Regardless of the frustration factor concerning gameplay, this also cuts down on the drama of the moment. If you're forced to watch the same moment fifty times before you get through that spot of the game, the emotional impact is reduced.
That's my biggest peeve with City of Heroes/Villains' occasional cutscene. When I go into a mission, the last thing that I really need to see is a narrator's view of some situation deep in the map, with characters that I'm going to pound the crap out of going on about their nefarious schemes.
It gets worse (or better) if you're teamed with people who've discovered that, while your powers and movement keys are disabled, your speech macro keys aren't. There's nothing quite like watching Lord Recluse pat himself on the back, while a speech bubble in the background scrolls "OW MY BALLS!"
The guys at Penny-Arcade noted that there's a limited number of each card you can stack in your deck, anyway-- three for most, and some others are even more limited, so it's not like you're going to run up against a guy with a deck that's full of Fruitfucker Behemoths.
Given that Sony seems to be selling the camera separately (or at least making plans to do so), and retailers don't know what to make of it in the first place, the game is probably already doomed to being an odd little gimmick. If they really wanted to go with a collectible game, they would have been better served by something that was wholly online and digital-- the chance of counterfeits goes down substantially there, and the players are only a step away from the card store whenever they turn the console on.
I suspect that they'll offer a 'strategic partnership' to PAX, and/or try to lure exhibitors, performers and vital staff away. Staging both conventions on the same weekend would mean that those so targeted would have to make a serious choice about which to attend.
As much as I've railed against it in the past, this is pretty much necessary for Wizards to keep D&D as a going concern. Wizards is a small branch of Hasbro. D&D is little more than pimple on Hasbro's ass. If it starts to be a problem (revivification of the old Satanic Panic, or simply not turning enough of a profit), Hasbro will pop it without a second thought. Wizards is Pokemon, as far as Hasbro's concerned.
The best way to make a promise of profits look good, in this (and I hate to use the word) industry is to promise the brass a new edition. New systems demand new expansions, and new realm books are easy enough to justify as well. Sure, the old stuff is obsoleted (that's rather the point), and sure there's a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of gamers, but few people do anything beyond that. You might lose a few of the old school players, but you stand to gain a lot more newbies.
While the cycle of new editions is speeding up, it has nothing on Shadowrun or Call of Cthulhu. First Edition had about fifteen years, Second had roughly ten, and Third has between five and eight, depending on whether you consider 3.5 a new edition or not.
The big gamble here is their attempt to leverage the Internet. For-pay web extensions and 'virtual gaming tables' are a ballsy move, but probably conceived as much to make Marketing happy as anything else.
Yeah, and meanwhile everyone else is assuming that your SL avatar will be able to skip merrily into WoW, which just isn't going to happen. It simply isn't in the best interests of anyone but Linden Labs and IBM to force this sort of interoperability.
I could see SOE do something like that for the games in their Station Pass stable, but you're still looking at either a standardized rendering engine, or some method of transporting geometry and texture data back and forth between virtual worlds.
Seriously. Minerva is one of the most singularly impressive single-player mods that I've ever had the pleasure of playing through. Anyone who has HL2 and hasn't played through this is missing something wonderful.
A new column in the 'My Games' tab titled 'Gifts' appeared earlier today, with listings beside my installs of HL2 and EP1. According to the official forums, that system is live.
UWO (University of Western Ontario) used to have the same problems, too, before ITS switched over to something slightly more usable. Of course, now we've got a pile of shit named WebCT bungling up student/instructor communications in the name of e-learning and other buzzwords. The mere sight of the Peoplesoft name made me groan.
So you've get to avoid the effort (and cost) of making up new textures, possibly changing the geometry in places, localizing in German, and just as possibly avoid having to alter whatever there is in the way of storyline. The casual German gamer gets shafted, but the rest probably do a bit of illicit footwork, heading out into other EU countries to get copies there. The publisher still makes some sales, avoids shelling out for otherwise unnecessary work, and German retailers get pissed off at the government for making them lose out on sales. Sounds like a financially responsible plan to me, on the part of the publisher and developer.
Given their experiences with the Lisa, the Granny Smith, the Newton and the Pippin, I imagine it might be less of a budge than a shriek and drop.
Given their experiences with the iPod, on the other hand, I imagine that we might see a slow trickle of updated hardware and Official Software over the course of the product line's lifespan. Not necessarily the product's lifespan, but the line itself. It's been observed that Apple seems to consider the iPod to be disposable, and given that at least the original run of iPhones have a similar degree of non-user-serviceability (soldered-in batteries? Beg pardon, but what?), there very well could be a similar intention at work on some level.
Otherwise, as has been noted, there's iTunes. Licensing is probably going to be very lucrative, assuming that Apple doesn't try to corner the market there, and turning the purchase of games, ringtones, and applications into something as immediately painless and impulse-friendly as buying a music track is money in the bank.
When I buy a game, I typically check reviews and with other gamers to make sure that it's going to scratch whatever itch I've got. Proper installation, playing nice with Windows and other applications... those are things that I tend to assume are going to happen, if the game is going to survive the aggregate review process. I don't really need MS telling me that a game will work on the platform it's intended for. Go figure. Auto-detection and reconfiguration based on whether you've got a controller plugged in or not is a cute touch, but ultimately gimmicky.
I hate to trot the 'console vs. pc players' thing out, but it's there. Yes, most modern consoles can handle a keyboard and mouse, and yes, computers can handle console controllers with a modicum of issue. At the same time, using a mouse on a couch is pretty damned awkward, and keyboards tend to violate the whole compact, elegant and self-contained idea that consoles operate around too. There's merit in convergence, sure, but KB/mouse works much better on a desktop than the same combination does on a couch.
I see the Games for Windows decal and shrug. I suspect that most gamers do the same thing, assuming they haven't moved entirely to consoles. In the end, it's a pretty empty gesture... if not an outright rude one.
That's the problem, though. The article implies that Google doesn't have the technology as yet, and are trying to sort out methods of dealing with the issue. That's probably why it didn't occur to them to do it in the first place.
If it ends up being something that they can automate, like the algorithms that were being developed a few years back to differentiate between porn and other images, then I imagine they'll apply it to their whole database. If it requires serious man-hours with Photoshop's Blur tool, then the States are probably SOL.
I imagine that Telltale is also a smaller outfit and coming up with jokes and storylines aside, the S&M engine is easier to bolt things onto and script for. Scene-based adventure games are doubtlessly easier to develop on a technical level, since there are far fewer places for the player to sneak under the world or exploit AI.
That said, something like S&M, or the CSI games that Telltale puts out too, are [i]perfect[/i] for episodic gaming. Shooters have gone so far beyond the days of Wolf3D and Doom, that developing in chunks like that is counterproductive at best. Blizzard's quasi-episodic updates (or Cryptic's "Issue #" updates for City of Foozles) are a similarly unfair comparison: Valve's entire staff could probably fit comfortably in one of Blizzard's meeting rooms. They have sheer manpower to throw at testing, modular components like AI and pathing, or discrete chunks of map, or quest writing, that Valve or a dedicated modding team doesn't.
Valve's stuck in the same tight spot that killed Sin: Episodes' developer. A graphically attractive, well-balanced shooter takes a lot more man-hours to develop than the shooters of yesteryear did. Short chapters with cliffhanger endings only work well if you've got the next chapter lined up for release before the audience gets bored. WoW has a ton of content to begin with, and S&M episodes come out just often enough to make the player base excited. Waiting a year or more for a few hours of same-game play and middling exposition is not something that enthuses the average player. Waiting a year or more for a full-blown expansion or sequel, is another matter entirely.
That's what I love about Slashdot. Instead of idiotic memes that won't die, we've got just as useless catchphrases like FUD floating around.
But hey, go ahead and accuse me of libeling your favourite browser. It's not like you could have known that I've used nothing but Firefox for the last several years, or suggested looking under the hood of my install. That would involve asking questions, instead of jerking your knee. Bravo.
That could have something to do with the suit that they lost in Germany... and speaking of Germany, this 'translate tiny snippets of text' thing reminds me of how the British handled The funniest joke in the world.
That's particularly funny, given that the example videos on the site are WMV. I don't know about anyone else, but getting WMV files to play through Firefox is like pulling teeth.
They've already claimed ownership of ISBN numbers. Clearly the legality of their actions plays second fiddle to whether or not they can get away with outlandish illegalities.
I can't be the only one who thought that Konfabulator (now something Yahoo) widgets and their ilk were a terrible waste of system resources, and I certainly can't be the only one who rolls their eyes when a Facebook acquaintance turns out to be a vampire, zombie, ninja or viral marketer who wants to bite/fuck/sell you something so that you can bite/fuck/sell things to all of your other friends. This is just taking shit to an all new, cynical level of manipulation.
While I'm here, what the fuck is this: 'Truly useful applications incorporating data feeds, maps, images, audio, video, Flash, HTML or JavaScript in a single creative.' A single creative. A single creative what?
I always wondered about that, having worked in a bookstore for the last few years. I know there's an extended ISBN now, and that certain digits in certain positions mark things like language of publication, but there's still a finite number of combinations. Recycling numbers though? Huh, live and learn.
On the original topic, my cynical guess is that the campus bookstore is going to go to the University president and lobby to have the cost of a year's new textbooks automatically added to tuition, so that the students have no choice but to buy straight from them no matter the cost.
That would explain things. They may have an interesting business opportunity, but unless they patent it (and sorry kids, but Sony's out-of-game stores and countless Korean MMOs provide tons of prior art) they're not going to see a cent from it.
First off, real money trading for goods in MMOs is almost universally verboten. It has a real potential for fucking in-game economies up because you're basically minting gold. That and the outfits that get banned for this shit would file an anti-competition suit against MMO Company X so fast, there wouldn't be time to point and laugh.
Second, this isn't exactly rocket science. Inserting a middleman might save money on development costs in the short run, but it's probably better to eat the costs once, then bolt the homebrew system onto future games, eliminating both licensing fees and the middleman's cut of each transaction.
Given the perennial problems that LL's backend suffers (servers going down under the load of a few dozen avatars, servers going down because someone sneezed, data corruption, awkward-at-best internal scalability...) I'd really prefer to see another group build something from the ground up with this kind of extensibility in mind. Open source is a good step, but the impression that I received when I heard about this months ago, and still get now, is that LL is basically trolling for free geek work.
Slashdot Mirror
It gets worse (or better) if you're teamed with people who've discovered that, while your powers and movement keys are disabled, your speech macro keys aren't. There's nothing quite like watching Lord Recluse pat himself on the back, while a speech bubble in the background scrolls "OW MY BALLS!"
Given that Sony seems to be selling the camera separately (or at least making plans to do so), and retailers don't know what to make of it in the first place, the game is probably already doomed to being an odd little gimmick. If they really wanted to go with a collectible game, they would have been better served by something that was wholly online and digital-- the chance of counterfeits goes down substantially there, and the players are only a step away from the card store whenever they turn the console on.
I think it means that the Avatar's discorporated one of the Shadowlords. Two more to go!
I suspect that they'll offer a 'strategic partnership' to PAX, and/or try to lure exhibitors, performers and vital staff away. Staging both conventions on the same weekend would mean that those so targeted would have to make a serious choice about which to attend.
The best way to make a promise of profits look good, in this (and I hate to use the word) industry is to promise the brass a new edition. New systems demand new expansions, and new realm books are easy enough to justify as well. Sure, the old stuff is obsoleted (that's rather the point), and sure there's a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of gamers, but few people do anything beyond that. You might lose a few of the old school players, but you stand to gain a lot more newbies.
While the cycle of new editions is speeding up, it has nothing on Shadowrun or Call of Cthulhu. First Edition had about fifteen years, Second had roughly ten, and Third has between five and eight, depending on whether you consider 3.5 a new edition or not.
The big gamble here is their attempt to leverage the Internet. For-pay web extensions and 'virtual gaming tables' are a ballsy move, but probably conceived as much to make Marketing happy as anything else.
Someone call me when their contributors sue for royalties.
I could see SOE do something like that for the games in their Station Pass stable, but you're still looking at either a standardized rendering engine, or some method of transporting geometry and texture data back and forth between virtual worlds.
Seriously. Minerva is one of the most singularly impressive single-player mods that I've ever had the pleasure of playing through. Anyone who has HL2 and hasn't played through this is missing something wonderful.
A new column in the 'My Games' tab titled 'Gifts' appeared earlier today, with listings beside my installs of HL2 and EP1. According to the official forums, that system is live.
UWO (University of Western Ontario) used to have the same problems, too, before ITS switched over to something slightly more usable. Of course, now we've got a pile of shit named WebCT bungling up student/instructor communications in the name of e-learning and other buzzwords. The mere sight of the Peoplesoft name made me groan.
Thank you for correcting me on that. EU trade laws are one of the many unfortunate holes in my knowledge.
So you've get to avoid the effort (and cost) of making up new textures, possibly changing the geometry in places, localizing in German, and just as possibly avoid having to alter whatever there is in the way of storyline. The casual German gamer gets shafted, but the rest probably do a bit of illicit footwork, heading out into other EU countries to get copies there. The publisher still makes some sales, avoids shelling out for otherwise unnecessary work, and German retailers get pissed off at the government for making them lose out on sales. Sounds like a financially responsible plan to me, on the part of the publisher and developer.
Given their experiences with the iPod, on the other hand, I imagine that we might see a slow trickle of updated hardware and Official Software over the course of the product line's lifespan. Not necessarily the product's lifespan, but the line itself. It's been observed that Apple seems to consider the iPod to be disposable, and given that at least the original run of iPhones have a similar degree of non-user-serviceability (soldered-in batteries? Beg pardon, but what?), there very well could be a similar intention at work on some level.
Otherwise, as has been noted, there's iTunes. Licensing is probably going to be very lucrative, assuming that Apple doesn't try to corner the market there, and turning the purchase of games, ringtones, and applications into something as immediately painless and impulse-friendly as buying a music track is money in the bank.
I hate to trot the 'console vs. pc players' thing out, but it's there. Yes, most modern consoles can handle a keyboard and mouse, and yes, computers can handle console controllers with a modicum of issue. At the same time, using a mouse on a couch is pretty damned awkward, and keyboards tend to violate the whole compact, elegant and self-contained idea that consoles operate around too. There's merit in convergence, sure, but KB/mouse works much better on a desktop than the same combination does on a couch.
I see the Games for Windows decal and shrug. I suspect that most gamers do the same thing, assuming they haven't moved entirely to consoles. In the end, it's a pretty empty gesture... if not an outright rude one.
If it ends up being something that they can automate, like the algorithms that were being developed a few years back to differentiate between porn and other images, then I imagine they'll apply it to their whole database. If it requires serious man-hours with Photoshop's Blur tool, then the States are probably SOL.
And in other Newspeak releases from the Redmond Ministry of Truthiness, the Zune has never been in competition with the iPod.
That said, something like S&M, or the CSI games that Telltale puts out too, are [i]perfect[/i] for episodic gaming. Shooters have gone so far beyond the days of Wolf3D and Doom, that developing in chunks like that is counterproductive at best. Blizzard's quasi-episodic updates (or Cryptic's "Issue #" updates for City of Foozles) are a similarly unfair comparison: Valve's entire staff could probably fit comfortably in one of Blizzard's meeting rooms. They have sheer manpower to throw at testing, modular components like AI and pathing, or discrete chunks of map, or quest writing, that Valve or a dedicated modding team doesn't.
Valve's stuck in the same tight spot that killed Sin: Episodes' developer. A graphically attractive, well-balanced shooter takes a lot more man-hours to develop than the shooters of yesteryear did. Short chapters with cliffhanger endings only work well if you've got the next chapter lined up for release before the audience gets bored. WoW has a ton of content to begin with, and S&M episodes come out just often enough to make the player base excited. Waiting a year or more for a few hours of same-game play and middling exposition is not something that enthuses the average player. Waiting a year or more for a full-blown expansion or sequel, is another matter entirely.
But hey, go ahead and accuse me of libeling your favourite browser. It's not like you could have known that I've used nothing but Firefox for the last several years, or suggested looking under the hood of my install. That would involve asking questions, instead of jerking your knee. Bravo.
That could have something to do with the suit that they lost in Germany... and speaking of Germany, this 'translate tiny snippets of text' thing reminds me of how the British handled The funniest joke in the world.
That's particularly funny, given that the example videos on the site are WMV. I don't know about anyone else, but getting WMV files to play through Firefox is like pulling teeth.
They've already claimed ownership of ISBN numbers. Clearly the legality of their actions plays second fiddle to whether or not they can get away with outlandish illegalities.
I can't be the only one who thought that Konfabulator (now something Yahoo) widgets and their ilk were a terrible waste of system resources, and I certainly can't be the only one who rolls their eyes when a Facebook acquaintance turns out to be a vampire, zombie, ninja or viral marketer who wants to bite/fuck/sell you something so that you can bite/fuck/sell things to all of your other friends. This is just taking shit to an all new, cynical level of manipulation.
While I'm here, what the fuck is this: 'Truly useful applications incorporating data feeds, maps, images, audio, video, Flash, HTML or JavaScript in a single creative.' A single creative. A single creative what?
On the original topic, my cynical guess is that the campus bookstore is going to go to the University president and lobby to have the cost of a year's new textbooks automatically added to tuition, so that the students have no choice but to buy straight from them no matter the cost.
First off, real money trading for goods in MMOs is almost universally verboten. It has a real potential for fucking in-game economies up because you're basically minting gold. That and the outfits that get banned for this shit would file an anti-competition suit against MMO Company X so fast, there wouldn't be time to point and laugh.
Second, this isn't exactly rocket science. Inserting a middleman might save money on development costs in the short run, but it's probably better to eat the costs once, then bolt the homebrew system onto future games, eliminating both licensing fees and the middleman's cut of each transaction.
Given the perennial problems that LL's backend suffers (servers going down under the load of a few dozen avatars, servers going down because someone sneezed, data corruption, awkward-at-best internal scalability...) I'd really prefer to see another group build something from the ground up with this kind of extensibility in mind. Open source is a good step, but the impression that I received when I heard about this months ago, and still get now, is that LL is basically trolling for free geek work.