Actually, another thought occurred to me. Most people buying games in the 80s were usually not the people playing them. That's another major shift that has occurred: those playing them (general under-18ers ) had little concept of what they cost. Which would explain why we see so many posts here saying games are so much "more expensive" than they used to be.
Games these days contain *hours* of quality recorded voice, *thousands* of high-quality meshes, *thousands* of high-quality textures, and *tens of thousands* of painstakingly hand-crafted or mocapped-then-hand-retouched animations. They implement somewhat realistic physics, quality 5.1 surround sound..
But the question is, do games need to do these things? People were not unhappy paying $50 for a game that consisted poorly animated 2d sprites; yet they are now unhappy in spite of the incredible visual and audible quality of modern games - quality that approaches real-life in some cases.
The message I'm getting is that maybe publishers need to stop focusing on flashy, showy high-poly counts, 3d sound, and movie-production budgets and start focusing on gameplay and writing. (By far the less expensive, and something that very few games do well these days.)
On the other hand, if these things were done, we would just start hearing people complain about how it's such a shame that given the state of modern technology, graphics/sound/etc are so poor; that innovative gameplay and can only take a game so far; and that the writing is great, but this game looks like crap.
Unfortunately, I think the people who want better gameplay and less glitz are a vocal minority; and the ones who want expensive art and modeling budgets are the silent majority. If that's not the case, surely the publishers would have picked up on it by now?
You may not buy crappy games, because you read reviews first
You do realize what a farce the major game reviewers have become, don't you? As in - if a publisher doesn't pay for a nice, lavish "reviewing" trip, they're not gonna get good reviews. There are depressingly few exceptions to this among the reviewers that people listen to.
The price has remained the same, but remember that back in the days of yore a lot more cost of the game was involved in it's medium. The ROM chips (and sometimes additional processors, batteries, etc) used in cartridges way back when were orders of magnitude more expensive than the CD's and DVD's that games ship on now (which cost maybe $0.15 per disc to produce). So yes, development costs have gone up, but that's the only reason prices should remain the same. Without that games would logically cost half as much as they do now given the reduction in media cost.
$50-60 today is not the same as $50-60 in 1985. Adjusted for inflation, game prices are decreasing while production costs are increasing...
Yeah, I hate that argument too - it annoyed the crap out of me when the oil companies used it to defend rising gas prices. Nonetheless, there is some truth to it.
What works better is making the legitimate music easier to purchase, download, and play than the pirated version -- in other words, actually give them a better product -- and making the price reasonable enough that it can actually compete.
I was with you right up until the end. How do you make a price that is competitive with "free"?
Great, because after reading the tags on the story, I am/positive/ that she'll get plenty of insightful, well-thought-out email from the slashdot crowd.
It's erotica. Porn = explicit SEX, or naked people in a way designed to arouse you sexually. Erotica= just naked people, can be art.
Not really. Erotica "refers to works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or arousing descriptions." From wikipedia, but several other sources have similar definitions.
I would say that you're right in that it is erotica and not porn, and also that it is more art than porn; but also that your definition of erotica is incorrect.
The code is used for other projects by the same company. Few companies release their old/failed code -- id being the only game company I know of that does so (GPLing their old code).
For games in particular, this is true. Sometimes it's just retired entirely. The code is often such a nest of intellectual property issues that publicly releasing the source is just not going to be an option for the development company.
The fourth likes it for the tactics and planning - when you get really familiar with the sport, it's quite amazing how much thought actually goes into each play, and how all of the different gameplay elements (time remaining, score, 'momentum', etc) are combined into it.
They won't eat the expense, anything over $50 will usually be reclaimed from the merchant bank. What the merchant (dell) does with it is up to them, but the bank won't refuse it. There are highly standardized proecdures that issuers go through to get a chargeback processed. Because the fraud was not CC fraud, it does not matter if Dell shipped it or not; what matters is that the customer did not receive it.
You make many assumptions... which goes only to further prove my point. Whether or not you can safely add such a thing, if this is for professional software, don't - because perception is all that counts. If people find bugs, they'll turn around and say "if you tested more instead of adding useless crap, this would not have happened", regardless of the validity in a particular circumstance.
Line item veto is highly unconstitutional. The very IDEA that somebody wants to give the president, I don't care either part, the ability to say yes or no to individual items in bill is WRONG! If there is something in the bill that the president does not like, well he should do his job and veto the whole thing. This would force congress (ha) to get another bill, or do an override.
Yeah, right. 'He voted against outlawing exploitation of minors! Do you want that man to be your president again?"
Nevermind that the reason the bill was vetoed was a couple of billion dollars in unrelated wasteful spending - all that's remembered is that he voted against some Noble Cause.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, another thought occurred to me. Most people buying games in the 80s were usually not the people playing them. That's another major shift that has occurred: those playing them (general under-18ers ) had little concept of what they cost. Which would explain why we see so many posts here saying games are so much "more expensive" than they used to be.
Games these days contain *hours* of quality recorded voice, *thousands* of high-quality meshes, *thousands* of high-quality textures, and *tens of thousands* of painstakingly hand-crafted or mocapped-then-hand-retouched animations. They implement somewhat realistic physics, quality 5.1 surround sound..
But the question is, do games need to do these things? People were not unhappy paying $50 for a game that consisted poorly animated 2d sprites; yet they are now unhappy in spite of the incredible visual and audible quality of modern games - quality that approaches real-life in some cases.
The message I'm getting is that maybe publishers need to stop focusing on flashy, showy high-poly counts, 3d sound, and movie-production budgets and start focusing on gameplay and writing. (By far the less expensive, and something that very few games do well these days.)
On the other hand, if these things were done, we would just start hearing people complain about how it's such a shame that given the state of modern technology, graphics/sound/etc are so poor; that innovative gameplay and can only take a game so far; and that the writing is great, but this game looks like crap.
Unfortunately, I think the people who want better gameplay and less glitz are a vocal minority; and the ones who want expensive art and modeling budgets are the silent majority. If that's not the case, surely the publishers would have picked up on it by now?
You may not buy crappy games, because you read reviews first
You do realize what a farce the major game reviewers have become, don't you? As in - if a publisher doesn't pay for a nice, lavish "reviewing" trip, they're not gonna get good reviews. There are depressingly few exceptions to this among the reviewers that people listen to.
The price has remained the same, but remember that back in the days of yore a lot more cost of the game was involved in it's medium. The ROM chips (and sometimes additional processors, batteries, etc) used in cartridges way back when were orders of magnitude more expensive than the CD's and DVD's that games ship on now (which cost maybe $0.15 per disc to produce). So yes, development costs have gone up, but that's the only reason prices should remain the same. Without that games would logically cost half as much as they do now given the reduction in media cost.
$50-60 today is not the same as $50-60 in 1985. Adjusted for inflation, game prices are decreasing while production costs are increasing...
Yeah, I hate that argument too - it annoyed the crap out of me when the oil companies used it to defend rising gas prices. Nonetheless, there is some truth to it.
What works better is making the legitimate music easier to purchase, download, and play than the pirated version -- in other words, actually give them a better product -- and making the price reasonable enough that it can actually compete.
I was with you right up until the end. How do you make a price that is competitive with "free"?
Nobody will be able to stay awake long enough to figure out how to pirate it...
As usual the government won't do shit and she'll worm her way into a different high position. I hope this bitch dies in a fire.
Nice way to invalidate any conceivable merit the rest of your argument had.
Great, because after reading the tags on the story, I am /positive/ that she'll get plenty of insightful, well-thought-out email from the slashdot crowd.
I have one thing to say to that: [Censored by the Australian Internet Censorship Agency]
I mean, wouldn't you agree? (Sorry about this my Australian friends, but everyone ELSE reading this knows what it says. )
There's something about jokes that require improbable/impossible setups that just makes them not worth the effort...
It's erotica. Porn = explicit SEX, or naked people in a way designed to arouse you sexually. Erotica= just naked people, can be art.
Not really. Erotica "refers to works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or arousing descriptions." From wikipedia, but several other sources have similar definitions. I would say that you're right in that it is erotica and not porn, and also that it is more art than porn; but also that your definition of erotica is incorrect.
Framing an argument this way all but guarantees the desired - Pavlovian - response.
Yep, because the slashdot crowd assuredly has a ton of faith in Satan.
The code is used for other projects by the same company. Few companies release their old/failed code -- id being the only game company I know of that does so (GPLing their old code).
For games in particular, this is true. Sometimes it's just retired entirely. The code is often such a nest of intellectual property issues that publicly releasing the source is just not going to be an option for the development company.
Oh, and the cheerleaders.
I have like 200 tabs in it,
The slightest bit bored at work, are we?
Also known as 1 in 100, or 1%? Granted, 10,0000 sounds a lot better, but it's a bit disingenuous...
Again, whoosh. Not to mention that the OP wasn't mine, but hey, whatever does it for you.
Besides, the researchers may well find themselves on the other end of that hallucination.
I totally hate when the people I'm studying start hallucinating me.
Wanna share what the book was? ...
Indeed. Most companies only seem to look at the short-term cost. Offshoring support is a prime example.
Whoosh.
They won't eat the expense, anything over $50 will usually be reclaimed from the merchant bank. What the merchant (dell) does with it is up to them, but the bank won't refuse it. There are highly standardized proecdures that issuers go through to get a chargeback processed. Because the fraud was not CC fraud, it does not matter if Dell shipped it or not; what matters is that the customer did not receive it.
They're not being very useful to the company as a whole when they waste an enormous amount of my time,
As far as they are concerned, your time is cheap ;)
You make many assumptions... which goes only to further prove my point. Whether or not you can safely add such a thing, if this is for professional software, don't - because perception is all that counts. If people find bugs, they'll turn around and say "if you tested more instead of adding useless crap, this would not have happened", regardless of the validity in a particular circumstance.
Line item veto is highly unconstitutional. The very IDEA that somebody wants to give the president, I don't care either part, the ability to say yes or no to individual items in bill is WRONG! If there is something in the bill that the president does not like, well he should do his job and veto the whole thing. This would force congress (ha) to get another bill, or do an override.
Yeah, right. 'He voted against outlawing exploitation of minors! Do you want that man to be your president again?"
Nevermind that the reason the bill was vetoed was a couple of billion dollars in unrelated wasteful spending - all that's remembered is that he voted against some Noble Cause.