A little off topic, but once a year here in San Jose, CA. There's something called California Extreme: http://www.caextreme.org/ which is a convention of classic arcade machine collectors. Basically they rent out an exhibition hall in San Jose and bring all their games set to free play. For $15-$20 you get to play all the arcade games you want, all day, as much as you want. And they're all the original cabinets, which means you don't have to come up with some ridiculous way to play Discs of Tron with the wrong controls.
The only time I've really gotten that "arcade feeling" from my youth in over 20 years.
Well, the publishing schedule for Captain America has a two month break after this issue. In the meantime, you get lots of one-off issues of a series called Fallen Soldier chronicling the reaction of other heroes to Cap's "death".
Now, what's also not mentioned is that in another comic released today he seems to still be alive, "fighting for his life" (He was shot in the shoulder and stomach after all, how fatal is THAT in comics?). So, I think it's pretty safe to say he will be back soon enough, that's if he dies at all.
Most popular current theories have this all as a staged stunt, to help Cap disappear underground and re-emerge in a new identity, Ronin, Iron Man, Hawkeye, or US Agent are the front runners. What it certainly is is an elaborate stunt by Marvel comics to sell lots of copies of this issue.
And instead of becoming accustomed to the virtual person and ceasing to empathise, many volunteers became more anxious as the study continued. Measures of stress, such as heart rate and sweatiness of palms, increased. These measures are nearly impossible to fake, and confirmed for Slater that the volunteers were actually feeling uncomfortable, rather than performing as they thought the experimenter would expect.
I've got to wonder what the participants' exposure to video games or other "virtual environments" would have on their responses. To a gamer, I'm not sure rapid heart rate, and sweaty palms indicate increased anxiety. They might have just been "getting into the game."
I remember when Half-Life first came out my friend and I spent a lot of time running around beating the innocent bystanders with our crowbars and watching them beg for forgiveness. We weren't doing it because we were sadists, just curious gamers. We'd never seen NPC's react in such a realistic way before, and thought it was "cool". My girlfriend came into the room while we were doing this and was horrified, got really upset and asked us to stop. Not being as avid a gamer, I don't think she was used to dissociating her emotions from video game characters.
I don't think video game violence numbs players to real world violence, but it sure numbs them to video game violence. Seems to me like prior experience would play a major role in your reaction to this experiment.
King-Halll: No, my fair cousin; If we are mark'd to die, we are enow To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour.....
Bed4d: Dood, u r lame, stop talking like that. Lol, u r RPer? rofl!!
King-Halll:...I pray thee, wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold...
Bed4d has left the game.
Gloucester69: What? You said there'd be phat lewt?!?!?!?11!!
King-Halll:....We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother...
I hear you. I spent hundreds of dollars on Magic in college (and that was considered moderate. My roomate spent thousands), and I still have most of the cards. I'd be into playing still, I love the mechanics of building and fine tuning decks, but the disparity of cards people have makes magic hard to "get back into" casually.
When I do run into an old college buddy who plays, I generally suggest we play with one or the other's cards exclusively. Pick colors or something, and make decks from the same pool of cards. Otherwise, do a mock draft with all the cards.
I had one friend who got so fed up with the idea of card disparity, and the cost of "real" drafts that he bought a box of boosters and carefully numbered each card with which booster it came from. That way he could hold a booster draft anytime he wanted, essentially for free.
I'm not suggesting you go to those lengths, but there are a lot of ways to still have fun with the old cards.
Seems like theyre trying to clone the success of Smallville, except Superman found out his powers on his own-- Luke didn't know about them until taught.
Shudder. That's just the feeling I had when I saw it was supposed to be a "Young Skywalker" series. I can already see all the ridiculous scenes with Luke and Wedge in the hallways of their high-school, the alt-rock soundtrack and the inevitable "love interest" for young Skywalker; Leia Lang (probably played by Kristin Kreuk.)
I swear if this is on the WB I'll claw my eye's out as a precautionary measure.
Man, both those games suck without their original controller set-ups. I understand why Xbox would want them available. They're the kind of game you remember fondly and would probably plunk down $10 to download, but without the original control scheme, they both leave much to be desired. I doubt many people will be happy with that investment after the fact. I guess 720 will be next.
You'd need some sort of command structure, but such a game could recreate the experience of being in the Star Trek Universe. It seems so obvious, that I'm surprised that no one has picked up on it until now.
In order to have some sort of command structure, you've got to make it an earned game mechanic, which means spending time progressing through the ranks. I don't think anyone wants to play Ensign Wesley Crusher in their spare time.
I agree for the most part, but RTFM? What Manual? The manual that shipped with the game was practically useless. The original game was so complex that they couldn't have done it justice with a manual 10X as big. This basically translated into "Read The F**king Forums." I had been playing the game for over a month before I even realized what a wealth of info the forums provided. Pretty much any question you had was there, already answered in one of the player made FAQs at that point, but this was just another barrier to entry.
They could have gone a long way by making this more easy to figure out on a basic level. Eventually they did this with the R2 trainer droid you got as a new player, but that wasn't until the game had been out for 6 months. So new players, especially children and those new to MMORPGs, the bread and butter of a breakthrough title like WOW, were totally lost. If you weren't savy enough to figure it out on your own, there was no one there to help unless you found a friendly person who would point you in the right direction, and not grief you or call you a "noob" and laugh. The game never should have shipped with a complete lack of useful new player tutorial. The one you had at launch taught you how to move and interact with objects, but left you completely in the dark on the mechanics of 34 very, very intricate professions. The fact that most of the hover text and help menus were bugged just made everything worse.
Then they went and made the problem even worse with the CURB. Now the game was changed completely and there was no new manual, so vets had to re-learn the game mechanics with the help of the forums, and newbies were more in the dark then ever, because not even a freidnly vet could answer your questions.
This is the one, and only thing IMO, that they got right with NGE. The new player tutorial is fun, and actually instructional. Problem is, once your done with it, the game sucks worse then ever.
I completely agree. I got a 14 day trial of City of Heroes with a PC gamer I bought to read on a long plane trip. I gave the game a try, and actually had a lot of fun playing it, but completely balked at the idea of ponying up another $45 just to contniue playing. This made no sense to me, I would have paid $15 for another month without a second thought, but $45 just for the "game" which was already installed on my computer seemed ridiculous.
Unfortunately, having killed off Book and Wash in the movie (which still surprised me each time I saw the movie), and having the two Tams not invovled with crew before the pilot really means something is going to feel really different about the show, whether its a sequel or prequel
I agree, it would be a very different show, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Out of Gas is my favorite episode, I guess I WANT deeper backstories on all these characters. There's a lot in the "history" of Firefly that I don't think was given near enough attention, Zoe and Wash's relationship, Book's history, Simon and Rivers struggles just prior to the pilot. I'd even watch a series just about Mal and Zoe's time as browncoats.
I think that the story might be best served at this point by a series of non-linear stories, sort of a "Tales from the World of Firefly" which would probably do great as individual DVD releases. Then you could tell stories from pretty much any timeframe you wanted, even more adventures from the timeframe of Season 1 if you wanted. You could also tailor the stories to which cast members were available.
I've read lots of speculation that a second movie, or season 2 would be a pre-quel to Season 1 of Firefly. This is internet speculation, so make of it what you will, but it certainly solves the problem of bringing back Wash, as well as Rev. Book. I think you could do a lot with a sequel, and could even proceed without the whole cast back if you needed to.
I'm assuming that they mean they'll be forward to post RotJ. All the people I've talked to regarding the NGE changes (including myself) has the same opinion, the new player tutorial and intro quests are the only part of the "new" game that is actually fun, the rest of it is dull, boring, and frustrating. But these quests center around you being rescued from Darth Vader by Han and Chewie. Hows that supposed to work in a post RotJ world again? So once again SOE scraps the working part of their game in a desperate attempt to generate "buzz" and new subscribers. I'm still betting on June for the servers to be shutdown.
Given the history this game and development team has for pushing publishes to live with scores of bugs and balance issues, including the last "Combat Upgrade" which went live with bugs that are still unaddressed in the live game, why such a short schedule from announcement, and public testing to live? The massive changes were announced slightly more then two weeks before you are slated to make these changes to live servers. Why such a condesed timeframe, especially considering this announcement was made 1 day after your most recent expansion went live with the same abundant bugs that all your publishes and expansions have been rushed to market with?
I think this whole incident illustrates precisely why there are so few non-combat oriented MMORPGs. SWG was by far one of the most expansive and ambitious in this regard at launch. It had lots of combat for sure, but you could find quite a rewarding play experience never fighting a single battle. Crafters, Entertainers, Resource Gatherers all had very vital roles in the economy. And look what happened. It wasn't nearly as succesful a game as the Star Wars license demanded. The developers surveyed the players and they all said, "combat sucks" or some such, and we started down the role of marginalizing non-combat players in the first "Combat Upgrade". Now they are really getting thrown out. There were over 10 professions with some kind of "crafting" component, and three Entertainer classes. All those, over 12 classes, are now 2, Entertainer, or Trader.
I don't think we will ever see a high profile MMORPG launched that is not centered on combat. Certainly not one with a license of a popular franchise like Star Wars. There are smaller, less known non-combat MMORPGs, Second Life for instance, but larger ones just can't justify the dollars that go into devlopment of a high profile one like SWG.
That article was kind of sad to me. The guy seemed still in grief from his wife's death, and annoyed that 30 years after the fact tons of reporters started knocking on his door practically unannounced. Can't say I blame him. I wouldn't want that kind of sudden publicity now, much less at 74 for something I did half my life ago.
Friends and I used to debate this all the time in Ultima Online. What if we sold someone a virtual weapon, say, on e-bay, exchanged it in-game, but had a gank squad waiting to mug him seconds later for the same weapon? After asking lots of pre-law friends, we came to the conclusion that, while definately a grey area, that it probably was illegal, and could be charged as racketering.
Basically the problem lies in whether or not he intended to deprive someone of real world assets before hand. My guess is that was exactly his intent, and if so, I'm not sure he'll get off as scot free as we might think.
Personally I'm suprised it took this long for such a well publicized case to come up.
Slashdot Mirror
A little off topic, but once a year here in San Jose, CA. There's something called California Extreme: http://www.caextreme.org/ which is a convention of classic arcade machine collectors. Basically they rent out an exhibition hall in San Jose and bring all their games set to free play. For $15-$20 you get to play all the arcade games you want, all day, as much as you want. And they're all the original cabinets, which means you don't have to come up with some ridiculous way to play Discs of Tron with the wrong controls.
The only time I've really gotten that "arcade feeling" from my youth in over 20 years.
Well, the publishing schedule for Captain America has a two month break after this issue. In the meantime, you get lots of one-off issues of a series called Fallen Soldier chronicling the reaction of other heroes to Cap's "death".
Now, what's also not mentioned is that in another comic released today he seems to still be alive, "fighting for his life" (He was shot in the shoulder and stomach after all, how fatal is THAT in comics?). So, I think it's pretty safe to say he will be back soon enough, that's if he dies at all.
Most popular current theories have this all as a staged stunt, to help Cap disappear underground and re-emerge in a new identity, Ronin, Iron Man, Hawkeye, or US Agent are the front runners. What it certainly is is an elaborate stunt by Marvel comics to sell lots of copies of this issue.
So in short, nothing to see here, move along.
And instead of becoming accustomed to the virtual person and ceasing to empathise, many volunteers became more anxious as the study continued. Measures of stress, such as heart rate and sweatiness of palms, increased. These measures are nearly impossible to fake, and confirmed for Slater that the volunteers were actually feeling uncomfortable, rather than performing as they thought the experimenter would expect.
I've got to wonder what the participants' exposure to video games or other "virtual environments" would have on their responses. To a gamer, I'm not sure rapid heart rate, and sweaty palms indicate increased anxiety. They might have just been "getting into the game."
I remember when Half-Life first came out my friend and I spent a lot of time running around beating the innocent bystanders with our crowbars and watching them beg for forgiveness. We weren't doing it because we were sadists, just curious gamers. We'd never seen NPC's react in such a realistic way before, and thought it was "cool". My girlfriend came into the room while we were doing this and was horrified, got really upset and asked us to stop. Not being as avid a gamer, I don't think she was used to dissociating her emotions from video game characters.
I don't think video game violence numbs players to real world violence, but it sure numbs them to video game violence. Seems to me like prior experience would play a major role in your reaction to this experiment.
Bed4d: Dood, u r lame, stop talking like that. Lol, u r RPer? rofl!!
King-Halll:...I pray thee, wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold...
Bed4d has left the game.
Gloucester69: What? You said there'd be phat lewt?!?!?!?11!!
King-Halll:....We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother...
Ex3ter: u suck!
Talbot420: This guild suxxx!1!!1
Gloucester69: This is lame. /qtd
Gloucester69 has left the game.
Talbot420 has left the game.
Ex3ter has left the game.
I hear you. I spent hundreds of dollars on Magic in college (and that was considered moderate. My roomate spent thousands), and I still have most of the cards. I'd be into playing still, I love the mechanics of building and fine tuning decks, but the disparity of cards people have makes magic hard to "get back into" casually. When I do run into an old college buddy who plays, I generally suggest we play with one or the other's cards exclusively. Pick colors or something, and make decks from the same pool of cards. Otherwise, do a mock draft with all the cards. I had one friend who got so fed up with the idea of card disparity, and the cost of "real" drafts that he bought a box of boosters and carefully numbered each card with which booster it came from. That way he could hold a booster draft anytime he wanted, essentially for free. I'm not suggesting you go to those lengths, but there are a lot of ways to still have fun with the old cards.
Seems like theyre trying to clone the success of Smallville, except Superman found out his powers on his own-- Luke didn't know about them until taught.
Shudder. That's just the feeling I had when I saw it was supposed to be a "Young Skywalker" series. I can already see all the ridiculous scenes with Luke and Wedge in the hallways of their high-school, the alt-rock soundtrack and the inevitable "love interest" for young Skywalker; Leia Lang (probably played by Kristin Kreuk.)
I swear if this is on the WB I'll claw my eye's out as a precautionary measure.
Man, both those games suck without their original controller set-ups. I understand why Xbox would want them available. They're the kind of game you remember fondly and would probably plunk down $10 to download, but without the original control scheme, they both leave much to be desired. I doubt many people will be happy with that investment after the fact. I guess 720 will be next.
You'd need some sort of command structure, but such a game could recreate the experience of being in the Star Trek Universe. It seems so obvious, that I'm surprised that no one has picked up on it until now.
In order to have some sort of command structure, you've got to make it an earned game mechanic, which means spending time progressing through the ranks. I don't think anyone wants to play Ensign Wesley Crusher in their spare time.
I agree for the most part, but RTFM? What Manual? The manual that shipped with the game was practically useless. The original game was so complex that they couldn't have done it justice with a manual 10X as big. This basically translated into "Read The F**king Forums." I had been playing the game for over a month before I even realized what a wealth of info the forums provided. Pretty much any question you had was there, already answered in one of the player made FAQs at that point, but this was just another barrier to entry. They could have gone a long way by making this more easy to figure out on a basic level. Eventually they did this with the R2 trainer droid you got as a new player, but that wasn't until the game had been out for 6 months. So new players, especially children and those new to MMORPGs, the bread and butter of a breakthrough title like WOW, were totally lost. If you weren't savy enough to figure it out on your own, there was no one there to help unless you found a friendly person who would point you in the right direction, and not grief you or call you a "noob" and laugh. The game never should have shipped with a complete lack of useful new player tutorial. The one you had at launch taught you how to move and interact with objects, but left you completely in the dark on the mechanics of 34 very, very intricate professions. The fact that most of the hover text and help menus were bugged just made everything worse. Then they went and made the problem even worse with the CURB. Now the game was changed completely and there was no new manual, so vets had to re-learn the game mechanics with the help of the forums, and newbies were more in the dark then ever, because not even a freidnly vet could answer your questions. This is the one, and only thing IMO, that they got right with NGE. The new player tutorial is fun, and actually instructional. Problem is, once your done with it, the game sucks worse then ever.
I completely agree. I got a 14 day trial of City of Heroes with a PC gamer I bought to read on a long plane trip. I gave the game a try, and actually had a lot of fun playing it, but completely balked at the idea of ponying up another $45 just to contniue playing. This made no sense to me, I would have paid $15 for another month without a second thought, but $45 just for the "game" which was already installed on my computer seemed ridiculous.
Unfortunately, having killed off Book and Wash in the movie (which still surprised me each time I saw the movie), and having the two Tams not invovled with crew before the pilot really means something is going to feel really different about the show, whether its a sequel or prequel I agree, it would be a very different show, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Out of Gas is my favorite episode, I guess I WANT deeper backstories on all these characters. There's a lot in the "history" of Firefly that I don't think was given near enough attention, Zoe and Wash's relationship, Book's history, Simon and Rivers struggles just prior to the pilot. I'd even watch a series just about Mal and Zoe's time as browncoats. I think that the story might be best served at this point by a series of non-linear stories, sort of a "Tales from the World of Firefly" which would probably do great as individual DVD releases. Then you could tell stories from pretty much any timeframe you wanted, even more adventures from the timeframe of Season 1 if you wanted. You could also tailor the stories to which cast members were available.
I've read lots of speculation that a second movie, or season 2 would be a pre-quel to Season 1 of Firefly. This is internet speculation, so make of it what you will, but it certainly solves the problem of bringing back Wash, as well as Rev. Book. I think you could do a lot with a sequel, and could even proceed without the whole cast back if you needed to.
I'm assuming that they mean they'll be forward to post RotJ. All the people I've talked to regarding the NGE changes (including myself) has the same opinion, the new player tutorial and intro quests are the only part of the "new" game that is actually fun, the rest of it is dull, boring, and frustrating. But these quests center around you being rescued from Darth Vader by Han and Chewie. Hows that supposed to work in a post RotJ world again? So once again SOE scraps the working part of their game in a desperate attempt to generate "buzz" and new subscribers. I'm still betting on June for the servers to be shutdown.
Psssst, yeah not like that ever happens in other cities: http://www.dailyfreepress.com/media/paper87/news/2 004/10/28/WorldSeriesChamps/Sox-Celebrations.Marre d-784768.shtml
And the link you supplied didn't occur anywhere near an actual Raiders game, just after one hundreds of miles away. But of course, all Raiders fans are raving lunatics and all slashdotters live in their mother's basements right?
Given the history this game and development team has for pushing publishes to live with scores of bugs and balance issues, including the last "Combat Upgrade" which went live with bugs that are still unaddressed in the live game, why such a short schedule from announcement, and public testing to live? The massive changes were announced slightly more then two weeks before you are slated to make these changes to live servers. Why such a condesed timeframe, especially considering this announcement was made 1 day after your most recent expansion went live with the same abundant bugs that all your publishes and expansions have been rushed to market with?
I think this whole incident illustrates precisely why there are so few non-combat oriented MMORPGs. SWG was by far one of the most expansive and ambitious in this regard at launch. It had lots of combat for sure, but you could find quite a rewarding play experience never fighting a single battle. Crafters, Entertainers, Resource Gatherers all had very vital roles in the economy. And look what happened. It wasn't nearly as succesful a game as the Star Wars license demanded. The developers surveyed the players and they all said, "combat sucks" or some such, and we started down the role of marginalizing non-combat players in the first "Combat Upgrade". Now they are really getting thrown out. There were over 10 professions with some kind of "crafting" component, and three Entertainer classes. All those, over 12 classes, are now 2, Entertainer, or Trader. I don't think we will ever see a high profile MMORPG launched that is not centered on combat. Certainly not one with a license of a popular franchise like Star Wars. There are smaller, less known non-combat MMORPGs, Second Life for instance, but larger ones just can't justify the dollars that go into devlopment of a high profile one like SWG.
That article was kind of sad to me. The guy seemed still in grief from his wife's death, and annoyed that 30 years after the fact tons of reporters started knocking on his door practically unannounced. Can't say I blame him. I wouldn't want that kind of sudden publicity now, much less at 74 for something I did half my life ago.
Friends and I used to debate this all the time in Ultima Online. What if we sold someone a virtual weapon, say, on e-bay, exchanged it in-game, but had a gank squad waiting to mug him seconds later for the same weapon? After asking lots of pre-law friends, we came to the conclusion that, while definately a grey area, that it probably was illegal, and could be charged as racketering. Basically the problem lies in whether or not he intended to deprive someone of real world assets before hand. My guess is that was exactly his intent, and if so, I'm not sure he'll get off as scot free as we might think. Personally I'm suprised it took this long for such a well publicized case to come up.