I'm happy with any gift that isn't necessarily a thing.
Treat me to a couple of drinks or a bottle of something I might not have ever thought to try. Tickets for admission to a museum or a zoo. Bake from scratch a truthful cake. Send a license to a game on Steam I might not already have.
It's about an experience, not a physical thing in meatspace like you mentioned. Are there objects I might want or need? Sure, but chances are I either already have it or will soon get it myself.
Short answer: because the employees are not trusted to do their job Long answer: because the employees are not trusted to do their job, but if they're here there is a chance we might catch them in the act of goofing off
Answer: because they built an echo chamber. If it didn't fit the interests of those funding the Republicans, it wasn't said. People who said the Republicans might be going in the wrong direction were purged. Fox News, the WSJ, and some blogs and radio stations were pretty much seen by Republicans as the only media to read, and because those outlets insisted that anything that wasn't them was "liberal biased" they didn't see the truth, they didn't see what was going on out there, they totally missed the boat.
More than that, I think, is that they were caught building the echo chamber. The conventional media has been very very cozy towards Democrats for quite a long time now and playing a downright shouting match over the heads of Republicans. You don't have to be blind to not see it, especially when you agree with them. But compare media coverage around Obama's Fast and Furious to Bush's Valerie Plame. Both put agents in harm's way, but only one scandal actually got one killed. I won't spoil it, but I find it curious. Similar comparisons abounds, compare coverage over Bush's "vacation presidency" from term to 9/11 and coverage over Obama's vacation days, compare Haliburton scandals versus Solyndra scandals, Obama's defense of warrantless wiretapping versus Bush's defense, Hurricane Katrina versus Hurricane Sandy, Bush being blamed for high gas prices versus Obama getting a pass, the list goes on and on.
Unfortunately, trying to shed light on things that the conventional media conveniently ignores gets interpreted by the conventional media as propaganda, but it's only because we've been swimming in propaganda for so long that we can't tell the truth apart anymore. Hell, I remember when Bush was up for re-election there was all this talk about the draft being re-instituted and as we all know that never happened.
If you believe in the Democrat platform, then things are pretty great for you right now. If you believe in the Republican platform, you're got a hard road ahead.
Either way, if you're like me and think both major parties are full of shit and can stuff it, all I've got is Alex Jones and Infowars.com, which is basically as useless as Coast to Coast AM radio talking about Reptilians, so I have to absorb my media from everywhere else, even though I'm not their target market. I'm thankful I can at least check out the opposing propaganda machines separately.
The OP suggested it is lazy or passive aggressive to use office IM as a means of communication. Let me say as a developer that I love office IM and want most simple communication to be done over it.
It allows me to check it when I want without interrupting my concentration on whatever logic problem I'm working on.
I find that I am less social and less capable of communicating well when I am deep into a programming problem. IM lets me take my time at forming a response.
It usually leads to a faster social interaction with less fluff so I can get back to what I was doing.
To me, IM is a fantastic means of communicating a very small amount of information or coordinating over a rather tiny issue. Face to face communication still has its moments, and in some environments it may always be superior to IM, but I very much disagree with the idea that the only two motivations for IM are laziness and being passive aggressive.
Z
I concur. It's telling that someone is advocating the elimination of a method of communication at the same time deriding those who use a different one.
I didn't realize it was passive aggressive ask something with a fire-and-forget IM instead of playing phone tag or walking across campus and hoping they're there.
If Ford welded hoods shut and promised convenient lifetime service at authorized service centers "for free"
LOL thats the worst automotive analogy I've ever heard about that topic.
If Ford welded hoods shut and used their money and power as a multinational megacorp plus all the force and power of the federal government to hunt you down like a dog and destroy you if you dared to open the hood of "your" car
Point being that in your version, it's obvious that it's a power grab. Cars have already been around and society is used to expect certain things of them, namely, having to check the blinker fluid and such.
So much of technology today is brand new, and there are no real pre-existing expectations in society. Even when cars were "new", machinery had been around and people were familiar with trains, steamships, and other mechanized marvels. The average person today probably didn't even see a practical need for a computing device in the home until maybe fifteen or so years ago.
In this way the power grab is much more subtle. It sure doesn't feel like you're giving away your freedom when you pick up a snazzy new iPhone considering all the stuff you can now do versus before you had anything like it in your pocket.
To the original car analogy, I'd add that you don't even have to give people anything to get them to give up their privacy. How many people complete submissions to sweepstakes that only promise they have a shadow of a chance to get the prize? Of course, they all will be sold on the open market to telemarketers and junk mail and electronic spam. How many people volunteer and sign up for Facebook and just give away their musings and pictures and networks for no compensation, not even a chance to win something, whatsoever?
I've done the game-jukebox-on-hard-drive trick on the Wii and the PS2, and in both cases I just plain have more fun when I don't have to worry about juggling discs, dropping them, scratching them, or any other disaster. 360 and PS3 kinda do it, but you still have to stick original discs in them to get it work. At least the point is there (I assume on the PS3, I only know first hand from the 360): a menu of what you have so you can browse without pulling jewelcases out or playing hide-and-seek with some obscure Atlus game that will now cost $80 to replace because they only printed 500 copies.
I kinda hope huge storage becomes the standard in the future, and maybe a Steam-like online game license check to close the piracy loophole, because it's really the only way to play.
He's just pointing out an obvious slashvertisement. A misleading one at that.
Point 1: At what point does an indie developer cease being an indie developer and being part of the system? I would put that at have one mass-recognition success, or a full release on a conventional system. With three of the titles in TFS are clearly in the not-indie category, having full release titles on 3DS or other platforms, only one I would really position as a true independently developed game, Little Inferno.
Point 2: This is not the first time indie games hit semi-pro on a major platform, let alone a Nintendo platform. Cave Story is a particularly noteworthy example.
Point 3: XBox indie games have the "indie games" section for truly indie and small-developer, available cheaply for no more than $3. Then there's the Live Arcade that has semi-pro games for around $10 to $20. There is some gap-jumping allowed, say with Bastion and Fez, particularly if it's developed with Microsoft's free XNA framework ($99 to join the club to get it onto actual 360 hardware, though, through the distribution or debugging through your home network). This has been going on for, what, about 4 years now?
Point 3.5: Cheap indie games these are not, sorry submitter. I smell a Nintendo shill in the face of laughable Wii U launch numbers, especially compared to the original Wii phenomenon with folks buying in to the motion control gimmick.
Point 4: Where's the devkit, Nintendo? Where's the SDK? If the point of this advertisement is about how cool Nintendo now is and how friendly to the independent developer they now are, where are they? The answer: the same rules apply as ever. You're just not going to get ahold of one if you don't have one shipped title and a physical office. The true independent spirit, or what's left of it in Nintendoland, is homebrew on the Wii and folks actually developing new stuff on the NES, all without Nintendo's help. And you know if they could squash it, they would, for all they've tried before.
incorrect, and thank you for proving my point that Xbox has failed to properly promote INDIE games, as in XBLIG, which require you to be SIGNED IN to a gold account to play
You're just plain 100% wrong. I've never had a Gold account and routinely download and play Live Indie Games. You have to be signed in, yes, to an online account, but it doesn't need to be a paid account.
For most people just looking for an excuse to eat butter (toast) or something to hold together a sandwich, bread IS a commodity.
While I suspect the percentage of true bread lovers on/. is perhaps higher than average since we're nerds and appreciate quality, the average man does not think twice about grabbing a loaf off the supermarket shelf. The mere situation of grabbing bread off the shelf compared to from a bonafide bakery says a lot about the state of bread in today's society.
Microsoft's move in that avenue was about promoting their XNA framework to a new generation of budding developers, and being able to let them cross-build for Windows mobile, and -- way in the future -- be their fully featured.NET (managed code) replacement for DirectX (native code). It also serves as a cross promotional situation with Visual Studio Express, and is all part of their global marketing strategy in keeping their platforms relevant into the future.
Nintendo doesn't have that kind of bread-and-butter market line behind them, all they got is gaming.
The GameCube failed because of underpowered hardware (yet again, see N64). That it didn't sink Nintendo was because of the strength of their 1st party lineup, compared to the weakness of the 3rd party lineup.
Just hypothetically, suppose the Wii U was a hardware powerhouse on par with the upcoming offerings from Sony and Microsoft. Couldn't they have a platform that other popular games can be easily ported to AND keep the distinguishing features for their games? It's not like 3rd party games are important in any way to Nintendo (the top selling 3rd party title comes it at number 15, "Just Dance"), but it will make people put their dollars with them instead of their competitors. After all, if the Nintendo model could handle it all, there really would be no compelling reason at all to look at another company. Instead of paying for a second console from someone else they could put that money into buying more titles on Nintendo's platform and earning them money.
If the allegedly underpowered hardware of the Wii U offends you, congratulations – you're not the target audience.
Offend is a pretty strong word, they can put out whatever kind of system they want, and good for them. It's their business, after all.
But, when a seven year old console sells better during your brand new console's launch week, business isn't necessarily booming. Financially, Nintendo isn't doing nearly as well as it did during the days when the Wii and the NDS hit the shelves, so I really do hope their decisions pay off for them. I just have to question the wisdom of it. Yeah yeah, aimchair entertainment empire executive, but it's just a discussion amongst passionate people.
After all, we got to witness the downward spiral of Sonic, one of Sega's biggest properties, after they dropped out of the hardware business. It would be a shame to see Mario go the same route.
The thing is, Kickstarter is all about bypassing the system. But, facts is facts, and the system exists because the system is successful.
Even if you don't want to sell your soul to EA or whoever, the process for developing a game is really no different than any other product.
1. Get investors Sometimes that investor is yourself. Sometimes it's your family, or someone else who would support your dream fairly unconditionally. You use that initial investment to build a prototype. In development, it might be a proof of concept. In writing, it might be called a rough draft. In filmmaking, it might be a treatment.
2. Use existing raw product to get more investment for refinement. This would most likely be external investors at this point. They're going to want to see your prototypes and market research and how "credit worthy" (looking for a better word failed me) you are. Your parents or your spouse might have been willing to invest in you, but these folks are gonna want to see ROI. Even if it's a slam dunk, expect a lot of no answers and slammed doors.
3. Refine into something salable Using that round of investment, you can afford to flesh things out. Maybe instead of a few one-off prototypes for your new carrot peeler, you might have molds made up and a sample run executed. Your game turns into an Alpha, then a Beta, and then RTM.
4. Sell and profit (maybe) There's risk in all things. Maybe your market research was off. Maybe someone beat you to market. Maybe people just don't a-like-a you face.
The problem with Kickstarter is that it goes right into #4. They're already trying to sell you something before it exists! You might suspect it's more like step #2, getting additional external investors, but if that was the case, Kickstarter backers would be getting back cash-money instead of something else. I guess the choice of the word "backer" instead of "investor" is deliberate.
Some of the Kickstarter initiatives are of what I consider to be pretty valuable properties: Shadowrun, Leisure Suit Larry, Shadowgate. You would think the companies that previously owned them would have done the market research to see if they were still viable, since that's practically money in the bank. I've got to wonder, in excess of backers, how many more copies will be sold? Probably not zero, but the market is already tailing out by release day.
I guess what I'm saying is that, when you have a good idea, you don't need to beg the public at large, and certainly not your target market, to fund it. They're going to be there, waiting with bells on, to buy it. But there's the wisdom of crowds, too. That other companies have already passed on investing in development tells me they're not going to be successful. And at that point, you might as well instead make your game "Darkrun", "Polyester Pants Peter", and "Shadowkey". If the idea of the game isn't as appealing as typing it into some IP that has nostalgia effect, then maybe it shouldn't exist?
The other possibility is that the consoles experience diminishing returns past the horsepower the modern systems are at for most of the game developer's needs. After enjoying the Wii, the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3, I'm more concerned about the media type they select for the discs as swapping three DVDs to play one game on the XBox 360 is unacceptable when it fits on one PS3 disc. For the love of Zelda, I suspect that popping an SSD into an XBox 360 and running everything from that and forgetting the optical drive would make everything faster (and, yes, I know you then would only be able to do that with downloaded games linked to your profile and not the installed discs that require a disc in the drive to run).
I don't see the console gaming industry going back to cartridges. They've had many generations enjoying absurdly cheap production costs on optical media.
Nintendo may have propped up a relatively weak CPU with considerably more GPU horsepower.
Like the reader comment on that Ars Technica article notes, raw CPU speed hasn't always equaled winning in the console department.
While true, the reality is that they're already behind the curve. How many games will be able to be ported from the other competing next generation systems without major refactoring and potentially reduced in features? Did Nintendo even tell their premiere 3rd party developers what to expect, or did they make them buy dev kits to find out how underpowered it is only after they took their money? The fact that these specs haven't been released until today tells me, no, since they would have definitely leaked before launch.
I guess one could argue that you don't want a bunch of ports on your system, but most people can't afford to buy all the consoles and will choose whichever they can expect to get most of the games they want to play. This will, once again, turn into "and then there's the Nintendo port" that's a radically different game, since at that point it's cheaper to start fresh than adapt. And a lot of studios won't even bother, I suspect, leaving yet another Nintendo generation filled with shovelware and crap kid games that are dirt cheap to make because they're so bad.
And, frankly, I'm a little disappointed that Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft haven't done a little innovating and created their own technology like SLI/Crossfire to connect several cheap GPUs for their heavy graphics lifting on their machines. I mean their CPU/GPU pairs make it look like we should really start addressing these things with a different name just like RAM started being called cache when it was fast and nestled up against or integrated with the CPU. I guess I'm not really a hardware guy but I feel like we've actually moved toward less inventive ideas for consoles. While that's been good for some aspects (I was able to flash the security sector of a HDD and install it myself on my XBox 360 to add storage) it seems like the architecture has gotten lazy and inbred to just do whatever desktops are doing.
SLI and Crossfire makes sense for computers which are mostly open platforms. They're designed to be upgradeable and expandable. Game consoles certainly aren't, and the only point to playing on a console instead of a PC is that you have a standard core of hardware available to you. You don't have to test your software on a variety of hardware, just that given platform.
...everyone forgets that once upon a time they thought you could use nukes like really really REALLY big dynamite, they even looked at making canals by using shaped nuke charges.
I never found the "man in the moon" a very convincing picture. Maybe with a few nukes...
I think it should have a laser etching to read "CHAIR"
Unfortunately for history, the bad effects of radiation were well known before the time of atomic weapons. As early as 1915 concerns were raised over the safety of mere radiation therapy, and by 1941 NIST (well, back then it was National Bureau of Standards) established limits of exposure.
The notion that we learned during atomic testing how bad radiation was is white-washing the truth: our government and the complicit military just plain didn't care. Just like with asbestos, they didn't care about the long term effects of soldiers, only the short term effects of fire on military vessels. Progress and power at all costs, people be damned.
And it's still going on. Look at the backscatter machines in use by the TSA at airports nationwide. TSA agents are getting cancer, and people are being exposed to massive doses of radiation, and it's all just fine and dandy. We're just the peons, not the ruling classes.
An RPG called Shadowrun painted a picture of a dystopian future of anarcho-capitalism and one of the things I found interesting in one of the source books was a reference to commerce. Most products sold to the public were dangerous and toxic in some way, but it was balanced out by having amazingly effective and efficient health care technology. We're slowly getting to that fictional world, where one hand is stabbing itself, except we're not holding cures for cancer in the other.
Maybe the best way to help the folks at HumbleBundle to find their way again is a nice email, instead of just sticking it to them.
What started as a nice way to promote indie and cross-platform gaming and openly rejecting freedom robbing DRM has morphed into this.
Humble Bundle is no longer a humble bundle but a business, Humble Bundle Inc. (TM). When they started gaining traction and recognition a while back, they dumped the indie angle. Then they dumped the non-Windows angle. Now they're dumping the non-DRM angle.
They're basically a vehicle for fundraising, happily used by the discriminatory and religious-right minded Red Cross. THQ knows that these games have already been pirated by those who weren't going to pay retail anyway, and just see it as a way to scrape a little cash from the fundraising efforts.
Best way to send a message is to buy something off GoG for yourself or some friends (it's Christmas!) and write a check yourself to the well-intentioned charity of your choice.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm happy with any gift that isn't necessarily a thing.
Treat me to a couple of drinks or a bottle of something I might not have ever thought to try.
Tickets for admission to a museum or a zoo.
Bake from scratch a truthful cake.
Send a license to a game on Steam I might not already have.
It's about an experience, not a physical thing in meatspace like you mentioned. Are there objects I might want or need? Sure, but chances are I either already have it or will soon get it myself.
Each of my last jobs started with a separate sick bank and vacation bank, and they all eventually migrated to the single bank system.
Easier to administrate, no pressure on validating "sick" days, and easier to screw people out of time off down the road by only adjusting one number.
Short answer: because the employees are not trusted to do their job
Long answer: because the employees are not trusted to do their job, but if they're here there is a chance we might catch them in the act of goofing off
I read at -1 because I happen to be a troll aficionado, for your information. Occasionally there are some really great ones, OP wasn't one of them.
Answer: because they built an echo chamber. If it didn't fit the interests of those funding the Republicans, it wasn't said. People who said the Republicans might be going in the wrong direction were purged. Fox News, the WSJ, and some blogs and radio stations were pretty much seen by Republicans as the only media to read, and because those outlets insisted that anything that wasn't them was "liberal biased" they didn't see the truth, they didn't see what was going on out there, they totally missed the boat.
More than that, I think, is that they were caught building the echo chamber. The conventional media has been very very cozy towards Democrats for quite a long time now and playing a downright shouting match over the heads of Republicans. You don't have to be blind to not see it, especially when you agree with them. But compare media coverage around Obama's Fast and Furious to Bush's Valerie Plame. Both put agents in harm's way, but only one scandal actually got one killed. I won't spoil it, but I find it curious. Similar comparisons abounds, compare coverage over Bush's "vacation presidency" from term to 9/11 and coverage over Obama's vacation days, compare Haliburton scandals versus Solyndra scandals, Obama's defense of warrantless wiretapping versus Bush's defense, Hurricane Katrina versus Hurricane Sandy, Bush being blamed for high gas prices versus Obama getting a pass, the list goes on and on.
Unfortunately, trying to shed light on things that the conventional media conveniently ignores gets interpreted by the conventional media as propaganda, but it's only because we've been swimming in propaganda for so long that we can't tell the truth apart anymore. Hell, I remember when Bush was up for re-election there was all this talk about the draft being re-instituted and as we all know that never happened.
If you believe in the Democrat platform, then things are pretty great for you right now. If you believe in the Republican platform, you're got a hard road ahead.
Either way, if you're like me and think both major parties are full of shit and can stuff it, all I've got is Alex Jones and Infowars.com, which is basically as useless as Coast to Coast AM radio talking about Reptilians, so I have to absorb my media from everywhere else, even though I'm not their target market. I'm thankful I can at least check out the opposing propaganda machines separately.
I don't know what he was thinking, but I think we all can correctly guess what he learned about Washington and politics in general.
It's an old boys' club, the yes man gets ahead, and messengers get shot when exposing contradictions.
The OP suggested it is lazy or passive aggressive to use office IM as a means of communication. Let me say as a developer that I love office IM and want most simple communication to be done over it.
It allows me to check it when I want without interrupting my concentration on whatever logic problem I'm working on.
I find that I am less social and less capable of communicating well when I am deep into a programming problem. IM lets me take my time at forming a response.
It usually leads to a faster social interaction with less fluff so I can get back to what I was doing.
To me, IM is a fantastic means of communicating a very small amount of information or coordinating over a rather tiny issue. Face to face communication still has its moments, and in some environments it may always be superior to IM, but I very much disagree with the idea that the only two motivations for IM are laziness and being passive aggressive.
Z
I concur. It's telling that someone is advocating the elimination of a method of communication at the same time deriding those who use a different one.
I didn't realize it was passive aggressive ask something with a fire-and-forget IM instead of playing phone tag or walking across campus and hoping they're there.
If Ford welded hoods shut and promised convenient lifetime service at authorized service centers "for free"
LOL thats the worst automotive analogy I've ever heard about that topic.
If Ford welded hoods shut and used their money and power as a multinational megacorp plus all the force and power of the federal government to hunt you down like a dog and destroy you if you dared to open the hood of "your" car
Point being that in your version, it's obvious that it's a power grab. Cars have already been around and society is used to expect certain things of them, namely, having to check the blinker fluid and such.
So much of technology today is brand new, and there are no real pre-existing expectations in society. Even when cars were "new", machinery had been around and people were familiar with trains, steamships, and other mechanized marvels. The average person today probably didn't even see a practical need for a computing device in the home until maybe fifteen or so years ago.
In this way the power grab is much more subtle. It sure doesn't feel like you're giving away your freedom when you pick up a snazzy new iPhone considering all the stuff you can now do versus before you had anything like it in your pocket.
To the original car analogy, I'd add that you don't even have to give people anything to get them to give up their privacy. How many people complete submissions to sweepstakes that only promise they have a shadow of a chance to get the prize? Of course, they all will be sold on the open market to telemarketers and junk mail and electronic spam. How many people volunteer and sign up for Facebook and just give away their musings and pictures and networks for no compensation, not even a chance to win something, whatsoever?
Seconded right here.
I've done the game-jukebox-on-hard-drive trick on the Wii and the PS2, and in both cases I just plain have more fun when I don't have to worry about juggling discs, dropping them, scratching them, or any other disaster. 360 and PS3 kinda do it, but you still have to stick original discs in them to get it work. At least the point is there (I assume on the PS3, I only know first hand from the 360): a menu of what you have so you can browse without pulling jewelcases out or playing hide-and-seek with some obscure Atlus game that will now cost $80 to replace because they only printed 500 copies.
I kinda hope huge storage becomes the standard in the future, and maybe a Steam-like online game license check to close the piracy loophole, because it's really the only way to play.
He's just pointing out an obvious slashvertisement. A misleading one at that.
Point 1: At what point does an indie developer cease being an indie developer and being part of the system? I would put that at have one mass-recognition success, or a full release on a conventional system. With three of the titles in TFS are clearly in the not-indie category, having full release titles on 3DS or other platforms, only one I would really position as a true independently developed game, Little Inferno.
Point 2: This is not the first time indie games hit semi-pro on a major platform, let alone a Nintendo platform. Cave Story is a particularly noteworthy example.
Point 3: XBox indie games have the "indie games" section for truly indie and small-developer, available cheaply for no more than $3. Then there's the Live Arcade that has semi-pro games for around $10 to $20. There is some gap-jumping allowed, say with Bastion and Fez, particularly if it's developed with Microsoft's free XNA framework ($99 to join the club to get it onto actual 360 hardware, though, through the distribution or debugging through your home network). This has been going on for, what, about 4 years now?
Point 3.5: Cheap indie games these are not, sorry submitter. I smell a Nintendo shill in the face of laughable Wii U launch numbers, especially compared to the original Wii phenomenon with folks buying in to the motion control gimmick.
Point 4: Where's the devkit, Nintendo? Where's the SDK? If the point of this advertisement is about how cool Nintendo now is and how friendly to the independent developer they now are, where are they? The answer: the same rules apply as ever. You're just not going to get ahold of one if you don't have one shipped title and a physical office. The true independent spirit, or what's left of it in Nintendoland, is homebrew on the Wii and folks actually developing new stuff on the NES, all without Nintendo's help. And you know if they could squash it, they would, for all they've tried before.
incorrect, and thank you for proving my point that Xbox has failed to properly promote INDIE games, as in XBLIG, which require you to be SIGNED IN to a gold account to play
You're just plain 100% wrong. I've never had a Gold account and routinely download and play Live Indie Games. You have to be signed in, yes, to an online account, but it doesn't need to be a paid account.
For most people just looking for an excuse to eat butter (toast) or something to hold together a sandwich, bread IS a commodity.
While I suspect the percentage of true bread lovers on /. is perhaps higher than average since we're nerds and appreciate quality, the average man does not think twice about grabbing a loaf off the supermarket shelf. The mere situation of grabbing bread off the shelf compared to from a bonafide bakery says a lot about the state of bread in today's society.
According to Betteridge's law of headlines, the answer to "Who Owns Your Health Data?" is "no".
The DMCA has, in fact, prolonged the life of DRM by making it a literal crime to circumvent it. At least in the US.
If they weren't 25 cents, we couldn't keep calling them quarters...
Where do you live that has such sad excuses for strip clubs in it?
Microsoft's move in that avenue was about promoting their XNA framework to a new generation of budding developers, and being able to let them cross-build for Windows mobile, and -- way in the future -- be their fully featured .NET (managed code) replacement for DirectX (native code). It also serves as a cross promotional situation with Visual Studio Express, and is all part of their global marketing strategy in keeping their platforms relevant into the future.
Nintendo doesn't have that kind of bread-and-butter market line behind them, all they got is gaming.
The GameCube failed because of underpowered hardware (yet again, see N64). That it didn't sink Nintendo was because of the strength of their 1st party lineup, compared to the weakness of the 3rd party lineup.
Just hypothetically, suppose the Wii U was a hardware powerhouse on par with the upcoming offerings from Sony and Microsoft. Couldn't they have a platform that other popular games can be easily ported to AND keep the distinguishing features for their games? It's not like 3rd party games are important in any way to Nintendo (the top selling 3rd party title comes it at number 15, "Just Dance"), but it will make people put their dollars with them instead of their competitors. After all, if the Nintendo model could handle it all, there really would be no compelling reason at all to look at another company. Instead of paying for a second console from someone else they could put that money into buying more titles on Nintendo's platform and earning them money.
If the allegedly underpowered hardware of the Wii U offends you, congratulations – you're not the target audience.
Offend is a pretty strong word, they can put out whatever kind of system they want, and good for them. It's their business, after all.
But, when a seven year old console sells better during your brand new console's launch week, business isn't necessarily booming. Financially, Nintendo isn't doing nearly as well as it did during the days when the Wii and the NDS hit the shelves, so I really do hope their decisions pay off for them. I just have to question the wisdom of it. Yeah yeah, aimchair entertainment empire executive, but it's just a discussion amongst passionate people.
After all, we got to witness the downward spiral of Sonic, one of Sega's biggest properties, after they dropped out of the hardware business. It would be a shame to see Mario go the same route.
The thing is, Kickstarter is all about bypassing the system. But, facts is facts, and the system exists because the system is successful.
Even if you don't want to sell your soul to EA or whoever, the process for developing a game is really no different than any other product.
1. Get investors
Sometimes that investor is yourself. Sometimes it's your family, or someone else who would support your dream fairly unconditionally. You use that initial investment to build a prototype. In development, it might be a proof of concept. In writing, it might be called a rough draft. In filmmaking, it might be a treatment.
2. Use existing raw product to get more investment for refinement.
This would most likely be external investors at this point. They're going to want to see your prototypes and market research and how "credit worthy" (looking for a better word failed me) you are. Your parents or your spouse might have been willing to invest in you, but these folks are gonna want to see ROI. Even if it's a slam dunk, expect a lot of no answers and slammed doors.
3. Refine into something salable
Using that round of investment, you can afford to flesh things out. Maybe instead of a few one-off prototypes for your new carrot peeler, you might have molds made up and a sample run executed. Your game turns into an Alpha, then a Beta, and then RTM.
4. Sell and profit (maybe)
There's risk in all things. Maybe your market research was off. Maybe someone beat you to market. Maybe people just don't a-like-a you face.
The problem with Kickstarter is that it goes right into #4. They're already trying to sell you something before it exists! You might suspect it's more like step #2, getting additional external investors, but if that was the case, Kickstarter backers would be getting back cash-money instead of something else. I guess the choice of the word "backer" instead of "investor" is deliberate.
Some of the Kickstarter initiatives are of what I consider to be pretty valuable properties: Shadowrun, Leisure Suit Larry, Shadowgate. You would think the companies that previously owned them would have done the market research to see if they were still viable, since that's practically money in the bank. I've got to wonder, in excess of backers, how many more copies will be sold? Probably not zero, but the market is already tailing out by release day.
I guess what I'm saying is that, when you have a good idea, you don't need to beg the public at large, and certainly not your target market, to fund it. They're going to be there, waiting with bells on, to buy it. But there's the wisdom of crowds, too. That other companies have already passed on investing in development tells me they're not going to be successful. And at that point, you might as well instead make your game "Darkrun", "Polyester Pants Peter", and "Shadowkey". If the idea of the game isn't as appealing as typing it into some IP that has nostalgia effect, then maybe it shouldn't exist?
I'm not sure where else to direct it now that all the kids are off the damn lawn.
The other possibility is that the consoles experience diminishing returns past the horsepower the modern systems are at for most of the game developer's needs. After enjoying the Wii, the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3, I'm more concerned about the media type they select for the discs as swapping three DVDs to play one game on the XBox 360 is unacceptable when it fits on one PS3 disc. For the love of Zelda, I suspect that popping an SSD into an XBox 360 and running everything from that and forgetting the optical drive would make everything faster (and, yes, I know you then would only be able to do that with downloaded games linked to your profile and not the installed discs that require a disc in the drive to run).
I don't see the console gaming industry going back to cartridges. They've had many generations enjoying absurdly cheap production costs on optical media.
Nintendo may have propped up a relatively weak CPU with considerably more GPU horsepower.
Like the reader comment on that Ars Technica article notes, raw CPU speed hasn't always equaled winning in the console department.
While true, the reality is that they're already behind the curve. How many games will be able to be ported from the other competing next generation systems without major refactoring and potentially reduced in features? Did Nintendo even tell their premiere 3rd party developers what to expect, or did they make them buy dev kits to find out how underpowered it is only after they took their money? The fact that these specs haven't been released until today tells me, no, since they would have definitely leaked before launch.
I guess one could argue that you don't want a bunch of ports on your system, but most people can't afford to buy all the consoles and will choose whichever they can expect to get most of the games they want to play. This will, once again, turn into "and then there's the Nintendo port" that's a radically different game, since at that point it's cheaper to start fresh than adapt. And a lot of studios won't even bother, I suspect, leaving yet another Nintendo generation filled with shovelware and crap kid games that are dirt cheap to make because they're so bad.
And, frankly, I'm a little disappointed that Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft haven't done a little innovating and created their own technology like SLI/Crossfire to connect several cheap GPUs for their heavy graphics lifting on their machines. I mean their CPU/GPU pairs make it look like we should really start addressing these things with a different name just like RAM started being called cache when it was fast and nestled up against or integrated with the CPU. I guess I'm not really a hardware guy but I feel like we've actually moved toward less inventive ideas for consoles. While that's been good for some aspects (I was able to flash the security sector of a HDD and install it myself on my XBox 360 to add storage) it seems like the architecture has gotten lazy and inbred to just do whatever desktops are doing.
SLI and Crossfire makes sense for computers which are mostly open platforms. They're designed to be upgradeable and expandable. Game consoles certainly aren't, and the only point to playing on a console instead of a PC is that you have a standard core of hardware available to you. You don't have to test your software on a variety of hardware, just that given platform.
...everyone forgets that once upon a time they thought you could use nukes like really really REALLY big dynamite, they even looked at making canals by using shaped nuke charges.
I never found the "man in the moon" a very convincing picture. Maybe with a few nukes...
I think it should have a laser etching to read "CHAIR"
Unfortunately for history, the bad effects of radiation were well known before the time of atomic weapons. As early as 1915 concerns were raised over the safety of mere radiation therapy, and by 1941 NIST (well, back then it was National Bureau of Standards) established limits of exposure.
The notion that we learned during atomic testing how bad radiation was is white-washing the truth: our government and the complicit military just plain didn't care. Just like with asbestos, they didn't care about the long term effects of soldiers, only the short term effects of fire on military vessels. Progress and power at all costs, people be damned.
And it's still going on. Look at the backscatter machines in use by the TSA at airports nationwide. TSA agents are getting cancer, and people are being exposed to massive doses of radiation, and it's all just fine and dandy. We're just the peons, not the ruling classes.
An RPG called Shadowrun painted a picture of a dystopian future of anarcho-capitalism and one of the things I found interesting in one of the source books was a reference to commerce. Most products sold to the public were dangerous and toxic in some way, but it was balanced out by having amazingly effective and efficient health care technology. We're slowly getting to that fictional world, where one hand is stabbing itself, except we're not holding cures for cancer in the other.
Maybe the best way to help the folks at HumbleBundle to find their way again is a nice email, instead of just sticking it to them.
What started as a nice way to promote indie and cross-platform gaming and openly rejecting freedom robbing DRM has morphed into this.
Humble Bundle is no longer a humble bundle but a business, Humble Bundle Inc. (TM). When they started gaining traction and recognition a while back, they dumped the indie angle. Then they dumped the non-Windows angle. Now they're dumping the non-DRM angle.
They're basically a vehicle for fundraising, happily used by the discriminatory and religious-right minded Red Cross. THQ knows that these games have already been pirated by those who weren't going to pay retail anyway, and just see it as a way to scrape a little cash from the fundraising efforts.
Best way to send a message is to buy something off GoG for yourself or some friends (it's Christmas!) and write a check yourself to the well-intentioned charity of your choice.