C'mon. Even some great films have glaring ads, and it doesn't affect the movie negatively. Take The Matrix. There's Mr. Anderson conspicuously listening to his Panasonic headphones, there he is on the window ledge dropping the phone which slowly rotates to show us the Nokia label before falling.
So, when I see a billboard in an appropriate place in MxO, I don't care if it's for a fake product or a real one. If I'm blasting down the streets in a race game, who cares if an ad at trackside is for Spoonzoil or Pennzoil.
On the other hand, if Aragorn had paused in the middle of Edoras to remark how a fresh coat of paint now on sale at Home Depot would cheer the place up, it would've been completely out of place.
The billboards are already in-game. They have ads for fictional products, and on occasion have been used to provide storyline hints in combination with the in-game newspaper.
In the original release (pre-SOE) they've occasionally been used to provide ads for WB movies.
Those billboards will be there whether Coca-Cola or "Slumberil" is displayed on them. They'll also allow player-created billboards on occasion, so that the things are not just a bit of polygonal fluff but a bit of revenue, a bit of storyline, even some roleplaying from one or another of MxO's factions.
Finally, a comment with something other than "SOE" followed by verbal diarrhea.
Of course it comes from SirBruce. (Looking forward to new numbers, by the way).
Here's my perspective. SOE has revamped two of its games lately, EQ2 and SWG. Both were billed as being changes intended to return the games to their original intent. MxO is undergoing similar changes right now behind the scenes in prep for a combat revision due sometime in 2006.
The EQ2 changes produced a ton of flak on their message boards but have succeeded wildly in producing a game you actually play instead of 'grind.'
I don't know SWG directly, but only through friends. I'm familiar with the things that were horribly broken in the original "pre-CU" game and certainly since the "CU" there's no shortage of people who spell badly ready to trash anything with the initials SOE attached to it on any given forum.
Frankly I think it's a mystery why anyone would want to stay with the "CU" as it appears to have been universally disliked.
However, the universal truth prevails; most people would rather stick with something they hate but are familiar with rather than try something new. That is, after all, the whole business model for MMOGs...
SOE has been very daring with this change. It would have been far easier to simply milk the existing system until natural attrition made it unprofitable.
SirBruce, I hope your next update is prompt and followed by another one. I'm intrigued to find out how the "CU" affected SWG numbers and it'll really be interesting to see how SWG plays out in the next 6 months or so. As you suggested, it's a hard sell to get new players to try an 'old' title than it is to hook them into a new yet-unreleased game which by definition doesn't have any disaffected former customers yet.
For my own part, I'm trying to find out how to add SWG most easily to my Station account. Being a very casual player, it's great fun to be able to pick a genre and playstyle at whim. 'course I don't get to be 'teh uber' and chase the end-game in any one game since I'm not dedicating day after day to it, but that's not my interest.
Most of the players treat it as a sneak preview at best or more commonly just free play.
A tiny fraction of people find and report bugs as they're supposed to.
A much larger minority actively looks for glitches, bugs, and exploits... and then proceeds to squirrel them away for later. Then at go-live time the carefully-planned game balance is instantly pooched by these guys who run straight to the loophole and max out while the new players are still trying to find the bank.
I can see a marketing reason to open a game up to the public, but other than that, no. Besides, if your game has any sort of showstopper issue, you've lost that customer for life and a few more who that person tells about buggy this and laggy that long after you've fixed the bug.
Functional testing is best handled by people whose professional interest lies in finding and fixing bugs, not finding and exploiting bugs.
Stress testing can just as easily be accomplished by 10k macroed test sessions as by 10k live players. In fact, better, since the macros can hit everything, faster, and all at once if you want. Might as well be ready for when bot pharming teams hit your game, right? Better yet, if you find the script is leveling faster than a human player, you have a problem.
This might get the somewhat left-leaning/. audience to wake up a bit about the PRC?
I know it's so very fashionable to b**** about corporate America or the religious right, but the religious right are libertarians compared to the atheist PRC.
There once was also a Western form of business etiquette which was far more direct than the Japanese style but yet retained 'face' for all parties, but it's been largely thrown away in favor of apeish poo-throwing and arrogance.
No, buy the HD-less one, wait for one of a dozen techie sites to 'reveal' that the HDD of the more expensive one is actually just a standard notebook drive, install your own (larger) drive and copy a disk image onto it.
As for me, nuts to XBox; I'm not buying a new console until I can get one with one or another of the HD DVDs (blue or red ray) as the drive.
Hey, someone figured it out. Let's see, what's deadlier to Sony, an extra controller or taking away the high-def standard Sony's banking on and establishing WMV as the standard movie format?
I won't buy either of these consoles (PS3 or XB360) without high-def DVD playback.
"CD: With XNA, which incorporates both DirectX and the Xbox/Xbox 360 Development Kits, we're making the tools to make it easier to make games for Microsoft's gaming platforms. We're looking to the game development community to surprise gamers with new ideas of what they can do with these tools--and of course, we're helping developers build games that can take advantage of the huge power of the next generation of hardware, both Xbox 360 and Longhorn."
Here's my contribution to the Paranoia RPG: it would, if properly funded, make the ultimate PvP MMORPG setting.
A million excuses to zap each other, an existing premise for 'why I come back to life indefinitely,' and a bulletproof excuse for every game bug: The Computer is insane, did you expect everything to work properly?
Add clones, secret mutant powers, secret societies, lasers, and shake briskly until something explodes.
"I'll be waiting and watching, looking to compare the Xbox 360 HD-DVD directly with the PS3 Blu-Ray. No, it won't be about the disc format, it'll be about the games... but even if I had been thinking I'd for sure buy the 360, I think knowing the HD-DVD version would be out within a year might make me think twice..."
For you it's not about the games. For many buyers, it will be about the disk format; like Beta and VHS, one of these two formats will prevail and the other will becomes useless.
Both these consoles are morphing away from game machine into multiple-purpose home entertainment centers.
I think M$ is being very smart here. Launch with an accepted, proven format; give enough time that if BluRay takes over the world they can switch; but certainly this announcement is a big swing in the high-def disk wars.
I'm only sad because the longer the squabble continues the longer I have to wait to re-buy LOTR:EE when it comes out in HD. There's no way I'm committing before the dust settles.
Where did all the cows come from? From the leftovers of all the steak Cypher and those who follow him have been eating...
I'm glad MxO is condensing. It needs some work, needs to be folded into the SOE world, and only then will a re-promotion mean anything. Right now there's no point in promoting MxO as it would only give an incentive for a bunch of new people to dismiss it.
MMOs need to hook people immediately and keep them for a few months; after that the investment of time in character and in friends keeps the player subscribed through good times and bad (which, of course, is the whole point of the root article.)
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C'mon. Even some great films have glaring ads, and it doesn't affect the movie negatively. Take The Matrix. There's Mr. Anderson conspicuously listening to his Panasonic headphones, there he is on the window ledge dropping the phone which slowly rotates to show us the Nokia label before falling.
So, when I see a billboard in an appropriate place in MxO, I don't care if it's for a fake product or a real one. If I'm blasting down the streets in a race game, who cares if an ad at trackside is for Spoonzoil or Pennzoil.
On the other hand, if Aragorn had paused in the middle of Edoras to remark how a fresh coat of paint now on sale at Home Depot would cheer the place up, it would've been completely out of place.
The billboards are already in-game. They have ads for fictional products, and on occasion have been used to provide storyline hints in combination with the in-game newspaper.
In the original release (pre-SOE) they've occasionally been used to provide ads for WB movies.
Those billboards will be there whether Coca-Cola or "Slumberil" is displayed on them. They'll also allow player-created billboards on occasion, so that the things are not just a bit of polygonal fluff but a bit of revenue, a bit of storyline, even some roleplaying from one or another of MxO's factions.
Finally, a comment with something other than "SOE" followed by verbal diarrhea.
Of course it comes from SirBruce. (Looking forward to new numbers, by the way).
Here's my perspective. SOE has revamped two of its games lately, EQ2 and SWG. Both were billed as being changes intended to return the games to their original intent. MxO is undergoing similar changes right now behind the scenes in prep for a combat revision due sometime in 2006.
The EQ2 changes produced a ton of flak on their message boards but have succeeded wildly in producing a game you actually play instead of 'grind.'
I don't know SWG directly, but only through friends. I'm familiar with the things that were horribly broken in the original "pre-CU" game and certainly since the "CU" there's no shortage of people who spell badly ready to trash anything with the initials SOE attached to it on any given forum.
Frankly I think it's a mystery why anyone would want to stay with the "CU" as it appears to have been universally disliked.
However, the universal truth prevails; most people would rather stick with something they hate but are familiar with rather than try something new. That is, after all, the whole business model for MMOGs...
SOE has been very daring with this change. It would have been far easier to simply milk the existing system until natural attrition made it unprofitable.
SirBruce, I hope your next update is prompt and followed by another one. I'm intrigued to find out how the "CU" affected SWG numbers and it'll really be interesting to see how SWG plays out in the next 6 months or so. As you suggested, it's a hard sell to get new players to try an 'old' title than it is to hook them into a new yet-unreleased game which by definition doesn't have any disaffected former customers yet.
For my own part, I'm trying to find out how to add SWG most easily to my Station account. Being a very casual player, it's great fun to be able to pick a genre and playstyle at whim. 'course I don't get to be 'teh uber' and chase the end-game in any one game since I'm not dedicating day after day to it, but that's not my interest.
"1.5x change in resolution. The actual resolutio n difference between 480p and 720p is only 50% extra."
720p is 1280x720 or 921600 pixels per frame.
480p is 720x480 or 345600 pixels per frame.
In other news, the area of a square 2x2 is not twice that of a square 1x1. (ducks)
Most of the players treat it as a sneak preview at best or more commonly just free play.
... and then proceeds to squirrel them away for later. Then at go-live time the carefully-planned game balance is instantly pooched by these guys who run straight to the loophole and max out while the new players are still trying to find the bank.
A tiny fraction of people find and report bugs as they're supposed to.
A much larger minority actively looks for glitches, bugs, and exploits
I can see a marketing reason to open a game up to the public, but other than that, no. Besides, if your game has any sort of showstopper issue, you've lost that customer for life and a few more who that person tells about buggy this and laggy that long after you've fixed the bug.
Functional testing is best handled by people whose professional interest lies in finding and fixing bugs, not finding and exploiting bugs.
Stress testing can just as easily be accomplished by 10k macroed test sessions as by 10k live players. In fact, better, since the macros can hit everything, faster, and all at once if you want. Might as well be ready for when bot pharming teams hit your game, right? Better yet, if you find the script is leveling faster than a human player, you have a problem.
This might get the somewhat left-leaning /. audience to wake up a bit about the PRC?
I know it's so very fashionable to b**** about corporate America or the religious right, but the religious right are libertarians compared to the atheist PRC.
"but it's not clear that any game is going to make use of anywhere close to even HD-DVD's "mere" 20GB+ storage capabilities in the near future."
:)
Nor will any PC ever need more than 640k RAM.
Trust me, by the time content gets rolling for whatever high-def DVD format wins, we'll all be wishing for at least twice as much storage per disk.
There once was also a Western form of business etiquette which was far more direct than the Japanese style but yet retained 'face' for all parties, but it's been largely thrown away in favor of apeish poo-throwing and arrogance.
At least that's my experience.
No, buy the HD-less one, wait for one of a dozen techie sites to 'reveal' that the HDD of the more expensive one is actually just a standard notebook drive, install your own (larger) drive and copy a disk image onto it.
As for me, nuts to XBox; I'm not buying a new console until I can get one with one or another of the HD DVDs (blue or red ray) as the drive.
Hey, someone figured it out. Let's see, what's deadlier to Sony, an extra controller or taking away the high-def standard Sony's banking on and establishing WMV as the standard movie format?
I won't buy either of these consoles (PS3 or XB360) without high-def DVD playback.
*If* I buy one of these consoles, it'll only be because it does serve multiple purposes, including high-def DVD playback (whether blue or red ray).
Not to disparage your point of view about what a console ought to be, but some people do want an everything box.
"First of all, I'm not so sure that MS want the 360 to be a Windows-gaming-killer."
9 950&filter=interview
I think the goal is to allow developers to write once and deploy on both Windows and XBox.
http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?article_id=
"CD: With XNA, which incorporates both DirectX and the Xbox/Xbox 360 Development Kits, we're making the tools to make it easier to make games for Microsoft's gaming platforms. We're looking to the game development community to surprise gamers with new ideas of what they can do with these tools--and of course, we're helping developers build games that can take advantage of the huge power of the next generation of hardware, both Xbox 360 and Longhorn."
Here's my contribution to the Paranoia RPG: it would, if properly funded, make the ultimate PvP MMORPG setting.
A million excuses to zap each other, an existing premise for 'why I come back to life indefinitely,' and a bulletproof excuse for every game bug: The Computer is insane, did you expect everything to work properly?
Add clones, secret mutant powers, secret societies, lasers, and shake briskly until something explodes.
"I'll be waiting and watching, looking to compare the Xbox 360 HD-DVD directly with the PS3 Blu-Ray. No, it won't be about the disc format, it'll be about the games... but even if I had been thinking I'd for sure buy the 360, I think knowing the HD-DVD version would be out within a year might make me think twice..."
For you it's not about the games. For many buyers, it will be about the disk format; like Beta and VHS, one of these two formats will prevail and the other will becomes useless.
Both these consoles are morphing away from game machine into multiple-purpose home entertainment centers.
I think M$ is being very smart here. Launch with an accepted, proven format; give enough time that if BluRay takes over the world they can switch; but certainly this announcement is a big swing in the high-def disk wars.
I'm only sad because the longer the squabble continues the longer I have to wait to re-buy LOTR:EE when it comes out in HD. There's no way I'm committing before the dust settles.
Where did all the cows come from? From the leftovers of all the steak Cypher and those who follow him have been eating...
I'm glad MxO is condensing. It needs some work, needs to be folded into the SOE world, and only then will a re-promotion mean anything. Right now there's no point in promoting MxO as it would only give an incentive for a bunch of new people to dismiss it.
MMOs need to hook people immediately and keep them for a few months; after that the investment of time in character and in friends keeps the player subscribed through good times and bad (which, of course, is the whole point of the root article.)