I got ripped off last year for $200 on ebay. I sent the money order registered, they claimed never have to received it. Yet the money order came back with their signature on it, cashed at an exclusive credit union. The police were supposedly looking into it. There was a backlog, but there were similar complaints found from at least 2 other individuals (they posted negative feedback right before Ebay suspended their account, so I contacted them and these people did the same thing to them). But all totalled it was only like $350 (at least from our 3 cases). I recommended they try and get a transaction list from around that time to try and contact buyers to see if anyone else got ripped off. I haven't heard back from the cop since November, maybe I'll e-mail him again and see if he got around to it.
Unfortunately not one of us were from the same state. Me from Canada, they were from the southern states (this person was in Ohio).
I don't have any embarrassing photos of them, but since I have their address I suppose I could hop a bus and go take some, maybe pick up my money while I'm there.
I did get a refund from Ebay, but it didn't include shipping, minues their "fee" for processing.
So I was still out quite a chunk on the other side.
I was hoping for this as well. Other than DDR, I'm not familiar with any other games for the Console/PC that encourage movement like that. I don't think Yourself Fitness really counts.
In the arcade I've noticed a few, like that one where you peddle some kind of flying machine, but thats hard to bring into the home (unless you could find a way to hook a new fangled exercise bike up to USB or something, speaking of things I need to patent...)
Actually it makes a huge difference whether its two people subscribing to two mmorgps or one person subscribing to two. In the first scenario you're looking at two distinct incomes, in the second you're looking at a single income.
If for example the average MMORPG player was found to subscribe to 2 MMORPGs, you have a much different marketing job if you're trying to pull 1 person away from 1 MMORPG to subscribe to yours or whether your just have to appeal to those two individuals and get them to pick up a second MMORPG.
and relative popularity is useful for what...? Trivia? And yes it wasn't hard to realize WoW was over 50% of all subscriptions given its immense popularity.
Do you? I don't know if this is a fair look at the market place though. It inflates the actual number of users. If WoW has over 50% of the "marketshare" theoretically that amount of people COULD be the market place if everyone who played every other MMORPG also played WoW.
I don't think this chart really tells us anything other than WoW is popular, other games are less popular, which unless you live under a rock, you already know.
How does this account for people who play more than one game. This isn't exactly a good representation of the market as a whole because you don't know what kind of overlap exists.
Well, this thread has "Locked" written all over it, but I'll throw in my mostly uninformed two cents.
My guess is that Atari will stay alive at least long enough to publish NWN2, though that's a little iffy. They'll potentially be delisted from Nasdaq August 30th if they don't get over $1 per share for ten days. They owe a lot of money to creditors. Still, they're generating ready cash by selling off licenses left and right. They'll probably make it to the September NWN2 release date.
The D&D license reverts to Infogrames should Atari go under. They can then sell it to another group. Infogrames is similarly in financial trouble, in which case it might revert to Hasbro, who can then sell it to someone else.
All of those things take time, however, so there might be a prolonged period of time where license ownership is uncertain. The biggest risk I see is that Obsidian doesn't get paid to work on patches and may not be able to get the necessary approvals to introduce new content.
So, I think everyone is holding their breath, seeing how NWN2 does at retail, and hoping for the best.
Are we talking about just console games, or are PC games included? Console games are more understandable because there is a higher initial investment. As well you only have a single model of distribution available to you. Which is also expensive.
On the other hands, PC games have a much lower initial investment (free tools if you really want) and by selling things electronically via a shareware method, you can keep distribution costs low.
Spiderweb Software still sells shareware games. You can get the demo for Avernum 4 released not to long ago on their website. Personally I'm more of a fan of the retro look of the Exile games (same game with slight changes, Avernum is just a completely updated engine). From what he's said he does okay on them, not hits, but they should be. The games are huge and engrossing. I used to play the demos endlessly when I was a teen in the mid-nineties.
I think the big obstacle is marketing. Indie movies seem to be able to get more exposure if they're even just reasonable. Critics, film festivals, independent theatres, etc.
A good indie game gets word of mouth, people pick it up, then some company buys them. PC Gamer once devoted a whole paragraph to spiderwebsoftware. Huge. Compared to the pages other inferior games get because they come from an established publisher.
The guy has been making quality CRPGs for over a decade, and thats the best he gets. Gamespot hasn't even gone to the trouble of having someone review the games, or do anything else of value with their entries.
You can't compare indie movies and games becuase they're not of the same world. You can't even compare indie PC games and indie Console games. Two completely different environments. I think on the PC (windows or linux, or even a mac I guess) indie games completely have the possibility of becoming hits.
A single example doesn't end the discussion. Its only a working point to expand it. What made Tux Racer a hit? Can it be replicated? Is it anything an indie game designer can learn from?
Does Atari, the current incarnation, have any history of releasing source code? They're more comfortable with letting things rot and letting the fans pick up the broken pieces. See Temple of Elemental Evil for example. This engine could have spawned a new Gold Box series of games, easily selling a half dozen hit titles had they bothered to look after it properly. Instead the fans not only fixed the engine, they're going about recreating B2: The Keep on the Borderlands . They've got a whole team there redoing everything. Professional looking maps, dialogue, etc. To me that speaks volumes about the poor decisions Atari makes.
On the other hand, neverwinter nights is potentially at the end of its life cycle here. With number 2 right around the corner, they do want to shift focus to that. However, I honestly believe its not necessary. Its Neverwinter Nights 2. If you are a fan of the series, or D&D at all, you would have to live under a rock to not know that its coming out. I believe everyone with a system that can handle it and that plays NWN will purchase it, to a certain extent, there always seems to be drop off as a series continues. The only concern I see at this point is, what if they mess up the game?
From what I've read there are going to be a variety of changes and the way things are handled, like party death for example, that some people aren't happy about. If they drop support for NWN and botch NWN2, not that Atari has ever been at the helm of a botched game, you could see it doing serious damage to the franchise.
Personally I would like to have seen support continued for about 6 months after the relase of NWN2. This gives the community time to adjust and decide if it likes the new incarnation. If it doesn't and there is a big holder over from the original NWN, it might be worth focusing on some premium modules for the original. Like how Sony did with their monthly EP for Everquest.
Obviously you missed the point of my message, care to pull your head out of your ass?
Thats one person claiming success. There are 300,000,000 million people in the US.
The point of my message was that just because he had a good experience in the public system doesn't mean others didn't or that its indicative of the whole. Everytime you turn around there seems to be more evidence pointing towards declining scores and pillaging of public school funds so there isn't much evidence to support that what he experienced was "normal" or "Average".
Nobody on our team intentionally creates new bugs. Yet we have done accidentally. Does anyone else find it appropriate that he made this error in this pair of sentences. Had he not have added the second sentence he wouldn't have introduced the error. He should have written:
"Yet we have done so accidentally."
or possibly:
"Yet we have accidentally done just that".
I'm sure you can all come up with your ways to fix that bug.
I've often wondered about this, and if children who come from harder lives end up doing better on average than those that don't because they had to struggle so much when they were young. When they become adults struggle isn't new to them and they're able to handle it easy and get ahead. I often here stories about succesful people who had very rough childhoods or had to overcome some major adversity early in their life.
It could just be they only show those stories because they're inpsiration.
1 out of 300,000,000 million awesome. There's nothing to suggest that your case is the rule and at all indicative of how the average student will perform when graduating from the American public school system. In fact we often see the opposite.
I think even more influential is the Barenaked Ladies initiative they've had on this entire issue. I attended a concert in December and purchased a coupon I could redeem at the website for a live recording of that concert. I finally got around to downloading it last week. No DRM, various formats I could download in (either tracked or two huge mp3s perfect for burning) as well as PDFs of CD covers and inserts that could be printed.
I could also purchase any of the other shows they've done, as well as some other things.
and you've got one great band that hasn't let me down in 15 years.
Its nice that a retailer is pushing no DRM, but I think its more important for the artists to get together like they have here. This should be a more important message because its what the artists really want, the retailers are just middle men and their opinion shouldn't hold that much weight with the lawmakers and standards.
While it might be harder for the US to walk in and take over greenland, I don't think they'd much care about a handful of peopleon a tiny island unless they were up to something seriously bad. A Server farm I don't think would set them off. On the other hand thousands of people in greenland is a much nicer target, it draws more attention.
I'm not saying that couldn't work, I just think that I'd feel safer in the middle of the ocean with a handful of people than sitting somewhere that might draw US attention. In Canada right now, things aren't too bad, our government currently doesn't seem too interested in signing onto US legislation so I think we're safe for a bit. It at least gives me planning time. I'm sure out of all those uninhabited islands there has to be at least one that would be suitable. maybe something that juts out but still has some soil on it. It might take some planning, but I'm not above that.
Maybe greenland can launch a couple satellites I can tap into from there.
Slashdot Mirror
So that means nothing?
1)it was 50 years ago
2)They didn't bother to try and prove it was true
If you'd like to have a point, why don't you find a case where someone lost and managed to prove the event was true.
I got ripped off last year for $200 on ebay. I sent the money order registered, they claimed never have to received it. Yet the money order came back with their signature on it, cashed at an exclusive credit union. The police were supposedly looking into it. There was a backlog, but there were similar complaints found from at least 2 other individuals (they posted negative feedback right before Ebay suspended their account, so I contacted them and these people did the same thing to them).
But all totalled it was only like $350 (at least from our 3 cases). I recommended they try and get a transaction list from around that time to try and contact buyers to see if anyone else got ripped off. I haven't heard back from the cop since November, maybe I'll e-mail him again and see if he got around to it.
Unfortunately not one of us were from the same state. Me from Canada, they were from the southern states (this person was in Ohio).
I don't have any embarrassing photos of them, but since I have their address I suppose I could hop a bus and go take some, maybe pick up my money while I'm there.
I did get a refund from Ebay, but it didn't include shipping, minues their "fee" for processing.
So I was still out quite a chunk on the other side.
If its 100% true, its not libel is it?
Libel only exists when you tell a lie about someone and it damages their reputation.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=libel
Armed and Dangerous was great.
The game itself wasn't so funny, but the cut scenes were hilarious.
I was hoping for this as well. Other than DDR, I'm not familiar with any other games for the Console/PC that encourage movement like that. I don't think Yourself Fitness really counts.
In the arcade I've noticed a few, like that one where you peddle some kind of flying machine, but thats hard to bring into the home (unless you could find a way to hook a new fangled exercise bike up to USB or something, speaking of things I need to patent...)
First visit to the page I clicked "more" on link swarm and it crashed mozilla. Second visit there was some extreme hitching.
Thats not terribly encouraging.
Actually it makes a huge difference whether its two people subscribing to two mmorgps or one person subscribing to two. In the first scenario you're looking at two distinct incomes, in the second you're looking at a single income.
If for example the average MMORPG player was found to subscribe to 2 MMORPGs, you have a much different marketing job if you're trying to pull 1 person away from 1 MMORPG to subscribe to yours or whether your just have to appeal to those two individuals and get them to pick up a second MMORPG.
and relative popularity is useful for what...? Trivia? And yes it wasn't hard to realize WoW was over 50% of all subscriptions given its immense popularity.
Do you? I don't know if this is a fair look at the market place though. It inflates the actual number of users. If WoW has over 50% of the "marketshare" theoretically that amount of people COULD be the market place if everyone who played every other MMORPG also played WoW.
I don't think this chart really tells us anything other than WoW is popular, other games are less popular, which unless you live under a rock, you already know.
How does this account for people who play more than one game. This isn't exactly a good representation of the market as a whole because you don't know what kind of overlap exists.
over 1 million downloads..thats prety popular.
With any luck Atari will completely collapse, and someone with half a brain will get the license:m l?topic=482903&forum=95
http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.ht
(if you can view it))
pertinent text:
Well, this thread has "Locked" written all over it, but I'll throw in my mostly uninformed two cents.
My guess is that Atari will stay alive at least long enough to publish NWN2, though that's a little iffy. They'll potentially be delisted from Nasdaq August 30th if they don't get over $1 per share for ten days. They owe a lot of money to creditors. Still, they're generating ready cash by selling off licenses left and right. They'll probably make it to the September NWN2 release date.
The D&D license reverts to Infogrames should Atari go under. They can then sell it to another group. Infogrames is similarly in financial trouble, in which case it might revert to Hasbro, who can then sell it to someone else.
All of those things take time, however, so there might be a prolonged period of time where license ownership is uncertain. The biggest risk I see is that Obsidian doesn't get paid to work on patches and may not be able to get the necessary approvals to introduce new content.
So, I think everyone is holding their breath, seeing how NWN2 does at retail, and hoping for the best.
uhm?
every link works fine for me... I'm not sure what site you're at, but I have no problem getting to Avernum 4 or Geneforge 3 from the main page.
There we go. Every indie game from now on must prominently feature penguins.
Are we talking about just console games, or are PC games included?
Console games are more understandable because there is a higher initial investment. As well you only have a single model of distribution available to you. Which is also expensive.
On the other hands, PC games have a much lower initial investment (free tools if you really want) and by selling things electronically via a shareware method, you can keep distribution costs low.
Spiderweb Software still sells shareware games. You can get the demo for Avernum 4 released not to long ago on their website. Personally I'm more of a fan of the retro look of the Exile games (same game with slight changes, Avernum is just a completely updated engine). From what he's said he does okay on them, not hits, but they should be. The games are huge and engrossing. I used to play the demos endlessly when I was a teen in the mid-nineties.
I think the big obstacle is marketing. Indie movies seem to be able to get more exposure if they're even just reasonable. Critics, film festivals, independent theatres, etc.
A good indie game gets word of mouth, people pick it up, then some company buys them.
PC Gamer once devoted a whole paragraph to spiderwebsoftware. Huge. Compared to the pages other inferior games get because they come from an established publisher.
The guy has been making quality CRPGs for over a decade, and thats the best he gets. Gamespot hasn't even gone to the trouble of having someone review the games, or do anything else of value with their entries.
You can't compare indie movies and games becuase they're not of the same world. You can't even compare indie PC games and indie Console games. Two completely different environments. I think on the PC (windows or linux, or even a mac I guess) indie games completely have the possibility of becoming hits.
A single example doesn't end the discussion. Its only a working point to expand it. What made Tux Racer a hit? Can it be replicated? Is it anything an indie game designer can learn from?
Does Atari, the current incarnation, have any history of releasing source code?
They're more comfortable with letting things rot and letting the fans pick up the broken pieces. See Temple of Elemental Evil for example. This engine could have spawned a new Gold Box series of games, easily selling a half dozen hit titles had they bothered to look after it properly. Instead the fans not only fixed the engine, they're going about recreating B2: The Keep on the Borderlands . They've got a whole team there redoing everything. Professional looking maps, dialogue, etc. To me that speaks volumes about the poor decisions Atari makes.
On the other hand, neverwinter nights is potentially at the end of its life cycle here. With number 2 right around the corner, they do want to shift focus to that. However, I honestly believe its not necessary. Its Neverwinter Nights 2. If you are a fan of the series, or D&D at all, you would have to live under a rock to not know that its coming out. I believe everyone with a system that can handle it and that plays NWN will purchase it, to a certain extent, there always seems to be drop off as a series continues. The only concern I see at this point is, what if they mess up the game?
From what I've read there are going to be a variety of changes and the way things are handled, like party death for example, that some people aren't happy about. If they drop support for NWN and botch NWN2, not that Atari has ever been at the helm of a botched game, you could see it doing serious damage to the franchise.
Personally I would like to have seen support continued for about 6 months after the relase of NWN2. This gives the community time to adjust and decide if it likes the new incarnation. If it doesn't and there is a big holder over from the original NWN, it might be worth focusing on some premium modules for the original. Like how Sony did with their monthly EP for Everquest.
This summary reads like a bad fox reality show.
So can we donate to help the legal battle?
Obviously you missed the point of my message, care to pull your head out of your ass? Thats one person claiming success. There are 300,000,000 million people in the US. The point of my message was that just because he had a good experience in the public system doesn't mean others didn't or that its indicative of the whole. Everytime you turn around there seems to be more evidence pointing towards declining scores and pillaging of public school funds so there isn't much evidence to support that what he experienced was "normal" or "Average".
Nobody on our team intentionally creates new bugs. Yet we have done accidentally. Does anyone else find it appropriate that he made this error in this pair of sentences. Had he not have added the second sentence he wouldn't have introduced the error. He should have written:
"Yet we have done so accidentally."
or possibly:
"Yet we have accidentally done just that".
I'm sure you can all come up with your ways to fix that bug.
I've often wondered about this, and if children who come from harder lives end up doing better on average than those that don't because they had to struggle so much when they were young. When they become adults struggle isn't new to them and they're able to handle it easy and get ahead. I often here stories about succesful people who had very rough childhoods or had to overcome some major adversity early in their life.
It could just be they only show those stories because they're inpsiration.
1 out of 300,000,000 million awesome.
There's nothing to suggest that your case is the rule and at all indicative of how the average student will perform when graduating from the American public school system. In fact we often see the opposite.
Its too early for Thanksgiving... but then I suppose we do have some information lag, maybe its still getting over Easter ham?
I think even more influential is the Barenaked Ladies initiative they've had on this entire issue.
I attended a concert in December and purchased a coupon I could redeem at the website for a live recording of that concert. I finally got around to downloading it last week. No DRM, various formats I could download in (either tracked or two huge mp3s perfect for burning)
as well as PDFs of CD covers and inserts that could be printed.
I could also purchase any of the other shows they've done, as well as some other things.
Couple that with the fact that they seem to be a major force behind: http://www.musiccreators.ca/
and you've got one great band that hasn't let me down in 15 years.
Its nice that a retailer is pushing no DRM, but I think its more important for the artists to get together like they have here. This should be a more important message because its what the artists really want, the retailers are just middle men and their opinion shouldn't hold that much weight with the lawmakers and standards.
While it might be harder for the US to walk in and take over greenland, I don't think they'd much care about a handful of peopleon a tiny island unless they were up to something seriously bad. A Server farm I don't think would set them off. On the other hand thousands of people in greenland is a much nicer target, it draws more attention.
I'm not saying that couldn't work, I just think that I'd feel safer in the middle of the ocean with a handful of people than sitting somewhere that might draw US attention. In Canada right now, things aren't too bad, our government currently doesn't seem too interested in signing onto US legislation so I think we're safe for a bit. It at least gives me planning time. I'm sure out of all those uninhabited islands there has to be at least one that would be suitable. maybe something that juts out but still has some soil on it. It might take some planning, but I'm not above that.
Maybe greenland can launch a couple satellites I can tap into from there.