Maybe I should unwrap the plastic on my copy of this game.... the one I bought on release day and then set on a shelf while I played other things. I keep hearing good things but it's one of a handful of games that I've purchased and haven't got around to opening let alone play. Just too many games to play and not enough time to play them
With new content available and your claim of a relatively short game overall, I think I'm convinced to bump it to the top of my "to play" list.
FWIW I didn't order it for the Halo 3 beta, I really don't care all that much for the Halo games. I actually have 8 or so games that I've bought but haven't got around to playing yet.
Well it's not a Sequel but Blue Dragon is supposed to be an "extension" (the creators words not mine) of the Chrono Trigger world. It also helps that it's being created by the same guy. I would suspect he wanted to do a Sequel but Square owns the rights and he's with Mistwalker now.
Hmm... well I know someone who went from a career in IT to a forklift operator at a machine shop... he loves every minute of it (sort of a Peter Gibbons example right there).
I work in IT despite the fact that I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Personally I'd love to work in Journalism, conducting interviews, writing reviews and and informational articles. Unfortunately this isn't exactly a field that earns much in comparison to my current career. I've compromised by staying where I am and writing articles for my own benefit once a week (see the sig) to at least get better at that sort of thing and build up a portfolio.
As for opening a shop... I could do that too, I wouldn't mind a video game store or a home theater boutique. I wouldn't be adverse to opening a chain store like an EB or Gamestop... but then we get back to your point of not having any business experience, nevermind startup capital. I wouldn't mind opening my own arcade either (I do actually have experience in that field from running the maintenance end of a summer boardwalk arcade for 3 years) but that gets back to your point about the market drying up about 10 years ago. Again that requires some startup capital, though I suppose these are dreams I could fulfill if I had a million dollars.
... or maybe I'd just do two chicks at the same time.
You know what's funny. Perfect Dark Zero does exactly that... it's just too bad the gameplay in that game is so kludgey that it's not worth playing, even with all of the ridiculously cool and unique features that game has to offer.
If you think about it in terms of copyright/piracy issues how much content created in the US is cracked or distributed overseas? How popular is American content in other countries? Now, how much foreign content is cracked or distributed in the US? How popular is foreign content in America?
Also consider that **AA like associations outside of the USA aren't as lawsuit happy. As bringing someone to court seems to be the de-facto method of solving any and all problems in the states.
I guess the lesson that we can learn from the success of the iTunes store is that people will pay extra for convenience, even if it means that they'll get a little less.
Nothing new, compare the per-can cost of a drink from a vending machine versus getting the same can in a 24 pack from the grocery store.
It can't be that strict of a licensing requirement because there are a few games that require the hard drive... FFXI and LMA Manager come to mind, I'm sure there are others.
Seeing as most/.ers seem to also be Libertarian voters, and it's a rare occasion that any Libertarian politician is elected for anything in the US, I would say that even if most of/. is from the USA, very few of them actually hold the same political mindset as your average American voter.
to be clear MS is already making a profit on each Xbox 360 console sold, and has been since last November (I'd be willing to bet they're making a killing with the Elite version)... 2008 simply marks the point where the Xbox division as a whole finally gets out of the red, most of that is making up with losses from the Xbox 1 which IIRC never made a profit on a per console basis.
He didn't STEAL anything, he created his own page separate from the one he offered to buy. It's equivalent to asking for the price of a house saying it's way too much and then going off and building your own.
$50K is quite a large sum for a myspace page regardless of the work that has gone into it. my guess is it was SO far out of whack with what they were expecting to pay that they didn't even bother trying to negotiate and instead determined that it would be more economical to simply make their own.
Or alternatively if your publication is actually worth more than a pile of dirt you might actually buy the next product from the "offended" vendor and still review it... and then expose them for the asswipe they are.
The problem being that they don't get an advance copy, meaning that they can't release the review before the game (for all those people wondering if they should pick it up on release day. By the time you buy it, play it, and write the review no one really cares about that game anymore because they've already bought it based on and article written by a shill.
Better yet... Pirate the game pre-release (I'm sure some other publication leaked their beta copy)... then you can REALLY stick it to em!
RSS feeds can and often do include the entire article in the feed... it's just a matter of how the content provider has set it up. Some of my sites actually offer several flavors of the same RSS feed so that readers can choose the amount of content they see.
For instance they could get summaries only, or whole articles, or whole articles+user comments, and I even offer topical filters so if they want they can just get the particular type of content they're interested in.
if the feed you read is summaries only you should contact them and tell them you'd appreciate a full featured version. (though many sites that make their $$ on advertising don't do that because then no one sees the ads)
There is a distinct difference between redistributing and doing whatever you want with a product privately in your own home.
If I buy a car I am beyond my purchase if I duplicate that car and sell or redistribute my duplications. I should be well within my rights to hack it up into little pieces or turn the motor into a generator, or even if I want to duplicate the car so I can drive two around in my own yard.
The difference is the price of reproduction while it might cost a few thousand to duplicate a car it only cost a few cents to reproduce a disc.... How would things be different if you could duplicate a car for a few cents? How are the creative values of automotive design and engineering any different then that of a song or movie?
I also don't recall ever signing any contracts agreeing to how I would use and what I would do with a product within the privacy of my own home.
I remember that too... I had no idea who Green Jelly was but I was happy to see real music for a change.
I seem to remember the cartridge being red too.
Re:If you think that is evil
on
Google's Evil NDA
·
· Score: 5, Funny
on the upside you could make your own crappy search engine called "Giggle", sign an NDA that you made yourself and tell prospective employers you're not at liberty to talk about it but it started with a "G"
Let them jump to the conclusions that you used to work for Google.
Why, when the only evolutionary advantage human beings have is large and complex brains, do people insist on having children and raising them as idiots?
Most people teach what they know, and raise their children in their own image...
yup, I used to work in an arcade. the "points" distributed by the redemption machines were worth approximately.5 cents (that's half a cent for those of you who work at Verizon). The machines were programmed to dispense an average of 2.5 cents for every quarter deposited and then the "prices" in the point currency were marked up 100% such that if you paid $10 (2000 points) the arcade was making another $5 on your "purchase".
This is why redemption machines are so prominent in what's left of the arcades. Some kid who can play Tekken for 5 hours on two quarters because he spends his off-time practicing at home doesn't make arcade operators much money. I suspect applying the redemption methodology to online gaming could be a big money winner for companies if they implement it right.
Well, I respect Tycho from Penny Arcade, but he is referring to a launch day console that he purchased over a year ago; not one of the newly redesigned "elite" units being reported on in TFA.
I own a launch unit Xbox 360 as well, I've never had any problems, but I also maintain the largest (if not the only) FAQ on the subject of Red Rings of Death (at least it's the largest one I know of).
There is no denying that a large number of Xbox 360 consoles have gone belly up, I see that crap first hand on a daily basis. Even still MS claims the failure rate is between 3 and 5 percent. Considering they've shipped 10 million consoles... 3 to 5 percent is still 300,000 to half a million units. When you consider a chunk of consumers that size and the speed in which bad news travels over the tubes... whether it's FUD or not, you get a reputation for that sort of thing.
I have no doubt that some of the new elite units are throwing errors out of the box, despite the fact that it was "redesigned" the problematic components haven't been fixed or even addressed in the elite units and a potential fix wont go into production until sometime next month.
FWIW: If I had to make an educated guess I'd say 90% of the broken Xbox 360s can be traced back to a single design error and that is a GPU that runs too hot due to a shoddy cooling system resulting in either weak or bridged solder connections in it's Ball Grid Array. Neither the GPU, it's cooling system, or it's attachment to the motherboard have been modified since the console's launch, why would any new systems be any different from the older ones.
I'm not saying that such scenarios don't exist at all, but they're much harder to come by. Also I'd argue that Aris' death wasn't a game... it was a movie. I don't recall ever "playing" that part of the game... but I do remember watching that video clip.
RPGs like the Final Fantasies are somewhat of an exception, in some respects the game plays like a movie. The key is whether you pull in the media and use it like an extension of yourself, in which case you're in control of the actions and motivations or if the media pulls you in and effectively pushes around your emotions and thoughts. Something like a Final Fantasy will move back and forth between the two. When you're running around town or battling a baddy you're essentially choosing who your character interacts with and how they interact; the game is an extension of you. Then it will flip over to a cut scene and you're no longer playing a game, you're watching a movie.
In essence some games can exists in both spaces, but unlike a real movie or tv show it's not constant. If you are engrossed it's only for brief fleeting moments, and most games don't even have those moments. How much of that do you get in a racing game? a sports game? a puzzle game? a fighting game? a platformer? an RTS? an FPS? etc.
Obviously the words of someone who has never been ganked and camped by horde for 45 minutes.
There is a difference between engrossed and obsessed.
I believe the way they're using engrossed implies that people have more empathy for TV and movie characters then they do for video game characters. Probably because in a video game the gamer is the one making the decisions of the leading character, meaning in most games there is no major character in the game left for the gamer to empathize with.
I've you haven't used Wordpress since the release of 2.0 Then you're remembering a completely different application. From what I've seen the only similarities between 1.x and 2.x are a vague familiarity in admin controls. Since 2.0 the themes are their own separate entities as are plugins.
I started using WP around v1.1 it was ok... and once it was up and running and I spent hours integrating the style into the rest of my page (without breaking anything) I really wasn't up to trying to move to a different system... By the time I got around to upgrading 2.0 had been released. I was highly considering moving to a different platform (I was considering Movable Type) but upgrading WP was an easy task so I figured it wouldn't hurt to just try it... I absolutely loved 2.0 as it essentially fixed every major problem I had with the system.
I use it on a few different sites now and it really is a much much better system now then what it used to be. Particularly because it's got a fairly flexible API for plugins, easily one of the best I've used with a web application and the style system is just as flexible too. I've even written a few plugins for it without any problems. 1.x was a chore to work with and fairly limited but since 2.x I feel like I can pretty much do whatever I want with it without having to modifying the core application.
I seemed to understand where he was coming from, I'm in a similar situation. From the time I get out of work on Friday until Sunday night I have a pretty active social life. I'm rarely at home and I'm usually spending time out with my friends.
During the week however my schedule conflicts with most of my friends. I don't watch TV and that leaves me with 4-6 hours a night, Monday through Thursday to play games. I'll often play online with a few friends but in general I'm looking for games that I can play 4 to 6 hours at a time, or has solid online features to keep me connected with my friends. As of right now the Wii doesn't really offer that (2 games in 5 months does not constitute a compelling offering). I bought a Wii when it came out. I played through Zelda, and that was fun but then that was it... nothing else on the console has held my attention for more then 20 minutes. Games like Wii sports might be fun if I could play them online but it's not something I can play alone for 4 to 6 hours without getting bored out of my mind. It's a great when I have friends over but that's not most week nights. It might be fun to play online but it doesn't have any online features.
My Xbox 360 sees most of my gaming action, I can play DDR online with friends until I'm exhausted. A 16 round match of Gears of War with friends can easily last a couple of hours. And if none of my friends are online that night I have a stack of single player games that I've purchased and haven't even had a chance to unwrap the plastic on. It's not that I don't like the Wii, I'd love to play games with the Wii remote but until they give me more then Zelda and Paper Mario or some form of entertainment that can connect me with friends online it's got nothing that really interests me.
The Virtual Console might be fun but I'm one of those people who still have their old classic consoles kicking around for when I feel like replaying old favorites, so while a re-release of Super Mario Bros X might be fun for most Wii owners, I already replayed it last week, and I didn't even have to buy it again.
You'll probably hate me for this comparison but to me the Wii and the PS3 have one big thing in common, they have a lot of potential that could deliver some really interesting and compelling gaming experiences down the road, but right now there isn't all that much substance for those of us who game with regularity.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I should unwrap the plastic on my copy of this game.... the one I bought on release day and then set on a shelf while I played other things. I keep hearing good things but it's one of a handful of games that I've purchased and haven't got around to opening let alone play. Just too many games to play and not enough time to play them
With new content available and your claim of a relatively short game overall, I think I'm convinced to bump it to the top of my "to play" list.
FWIW I didn't order it for the Halo 3 beta, I really don't care all that much for the Halo games. I actually have 8 or so games that I've bought but haven't got around to playing yet.
Well it's not a Sequel but Blue Dragon is supposed to be an "extension" (the creators words not mine) of the Chrono Trigger world. It also helps that it's being created by the same guy. I would suspect he wanted to do a Sequel but Square owns the rights and he's with Mistwalker now.
Hmm... well I know someone who went from a career in IT to a forklift operator at a machine shop... he loves every minute of it (sort of a Peter Gibbons example right there).
... or maybe I'd just do two chicks at the same time.
I work in IT despite the fact that I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Personally I'd love to work in Journalism, conducting interviews, writing reviews and and informational articles. Unfortunately this isn't exactly a field that earns much in comparison to my current career. I've compromised by staying where I am and writing articles for my own benefit once a week (see the sig) to at least get better at that sort of thing and build up a portfolio.
As for opening a shop... I could do that too, I wouldn't mind a video game store or a home theater boutique. I wouldn't be adverse to opening a chain store like an EB or Gamestop... but then we get back to your point of not having any business experience, nevermind startup capital. I wouldn't mind opening my own arcade either (I do actually have experience in that field from running the maintenance end of a summer boardwalk arcade for 3 years) but that gets back to your point about the market drying up about 10 years ago. Again that requires some startup capital, though I suppose these are dreams I could fulfill if I had a million dollars.
You know what's funny. Perfect Dark Zero does exactly that... it's just too bad the gameplay in that game is so kludgey that it's not worth playing, even with all of the ridiculously cool and unique features that game has to offer.
If you think about it in terms of copyright/piracy issues how much content created in the US is cracked or distributed overseas? How popular is American content in other countries? Now, how much foreign content is cracked or distributed in the US? How popular is foreign content in America?
Also consider that **AA like associations outside of the USA aren't as lawsuit happy. As bringing someone to court seems to be the de-facto method of solving any and all problems in the states.
It can't be that strict of a licensing requirement because there are a few games that require the hard drive... FFXI and LMA Manager come to mind, I'm sure there are others.
When Your Powers Combine....
... I got nothing...
Seeing as most /.ers seem to also be Libertarian voters, and it's a rare occasion that any Libertarian politician is elected for anything in the US, I would say that even if most of /. is from the USA, very few of them actually hold the same political mindset as your average American voter.
to be clear MS is already making a profit on each Xbox 360 console sold, and has been since last November (I'd be willing to bet they're making a killing with the Elite version)... 2008 simply marks the point where the Xbox division as a whole finally gets out of the red, most of that is making up with losses from the Xbox 1 which IIRC never made a profit on a per console basis.
He didn't STEAL anything, he created his own page separate from the one he offered to buy. It's equivalent to asking for the price of a house saying it's way too much and then going off and building your own.
$50K is quite a large sum for a myspace page regardless of the work that has gone into it. my guess is it was SO far out of whack with what they were expecting to pay that they didn't even bother trying to negotiate and instead determined that it would be more economical to simply make their own.
Better yet... Pirate the game pre-release (I'm sure some other publication leaked their beta copy)... then you can REALLY stick it to em!
RSS feeds can and often do include the entire article in the feed... it's just a matter of how the content provider has set it up. Some of my sites actually offer several flavors of the same RSS feed so that readers can choose the amount of content they see.
For instance they could get summaries only, or whole articles, or whole articles+user comments, and I even offer topical filters so if they want they can just get the particular type of content they're interested in.
if the feed you read is summaries only you should contact them and tell them you'd appreciate a full featured version. (though many sites that make their $$ on advertising don't do that because then no one sees the ads)
There is a distinct difference between redistributing and doing whatever you want with a product privately in your own home.
If I buy a car I am beyond my purchase if I duplicate that car and sell or redistribute my duplications. I should be well within my rights to hack it up into little pieces or turn the motor into a generator, or even if I want to duplicate the car so I can drive two around in my own yard.
The difference is the price of reproduction while it might cost a few thousand to duplicate a car it only cost a few cents to reproduce a disc.... How would things be different if you could duplicate a car for a few cents? How are the creative values of automotive design and engineering any different then that of a song or movie?
I also don't recall ever signing any contracts agreeing to how I would use and what I would do with a product within the privacy of my own home.
I remember that too... I had no idea who Green Jelly was but I was happy to see real music for a change.
I seem to remember the cartridge being red too.
on the upside you could make your own crappy search engine called "Giggle", sign an NDA that you made yourself and tell prospective employers you're not at liberty to talk about it but it started with a "G"
Let them jump to the conclusions that you used to work for Google.
yup, I used to work in an arcade. the "points" distributed by the redemption machines were worth approximately .5 cents (that's half a cent for those of you who work at Verizon). The machines were programmed to dispense an average of 2.5 cents for every quarter deposited and then the "prices" in the point currency were marked up 100% such that if you paid $10 (2000 points) the arcade was making another $5 on your "purchase".
This is why redemption machines are so prominent in what's left of the arcades. Some kid who can play Tekken for 5 hours on two quarters because he spends his off-time practicing at home doesn't make arcade operators much money. I suspect applying the redemption methodology to online gaming could be a big money winner for companies if they implement it right.
Well, I respect Tycho from Penny Arcade, but he is referring to a launch day console that he purchased over a year ago; not one of the newly redesigned "elite" units being reported on in TFA.
I own a launch unit Xbox 360 as well, I've never had any problems, but I also maintain the largest (if not the only) FAQ on the subject of Red Rings of Death (at least it's the largest one I know of).
There is no denying that a large number of Xbox 360 consoles have gone belly up, I see that crap first hand on a daily basis. Even still MS claims the failure rate is between 3 and 5 percent. Considering they've shipped 10 million consoles... 3 to 5 percent is still 300,000 to half a million units. When you consider a chunk of consumers that size and the speed in which bad news travels over the tubes... whether it's FUD or not, you get a reputation for that sort of thing.
I have no doubt that some of the new elite units are throwing errors out of the box, despite the fact that it was "redesigned" the problematic components haven't been fixed or even addressed in the elite units and a potential fix wont go into production until sometime next month.
FWIW: If I had to make an educated guess I'd say 90% of the broken Xbox 360s can be traced back to a single design error and that is a GPU that runs too hot due to a shoddy cooling system resulting in either weak or bridged solder connections in it's Ball Grid Array. Neither the GPU, it's cooling system, or it's attachment to the motherboard have been modified since the console's launch, why would any new systems be any different from the older ones.
well it did actually launch didn't it...
I suppose it depends on your definition of success.
I'm not saying that such scenarios don't exist at all, but they're much harder to come by. Also I'd argue that Aris' death wasn't a game... it was a movie. I don't recall ever "playing" that part of the game... but I do remember watching that video clip.
RPGs like the Final Fantasies are somewhat of an exception, in some respects the game plays like a movie. The key is whether you pull in the media and use it like an extension of yourself, in which case you're in control of the actions and motivations or if the media pulls you in and effectively pushes around your emotions and thoughts. Something like a Final Fantasy will move back and forth between the two. When you're running around town or battling a baddy you're essentially choosing who your character interacts with and how they interact; the game is an extension of you. Then it will flip over to a cut scene and you're no longer playing a game, you're watching a movie.
In essence some games can exists in both spaces, but unlike a real movie or tv show it's not constant. If you are engrossed it's only for brief fleeting moments, and most games don't even have those moments. How much of that do you get in a racing game? a sports game? a puzzle game? a fighting game? a platformer? an RTS? an FPS? etc.
I believe the way they're using engrossed implies that people have more empathy for TV and movie characters then they do for video game characters. Probably because in a video game the gamer is the one making the decisions of the leading character, meaning in most games there is no major character in the game left for the gamer to empathize with.
I've you haven't used Wordpress since the release of 2.0 Then you're remembering a completely different application. From what I've seen the only similarities between 1.x and 2.x are a vague familiarity in admin controls. Since 2.0 the themes are their own separate entities as are plugins.
I started using WP around v1.1 it was ok... and once it was up and running and I spent hours integrating the style into the rest of my page (without breaking anything) I really wasn't up to trying to move to a different system... By the time I got around to upgrading 2.0 had been released. I was highly considering moving to a different platform (I was considering Movable Type) but upgrading WP was an easy task so I figured it wouldn't hurt to just try it... I absolutely loved 2.0 as it essentially fixed every major problem I had with the system.
I use it on a few different sites now and it really is a much much better system now then what it used to be. Particularly because it's got a fairly flexible API for plugins, easily one of the best I've used with a web application and the style system is just as flexible too. I've even written a few plugins for it without any problems. 1.x was a chore to work with and fairly limited but since 2.x I feel like I can pretty much do whatever I want with it without having to modifying the core application.
I seemed to understand where he was coming from, I'm in a similar situation. From the time I get out of work on Friday until Sunday night I have a pretty active social life. I'm rarely at home and I'm usually spending time out with my friends.
During the week however my schedule conflicts with most of my friends. I don't watch TV and that leaves me with 4-6 hours a night, Monday through Thursday to play games. I'll often play online with a few friends but in general I'm looking for games that I can play 4 to 6 hours at a time, or has solid online features to keep me connected with my friends. As of right now the Wii doesn't really offer that (2 games in 5 months does not constitute a compelling offering). I bought a Wii when it came out. I played through Zelda, and that was fun but then that was it... nothing else on the console has held my attention for more then 20 minutes. Games like Wii sports might be fun if I could play them online but it's not something I can play alone for 4 to 6 hours without getting bored out of my mind. It's a great when I have friends over but that's not most week nights. It might be fun to play online but it doesn't have any online features.
My Xbox 360 sees most of my gaming action, I can play DDR online with friends until I'm exhausted. A 16 round match of Gears of War with friends can easily last a couple of hours. And if none of my friends are online that night I have a stack of single player games that I've purchased and haven't even had a chance to unwrap the plastic on. It's not that I don't like the Wii, I'd love to play games with the Wii remote but until they give me more then Zelda and Paper Mario or some form of entertainment that can connect me with friends online it's got nothing that really interests me.
The Virtual Console might be fun but I'm one of those people who still have their old classic consoles kicking around for when I feel like replaying old favorites, so while a re-release of Super Mario Bros X might be fun for most Wii owners, I already replayed it last week, and I didn't even have to buy it again.
You'll probably hate me for this comparison but to me the Wii and the PS3 have one big thing in common, they have a lot of potential that could deliver some really interesting and compelling gaming experiences down the road, but right now there isn't all that much substance for those of us who game with regularity.