Personally, I think it's because the anime/manga style is a stylized caricature of reality, and trying to duplicate that back into realty tends to look... strange.
Everyone has their own rationalization for why they do (or don't) turn to piracy. An example for myself: I pirate movies all the time, but I've also got a Netflix subscription, most of the movie channels on my cable service and a DVR. A lot of the time, however, it's just more convenient to grab a torrent and have a movie in an hour or so than have to wait for it to come in the mail or, worse, show up on TV and the studios are still getting my money anyway (I don't pirate movies that are still in theaters).
I know plenty of people who pirate simply because they can. A lot of them only end up using a fraction of the things they download. I think it's a result of two big changes in our culture: The quest for consumption, which is instilled in us from a young age. And an overwhelming respect for curiosity, which I think the vastness of the internet has strengthened in the last decade or so. The fact is, a lot of people, download things that they've only got a cursory interest, but it's so easy to pirate that figure they might as well check it out. The same way I might look up Boudhanath on wikipedia, but if I had to go to the library to do so I'd lose any interest I might have had in it.
Personally, I rarely pirate games. Those that I do pirate are usually old games that I either want to revisit (roms) or just never got to play when they were still new (I didn't have a computer as a kid, so I missed out on a lot of classics).
A trend I have noticed, however, is that a lost of publishers are including intrusive and annoying DRM in their games and sometimes even in the demos of the games. I remember on my last computer I'd been having problems with the disc drive for months before I found out about Starforce. Removing it fixed all of my problems. Those sorts of things make it clear why even legit customers would prefer to use a pirated version.
It'd be foolish to think that you could stop piracy completely, but I think the best way to reduce it is to make your product as easy to acquire and use as possible. It's pretty difficult to beat the pirates at ease of acquisition; with torrent sites people can go to one place for anything they need, whether it be games, music, ebooks or what have you. Something like Steam, but for EVERYTHING, that worked in a browser rather than as a stand-alone app could put up a good fight, I think, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Increasing ease of use can be done pretty easily, though. It just means throwing out any DRM that impedes functionality (of the game OR the system it's run on), because that will just turn customers into pirates.
I feel like the rest of the cast is overlooked. The Joker certainly stole the show, but Aaron Eckhart was great as Dent. Gary Oldman especially seems to be ignored and I think, excluding Ledger, he gave the best performance in the film. He did a great job of making Gordon seem like a real person that you could run into in any police station in America.
It DID work. The guy in question decided not to blackmail Bruce Wayne. When he went on TV it was because Joker had begun to kill people demanding that Batman reveal his true identity. He was attempting to save lives in his own, misguided way, but it backfired when the Joker put a price on his head instead.
Capcom HAS been successful on the Wii, with their ports and virtual console games.
But they've only put out two original titles made specifically for the Wii. They've done for Wii so far one (Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles) has sold well and one (Zack & Wiki) has not, so I'm not ready to say that they completely understand the Wii just yet. But I'd agree that Capcom is easily the most proactive of the third parties when it comes to the Wii and it's certainly paid off for them.
If someone would rather be working on the next Gears of War, I'm not sure I want them making stuff for the Wii. It takes someone who's actually capable of original thought, not someone who wants to turn out yet another shooter with shiny graphics.
Just to clarify, when I said "the next Gears of War" I meant the next new franchise that will becomes a hit amongst 'core' gamers, not a Gears clone. Maybe Assassin's Creed or Dead Rising would have been better examples.
There's also the fact that a lot of companies dismissed the Wii at first, because it's a lot less powerful than the Xbox 360 and PS3.
While that was certainly true for the first six months or so that the wii was out, that's hardly the problem now. A lot of companies are making games for Wii and simply not doing well (with a few exceptions). Simply put, the third parties can't figure out what Wii owners 'want.' Some people even believe that all Wii owners want is "games from Nintendo" and little else.
It's not like they're obligated to use the Wii-mote/nunchuck for the games, they could make "classic controller required" games.
From a business standpoint, I can see how that might make sense, but there are other factors involved. The Wii is old tech. The only thing that separates it from the other consoles is its peripherals. If you're not going to take advantage of them then working on a Wii title isn't going to feel very rewarding. Especially when you see what all your friends are doing with the HD systems.
I mean, this is all conjecture, admittedly, but I'd imagine that the type of people who'd want to work in the gaming industry to begin with are naturally more into 'hardcore' games. They're not the target demographic of the Wii. It'd be like asking a director who loves action movies to do a romantic comedy. They'll do it grudgingly and turn out a rushed product that they'll be all too happy to be finished with.
I don't have any experience in the industry, but my understanding is that similar positions outside of the gaming industry tend to have better pay and hours, which leads me to believe that those who do work in gaming are probably very enthusiastic about what they do. So how do you convince someone who'd rather be working on the next Gears of War to make something on the Wii? To work within the limitations of old tech (after all, these people have likely worked on the gamecube and PS2 for quite some time) on a game that they themselves have little interest in? If their heart isn't in it then it will show through in the final product.
So ultimately, the people that would be best to develop for the Wii would be those that are the most interested in it's peripherals. But even then, there have been a lot of third party games that have been released for the Wii and gotten universal acclaim for their use of the wiimote and still tanked when it came to sales.
In short, I think to most publishers, the Wii is just a big mystery that they have yet to figure out.
considering they were number 2 to themselves, the numbers take on a different light.
They were actually #2 to XBox 360. The article is about life-to-date sales in the U.S. and, although it's up for debate, handhelds and home consoles are generally considered two different markets.
Anyway, I was actually surprised when Nintendo announced this at E3. I had assumed it had already happened long ago with the sorts of numbers Nintendo was hitting every month and the way the 360 sales had slowed.
The problem with saying that PC gaming is 'dying' is that a lot of people disagree on what, specifically, counts as PC gaming. Most people who'd call themselves gamers think of the big franchises and developers when they think of PC gaming. Half-life and Crysis and so on.
But those aren't the only PC games out there. Some people would include flash games amongst PC games (though it can be debated that you can play those games on two of the three current-gen consoles as well) which are certainly far more popular with the non-gaming crowd than even console games.
The biggest problem, though, when comparing PC gaming to console gaming is that most people see it as X vs. Y. Consoles vs. PC. It's more accurate, in my opinion, to see the PC as another platform; to compare it individually to the Wii or the XBox 360, etc. rather than to the consoles as a whole.
Even if commercial PC gaming becomes a thing of the past (I highly doubt it ever will) because the platform is so open there will always be the hobbyists who simply enjoy making games that will keep churning our content. So, although investing in PC gaming from a publishers point of view may not be a great idea, from the player's view I don't see any real cause for concern.
This is the basic premise behind Metal Gear Solid 4's plot. All military equipment is controlled by one centralized system and a terrorist group is trying to take over the system. If we're not careful we could have some Russian guy with a sinister mustache in control of everything.
You know where the sanctity of life came from? We made it up.
You know why? 'Cause we're alive! Self-interest.
Living people have a strong interest in promoting the idea that, somehow, life is sacred.
You don't see Abbot and Costello running around talking about this shit, do you?
We're not not hearing a whole lot from Mussolini on the subject.
What's the latest from JFK? Not a god damn thing!
'Cause JFK, Mussolini and Abbot and Costello are fucking dead! And dead people give less than a shit about the sanctity of life.
Easily my favorite comedian. With George Carlin and Bill Hicks gone the only counter-culture comedians left are Jon Stewart Lewis Black and David Cross. Hopefully one, or all, of them will step up and pick up the slack.
Screaming Mantis' marionettes are just lame. We get it, she's like The Sorrow, who's like Psycho Mantis. don't insult our intelligence by dangling that in front of our faces! I didn't really have a problem with any of the campiness. Metal Gear Solid has always been over the top and silly. What separates it from other games is that it realizes that it's silly and revels in it.
The dolls, to me, seemed to be more a self-referential nod, similar to how snake says "infinite ammo" when pointing to his bandanna in MGS2. Between her name, her looks and Snake's reaction, I think they made it pretty apparent the first time you see her that you were supposed to make the connection to Mantis.
Moreover, what doesn't come out in the reviews is that this game has a serious poo fixation. Within the first couple of hours of gameplay, there are two distinct major poo incidents. The first one shows you rather more than you might want to see of an enemy trooper... the second one, in particular, is just plain... freaky.
Again, that's just a reference to the earlier games. There's a character, Johnny Sasaki, that appears in all of the games (well, in MGS3 it's his grandfather) that gets a stomach virus in every game. He's pretty oafish in general, but again he's appeared in all of the games, so it should've been pretty obvious that he'd be in this one (though, admittedly his role is much larger than anyone would have expected this time around).
I feel like this game is designed very much for the people who've been following the series since the beginning. It's strange, considering that with MGS3 it seemed like they were trying to tailor it in such a way that new players could get into without knowing the history of the series.
Where MGS3 succeeded in making the plot work for new players, it failed at doing so for the controls. Even some veteran players had problems with the controller layout, most of which were due to multiple actions using a single button, but at different pressure levels. The top down camera as well was difficult to use for most players with the loss of the radar.
MGS4, on the other, made strides in the playability of the game (although they don't bother to explain all of the different CQC moves in-game, I think most new players can get by without them), but I feel that a new player would be completely lost as far as the story is concerned. It was obviously a difficult job considering how many loose ends the game needed to tie up. It's apparent that they at the very least tried to help newer players out a little by reducing the amount of codec calls you receive, the length of each one and making some of the calls happen in real-time while you're still in full control of the character. However, when it comes to the cutscenes they clearly felt it was better to give the fans of the series what they were used too rather than trying to make them appeal to a broader set.
Having finished the game last night I thought it was great. They tie up just about every loose end in the entire series and the large majority of them in a satisfying way. The final scene (after the initial credits) I thought was a great concept, but it went on much longer than it needed to, I felt. There wasn't as much humor in this game as the others and what was there wasn't as good as past games, but given the somber tone of Snake's dilemma I can understand why. There are a few parts where the weight of the situation can bear down on you; one scene in the last level is sure to go down as one of the most emotional moments in gameplay history.
As far as the gameplay is concerned I mostly knew what to expect since I played in the Metal Gear Online beta. I was surprised that there was one level where you were forced to be stealthy. In the levels before it you were given the option of how you wanted to play (though generally rewarded more for being stealthy), but in this one going guns akimbo didn't work. I could see how that could turn some people off.
I didn't feel the bosses were up to par with MGS3, but I don't see any game living up to the enemies in that one, especially 'The End.' With a few exceptions all of the bosses in MGS4 were new characters and you didn't find out their stories until AFTER you defeated them. To make things worse their background is revealed through (relatively) lengthy and boring codec conversations. This is one place where I felt MGS4 dropped the ball, but it seems to be a side effect of not wanting to introduce any new major characters.
Graphically and cinematically this game is ridiculously great. The character models are easily the best I've ever seen in a game(note: I'm mainly a console gamer). Most of the background textures are good, though a few are pretty low-res, but it seems to be a trade off for having such detailed character models. The cutscenes are enthralling and rival the work of some of the best directors in film (though some of the dialog is really, truly awful). What's great is that, for the most part, they blend seamlessly back into the gameplay.
Overall, I'd say the game is fantastic if you're familiar with the story, and an interesting, though flawed, ride for those who aren't but are patient enough to sit through the long cinematics.
...that George Carlin didn't say on "You Are All Diseased."
"Fuck the Children!... Remember, this is 'Mr. Conductor' talking, I know what I'm talking about. I also know all you single dads and soccer moms who think you're such fucking heroes aren't going to like this, but someone's gotta tell you for your own good. Your children are overrated and overvalued. You've turned them into little cult objects. You have a child fetish and it's not healthy.
...
What I'm talking about is this constant, mindless yammering in the media. This neurotic fixation that somehow everything, EVERYTHING, has to revolve around children. It's completely out of balance... The sooner you face it the better off you're gonna be.
...
You can't save 'em all. You gotta let 'em go. You gotta cut 'em loose. You gotta stop overprotecting them, because you're making them too soft. Today's kids are way too soft. For one thing there's too much emphasis on 'safety'... Kids have to wear helmets now for everything but jerking off! Grown ups have taken all the fun out of being a kid... Whatever happened to natural selection? Survival of the fittest? The kid who swallows too many marbles doesn't grow up to have kids of his own! Simple as that.
...
If you want to know how you can help your children: LEAVE THEM THE FUCK ALONE!"
Obviously some of the points he makes are exaggerated for comedic effect, but I think the underlying idea is spot on. Trying to protect kids from 'cyberbullying' is just stupid. There are assholes in the real world, that's just a fact of life. Trying to shield your kids (or anyone for that matter) from what basically amounts to name-calling will only ensure that they're not prepared to deal with people they might not like (something most adults have to do on a regular basis).
As the RIAA has learned (or at least should have by now) is that trying to persecute something like this will only help to make it more popular. The way I see it, there are two things that need to be done to reduce online bullying (you can't stop it completely, of course).
1. Keep people from becoming bullies in the first place. This is easier said than done and I can't say that I have any insight into how you'd even do this.
2. Make sure that the targets of online bullies don't play into the role of 'victim.' Most Internet Tough Guys act the way they do for their own amusement, which they mainly get from the reactions of the people they irritate. If no one bothers to even flinch at their efforts you can bet that most of them would change their ways or simply disappear to try their hand elsewhere. Either way it's a victory.
I flat-out disagree with his claim that it's the actors who bring the characters to life. Many games have been made that have wonderful character portrayal with no voiceacting.
The single most important thing for the portrayal of humanality in video games is character animation/body language, and facial expression. I just want to point out that this guy did both the voice acting and the majority of the motion-capture for Niko.
Reading the article, I don't get the sense that Hollick was looking for an outlet to complain. It seems more like the Times interviewed him and the best article they could pull out of it required them to take a small, but obviously controversial, portion of the interview and balloon it out to be the entire focus of the article.
I don't have Tivo, but I do have the cablevision HD DVR. While it's not perfect, it works well enough for me that it's worth the asking price ($10 a month per box). I can record two shows at once and set it up to record every new episode of a show, every episode of a show at that time or every episode of the show at any time. It even lets you plug in an eSATA drive for extra space, so I threw a 250 drive on with an enclosure and have virtually unlimited space (relative to how much TV I actually watch).
As far as going back to regular TV: I can't stand it. Commercials are such a huge waste of time and I make it a point to watch shows 'late' enough so that I can skip over all of the commercial breaks.
I've also noticed that, with a DVR, I actually watch a lot more TV. There are a lot of shows that I am vaguely interested in, but not enough that I'm willing to set aside a specific time to check them out. The good thing is that commercials account for about a quarter of actual programming, so even though I'm watching 'more' TV I'm not spending too much more actual time than I have in the past.
As convenient as it is though, a lot of my friends and family seem reluctant to the tech. I've noticed that, of my friends who don't like the idea, most of them are the type to turn on the TV randomly flip through the channels for an hour or two and then complain that "TV sucks." I've offered to get one for my grandmother, but being the technophobe that she is she thinks that she won't be able to work it and that I shouldn't waste the money, but then every time she comes here she talks about how cool it is. I did manage to get my brother to get one and he loves it and probably uses his more than I use mine.
I think if most people had access to a DVR it'd have a huge effect on the entire television landscape. Beyond the obvious effect on the business model I get the sense that a good chunk (likely the majority) of viewers have a handful of shows that they enjoy but for the most part just watch whatever is on. With the option to watch whatever they want at any time they want I think a lot of the stuff that's popular these days would be much less so.
I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but I get tired of the whole 'man is the ultimate evil' thing, especially since a lot of the people who believe that back it up with baseless information. Plenty of animals, like bears, kill each other (even their young) under the right circumstances. Animals war with one another (amongst their own species) just like us. In fact, Planet Earth has a segment that shows two tribes of gorillas fighting over territory. Likewise, plenty of different species will fight over things such as food or mates.
Of course, a lot of these conflicts end with one party surrendering rather than death, but the same is true of humans. On Killing does a pretty good job of showing how humans have a natural aversion to killing members of their own species (even in times of war) just like any other animal. And plenty of animals other than humans have been known to use tools. I'm too lazy to find the article, but I remember reading, about a year ago, an account of an ape using a bone to test the depth of the water in a river. It's safe to say that they animal kingdom has the same capacity for 'evil' as man. We just happen to be the dominant species and are very self-centered so no one pays attention to what the other creatures of the Earth are up to.
There's always the possibility that he never believed in the RIAA's bullshit and just did it all out of greed, but someone with such loose morals isn't the kind of person you'd want behind the bench. It seems to be a lose-lose situation for the people of Colorado.
Re:What do you call 1 lawyer at the ocean's bottom
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RIAA Lawyer Jumps Ship
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, Saul Williams used a pretty similar distribution method (with Reznor's help) for his last album and it did pretty well. He didn't make millions of dollars, but I'm sure he's made more than enough to be satisfied and certainly a lot more than if he'd gone through a label. I'd say that's pretty good for a relatively unknown act.
I've been using Optimum Online for about five years now and it's always been a pretty bad service up until recently. My connection would drop for fix or six hours at a time with no explanation a few nights a week. I'd call the support line and they'd fix something on their end and get it working again, but then it'd just drop a few hours later. It got to the point where it wasn't worth all the time spent on hold calling them every time it happened so I just began to work around it. On top of that my upload speeds were capped at about 17 kB/s which was a lot less than other people with the same plan as me were getting. Unfortunately, it was the only broadband service available to me so it was either learn to deal with the annoyances or switch back to dial-up.
Then about two years ago Verizon started rolling out their fios plans around here. A couple of my friends got it and loved it. It was a lot faster than cable and about 10 dollars cheaper to boot (or the same price for an even FASTER plan). So of course, I wanted to switch myself. So I looked at their site for details and started to get a little worried when I saw that they needed to install fiber in the ground. I knew it'd be a problem because I live in an apartment building, but their site claimed my address was eligible, so I figure it can't hurt to schedule an install. Of course the day the installer comes he tells me that I'm not eligible which was no big surprise.
But something great happened. I don't know if it was a coincidence or if Optimum had somehow found out that I tried to switch, but a few days later I noticed a huge increase in my speeds. Ever since then I've been getting down speeds in the range of 12~13 MBps or so and up speeds at about 2~3 MBps. My connection very rarely ever drops and when it does it's only for a few seconds.
If that's the effect that a single competitor has I can't help but wonder what sort of service we'd be seeing if we all had half a dozen or more broadband choices.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I think it's because the anime/manga style is a stylized caricature of reality, and trying to duplicate that back into realty tends to look... strange.
Quite the understatement.
Everyone has their own rationalization for why they do (or don't) turn to piracy. An example for myself: I pirate movies all the time, but I've also got a Netflix subscription, most of the movie channels on my cable service and a DVR. A lot of the time, however, it's just more convenient to grab a torrent and have a movie in an hour or so than have to wait for it to come in the mail or, worse, show up on TV and the studios are still getting my money anyway (I don't pirate movies that are still in theaters).
I know plenty of people who pirate simply because they can. A lot of them only end up using a fraction of the things they download. I think it's a result of two big changes in our culture: The quest for consumption, which is instilled in us from a young age. And an overwhelming respect for curiosity, which I think the vastness of the internet has strengthened in the last decade or so. The fact is, a lot of people, download things that they've only got a cursory interest, but it's so easy to pirate that figure they might as well check it out. The same way I might look up Boudhanath on wikipedia, but if I had to go to the library to do so I'd lose any interest I might have had in it.
Personally, I rarely pirate games. Those that I do pirate are usually old games that I either want to revisit (roms) or just never got to play when they were still new (I didn't have a computer as a kid, so I missed out on a lot of classics).
A trend I have noticed, however, is that a lost of publishers are including intrusive and annoying DRM in their games and sometimes even in the demos of the games. I remember on my last computer I'd been having problems with the disc drive for months before I found out about Starforce. Removing it fixed all of my problems. Those sorts of things make it clear why even legit customers would prefer to use a pirated version.
It'd be foolish to think that you could stop piracy completely, but I think the best way to reduce it is to make your product as easy to acquire and use as possible. It's pretty difficult to beat the pirates at ease of acquisition; with torrent sites people can go to one place for anything they need, whether it be games, music, ebooks or what have you. Something like Steam, but for EVERYTHING, that worked in a browser rather than as a stand-alone app could put up a good fight, I think, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Increasing ease of use can be done pretty easily, though. It just means throwing out any DRM that impedes functionality (of the game OR the system it's run on), because that will just turn customers into pirates.
There was also a picture of the G-man on the old lady's computer.
I feel like the rest of the cast is overlooked. The Joker certainly stole the show, but Aaron Eckhart was great as Dent. Gary Oldman especially seems to be ignored and I think, excluding Ledger, he gave the best performance in the film. He did a great job of making Gordon seem like a real person that you could run into in any police station in America.
It DID work. The guy in question decided not to blackmail Bruce Wayne. When he went on TV it was because Joker had begun to kill people demanding that Batman reveal his true identity. He was attempting to save lives in his own, misguided way, but it backfired when the Joker put a price on his head instead.
But they've only put out two original titles made specifically for the Wii. They've done for Wii so far one (Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles) has sold well and one (Zack & Wiki) has not, so I'm not ready to say that they completely understand the Wii just yet. But I'd agree that Capcom is easily the most proactive of the third parties when it comes to the Wii and it's certainly paid off for them.
If someone would rather be working on the next Gears of War, I'm not sure I want them making stuff for the Wii. It takes someone who's actually capable of original thought, not someone who wants to turn out yet another shooter with shiny graphics.
Just to clarify, when I said "the next Gears of War" I meant the next new franchise that will becomes a hit amongst 'core' gamers, not a Gears clone. Maybe Assassin's Creed or Dead Rising would have been better examples.
Bah, forgot to add the line breaks in there. Curse, you Slashdot!
There's also the fact that a lot of companies dismissed the Wii at first, because it's a lot less powerful than the Xbox 360 and PS3.
While that was certainly true for the first six months or so that the wii was out, that's hardly the problem now. A lot of companies are making games for Wii and simply not doing well (with a few exceptions). Simply put, the third parties can't figure out what Wii owners 'want.' Some people even believe that all Wii owners want is "games from Nintendo" and little else.
It's not like they're obligated to use the Wii-mote/nunchuck for the games, they could make "classic controller required" games.
From a business standpoint, I can see how that might make sense, but there are other factors involved. The Wii is old tech. The only thing that separates it from the other consoles is its peripherals. If you're not going to take advantage of them then working on a Wii title isn't going to feel very rewarding. Especially when you see what all your friends are doing with the HD systems. I mean, this is all conjecture, admittedly, but I'd imagine that the type of people who'd want to work in the gaming industry to begin with are naturally more into 'hardcore' games. They're not the target demographic of the Wii. It'd be like asking a director who loves action movies to do a romantic comedy. They'll do it grudgingly and turn out a rushed product that they'll be all too happy to be finished with. I don't have any experience in the industry, but my understanding is that similar positions outside of the gaming industry tend to have better pay and hours, which leads me to believe that those who do work in gaming are probably very enthusiastic about what they do. So how do you convince someone who'd rather be working on the next Gears of War to make something on the Wii? To work within the limitations of old tech (after all, these people have likely worked on the gamecube and PS2 for quite some time) on a game that they themselves have little interest in? If their heart isn't in it then it will show through in the final product. So ultimately, the people that would be best to develop for the Wii would be those that are the most interested in it's peripherals. But even then, there have been a lot of third party games that have been released for the Wii and gotten universal acclaim for their use of the wiimote and still tanked when it came to sales. In short, I think to most publishers, the Wii is just a big mystery that they have yet to figure out.
considering they were number 2 to themselves, the numbers take on a different light.
They were actually #2 to XBox 360. The article is about life-to-date sales in the U.S. and, although it's up for debate, handhelds and home consoles are generally considered two different markets.
Anyway, I was actually surprised when Nintendo announced this at E3. I had assumed it had already happened long ago with the sorts of numbers Nintendo was hitting every month and the way the 360 sales had slowed.
The problem with saying that PC gaming is 'dying' is that a lot of people disagree on what, specifically, counts as PC gaming. Most people who'd call themselves gamers think of the big franchises and developers when they think of PC gaming. Half-life and Crysis and so on.
But those aren't the only PC games out there. Some people would include flash games amongst PC games (though it can be debated that you can play those games on two of the three current-gen consoles as well) which are certainly far more popular with the non-gaming crowd than even console games.
The biggest problem, though, when comparing PC gaming to console gaming is that most people see it as X vs. Y. Consoles vs. PC. It's more accurate, in my opinion, to see the PC as another platform; to compare it individually to the Wii or the XBox 360, etc. rather than to the consoles as a whole.
Even if commercial PC gaming becomes a thing of the past (I highly doubt it ever will) because the platform is so open there will always be the hobbyists who simply enjoy making games that will keep churning our content. So, although investing in PC gaming from a publishers point of view may not be a great idea, from the player's view I don't see any real cause for concern.
This is the basic premise behind Metal Gear Solid 4's plot. All military equipment is controlled by one centralized system and a terrorist group is trying to take over the system. If we're not careful we could have some Russian guy with a sinister mustache in control of everything.
You know where the sanctity of life came from? We made it up.
You know why? 'Cause we're alive! Self-interest.
Living people have a strong interest in promoting the idea that, somehow, life is sacred.
You don't see Abbot and Costello running around talking about this shit, do you?
We're not not hearing a whole lot from Mussolini on the subject.
What's the latest from JFK? Not a god damn thing!
'Cause JFK, Mussolini and Abbot and Costello are fucking dead! And dead people give less than a shit about the sanctity of life.
Easily my favorite comedian. With George Carlin and Bill Hicks gone the only counter-culture comedians left are Jon Stewart Lewis Black and David Cross. Hopefully one, or all, of them will step up and pick up the slack.
I can't! I'm a vampire!
The dolls, to me, seemed to be more a self-referential nod, similar to how snake says "infinite ammo" when pointing to his bandanna in MGS2. Between her name, her looks and Snake's reaction, I think they made it pretty apparent the first time you see her that you were supposed to make the connection to Mantis.
Moreover, what doesn't come out in the reviews is that this game has a serious poo fixation. Within the first couple of hours of gameplay, there are two distinct major poo incidents. The first one shows you rather more than you might want to see of an enemy trooper... the second one, in particular, is just plain... freaky.
Again, that's just a reference to the earlier games. There's a character, Johnny Sasaki, that appears in all of the games (well, in MGS3 it's his grandfather) that gets a stomach virus in every game. He's pretty oafish in general, but again he's appeared in all of the games, so it should've been pretty obvious that he'd be in this one (though, admittedly his role is much larger than anyone would have expected this time around).
I feel like this game is designed very much for the people who've been following the series since the beginning. It's strange, considering that with MGS3 it seemed like they were trying to tailor it in such a way that new players could get into without knowing the history of the series.
Where MGS3 succeeded in making the plot work for new players, it failed at doing so for the controls. Even some veteran players had problems with the controller layout, most of which were due to multiple actions using a single button, but at different pressure levels. The top down camera as well was difficult to use for most players with the loss of the radar.
MGS4, on the other, made strides in the playability of the game (although they don't bother to explain all of the different CQC moves in-game, I think most new players can get by without them), but I feel that a new player would be completely lost as far as the story is concerned. It was obviously a difficult job considering how many loose ends the game needed to tie up. It's apparent that they at the very least tried to help newer players out a little by reducing the amount of codec calls you receive, the length of each one and making some of the calls happen in real-time while you're still in full control of the character. However, when it comes to the cutscenes they clearly felt it was better to give the fans of the series what they were used too rather than trying to make them appeal to a broader set.
Having finished the game last night I thought it was great. They tie up just about every loose end in the entire series and the large majority of them in a satisfying way. The final scene (after the initial credits) I thought was a great concept, but it went on much longer than it needed to, I felt. There wasn't as much humor in this game as the others and what was there wasn't as good as past games, but given the somber tone of Snake's dilemma I can understand why. There are a few parts where the weight of the situation can bear down on you; one scene in the last level is sure to go down as one of the most emotional moments in gameplay history.
As far as the gameplay is concerned I mostly knew what to expect since I played in the Metal Gear Online beta. I was surprised that there was one level where you were forced to be stealthy. In the levels before it you were given the option of how you wanted to play (though generally rewarded more for being stealthy), but in this one going guns akimbo didn't work. I could see how that could turn some people off.
I didn't feel the bosses were up to par with MGS3, but I don't see any game living up to the enemies in that one, especially 'The End.' With a few exceptions all of the bosses in MGS4 were new characters and you didn't find out their stories until AFTER you defeated them. To make things worse their background is revealed through (relatively) lengthy and boring codec conversations. This is one place where I felt MGS4 dropped the ball, but it seems to be a side effect of not wanting to introduce any new major characters.
Graphically and cinematically this game is ridiculously great. The character models are easily the best I've ever seen in a game(note: I'm mainly a console gamer). Most of the background textures are good, though a few are pretty low-res, but it seems to be a trade off for having such detailed character models. The cutscenes are enthralling and rival the work of some of the best directors in film (though some of the dialog is really, truly awful). What's great is that, for the most part, they blend seamlessly back into the gameplay.
Overall, I'd say the game is fantastic if you're familiar with the story, and an interesting, though flawed, ride for those who aren't but are patient enough to sit through the long cinematics.
"Fuck the Children!
What I'm talking about is this constant, mindless yammering in the media. This neurotic fixation that somehow everything, EVERYTHING, has to revolve around children. It's completely out of balance... The sooner you face it the better off you're gonna be.
You can't save 'em all. You gotta let 'em go. You gotta cut 'em loose. You gotta stop overprotecting them, because you're making them too soft. Today's kids are way too soft. For one thing there's too much emphasis on 'safety'... Kids have to wear helmets now for everything but jerking off! Grown ups have taken all the fun out of being a kid... Whatever happened to natural selection? Survival of the fittest? The kid who swallows too many marbles doesn't grow up to have kids of his own! Simple as that.
If you want to know how you can help your children: LEAVE THEM THE FUCK ALONE!"
Obviously some of the points he makes are exaggerated for comedic effect, but I think the underlying idea is spot on. Trying to protect kids from 'cyberbullying' is just stupid. There are assholes in the real world, that's just a fact of life. Trying to shield your kids (or anyone for that matter) from what basically amounts to name-calling will only ensure that they're not prepared to deal with people they might not like (something most adults have to do on a regular basis).
As the RIAA has learned (or at least should have by now) is that trying to persecute something like this will only help to make it more popular. The way I see it, there are two things that need to be done to reduce online bullying (you can't stop it completely, of course).
1. Keep people from becoming bullies in the first place. This is easier said than done and I can't say that I have any insight into how you'd even do this.
2. Make sure that the targets of online bullies don't play into the role of 'victim.' Most Internet Tough Guys act the way they do for their own amusement, which they mainly get from the reactions of the people they irritate. If no one bothers to even flinch at their efforts you can bet that most of them would change their ways or simply disappear to try their hand elsewhere. Either way it's a victory.
I don't have Tivo, but I do have the cablevision HD DVR. While it's not perfect, it works well enough for me that it's worth the asking price ($10 a month per box). I can record two shows at once and set it up to record every new episode of a show, every episode of a show at that time or every episode of the show at any time. It even lets you plug in an eSATA drive for extra space, so I threw a 250 drive on with an enclosure and have virtually unlimited space (relative to how much TV I actually watch).
As far as going back to regular TV: I can't stand it. Commercials are such a huge waste of time and I make it a point to watch shows 'late' enough so that I can skip over all of the commercial breaks.
I've also noticed that, with a DVR, I actually watch a lot more TV. There are a lot of shows that I am vaguely interested in, but not enough that I'm willing to set aside a specific time to check them out. The good thing is that commercials account for about a quarter of actual programming, so even though I'm watching 'more' TV I'm not spending too much more actual time than I have in the past.
As convenient as it is though, a lot of my friends and family seem reluctant to the tech. I've noticed that, of my friends who don't like the idea, most of them are the type to turn on the TV randomly flip through the channels for an hour or two and then complain that "TV sucks." I've offered to get one for my grandmother, but being the technophobe that she is she thinks that she won't be able to work it and that I shouldn't waste the money, but then every time she comes here she talks about how cool it is. I did manage to get my brother to get one and he loves it and probably uses his more than I use mine.
I think if most people had access to a DVR it'd have a huge effect on the entire television landscape. Beyond the obvious effect on the business model I get the sense that a good chunk (likely the majority) of viewers have a handful of shows that they enjoy but for the most part just watch whatever is on. With the option to watch whatever they want at any time they want I think a lot of the stuff that's popular these days would be much less so.
I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but I get tired of the whole 'man is the ultimate evil' thing, especially since a lot of the people who believe that back it up with baseless information. Plenty of animals, like bears, kill each other (even their young) under the right circumstances. Animals war with one another (amongst their own species) just like us. In fact, Planet Earth has a segment that shows two tribes of gorillas fighting over territory. Likewise, plenty of different species will fight over things such as food or mates.
Of course, a lot of these conflicts end with one party surrendering rather than death, but the same is true of humans. On Killing does a pretty good job of showing how humans have a natural aversion to killing members of their own species (even in times of war) just like any other animal. And plenty of animals other than humans have been known to use tools. I'm too lazy to find the article, but I remember reading, about a year ago, an account of an ape using a bone to test the depth of the water in a river. It's safe to say that they animal kingdom has the same capacity for 'evil' as man. We just happen to be the dominant species and are very self-centered so no one pays attention to what the other creatures of the Earth are up to.
There's always the possibility that he never believed in the RIAA's bullshit and just did it all out of greed, but someone with such loose morals isn't the kind of person you'd want behind the bench. It seems to be a lose-lose situation for the people of Colorado.
I thought the RIAA lawyers were the sharks.
Reminds me of What's Expected of Us by Ted Chiang.
Well, Saul Williams used a pretty similar distribution method (with Reznor's help) for his last album and it did pretty well. He didn't make millions of dollars, but I'm sure he's made more than enough to be satisfied and certainly a lot more than if he'd gone through a label. I'd say that's pretty good for a relatively unknown act.
I've been using Optimum Online for about five years now and it's always been a pretty bad service up until recently. My connection would drop for fix or six hours at a time with no explanation a few nights a week. I'd call the support line and they'd fix something on their end and get it working again, but then it'd just drop a few hours later. It got to the point where it wasn't worth all the time spent on hold calling them every time it happened so I just began to work around it. On top of that my upload speeds were capped at about 17 kB/s which was a lot less than other people with the same plan as me were getting. Unfortunately, it was the only broadband service available to me so it was either learn to deal with the annoyances or switch back to dial-up.
Then about two years ago Verizon started rolling out their fios plans around here. A couple of my friends got it and loved it. It was a lot faster than cable and about 10 dollars cheaper to boot (or the same price for an even FASTER plan). So of course, I wanted to switch myself. So I looked at their site for details and started to get a little worried when I saw that they needed to install fiber in the ground. I knew it'd be a problem because I live in an apartment building, but their site claimed my address was eligible, so I figure it can't hurt to schedule an install. Of course the day the installer comes he tells me that I'm not eligible which was no big surprise.
But something great happened. I don't know if it was a coincidence or if Optimum had somehow found out that I tried to switch, but a few days later I noticed a huge increase in my speeds. Ever since then I've been getting down speeds in the range of 12~13 MBps or so and up speeds at about 2~3 MBps. My connection very rarely ever drops and when it does it's only for a few seconds.
If that's the effect that a single competitor has I can't help but wonder what sort of service we'd be seeing if we all had half a dozen or more broadband choices.