Just because you have a lot of red rock doesn't mean you have to turn into Utah.
I'm pretty sure I could go to Utah and buy a fully functional Left 4 Dead game. People keep trying to blame this on religion. It's not religion that's the problem here. It's *politicians*. Idiot politicians on the left AND the right try to control their people - think of Hugo Chavez's recent campaign against "violent videogames".
You clearly know nothing about MMO design. You have to trust the client for many things, or the game will be unresponsive or unplayable. Anti-cheating software is absolutely necessary.
I'm a professional game programmer, currently working on an MMO. Please believe me when I say, you trust the client with NOTHING. You allow the game to render the world, play sounds, and process input which is then send to the server for validation and processing. You only send the client what it absolutely has to know in order to render the world, and nothing else.
Many people mistakenly think that the client is responsible for movement. This is not the case (unless the developers are unbelievably incompetent). The client moves your avatar locally, yes, to prevent the appearance of lag, but the game server performs all movement authentication based on the input data the client sends. If the client and server positions don't match, the server is considered the authority, and the client must reset its position. This is nothing more than client-side prediction, and has been a staple of networked games for over a decade now.
Companies use client-side scanning software because it's *easier* than doing server-side analysis.
I mean, seriously. Why should companies like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Dell, HP, or any manufacturer spend any amount of time helping to track down your stolen property to begin with.
For the same reason a company may provide services above and beyond what they technically *have* to... it builds customer loyalty. It's up to them to decide whether that's worth more than the potential hassle of dealing with issues like these.
Personally, I suspect it's for fear of lawsuits. Generally speaking, in this country, it seems like it's almost always safer to *do nothing* rather than trying to do the "right thing", which is sort of a sad state of affairs.
I would give them more credit than that. In the last couple of years, EA's really put out some quality games, mostly because they have gone from a buy-and-assimilate mode to a buy-and-nurture mode. In recent memory, that means Black Box (Skate), Harmonix (Rock Band), Criterion (Burnout: Paradise), and BioWare (Mass Effect), which is nothing to sneeze at. All this without forcing out a new Rock Band game every three months on every available platform. No, Activision is the new king of sludge.
If by "nurture", you mean the way Lennie "nurtured" his small pets, or the loving way Microsoft "embraces" competing companies, then sure.
I'm sure it starts off comfy, but you can bet the squeeze will come eventually. They won't be able to help sticking their finger in the game development pie. Everyone thinks they can design games.
Back when I was using DOS, I made a simple little program that displayed a C prompt, and allowed any input, but as soon as you pressed return, it threw up a while bunch of errors and looked like the computer was going onto meltdown. After a few requests for permission to do diagnostics and scary looking progress bars, it stopped and displayed a gotcha screen. Few people ever got that for though. Always fun to watch people go from bored to terrified, followed by hastily turning the computer off and quickly and quietly walking away. Tried it on a neighbour's kids and the look of sheer horror on their faces was classic.
My dad's computer at his company used a custom DOS program written in Pascal. I fired up Turbo Pascal and simulated the login and initial menu options perfectly with my own program. I then slipped that program ahead the real login exe in the autoexec.bat file, and waited for Monday for the fun to begin. The program was designed to log in, but after a few key-presses, the computer starting spitting garbage on the screen, and then displayed a very scary warning talking about data corruption on the server, etc. After I heard him holler for me, I entered a secret "password", and the computer displayed a little animation telling him he'd been had.
Yeah, he was kind of pissed. I'm not sure he's quite forgiven me for that one.
The 360 probably tells MS what resolution you're running at when you log in (I'd guess a number of other settings are sent as well, such as whether or not you have parental controls turned on, what your audio settings are, etc). This sort of stuff is typically studied and released in aggregate (i.e. no personal info).
Honestly, if you're subscribed to Xbox LIVE, MS already has your name, address, credit card number, and a complete listing of every game you've ever played on your console. If you've got trust issues with MS, then it seems that whether or not they're peeking at your display settings is the least of your worries.
This also brings up the inadequacy of their "cloud" model for storage of annotations etc.: if you have any content you want to keep, you had better handle storage yourself, because nobody else can be trusted. This principle, of course, goes beyond Amazon, but is brought into focus here.
Until you get into the case of one language per platform: web games use JavaScript, SWF games use ActionScript, phone games and applet games use Java, iPhone games use Objective-C, Xbox 360 games from smaller companies use C#, etc.
In the commercial sector, with console and PC titles, C++ still dominates the industry. C# is emerging as a contender, but it's still niche, and largely used for ancillary work (like tool development). If you want to work on web apps or iPhone games, then there's nothing that's stopping you from developing that sort of specialty, but that's still what I consider outside the "mainstream" of the gaming industry. I have little experience in those fields.
Does releasing free software on my web site and having an active forum about it count as "shipped", or must it be proprietary and commercial? In the latter case, how can a fan of a genre stereotypically associated with consoles "ship" a console-style title for the PC? I'd like to get into the video game industry within the next few years, and I want to know what I can do to prepare while I still have a job in a different industry.
Well, everything "counts" when trying to get a job, but shipped commercial titles probably beat homebrew projects. That being said, having a small, polished game to show off definitely trumps non-related software or no code to show at all. FOSS is fine, the result is what matters . I think what I'm getting at is having a finished project shows you have the skill and fortitude to not only start a game, but finish it as well. Of course, keep in mind this is just my observation - every company will have a different set of standards they'll be looking for.
Honestly, if you're interested in multi-player brawling games, for example, then just code up a simple demo on the PC. I don't think too many companies would discount the demo just because it's not running on a PS3, Xbox 360, or a Wii. Think about it this way - said company would undoubtedly already have a game engine of some sort. As such, as a new hire, you'd be working on high-level code, and probably not doing anything remotely platform-specific.
My advice would be, however, not to set your sights too narrowly for your first job in the industry. I'd be willing to take whatever you could get initially, as that will get you valuable experience. My first job was working on bargain-bin-type hunting and fishing titles for the PC - not exactly my dream job. But it was a great experience, and allowed me to work my way up the industry food chain. Now I pretty much have enough experience and shipped titles on my resume that I have my choice of AAA companies to work for.
Then the problem becomes getting one of the dev kits in the first place, which is difficult unless you've already lived in a city with a major dev house.
If your employer is making console games, you'll have a dev kit. If you're making PC games, you won't need it.
Industry experience seems to be far more valuable than platform-specific knowledge (except in the case of very specific domain knowledge, like a PS3 graphics programmer). Most programmers, however, are working on game code, not engine code. Game code tends to look pretty much the same no matter which platform you're working on. New programmers in particular will probably be *nowhere* near the low-level engine code.
So, once you've shipped a title or two (even if it's a PC game), your chances of getting hired by a company making console games go up dramatically. Once you've got your foot in the door, it's easier to take on more specific projects and start developing domain-specific specialties. In my case, after working on PC games for 4 or 5 years, I ended up working on PS2 titles. After that, I went back to a PC company.
Essentially, I think you just need to get your foot in the door. Once you're in, it's easier to move laterally to the platform of your choice. Probably good advice for just about any industry, I suppose.
I learned how to program on an Apple II. My first "serious" games and projects were in DOS, and later Windows / DirectX. My first professional game programming job was a Windows/PC title, and after a few years, I was hired on as a PS2 game programmer.
Honestly, most employers (in my experience at least) don't care all that much about what sort of platform experience an entry-level programmer has. They'll be working on high-level game code that's far away from any sort of platform-specific idiosyncrasies.
Yep, and all you'd have to give up is what consoles do best. You plug it in, put the disk in, and play.
Consoles aren't about giving you the best gaming experience. They're about giving you a nicely-packaged, so-easy-to-use-anyone-can-do-it gaming experience.
I imagine sometimes PC gamers scratch their heads and wonder why the PC gaming market share is dwarfed by consoles. After all, the PC is an open platform, it's far more powerful, has deeper and more sophisticated games, a more diverse set of input devices, some of which are clearly superior for certain genres....
Yet, none of that trumps the console's ace: plug it in, works every time.*
Re:Biggest Gripe about coding .. shouldn't be code
on
Coders At Work
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· Score: 1
Yeah, because the test of quality software is shiny graphics and multimedia. You're a non-technical manager, aren't you?
I program video games for a living, and I compose music on the computer as a hobby. As such, I'm somewhat partial to shiny graphics and multimedia.
Re:Biggest Gripe about coding .. shouldn't be code
on
Coders At Work
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I hear you. I remember when, back on my Apple II+, I could write new music on my sequencer (with fully sampled orchestral sounds - no external hardware needed), download new mp3s from Amazon.com, and chat in real-time with some friends, all at the same time. I remember how easy it was to stream real-time video wirelessly to my TV. Programming interfaces was a snap as well, with fully-featured APIs available for several different flavors of operating systems.
I remember how just about any information you could want was available on the Internet with just a click of a mouse. I especially loved how I could order just about anything online - no more hectic holiday shopping for me! Also, remember how awesome the videogames used to look and play? Why, those first-person shooters practically looked photo-realistic. It was amazing how well they ran on such old hardware.
Integrating new hardware and devices was far easier as well. We could just pick up a new gizmo and plug it to the Apple II's USB port, and damned if the computer didn't just instantly recognize it and load up some drivers. Best of all, you could pick up a new, reasonably powerful computer for about $1000 or so.
Man, those were the days... Oh, wait. I'm thinking of *today's computers*.
Even the 360, the thing you claim they "got right," had a 100% failure rate on the day of release.
I must be misunderstanding what you mean by this, because it sounds like you're claiming that every single Xbox 360 sold on launch day died later that same day.
Also, very clever of you to use Stalin instead of Hitler, thus avoiding a Godwi... Oh snap!
There's also a constitutional right protecting us from excessive bail...
Haven't you heard? The Constitution is now a "living document", meaning we can re-interpret it to mean what we think it should mean, instead of what it actually says. Re-interpretation is *so* much more convenient than amending the silly thing.
FPS games are a pretty narrow genre, albeit a popular one. By definition, it involves the player running around with a gun and shooting things. That tends to get at least a T, and if it involves shooting people, probably an M.
That's sort of like saying: "All the fighting games I've looked at seem to involve a high degree of physical violence." Technically true, but it doesn't really mean anything when cherry-picking one specific genre which is, by definition, probably more violent.
Yep, a very good point. That's why I don't outright reject the notion of government coercion when other measures fail. Pollution is certainly an infringement on our ability to enjoy a clean, pollution-free environment. Like I stated, I think there can be an appropriate balance struck in these issues. But when abuse occurs, the only one with the authority to ultimately correct that abuse is the government, and it's foolish to think that *everyone* can be reasoned with.
Perhaps game devs should tone down the violence then. It's getting absurd how much violence is going into games lately. It's no longer enough to show a blood splat and have the enemy fall over, no, you have to show all the organs being ripped out in every detail.
then this...
Anyway, there are plenty of videogames that are both good and not M rated. Nintendo is known for making great games that you can give to a child without having to freak out.
If there are plenty of videogames that are both good and not M rated, then what's the problem?
I've worked in the game industry for well over a decade now. I have yet to work on a game that wasn't Teen-rated or lower, and I've made no special effort to do so. The simple fact of the matter is this: like you said, there are a HUGE NUMBER of great Teen-rated or lower games out there. And yet a small number of M-rated games get so much of the attention. Why are you blaming developers for that?
Ok, I guess I'll speak up for conservatives here...
Yeah, I'm extremely skeptical that global warming trends we've seen are the result of our fossil fuel usage. If you follow the money, there are a lot of people in the environmental movement pushing "carbon credits", and are poised to make a boatload of money by exploiting others' guilt, while doing nothing to actually solve real problems. But no one wants dirty air or water. There are plenty of good reasons why we should be reducing our oil and gas dependency (just inhale deeply on a bad smog day if you live in LA). And one would be an idiot to argue that a bunch of plastic in the ocean (or other obviously man-made debris or pollutants) are anything but a problem caused by humans, and needs to be solved by humans.
Believe it or not, I consider myself an environmentalist. When I was a bit younger, I did a lot of hiking in the mountain ranges near my home. I think nature is something that needs to be carefully protected, because it's far to easy to trample it under the foot of progress and industry. I support our national park system, and conversation efforts everywhere. I'm switching my light bulbs to more efficient halogens as they need replacing (not by force of law, though!). I'll be replacing my gas-burning car with an electric when they come out with a practical, affordable model, and I'm looking forward to doing so.
However, I also believe that we can strike a balance between responsible stewardship, individual liberty, and capitalist enterprise. I just happen to believe that you need to be extremely judicious in applying the force of law to every problem you need to solve. Growing the power of government nearly always comes at the expense of individual liberty, so I prefer that not be our first solution, but the last.
Exactly, in all honesty with counterfeit money, so long as people don't notice it is a -good thing- in moderation. So long as everyone agrees it is valuable, it doesn't get "recorded" so as long as it is in moderation it doesn't cause any inflation, and it gets money around. Unfair, yes, terrible? No.
Are you serious? How can it possibly be a good thing, even in moderation? Let me count the ways counterfeiting is bad:
* It devalues real currency. It may not be a large percentage of all the cash our there, but it's no less wrong than stealing from a bank. Those losses are also absorbed by a large number of people, just like inflationary losses. Stealing a dollar from a million people is just as wrong as stealing a million dollars from one person. The government needs no assistance from criminals in printing more money, thank you. * It costs our government additional money spent on detection and prosecution of counterfeiters. Again, we, the taxpayers, are shouldering that cost. * The people involved in counterfeiting are, by definition, criminals. And those sorts of people are just as likely to do bad things rather than positive things with their ill-gotten gains. Money can buy power, and those are not the type of people I want with a lot of power.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because you have a lot of red rock doesn't mean you have to turn into Utah.
I'm pretty sure I could go to Utah and buy a fully functional Left 4 Dead game. People keep trying to blame this on religion. It's not religion that's the problem here. It's *politicians*. Idiot politicians on the left AND the right try to control their people - think of Hugo Chavez's recent campaign against "violent videogames".
You clearly know nothing about MMO design. You have to trust the client for many things, or the game will be unresponsive or unplayable. Anti-cheating software is absolutely necessary.
I'm a professional game programmer, currently working on an MMO. Please believe me when I say, you trust the client with NOTHING. You allow the game to render the world, play sounds, and process input which is then send to the server for validation and processing. You only send the client what it absolutely has to know in order to render the world, and nothing else.
Many people mistakenly think that the client is responsible for movement. This is not the case (unless the developers are unbelievably incompetent). The client moves your avatar locally, yes, to prevent the appearance of lag, but the game server performs all movement authentication based on the input data the client sends. If the client and server positions don't match, the server is considered the authority, and the client must reset its position. This is nothing more than client-side prediction, and has been a staple of networked games for over a decade now.
Companies use client-side scanning software because it's *easier* than doing server-side analysis.
I mean, seriously. Why should companies like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Dell, HP, or any manufacturer spend any amount of time helping to track down your stolen property to begin with.
For the same reason a company may provide services above and beyond what they technically *have* to... it builds customer loyalty. It's up to them to decide whether that's worth more than the potential hassle of dealing with issues like these.
Personally, I suspect it's for fear of lawsuits. Generally speaking, in this country, it seems like it's almost always safer to *do nothing* rather than trying to do the "right thing", which is sort of a sad state of affairs.
I would give them more credit than that. In the last couple of years, EA's really put out some quality games, mostly because they have gone from a buy-and-assimilate mode to a buy-and-nurture mode. In recent memory, that means Black Box (Skate), Harmonix (Rock Band), Criterion (Burnout: Paradise), and BioWare (Mass Effect), which is nothing to sneeze at. All this without forcing out a new Rock Band game every three months on every available platform. No, Activision is the new king of sludge.
If by "nurture", you mean the way Lennie "nurtured" his small pets, or the loving way Microsoft "embraces" competing companies, then sure.
I'm sure it starts off comfy, but you can bet the squeeze will come eventually. They won't be able to help sticking their finger in the game development pie. Everyone thinks they can design games.
Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind
... probably also: Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent.
Would you also characterize those people as "a bunch of Boy Scouts"?
Back when I was using DOS, I made a simple little program that displayed a C prompt, and allowed any input, but as soon as you pressed return, it threw up a while bunch of errors and looked like the computer was going onto meltdown. After a few requests for permission to do diagnostics and scary looking progress bars, it stopped and displayed a gotcha screen. Few people ever got that for though. Always fun to watch people go from bored to terrified, followed by hastily turning the computer off and quickly and quietly walking away. Tried it on a neighbour's kids and the look of sheer horror on their faces was classic.
My dad's computer at his company used a custom DOS program written in Pascal. I fired up Turbo Pascal and simulated the login and initial menu options perfectly with my own program. I then slipped that program ahead the real login exe in the autoexec.bat file, and waited for Monday for the fun to begin. The program was designed to log in, but after a few key-presses, the computer starting spitting garbage on the screen, and then displayed a very scary warning talking about data corruption on the server, etc. After I heard him holler for me, I entered a secret "password", and the computer displayed a little animation telling him he'd been had.
Yeah, he was kind of pissed. I'm not sure he's quite forgiven me for that one.
Guild Wars did "stick figures for a day" as a joke on April 1, 2008.
The 360 probably tells MS what resolution you're running at when you log in (I'd guess a number of other settings are sent as well, such as whether or not you have parental controls turned on, what your audio settings are, etc). This sort of stuff is typically studied and released in aggregate (i.e. no personal info).
Honestly, if you're subscribed to Xbox LIVE, MS already has your name, address, credit card number, and a complete listing of every game you've ever played on your console. If you've got trust issues with MS, then it seems that whether or not they're peeking at your display settings is the least of your worries.
This also brings up the inadequacy of their "cloud" model for storage of annotations etc.: if you have any content you want to keep, you had better handle storage yourself, because nobody else can be trusted. This principle, of course, goes beyond Amazon, but is brought into focus here.
Are you saying that... RMS is right?
My head hurts. I'm going to lie down for a bit...
Until you get into the case of one language per platform: web games use JavaScript, SWF games use ActionScript, phone games and applet games use Java, iPhone games use Objective-C, Xbox 360 games from smaller companies use C#, etc.
In the commercial sector, with console and PC titles, C++ still dominates the industry. C# is emerging as a contender, but it's still niche, and largely used for ancillary work (like tool development). If you want to work on web apps or iPhone games, then there's nothing that's stopping you from developing that sort of specialty, but that's still what I consider outside the "mainstream" of the gaming industry. I have little experience in those fields.
Does releasing free software on my web site and having an active forum about it count as "shipped", or must it be proprietary and commercial? In the latter case, how can a fan of a genre stereotypically associated with consoles "ship" a console-style title for the PC? I'd like to get into the video game industry within the next few years, and I want to know what I can do to prepare while I still have a job in a different industry.
Well, everything "counts" when trying to get a job, but shipped commercial titles probably beat homebrew projects. That being said, having a small, polished game to show off definitely trumps non-related software or no code to show at all. FOSS is fine, the result is what matters . I think what I'm getting at is having a finished project shows you have the skill and fortitude to not only start a game, but finish it as well. Of course, keep in mind this is just my observation - every company will have a different set of standards they'll be looking for.
Honestly, if you're interested in multi-player brawling games, for example, then just code up a simple demo on the PC. I don't think too many companies would discount the demo just because it's not running on a PS3, Xbox 360, or a Wii. Think about it this way - said company would undoubtedly already have a game engine of some sort. As such, as a new hire, you'd be working on high-level code, and probably not doing anything remotely platform-specific.
My advice would be, however, not to set your sights too narrowly for your first job in the industry. I'd be willing to take whatever you could get initially, as that will get you valuable experience. My first job was working on bargain-bin-type hunting and fishing titles for the PC - not exactly my dream job. But it was a great experience, and allowed me to work my way up the industry food chain. Now I pretty much have enough experience and shipped titles on my resume that I have my choice of AAA companies to work for.
Then the problem becomes getting one of the dev kits in the first place, which is difficult unless you've already lived in a city with a major dev house.
If your employer is making console games, you'll have a dev kit. If you're making PC games, you won't need it.
Industry experience seems to be far more valuable than platform-specific knowledge (except in the case of very specific domain knowledge, like a PS3 graphics programmer). Most programmers, however, are working on game code, not engine code. Game code tends to look pretty much the same no matter which platform you're working on. New programmers in particular will probably be *nowhere* near the low-level engine code.
So, once you've shipped a title or two (even if it's a PC game), your chances of getting hired by a company making console games go up dramatically. Once you've got your foot in the door, it's easier to take on more specific projects and start developing domain-specific specialties. In my case, after working on PC games for 4 or 5 years, I ended up working on PS2 titles. After that, I went back to a PC company.
Essentially, I think you just need to get your foot in the door. Once you're in, it's easier to move laterally to the platform of your choice. Probably good advice for just about any industry, I suppose.
I can't speak for others, but...
I learned how to program on an Apple II. My first "serious" games and projects were in DOS, and later Windows / DirectX. My first professional game programming job was a Windows/PC title, and after a few years, I was hired on as a PS2 game programmer.
Honestly, most employers (in my experience at least) don't care all that much about what sort of platform experience an entry-level programmer has. They'll be working on high-level game code that's far away from any sort of platform-specific idiosyncrasies.
Yep, and all you'd have to give up is what consoles do best. You plug it in, put the disk in, and play.
Consoles aren't about giving you the best gaming experience. They're about giving you a nicely-packaged, so-easy-to-use-anyone-can-do-it gaming experience.
I imagine sometimes PC gamers scratch their heads and wonder why the PC gaming market share is dwarfed by consoles. After all, the PC is an open platform, it's far more powerful, has deeper and more sophisticated games, a more diverse set of input devices, some of which are clearly superior for certain genres....
Yet, none of that trumps the console's ace: plug it in, works every time.*
* Ok, ok, cue 360 jokes here.
...level loading. Give me a stupid orbitz game to play why it loads.
Sorry, that idea's already been patented.
Yeah, because the test of quality software is shiny graphics and multimedia. You're a non-technical manager, aren't you?
I program video games for a living, and I compose music on the computer as a hobby. As such, I'm somewhat partial to shiny graphics and multimedia.
I hear you. I remember when, back on my Apple II+, I could write new music on my sequencer (with fully sampled orchestral sounds - no external hardware needed), download new mp3s from Amazon.com, and chat in real-time with some friends, all at the same time. I remember how easy it was to stream real-time video wirelessly to my TV. Programming interfaces was a snap as well, with fully-featured APIs available for several different flavors of operating systems.
I remember how just about any information you could want was available on the Internet with just a click of a mouse. I especially loved how I could order just about anything online - no more hectic holiday shopping for me! Also, remember how awesome the videogames used to look and play? Why, those first-person shooters practically looked photo-realistic. It was amazing how well they ran on such old hardware.
Integrating new hardware and devices was far easier as well. We could just pick up a new gizmo and plug it to the Apple II's USB port, and damned if the computer didn't just instantly recognize it and load up some drivers. Best of all, you could pick up a new, reasonably powerful computer for about $1000 or so.
Man, those were the days... Oh, wait. I'm thinking of *today's computers*.
Even the 360, the thing you claim they "got right," had a 100% failure rate on the day of release.
I must be misunderstanding what you mean by this, because it sounds like you're claiming that every single Xbox 360 sold on launch day died later that same day.
Also, very clever of you to use Stalin instead of Hitler, thus avoiding a Godwi... Oh snap!
There's also a constitutional right protecting us from excessive bail...
Haven't you heard? The Constitution is now a "living document", meaning we can re-interpret it to mean what we think it should mean, instead of what it actually says. Re-interpretation is *so* much more convenient than amending the silly thing.
Penny Arcade was on the right track...
FPS games are a pretty narrow genre, albeit a popular one. By definition, it involves the player running around with a gun and shooting things. That tends to get at least a T, and if it involves shooting people, probably an M.
That's sort of like saying: "All the fighting games I've looked at seem to involve a high degree of physical violence." Technically true, but it doesn't really mean anything when cherry-picking one specific genre which is, by definition, probably more violent.
Yep, a very good point. That's why I don't outright reject the notion of government coercion when other measures fail. Pollution is certainly an infringement on our ability to enjoy a clean, pollution-free environment. Like I stated, I think there can be an appropriate balance struck in these issues. But when abuse occurs, the only one with the authority to ultimately correct that abuse is the government, and it's foolish to think that *everyone* can be reasoned with.
First you say this:
Perhaps game devs should tone down the violence then. It's getting absurd how much violence is going into games lately. It's no longer enough to show a blood splat and have the enemy fall over, no, you have to show all the organs being ripped out in every detail.
then this...
Anyway, there are plenty of videogames that are both good and not M rated. Nintendo is known for making great games that you can give to a child without having to freak out.
If there are plenty of videogames that are both good and not M rated, then what's the problem?
I've worked in the game industry for well over a decade now. I have yet to work on a game that wasn't Teen-rated or lower, and I've made no special effort to do so. The simple fact of the matter is this: like you said, there are a HUGE NUMBER of great Teen-rated or lower games out there. And yet a small number of M-rated games get so much of the attention. Why are you blaming developers for that?
Ok, I guess I'll speak up for conservatives here...
Yeah, I'm extremely skeptical that global warming trends we've seen are the result of our fossil fuel usage. If you follow the money, there are a lot of people in the environmental movement pushing "carbon credits", and are poised to make a boatload of money by exploiting others' guilt, while doing nothing to actually solve real problems. But no one wants dirty air or water. There are plenty of good reasons why we should be reducing our oil and gas dependency (just inhale deeply on a bad smog day if you live in LA). And one would be an idiot to argue that a bunch of plastic in the ocean (or other obviously man-made debris or pollutants) are anything but a problem caused by humans, and needs to be solved by humans.
Believe it or not, I consider myself an environmentalist. When I was a bit younger, I did a lot of hiking in the mountain ranges near my home. I think nature is something that needs to be carefully protected, because it's far to easy to trample it under the foot of progress and industry. I support our national park system, and conversation efforts everywhere. I'm switching my light bulbs to more efficient halogens as they need replacing (not by force of law, though!). I'll be replacing my gas-burning car with an electric when they come out with a practical, affordable model, and I'm looking forward to doing so.
However, I also believe that we can strike a balance between responsible stewardship, individual liberty, and capitalist enterprise. I just happen to believe that you need to be extremely judicious in applying the force of law to every problem you need to solve. Growing the power of government nearly always comes at the expense of individual liberty, so I prefer that not be our first solution, but the last.
Exactly, in all honesty with counterfeit money, so long as people don't notice it is a -good thing- in moderation. So long as everyone agrees it is valuable, it doesn't get "recorded" so as long as it is in moderation it doesn't cause any inflation, and it gets money around. Unfair, yes, terrible? No.
Are you serious? How can it possibly be a good thing, even in moderation? Let me count the ways counterfeiting is bad:
* It devalues real currency. It may not be a large percentage of all the cash our there, but it's no less wrong than stealing from a bank. Those losses are also absorbed by a large number of people, just like inflationary losses. Stealing a dollar from a million people is just as wrong as stealing a million dollars from one person. The government needs no assistance from criminals in printing more money, thank you.
* It costs our government additional money spent on detection and prosecution of counterfeiters. Again, we, the taxpayers, are shouldering that cost.
* The people involved in counterfeiting are, by definition, criminals. And those sorts of people are just as likely to do bad things rather than positive things with their ill-gotten gains. Money can buy power, and those are not the type of people I want with a lot of power.
The sad part is that NCSoft will likely abandon the incredible F2P Atlantica Online in favor of Aion.
Yes, I'm sure they're abandoning all their free to play MMOs once Aion is out.