What? No, money is a representation of life energy, not simple power. A person trades their time (life energy) for money. A person's wage or salary determines the exchange rate. That person can then trade that money for goods and services that other people have sacrificed their life energy to produce. I can have the equivalent of a nuclear power plant in my house. That's not going to put a single green bean on my plate, nor purchase a car to travel in.
Anyhow, back on topic... the single slimiest producer I've ever worked with ended up at Zynga. I'm pretty sure he fit right in to their corporate culture. Don't paint all companies with the same brush. I really appreciate the game dev company I currently work for. Everyone is genuinely excited about making fun games for people, and while we want to earn a living doing it, we're also not actively looking for every opportunity to screw customers over, or to pillage and rape other companies with teams of lawyers. We just try to produce fun games.
Generally speaking, I think a company's ethics pretty much flows from the top. In our case, I genuinely respect our company prez (he's earned his stripes in the trenches). I've been in other companies where the leadership couldn't even be bothered to play the games we made (seriously, they just watched other people play and then made random decisions about things to change). The difference between the two companies, in everything from the quality of the games we produce to the way employees are treated... night and day difference.
Concur, but recall that on the week of Dennis Richie and Steve Jobs passing, there were thousands of articles and millions of comments about Mr. Jobs. For the most part, the passing of Mr. Richie elicited a response of, "Who?" followed by, "So what?"
To a certain group of people, style is substance, I guess.
Hmm, I think maybe it's more about relevance in that particular example. Ritchie is only known to programmers for his contributions... why would non-programmers know about him? He's several steps removed from their daily lives (it's hard to even explain to a layperson why he's so famous). He received plenty of lifetime awards and accolades as well, so it's not as though he's unacknowledged either. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, was exactly one step removed from many people's daily lives, technologically speaking, of course. Moreover, he was a very dynamic and oftentimes controversial figure, and he also died relatively young. So, I don't think it's quite as simple as "style over substance".
I'm glad you mentioned Uncharted because I think it's a perfect example of how pushing towards a movie type of story telling ruins a game. The story telling elements in Uncharted 2 was over used, forced and ultimately broke game play. For example when you first start the game and granted control: you find the main character hanging off a crashed train danging off an edge of a cliff. You start to climb upwards and then BAM a piece of the train breaks off and you loose control to a mini-scene where you watch him dangle by one hand, he watches the broken pipe fall a long ways down and you're given a scenic views of the snow covered mountains in the distance as he slowly turns himself back around and gets his other hand back on the train. You're then granted control again and this process is repeated a number of times until you finally make it onto solid ground. That ruins the game play for me, I've lost control and was interrupted not because I made a mistake but because the designers wanted it to be more like a movie. Metal Gear Solid 4 while having a million hours of cut-scenes manages not to break game play; when they take control away and show a scene it's because there's going to be a change in game play. If I sneak into a house and they start a cut-scene it's because the gameplay is shifting from sneaking past henchmen to a boss battle. Playing Uncharted 2 I felt less like playing a game with an interactive world with a story to drive that interaction and more like watching a movie that required me to push some buttons.
Yeah, I specifically mention Uncharted because I think it's the foremost example of the "cinematic game." For me, the cinematic feel of the scene you mentioned didn't ruin anything for me - in fact, I enjoyed the cinematic-style presentation quite a bit.
Here's the rub: everyone has different opinions about what they like and dislike about games (or just about anything else). What scratches my discs is when someone say: Sorry, your opinion is wrong. Game developers should stop making the type of games you enjoy playing. (note: not talking about you here, of course). To me, that's the height of arrogance, and it's just absurd on it's face to try to lay down these sort of blanket rules to which all games should try to conform to.
I don't understand the fundamental problem with "games that have been intentionally made from the ground up with the intent and purpose of telling a story or expressing a philosophy or giving a designer's narrative." Likewise, I don't have a problem with games that are 100% about gameplay and don't bother with any sort of meaningful narrative or story.
While I love Skyrim, I also love heavily story-driven games with lots of cutscenes as well (like Uncharted). To me, they're a nice reward and a way to help break up the gameplay a bit. Moreover, it's a fun way of merging my love of videogames with my love of interesting narrative, storytelling, and lore. Also, there are times it's fun to see personalities OTHER than the one you impose on characters in games. In other words, not every game is a Western-style role-playing game where the main protaganist is suppose to be a blank slate. It's entertaining to me when you care about the characters in your story and look forward to seeing the plot develop. Why do people try to shoehorn everything into one box? I think the world of "videogames" is big enough to fit both philosophies quite nicely.
Frankly, it just sounds like he's a big fan of more free-form worlds in gaming, and is just annoyed that there aren't more Skyrim-like games out there. I agree it's a shame, but if there's a demand for these games, then companies will fulfill that market space, especially as the gaming market continues to expand.
To me, my iphone is the first device ive ever looked at and said, "you are the progenitor of the Tricorder". Pocket computing began with the iphone. You may look at the device as a trinket, to me its one of the most powerful tools ever to be created.
Apple has a design sense that no other company does. Their products ooze style and ease-of-use, but please don't make the mistake of thinking that Apple invented all this stuff. They refined and popularized it, and brought it to the masses. And the phrase "pocket computing began with the iPhone" is sort of silly. That completely ignores the predecessors to smartphones - PDAs, such as blackberry and palm devices, not to mention other smartphones that predated the iPhone by years.
Don't take me for an Apple hater, btw. I own an iPad, and while I currently down own a smartphone, I'm leaning towards an iPhone when I do make the plunge. It just bothers me when people tend to mistake the *popularization* of technology with the *invention* of technology.
Horses and buggies were also better and more reliable than the earliest automobiles. I understand the point you're making. High tech isn't a solution for everything, but stuff like this is worth a shot at the R&D stage. You're never really sure that you can't improve a technology until you give it a try.
It sounds like even the university students can't be bothered to generate more than a tepid response to this matter. What if... instead of there being a conspiracy of silence on the matter... What if maybe, just maybe, it's not really all that outrageous?
Yeah... that was my first thought. The deafening sound of silence you heard was everyone not caring. Or rather, thinking, "yeah, the explanation offered by the University sounded reasonable, actually." Granted, there are plenty of people here on Slashdot perfectly willing to get outraged. They care enough to write a post flaming the University without every really digging deeper, but that's about as far as it goes.
Honestly, I think it's far more productive to save our outrage for cases where it really matters. Censorship is a real problem - but let's not go tilting at windmills when there are real giants to fight.
And Please.... Censorship in Arizona?? This is a state that refuses to recognize daylight savings time, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's holiday, and issues a gun license to a known psychopath. Censorship doesn't even rate very high in their list of crimes as a state.
"Arizona - we're so badass that we ignore the orders from Washington to change our clocks twice a year"
They should totally change their state motto to something like that. Is that how you think daylight savings time works or something? lol
Unions aren't there just to get you a fair salary when you start. They negotiate the conditions under which you may be replaced as well. While I agree many unions have gone too far with this and many also do very little for their workers, that's not reason enough to discard the concept entirely. I see it as much like the political landscape; when the masses no longer govern by regular involvement in the process, those who wish to abuse the process come into power and, frankly, screw it all up.
Game development is an industry RIPE for unionization but the companies keep the workers in a competitive frenzy and rely on churn to get rid of those who may desire a stable life along with their decent job.
Note, please, that I own a business and my employees are unionized by my choice. I encouraged them to organize and stayed hands-off as they interviewed various unions until they found one they thought suitable. I negotiated a fair deal with the union based on what my employees actually wanted as a whole. Surprisingly, there was less about pay that changed and more about things I would consider silly such as them being allowed to use their own tools instead of the ones I provided. We're talking screwdrivers and such here but they felt it was important. I'm happy to have satisfied employees who feel empowered in their own benefits and working conditions. They're much more productive this way than when each was thinking about how to outdo the next in pay or benefits.
Interesting perspective. To be honest, if the game industry unionized (and if I were essentially forced to join a union), I'd probably either go indie or find a new line of work. I like being in charge of my own destiny, and that includes negotiation of my benefits and working conditions.
Note: I'm not saying non-union is right for everyone. It's just the way I roll. I'm glad it seems to be working out for you and your employees, though.
Typically companies wants someone with exactly 5 or 10 years of experience and no more. After that, employees start costing more than they're worth.
I'm curious... "costing more than they're worth"... I had thought that that most IT workers are not unionized. Am I mistaken? I get paid what I do because my employer and I have negotiated that value on my initial hiring. At subsequent years they've increased my salary to compensate for my performance and increased experience. If I don't agree with the pay rate, I'm free to try to re-negotiate or find a higher paying job.
Is someone forcing these companies to pay employees based on some time-based salary schedule? Or are we just talking about normal market forces, where if you don't pay experience people enough some other company will lure them away? Sorry, I just don't know how it works outside my own somewhat specialized industry (game development), where pretty much everyone negotiates salaries on their own.
So, you're asking what the benefit is of an online gaming store is if you don't have a fast, reliable internet connection? Seriously? Obviously Steam is sort of pointless without the online component. No one is saying otherwise, as far as I can tell.
The rocket disasters in the early space program did not shelve the project until endless analyses could be conducted to guarantee 100% future success.
The early Apollo disaster that killed three astronauts did, in fact, set the program back time-wise, and put more focus on safety. It forced NASA to take a good, long look at a number of substandard and unsafe systems and redesign them for the better.
Also, I think you give modern society too little credit. We lost two shuttles in pretty horrific and spectacular disasters, and we kept flying them. Public support didn't evaporate. It's just that the shuttle fleet is too old at this point, and for lots of really crappy reasons that I won't get into, a good replacement system was never created.
Any such system would allow migration of licenses. This is already a feature of the Xbox for things like Xbox Arcade titles.
That being said, I tend to agree with your conclusion if not your reasons. I think MS can't afford to piss off it's customers who like to sell used games. The console race is still too close for that.
Honestly, as much as the "no used sales" bothers me, I'm also worried as hell MS will screw up their controller. IMO, it's currently damn-near perfect right now (with the exception of the d-pad for many, I know - I don't use it that much), at least for my hand size. The PS3 controller feels too small and lightweight, and it's not nearly as ergonomic-feeling for me. And Nintendo seems to make a game of create an even more horrid and unwieldy controller with each new console generation.
Xbox Live and the Xbox controller are the reason 95% of my game purchase are for the Xbox, even though I own all three consoles. I only buy games for the others when they're exclusive to that platform.
Personally, I'm not sure I put much stake in these rumors, though. If MS were solidly in the leader position, I wouldn't put it past them to do this. However, with the current 3-way race with no runaway leader, I think they can't afford to annoy their customers that much. Competition is a good thing.
Microsoft doesn't like to change features, especially if they break compatibility. ReFS isn't really a new FS, it is NTFS with a bunch of old features and restrictions removed maintaining as much backwards compatibility as possible (Microsoft claims it's a ground up rewrite, but it still is essentially NTFS from a high level).
"Essentially NTFS from a high level"... Doesn't that mean they just kept features and compatibility where it made sense? I've done that before with software - rewrote the guts of something but kept the API mostly the same.
Then you're either ignorant of its actual mechanics or being purposefully obtuse. The entire point of the ribbon is that it intelligently scales up or down to fill available space much better than previous paradigms. As you resize the window up or down, lower-priority items collapse first, leaving the more important items in view. You probably wouldn't know this if you've only ever seen screenshots of the UI.
Yeah, that's really annoying. I really, really wish that game developers spent more time on creating UIs better tailored for the PC experience. Unfortunately, the PC is becoming more marginalized as a platform, with the exception of MMOs or other always online offerings.
I have a feeling Blizzard won't make the same type of mistakes. At least not yet. I have zero faith that Activision won't push them toward more expedient development cycles and try to start cutting quality eventually, but hopefully that won't happen for a while.
I read a really interesting whitepaper (I wish I could find it - anyone?) on the design process that went into the Ribbon concept. In a nutshell, it showed the size and complexity explosion of the menu / toolbar system through the various versions of Office through the years (it was really getting sort of ridiculous). It was then contrasted with the increasing resolutions of modern screens. From what I could see, they did a huge amount of usability study in this features, as one might realistically imagine would happen.
So, no, the ribbon was not designed by programmers, nor was it a child of designers to pretty up the interface. The simple fact of the matter is that menus and toolbars simply weren't scaling up well with the explosion of features in modern versions of Office.
Honestly, I think it's pretty hard for people to take a step back from a long-held convention like the traditional menu bar, and take a look at it's shortcomings somewhat rationally. As one example: have you noticed that so many programs have a top level 'File' menu even if they don't really work with files? There's nothing logical about it - it's convention trumping rational design right there. There's absolutely nothing wrong with menus as a core concept, but they past a certain point of complexity, I think the usability tends to take a pretty big hit. And frankly, there's also the simple matter that people simple dislike change - especially when they've already spent a considerable amount of effort learning what may have been a quirky but usable system. I certainly know I'm not immune - I still prefer the old VC++6 shortcuts instead of the newer defaults.
Did MS get the ribbon design perfect? Of course not, but I think they'll keep refining it based on user feedback until it becomes a ubiquitous part of UI systems in lots of places. At some point in just a few years, people will probably look back and wonder what all the crying and gnashing of teeth was all about. My little prediction anyways...
Most of the 'artists' I know aren't particularly 'artistic'. They just self apply the label as a lifelong excuse for being fuckups.
I work in the game development industry, so I'm surrounded by folks that produce awesome art on a daily basis. I'm not doubting you, because I've seen people throw random shit at a wall and call it 'art' before, but when you work with actual talented artists on a daily basis, you get a very realistic idea of your own artistic limitations as a programmer. I'm probably in a relatively unique situation in this regard, I guess.
They've removed all the complex "stats" that made the game too difficult for console users who can barely figure out their power button and lame ass controller. THATS RIGHT they removed the damn stats from an RPG to make it easier for console users. That's like removing the bullets from a gun to make it safer! God damn idiots! That's he whole reason people play RPGs!
I'm an absolute RPG nut, and the incessant focus on stats drives me up a tree. I think my perfect RPG would actually hide most or all game stats. I know the min/max type players would hate it, and I'm certainly not saying it would appeal to all players. In the same vein, please don't presume to speak for me either. I play RPGs primary for the immersive experience in fantastic worlds, and the interesting story / narrative it provides. The mechanics of the game are actually of secondary concern to me, except when they're stupidly broken (i.e. Oblivion - which Skyrim appears to have mostly fixed, btw) to the point where you have to actively fight against them.
Personally, while I play both console and PC games, I chose to purchase and play Skyrim on Xbox. I develop PC games for a living, so I certainly don't have anything against that platform. However, at the end of the day, I tend to appreciate sitting back on a couch and using the Xbox controller, which I find fairly comfortable for long gaming sessions.
Also, most rational people would never argue that a mouse isn't far superior for FPS aiming, or selection and clicking, like for RTS games or the classic Diablo style control. That's why it's important for game designers to avoid a simple "port" of a game and design the game with the platform in mind. Far too many PC games get substandard user interfaces and have their controls dumbed down. This isn't the fault of the consoles - this is simply lazy development, and unfortunately, PCs tend to get the raw end of this deal, simply because consoles are a more lucrative market.
Good list. Although honestly, one of my biggest fears is that they'll abandon their controller design. It's my absolute favorite console by far to play on, and the console is largely responsible for that.
We haven't gone backwards exactly. It's just that increases in CPU speeds, memory amount, and storage capacity have far exceeded increases in comparable data transfer rates. Every time you double texture size, keep in mind that you're quadrupling the required memory, and as such, the internal "bandwidth" required to transfer it from a storage medium to RAM.
Unfortunately, there's no real solution to this other than to use advanced streaming algorithms to continuously load / cache data on the fly. Nearly every modern console game does this now to some degree, but it's sort of an impossible problem to solve when you allow the player to teleport to new regions of the world in any way, because there's often no way to predict and pre-cache that data in advance. As much as I hate long loading times, it's extremely difficult to pare that time down when you've got a very large data set that must be in RAM before you can start rendering a scene.
Formation of structure begins: 2 days Earliest stars and galaxies form: 6 years Sun and Earth form: 37 years First evidence of life on Earth: 47 years Advanced life forms on Earth: 57 years First dinosaurs: 58 years Dinosaurs become extinct: 4 months ago Humans appear: 8 hours ago Writing is developed: 15 minutes ago Modern scientific thought: one minute ago Present day: 59 years Human lifetime: ten seconds The Sun dies: 80 years
Absolutely. This man can be substantially credited with inspiring me as a child to pursue the software engineering career I now enjoy.
Yep, I'm a game developer largely because of the influence of his work. Other major influences: Roberta Williams (King's Quest series) and Sid Meier (Civilization), and plenty more I'm missing. And whoever made all those awesome Odyssey II games (my first console).
Wishing the best of luck to him in whatever he chooses to do, or whatever wisdom he imparts to future game designers.
Slashdot Mirror
What? No, money is a representation of life energy, not simple power. A person trades their time (life energy) for money. A person's wage or salary determines the exchange rate. That person can then trade that money for goods and services that other people have sacrificed their life energy to produce. I can have the equivalent of a nuclear power plant in my house. That's not going to put a single green bean on my plate, nor purchase a car to travel in.
Anyhow, back on topic... the single slimiest producer I've ever worked with ended up at Zynga. I'm pretty sure he fit right in to their corporate culture. Don't paint all companies with the same brush. I really appreciate the game dev company I currently work for. Everyone is genuinely excited about making fun games for people, and while we want to earn a living doing it, we're also not actively looking for every opportunity to screw customers over, or to pillage and rape other companies with teams of lawyers. We just try to produce fun games.
Generally speaking, I think a company's ethics pretty much flows from the top. In our case, I genuinely respect our company prez (he's earned his stripes in the trenches). I've been in other companies where the leadership couldn't even be bothered to play the games we made (seriously, they just watched other people play and then made random decisions about things to change). The difference between the two companies, in everything from the quality of the games we produce to the way employees are treated... night and day difference.
Concur, but recall that on the week of Dennis Richie and Steve Jobs passing, there were thousands of articles and millions of comments about Mr. Jobs. For the most part, the passing of Mr. Richie elicited a response of, "Who?" followed by, "So what?"
To a certain group of people, style is substance, I guess.
Hmm, I think maybe it's more about relevance in that particular example. Ritchie is only known to programmers for his contributions... why would non-programmers know about him? He's several steps removed from their daily lives (it's hard to even explain to a layperson why he's so famous). He received plenty of lifetime awards and accolades as well, so it's not as though he's unacknowledged either. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, was exactly one step removed from many people's daily lives, technologically speaking, of course. Moreover, he was a very dynamic and oftentimes controversial figure, and he also died relatively young. So, I don't think it's quite as simple as "style over substance".
I'm glad you mentioned Uncharted because I think it's a perfect example of how pushing towards a movie type of story telling ruins a game. The story telling elements in Uncharted 2 was over used, forced and ultimately broke game play. For example when you first start the game and granted control: you find the main character hanging off a crashed train danging off an edge of a cliff. You start to climb upwards and then BAM a piece of the train breaks off and you loose control to a mini-scene where you watch him dangle by one hand, he watches the broken pipe fall a long ways down and you're given a scenic views of the snow covered mountains in the distance as he slowly turns himself back around and gets his other hand back on the train. You're then granted control again and this process is repeated a number of times until you finally make it onto solid ground. That ruins the game play for me, I've lost control and was interrupted not because I made a mistake but because the designers wanted it to be more like a movie. Metal Gear Solid 4 while having a million hours of cut-scenes manages not to break game play; when they take control away and show a scene it's because there's going to be a change in game play. If I sneak into a house and they start a cut-scene it's because the gameplay is shifting from sneaking past henchmen to a boss battle. Playing Uncharted 2 I felt less like playing a game with an interactive world with a story to drive that interaction and more like watching a movie that required me to push some buttons.
Yeah, I specifically mention Uncharted because I think it's the foremost example of the "cinematic game." For me, the cinematic feel of the scene you mentioned didn't ruin anything for me - in fact, I enjoyed the cinematic-style presentation quite a bit.
Here's the rub: everyone has different opinions about what they like and dislike about games (or just about anything else). What scratches my discs is when someone say: Sorry, your opinion is wrong. Game developers should stop making the type of games you enjoy playing. (note: not talking about you here, of course). To me, that's the height of arrogance, and it's just absurd on it's face to try to lay down these sort of blanket rules to which all games should try to conform to.
Maybe he should talk to Tim Schafer, Double Fine, et al. and tell all these people that they are having fun incorrectly.
Apparently, what Jaffe enjoys most is telling others that they're playing wrong.
I don't understand the fundamental problem with "games that have been intentionally made from the ground up with the intent and purpose of telling a story or expressing a philosophy or giving a designer's narrative." Likewise, I don't have a problem with games that are 100% about gameplay and don't bother with any sort of meaningful narrative or story.
While I love Skyrim, I also love heavily story-driven games with lots of cutscenes as well (like Uncharted). To me, they're a nice reward and a way to help break up the gameplay a bit. Moreover, it's a fun way of merging my love of videogames with my love of interesting narrative, storytelling, and lore. Also, there are times it's fun to see personalities OTHER than the one you impose on characters in games. In other words, not every game is a Western-style role-playing game where the main protaganist is suppose to be a blank slate. It's entertaining to me when you care about the characters in your story and look forward to seeing the plot develop. Why do people try to shoehorn everything into one box? I think the world of "videogames" is big enough to fit both philosophies quite nicely.
Frankly, it just sounds like he's a big fan of more free-form worlds in gaming, and is just annoyed that there aren't more Skyrim-like games out there. I agree it's a shame, but if there's a demand for these games, then companies will fulfill that market space, especially as the gaming market continues to expand.
To me, my iphone is the first device ive ever looked at and said, "you are the progenitor of the Tricorder". Pocket computing began with the iphone. You may look at the device as a trinket, to me its one of the most powerful tools ever to be created.
Apple has a design sense that no other company does. Their products ooze style and ease-of-use, but please don't make the mistake of thinking that Apple invented all this stuff. They refined and popularized it, and brought it to the masses. And the phrase "pocket computing began with the iPhone" is sort of silly. That completely ignores the predecessors to smartphones - PDAs, such as blackberry and palm devices, not to mention other smartphones that predated the iPhone by years.
http://smartphone-guide.com/a-short-history-of-the-smartphone.html
Don't take me for an Apple hater, btw. I own an iPad, and while I currently down own a smartphone, I'm leaning towards an iPhone when I do make the plunge. It just bothers me when people tend to mistake the *popularization* of technology with the *invention* of technology.
Horses and buggies were also better and more reliable than the earliest automobiles. I understand the point you're making. High tech isn't a solution for everything, but stuff like this is worth a shot at the R&D stage. You're never really sure that you can't improve a technology until you give it a try.
It sounds like even the university students can't be bothered to generate more than a tepid response to this matter. What if... instead of there being a conspiracy of silence on the matter... What if maybe, just maybe, it's not really all that outrageous?
Yeah... that was my first thought. The deafening sound of silence you heard was everyone not caring. Or rather, thinking, "yeah, the explanation offered by the University sounded reasonable, actually." Granted, there are plenty of people here on Slashdot perfectly willing to get outraged. They care enough to write a post flaming the University without every really digging deeper, but that's about as far as it goes.
Honestly, I think it's far more productive to save our outrage for cases where it really matters. Censorship is a real problem - but let's not go tilting at windmills when there are real giants to fight.
And Please.... Censorship in Arizona?? This is a state that refuses to recognize daylight savings time, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's holiday, and issues a gun license to a known psychopath. Censorship doesn't even rate very high in their list of crimes as a state.
"Arizona - we're so badass that we ignore the orders from Washington to change our clocks twice a year"
They should totally change their state motto to something like that. Is that how you think daylight savings time works or something? lol
Unions aren't there just to get you a fair salary when you start. They negotiate the conditions under which you may be replaced as well. While I agree many unions have gone too far with this and many also do very little for their workers, that's not reason enough to discard the concept entirely. I see it as much like the political landscape; when the masses no longer govern by regular involvement in the process, those who wish to abuse the process come into power and, frankly, screw it all up.
Game development is an industry RIPE for unionization but the companies keep the workers in a competitive frenzy and rely on churn to get rid of those who may desire a stable life along with their decent job.
Note, please, that I own a business and my employees are unionized by my choice. I encouraged them to organize and stayed hands-off as they interviewed various unions until they found one they thought suitable. I negotiated a fair deal with the union based on what my employees actually wanted as a whole. Surprisingly, there was less about pay that changed and more about things I would consider silly such as them being allowed to use their own tools instead of the ones I provided. We're talking screwdrivers and such here but they felt it was important. I'm happy to have satisfied employees who feel empowered in their own benefits and working conditions. They're much more productive this way than when each was thinking about how to outdo the next in pay or benefits.
Interesting perspective. To be honest, if the game industry unionized (and if I were essentially forced to join a union), I'd probably either go indie or find a new line of work. I like being in charge of my own destiny, and that includes negotiation of my benefits and working conditions.
Note: I'm not saying non-union is right for everyone. It's just the way I roll. I'm glad it seems to be working out for you and your employees, though.
Typically companies wants someone with exactly 5 or 10 years of experience and no more. After that, employees start costing more than they're worth.
I'm curious... "costing more than they're worth"... I had thought that that most IT workers are not unionized. Am I mistaken? I get paid what I do because my employer and I have negotiated that value on my initial hiring. At subsequent years they've increased my salary to compensate for my performance and increased experience. If I don't agree with the pay rate, I'm free to try to re-negotiate or find a higher paying job.
Is someone forcing these companies to pay employees based on some time-based salary schedule? Or are we just talking about normal market forces, where if you don't pay experience people enough some other company will lure them away? Sorry, I just don't know how it works outside my own somewhat specialized industry (game development), where pretty much everyone negotiates salaries on their own.
So, you're asking what the benefit is of an online gaming store is if you don't have a fast, reliable internet connection? Seriously? Obviously Steam is sort of pointless without the online component. No one is saying otherwise, as far as I can tell.
The rocket disasters in the early space program did not shelve the project until endless analyses could be conducted to guarantee 100% future success.
The early Apollo disaster that killed three astronauts did, in fact, set the program back time-wise, and put more focus on safety. It forced NASA to take a good, long look at a number of substandard and unsafe systems and redesign them for the better.
Also, I think you give modern society too little credit. We lost two shuttles in pretty horrific and spectacular disasters, and we kept flying them. Public support didn't evaporate. It's just that the shuttle fleet is too old at this point, and for lots of really crappy reasons that I won't get into, a good replacement system was never created.
Any such system would allow migration of licenses. This is already a feature of the Xbox for things like Xbox Arcade titles.
That being said, I tend to agree with your conclusion if not your reasons. I think MS can't afford to piss off it's customers who like to sell used games. The console race is still too close for that.
Honestly, as much as the "no used sales" bothers me, I'm also worried as hell MS will screw up their controller. IMO, it's currently damn-near perfect right now (with the exception of the d-pad for many, I know - I don't use it that much), at least for my hand size. The PS3 controller feels too small and lightweight, and it's not nearly as ergonomic-feeling for me. And Nintendo seems to make a game of create an even more horrid and unwieldy controller with each new console generation.
Xbox Live and the Xbox controller are the reason 95% of my game purchase are for the Xbox, even though I own all three consoles. I only buy games for the others when they're exclusive to that platform.
Personally, I'm not sure I put much stake in these rumors, though. If MS were solidly in the leader position, I wouldn't put it past them to do this. However, with the current 3-way race with no runaway leader, I think they can't afford to annoy their customers that much. Competition is a good thing.
Microsoft doesn't like to change features, especially if they break compatibility. ReFS isn't really a new FS, it is NTFS with a bunch of old features and restrictions removed maintaining as much backwards compatibility as possible (Microsoft claims it's a ground up rewrite, but it still is essentially NTFS from a high level).
"Essentially NTFS from a high level"... Doesn't that mean they just kept features and compatibility where it made sense? I've done that before with software - rewrote the guts of something but kept the API mostly the same.
Then you're either ignorant of its actual mechanics or being purposefully obtuse. The entire point of the ribbon is that it intelligently scales up or down to fill available space much better than previous paradigms. As you resize the window up or down, lower-priority items collapse first, leaving the more important items in view. You probably wouldn't know this if you've only ever seen screenshots of the UI.
Yeah, that's really annoying. I really, really wish that game developers spent more time on creating UIs better tailored for the PC experience. Unfortunately, the PC is becoming more marginalized as a platform, with the exception of MMOs or other always online offerings.
I have a feeling Blizzard won't make the same type of mistakes. At least not yet. I have zero faith that Activision won't push them toward more expedient development cycles and try to start cutting quality eventually, but hopefully that won't happen for a while.
I read a really interesting whitepaper (I wish I could find it - anyone?) on the design process that went into the Ribbon concept. In a nutshell, it showed the size and complexity explosion of the menu / toolbar system through the various versions of Office through the years (it was really getting sort of ridiculous). It was then contrasted with the increasing resolutions of modern screens. From what I could see, they did a huge amount of usability study in this features, as one might realistically imagine would happen.
So, no, the ribbon was not designed by programmers, nor was it a child of designers to pretty up the interface. The simple fact of the matter is that menus and toolbars simply weren't scaling up well with the explosion of features in modern versions of Office.
Honestly, I think it's pretty hard for people to take a step back from a long-held convention like the traditional menu bar, and take a look at it's shortcomings somewhat rationally. As one example: have you noticed that so many programs have a top level 'File' menu even if they don't really work with files? There's nothing logical about it - it's convention trumping rational design right there. There's absolutely nothing wrong with menus as a core concept, but they past a certain point of complexity, I think the usability tends to take a pretty big hit. And frankly, there's also the simple matter that people simple dislike change - especially when they've already spent a considerable amount of effort learning what may have been a quirky but usable system. I certainly know I'm not immune - I still prefer the old VC++6 shortcuts instead of the newer defaults.
Did MS get the ribbon design perfect? Of course not, but I think they'll keep refining it based on user feedback until it becomes a ubiquitous part of UI systems in lots of places. At some point in just a few years, people will probably look back and wonder what all the crying and gnashing of teeth was all about. My little prediction anyways...
Most of the 'artists' I know aren't particularly 'artistic'. They just self apply the label as a lifelong excuse for being fuckups.
I work in the game development industry, so I'm surrounded by folks that produce awesome art on a daily basis. I'm not doubting you, because I've seen people throw random shit at a wall and call it 'art' before, but when you work with actual talented artists on a daily basis, you get a very realistic idea of your own artistic limitations as a programmer. I'm probably in a relatively unique situation in this regard, I guess.
They've removed all the complex "stats" that made the game too difficult for console users who can barely figure out their power button and lame ass controller. THATS RIGHT they removed the damn stats from an RPG to make it easier for console users. That's like removing the bullets from a gun to make it safer! God damn idiots! That's he whole reason people play RPGs!
I'm an absolute RPG nut, and the incessant focus on stats drives me up a tree. I think my perfect RPG would actually hide most or all game stats. I know the min/max type players would hate it, and I'm certainly not saying it would appeal to all players. In the same vein, please don't presume to speak for me either. I play RPGs primary for the immersive experience in fantastic worlds, and the interesting story / narrative it provides. The mechanics of the game are actually of secondary concern to me, except when they're stupidly broken (i.e. Oblivion - which Skyrim appears to have mostly fixed, btw) to the point where you have to actively fight against them.
Personally, while I play both console and PC games, I chose to purchase and play Skyrim on Xbox. I develop PC games for a living, so I certainly don't have anything against that platform. However, at the end of the day, I tend to appreciate sitting back on a couch and using the Xbox controller, which I find fairly comfortable for long gaming sessions.
Also, most rational people would never argue that a mouse isn't far superior for FPS aiming, or selection and clicking, like for RTS games or the classic Diablo style control. That's why it's important for game designers to avoid a simple "port" of a game and design the game with the platform in mind. Far too many PC games get substandard user interfaces and have their controls dumbed down. This isn't the fault of the consoles - this is simply lazy development, and unfortunately, PCs tend to get the raw end of this deal, simply because consoles are a more lucrative market.
Good list. Although honestly, one of my biggest fears is that they'll abandon their controller design. It's my absolute favorite console by far to play on, and the console is largely responsible for that.
We haven't gone backwards exactly. It's just that increases in CPU speeds, memory amount, and storage capacity have far exceeded increases in comparable data transfer rates. Every time you double texture size, keep in mind that you're quadrupling the required memory, and as such, the internal "bandwidth" required to transfer it from a storage medium to RAM.
Unfortunately, there's no real solution to this other than to use advanced streaming algorithms to continuously load / cache data on the fly. Nearly every modern console game does this now to some degree, but it's sort of an impossible problem to solve when you allow the player to teleport to new regions of the world in any way, because there's often no way to predict and pre-cache that data in advance. As much as I hate long loading times, it's extremely difficult to pare that time down when you've got a very large data set that must be in RAM before you can start rendering a scene.
In the global scale of time, we've barely even begun. Here's a relative timeline of the universe for your consideration. Source: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/General_Astronomy/Short_History_of_the_Universe
Formation of structure begins: 2 days
Earliest stars and galaxies form: 6 years
Sun and Earth form: 37 years
First evidence of life on Earth: 47 years
Advanced life forms on Earth: 57 years
First dinosaurs: 58 years
Dinosaurs become extinct: 4 months ago
Humans appear: 8 hours ago
Writing is developed: 15 minutes ago
Modern scientific thought: one minute ago
Present day: 59 years
Human lifetime: ten seconds
The Sun dies: 80 years
Absolutely. This man can be substantially credited with inspiring me as a child to pursue the software engineering career I now enjoy.
Yep, I'm a game developer largely because of the influence of his work. Other major influences: Roberta Williams (King's Quest series) and Sid Meier (Civilization), and plenty more I'm missing. And whoever made all those awesome Odyssey II games (my first console).
Wishing the best of luck to him in whatever he chooses to do, or whatever wisdom he imparts to future game designers.