You're preaching to the choir. Gimme a decent single player game and I'll get more fun out of it than every MMO I've ever played. Stairmasters are less fun but using them regularly keeps you from getting chest pains every time you get up for more chips.
Another issue is the one of time spent playing. Single player games have a maximum number of hours of play before you've done everything the game was programmed to do, which didn't get much above 60 hours and usually hovered around 30. With only 30 hours of gameplay per game you needed to go out and find new ones every now and then. Multiplayer games increased the number of playable hours by allowing mindless repetition of a scenario over and over with other people. Lots of fun, but it only raised the playable hours by an order of magnitude at best. MMOs have shattered this play-time boundary by requiring even more mindless repetition with even more people. Grinding up a fully epic equipped character on WoW takes literally weeks of play time.
The bottom line: forget money spent on games. If people were spending too much on MMOs, they would just pirate the games they wanted to play and declare themselves the winner over the EVAL CAPITALISM MONSTAR. The sad thing is that people who play MMOs can't even afford to pirate new games because they need to spend the time getting more nature resist gear for higher level instance runs.
The story you just related about Christ underscores the very counterintuitive, very real problem with the charity work Bill Gates and others do. On the one hand he is providing what most of us would consider an obscene amount of money to a cause that could certainly use it. On the other hand, he still lives in a gajillion dollar house where he might as well be Scrooge MacDuck swimming in his piles of gold coins. His gift is certainly large, and will presumably do untold amounts of good in the world, but is it really generous?
The widow giving her two mites or the doctor working for nothing in Sudan or the aid worker sacrificing his or her time, health, and energy are providing a negligible fraction of the economic benefit of the Gates Foundation. They are also giving more than Bill Gates, Bono or most likely any of us could concieve of giving.
Is Bill Gates' donation a good thing? Certainly. Should Steve Jobs and others start doing the same? Again, no question. Do any of them deserve to be hailed as heroes in Time Magazine for giving away money they can afford to lose? No, they don't. The only difference between what Bill Gates does for charity and what most other people do is scale.
I'm not saying everyone needs to be a martyr or a hero, nor am I a short-sighted, bleeding-heart socialist demagogue preaching economic equality at any cost. I'm saying that we should honor the real martyrs and heroes and not those who happen to give more dollars. The appropriate response to Bill Gates' charitable donation (and any donation like it, of any scale) should be a simple "Thank you very much, we really appreciate your support. Come back when you have more." I know that's what I hear when I donate to charity and I think Gates should get the same.
Was waiting for someone to reference that quote. First thing that came to my mind when I read the article.
Re:Why wouldn't they be happy?
on
Pixar For Sale?
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· Score: 1
I read through this thread a bit and it seems to me that half the people here think that Pixar consists of a dozen creative geniuses and Steve Jobs. The vast majority of employees are low level programmers, paper pushers, bean counters, etc. who aren't really involved with the product at all. For the talented, creative artists, writers, designers, etc. a buyout will either give them a fair deal or an excuse to go work for another company who will give them a better deal. The other 90% of the workforce usually gets a pink slip and a box to put their stuff in. Pixar has many talented employees. It has way, way more merely competent employees who have done their jobs well for years and who now may face a harsh reorganisation. It's the reality but it's not fun all the same.
History is litteres with good companies slamming into the ground full of happy, motivated, skilled, productive employees due the ineptitude of management and their lack of vision and leadership.4
History is littered with examples of well run companies that have high employee turnover and low productivity because they treat employees like garbage. Happy employees are motivated to work harder, work later, and keep their jobs instead of looking for new ones. Disgruntled employees are motivated to steal office furniture, leave early, and schedule job interviews during their lunch hours. This may shock and dismay you but...
...turnover and productivity are actually very important to shareholders.
A happy, motivated employee is worth more in real dollars than a disgruntled one. The idea is that you don't spend more money making employees happy than is warranted by the productivity and retention level that having happy employees provides. So you can stop making sarcastic arguments about "warm and fuzzy" feelings and understand that there is a quantifiable reason to make employees happy even if you are a soulless monster.
Your philosophy about employee happiness not mattering is how people thought at the turn of the century. In short, buy a zoot suit, top hat, and monocle and go back to 1910 where you can own a factory and crap all over employees all you want without a loss in competetiveness.
Halo was a Mac title until MS came along. When MS bought Bungie they rushed it into production. It wasn't just a serendipitous coincidence that made Halo the flagship launch title for the Xbox.
America is the evil empire run by puritanical fascists and only by protesting everything they do can we ever hope to topple them!/hyperbole
As long as we have independent forums for discussion by individuals (electronic and otherwise) then people will be watching the government and discussing every minute detail of their actions. Throughout human history power has been abused and throughout human history the abusers have ultimately been bitchslapped to the dung heap of history be replaced by a slightly improved abuser who is in line for another bitchslap. That's why they call it a revolution. Power corrupts, people get pissed, corrupted get spanked, and the world keeps on spinning.
I support the Bush administration. They can't run the country but they're shortening the time it'll take before the whole regime gets an overhaul. And keep on whining people, the whiners of today become the dissenters of tomorrow.
http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html>
This is Google's "Ten Things" Philosophy. Number 2 on Google's "Ten Things" is "It's best to do one thing really, really well". I'm not saying they don't do search ridiculously well, but the idea that they may have too many things going on at once is not unwarranted.
Thanks for giving us the info instead of just berating us for using the only information we have to voice our opinions. It's nice to see someone informing the community instead of just starting flame wars based on his own undeserved yet heightened sense of self worth. Also, good call on posting anonymously; you don't want anyone knowing who you are in case they become jealous of your brilliance and decide to track you down and kill you. Worse yet they might become obsessed with your incredible intellect and decide to kidnap you. Very smart indeed.
Let's not forget that a lot of games get rushed into production without being properly finished. I'm a big Halo fan but I would love to have seen Microsoft Games/Bungee release Halo three months later instead of trying to meet the Xmas rush with an admittedly polished but definitely unfinished game. It was really the only thing to do from a business perspective, especially with the Xbox coming out, but it's still a little disappointing.
No one wants to play a 75% title for more than a few hours. There are so many games that make it 3/4s the way there then run out of gas and I don't want to spend the time or money playing them. I want games that I can really sink my teeth into. I'll forgive any number of crappy licensed games for a Dawn of War or a Doom 3. Consistency is great if you're talking about your grades in high school or your job performance but there are some things I'd prefer to be better than 'solid'. EA and the rest of them are hurting gamers because they're telling us that 75% is good enough. Why not put out a couple of 90s along with those 75s? Why not indeed.
I disagree with this list on many fronts. EA is not the best publisher, just the largest/most profitable/most prolific or some combination thereof. The overall quality of EA games is going down the toilet and by the news I've read the treatment of their employees ranges somewhere between 3rd world sweat shop workers and Russian soldiers during WWI. EA is probably the biggest offender on those fronts but similar things could be said about many of those 'top publishers'. A qualitative perspective would probably leave most or all of those publishers on the board while giving respect to the ones who are actually encouraging innovation over pure profit. To those who would argue that profit is what game publishers are in the game for I say this: If you want to rate the publishers by profit margin then do it in a finance publication and not a gaming magazine. Gamers don't care about profit and while profitability is important it should be considered alongside the quality of the product if one really wants to see who's on 'top'.
Slashdot Mirror
You're preaching to the choir. Gimme a decent single player game and I'll get more fun out of it than every MMO I've ever played. Stairmasters are less fun but using them regularly keeps you from getting chest pains every time you get up for more chips.
The bottom line: forget money spent on games. If people were spending too much on MMOs, they would just pirate the games they wanted to play and declare themselves the winner over the EVAL CAPITALISM MONSTAR. The sad thing is that people who play MMOs can't even afford to pirate new games because they need to spend the time getting more nature resist gear for higher level instance runs.
In short, yes, MMOs mean less games being played.
How the hell is Starcraft 2 new?
The story you just related about Christ underscores the very counterintuitive, very real problem with the charity work Bill Gates and others do. On the one hand he is providing what most of us would consider an obscene amount of money to a cause that could certainly use it. On the other hand, he still lives in a gajillion dollar house where he might as well be Scrooge MacDuck swimming in his piles of gold coins. His gift is certainly large, and will presumably do untold amounts of good in the world, but is it really generous?
The widow giving her two mites or the doctor working for nothing in Sudan or the aid worker sacrificing his or her time, health, and energy are providing a negligible fraction of the economic benefit of the Gates Foundation. They are also giving more than Bill Gates, Bono or most likely any of us could concieve of giving.
Is Bill Gates' donation a good thing? Certainly. Should Steve Jobs and others start doing the same? Again, no question. Do any of them deserve to be hailed as heroes in Time Magazine for giving away money they can afford to lose? No, they don't. The only difference between what Bill Gates does for charity and what most other people do is scale.
I'm not saying everyone needs to be a martyr or a hero, nor am I a short-sighted, bleeding-heart socialist demagogue preaching economic equality at any cost. I'm saying that we should honor the real martyrs and heroes and not those who happen to give more dollars. The appropriate response to Bill Gates' charitable donation (and any donation like it, of any scale) should be a simple "Thank you very much, we really appreciate your support. Come back when you have more." I know that's what I hear when I donate to charity and I think Gates should get the same.
Was waiting for someone to reference that quote. First thing that came to my mind when I read the article.
I read through this thread a bit and it seems to me that half the people here think that Pixar consists of a dozen creative geniuses and Steve Jobs. The vast majority of employees are low level programmers, paper pushers, bean counters, etc. who aren't really involved with the product at all. For the talented, creative artists, writers, designers, etc. a buyout will either give them a fair deal or an excuse to go work for another company who will give them a better deal. The other 90% of the workforce usually gets a pink slip and a box to put their stuff in. Pixar has many talented employees. It has way, way more merely competent employees who have done their jobs well for years and who now may face a harsh reorganisation. It's the reality but it's not fun all the same.
History is littered with examples of well run companies that have high employee turnover and low productivity because they treat employees like garbage. Happy employees are motivated to work harder, work later, and keep their jobs instead of looking for new ones. Disgruntled employees are motivated to steal office furniture, leave early, and schedule job interviews during their lunch hours. This may shock and dismay you but...
A happy, motivated employee is worth more in real dollars than a disgruntled one. The idea is that you don't spend more money making employees happy than is warranted by the productivity and retention level that having happy employees provides. So you can stop making sarcastic arguments about "warm and fuzzy" feelings and understand that there is a quantifiable reason to make employees happy even if you are a soulless monster.
Your philosophy about employee happiness not mattering is how people thought at the turn of the century. In short, buy a zoot suit, top hat, and monocle and go back to 1910 where you can own a factory and crap all over employees all you want without a loss in competetiveness.
Halo was a Mac title until MS came along. When MS bought Bungie they rushed it into production. It wasn't just a serendipitous coincidence that made Halo the flagship launch title for the Xbox.
As long as we have independent forums for discussion by individuals (electronic and otherwise) then people will be watching the government and discussing every minute detail of their actions. Throughout human history power has been abused and throughout human history the abusers have ultimately been bitchslapped to the dung heap of history be replaced by a slightly improved abuser who is in line for another bitchslap. That's why they call it a revolution. Power corrupts, people get pissed, corrupted get spanked, and the world keeps on spinning.
I support the Bush administration. They can't run the country but they're shortening the time it'll take before the whole regime gets an overhaul. And keep on whining people, the whiners of today become the dissenters of tomorrow.
http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html> This is Google's "Ten Things" Philosophy. Number 2 on Google's "Ten Things" is "It's best to do one thing really, really well". I'm not saying they don't do search ridiculously well, but the idea that they may have too many things going on at once is not unwarranted.
Thanks for giving us the info instead of just berating us for using the only information we have to voice our opinions. It's nice to see someone informing the community instead of just starting flame wars based on his own undeserved yet heightened sense of self worth. Also, good call on posting anonymously; you don't want anyone knowing who you are in case they become jealous of your brilliance and decide to track you down and kill you. Worse yet they might become obsessed with your incredible intellect and decide to kidnap you. Very smart indeed.
Let's not forget that a lot of games get rushed into production without being properly finished. I'm a big Halo fan but I would love to have seen Microsoft Games/Bungee release Halo three months later instead of trying to meet the Xmas rush with an admittedly polished but definitely unfinished game. It was really the only thing to do from a business perspective, especially with the Xbox coming out, but it's still a little disappointing.
No one wants to play a 75% title for more than a few hours. There are so many games that make it 3/4s the way there then run out of gas and I don't want to spend the time or money playing them. I want games that I can really sink my teeth into. I'll forgive any number of crappy licensed games for a Dawn of War or a Doom 3. Consistency is great if you're talking about your grades in high school or your job performance but there are some things I'd prefer to be better than 'solid'. EA and the rest of them are hurting gamers because they're telling us that 75% is good enough. Why not put out a couple of 90s along with those 75s? Why not indeed.
I disagree with this list on many fronts. EA is not the best publisher, just the largest/most profitable/most prolific or some combination thereof. The overall quality of EA games is going down the toilet and by the news I've read the treatment of their employees ranges somewhere between 3rd world sweat shop workers and Russian soldiers during WWI. EA is probably the biggest offender on those fronts but similar things could be said about many of those 'top publishers'. A qualitative perspective would probably leave most or all of those publishers on the board while giving respect to the ones who are actually encouraging innovation over pure profit. To those who would argue that profit is what game publishers are in the game for I say this: If you want to rate the publishers by profit margin then do it in a finance publication and not a gaming magazine. Gamers don't care about profit and while profitability is important it should be considered alongside the quality of the product if one really wants to see who's on 'top'.