I think the point is: do Nintendo care if it's a gimmick, so long as it's as successful a "gimmick" as the DS. Whether the dual screen helped or not (I've always been kind of "meh" about it, even though I own one and enjoy the games) you can't argue it sold boatloads. Of course, price may have helped there, at more than twice the cost (and during not exactly great times for the world financially) it will be interesting to see both a) how many people jump on the 3DS right away and b) how competitively any Sony device is priced.
Short of banning him forever, this is an effective way of alerting other players that they might be playing with a cheat. The label isn't part of the punishment, it's part of the service that other gold subscribers are paying for. Arguably it's in MS' interests to outright ban him (he loses whatever remaining subscription he has paid for and has to buy a new one, MS get to appear to have a zero tolerance for cheats approach which makes it more appealing to others), the fact that they're only labelling him IS a concession in his favour that doesn't then go on to disadvantage everyone else he plays with.
It's pretty much required to disable all voice communications before playing most XBL games. Even if the profanity doesn't worry you, the idiocy almost certainly will, and that's without the people who seem to think we all want to listen to a heavily distorted, heavily compressed rendition of whatever music they've got blaring down the microphone the whole time you're playing.
That's not entirely true, I play offline quite a lot (I have two XBOX consoles, one online and one offline, in different rooms), I take my profile between the two on a USB stick and achievements I've earned offline have (touch wood) always been recognised when I go online. They are stored against the profile though, so if your profile was in any way corrupted and had to be recovered from their server (where the information about unlocked achievements hadn't yet been uploaded) it's possible this data was lost.
Sole intent? Only serves to humiliate? I'd argue at least a big part of the intent is to protect other (paying) members of the service - they have a vested interest in knowing if people have been caught cheating, particularly if they suspect they're doing it again (although to be fair the tag should probably expire after a set time to give people a chance to mend their ways).
You're making the massive assumption that the evidence they presented the mother with wasn't conclusive. For instance, it's possible to obtain gamesaves for the XBOX at key stages in a game (i.e. just prior to an achievement popping) and modify these in such a way that they appear to have been played on your profile. Using these saves, cheats can gain achievements that would only come naturally through many hours of gameplay in a matter of minutes. What if the evidence showed that he'd gained in the space of five minutes achievements that should have taken hundreds of hours of play? Now, I agree we can't definitively say either way that the kid cheated or not without seeing the evidence, but to just assume that MS are making a mistake and should reward him with new games and not punish him is failing to consider that maybe they did conclusively prove the kid's guilt beyond any shadow of doubt.
If you're cheating just to see the end of a game, why would you not use an offline profile and disconnect the XBOX. If you're cheating and it's adding achievements to your account or you're cheating against other players in multiplayer then you're in clear breach of the rules. Having said achievements removed is probably getting off lightly.
While I totally agree GP is going way over the top, I disagree with your summary that cheats only affect people who invest way too much time and thought in games. Some of us have very little time to invest in games and that's precisely why we want to play in cheat-free environments. If I spend five minutes of my precious hour of gaming time stuck on the match-making screen, the last thing I want is to get into the game, find out someone's cheating and spoiling the whole thing and be forced to leave and try again.
It depends if it's something which, by revealing how they proved it, they make it easier for cheaters in the future. If it's a cut-and-dry "he got these achievements in this order or accomplished this in X time which is impossible within the game mechanics" then fair enough they strengthen their position by telling us. If it's "we have a method in the code of detecting hacked/modified saves that the modders aren't currently aware of" then of course they want to keep that quiet.
Usually I'd argue that a EULA isn't worth the paper its printed on/screen real estate it's displayed on/whatever. On a service like this, the "EULA" is actually more like a contractual term of using the service. You pay them to use the service and agree to the terms, they provide the service and also have some responsibility under the terms. Technically, if you're not capable of agreeing such a contract (either through age or disability) someone would have to stand on your behalf and agree to said terms.
Back then it seemed enjoyable games were less frequent (or maybe it's just that I didn't have the disposable cash back then to buy too many) and good games had to be milked for all the enjoyment they could give. These days I usually have four or five games in the queue waiting for my attention, if I get stuck I don't mind so much looking up the answer (after I've spent a reasonable amount of time pulling my hair out trying to figure it out myself). I wouldn't say I enjoy them less, but my patience is definitely thinner than it was!
It may very well be that these point-and-click adventure games are an acquired taste, though. Those of us who grew up with them are more likely to go back and play them than somebody coming from the world of PS2 and XBox.
There's no excuse for the XBOX generation not to go enjoy Monkey Island - it's been available on XBOX Live Arcade for a while. The graphics even got a fresh lick of paint to make them more bearable on big modern TVs (although if you want the true experience there's the option to play "old shool" with the original graphics).
There's nothing new about "filesharing is terrorism" - I remember seeing warnings on DVDs several years ago (mid 00's ish) claiming that the funds from piracy directly fed into organised crime and terrorist organisations (even though the vast majority of "piracy" by that point was in the form of downloads). They've just changed the focus from the people distributing it to the people receiving it.
This case illustrates it's sufficient for a clued-up subset of the masses to learn. The main issue in going after filesharers is that your dragnet is likely to scoop up a lot of people who are a) net savvy, b) are pretty clued-up on IP and filesharing or c) both. In this case they obviously annoyed enough of group c to scare them off - it's not so one-way when you're not specifically going after single mothers who don't know about filesharing or octogenarians who don't even own a computer.
Maybe I'm jaded from being around computers so much, but to me Avatar was like a 2 hour long NVidia demo video, sure the SFX were pretty, but nothing I've not seen before and nothing I needed to watch for more than 30 seconds. Now maybe I'm overly cynical, but how long will it take the general populace to catch up with this once they've had the same level of exposure (and let's face it, it's everywhere these days).
It also explains why the machines don't just amputate the arms and legs of every human "battery" that's born. It can't be compassion, I doubt it's medical (if the shock of having sockets hard wired into your body doesn't kill you then that likely won't either) and it seems to be a massive oversight on the part of the machines when you realise they now have a city full of mostly escapees fighting against them.
Sure, but he's got around 50 movies listed on his Wikipedia page and only the Bill & Ted and Matrix movies have sequels, and he can almost certainly be forgiven for B&T, as a young, not particularly great actor, early in his career it would have been too good an opportunity to pass up. I'd hardly say that defines him as someone who is a sequel whore.
If they'd not said they were talking to Cameron about how to use 3D I'd have more faith. They might not have created bullet time but they made it an incredibly popular movie-maker's tool at the time, and the last hope I had was that they'd actually use 3D in some novel way. News that they're taking tips from Cameron dashes that hope - Avatar did nothing interesting with the medium whatsoever (actually I found it counter productive, I couldn't focus on the lush animated world around them because of the way 3D forces me to focus on what the camera's looking at, the movie would have probably worked better in 2D).
Somewhat similar - bought the first one on DVD (missed it at the cinema unfortunately); saw the second one at the cinema and was so disappointed that I didn't buy the DVD; rented the third on DVD and don't even remember most of it. If I'm their target for 4 and 5 then I'm afraid they're going to miss (unless I hear reports that 4 is awesome, in which case I might buy it cheap on DVD and if I concur, go watch 5, I don't envisage this happening but I wouldn't be unhappy if it did).
That doesn't really explain why all the human "batteries" have a two inch thick slab of cable hard wired into their heads. Why bother with WiFi if they're all hard wired? And if they do have WiFi you'd think that would make them incredibly easy to track and that they were never "disconnected" from the network in the first place, so why the Squiddies have such a hard time finding them makes no sense.
Even a good 4 and 5 would be a trigger to remind you of an awful 2 and 3. Some memories are best left buried.The bit about 3D is a big warning. 3D shouldn't be the driver behind the movie - get a decent story first and use 3D if it enhances the story, anything else just smells of cash-in.
Why exactly is that? When I was little, if a friend told me to do something that I knew was wrong and I got in trouble, my mum would say "If he told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?" This is a personal responsibility issue, I knew enough when I was a little kid to take responsibility for my actions and not just blindly follow the orders of others where I knew they were wrong. Now I admit there is a big difference between incitement and just giving an order - if a police officer incites someone to commit a crime that otherwise wouldn't have happened (in whatever way, playing on their fears or ambitions, providing the necessary tools, etc) then he should certainly be legally liable for that, but if a policeman just told me to outright do something illegal I'd tell him where to stick his helmet.
The point of a live audience here isn't to "tack on a laugh track" - the interplay between the audience and the actors is meant to enhance the experience. If you watch any of the outtake shows from the earlier studio audience series you can see that everyone is really having a good laugh and there's a generally good atmosphere whereby the actors are feeding off the energy of the audience. I'm not sure how feasible it would be to shoot very close to airing as a compromise. In the early days it was probably easier when sets were smaller and cheaper, although if this series is being made by Dave then that might not be an issue:)
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I think the point is: do Nintendo care if it's a gimmick, so long as it's as successful a "gimmick" as the DS. Whether the dual screen helped or not (I've always been kind of "meh" about it, even though I own one and enjoy the games) you can't argue it sold boatloads. Of course, price may have helped there, at more than twice the cost (and during not exactly great times for the world financially) it will be interesting to see both a) how many people jump on the 3DS right away and b) how competitively any Sony device is priced.
Short of banning him forever, this is an effective way of alerting other players that they might be playing with a cheat. The label isn't part of the punishment, it's part of the service that other gold subscribers are paying for. Arguably it's in MS' interests to outright ban him (he loses whatever remaining subscription he has paid for and has to buy a new one, MS get to appear to have a zero tolerance for cheats approach which makes it more appealing to others), the fact that they're only labelling him IS a concession in his favour that doesn't then go on to disadvantage everyone else he plays with.
It's pretty much required to disable all voice communications before playing most XBL games. Even if the profanity doesn't worry you, the idiocy almost certainly will, and that's without the people who seem to think we all want to listen to a heavily distorted, heavily compressed rendition of whatever music they've got blaring down the microphone the whole time you're playing.
That's not entirely true, I play offline quite a lot (I have two XBOX consoles, one online and one offline, in different rooms), I take my profile between the two on a USB stick and achievements I've earned offline have (touch wood) always been recognised when I go online. They are stored against the profile though, so if your profile was in any way corrupted and had to be recovered from their server (where the information about unlocked achievements hadn't yet been uploaded) it's possible this data was lost.
Sole intent? Only serves to humiliate? I'd argue at least a big part of the intent is to protect other (paying) members of the service - they have a vested interest in knowing if people have been caught cheating, particularly if they suspect they're doing it again (although to be fair the tag should probably expire after a set time to give people a chance to mend their ways).
You're making the massive assumption that the evidence they presented the mother with wasn't conclusive. For instance, it's possible to obtain gamesaves for the XBOX at key stages in a game (i.e. just prior to an achievement popping) and modify these in such a way that they appear to have been played on your profile. Using these saves, cheats can gain achievements that would only come naturally through many hours of gameplay in a matter of minutes. What if the evidence showed that he'd gained in the space of five minutes achievements that should have taken hundreds of hours of play? Now, I agree we can't definitively say either way that the kid cheated or not without seeing the evidence, but to just assume that MS are making a mistake and should reward him with new games and not punish him is failing to consider that maybe they did conclusively prove the kid's guilt beyond any shadow of doubt.
If you're cheating just to see the end of a game, why would you not use an offline profile and disconnect the XBOX. If you're cheating and it's adding achievements to your account or you're cheating against other players in multiplayer then you're in clear breach of the rules. Having said achievements removed is probably getting off lightly.
While I totally agree GP is going way over the top, I disagree with your summary that cheats only affect people who invest way too much time and thought in games. Some of us have very little time to invest in games and that's precisely why we want to play in cheat-free environments. If I spend five minutes of my precious hour of gaming time stuck on the match-making screen, the last thing I want is to get into the game, find out someone's cheating and spoiling the whole thing and be forced to leave and try again.
It depends if it's something which, by revealing how they proved it, they make it easier for cheaters in the future. If it's a cut-and-dry "he got these achievements in this order or accomplished this in X time which is impossible within the game mechanics" then fair enough they strengthen their position by telling us. If it's "we have a method in the code of detecting hacked/modified saves that the modders aren't currently aware of" then of course they want to keep that quiet.
If they banned people for having mad skills, then everyone would be in danger of bans.
No, I'm afraid to say I'd probably still be safe :o(
Usually I'd argue that a EULA isn't worth the paper its printed on/screen real estate it's displayed on/whatever. On a service like this, the "EULA" is actually more like a contractual term of using the service. You pay them to use the service and agree to the terms, they provide the service and also have some responsibility under the terms. Technically, if you're not capable of agreeing such a contract (either through age or disability) someone would have to stand on your behalf and agree to said terms.
Back then it seemed enjoyable games were less frequent (or maybe it's just that I didn't have the disposable cash back then to buy too many) and good games had to be milked for all the enjoyment they could give. These days I usually have four or five games in the queue waiting for my attention, if I get stuck I don't mind so much looking up the answer (after I've spent a reasonable amount of time pulling my hair out trying to figure it out myself). I wouldn't say I enjoy them less, but my patience is definitely thinner than it was!
It may very well be that these point-and-click adventure games are an acquired taste, though. Those of us who grew up with them are more likely to go back and play them than somebody coming from the world of PS2 and XBox.
There's no excuse for the XBOX generation not to go enjoy Monkey Island - it's been available on XBOX Live Arcade for a while. The graphics even got a fresh lick of paint to make them more bearable on big modern TVs (although if you want the true experience there's the option to play "old shool" with the original graphics).
Oblig. "There is no emoticon for how I feel right now."
There's nothing new about "filesharing is terrorism" - I remember seeing warnings on DVDs several years ago (mid 00's ish) claiming that the funds from piracy directly fed into organised crime and terrorist organisations (even though the vast majority of "piracy" by that point was in the form of downloads). They've just changed the focus from the people distributing it to the people receiving it.
This case illustrates it's sufficient for a clued-up subset of the masses to learn. The main issue in going after filesharers is that your dragnet is likely to scoop up a lot of people who are a) net savvy, b) are pretty clued-up on IP and filesharing or c) both. In this case they obviously annoyed enough of group c to scare them off - it's not so one-way when you're not specifically going after single mothers who don't know about filesharing or octogenarians who don't even own a computer.
Maybe I'm jaded from being around computers so much, but to me Avatar was like a 2 hour long NVidia demo video, sure the SFX were pretty, but nothing I've not seen before and nothing I needed to watch for more than 30 seconds. Now maybe I'm overly cynical, but how long will it take the general populace to catch up with this once they've had the same level of exposure (and let's face it, it's everywhere these days).
It also explains why the machines don't just amputate the arms and legs of every human "battery" that's born. It can't be compassion, I doubt it's medical (if the shock of having sockets hard wired into your body doesn't kill you then that likely won't either) and it seems to be a massive oversight on the part of the machines when you realise they now have a city full of mostly escapees fighting against them.
Sure, but he's got around 50 movies listed on his Wikipedia page and only the Bill & Ted and Matrix movies have sequels, and he can almost certainly be forgiven for B&T, as a young, not particularly great actor, early in his career it would have been too good an opportunity to pass up. I'd hardly say that defines him as someone who is a sequel whore.
If they'd not said they were talking to Cameron about how to use 3D I'd have more faith. They might not have created bullet time but they made it an incredibly popular movie-maker's tool at the time, and the last hope I had was that they'd actually use 3D in some novel way. News that they're taking tips from Cameron dashes that hope - Avatar did nothing interesting with the medium whatsoever (actually I found it counter productive, I couldn't focus on the lush animated world around them because of the way 3D forces me to focus on what the camera's looking at, the movie would have probably worked better in 2D).
Somewhat similar - bought the first one on DVD (missed it at the cinema unfortunately); saw the second one at the cinema and was so disappointed that I didn't buy the DVD; rented the third on DVD and don't even remember most of it. If I'm their target for 4 and 5 then I'm afraid they're going to miss (unless I hear reports that 4 is awesome, in which case I might buy it cheap on DVD and if I concur, go watch 5, I don't envisage this happening but I wouldn't be unhappy if it did).
That doesn't really explain why all the human "batteries" have a two inch thick slab of cable hard wired into their heads. Why bother with WiFi if they're all hard wired? And if they do have WiFi you'd think that would make them incredibly easy to track and that they were never "disconnected" from the network in the first place, so why the Squiddies have such a hard time finding them makes no sense.
Even a good 4 and 5 would be a trigger to remind you of an awful 2 and 3. Some memories are best left buried.The bit about 3D is a big warning. 3D shouldn't be the driver behind the movie - get a decent story first and use 3D if it enhances the story, anything else just smells of cash-in.
Why exactly is that? When I was little, if a friend told me to do something that I knew was wrong and I got in trouble, my mum would say "If he told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?" This is a personal responsibility issue, I knew enough when I was a little kid to take responsibility for my actions and not just blindly follow the orders of others where I knew they were wrong. Now I admit there is a big difference between incitement and just giving an order - if a police officer incites someone to commit a crime that otherwise wouldn't have happened (in whatever way, playing on their fears or ambitions, providing the necessary tools, etc) then he should certainly be legally liable for that, but if a policeman just told me to outright do something illegal I'd tell him where to stick his helmet.
The point of a live audience here isn't to "tack on a laugh track" - the interplay between the audience and the actors is meant to enhance the experience. If you watch any of the outtake shows from the earlier studio audience series you can see that everyone is really having a good laugh and there's a generally good atmosphere whereby the actors are feeding off the energy of the audience. I'm not sure how feasible it would be to shoot very close to airing as a compromise. In the early days it was probably easier when sets were smaller and cheaper, although if this series is being made by Dave then that might not be an issue :)