Posts by Thrik

  • Richard Wright is dead

    Quote

    Wright died of an as yet undisclosed form of cancer in his home in Britain on 15 September 2008. He was 65 years old. At the time of his death, Wright had been working on a new solo album, which was thought to comprise a series of instrumental pieces.Bandmate David Gilmour said: "In my view, all the greatest Pink Floyd moments are the ones where he is in full flow. No-one can replace Richard Wright - he was my musical partner and my friend."

  • Spotlight

    That's always been the plan as far as I'm aware, to work what was once on the front page into the header of the forums themselves. That bit's no problem, this thread is more for establishing a process of selection and shit.

    Regarding the process, having it as simple as possible is good. Having users able to hit a 'nominate for spotlight' button does sound nice, and very easy for people to do. Perhaps once a work has 15 nominations like e-freak said, it's then left up to the moderators when and if they promote it (it's going to be obvious if a shitty map got voted up because he got all his friends to help him out).

    I think this'd be a good compromise between moderators having to keep a close eye on each and every thread and being responsible for every decision from start to finish, and also giving the community a good say in the matter.

  • Spotlight

    lol

    What's the fairest way of handling the spotlight process you lot can think of? Technically implementing it is no problem and I've been saying (to myself) for a while that I'll look into it properly once I launch my newest site, but I've no idea how we'd handle working out who should get one, making sure we have a mix of styles and not just the preferences of one or two mods, how to ensure not too many people have the tag (ie: 99% of Mapcorians), etc. I was thinking maybe a temporary tag below usernames, and a proper nice list of past featured members on a page?

  • Spore. Buy. Now

    Plenty of people care, Hourences. If you check out Spore's Amazon reviews it has over a thousand 1-star ratings from disgruntled fans, precisely because of the DRM.

    As I said way earlier, I don't like the idea of DRM because it rarely punishes anyone but the legitimate consumers. However as I also said, the same system was used in BioShock and they removed the limit after less than a month; as such, BioShock's DRM ended up not being much of a big deal at all. I'm hanging on and waiting to see what happens in that respect, because at the moment the 3-install limit hasn't affected me.

    Hopefully publishers will learn from the massive backfiring of Spore's DRM, because the huge amount of bad reviews on Amazon and other such sites is surely going to cost them a lot of sales. Sure, most of the reviews are basically malicious and intended to cost EA sales, but it's a very good case of consumer protest in a way that actually carries genuine power.

  • Kane & Lynch director talks about being critically panned

    Interesting article here where the Kane & Lynch director discusses what it's like to have your game critically panned:

    http://www.gamesradar.com/f/kane-lynch- ... 2911734000

    You don't often read about how developers feel in the aftermath of a game hitting the critics (which was amplified in K&L's case because of the whole GameSpot debacle), although I'm sure a lot of MapCorians have obviously personally experienced it.

    Also mentioned is that the movie deal is still coming along. I'd totally forgotten about that, kind of assuming it'd been shelved following the mediocre reviews. Pretty cool because whatever the quality of the game, it's hard to deny that the characters and general premise of the game were pretty cool.

  • Tattoos and the games industry

    Yes, definitely. No matter how much you might be proud of your tattoo, always get it somewhere you have the option of easily covering it up. Sometimes you might need to look professional for an interview or something, or might be in a situation where you could feel potentially self-conscious about your tattoo (plan for when you could be in your 40s and some kind of executive).

  • Spore. Buy. Now

    No, but I do try games that a lot of people and generally reliable reviewers are saying is good.

    I'm not trying to dictate how you choose what to buy, etc. I was just contesting you coming in and quoting the scores of two German magazines as if it's concluding evidence that Spore isn't worth playing. There's no doubt the game was overhyped which has led to disappointment for those expecting the last game they'll ever need to buy (Lol?), but IMO it's worth more than a 7x% mark.

    People writing games off based on review scores alone has always been a pet peeve of mine, though. I think it's impossible to condense paragraphs of analysis into two numbers.

  • Spore. Buy. Now

    Quote from Steppenwolf

    The two biggest german print magazines rated the game 73% and 79%. Game was overhyped just as i expected.

    Do you really judge games solely on a two-digit number supplied by magazines? Have you even read the reviews you're basing your purchasing decisions on?

    I'd personally rate Spore higher than the 70s, and so would many of these guys. You should give it a go and make up your own mind.

    Edit: Omg, beaten by Dux.

  • Spore. Buy. Now

    To be honest that door was opened when BioShock did it. It's pretty much inevitable that more games are going to require online activation after that was relatively successful for them, and it's not like perfectly good services such as Steam don't require an internet connection too.

    We're moving into an age where internet and games are intertwined. Retail games requiring internet activation is only going to help push everyone towards digital distribution I imagine. Gaming will be based on what you have licenses to, not what you physically own. Whether you get it from a shop or an online download store, you still need to be authorised to install it. I don't see a big problem in this respect, especially if it gets you lots of additional content like in Spore.

    I do agree that the limited install count is a pain, but again that's something BioShock had. And with BioShock, they raised the limit and eventually removed it completely within weeks — hopefully EA is smart enough to realise that this is a good idea. Ideally there should be no limit, but I guess it does stop someone's CD key being intentionally shared or guessed, thus inconveniencing piraters and forcing them to to go with the fully cracked copy.

  • Spore. Buy. Now

    Quote from Taylor

    They are?.

    I don't know how many games you play outside of RPGs and RTS titles (these admittedly still put a lot of focus on gameplay), but in other genres I'd say that gameplay and fun has very much been compromised by striving towards a 'cinematic' experience with the finest graphics and set-pieces. We're in an age where there's an abundance of games that look fantastic, and little more. Pretty much every current-gen console action game has fell into this category for me.

    And just to clarify the applaud comment, I didn't mean that they should be applauded simply for doing something different. I meant they should be applauded for doing something different really well. This is one of the best examples I've seen of a game providing an experience that only a game can provide: being a fantastic toy.

    Of course, it's this very open-ended toy-like nature that seems to turn a number of Mapcorians off. I say: does a game need a story like a film to be good? Is a basic structure like Spore has not enough?

  • Spore. Buy. Now

    Pretty interesting article here about what Spore is, etc:

    http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=230510

    I completely agree with the notion that Spore is to be applauded for bringing out the best of the gaming medium, rather than doing what 99% of other games do nowadays and trying to deliver a film-like experience. Is a game without a plot really so bad?

    Don't forget that no matter how much games are dressed up and made to appear mature, they are at their core one thing: toys. Spore is one of the best incarnations of such a thing I've ever seen, personally. I've been playing it, and the hours have melted away while I waste time making things like TF2 sentries and Metal Gear REXes for the sheer hell of it. I'm sure it'll get old before long, but even at this point it's given me more hours of entertainment than most current-gen games I've played in the past year or so. Damn.

    While it may not be for everyone, it really does do what it intended to do pretty much as well as it could have done. With that said, I can definitely see kids enjoying it the most; it's pretty much the ultimate creativity toy. If I'd had this instead of LEGO when I was a kid I'd never have been off the computer.

  • Spore. Buy. Now

    I'd imagine most Mapcorians are somewhat objective and can appreciate that it is a pretty grand accomplishment of a game, particularly the level of quality with which pretty much any creature shape, etc can be fully animated and used in a whole bunch of game genres. By all accounts it seems to be pretty fun too, albeit not to a degree that's ever going to survive years of sustained hype. Can anything?

    If you can seriously look at Spore and say they haven't done something fairly tremendous then there must be something wrong with your neurons. It was the features that got Spore so hyped up in the first place, and they seem to have delivered on those features and promises as much as you could expect.