major factor in the industry crash.
Not everything Nintendo did in those days was benevolent or good, but artificially creating shortages of systems was not one of their activities. They didn't produce as many copies of games as many developers wanted, but that isn't analogous to holding back on system production.
Citing that book as proof that Nintendo is underproducing Wiis on purpose is a bad argument. Even if the book was definitive proof of past artificial shortages (owning a copy myself I am certain it is not) that is all it proves. Just as proving that Joe Schmoe robbed a bank in the past doesn't prove that he robbed a bank recently.
I may be have forgotten an important passage in the book, so if there is something I missed please reference the chapter or page.
My only problem with Trauma center is that damn star. Their coding for that is infuriating. Rather than drawing brush style, you have that crazy "When is it going to figure out I changed directions?" line drawing technique. I find myself constantly drawing strange symbols I don't understand, because it doesn't understand what I'm doing.
Outside of that, I love the game.
They aren't implying that at all.
Bots are considered cheating because they allow players to bypass game content. They exempt players from the rules of the game. Everyone has to deal with the time investment required to advance, except people who bot. That is unfair, and against EULA.
I have to disagree with the RIAA comparison. Blizzard would have to be going after the individual players responsible for botting rather than the root of the actual program for that to be a fair analogy.
That and they aren't being extortionists. They're trying to shut down the program first and foremost.
The bot isn't the same as the others. Training dogs, ramps, and subtitles are required so that those with handicaps can have the same opportunities as everyone else. Whether they have the time or the will to pursue them is a different matter.
As a WoW player, you have all the same opportunities as everyone else. Your life may be structured in such a way that you do not want to commit as much of it to the game, but that is your choice.
It may not seem fair to the 9-5 adults who have to care for families, but the opportunity is there. It may require more of you that you're willing to give, but that doesn't mean you couldn't possibly do it. If that's a problem and interferes with your enjoyment of the game, you might want to find a different game to play.
The problem is your bot is fun at the expense of others. Both casual and hardcore players are hurt by bots like yours. They mess up the economy, interfere with other people's playing, and only serve to greater emphasize the importance of time invested. This causes players to stop playing, Blizzard to cancel accounts, and generally creates hassle on all sides that only serves one person.
Programming the bot might be a fun experiment, and something I can understand wanting to try. However, actually using it or distributing it I can not endorse.
While designing your game to minimize the ability to cheat is a nice notion, I'm not sure it's one I can endorse in terms of outright game design (actual code is a different matter).
Quite simply, any number of interesting and fun concepts might be killed just because one could cheat or make bots. While I dislike cheaters, I think there are better ways to fight them than to ruin the game because of a small number of jerks.