There was an episode where Robert Picardo's holographic Doctor introduces an entire planet to music. He becomes a celebrated singer, and even attempts to stay on the planet, but finds out at the end that the "music" that the aliens ultimately enjoy turns out to be far different. He starts a musical revolution, but is "left behind" at the end.
Basically, Gamestop may be in the right, legally, if Square-Enix has a pre-existing contract with them with a non-compete clause. As the article states: “Existing contracts between GameStop and Square may have barred this kind of promotion, and so GameStop may actually be justified in their action if Square is in breach of some promotion/marketing agreement”
But they can also be in legal trouble over this, as the article also points out, for a number of different reasons.
Nowhere on the packaging does it say "Free OnLive coupon", apparently. I haven't looked at the packaging myself.
So you are playing The Sims? In all seriousness, even The Sims takes you a step out of reality. While we were housecleaning this past week, my girlfriend sighed and commented "You know, cleaning up the house is a lot easier in The Sims. You just point and click."
Still, some people play video games to escape from reality. But some folks play video games to explore things in reality that they cannot possibly do on their own, due to their wealth, social status, language barrier, etc. Flight Simulators are a prime example of this. Not everyone can afford a plane, but they can turn to a Flight Simulator to give them an experience that they could not afford otherwise.
You could always make your video game universe more and more surreal, with no limit to the imagination (look at The Void or Zeno Clash). But you are limited by technical restraints when you want to push for realism.
Sonic the Hedgehog may be a poor example for this topic. The gameplay consisted mostly of running and jumping really fast while grabbing rings. It took advantage of the console technology of the time to provide smooth framerates with no tearing, which allowed the backgrounds to zoom by quickly, giving the illusion of speed. But that was the gimmick. Sonic the Hedgehog, as a series, wasn't known for being difficult (like Mega Man) or innovative (like Marathon). It doesn't even have that much of a compelling story (like RPGs). The same gameplay 20 years later may appeal to some people, but most gamers who played Sonic back then are different people now and are looking for more than just running and jumping really fast while grabbing rings (which is one of the laments of the article).
A better example of a classic revamp would be the Bionic Commando Rearmed or the most recent Mega Man game. Bionic Commando Rearmed adds a lot of modern features to the original game, like big boss battles, hacking mini-games, and the ability to swap weapons within the stage, but the basic mechanic of swinging and shooting is still challenging. The most recent Mega Man was pretty popular, despite (or perhaps because) it staying true to the 8-bit Mega Man graphics and gameplay, mostly because it still maintained the same level of challenge.
Of course, many classic games are getting a cloning vats treatment on the iPhone/iPad/iFranchise and Android market. If anything, the older 8-bit, 16-bit, and PS1 era games (or clones of those games) are seeing a bit of a renaissance on those platforms.
Last I read a DNA test took at least three days to complete. Amazing they were able to pull it off in just a few hours of dumping the body. And what DNA did they compare it too, btw?
In this day and age, not only is the cost of DNA sequencing beating Moore's Law, but the turn-around time is around 45 minutes to an hour for the actual analysis. For the University of California system, you get your results by e-mail by the next day at the latest, and that's assuming that the day was busy for them. The "3 days" thing is typically the time it takes to mail a package or similarly courier the physical end-product. There are handheld DNA testing portable labs about the size of an AED or first aid kit nowadays, too.
While Walmart is certainly late to the party on this one, the business implications are pretty big. They are already the world's largest retailer. They are already known for pushing out local businesses (which may be a good or bad thing depending on which point of view you are seeing). Delivery is one of the few ways that grocery stores have set themselves apart from Walmart. Is this a way for Walmart to strike out at their competition? Are they going to try to cut into competitors like Safeway and Albertson's who offer grocery delivery?
My other slightly off-topic question is: why aren't there any fast food hamburger delivery chains? You can't throw a rock without hitting a pizza delivery place (or Chinese or Indian food), but there aren't any well-known burger joints that deliver (at least, not throughout the US in all locations).
Nah, downloading will be the new standard, but for folks who don't like to wait and want to buy a physical copy, they'll have USB drives that are read-only which you can buy at your local WalGameStopBestMart. They'll call them "cartridges". Oh. Wait. Dammit.
I hated Prince of Persia IV, but not because it was a terrible game. The art is gorgeous, the boss fights are over-the-top, and the jumping puzzles are inventive (although extremely easy, with the Quick-Time-Event mechanic). The "not dying" mechanic is just a streamlined, limited version of what the previous three games offered.
But I cannot forgive the game for not being Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.
It's streamlined to tell a mystic and magical story. Like a Disney movie. But for me, the Prince of Persia series was all about platform puzzles and jumping around in realistic looking environments. I felt like I was running around in amusement park rides in Prince of Persia IV, rather than ancient ruins or stately Arabian buildings. I realize that the game designers have moved away from the puzzling to "let's make the player look awesomely cool in messed up worlds". But that isn't the kind of gameplay that I'm looking for, so it is a lesser game in my eyes. I want to emphasize that I can see how this game can be fun for other people (it certainly has a "God of War" vibe to it which is quite inticing), but it wasn't fun for me because it lacked the thoughtful platforming of the first remake.
Jump on my sword while you can, Evil! I won't be as gentle!
Boo says... WHAT?
The best Minsc interaction is when you are trying to convince the Pirate Lord that you are insane to get into an asylum. Minsc handily proves this for you. *grin*
NWN, as a single player campaign, was pretty mediocre, although the NPC followers really grow on you and are well written, just like in Baldur's Gate (but you can only have ONE!).
NWN, as a multiplayer game, though, is a dream come true. This game as a multiplayer experience sucked away several years of my life, and I loved every minute of it. All that it required was proficiency with the toolset, which was a bit of a hurdle if you aren't a modder or a programmer. The scripting language let you do pretty much anything. I was able to make talking swords (a la Lilacor from BG II) that leaped out of the user's hand and acted as independent entities, villages that can "spawn" into zones after they were cleared of a horde of monsters (with grateful villagers), supply and demand economies between villages, and many more things.
The party interactions were also severely limited. Half of the fun in BG was to hear your party bickering. NWN got rid of that too.
Hordes of the Underdark allowed you to have two minions, and they bickered a lot. Just pick Sharwina (or whatever the names was of that female bard who looked like Catherine Zeta Jones) and Deekin (the kobold bard) for a lot of laughs.
NWN gets a lot of rap for not being Baldur's Gate. But it's something completely different and wonderful, if you overlook the fact that it isn't Baldur's Gate (aka a single player DnD RPG) and accept it for the multiplayer DnD engine that it is.
If you pretend that you are being cursed by a witch, the whole village will break out their pitchtorches and burning forks to burn the witch. Get the mob to side with you, and you win, regardless of whether or not the so-called witch was actually guilty of witchcraft.
That's the basic principle in this essay. I'm not saying that I agree with all of the finer points of the essay, but it makes a good argument overall. So far in my short lifespan, I have heard several cases involving harassment which were attempts by the harasser to cover up what they were doing by claiming the victim was the harasser.
"It is possible today to hijack an aircraft using only five or six able-bodied passengers who are well-trained in Kung Fu fighting," he says. "There is no technology in place in airports to detect a threat like that."
Well, no. Not unless you start putting Ninjas on every plane. Everyone knows that Ninjas > Kung Fu fighting.
There are plenty of other places in many other Metal Gear games where the 4th wall is broken. Even in the first Metal Gear Solid, you had to get a codec code from the back of the actual physical CD case of the game. There was no way in-game to get this codec code to progress, and the characters within the game mention "It's on the back of your CD case" directly to the player. Another similar instance happens during the Psycho Mantis battle. Oh, and Twin Snakes IS the remake of the original Metal Gear Solid.
You probably should have picked a better example, but your point is valid, however.
Does anybody know of a collaborative drawing tool in the same vein? This would be great for a play-by-IM roleplaying game, so I could draw a battle map for my players. I could draw the map and they would be able to move their characters when it was their turn. I could even use different background textures to give the maps more character.
Cross platform would be ideal so that I don't have to use Windows...
I use MapTool from rptools.net. It's free, and it has ever feature that I need for running a weekly Shadowrun and Castle Falkenstein campaign, including drawing, maps, minis, chat, dicerolling, etc.
The longer-term goal is to create a system with the level of complexity of a cat's brain.
Seriously? They are shooting WAY higher than simply Artificial Intelligence that mimics humans. Have they ever interacted with a cat before? Don't they know how inscrutable, annoying, and unpredictable they are? Will this computer need a Litter box and Catnip?
This sounds like common sense. Seriously. Several years ago, a military bud of mine said that the worst threat to their security is the USB flash drive.
(OT: what happened to the Republicans? They *used* to be about smaller government, less intrusion into our lives, lower taxes, and a strong military. They are now 180degrees off from all of those issues) Our political parties in the United States have a long history of re-inventing themselves every generation to appeal to the masses and get more votes. It wasn't so long ago that conventional wisdom said "If you want to go to war, vote a Democrat into office." Personally, I think it was probably the (relative) surprise of Bush Sr. losing to Clinton and the subsequent success of that administration that made the Republicans reinvent themselves and aggressively pursue a larger constituency. As issues like privacy, technology, and health care march to the fore and people become less interested in mucking about in the Middle East and caring about terrorism, expect the parties to evolve and follow suit.
Depression (at least in mild cases) is one of the few diseases where people taking placebo do get better, actually. There are more than "a few" diseases where placebos make the test subjects better. There are many non-psychiatric studies where the control group on placebo showed "real" non-subjective improvement (objective readings like blood pressure, lipid panels, etc.). Is it a treatment bias, where the person who feels like they are being treated simply feels better? Is it because the subjects receive medical follow up, when they might not necessarily have received that follow-up when not on the study.
The amazing thing about the "placebo effect" to me is not the fact that folks on placebo may experience some improvement of their symptoms or even resolve the stigmata of their disease. It's the fact that most folks on the "test drug" who were actually on placebo stop taking the drug because of various side effects, even though theoretically, they shouldn't feel side effects from the faux medication at all.
Most of the points were already discussed in this recent thread. Still, I think it bears worth mentioning that a lot of times, sequels represent a refinement of the original idea. Sure, a lot of times, they suck. But sometimes they extend or even surpass the original idea that spawned in the first game.
Twenty years from now...
on
An Ode To Al
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I wonder what Weird Al will be like 20 years from now... will he be remembered as one of the "greats" of comedy, a name living long after everyone forgets the jokes? What will his parodies (and polkas) be like? Will he continue to be the pop culture barometer that we've come to know and love? Regardless, all of his songs have been a constant companion on my playlists and CD jackets and tapedecks, and I think I remember his songs with more clarity than the originals. Maybe he will be known as the last successful accordion artist. *grin*
I could see this as a good topic for a Computer Science thesis, rather than a Sociology thesis. In a Sociology thesis, you'd do more exploration of the cultures and outside influences, whereas in a Computer Science thesis, you'd focus more on how these outside influences have historically determined the end-product and what sort of trends one can see in computing/programming based on culture. Either way, a lot of those megacorps would eat this stuff up, in terms of the "global economy" and outsourcing.
For me, it depends on my comfort level on the subject matter. If I know nothing or very little about a subject, I tend to start at Wikipedia first, so that I can get a general overview on the subject. If I know a lot about the subject and just would like more details, typically I can get the information faster through a search engine of my choice (not necessarily Google... PubMed and other resources, too).
I also tend to take Wikipedia's entries with a grain of salt. It just tells me what a bunch of people on the Internet knows about the subject, and the question of whether it is right or wrong or laced with hidden agendas is up in the air. The discussion pages on Wikipedia tend to be useful, if there has been a good debate, but I always assume that some crazy nut with an agenda has been through and "sanitized" the article for his/her own tastes.
Slashdot Mirror
There was an episode where Robert Picardo's holographic Doctor introduces an entire planet to music. He becomes a celebrated singer, and even attempts to stay on the planet, but finds out at the end that the "music" that the aliens ultimately enjoy turns out to be far different. He starts a musical revolution, but is "left behind" at the end.
The Wired article on this does a more balanced job at handling the legal ramifications:
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/08/gamestop-onlive/
Basically, Gamestop may be in the right, legally, if Square-Enix has a pre-existing contract with them with a non-compete clause. As the article states: “Existing contracts between GameStop and Square may have barred this kind of promotion, and so GameStop may actually be justified in their action if Square is in breach of some promotion/marketing agreement”
But they can also be in legal trouble over this, as the article also points out, for a number of different reasons.
Nowhere on the packaging does it say "Free OnLive coupon", apparently. I haven't looked at the packaging myself.
So you are playing The Sims? In all seriousness, even The Sims takes you a step out of reality. While we were housecleaning this past week, my girlfriend sighed and commented "You know, cleaning up the house is a lot easier in The Sims. You just point and click."
Still, some people play video games to escape from reality. But some folks play video games to explore things in reality that they cannot possibly do on their own, due to their wealth, social status, language barrier, etc. Flight Simulators are a prime example of this. Not everyone can afford a plane, but they can turn to a Flight Simulator to give them an experience that they could not afford otherwise.
You could always make your video game universe more and more surreal, with no limit to the imagination (look at The Void or Zeno Clash). But you are limited by technical restraints when you want to push for realism.
Sonic the Hedgehog may be a poor example for this topic. The gameplay consisted mostly of running and jumping really fast while grabbing rings. It took advantage of the console technology of the time to provide smooth framerates with no tearing, which allowed the backgrounds to zoom by quickly, giving the illusion of speed. But that was the gimmick. Sonic the Hedgehog, as a series, wasn't known for being difficult (like Mega Man) or innovative (like Marathon). It doesn't even have that much of a compelling story (like RPGs). The same gameplay 20 years later may appeal to some people, but most gamers who played Sonic back then are different people now and are looking for more than just running and jumping really fast while grabbing rings (which is one of the laments of the article).
A better example of a classic revamp would be the Bionic Commando Rearmed or the most recent Mega Man game. Bionic Commando Rearmed adds a lot of modern features to the original game, like big boss battles, hacking mini-games, and the ability to swap weapons within the stage, but the basic mechanic of swinging and shooting is still challenging. The most recent Mega Man was pretty popular, despite (or perhaps because) it staying true to the 8-bit Mega Man graphics and gameplay, mostly because it still maintained the same level of challenge.
Of course, many classic games are getting a cloning vats treatment on the iPhone/iPad/iFranchise and Android market. If anything, the older 8-bit, 16-bit, and PS1 era games (or clones of those games) are seeing a bit of a renaissance on those platforms.
You can have one in your briefcase, if you had the cash. http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/0710/1501.html
Last I read a DNA test took at least three days to complete. Amazing they were able to pull it off in just a few hours of dumping the body. And what DNA did they compare it too, btw?
In this day and age, not only is the cost of DNA sequencing beating Moore's Law, but the turn-around time is around 45 minutes to an hour for the actual analysis. For the University of California system, you get your results by e-mail by the next day at the latest, and that's assuming that the day was busy for them. The "3 days" thing is typically the time it takes to mail a package or similarly courier the physical end-product. There are handheld DNA testing portable labs about the size of an AED or first aid kit nowadays, too.
While Walmart is certainly late to the party on this one, the business implications are pretty big. They are already the world's largest retailer. They are already known for pushing out local businesses (which may be a good or bad thing depending on which point of view you are seeing). Delivery is one of the few ways that grocery stores have set themselves apart from Walmart. Is this a way for Walmart to strike out at their competition? Are they going to try to cut into competitors like Safeway and Albertson's who offer grocery delivery? My other slightly off-topic question is: why aren't there any fast food hamburger delivery chains? You can't throw a rock without hitting a pizza delivery place (or Chinese or Indian food), but there aren't any well-known burger joints that deliver (at least, not throughout the US in all locations).
Nah, downloading will be the new standard, but for folks who don't like to wait and want to buy a physical copy, they'll have USB drives that are read-only which you can buy at your local WalGameStopBestMart. They'll call them "cartridges". Oh. Wait. Dammit.
I hated Prince of Persia IV, but not because it was a terrible game. The art is gorgeous, the boss fights are over-the-top, and the jumping puzzles are inventive (although extremely easy, with the Quick-Time-Event mechanic). The "not dying" mechanic is just a streamlined, limited version of what the previous three games offered.
But I cannot forgive the game for not being Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.
It's streamlined to tell a mystic and magical story. Like a Disney movie. But for me, the Prince of Persia series was all about platform puzzles and jumping around in realistic looking environments. I felt like I was running around in amusement park rides in Prince of Persia IV, rather than ancient ruins or stately Arabian buildings. I realize that the game designers have moved away from the puzzling to "let's make the player look awesomely cool in messed up worlds". But that isn't the kind of gameplay that I'm looking for, so it is a lesser game in my eyes. I want to emphasize that I can see how this game can be fun for other people (it certainly has a "God of War" vibe to it which is quite inticing), but it wasn't fun for me because it lacked the thoughtful platforming of the first remake.
Jump on my sword while you can, Evil! I won't be as gentle!
Boo says... WHAT?
The best Minsc interaction is when you are trying to convince the Pirate Lord that you are insane to get into an asylum. Minsc handily proves this for you. *grin*
NWN, as a single player campaign, was pretty mediocre, although the NPC followers really grow on you and are well written, just like in Baldur's Gate (but you can only have ONE!). NWN, as a multiplayer game, though, is a dream come true. This game as a multiplayer experience sucked away several years of my life, and I loved every minute of it. All that it required was proficiency with the toolset, which was a bit of a hurdle if you aren't a modder or a programmer. The scripting language let you do pretty much anything. I was able to make talking swords (a la Lilacor from BG II) that leaped out of the user's hand and acted as independent entities, villages that can "spawn" into zones after they were cleared of a horde of monsters (with grateful villagers), supply and demand economies between villages, and many more things.
The party interactions were also severely limited. Half of the fun in BG was to hear your party bickering. NWN got rid of that too.
Hordes of the Underdark allowed you to have two minions, and they bickered a lot. Just pick Sharwina (or whatever the names was of that female bard who looked like Catherine Zeta Jones) and Deekin (the kobold bard) for a lot of laughs.
NWN gets a lot of rap for not being Baldur's Gate. But it's something completely different and wonderful, if you overlook the fact that it isn't Baldur's Gate (aka a single player DnD RPG) and accept it for the multiplayer DnD engine that it is.
If you pretend that you are being cursed by a witch, the whole village will break out their pitchtorches and burning forks to burn the witch. Get the mob to side with you, and you win, regardless of whether or not the so-called witch was actually guilty of witchcraft.
That's the basic principle in this essay. I'm not saying that I agree with all of the finer points of the essay, but it makes a good argument overall. So far in my short lifespan, I have heard several cases involving harassment which were attempts by the harasser to cover up what they were doing by claiming the victim was the harasser.
"It is possible today to hijack an aircraft using only five or six able-bodied passengers who are well-trained in Kung Fu fighting," he says. "There is no technology in place in airports to detect a threat like that."
Well, no. Not unless you start putting Ninjas on every plane. Everyone knows that Ninjas > Kung Fu fighting.
Apparently, Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting...
tl;dr WTF?
There are plenty of other places in many other Metal Gear games where the 4th wall is broken. Even in the first Metal Gear Solid, you had to get a codec code from the back of the actual physical CD case of the game. There was no way in-game to get this codec code to progress, and the characters within the game mention "It's on the back of your CD case" directly to the player. Another similar instance happens during the Psycho Mantis battle. Oh, and Twin Snakes IS the remake of the original Metal Gear Solid. You probably should have picked a better example, but your point is valid, however.
Does anybody know of a collaborative drawing tool in the same vein? This would be great for a play-by-IM roleplaying game, so I could draw a battle map for my players. I could draw the map and they would be able to move their characters when it was their turn. I could even use different background textures to give the maps more character.
Cross platform would be ideal so that I don't have to use Windows...
I use MapTool from rptools.net. It's free, and it has ever feature that I need for running a weekly Shadowrun and Castle Falkenstein campaign, including drawing, maps, minis, chat, dicerolling, etc.
The longer-term goal is to create a system with the level of complexity of a cat's brain.
Seriously? They are shooting WAY higher than simply Artificial Intelligence that mimics humans. Have they ever interacted with a cat before? Don't they know how inscrutable, annoying, and unpredictable they are? Will this computer need a Litter box and Catnip?
This sounds like common sense. Seriously. Several years ago, a military bud of mine said that the worst threat to their security is the USB flash drive.
So I can play Dragonforce on Expert. Seriously, do I need to be on meth to play this? Someone link up my brain to the game, please! *grin*
"That belongs in a museum!" *cracks bullwhip, grabbing hat before stone door collapses*
(OT: what happened to the Republicans? They *used* to be about smaller government, less intrusion into our lives, lower taxes, and a strong military. They are now 180degrees off from all of those issues)
Our political parties in the United States have a long history of re-inventing themselves every generation to appeal to the masses and get more votes. It wasn't so long ago that conventional wisdom said "If you want to go to war, vote a Democrat into office." Personally, I think it was probably the (relative) surprise of Bush Sr. losing to Clinton and the subsequent success of that administration that made the Republicans reinvent themselves and aggressively pursue a larger constituency. As issues like privacy, technology, and health care march to the fore and people become less interested in mucking about in the Middle East and caring about terrorism, expect the parties to evolve and follow suit.
Depression (at least in mild cases) is one of the few diseases where people taking placebo do get better, actually.
There are more than "a few" diseases where placebos make the test subjects better. There are many non-psychiatric studies where the control group on placebo showed "real" non-subjective improvement (objective readings like blood pressure, lipid panels, etc.). Is it a treatment bias, where the person who feels like they are being treated simply feels better? Is it because the subjects receive medical follow up, when they might not necessarily have received that follow-up when not on the study.
The amazing thing about the "placebo effect" to me is not the fact that folks on placebo may experience some improvement of their symptoms or even resolve the stigmata of their disease. It's the fact that most folks on the "test drug" who were actually on placebo stop taking the drug because of various side effects, even though theoretically, they shouldn't feel side effects from the faux medication at all.
Most of the points were already discussed in this recent thread. Still, I think it bears worth mentioning that a lot of times, sequels represent a refinement of the original idea. Sure, a lot of times, they suck. But sometimes they extend or even surpass the original idea that spawned in the first game.
I wonder what Weird Al will be like 20 years from now... will he be remembered as one of the "greats" of comedy, a name living long after everyone forgets the jokes? What will his parodies (and polkas) be like? Will he continue to be the pop culture barometer that we've come to know and love? Regardless, all of his songs have been a constant companion on my playlists and CD jackets and tapedecks, and I think I remember his songs with more clarity than the originals. Maybe he will be known as the last successful accordion artist. *grin*
I could see this as a good topic for a Computer Science thesis, rather than a Sociology thesis. In a Sociology thesis, you'd do more exploration of the cultures and outside influences, whereas in a Computer Science thesis, you'd focus more on how these outside influences have historically determined the end-product and what sort of trends one can see in computing/programming based on culture. Either way, a lot of those megacorps would eat this stuff up, in terms of the "global economy" and outsourcing.
For me, it depends on my comfort level on the subject matter. If I know nothing or very little about a subject, I tend to start at Wikipedia first, so that I can get a general overview on the subject. If I know a lot about the subject and just would like more details, typically I can get the information faster through a search engine of my choice (not necessarily Google... PubMed and other resources, too).
I also tend to take Wikipedia's entries with a grain of salt. It just tells me what a bunch of people on the Internet knows about the subject, and the question of whether it is right or wrong or laced with hidden agendas is up in the air. The discussion pages on Wikipedia tend to be useful, if there has been a good debate, but I always assume that some crazy nut with an agenda has been through and "sanitized" the article for his/her own tastes.