I'm not so sure... Any business-person worth his/her salt would gladly accept foreign payments given a significant demand from customers, although they might charge above a normal exchange rate to make up for the convenient of having to exchange the money. Stores near the Canadian/US border typically accept both US and Canadian currency (regardless of which side of the border they are on). There simply has to be enough demand for the exchange service, combined with a general trust of the economic stability of the currency's backer.
The Wii is most certainly a souped-up GameCube, but this detracts nothing from what Nintendo has done with it. A friend of mine, a Nintendo dev, were having lunch a few months ago. When I asked him a few months ago what the new Wii hardware was like, his response - "It's basically a Gamecube..." It rather surprised me. Obviously, it's been boosted in both performance (clock speeds have doubled approximately) and memory , but the point is that fundamentally, the architecture has remained consistent. Why exactly do you think Nintendo can offer the Wii at such a low price? Again, nothing against Nintendo, this. I think it's a pretty clever approach to focus on gameplay innovation with a wildly new controller paradigm rather than keeping up with the others in terms of raw power. I'll probably be getting myself one as soon as they're more widely available.
The 360 and PS3, on the other hand, are both radically different beasts architecturally than their previous incantations. Both utilize high-powered processors that are far and away. As a simple example, the Xbox had a single ~800MHz processor (I believe), and the 360 CPU now utilizes 3 3.2GHz cores with two hardware threads per core. The PS3 is even more of a radical departure hardware-wise, and may ultimately prove more powerful than even the 360 (if we can believe Sony at this point).
As far as gameplay - don't discount the idea that raw CPU power can open up new possibilities. As a simple example - look at Dead Rising. This game simply wouldn't be possible on lesser systems. The size of your game world, the number of enemies you can render at once, and the CPU "brains" you can allocate to them all do have a significant impact on gameplay. It's not just a matter of being "shinier".
Still, I wouldn't have used the pejorative adjectives the previous poster used in describing the Wii.
"Which I think is how Guild Wars can afford to scrub the monthly sibscription model and make its money selling (standalone) expansions packs."
This seems to be a common misconception. Guild Wars games are hosted entirely on NCSoft servers in regional datacenters. Otherwise, the game would be far too insecure - given enough time, any locally running process can be hacked and exploited, no matter what safeguard you try to put in place. Anything on a client's machine has to be treated as insecure and untrusted, or the whole system breaks down. Perhaps someone in time will figure out a way to make use of distributed computing power to run the game, but for now, that's just not an option if you wish to create a secure game.
In general, GW is designed to use far less bandwidth than most MMOs on the market, which helps to keep costs down. That, combined with a fairly rapid release of GW chapters is what's keeping ArenaNet in the black so far.
I'm sorry you feel inconvenienced with some additional rules regarding liquids when flying. But 1984? Did you and I see the same movie? Ah, I see... "it's just the first step", right?
Here's my explanation for the ban on liquids: the government is just covering it's arse. These guys (the ones making the decisions) are politicians and beauracrats, not scientists or engineers. Yes, it may be stupid and overreactionary. But I don't subscribe some sinister motive to these actions either. In my estimation, this type of rule is meant to make people feel safer, not the opposite ("well, I can't bring liquids on the plane but neither can the terrorists"). And, the government's typical reaction is to, at the very least, "do something", even when there's very little that can practically be done.
It's rather odd to see such outrage over some minor inconveniences, especially after so many honest-to-God actual attacks have occured (I don't call potential terrorist attacks a 'fantasy'). But I've found that some people seem to take great delight in being perpetually outraged, so perhaps I shouldn't discourage their fun.
There are probably lots of local Boys and Girls clubs or other such organizations that would love anything you can give them. It seems like it would be a lot more practical to work inside an existing structure than to try to create something from scratch. Go to a place where kids like to hang out and see what you can do to collect old video games. In general, the trade-in value for used games is horrible at places like EBGames, so it seems like you could find some people willing to do this. Also, most children's hospitals can only accept new games.
Yes, theoretically you could build a world completely out of algorithms. I've put a lot of thought the same processes that you've described, and I definitely feel this is the way of the future. Games are getting so massive that we need to find new ways of generating the huge amount of content for these virtual worlds.
But quite honestly, I think what you're envisioning is not really all that practical quite yet - at least for our technology / game. The goal for us, at least in the near term, is to find a balance between hand-crafted and generated material. When I say, "the content to build it from", I simply mean whatever you consider the "core" components to be - those would typically be more expensive to build algorithmically than simply modeling and storing in a library for reuse. This core content could be textures, models, or even algorithms.
A simple example - office furniture could likely be described algorithmically, but doing so would be a huge waste of programmer time. An artist can create a large library of furniture for a higher-level algorithm to place in office buildings, and the furniture can be tagged with logical descriptions for these algorithms to use. And, it would certainly look much better than anything an algorithm could generate. This way, you can generate an entire skyscraper (both exterior and interior), and every single floor would be traversable.
I'm well familiar with the demoscene, but believe me, there's a huge difference between putting together a small demo with the luxury of generating any content you wish, and creating the required content for a commercial next-gen game. Anytime you use an algorithm to generate content, you are making a trade-off. The lower-level the algorithm, the more generic looking the final outcome, but the broader the range of possible variants. Higher-level algorithms have the advantage of creating more unique and creative-looking results, but typically draw on pre-fabricated components in order to achieve this, and thus have a limited number of permutations.
In general, I'm not really disagreeing with you *in theory*, but for us, seeing as we actually have to ship products, it simply makes more sense to move toward that goal a bit more incrementally.
We already do some of that. The game I'm working on is a network/MMO game, and when we download some data, we actually use a lot of advanced generation techniques to reduce download size. For instance, we actually use the video card hardware to expand some of the data on the user's machine.
I agree, the best algorithms would be supported in the engine. That way, an entire world could be nothing more than a transmitted seed number (plus the content to build it from). We're still a ways out from this sort of technology being fully realized though.
Definitely agree with you. I think one of the biggest issues game development is facing is the spiraling cost of generating mass amounts of highly-detailed hand-generated content (take a look at Gears of War for a good example of this). I think a good deal of programming effort is going to be focused on creating smarter tools and algorithms to automatically create "filler" area interspersed with hand-crafted details.
This is definitely an area of interest at our studio. Although some minor functionality in our world editor is automated / algorithmic, too much still requires explicit hand-crafting by a level designer. The future is going to belong to whoever can create the most and best content in the fastest amount of time. And it's going to be up to the programmers to develop the tools that can do this.
Could part of this be the fact that video game sounds and scores are so realistic nowadays that the audience might have problems associating those sounds with "video games"? The newest generation of games have scores that rival most films of just a few years back.
Plus, the arcade sounds of yesteryear's arcades have so embedded themselves in pop culture conciousness that it's a bit hard to collectively let them go. Sort of how like classic synth keyboard sounds that produced a simulated electric piano sound (like the DX7) are now emulated by modern computer-based software synths (emulations of emulations of emulations), even though they are capable of producing highly realistic piano simulations nowadays. Or how most people nowadays prefer the taste of fake maple syrup to the real deal? (believe me, they don't taste the same)
Sometimes the most effective presentation is not the most realistic one. Engineers / programmer types seem to have a harder time than most grasping this concept - thus the endless lists of technical flaws in movies, etc. Still, I'm not going to claim that I don't nitpick myself. But at least I do it silently, and allow the others in the room to enjoy the movie in peace!
Well, I'm no military tech, but according to a documentary on the History Channel (maybe Modern Marvels: Engineering Disasters? - not entirely certain), NORAD issued false attack warnings not once, but twice, because of a minor electronic glitch combined with a machine that simulated nuclear attacks (again, to the best of my memory here). After the second incident, the entire system was redesigned to prevent this from happening. A little scary that TWO incidents would have to occur before action was taken.
I wonder if the movie was partly based on these incidents?
Of course! I'm *sure* people will understand if the latest security patch hoses their e-mail client, tax software, or instant messanging program.;-) A small problem that only affects 1% of users can still mean a million computers that are now inoperable. When dealing with an OS, especially one as widespread as Windows, regression testing is something that has to be taken very seriously.
You make a very good point. I admit I was negligent in only mentioning human interaction, plot, and storyline as the means for advancing games.
So, yes, there are far more ways to create great games than by simply pressing ahead on these fronts. There are many, many examples of very creative games that don't involve story at all. My choice of words happened to show my bias for my favorite genre, RPGs.
But I think perhaps you're missing the main point of my post, which is that violence tends to be a far-too-oft-used crutch in many games today. Instead of thinking of something creative for the player to do, they give the player a bunch of weapons, a lot of stuff to kill, and simply assume that will be 'fun'. It would be nice to see more games that looks beyond a hack-and-slash, shoot-everything-that-moves experience.
Exactly what 'western country' took over Japan at the beginning of the 20th century? Perhaps you're referring to the Meiji era, in which Japan made efforts to establish itself as a world power. In doing so, they made efforts to embrace more western ideals and customs, as well as moving forward technologically. Censorship is typically acknowledged to have its roots there (although some would rightly argue the motivation was to appear more 'civilized' to the more sexually conservative European countries).
One of the more common myths bandied about is that the US imposed sexual censorship laws on Japan after WWII. The constitution that McArthur mostly wrote had provisions such as the separation from church and state, a right to privacy, and bans on censorship. Article 21 protects secrecy of any means of communication: "No censorship shall be maintained, nor shall the secrecy of any means of communication be violated." Ironically, the US occupation forces routinely violated these censorship provisions, which makes a certain amount of sense, being that they were occupying forces in a formally hostile nation, I suppose.
It was the Japanese themselves that established precedence for allowing censorship of material deemed to be of a pornographic nature (Article 175 of the Penal Code) by a publisher printing a translated copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover in the case Koyama v. Japan.
I get a bit tired of this constant politically-correct anti-western civilization crap. At the very least, get your facts straight.
...it's a lack of general creativity in the industry. The fact of the matter is that that violence is easy to do. Human interaction is hard. Plot development is hard. Drama is hard. I'm guessing that you'd attract a bigger female market share as well as more mature gamers in general by moving in these directions, but it's not a simple thing to do.
So, when a fiscally conservative publisher is looking for their next "safe bet", what sort of title do you think they're going to 'green light'? Sure, a few truly original games manage to slip by, but most of those sneaked through either because of the reputation of the designer, or because the game was disguised as something else during the pitch. My recollection is that Katamari Damacy was sold to the publisher as a racing game.
Honestly, I suspect it's not so much the sexism that drives women away from today's games. It's the mind-numbing wave of "violence as gameplay" that permeates 90% of all games you see on the shelf today.
Oh, btw, to answer the question of *why* everyone is interested in female gamers... it's not for some altruistic reason by any stretch of the imagination. It's simply that they're considered to be an untapped market. Nothing wrong with that, it's just pragmatic business.
Yep, I occasionally still dream about being a game designer, even though I'm a professional game programmer. Unfortunately, much of the attractiveness of being a designer comes only if you actually had complete creative control, and this is most definitely not the norm.
While this may be the case with a handful of a well-known few, most game designers in the industry are handed a tight set of constraints for any game they are assigned to work on. They must endure a good deal of 'direction' from higher-ups within their own company and from the publisher (as well as justifying their design decisions). If they're lucky, they won't get forced to add features that end up destroying the game. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible for those in positions of authority to abstain from playing 'game designer' to some degree, even if they have no real talent for it.
Generally speaking, if you have some sort of 'I have The Vision and if you disagree with me, then you're a moron' attitude, you're not going to make it in this industry very far. If you know how to get people excited about your ideas... if you can build a concensus from among a wildly diverse set of professionals... if you can modify your ideas on the fly because the programmers or artists tell you your idea won't work... then you might just make it.
Anyhow, I still have a lot of creative input as a programmer. Any good designer is open to good ideas. Nearly all the games I've worked on have had a fairly collaborative design effort.
In fact, I had a lot of design ideas for the current game I'm working on (LOTR: Tactics for PSP), and it's been fun seeing those ideas coming to life. I can't tell you any more or EA will send their hit squad after me... Actually, kidding aside, EA has been pretty good about giving us enough slack to get this game done, so we're feeling pretty good about it so far.
The reality is, I'm pretty happy with my job as a programmer. One of the best parts of my job is that managers can't sit over your shoulder and say, "Shouldn't that bracket be moved a little bit to the left?" Programming to most everyone else is still a black art, so they leave us wizards alone... heh.
Modern video hardware supports in-memory compressed textures. I'm guessing the ATI chip supports the DTX standard natively, which offers variable compression rates depending on how you wish to allocates your bits for alpha channels, and what final quality you want.
So, your calculations are a bit off (by at least a factor of 4), I'm afraid.
I think a lot of people are confusing the intent of the article when it speaks of woment "understanding" the technology. Whenever you speak of a particular product, keep in mind there are nearly an infinite layers of "understanding" one might have.
To a user, "understanding" means knowing how to fully unitilize a product's features. This is not a completely illegitimate point of view. Software engineers think that they understand the DVR because they know how the code works. I'm guessing that hardware engineers could make a pretty good case that, compared to them, the software engineers don't really "understand" the machines either. It's also a pretty good bet that marketing and advertising executives think that they "understand" the DVR, since they know how it's positioned in the marketplace, etc, etc.
You get the point... Understanding is in the mind of the beholder.
I've got news for you. Most business could give a rip whether "Linux is so hackable". That's a great argument for a kid experimenting with Linux, a bad one for a business looking at the viability of an alternative desktop platform.
The fact of the matter is that most business are not in the business of hacking software. They're in the business of producing whatever their business produces, and the software is simply a tool for the to use to get their job done more efficiently.
Sometimes, I think, those of us in the software development business tend to forget that, for most companies, software is nothing more than a simple product and/or a service (like plumbing or electicity) to the larger business community. It's a critical to the operation of their business, and they just want the damn thing to *work*!
Dreaming isn't the problem. This guy just can't write.
Have you seen an AMD 64 being ran with a fan-less solution? They melt like marshmallows on a campfire.
Or how about this gem in the very next paragraph...
Seeing how there are is a nearly frictionless lubricant in Japan, I'm sure that some engineers from these fan manufacturers can conjure up the nerve to walk into the sex shops selling the stuff and just...
I stopped reading there. The content of the article is not only laughable, but if someone can't be bothered take the time to present a carefully-written article, it means it likely isn't worth the time spent reading.
I bought my parents a TiVo with built-in DVD burner last Christmas (it's their favorite present ever, btw). My Mom is fairly technophobic, but picked up on how to program the thing right away. I wouldn't say she controls it necessarily, but let's just say I'm guessing she's pretty adament about certain show's being high up on the ole priority list.
Remember that old matra that was oft-spoke years ago: "someday the technology will be so advanced, it will be easy to use, and people will view their computers just like any other appliance"?
Guess what? It's here, and it's called TiVo! For the relative complexity of what it does, I'd have to say that TiVo has one of the most brilliantly-designed user interfaces I've ever seen.
Mr. Gelernter said his own family's computer became so badly infected that he bought a new one this week. He said his two teenage sons were balking at spending the hours needed to scrub the old one clean of viruses, worms and adware.
Mr. Gelernter blames the software industry for the morass, noting that people are increasingly unwilling to take out their "software tweezers" to clean their machines.
So, they guy admits that it just would have taken some time and a bit of spit-polish to clean out the machine. Isn't that a bit like saying that it's really not worth cleaning your microwave oven because it's gotten all dirty?
Moreover, that seems like a horrible message to send to your teenage sons. They're likely the ones who screwed up the system by downloading all kinds of crap on it. When they break the system, they whine to dad about how they don't want to spend a few hours fixing their computer... and dad goes and buys them a new machine as a reward.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it sounds pretty irresponsible to me.
Oh, and would you trust a company who's executives (supposedly computer-saavy ones) can't even keep their own computers up and running? I know the article-writers profiled him to make the problem more legitimate sounding, but all they did in my eyes is make that guy sound incompetent.
It all comes down to following a few very simple rules. If you follow them, then 99.9% of your mistakes go away forever (even if running in administration mode).
1) Use anti-virus software, and keep it up to date. 2) Use a firewall and/or router. 3) Don't install 'free' utilities that you don't need. 4) Don't install cracks and warez. 5) Patch your machine when it asks to be patched.
I have a friend (a CS major and reasonably saavy computer user, btw), who regularly breaks all these rules. And yet, he can't understand why his machine is always getting taken down by viruses, spyware, and other crap all the time.
I think that people are overstating the consumer demand for next-generation media format. Granted, high-def movie playback will be nice, but I think it's perhaps a bit too early for the market to embrace that technology. Frankly, standard DVDs are just too popular at the moment (meaning the new format will have to overcome a tremendous amount of inertia). Lots of folks have just purchased their first DVD players in the last few years.
Not that it really matters to me who wins the console wars... As a game developer, I'll likely be developing for all three platforms, and I'll have all three platforms at home as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not so sure... Any business-person worth his/her salt would gladly accept foreign payments given a significant demand from customers, although they might charge above a normal exchange rate to make up for the convenient of having to exchange the money. Stores near the Canadian/US border typically accept both US and Canadian currency (regardless of which side of the border they are on). There simply has to be enough demand for the exchange service, combined with a general trust of the economic stability of the currency's backer.
- franchise-accepts-payment-in-pesos-from-spanish-pa trons/
http://www.smallbusinessbranding.com/647/us-pizza
My guess is that this is news because of the current illegal immigration debate. This kind of thing is already pretty common along our norther border.
No, he's being quite serious, and he's spot on.
The Wii is most certainly a souped-up GameCube, but this detracts nothing from what Nintendo has done with it. A friend of mine, a Nintendo dev, were having lunch a few months ago. When I asked him a few months ago what the new Wii hardware was like, his response - "It's basically a Gamecube..." It rather surprised me. Obviously, it's been boosted in both performance (clock speeds have doubled approximately) and memory , but the point is that fundamentally, the architecture has remained consistent. Why exactly do you think Nintendo can offer the Wii at such a low price? Again, nothing against Nintendo, this. I think it's a pretty clever approach to focus on gameplay innovation with a wildly new controller paradigm rather than keeping up with the others in terms of raw power. I'll probably be getting myself one as soon as they're more widely available.
The 360 and PS3, on the other hand, are both radically different beasts architecturally than their previous incantations. Both utilize high-powered processors that are far and away. As a simple example, the Xbox had a single ~800MHz processor (I believe), and the 360 CPU now utilizes 3 3.2GHz cores with two hardware threads per core. The PS3 is even more of a radical departure hardware-wise, and may ultimately prove more powerful than even the 360 (if we can believe Sony at this point).
As far as gameplay - don't discount the idea that raw CPU power can open up new possibilities. As a simple example - look at Dead Rising. This game simply wouldn't be possible on lesser systems. The size of your game world, the number of enemies you can render at once, and the CPU "brains" you can allocate to them all do have a significant impact on gameplay. It's not just a matter of being "shinier".
Still, I wouldn't have used the pejorative adjectives the previous poster used in describing the Wii.
"Which I think is how Guild Wars can afford to scrub the monthly sibscription model and make its money selling (standalone) expansions packs."
This seems to be a common misconception. Guild Wars games are hosted entirely on NCSoft servers in regional datacenters. Otherwise, the game would be far too insecure - given enough time, any locally running process can be hacked and exploited, no matter what safeguard you try to put in place. Anything on a client's machine has to be treated as insecure and untrusted, or the whole system breaks down. Perhaps someone in time will figure out a way to make use of distributed computing power to run the game, but for now, that's just not an option if you wish to create a secure game.
In general, GW is designed to use far less bandwidth than most MMOs on the market, which helps to keep costs down. That, combined with a fairly rapid release of GW chapters is what's keeping ArenaNet in the black so far.
- a GW dev
Lol, smartass. But I stand by my point...
I'm sorry you feel inconvenienced with some additional rules regarding liquids when flying. But 1984? Did you and I see the same movie? Ah, I see... "it's just the first step", right?
Here's my explanation for the ban on liquids: the government is just covering it's arse. These guys (the ones making the decisions) are politicians and beauracrats, not scientists or engineers. Yes, it may be stupid and overreactionary. But I don't subscribe some sinister motive to these actions either. In my estimation, this type of rule is meant to make people feel safer, not the opposite ("well, I can't bring liquids on the plane but neither can the terrorists"). And, the government's typical reaction is to, at the very least, "do something", even when there's very little that can practically be done.
It's rather odd to see such outrage over some minor inconveniences, especially after so many honest-to-God actual attacks have occured (I don't call potential terrorist attacks a 'fantasy'). But I've found that some people seem to take great delight in being perpetually outraged, so perhaps I shouldn't discourage their fun.
A more fitting comparison would be:
If you'd like to avoid STD's, avoid having sex with skanky prostitutes.
Likewise, if you'd like to avoid spyware, avoid installing "free" software from companies you neither know nor trust.
Seriously, the headline essentially reads "Marketing firm installs spyware on users system. World is shocked." WTF?
There are probably lots of local Boys and Girls clubs or other such organizations that would love anything you can give them. It seems like it would be a lot more practical to work inside an existing structure than to try to create something from scratch. Go to a place where kids like to hang out and see what you can do to collect old video games. In general, the trade-in value for used games is horrible at places like EBGames, so it seems like you could find some people willing to do this. Also, most children's hospitals can only accept new games.
Yes, theoretically you could build a world completely out of algorithms. I've put a lot of thought the same processes that you've described, and I definitely feel this is the way of the future. Games are getting so massive that we need to find new ways of generating the huge amount of content for these virtual worlds.
But quite honestly, I think what you're envisioning is not really all that practical quite yet - at least for our technology / game. The goal for us, at least in the near term, is to find a balance between hand-crafted and generated material. When I say, "the content to build it from", I simply mean whatever you consider the "core" components to be - those would typically be more expensive to build algorithmically than simply modeling and storing in a library for reuse. This core content could be textures, models, or even algorithms.
A simple example - office furniture could likely be described algorithmically, but doing so would be a huge waste of programmer time. An artist can create a large library of furniture for a higher-level algorithm to place in office buildings, and the furniture can be tagged with logical descriptions for these algorithms to use. And, it would certainly look much better than anything an algorithm could generate. This way, you can generate an entire skyscraper (both exterior and interior), and every single floor would be traversable.
I'm well familiar with the demoscene, but believe me, there's a huge difference between putting together a small demo with the luxury of generating any content you wish, and creating the required content for a commercial next-gen game. Anytime you use an algorithm to generate content, you are making a trade-off. The lower-level the algorithm, the more generic looking the final outcome, but the broader the range of possible variants. Higher-level algorithms have the advantage of creating more unique and creative-looking results, but typically draw on pre-fabricated components in order to achieve this, and thus have a limited number of permutations.
In general, I'm not really disagreeing with you *in theory*, but for us, seeing as we actually have to ship products, it simply makes more sense to move toward that goal a bit more incrementally.
We already do some of that. The game I'm working on is a network/MMO game, and when we download some data, we actually use a lot of advanced generation techniques to reduce download size. For instance, we actually use the video card hardware to expand some of the data on the user's machine.
I agree, the best algorithms would be supported in the engine. That way, an entire world could be nothing more than a transmitted seed number (plus the content to build it from). We're still a ways out from this sort of technology being fully realized though.
Definitely agree with you. I think one of the biggest issues game development is facing is the spiraling cost of generating mass amounts of highly-detailed hand-generated content (take a look at Gears of War for a good example of this). I think a good deal of programming effort is going to be focused on creating smarter tools and algorithms to automatically create "filler" area interspersed with hand-crafted details.
This is definitely an area of interest at our studio. Although some minor functionality in our world editor is automated / algorithmic, too much still requires explicit hand-crafting by a level designer. The future is going to belong to whoever can create the most and best content in the fastest amount of time. And it's going to be up to the programmers to develop the tools that can do this.
Could part of this be the fact that video game sounds and scores are so realistic nowadays that the audience might have problems associating those sounds with "video games"? The newest generation of games have scores that rival most films of just a few years back.
Plus, the arcade sounds of yesteryear's arcades have so embedded themselves in pop culture conciousness that it's a bit hard to collectively let them go. Sort of how like classic synth keyboard sounds that produced a simulated electric piano sound (like the DX7) are now emulated by modern computer-based software synths (emulations of emulations of emulations), even though they are capable of producing highly realistic piano simulations nowadays. Or how most people nowadays prefer the taste of fake maple syrup to the real deal? (believe me, they don't taste the same)
Sometimes the most effective presentation is not the most realistic one. Engineers / programmer types seem to have a harder time than most grasping this concept - thus the endless lists of technical flaws in movies, etc. Still, I'm not going to claim that I don't nitpick myself. But at least I do it silently, and allow the others in the room to enjoy the movie in peace!
Well, I'm no military tech, but according to a documentary on the History Channel (maybe Modern Marvels: Engineering Disasters? - not entirely certain), NORAD issued false attack warnings not once, but twice, because of a minor electronic glitch combined with a machine that simulated nuclear attacks (again, to the best of my memory here). After the second incident, the entire system was redesigned to prevent this from happening. A little scary that TWO incidents would have to occur before action was taken.
I wonder if the movie was partly based on these incidents?
Of course! I'm *sure* people will understand if the latest security patch hoses their e-mail client, tax software, or instant messanging program. ;-) A small problem that only affects 1% of users can still mean a million computers that are now inoperable. When dealing with an OS, especially one as widespread as Windows, regression testing is something that has to be taken very seriously.
You make a very good point. I admit I was negligent in only mentioning human interaction, plot, and storyline as the means for advancing games.
So, yes, there are far more ways to create great games than by simply pressing ahead on these fronts. There are many, many examples of very creative games that don't involve story at all. My choice of words happened to show my bias for my favorite genre, RPGs.
But I think perhaps you're missing the main point of my post, which is that violence tends to be a far-too-oft-used crutch in many games today. Instead of thinking of something creative for the player to do, they give the player a bunch of weapons, a lot of stuff to kill, and simply assume that will be 'fun'. It would be nice to see more games that looks beyond a hack-and-slash, shoot-everything-that-moves experience.
Exactly what 'western country' took over Japan at the beginning of the 20th century? Perhaps you're referring to the Meiji era, in which Japan made efforts to establish itself as a world power. In doing so, they made efforts to embrace more western ideals and customs, as well as moving forward technologically. Censorship is typically acknowledged to have its roots there (although some would rightly argue the motivation was to appear more 'civilized' to the more sexually conservative European countries).
f m l
One of the more common myths bandied about is that the US imposed sexual censorship laws on Japan after WWII. The constitution that McArthur mostly wrote had provisions such as the separation from church and state, a right to privacy, and bans on censorship. Article 21 protects secrecy of any means of communication: "No censorship shall be maintained, nor shall the secrecy of any means of communication be violated." Ironically, the US occupation forces routinely violated these censorship provisions, which makes a certain amount of sense, being that they were occupying forces in a formally hostile nation, I suppose.
It was the Japanese themselves that established precedence for allowing censorship of material deemed to be of a pornographic nature (Article 175 of the Penal Code) by a publisher printing a translated copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover in the case Koyama v. Japan.
I get a bit tired of this constant politically-correct anti-western civilization crap. At the very least, get your facts straight.
http://law.vanderbilt.edu/journal/35-03/Gilmer.pd
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/rananim/lawrence/lcl.ht
...it's a lack of general creativity in the industry. The fact of the matter is that that violence is easy to do. Human interaction is hard. Plot development is hard. Drama is hard. I'm guessing that you'd attract a bigger female market share as well as more mature gamers in general by moving in these directions, but it's not a simple thing to do.
So, when a fiscally conservative publisher is looking for their next "safe bet", what sort of title do you think they're going to 'green light'? Sure, a few truly original games manage to slip by, but most of those sneaked through either because of the reputation of the designer, or because the game was disguised as something else during the pitch. My recollection is that Katamari Damacy was sold to the publisher as a racing game.
Honestly, I suspect it's not so much the sexism that drives women away from today's games. It's the mind-numbing wave of "violence as gameplay" that permeates 90% of all games you see on the shelf today.
Oh, btw, to answer the question of *why* everyone is interested in female gamers... it's not for some altruistic reason by any stretch of the imagination. It's simply that they're considered to be an untapped market. Nothing wrong with that, it's just pragmatic business.
Yep, I occasionally still dream about being a game designer, even though I'm a professional game programmer. Unfortunately, much of the attractiveness of being a designer comes only if you actually had complete creative control, and this is most definitely not the norm.
While this may be the case with a handful of a well-known few, most game designers in the industry are handed a tight set of constraints for any game they are assigned to work on. They must endure a good deal of 'direction' from higher-ups within their own company and from the publisher (as well as justifying their design decisions). If they're lucky, they won't get forced to add features that end up destroying the game. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible for those in positions of authority to abstain from playing 'game designer' to some degree, even if they have no real talent for it.
Generally speaking, if you have some sort of 'I have The Vision and if you disagree with me, then you're a moron' attitude, you're not going to make it in this industry very far. If you know how to get people excited about your ideas... if you can build a concensus from among a wildly diverse set of professionals... if you can modify your ideas on the fly because the programmers or artists tell you your idea won't work... then you might just make it.
Anyhow, I still have a lot of creative input as a programmer. Any good designer is open to good ideas. Nearly all the games I've worked on have had a fairly collaborative design effort.
In fact, I had a lot of design ideas for the current game I'm working on (LOTR: Tactics for PSP), and it's been fun seeing those ideas coming to life. I can't tell you any more or EA will send their hit squad after me... Actually, kidding aside, EA has been pretty good about giving us enough slack to get this game done, so we're feeling pretty good about it so far.
The reality is, I'm pretty happy with my job as a programmer. One of the best parts of my job is that managers can't sit over your shoulder and say, "Shouldn't that bracket be moved a little bit to the left?" Programming to most everyone else is still a black art, so they leave us wizards alone... heh.
Modern video hardware supports in-memory compressed textures. I'm guessing the ATI chip supports the DTX standard natively, which offers variable compression rates depending on how you wish to allocates your bits for alpha channels, and what final quality you want. So, your calculations are a bit off (by at least a factor of 4), I'm afraid.
I think a lot of people are confusing the intent of the article when it speaks of woment "understanding" the technology. Whenever you speak of a particular product, keep in mind there are nearly an infinite layers of "understanding" one might have.
To a user, "understanding" means knowing how to fully unitilize a product's features. This is not a completely illegitimate point of view. Software engineers think that they understand the DVR because they know how the code works. I'm guessing that hardware engineers could make a pretty good case that, compared to them, the software engineers don't really "understand" the machines either. It's also a pretty good bet that marketing and advertising executives think that they "understand" the DVR, since they know how it's positioned in the marketplace, etc, etc.
You get the point... Understanding is in the mind of the beholder.
I've got news for you. Most business could give a rip whether "Linux is so hackable". That's a great argument for a kid experimenting with Linux, a bad one for a business looking at the viability of an alternative desktop platform.
The fact of the matter is that most business are not in the business of hacking software. They're in the business of producing whatever their business produces, and the software is simply a tool for the to use to get their job done more efficiently.
Sometimes, I think, those of us in the software development business tend to forget that, for most companies, software is nothing more than a simple product and/or a service (like plumbing or electicity) to the larger business community. It's a critical to the operation of their business, and they just want the damn thing to *work*!
I stopped reading there. The content of the article is not only laughable, but if someone can't be bothered take the time to present a carefully-written article, it means it likely isn't worth the time spent reading.
I bought my parents a TiVo with built-in DVD burner last Christmas (it's their favorite present ever, btw). My Mom is fairly technophobic, but picked up on how to program the thing right away. I wouldn't say she controls it necessarily, but let's just say I'm guessing she's pretty adament about certain show's being high up on the ole priority list.
Remember that old matra that was oft-spoke years ago: "someday the technology will be so advanced, it will be easy to use, and people will view their computers just like any other appliance"?
Guess what? It's here, and it's called TiVo! For the relative complexity of what it does, I'd have to say that TiVo has one of the most brilliantly-designed user interfaces I've ever seen.
So, they guy admits that it just would have taken some time and a bit of spit-polish to clean out the machine. Isn't that a bit like saying that it's really not worth cleaning your microwave oven because it's gotten all dirty?
Moreover, that seems like a horrible message to send to your teenage sons. They're likely the ones who screwed up the system by downloading all kinds of crap on it. When they break the system, they whine to dad about how they don't want to spend a few hours fixing their computer... and dad goes and buys them a new machine as a reward.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it sounds pretty irresponsible to me.
Oh, and would you trust a company who's executives (supposedly computer-saavy ones) can't even keep their own computers up and running? I know the article-writers profiled him to make the problem more legitimate sounding, but all they did in my eyes is make that guy sound incompetent.
It all comes down to following a few very simple rules. If you follow them, then 99.9% of your mistakes go away forever (even if running in administration mode).
1) Use anti-virus software, and keep it up to date.
2) Use a firewall and/or router.
3) Don't install 'free' utilities that you don't need.
4) Don't install cracks and warez.
5) Patch your machine when it asks to be patched.
I have a friend (a CS major and reasonably saavy computer user, btw), who regularly breaks all these rules. And yet, he can't understand why his machine is always getting taken down by viruses, spyware, and other crap all the time.
Not that it really matters to me who wins the console wars... As a game developer, I'll likely be developing for all three platforms, and I'll have all three platforms at home as well.