I was just at the local EB a few nights ago, and in walks a girl and her mother. They looked around for a bit, and then noticed that all of the casual girly games (Barbie Horse Adventures or Nancy Drew or whatever) are all... 8 feet above the ground, on the highest shelf possible. The actual reachable shelves were stocked with shooters and EA sports titles. They had to get a guy over to bring each interesting game down for them. So yes, retooling their layout is certainly necessary.
To be clear I'm not advocating that an aspiring game developer should go to game school - quite the opposite in fact. My experience in the industry is such that I know the quality of the education is minimal at best, and it certainly doesn't give you the depth necessary for your skills to be relevant in even 6 months. An aspiring game artist needs to go to art school (a proper one, with proper basic education in visual or audio arts)... an aspiring game coder needs to get a CS/eng degree.
Yes, great games do come out of hobbyists all the time. This is because these hobbyists have poured time and energy into the craft and they DO have a fair bit of experience developing and designing games. For every great indie game like Gish that shows up are a million crappy, unworthy prototypes sitting on the developer's hard drive somewhere. Nobody drops in out of the blue and designs a great game with no prior experience.
I was more responding to the other poster's claim that one can make a great deal of money and then get a bunch of lowly-paid slack-jawed yokels to make his game for him. It doesn't work like that, or at least certainly the product won't be any good. You either spend a huge amount of developing your craft or you don't.
There's funding experienced designers to produce a great product, and then there's sticking your hand in to somewhere you don't belong. I have seen both types of management. The effective exec recognizes design talent and recognizes that the best way to create great work is to leave them be and support them when necessary. The ineffective exec fulfills his own incomplete dreams of being an uber-designer, and injects his asinine ideas left, right, and center, exploiting his position to get his crappy ideas into the game, and thus compromising it.
A random idea and a sack of money will get you a laughably shoddy product that nobody in their right mind will ever play - the gaming equivalent to vanity presses... Sure your book gets printed, but nobody will ever read it, and the guys who published it for you will be laughing all the way to th bank.
Great experience and no money won't get you all too far, but with technology in its current and future state independent low-budget developers can still make an impact, and a fair bit of cash while doing so.
Naturally one wants to be a talented and experienced designer who has the entire balance of a swiss bank supporting him. If you're in that position, great, perhaps you will create something superb, spectacular, and will define the industry.
Yes, because being a business grad with a sack of money makes you a qualified game designer? I feel sorry for the coders you hire who have to implement your idiotic ideas - designing a game is an art/science that takes dedication and real experience, not just a random idea and a sack of money. It's like a wealthy financier trying to become a world-renowned filmmaker just because he has the money to hire a camera crew.
Some of us have a passion for game development, and for programming. While there are some companies out there that exploit their employees in horrible conditions, there are just as many who are willing to treat their developers with respect. This is true for every field of industry I have ever been in (from manufacturing all the way to game dev), so don't think long hours, low pay, poor job security, lousy managers, and corrupt execs are somehow unique or more prevalent in this industry than the next.
Game development is hectic, is it often tough, and if you don't love building games you're going to have a hellish time. Same goes for most "industrialized" arts like film or publishing.
60% in your world maybe. Keep in mind that the most successful gaming franchise of *all time* is rated E (I am, of course, talking about The Sims). That one series has kicked the collective asses of your 3 M-rated successful franchises...
With companies seemingly jumping aboard the Mac gaming wagon (great for a Mac user like myself), I wonder if Cider will become a stopgap, or the future. On the one hand, the recent move towards Macs is obviously because publishers feel the Mac market is now worth capturing, but at the same time will companies continue to rely on the crutch that is Cider far into the future, or will developers shift towards developing for both platforms natively?
The problem I have with this is that some of the best films of our time have not been rated R, and in fact many were PG, or at most PG-13. Hollywood doesn't seem to have a problem with making great films without decapitating someone. So why is it that the game industry, and gamers, feel the need to make bloody, violent messes in order for a game to even be good?
Well, keep in mind that Bioshock is a "sequel" to the System Shock series in the first place. I hope if Irrational does do a sequel (and I'm hoping they do!) that it be a spiritual sequel, not a direct continuation of this plot, since it's pretty much run its course.
The average consumer cannot be expected to keep such tabs on their hardware devices. As the suite of iPhone apps grow (both 1st and 3rd party) IMHO there should be a control panel setting to turn off EDGE data. In the end you need a few settings:
If those controls are in place a user can easily avoid data charges while roaming, without having to hunt down and turn off the settings in EVERY app on the phone.
The way I see it, and from what I've seen through history, violent revolution is inevitable. No government is perfectly stable, and eventually all will fall. I see revolutions as a natural part of a cycle - birth, rise, rule, and collapse of an empire/government/civilization, only to begin anew again. Some countries unfortunately are stuck in a perpetual loop of revolution, which is sad, but that being said I do not think revolutions in general are avoidable. This is not to say I *condone* violent revolution per se, but rather that I think it is inevitable.
Furthermore, revolutions are a critical part of wealth redistribution. No matter how their contemporaries (or even historians!) try to sugar coat it with glitzy values like purity, freedom, liberty, etc, every major revolution that's ever occurred has had their basis in economics. When an oligarchy appears, when the poor and destitute become the majority, and simply when the wealth gap gets ridiculously wide, society will revolt and equalize the wealth (usually by slaughtering the rich). This is why I'm wary of the growing wealth divide in first-world nations, as the wider we get the closer we are to the next big revolution.
While I agree with your assessment on Fossett and Gray, I would disagree about Kim. From what I have read Kim waited with his family in a car until there seemed to be no hope that rescue was imminent, and only left the vehicle to retrieve help. Perhaps it was not the smartest thing to do, wandering into the wilderness alone, but he certainly didn't endanger himself unnecessarily in the first place, unlike the other two on the list.
At the altitudes that small planes fly, to something viewing from space the size difference would be negligible. Goes double if it's flying close to the tree tops, like a search and rescue plane would.
MS Paint for screenshots is the wrong tool for the job.
On Mac: Cmd+Shift+3 takes a screenshot to your desktop in PNG format. Cmd+Shift+4 allows you to drag out a zone, which is then similarly dumped to a PNG file. Cmd+Shift+4 then Space allows you to click on any window to take a shot of just that window. Funny shortcuts to remember, but it's MUCH faster that PrntScrn, Open Paint, Paste, Crop, Save As.
I don't really get the fuss about solid state. There are the constant claims that a spinning platter in your computer is inherently dangerous, but honestly, I have NEVER had a problem with my iPod, nor any of my laptop's drives. The battery consumption is certainly nice though.
I often favour FS over BB. Best Buy advertises that none of their staff are on commission, and thus are not likely to get aggressive trying to sell you things - but I've found that in my local BB this is taken to the other extreme - I couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone, trying to find an item. The staff bounced me from one to another just trying to find a goddamn USB hub.
At least at Future Shop if I tell a guy I need a USB hub, he will bust his ass and show me the selection.
I hate to be a bitch, but... many of Slashdot's Patriot Act opposers also opposed the second amendment. There's plenty of "throwing out the Constitution the moment it inconveniences them" on both sides.
We have this store called Future Shop, which is about equivalent to your Best Buy in the US. I've noticed that over the last year or so they've started processing all rebates at the checkout counter and submitting electronically. I suppose that is a more secure way to ensure your money does arrive - after all, the clerk did it himself, and if they "lose" it, it's their own fault.
Maybe retailers should start fronting the rebate and recovering it from the processors at a later time...
Yes... The point I was trying to make is that, for all the people talking about 3rd party Skype on iPhone/Touch, how about someone come up with a GSM chip + microphone + speaker that hooks up to the dock, and some enterprising coders rebuild the iPhone UI from scratch? Allows for an "upgrade path" from a iPod Touch to the iPhone, so to speak.
Many posters have brought up the existence of voice memo microphones/speaker attachments for the olds iPods. My question is... will we see accessory producers make *cell phone* attachments? A GSM transceiver with a microphone and a speaker that hooks up through the dock connector. Won't be terribly elegant but it would be usable, especially since it's almost a complete certainty that 3rd party apps WILL be written for the phone whether Apple likes it or not.
The fact that it's better than what came before is no excuse. If I buy a track off iTunes I deserve to be able to splice, mix, speed up, slow down, delete, burn, etc, the file in any way I choose. Charging people a second time is just ludicrous.
How did that get modded informative? Are the mods subscribing to unsubstantiated low-budget conspiracy theory shows now? The Nazca Lines are important archaeologically, but there's nothing to suggest that they are of extraterrestrial origin, or that it was involved with spacecraft at all.
While I agree with the gist of what you're saying...
No one will tell you where to work or where to live or which doctor to go to or who you can be friends with.
This simply isn't true for many churches. While the church won't send out their legal hounds, I have personally seen many pastors and religious leaders who DO tell their followers such things. Some jobs are against God's will, some friends should be sidelined, since they do not believe. Heck, aren't Jehovah's Witnesses aren't allowed blood transfusions? That's a pretty big "can't see that doctor" to me.
So yes, the difference between cult and religion is that the former wants compensation for belief, while the latter does not. But both can cause believers to do terrible things.
Slashdot Mirror
I was just at the local EB a few nights ago, and in walks a girl and her mother. They looked around for a bit, and then noticed that all of the casual girly games (Barbie Horse Adventures or Nancy Drew or whatever) are all... 8 feet above the ground, on the highest shelf possible. The actual reachable shelves were stocked with shooters and EA sports titles. They had to get a guy over to bring each interesting game down for them. So yes, retooling their layout is certainly necessary.
Neither. You present that as a binary choice when it really is not. Or both, if you work for yourself :D
To be clear I'm not advocating that an aspiring game developer should go to game school - quite the opposite in fact. My experience in the industry is such that I know the quality of the education is minimal at best, and it certainly doesn't give you the depth necessary for your skills to be relevant in even 6 months. An aspiring game artist needs to go to art school (a proper one, with proper basic education in visual or audio arts)... an aspiring game coder needs to get a CS/eng degree.
Yes, great games do come out of hobbyists all the time. This is because these hobbyists have poured time and energy into the craft and they DO have a fair bit of experience developing and designing games. For every great indie game like Gish that shows up are a million crappy, unworthy prototypes sitting on the developer's hard drive somewhere. Nobody drops in out of the blue and designs a great game with no prior experience.
I was more responding to the other poster's claim that one can make a great deal of money and then get a bunch of lowly-paid slack-jawed yokels to make his game for him. It doesn't work like that, or at least certainly the product won't be any good. You either spend a huge amount of developing your craft or you don't.
There's funding experienced designers to produce a great product, and then there's sticking your hand in to somewhere you don't belong. I have seen both types of management. The effective exec recognizes design talent and recognizes that the best way to create great work is to leave them be and support them when necessary. The ineffective exec fulfills his own incomplete dreams of being an uber-designer, and injects his asinine ideas left, right, and center, exploiting his position to get his crappy ideas into the game, and thus compromising it.
A random idea and a sack of money will get you a laughably shoddy product that nobody in their right mind will ever play - the gaming equivalent to vanity presses... Sure your book gets printed, but nobody will ever read it, and the guys who published it for you will be laughing all the way to th bank.
Great experience and no money won't get you all too far, but with technology in its current and future state independent low-budget developers can still make an impact, and a fair bit of cash while doing so.
Naturally one wants to be a talented and experienced designer who has the entire balance of a swiss bank supporting him. If you're in that position, great, perhaps you will create something superb, spectacular, and will define the industry.
Yes, because being a business grad with a sack of money makes you a qualified game designer? I feel sorry for the coders you hire who have to implement your idiotic ideas - designing a game is an art/science that takes dedication and real experience, not just a random idea and a sack of money. It's like a wealthy financier trying to become a world-renowned filmmaker just because he has the money to hire a camera crew.
Some of us have a passion for game development, and for programming. While there are some companies out there that exploit their employees in horrible conditions, there are just as many who are willing to treat their developers with respect. This is true for every field of industry I have ever been in (from manufacturing all the way to game dev), so don't think long hours, low pay, poor job security, lousy managers, and corrupt execs are somehow unique or more prevalent in this industry than the next.
Game development is hectic, is it often tough, and if you don't love building games you're going to have a hellish time. Same goes for most "industrialized" arts like film or publishing.
60% in your world maybe. Keep in mind that the most successful gaming franchise of *all time* is rated E (I am, of course, talking about The Sims). That one series has kicked the collective asses of your 3 M-rated successful franchises...
With companies seemingly jumping aboard the Mac gaming wagon (great for a Mac user like myself), I wonder if Cider will become a stopgap, or the future. On the one hand, the recent move towards Macs is obviously because publishers feel the Mac market is now worth capturing, but at the same time will companies continue to rely on the crutch that is Cider far into the future, or will developers shift towards developing for both platforms natively?
The problem I have with this is that some of the best films of our time have not been rated R, and in fact many were PG, or at most PG-13. Hollywood doesn't seem to have a problem with making great films without decapitating someone. So why is it that the game industry, and gamers, feel the need to make bloody, violent messes in order for a game to even be good?
Well, keep in mind that Bioshock is a "sequel" to the System Shock series in the first place. I hope if Irrational does do a sequel (and I'm hoping they do!) that it be a spiritual sequel, not a direct continuation of this plot, since it's pretty much run its course.
The average consumer cannot be expected to keep such tabs on their hardware devices. As the suite of iPhone apps grow (both 1st and 3rd party) IMHO there should be a control panel setting to turn off EDGE data. In the end you need a few settings:
- Voice on/off
- Data on/off
-SMS on/off (also uses EDGE)
WiFi on/off
If those controls are in place a user can easily avoid data charges while roaming, without having to hunt down and turn off the settings in EVERY app on the phone.
The way I see it, and from what I've seen through history, violent revolution is inevitable. No government is perfectly stable, and eventually all will fall. I see revolutions as a natural part of a cycle - birth, rise, rule, and collapse of an empire/government/civilization, only to begin anew again. Some countries unfortunately are stuck in a perpetual loop of revolution, which is sad, but that being said I do not think revolutions in general are avoidable. This is not to say I *condone* violent revolution per se, but rather that I think it is inevitable.
Furthermore, revolutions are a critical part of wealth redistribution. No matter how their contemporaries (or even historians!) try to sugar coat it with glitzy values like purity, freedom, liberty, etc, every major revolution that's ever occurred has had their basis in economics. When an oligarchy appears, when the poor and destitute become the majority, and simply when the wealth gap gets ridiculously wide, society will revolt and equalize the wealth (usually by slaughtering the rich). This is why I'm wary of the growing wealth divide in first-world nations, as the wider we get the closer we are to the next big revolution.
While I agree with your assessment on Fossett and Gray, I would disagree about Kim. From what I have read Kim waited with his family in a car until there seemed to be no hope that rescue was imminent, and only left the vehicle to retrieve help. Perhaps it was not the smartest thing to do, wandering into the wilderness alone, but he certainly didn't endanger himself unnecessarily in the first place, unlike the other two on the list.
At the altitudes that small planes fly, to something viewing from space the size difference would be negligible. Goes double if it's flying close to the tree tops, like a search and rescue plane would.
I'm on Slashdot, that advice is irrelevant.
MS Paint for screenshots is the wrong tool for the job.
On Mac: Cmd+Shift+3 takes a screenshot to your desktop in PNG format. Cmd+Shift+4 allows you to drag out a zone, which is then similarly dumped to a PNG file. Cmd+Shift+4 then Space allows you to click on any window to take a shot of just that window. Funny shortcuts to remember, but it's MUCH faster that PrntScrn, Open Paint, Paste, Crop, Save As.
I don't really get the fuss about solid state. There are the constant claims that a spinning platter in your computer is inherently dangerous, but honestly, I have NEVER had a problem with my iPod, nor any of my laptop's drives. The battery consumption is certainly nice though.
I often favour FS over BB. Best Buy advertises that none of their staff are on commission, and thus are not likely to get aggressive trying to sell you things - but I've found that in my local BB this is taken to the other extreme - I couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone, trying to find an item. The staff bounced me from one to another just trying to find a goddamn USB hub.
At least at Future Shop if I tell a guy I need a USB hub, he will bust his ass and show me the selection.
I hate to be a bitch, but... many of Slashdot's Patriot Act opposers also opposed the second amendment. There's plenty of "throwing out the Constitution the moment it inconveniences them" on both sides.
We have this store called Future Shop, which is about equivalent to your Best Buy in the US. I've noticed that over the last year or so they've started processing all rebates at the checkout counter and submitting electronically. I suppose that is a more secure way to ensure your money does arrive - after all, the clerk did it himself, and if they "lose" it, it's their own fault.
Maybe retailers should start fronting the rebate and recovering it from the processors at a later time...
Yes... The point I was trying to make is that, for all the people talking about 3rd party Skype on iPhone/Touch, how about someone come up with a GSM chip + microphone + speaker that hooks up to the dock, and some enterprising coders rebuild the iPhone UI from scratch? Allows for an "upgrade path" from a iPod Touch to the iPhone, so to speak.
I would. But we all know Joe Average is not even going to KNOW about all of this 3rd party iPhone software, much less use it.
Many posters have brought up the existence of voice memo microphones/speaker attachments for the olds iPods. My question is... will we see accessory producers make *cell phone* attachments? A GSM transceiver with a microphone and a speaker that hooks up through the dock connector. Won't be terribly elegant but it would be usable, especially since it's almost a complete certainty that 3rd party apps WILL be written for the phone whether Apple likes it or not.
The fact that it's better than what came before is no excuse. If I buy a track off iTunes I deserve to be able to splice, mix, speed up, slow down, delete, burn, etc, the file in any way I choose. Charging people a second time is just ludicrous.
How did that get modded informative? Are the mods subscribing to unsubstantiated low-budget conspiracy theory shows now? The Nazca Lines are important archaeologically, but there's nothing to suggest that they are of extraterrestrial origin, or that it was involved with spacecraft at all.
While I agree with the gist of what you're saying...
No one will tell you where to work or where to live or which doctor to go to or who you can be friends with.This simply isn't true for many churches. While the church won't send out their legal hounds, I have personally seen many pastors and religious leaders who DO tell their followers such things. Some jobs are against God's will, some friends should be sidelined, since they do not believe. Heck, aren't Jehovah's Witnesses aren't allowed blood transfusions? That's a pretty big "can't see that doctor" to me.
So yes, the difference between cult and religion is that the former wants compensation for belief, while the latter does not. But both can cause believers to do terrible things.