From my perspective, making the auctions last until five minutes after the last bid would probably just prevent me from using the site anymore, since it would take away the only method I have found (other than 'BUY IT NOW') for buying anything there.
I feel the same way, though I've started seeing a lot more "buy it now or best offer" auctions pop up. With these you basically make an offer BELOW the buy it now price and the seller has 48 hours or accept it and end the "auction".
I've started making offers on a lot of these auctions recently and I've been able to pick stuff up 20-30% below the buy it now price. It works particularly well with power sellers who have 8-10 identical items up for auction at the same time. IMO it's a much better alternative to buy it now auctions if you have the option available.
That's a good point I suppose anything that changes the way the industry does business would be considered Industry Reshaping. I guess I interpreted it more along the lines of reshaping game design. But both are portions of industry as a whole.
The fact that you'd mention gears of war is a testament to your lack of gaming history. Many games have done the duck and cover, it wasn't 'new' so much as repackaged gameplay with new animations.
I think the fact that you neglected to read a point I iterated twice is a testament to your lack of literacy. I never said they were the first, nor did I say they were innovative. I know that Gears is neither, and I stated that fact _TWICE_. You also seem to be confusing "Industry Shaping" with "innovation" which are not synonymous and we're only discussing the former.
Gears didn't do anything that hadn't already been done before, but they packaged the duck and cover mechanism in a very simple and easy to understand controller layout. As a result, what was formerly a Shooter mechanic that had been limited to very few games, and usually coupled with complex control mechanics above attracting average gamers, has seen a half dozen new action/shooter games pop up with that style gameplay since with dozens more arriving this year.
Kain and Lynch, Army of Two, Blacksite Area 51, and Uncharted all borrow heavily from Gears, and even upcoming releases of major game franchises like GTA, and Tomb Raider are adopting those gameplay elements as well.
Was Gears of War innovative? No. Did it have a lasting impact across the rest of the industry that changed they way other games are being developed? Absolutely.
You don't have to be innovative to to Reshape an industry, sometimes it's just mixing the right combination of old ideas at the right time. The only criteria is that other games in the industry were different because of it, and to what degree. Gears made a large portion of the game industry stop and think about what they were doing and then change the way they were doing things, and thats why it made my list of games that have recently aided in Reshaping the Gaming Industry.
Don't get me wrong, I love the games that this guy produces but I'd hardly classify re-releasing the same exact game for over a decade with little more than slightly more refined mechanics and graphics every single time as "industry reshaping". By that same token I don't think Kojima belong anywhere near that list either.
In my opinion an industry shaping player is someone who makes a game, good or bad, popular or not, profitable or not, new ideas or not, and makes other developers in the industry start thinking about their own game design as a result. I can think of several instances this generation where games have come out and their design elements have started trickling into other games in the industry. They might not have been the first to do something, but they were the first to start certain trends in the industry.
I think Portal did that with the portal system and associated gameplay, I think Gears of War did that with it's gameplay style, I think a lot of Nintendo's games have done that with the way their games use the Wii Remote, Test Drive unlimited did it with their online gameplay system, and fight night 3 did it with their analog control mechanism. Older examples are the Guitar Hero series making music a major gameplay element and Fable with it's ideals of a good vs evil evolution.
as I said these aren't the first games to use these concepts but they are the games that sparked trends that have started flowing through the industry whole industry.
This would mean that potential buyers are being put off -- and these will be people like me, who've never used eBay, and might venture there to look for something in particular, yet by the time the auction closes find that the price has escalated to a ridiculous amount. That's happened in the past, and it certainly put me off bidding in any auction, real or pretend.
I avoid that whole situation by using Auction Sniper. Basically I find an item I want, go over to auction sniper and put in the ID and how much I'm willing to pay for it, then forget about it until I get an email saying I won or lost.
Even better they have "bid groups" so I could enter 20 or 30 auction IDs for like items and it will keep submitting my bids automatically until I get one at the price I want.
Unless you count "buy it now" or "best offer" auctions I haven't submitted a "real" bid in years.
...then they turn around and offer kits to install Linux on PS2s and even support Linux out of the box on a PS3
That's a different situation entirely... A group of console/linux hackers basically held Sony hostage saying that they cracked the console and if Sony didn't offer an official Linux distro they'd go public and open the door to pirates as well. Sony obliged and we got an official Linxu distro. The same group did the same thing to MS over the Xbox 1, MS denied and the console was cracked wide open to the point where it can be used as a fully functioning PC with little more than a screwdriver and a soldering iron.
Even still the PS3 does offer more open standard support than their competitors. You can use Generic hard drives, generic bluetooth devices, generic memory units, generic usb devices, etc. while it's mostly proprietary on the 360 and Wii.
Sony's Biggest folly IMO is their abhorrent lack of organization both blu-ray and the PS3 in their release configurations were running on un-finalized specs, blu-ray is just now finalizing it's spec and basically obsoleting most of the early players, and disc releases and the PS3 still feels incomplete and probably wont feel "finished" until the release of home/full integration of the x-media bar. At least the HD-DVD spec was finalized and all the players and media supported that spec on day 1.
not everyone's vocation fits into a nice little car-pool/public transportation package.
For instance I have a friend who owns a plumbing company with a fleet of trucks used by his employees. Exactly how do you "car-pool" a truck full of tools and supplies?
For those of us who work in IT with some semblance of responsibility, how exactly do we car-pool to work at 3am when a server crashes and we need to get it up and running before the next day's business?
What about those of us who leave work somewhere in a fuzzy 2 hour window depending on what needs to get done at the end of the day? Carpool in the morning and sleep on the server room floor in the evening when the rest of your carpool buddies leave without you? Not to mention, unless you live in and work in a major city, most areas are completely devoid of useful public transportation.
Maybe not true of all people but I think at least the/. crow have jobs that require us to be more than a simple 9-5 automaton.
Are you implying that they don't care about their favorite movies and music? I don't see how games are any different.
It's not the content that slashdotters care/don't care about it's the extremes by which these groups go to "protect" them, punishing the legitimate consumers in the process and making the pirate version superior by not hindering access.
A content's value is directly proportional to it's accessibility.
In all seriousness, I think this is where the major issue lies. The judge ruled that because most people don't know about host -l, that the information was private, even though it was publicly available with a standard command.
Exactly, that's like saying walking through an unlocked door to a shop is illegal because most people don't know how to turn a door knob.
The thing most people neglect about the writing in Bioshock and something that is IMO the reason it's such a well written game and should be nominated is the twist near the end... It's something that wouldn't have had the same kind of impact had you been watching a movie because in a game you're an active participant. The writing along provided replay value through it's sheer craftsmanship by encouraging you to play the game again and see it in a different light knowing what you learn in the end.
Add to that the tremendous quality of the scrip in general and there is no doubt in my mind that it's the best game script I've ever played.
Portal was great too because it did so much with so little, it melded perfectly with the environment and gameplay and it was incredibly entertaining the whole time. Giving someone 30 hours worth of gameplay to flesh out their characters and create depth is one thing. Asking someone to write an award worthy script in 10 sentences or less is an entire challenge in and of itself.
Funny, I always used to think this (corporate lobbying) was a bad thing. But now that it's for something I care about, I'm all for it!
I realize you jest, but this is really a double edged sword.
On the one hand you'll see them battling out for getting rid of censorship of gaming, which is a good thing.
On the other hand you'll see them battling out for making the DMCA even tighter than it already is. As much as we like to point fingers at the RIAA, and MPAA, Nintendo and Sony have both leveraged quite a few government resources in the past to do raids of copyright violators. As for Microsoft, well, they seem to like DRM just as much as anybody.
yup... EAC is the only application I ever use to rip my CDs, not only does it let you cut through this kind of garbage it does a damn good job quality wise as well.
Why is it then that in reality the price doesn't go down to fill the empty seats?
The price is most likely based on historical averages as opposed to up to the minute analysis on a flight by flight, minute by minute basis, even still the price of a ticket on a single flight does fluctuate over time based on the market for that flight.
to add another example to your post look at first class seating on airplanes. Say there are only 12 1st class seats on the plain and dozens of cattle class seats. The price of the 1st class seats isn't arbitrary is based on the market... there is a very limited supply of seats in that section, so the price point is directly related to what the market is willing to pay for them. In essence the price of 1st class seats is as high as it can possibly be to the point where 12 there are 12 people left that are willing to pay for them.
If the price goes higher than there are fewer people willing to buy those seats and seats go empty, if the price goes lower then there are more people willing to buy the seats then there are seats available and the airline is losing potential profits.
You could also argue that flights in general are priced on demand... the planes can only hold so much so the price gets jacked up until they reach a point where they can fill the plane without any empty seats and without any potential customers with enough money who still want a flight. If demand get high enough that the prices are as high as they can go without losing customers but there are still many more people willing to fly than there are seats on the plane then they'll buy new planes/add more flights/harvest more helium.
it basically boils down to: rare things that people want are expensive, common things that people don't want are cheap.
it's just a 2D bar code on the back of the license is it not? (well, it is on my license at least) what's to stop you from photocopying someone else's barcode and printing out a sticker for the back of your license?
If what the article says is true, and the barcode is in an open format you could even use a barcode generator on your PC and make up fake info for it to scan up as. I would venture a guess that as long the machine goes "BEEP" the ID checker would be none the wiser.
Actually it's interesting that this topic comes up after the recent 24C3 conference, considering one of my favorite lectures (over the web, I didn't attend) was one on bar codes. Apparently you can even do SQL injection via barcode if you're feeling malicious
Since when is the BRD vs HDDVD battle video game related? if I hate Sony AND MS how exactly will a Wii aide me in purchasing a HD movie format? Honestly that's why Toshiba had my support... why Supporting Toshiba somehow makes me an MS fanboy I don't really understand.
Despite how much I like the HD-DVD format more than Blu-Ray Toshiba really needs to just throw in the towel at this point and do the consumer market a favor...
DVDs look like complete garbage as well. Unless you're using VGA or HDMI the best you'll get out of it is 480p during DVD playback (a neat idea by the MPAA to curtail piracy). Not only that but the mpeg decoding is atrocious and the black levels look like something from a cheapo sub-$30 player.
after only 2 weeks with the console I bought an oppo unit for my DVDs and never looked back. I love the 360 for gaming but it's so horrid with DVD movies you'd be better served watching them on a PS2.
Actually, that setting performs DREADFULLY. 1280x720 gets scaled to 766 high, giving nasty moire patterns on any horizontal lines and generally messing things up.
If the display wont let you send it the native resolution, and it can't properly scale from one of the resolutions it DOES accept then I'm sorry it's just a plain old-fashioned BAD product.
If that's how your TV functions then you'd be best served setting your PC to output 1280x720 (720p). While it's not the native res of the screen it's the closest match and a resolution that the scaler was designed to scale well.
in the future I'd recommend not purchasing displays that impose such restrictions on their use, either that or buy displays where the native resolution is 1280x720 or 1920x1080
Slashdot Mirror
I've started making offers on a lot of these auctions recently and I've been able to pick stuff up 20-30% below the buy it now price. It works particularly well with power sellers who have 8-10 identical items up for auction at the same time. IMO it's a much better alternative to buy it now auctions if you have the option available.
That's a good point I suppose anything that changes the way the industry does business would be considered Industry Reshaping. I guess I interpreted it more along the lines of reshaping game design. But both are portions of industry as a whole.
Gears didn't do anything that hadn't already been done before, but they packaged the duck and cover mechanism in a very simple and easy to understand controller layout. As a result, what was formerly a Shooter mechanic that had been limited to very few games, and usually coupled with complex control mechanics above attracting average gamers, has seen a half dozen new action/shooter games pop up with that style gameplay since with dozens more arriving this year.
Kain and Lynch, Army of Two, Blacksite Area 51, and Uncharted all borrow heavily from Gears, and even upcoming releases of major game franchises like GTA, and Tomb Raider are adopting those gameplay elements as well.
Was Gears of War innovative? No. Did it have a lasting impact across the rest of the industry that changed they way other games are being developed? Absolutely.
You don't have to be innovative to to Reshape an industry, sometimes it's just mixing the right combination of old ideas at the right time. The only criteria is that other games in the industry were different because of it, and to what degree. Gears made a large portion of the game industry stop and think about what they were doing and then change the way they were doing things, and thats why it made my list of games that have recently aided in Reshaping the Gaming Industry.
...Itagaki...
Don't get me wrong, I love the games that this guy produces but I'd hardly classify re-releasing the same exact game for over a decade with little more than slightly more refined mechanics and graphics every single time as "industry reshaping". By that same token I don't think Kojima belong anywhere near that list either.
In my opinion an industry shaping player is someone who makes a game, good or bad, popular or not, profitable or not, new ideas or not, and makes other developers in the industry start thinking about their own game design as a result. I can think of several instances this generation where games have come out and their design elements have started trickling into other games in the industry. They might not have been the first to do something, but they were the first to start certain trends in the industry.
I think Portal did that with the portal system and associated gameplay, I think Gears of War did that with it's gameplay style, I think a lot of Nintendo's games have done that with the way their games use the Wii Remote, Test Drive unlimited did it with their online gameplay system, and fight night 3 did it with their analog control mechanism. Older examples are the Guitar Hero series making music a major gameplay element and Fable with it's ideals of a good vs evil evolution.
as I said these aren't the first games to use these concepts but they are the games that sparked trends that have started flowing through the industry whole industry.
Even better they have "bid groups" so I could enter 20 or 30 auction IDs for like items and it will keep submitting my bids automatically until I get one at the price I want.
Unless you count "buy it now" or "best offer" auctions I haven't submitted a "real" bid in years.
Those are The only things I miss having given up PC gaming for the console world...
I'm probably dreaming if I think fan portal content will find it's way to the 360..
So what you're saying is you'd rather companies like EA just roll over and take it as opposed to fighting back to try and break that stigma?
Even still the PS3 does offer more open standard support than their competitors. You can use Generic hard drives, generic bluetooth devices, generic memory units, generic usb devices, etc. while it's mostly proprietary on the 360 and Wii.
Sony's Biggest folly IMO is their abhorrent lack of organization both blu-ray and the PS3 in their release configurations were running on un-finalized specs, blu-ray is just now finalizing it's spec and basically obsoleting most of the early players, and disc releases and the PS3 still feels incomplete and probably wont feel "finished" until the release of home/full integration of the x-media bar. At least the HD-DVD spec was finalized and all the players and media supported that spec on day 1.
not everyone's vocation fits into a nice little car-pool/public transportation package.
/. crow have jobs that require us to be more than a simple 9-5 automaton.
For instance I have a friend who owns a plumbing company with a fleet of trucks used by his employees. Exactly how do you "car-pool" a truck full of tools and supplies?
For those of us who work in IT with some semblance of responsibility, how exactly do we car-pool to work at 3am when a server crashes and we need to get it up and running before the next day's business?
What about those of us who leave work somewhere in a fuzzy 2 hour window depending on what needs to get done at the end of the day? Carpool in the morning and sleep on the server room floor in the evening when the rest of your carpool buddies leave without you? Not to mention, unless you live in and work in a major city, most areas are completely devoid of useful public transportation.
Maybe not true of all people but I think at least the
what you and other's fail to realize is... ITSATRAP!
Are you implying that they don't care about their favorite movies and music? I don't see how games are any different.
It's not the content that slashdotters care/don't care about it's the extremes by which these groups go to "protect" them, punishing the legitimate consumers in the process and making the pirate version superior by not hindering access.
A content's value is directly proportional to it's accessibility.
The thing most people neglect about the writing in Bioshock and something that is IMO the reason it's such a well written game and should be nominated is the twist near the end... It's something that wouldn't have had the same kind of impact had you been watching a movie because in a game you're an active participant. The writing along provided replay value through it's sheer craftsmanship by encouraging you to play the game again and see it in a different light knowing what you learn in the end.
Add to that the tremendous quality of the scrip in general and there is no doubt in my mind that it's the best game script I've ever played.
Portal was great too because it did so much with so little, it melded perfectly with the environment and gameplay and it was incredibly entertaining the whole time. Giving someone 30 hours worth of gameplay to flesh out their characters and create depth is one thing. Asking someone to write an award worthy script in 10 sentences or less is an entire challenge in and of itself.
On the one hand you'll see them battling out for getting rid of censorship of gaming, which is a good thing.
On the other hand you'll see them battling out for making the DMCA even tighter than it already is. As much as we like to point fingers at the RIAA, and MPAA, Nintendo and Sony have both leveraged quite a few government resources in the past to do raids of copyright violators. As for Microsoft, well, they seem to like DRM just as much as anybody.
yup... EAC is the only application I ever use to rip my CDs, not only does it let you cut through this kind of garbage it does a damn good job quality wise as well.
to add another example to your post look at first class seating on airplanes. Say there are only 12 1st class seats on the plain and dozens of cattle class seats. The price of the 1st class seats isn't arbitrary is based on the market... there is a very limited supply of seats in that section, so the price point is directly related to what the market is willing to pay for them. In essence the price of 1st class seats is as high as it can possibly be to the point where 12 there are 12 people left that are willing to pay for them.
If the price goes higher than there are fewer people willing to buy those seats and seats go empty, if the price goes lower then there are more people willing to buy the seats then there are seats available and the airline is losing potential profits.
You could also argue that flights in general are priced on demand... the planes can only hold so much so the price gets jacked up until they reach a point where they can fill the plane without any empty seats and without any potential customers with enough money who still want a flight. If demand get high enough that the prices are as high as they can go without losing customers but there are still many more people willing to fly than there are seats on the plane then they'll buy new planes/add more flights/harvest more helium.
it basically boils down to: rare things that people want are expensive, common things that people don't want are cheap.
it's just a 2D bar code on the back of the license is it not? (well, it is on my license at least) what's to stop you from photocopying someone else's barcode and printing out a sticker for the back of your license?
If what the article says is true, and the barcode is in an open format you could even use a barcode generator on your PC and make up fake info for it to scan up as. I would venture a guess that as long the machine goes "BEEP" the ID checker would be none the wiser.
Actually it's interesting that this topic comes up after the recent 24C3 conference, considering one of my favorite lectures (over the web, I didn't attend) was one on bar codes. Apparently you can even do SQL injection via barcode if you're feeling malicious
what about jamming the wireless signal across major highways and causing transportation to come to a standstill as the new form of "terrorism"
Since when is the BRD vs HDDVD battle video game related? if I hate Sony AND MS how exactly will a Wii aide me in purchasing a HD movie format? Honestly that's why Toshiba had my support... why Supporting Toshiba somehow makes me an MS fanboy I don't really understand.
Despite how much I like the HD-DVD format more than Blu-Ray Toshiba really needs to just throw in the towel at this point and do the consumer market a favor...
SCIENTOLOGY!!!111
DVDs look like complete garbage as well. Unless you're using VGA or HDMI the best you'll get out of it is 480p during DVD playback (a neat idea by the MPAA to curtail piracy). Not only that but the mpeg decoding is atrocious and the black levels look like something from a cheapo sub-$30 player.
after only 2 weeks with the console I bought an oppo unit for my DVDs and never looked back. I love the 360 for gaming but it's so horrid with DVD movies you'd be better served watching them on a PS2.
If that's how your TV functions then you'd be best served setting your PC to output 1280x720 (720p). While it's not the native res of the screen it's the closest match and a resolution that the scaler was designed to scale well.
in the future I'd recommend not purchasing displays that impose such restrictions on their use, either that or buy displays where the native resolution is 1280x720 or 1920x1080