Maybe Microsoft's nascent foray into user-produced games will eventually turn into a real option for hobbyists
Actually, the puropse of Microsoft's XNA is both transparent and selfish, and has nothing to do with hobby games development. Xbox 360 games dev kits are sold to Universities at a cheap rate, along with Microsoft certified training on their 'XNA' system, which co-incidentally isn't very much like any other programming language used to make games that was ever created. Once a large enough pool of students have learned to exclusively use their system, they simply have to wait until a Microsoft-approved company comes along and skimms off the real talent, because no-one apart from Microsoft can progress them from what they've learned from XNA to real games development. Everyone else is buggered, which co-incidentally (or not) hampers other developers looking for graduate talent, because they haven't learned to dev with real software packages. They're just farming students for their company in a new and inventive way.
Sony, the big bad guy this generation, provided PS2 dev kits *last generation* to universities in much the same way. Except they all ran linux, and students learned to developed games in C. All the pros of microsofts approach and none of the cons, with the additional benefit of hobbyists being able to buy all the hardware themselves (for about £100 here in the UK).
"But associating loud noises with a negative result is more tangible. I'd think that while it might not be entirely innate, it is probably learned early enough in life by a wide enough variety of people to be nearly inescapable."
It is innate, it's called a Fixed Action Pattern. Blinking when something approaches your eye, yawning and pulling away when you touch something painful are all examples of innate responses to negative stimuli. Whether that's really fear or not is all down to semantics.
Your marine example is very good actually, and is the exception that proves the rule: in order to be useful, fear must not only be learned, but unlearned. If we retained every fear we ever had, people over the age of about 20 would be so paralysed with fear they wouldn't be able to leave the house. Exposure to a negative experience can have bizzare and over the top reactions, but continued exposure causes the reaction to decay as you become used to the stimuli. Even FAPs can be unlearned. However, you are born with them fully intact.
Disclaimer: IAABMBIOGA22 (I Am A Biology Major But I Only Got A 2-2)
"Are Marketers Abandoning Second Life?"
I don't know, does your premium for posting second life 'news' suddenly seem a little lower than before? Whatever it is, it still gets on the front page pretty frequently despite the fact that it's had nothing but ridicule from the/. community, so i'd suggest it's still doing quite well for itself.
Hey! These guys are masters of business here, they've been in charge of the miniatures market in the west for 25 years, they know what's best for their business, even if it seems like it might not be in the fans best interest. I heard they once pumped thousands in development costs some some crappy RTS, and then had the forethought to ditch the company before the whole money sucking company before it they released it and it went under. Good thing they jumped off that sinking ship, lemme tell you...
"There was much discussion of the Nintendo approach to expanding audience..."
There's always talk of expanding the audience at Nintendo conferences these days. They're reaching out to the casual gamer, they're growing the gaming market, they're making gaming mainstream and they're doing it in style, or so they say.
Last generation, the gaming market was somewhere around 150 million console sales in total, and 100 million+ of that was PS2 sales. In order to grow the market, they're really going to need to sell more than their rivals last sales total of 100 million consoles, right? And something makes me wonder exactly how many Wii customers are first time buyers...
I think the real question is how many times are you going to let your electronics break before you demand a refund? Consumer rights are behind you on this one. Remember, capitalism doesn't work if you don't vote with your wallet, and vendors are going to keep fobbing you off with crap until you either move to a competitor, or stop buying the product completely. I'm not saying thats why every Microsoft product is so shoddy in at least one major area, but it's probably why every Microsoft product is still shoddy, even after months or years of sales and complaints.
"Get real Sony, we all know exactly how it would've played out if a game went on [allowed people to go on?] a spree round your offices..."
You can actually test that theory, if you like. Insomniac Studios (the makers of Resistance) actually modelled the complete layout of their California offices, which was included as a playable level in Ratchet and Clank!
Perhaps this is idealistic of me, but maybe you should consider living the dream. Set up an independent studio, and sell your game through popcap. Have you ever played Bookworm Adventures, from the same site? I tried it at the recommendation of Tycho from Penny Arcade, and its shockingly fun, not to mention educational. Certainly you won't have the broad reach of a console game funded and published professionally, but under your own direction I have no doubt you can make something which is at least conceptually more interesting than 'Educational rehash of falling block game #76', which is what those companies will want you to make.
Want to go the console route? DS homebrew is at a shockingly good level. Someone ported Quake, complete with Metroid Prime Hunters-style touch screen controls. The tools are there to make a working prototype for nothing more than the cost of a flash card (try R4DS, that is the card I use). Get a team together, make it, pitch it, and see what happens. You might think that's inconceivable, but web favourite time waster 'Line Rider' is getting a DS port, so it can and does happen.
Actually, the solution is simple: don't advertise your system as secure out of the box when it isn't. Either make it secure or don't, don't say one thing then do another.
"Faulting an AV-less Vista for not stopping viruses is a bit like faulting a door without a lock for opening when the handle is twisted."
I'm sorry, but if I bought a security door that claimed it would keep out 99% of criminals, I would be a bit pissed off if I got it home and realised that an actual lock for that door was considered an 'optional extra'. The idea of browsing the internet with IE, no anti-virus and the windows firewall for any length of time, even no longer than it takes to download zonealarm and avg, gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Big corporations can protect their property through the courts via trademark etc. So obviously one cannot just arbitrarily use someone elses domain... if that someone else has the money and legal talent to protect it.
You'd think so wouldn't you? But in fact, a company would need to prove that they intended to use their trademark online in a useful way, and that trademark would need to be unique enough to be enforceable. And even then it isn't a given. The perfect counter to your argument is simply to point out that billgates.com is a domain park.
Does anyone know of any industries where trade shows are growing?
Webcomic Panels and conventions (these are often real artists who sell physical copies of their comics in book form). Someone else mentioned PAX too, which has developer booths, and console stands from the big 3. Where industries are turning to the internet to solve the cost problem of actually meeting people, internet communities are starting to hold conventions to solve the public relations problem of not actually being able to meet anyone... the result? More fun conventions for me to visit.
Actually, this is a good point - the largest proportion is almost certainly going to the RIAA, and considering Microsoft's recent spat with Epic about Gears of war content which Epic had originally wanted to give away for free, we can suppose that a large portion of the remaining is going to Microsoft. Harmonix, the people who modified the original content to be a pretty fun game are getting the rest of the money, and the bands which wrote the tunes, having pre-sold their tunes to record companies, are getting nothing.... isn't that the opposite of how much time and effort has gone into creating each track? Aren't we paying people in reverse?!
Al-Qaede are funded partly by contributions and partly by the drug trade
Yeah that's right, just like they're funded by video piracy. I can just see Osama in the middle of the desert with his poppy farm and his VCR, laughing at our western values. Imagine, all those Al-Qaeda 'militants' standing on street corners, convinced that fencing crack is doing God's work.
Use your brains mate, the drugs trade is controlled by international organised gangs, who have the least to gain from a tightening of security in the west. We're their main source of income, after all. Pissing about funding terrorism is only going to attract attention and reduce their markets. Do yourself a favour and don't believe everything you see on TV.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the puropse of Microsoft's XNA is both transparent and selfish, and has nothing to do with hobby games development. Xbox 360 games dev kits are sold to Universities at a cheap rate, along with Microsoft certified training on their 'XNA' system, which co-incidentally isn't very much like any other programming language used to make games that was ever created. Once a large enough pool of students have learned to exclusively use their system, they simply have to wait until a Microsoft-approved company comes along and skimms off the real talent, because no-one apart from Microsoft can progress them from what they've learned from XNA to real games development. Everyone else is buggered, which co-incidentally (or not) hampers other developers looking for graduate talent, because they haven't learned to dev with real software packages. They're just farming students for their company in a new and inventive way.
Sony, the big bad guy this generation, provided PS2 dev kits *last generation* to universities in much the same way. Except they all ran linux, and students learned to developed games in C. All the pros of microsofts approach and none of the cons, with the additional benefit of hobbyists being able to buy all the hardware themselves (for about £100 here in the UK).
I value that at roughly $5 :).
It is innate, it's called a Fixed Action Pattern. Blinking when something approaches your eye, yawning and pulling away when you touch something painful are all examples of innate responses to negative stimuli. Whether that's really fear or not is all down to semantics.
Your marine example is very good actually, and is the exception that proves the rule: in order to be useful, fear must not only be learned, but unlearned. If we retained every fear we ever had, people over the age of about 20 would be so paralysed with fear they wouldn't be able to leave the house. Exposure to a negative experience can have bizzare and over the top reactions, but continued exposure causes the reaction to decay as you become used to the stimuli. Even FAPs can be unlearned. However, you are born with them fully intact.
Disclaimer: IAABMBIOGA22 (I Am A Biology Major But I Only Got A 2-2)
"Are Marketers Abandoning Second Life?" I don't know, does your premium for posting second life 'news' suddenly seem a little lower than before? Whatever it is, it still gets on the front page pretty frequently despite the fact that it's had nothing but ridicule from the /. community, so i'd suggest it's still doing quite well for itself.
Hey! These guys are masters of business here, they've been in charge of the miniatures market in the west for 25 years, they know what's best for their business, even if it seems like it might not be in the fans best interest. I heard they once pumped thousands in development costs some some crappy RTS, and then had the forethought to ditch the company before the whole money sucking company before it they released it and it went under. Good thing they jumped off that sinking ship, lemme tell you...
There's always talk of expanding the audience at Nintendo conferences these days. They're reaching out to the casual gamer, they're growing the gaming market, they're making gaming mainstream and they're doing it in style, or so they say.
Last generation, the gaming market was somewhere around 150 million console sales in total, and 100 million+ of that was PS2 sales. In order to grow the market, they're really going to need to sell more than their rivals last sales total of 100 million consoles, right? And something makes me wonder exactly how many Wii customers are first time buyers...
It's called Little Big Planet.
I think the real question is how many times are you going to let your electronics break before you demand a refund? Consumer rights are behind you on this one. Remember, capitalism doesn't work if you don't vote with your wallet, and vendors are going to keep fobbing you off with crap until you either move to a competitor, or stop buying the product completely. I'm not saying thats why every Microsoft product is so shoddy in at least one major area, but it's probably why every Microsoft product is still shoddy, even after months or years of sales and complaints.
You can actually test that theory, if you like. Insomniac Studios (the makers of Resistance) actually modelled the complete layout of their California offices, which was included as a playable level in Ratchet and Clank!
OK I hear ya :P.
I think I need to look up what paraphrasing means, heh.
"Any machine that connects me to noobs and lets me pwn 'em" I believe is the quote.
Sounds like fun. Pity it's going to take 4-5 years to complete. That's a pretty long time in game development.
Want to go the console route? DS homebrew is at a shockingly good level. Someone ported Quake, complete with Metroid Prime Hunters-style touch screen controls. The tools are there to make a working prototype for nothing more than the cost of a flash card (try R4DS, that is the card I use). Get a team together, make it, pitch it, and see what happens. You might think that's inconceivable, but web favourite time waster 'Line Rider' is getting a DS port, so it can and does happen.
... but I sure want a pair or Shure earbuds after reading it.
Actually, the solution is simple: don't advertise your system as secure out of the box when it isn't. Either make it secure or don't, don't say one thing then do another.
I'm sorry, but if I bought a security door that claimed it would keep out 99% of criminals, I would be a bit pissed off if I got it home and realised that an actual lock for that door was considered an 'optional extra'. The idea of browsing the internet with IE, no anti-virus and the windows firewall for any length of time, even no longer than it takes to download zonealarm and avg, gives me the heebie-jeebies.
You'd think so wouldn't you? But in fact, a company would need to prove that they intended to use their trademark online in a useful way, and that trademark would need to be unique enough to be enforceable. And even then it isn't a given. The perfect counter to your argument is simply to point out that billgates.com is a domain park.
Honestly, I think Eurogamers take on it is far more even handed than 1ups, which is something I'm almost never able to say.
Webcomic Panels and conventions (these are often real artists who sell physical copies of their comics in book form). Someone else mentioned PAX too, which has developer booths, and console stands from the big 3. Where industries are turning to the internet to solve the cost problem of actually meeting people, internet communities are starting to hold conventions to solve the public relations problem of not actually being able to meet anyone... the result? More fun conventions for me to visit.
Actually, this is a good point - the largest proportion is almost certainly going to the RIAA, and considering Microsoft's recent spat with Epic about Gears of war content which Epic had originally wanted to give away for free, we can suppose that a large portion of the remaining is going to Microsoft. Harmonix, the people who modified the original content to be a pretty fun game are getting the rest of the money, and the bands which wrote the tunes, having pre-sold their tunes to record companies, are getting nothing. ... isn't that the opposite of how much time and effort has gone into creating each track? Aren't we paying people in reverse?!
Al-Qaede are funded partly by contributions and partly by the drug trade Yeah that's right, just like they're funded by video piracy. I can just see Osama in the middle of the desert with his poppy farm and his VCR, laughing at our western values. Imagine, all those Al-Qaeda 'militants' standing on street corners, convinced that fencing crack is doing God's work. Use your brains mate, the drugs trade is controlled by international organised gangs, who have the least to gain from a tightening of security in the west. We're their main source of income, after all. Pissing about funding terrorism is only going to attract attention and reduce their markets. Do yourself a favour and don't believe everything you see on TV.