If you modify it slightly, it will apply to DRM as it exists today.
You go buy a Subaru and park it in the street overnight. When you wake up in the morning, the car has disintegrated, and in order to drive to work the next day, you must purchase the car again.
That is DRM in its current state, and once everyone figures out that the RIAA/MPAA sueing spree is really an attempt to enforce a new type of business model (rent-and-never-own), they'll lose popular support for their tactics pretty quick.
Making mix-tapes used to get you chicks. Now it gets you jail time.
That's because Turbine is like King Sadim. Everything they touch turns to shit.
I don't get their philosophy at all. Every game I've played by them has felt lifeless and bland, with transparency taking away all the magic and opacity where it doesn't belong.
I can't tell you how upsetting it was to find out they'd been handed both D&D Online (which is ruined), AND Middle Earth Online. Maybe in 10 years someone can remake those titles into something decent. Till then, they're both going to be utter tripe.
Your town has staples, but not USPS, FedEx, or UPS?
Weird. Everything I buy gets dropped at my door within 2 days for 25% cheaper than I could have bought it locally. With online shopping I also have about 1000x more products to choose from.
Companies like Newegg do it right. Cut out the retail costs, and you can cut prices phenomenally.
Sort of hard to describe it as a "coin", when the one side (lower quality items) is much more prevalent than the other side (same quality-lower price).
Think about it. If the company could AFFORD to sell their product for a lower price, why do it just for WalMart? Why not lower their price in EVERY STORE EVERYWHERE, and increase their profits by making it more affordable to everyone, not just WalMart shoppers?
The reason this doesn't happen, is that companies are ALREADY selling their products for the lowest amount possible. If they want to make the product cheaper, they need to use cheaper materials, or pay the people who make those products less (fewer benefits, etc).
Wal-Mart is not a magic low-price fairy, they're the demons of low quality, low wage, no-benefit society. By buying stuff at Wal-Mart, you encourage companies to cut benefits to their employees, and move to countries with fewer worker rights - creating even more people who are poor and think they need to shop at Wal-Mart.
If they're socio-economically ignorant enough to shop at Wal-Mart, the chances of them being interested in running Linux are slim and none.
This is GREAT! Now Wal-Mart can start strong-arming hardware companies to force them to move to the cheapest possible manufacturing process, regardless of what effects it will have on society. Worker benefits will drop, and so will product quality - just like everything else made specially for Wal-Mart.
Like their "Lee" jeans line. Normal Lee jeans too expensive for Wal-Mart's price point? No problem! Move the factory to some asian country so you don't have to provide jack in worker benefits and lower the quality of materials; problem solved!! It's what the consumers want! Lower-quality cheapo items that SEEM like they're the quality we're accustomed to (after all, they still have that Lee label). This business philosophy WILL fail, it's just a question of when people wake up to what's happening to the world.
Price is not the only cost you pay when you buy something.
At least people who buy crap in actual games online like WoW or EQ2 have something to show for it.
WoW/EQ/Actual MMO item purchase: I am elite because I have the Sword of L337Pwn +2 and I can kill you and your little dog too! All the rats will phear me!
SL item purchase: Look I have a pretty pink bonnet! WHEEEE look at me!!
Other games like AO have tons of flair items you can create and/or purchase if you want to game like this, it's just that the devs control what can be made so that everything doesn't look like a haphazard conglomeration of differently-styled worthless junk like it does in SL.
If you can't run the game playably on that rig with an X800 Pro, it's your own fault, not anyone else's.
Glad you returned it though, because if you're not capable of getting it to run without lag on that rig, then you don't deserve to play it anyway.
In fact, my 12-yr old nephew knows how to update drivers and tweak graphics settings already. You should ship your rig to him so someone at least moderately competent can get some good use out of it.
It's a conspiracy to make gaming look evil. Typical arguments about artistic value and freedom of speech cannot be used when considering Boll's work; it's just wholesale artless destruction of perfectly good franchises.
I'm not sure what is appropriate in this situation. Do we run him out of town on a rail, or tar and feather him?
We should also probably look at Mercedes, since they clearly designed this car with the intention of allowing him to ram a Taxi and survive, thus ENCOURAGING him to kill with it without fear of injury to himself. It's pretty clear from the design of the car that they intend people to kill with it.
On top of that, the city itself paved flat streets and routinely keeps them free of obstructions as if to encourage fast driving. Clearly the city has a hand in the death of this taxi driver as well.
So FF/Serenity is dead, before even one day of DVD sales are in (#1 on Amazon first day of release, FYI), and yet this series may be brought back due to DVD sales.
This just goes to show how far DVD sales have brought the industry. If crappy marketing and the limits of non-on-demand show viewing don't kill a series, then the networks will. Later, after a few million copies of the DVDs go flying off the shelves, the network execs then turn around and say "Hey, I guess we had something there, huh?".
At least now there's a way to correct idiot studio execs. Arrested Development shouldn't be cancelled either. I don't see DVD sales of Two and a Half Men anywhere near the top 100, and yet that show seems secure enough. AD has been in the top 50 for how long now? MORONS!!
This is hardly an announcement. All he said was that he wouldn't let it get him down. He's got other things to do now, and he can't do anything with the FF verse till the DVD sales provide enough momentum for a sequel of some sort - or they don't. Either way, the only thing to do is move on for now.
He has already stated that there WILL BE comics extending the story. To call the Serenity verse dead because Joss is moving on as far as movie projects go is just plain idiocy. That's EW for you though.
Turbine has never impressed me, and this game didn't change that. The sad part is that they have LOTR Online too.
Two outstanding franchises RUINED by one lousy game company.
SO LAME.
The company selling the adverts, and a company who people will pay to tell them if the ads are working both say the advertising works.
Gee, who woulda thunk it?
This is not the municipal WiFi a lot of people seem to think it is.
There is no free service for anyone.
Two companies are paying the local power utility Madison Gas & Electric (MG&E) to place the antennae on street lights. At first, it will just cover the downtown area and expand later.
There is no free service. Pricing is still unknown, but it is supposedly going to be competitive with local DSL and Cable services. In other words: Expensive.
Visiting business people will not be able to simply sit in a cafe and hook up. Low income Madison residents will not get access.
This is not a public service. Nobody put up a fuss when Charter started offering Municipal Broadband over cable or local phone companies started offering Municipal Broadband over phone wires, so I don't get why this is such a big deal. This is not a municipal program, it's a commercial endeavor and we're handing over our city to these two companies so they can charge us for WiFi. Won't COST us anything? They SHOULD BE PAYING US!!!!! We should force them to offer a free service to our low income residents to help get them better access to job opportunities.
I fail to see what's revolutionary about it. One can only HOPE it helps to bring down the ridiculously high broadband prices, but I doubt it.
You can still use that paper man. Here are some phrases to help you out:
As far as we know According to recent research Most observations point to Many physicists believe
And if that doesn't work, finish it off and turn it all into the past tense, as if it were a history of ideas on dark matter, then at the end spend a couple paragraphs mentioning the new theory.
I didn't switch because I hate Microsoft, I switched because FireFox is modular and it's convenient for what I need to do.
I think it's silly to paint people who want more functionality and only want to see what they need in their software interface as Microsoft haters. I would call us power users.
I've tried to show my friends and family what's out there. Half of the people I show it to (somewhat un-savvy internet users) adopt it after seeing the tabbed browsing and installing a few extensions here and there.
I think one way to market it to less tech-savvy people would be to create packages with some of the most popular extensions already installed.
When they did a plague like this in EQ2, it spread through NPCs just like the WoW one is.
Instead of killing you, it just made you turn green and puke every now and then - no stat effects. It was curable with a store-bought potion, but the disease was rampant in the cities (where you could buy cures), and once you left the city generally only spread by idiots and NPCs.
I remember WoW players laughing at EQ2 players about the "lame plague" at the time. Now it happens in WoW, worse, and they like it?
rofl
Can't wait for this to be copied by Sony and MS so I can use it on a console with games I am interested in purchasing.
Nintendo has had revolutionary games, but none of their games can hold a candle to the likes of KOTOR and Fable in my opinion. The announced developers for Xbox and PS2 have me way more excited that more cartoony Nintendo kiddie junk.
Adults are the future of gaming. Somebody has to put something out for the kids though. It will take a few impressive games to make me want a Revolution instead of a 360 at this point.
I agree mostly with what you've said. Others have pointed out that some of these qualities are desiriable in some form or another. Cinematics can add drama to an action game when done right (most can be skipped out of anyway). A better critique would have been cinematics that can't be skipped. I bet almost everyone hates that (especially your third try on the level).
Anyway, I think it's ranting and poorly thought out ranting at that. Most of these characteristics are desirable in some form or another, and ANY game characteristic can be annoying when done wrong. And some games just aren't for everyone (Leisure Suit Larry anyone?).
As for the movie comment, I point to the Chronicles of Riddick as a prime example that movie material CAN be done well in games. Of course not every movie has a Vin Diesel and a Tigon Studios to back it up. The author might be reminded that KOTOR and it's successor were outstanding hugely successful games that used tons of cinematics, dialogue, storylines, graphics, AND were based on movie material as well. Add in the Twi'lek dancers, and you've got yourself ALL FIVE characteristics (if you consider the graphics good) in a pair of HUGELY successful games.
On a related note: Peter Jackson has his hands all over the development of King Kong. Look for another possible success in that game.
Back on topic: All those characteristics are what's right about games too. The author failed to nail down what we DON'T like about them:
Sex in place of content
Bad stories in place of good ones
Shallow heroes in place of depth and complexity
Graphics at the expense of gameplay
Not all movie games suck
Not all these are always a trade-off. Many games in the past have shown that you can do both.
Look at the movie industry, books, music: you will always find 1000 turds for every diamond based on personal taste alone. The author could have done much better criticizing the game industry, and failed.
5 Ways To Save Game Journalism:
Stop overgeneralizing.
Criticize constructively.
Play some games now and then.
Don't take bad games personally.
and for Sidney Shuman:
Shut the F up.
Slashdot Mirror
If you modify it slightly, it will apply to DRM as it exists today.
You go buy a Subaru and park it in the street overnight. When you wake up in the morning, the car has disintegrated, and in order to drive to work the next day, you must purchase the car again.
That is DRM in its current state, and once everyone figures out that the RIAA/MPAA sueing spree is really an attempt to enforce a new type of business model (rent-and-never-own), they'll lose popular support for their tactics pretty quick.
Making mix-tapes used to get you chicks. Now it gets you jail time.
That's because Turbine is like King Sadim. Everything they touch turns to shit.
I don't get their philosophy at all. Every game I've played by them has felt lifeless and bland, with transparency taking away all the magic and opacity where it doesn't belong.
I can't tell you how upsetting it was to find out they'd been handed both D&D Online (which is ruined), AND Middle Earth Online. Maybe in 10 years someone can remake those titles into something decent. Till then, they're both going to be utter tripe.
Sounds like you got a book deal on your hands!!
Your town has staples, but not USPS, FedEx, or UPS?
Weird. Everything I buy gets dropped at my door within 2 days for 25% cheaper than I could have bought it locally. With online shopping I also have about 1000x more products to choose from.
Companies like Newegg do it right. Cut out the retail costs, and you can cut prices phenomenally.
Some of the most talented people in history were depressed/alcoholic/etc.
None of the most talented people in history shopped at Wal-Mart.
Sort of hard to describe it as a "coin", when the one side (lower quality items) is much more prevalent than the other side (same quality-lower price).
Think about it. If the company could AFFORD to sell their product for a lower price, why do it just for WalMart? Why not lower their price in EVERY STORE EVERYWHERE, and increase their profits by making it more affordable to everyone, not just WalMart shoppers?
The reason this doesn't happen, is that companies are ALREADY selling their products for the lowest amount possible. If they want to make the product cheaper, they need to use cheaper materials, or pay the people who make those products less (fewer benefits, etc).
Wal-Mart is not a magic low-price fairy, they're the demons of low quality, low wage, no-benefit society. By buying stuff at Wal-Mart, you encourage companies to cut benefits to their employees, and move to countries with fewer worker rights - creating even more people who are poor and think they need to shop at Wal-Mart.
If they're socio-economically ignorant enough to shop at Wal-Mart, the chances of them being interested in running Linux are slim and none.
This is GREAT! Now Wal-Mart can start strong-arming hardware companies to force them to move to the cheapest possible manufacturing process, regardless of what effects it will have on society. Worker benefits will drop, and so will product quality - just like everything else made specially for Wal-Mart.
Like their "Lee" jeans line. Normal Lee jeans too expensive for Wal-Mart's price point? No problem! Move the factory to some asian country so you don't have to provide jack in worker benefits and lower the quality of materials; problem solved!! It's what the consumers want! Lower-quality cheapo items that SEEM like they're the quality we're accustomed to (after all, they still have that Lee label). This business philosophy WILL fail, it's just a question of when people wake up to what's happening to the world.
Price is not the only cost you pay when you buy something.
At least people who buy crap in actual games online like WoW or EQ2 have something to show for it.
WoW/EQ/Actual MMO item purchase: I am elite because I have the Sword of L337Pwn +2 and I can kill you and your little dog too! All the rats will phear me!
SL item purchase: Look I have a pretty pink bonnet! WHEEEE look at me!!
Other games like AO have tons of flair items you can create and/or purchase if you want to game like this, it's just that the devs control what can be made so that everything doesn't look like a haphazard conglomeration of differently-styled worthless junk like it does in SL.
Yeah, we should start innoculating all birds everywhere. Inventing that Avian Flu virus was the worst environmental decision we ever made.
If you can't run the game playably on that rig with an X800 Pro, it's your own fault, not anyone else's.
Glad you returned it though, because if you're not capable of getting it to run without lag on that rig, then you don't deserve to play it anyway.
In fact, my 12-yr old nephew knows how to update drivers and tweak graphics settings already. You should ship your rig to him so someone at least moderately competent can get some good use out of it.
It's a conspiracy to make gaming look evil. Typical arguments about artistic value and freedom of speech cannot be used when considering Boll's work; it's just wholesale artless destruction of perfectly good franchises.
I'm not sure what is appropriate in this situation. Do we run him out of town on a rail, or tar and feather him?
We should also probably look at Mercedes, since they clearly designed this car with the intention of allowing him to ram a Taxi and survive, thus ENCOURAGING him to kill with it without fear of injury to himself. It's pretty clear from the design of the car that they intend people to kill with it.
On top of that, the city itself paved flat streets and routinely keeps them free of obstructions as if to encourage fast driving. Clearly the city has a hand in the death of this taxi driver as well.
So FF/Serenity is dead, before even one day of DVD sales are in (#1 on Amazon first day of release, FYI), and yet this series may be brought back due to DVD sales.
This just goes to show how far DVD sales have brought the industry. If crappy marketing and the limits of non-on-demand show viewing don't kill a series, then the networks will. Later, after a few million copies of the DVDs go flying off the shelves, the network execs then turn around and say "Hey, I guess we had something there, huh?".
At least now there's a way to correct idiot studio execs. Arrested Development shouldn't be cancelled either. I don't see DVD sales of Two and a Half Men anywhere near the top 100, and yet that show seems secure enough. AD has been in the top 50 for how long now? MORONS!!
This is hardly an announcement. All he said was that he wouldn't let it get him down. He's got other things to do now, and he can't do anything with the FF verse till the DVD sales provide enough momentum for a sequel of some sort - or they don't. Either way, the only thing to do is move on for now.
He has already stated that there WILL BE comics extending the story. To call the Serenity verse dead because Joss is moving on as far as movie projects go is just plain idiocy. That's EW for you though.
Turbine has never impressed me, and this game didn't change that. The sad part is that they have LOTR Online too. Two outstanding franchises RUINED by one lousy game company. SO LAME.
The company selling the adverts, and a company who people will pay to tell them if the ads are working both say the advertising works. Gee, who woulda thunk it?
If Bizarro kicks you in the head you will totally be better off than you were before. Do you even understand Bizarro?
There is no free service for anyone.
Two companies are paying the local power utility Madison Gas & Electric (MG&E) to place the antennae on street lights. At first, it will just cover the downtown area and expand later.
There is no free service. Pricing is still unknown, but it is supposedly going to be competitive with local DSL and Cable services. In other words: Expensive.
Visiting business people will not be able to simply sit in a cafe and hook up. Low income Madison residents will not get access.
This is not a public service. Nobody put up a fuss when Charter started offering Municipal Broadband over cable or local phone companies started offering Municipal Broadband over phone wires, so I don't get why this is such a big deal. This is not a municipal program, it's a commercial endeavor and we're handing over our city to these two companies so they can charge us for WiFi. Won't COST us anything? They SHOULD BE PAYING US!!!!! We should force them to offer a free service to our low income residents to help get them better access to job opportunities.
I fail to see what's revolutionary about it. One can only HOPE it helps to bring down the ridiculously high broadband prices, but I doubt it.
Man, you have a lot to learn about seasons in Wisconsin.
Winter is only 4 months.
The other 8 months are Construction.
You can still use that paper man. Here are some phrases to help you out:
As far as we know
According to recent research
Most observations point to
Many physicists believe
And if that doesn't work, finish it off and turn it all into the past tense, as if it were a history of ideas on dark matter, then at the end spend a couple paragraphs mentioning the new theory.
I didn't switch because I hate Microsoft, I switched because FireFox is modular and it's convenient for what I need to do. I think it's silly to paint people who want more functionality and only want to see what they need in their software interface as Microsoft haters. I would call us power users. I've tried to show my friends and family what's out there. Half of the people I show it to (somewhat un-savvy internet users) adopt it after seeing the tabbed browsing and installing a few extensions here and there. I think one way to market it to less tech-savvy people would be to create packages with some of the most popular extensions already installed.
I got all the way to the end only to find that this is a Euro-only competition. LAME!
When they did a plague like this in EQ2, it spread through NPCs just like the WoW one is. Instead of killing you, it just made you turn green and puke every now and then - no stat effects. It was curable with a store-bought potion, but the disease was rampant in the cities (where you could buy cures), and once you left the city generally only spread by idiots and NPCs. I remember WoW players laughing at EQ2 players about the "lame plague" at the time. Now it happens in WoW, worse, and they like it? rofl
Can't wait for this to be copied by Sony and MS so I can use it on a console with games I am interested in purchasing. Nintendo has had revolutionary games, but none of their games can hold a candle to the likes of KOTOR and Fable in my opinion. The announced developers for Xbox and PS2 have me way more excited that more cartoony Nintendo kiddie junk. Adults are the future of gaming. Somebody has to put something out for the kids though. It will take a few impressive games to make me want a Revolution instead of a 360 at this point.
I agree mostly with what you've said. Others have pointed out that some of these qualities are desiriable in some form or another. Cinematics can add drama to an action game when done right (most can be skipped out of anyway). A better critique would have been cinematics that can't be skipped. I bet almost everyone hates that (especially your third try on the level). Anyway, I think it's ranting and poorly thought out ranting at that. Most of these characteristics are desirable in some form or another, and ANY game characteristic can be annoying when done wrong. And some games just aren't for everyone (Leisure Suit Larry anyone?). As for the movie comment, I point to the Chronicles of Riddick as a prime example that movie material CAN be done well in games. Of course not every movie has a Vin Diesel and a Tigon Studios to back it up. The author might be reminded that KOTOR and it's successor were outstanding hugely successful games that used tons of cinematics, dialogue, storylines, graphics, AND were based on movie material as well. Add in the Twi'lek dancers, and you've got yourself ALL FIVE characteristics (if you consider the graphics good) in a pair of HUGELY successful games. On a related note: Peter Jackson has his hands all over the development of King Kong. Look for another possible success in that game. Back on topic: All those characteristics are what's right about games too. The author failed to nail down what we DON'T like about them: Sex in place of content Bad stories in place of good ones Shallow heroes in place of depth and complexity Graphics at the expense of gameplay Not all movie games suck Not all these are always a trade-off. Many games in the past have shown that you can do both. Look at the movie industry, books, music: you will always find 1000 turds for every diamond based on personal taste alone. The author could have done much better criticizing the game industry, and failed. 5 Ways To Save Game Journalism: Stop overgeneralizing. Criticize constructively. Play some games now and then. Don't take bad games personally. and for Sidney Shuman: Shut the F up.