most art now is derivative, which can be both good and bad. original thinking is often very hard to make successful, and most "original" thinking is derivative.
case in point: the argument that most creative thinking is actualy unoriginal is an unoriginal arguement.
:roll:
nevertheless, i think this is actually a good topic that needs to get rehashed every now and then.
good show, English.
Quote from mabufoto clarify: e3 makes games about flare, graphics, who has the best pr, half naked booth girls, beating the living snot out of the smaller developer houses with a lead pipe, and making a buck off joe gamer... That's not what games are about.if that's what games have become, it's a sad day on earth.
you know...i think that it is possible for that to change. this year at E3 there were certainly less booth babes, and the feeling at the show was just one of "hey, let's make better games not just shit and throw in a box and hope it sells." I've been to E3 six years in a row now, i feel like we're finally starting to turn the corner on "professionalizing" the industry with an attempt to raise quality across the board. I know we have a long long way to go before every game delivers value to its intended audience, but you just get this feeling when you see presentations and meet with devs that in their collective, they are starting to remember that it is about the games and serving the customer. Too many shit products in recent years that bombed, combined with massive industry consolidation and rising costs have made everyone realize that you have to deliver quality or else you will go otu of business.
The booths this year were not as loud and audacious, and there was a lot of playable code and open demos. Not everythign was "uber l33t secret" other than the lines for the Wii but that was to be expected.
Anyway, don't give up the faith. this industry is going to rock...and real innovation is coming soon...
Quote from TequilaThey did? I must have missed that.
Well, anyway, whatever that trailer was made from, "in engine" doesn't mean "in game"
:roll:
Yes they did.
And MGS4 was as much "in game" as Halo 3. The funny thing is that everytime a new MGS trailer comes out people need proof that it's real 
Tell me about it, and each time, without fail, the final product looks better than the trailers.
No what I mean was, the pacing and camera angles most of the time didn't feel like it was possible for someone to be controlling a character if that were footage of a game demo, not to mention the precision of the animations etc.
When someone says "in game" i think "game demo". For example, Gearbox showed actual live gameplay from BIA:HH. I watched it twice in a row so I know that was in game.
What I saw running up on the screen of MGS4 was not a live in game demo obviously. So did they record someone playing the game? Yes/No?
If yes, I bow to thee, Konami. If no, what was it? Two options: footage rendered in the game engine using in game assets etc, or it was something else. What was it?
What was it?
What was it?
What was it?
Quote from mikezillathem saying it numerous times at e3?
They did? I must have missed that.
Well, anyway, whatever that trailer was made from, "in engine" doesn't mean "in game"
:roll:
So now there is new press about PS3:
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=12701
ABI: Sony Pricing Strategy "Fraught with Risk"
There's already been a good deal of backlash towards Sony's expensive dual-pricing strategy for the PS3, and now some analysts are saying that the high price could put their market dominance at risk. ABI Research says Sony has "hamstrung itself."
In a recent GameDaily BIZ poll only 4 percent of our readers said they would buy the $500 PS3 this fall while 24 percent said they'd pony up the $600 for the premium version. The remaining 72 percent said they'd either forgo a PS3 purchase entirely or wait until there's a price drop. For a company that's become synonymous with gaming ever since the original PlayStation, that's a little alarming.
Is Sony's pricing strategy going to hurt their market leadership position? According to research firm ABI Research, there's a good chance that it will. "Sony is placing a serious bet that its inclusion of a Blu-ray drive in the PlayStation 3 will entice consumers to pay a premium price for the new console, despite lower cost alternatives from both Nintendo and Microsoft... Sony's console pricing strategy is fraught with risk, and may ultimately jeopardize its market leadership position," the firm explained.
"Asking consumers to pay $500 to $600 for a game console, when most have yet to purchase an HDTV, will give many current PlayStation 2 owners reason to consider the competition," said Michael Wolf, principal analyst with ABI Research's broadband and multimedia research practice. "Sony has clearly hamstrung itself with a box that is expensive to manufacture, and these costs are driving a retail pricing strategy that places a high financial burden on the consumer."
Of course, Sony doesn't feel this way at all. Recently SCE head Ken Kutaragi said that if anything the console is "too cheap" and that the price is easily justified because the PS3 offers an "amazing experience."
While ABI was concerned about PS3's prospects, the firm was quite high on Nintendo and Microsoft. "... Nintendo is the best positioned of the three to expand into the casual gamer and new gamer audiences with creative titles such as Wii Sports and WarioWare: Smooth Moves," said ABI.
As for MS, ABI believes that its new "Live Anywhere" service will have a big impact over the long run "...the ability for PC and mobile phone users to access the same online gaming community is a huge strategic maneuver with important long term implications," the firm continued.
"The ability for gamers to be continuously connected across three screens is incredibly important," added Wolf. "While we believe buy-once-play-anywhere will be hard to implement due to intellectual property and technology restrictions, the initial benefits of Live Anywhere--such as mobile scheduling and game asset purchases--will give Microsoft something that the other two competitors will be hard-pressed to counter."
And...
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=12699
Bloomberg: PS3 Launch Hampered by Lack of Dev Kits
With another 6 months to go before Sony launches its PlayStation 3, reports have surfaced that publishers have not gained access to final hardware, making it difficult to create games that utilize the console's power or to support the system at all this holiday.
Financial news publication Bloomberg.com is reporting that when the PlayStation 3 launches this November there will be "fewer and less-powerful games because the company hasn't given final technical details of the new console."
"A lot of developers have not gotten the kits,'' said Sega of America president Simon Jeffrey while attending E3 last week. "There certainly will not be a lot of titles available."
The result is that publishers that do want to take part in the PS3 launch will have to release games that don't fully take advantage of the power of the Cell processor, added Jeffrey. A number of other publishers, however, will likely decide to delay the release of their titles so that they have more time to perfect them. In fact, THQ chief executive Brian Farrell said that THQ opted not to release a version of The Sopranos for PS3 simply because the publisher didn't have enough information about Sony's next-gen console. "It was too risky to do it,'' said Farrell. "It made no sense.''
While THQ is waiting, other publishers don't seem too concerned. Both Activision and Electronic Arts have been working with the development kits as is. "While we may not have the final, final hardware, we know what the processor's capacity is,'' explained Activision CEO Robert Kotick. "We have active development under way.'' Added EA president Paul Lee: "We're happy with the development kits."
Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft's chief executive, noted that not having final hardware is a new trend that developers and publishers will simply have to adapt to. Microsoft didn't get its Xbox 360 dev kits out on time either. "We won't be able to take advantage of all the components of the machine, but it was the same last year,'' Guillemot said. "It's a challenge for the publishers."
Still, larger publishers may have the resources to be able to deal with this problem but others may not, especially when development for the other platforms is noticeably more affordable. "Developing for Sony's platform is incrementally more complex than what you're looking at for Microsoft or Nintendo,'' said Mike Hickey, an analyst for Janco Partners. "With costs that could go over $25 million a game, you're not seeing third-party content where it needs to be at this stage to have a successful launch."
So how many titles should consumers expect this holiday when shopping for the PS3? Kaz Hirai, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO, claims that there will be upwards of 15 titles available and that Sony is now giving game makers the final prototypes and software, "allowing for plenty of time to prepare games for PS3's debut." For the sake of comparison, Xbox 360 had 18 titles available at its launch last year.
"I don't think there will be too much of an issue," said Hirai.
So I don't really expect Sony to drop the ball with developers. I think the launch lineup won't be as amazing as some people at Sony are declaring, but eventually the platform should get "good" games, assuming you love MGS4, GT:HD...um... I don't expect Sony to blow it with the developers on the dev kits in the long run. Last summer the 360 beta kits kept crashing and final ones didn't show up until end of July / early August, and that was if you were working on a launch title. Sure, the 360 launch lineup wasn't that strong but in 2006 the 360 games are getting much better. I expect a similar thing for the PS3 games.
But on the pricing side, it's going to be hard for a lot of people to pass up a Wii with fun content for a PS3 with some content as discussed above. We've been through this debate some, but it does seem like the banking and research analysts are joining the WTFSONY bandwagon.
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Yeah it was pretty impressive. I only got to try it in EA's open area...on a pretty large screen so you could see some pixels (i mean like huge for a PC screen). Jungle combat was intense, and the jungle itself was the best i've ever seen in a game. Maybe with this tech someone can finally make a fun Vietnam jungle warfare game? Meh...we'll see.
Only downside was that the framerate was kind of slow, but given it was on a PC at E3 who knows how much abuse it had taken or what the settings were etc. As with all new PC technology, optimization and framerates will be tweaked until the day the game goes gold.
Anyway, of what I saw of the jungle combat, it was pretty cool.
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/v ... Des5bsNuDM
Fatal1ty spanking a random E3 attendee at Quake4. All his victim got in the end was a T-shrit. 
Well not really. Crappy dark photos and my comments. Enjoy.
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No photos inside the booth, but Mikey was kind enough to let me cut the line. I think I wrote up some comments in the BIA:HH thread. The glider was cool. Ubi's booth was nice because it was big and open in the middle with all the games on the perimeter.
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Move over EA, here comes Canada!
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Move over Canada, here comes the UK!
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Scary thing is, my cousin went to high school with Fatal1ty (not that you can see him in the photo) but damn that kid's got his own booth at E3 just cause he's good at games etc... damn
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Once again, Namco had dancers. Less scantily clad this year.
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Also at Namco's booth, the girl on the left is about 5 foot 2 by my guess...so that means the pacman dude must be really short. I asked my friend at Namco about it. The dude is a "little person" so any child welfare lawyers can STFU.
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Yeah, a meh dark picture. The PS3 games all looked beautiful..best smoke, textures, effects, etc ever. Still collecting coins.... :roll:
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Ok this photo doesn't show it...but during an open demo Sam Fisher jumps into water and it was supposed to show all these cool new underwater moves/gameplay - except the demo kept crashing in that spot... a major bug. It was laughable. Everyone walked away. Still, the game looked great and as a Splinter Cell fan, I will be sure to possible think about maybe checking it out 
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WTF?
Quote from submdlOk...
just giving you a little flak, that's all. 
Sanity 1....NDA's 0
lol...Klein FTW.
BTW, submdl, interesting you bring up a professional question when your sig is about as unprofessional as it gets. gg.
Quote from FuryoDefinitely one of the best duo scene in the history of action movies/thrillers
And as a fan of the movie, I would love to see the game somehow capture that same intensity of the characters...as well as the "tragic feeling" of the entire movie. Everybody in that film sort of self distructs themselves or their relationships. As an action/heist movie, that element took it to a higher level.
Further, that same character intensity and "tragic" flavor was very much delivered in the famous LA street shootout, hence why so many people really liked it. That said, I think a big challenge and opportunity for Gearbox is to find a way to deliver that same character and story element in the game, if possible.
Thought gameloft was based in NY. Or do they have another studios ?
Uh...i meant at Gameloft's E3 booth.
yeah on Thursday i was walking past Gameloft and the crowd was so dense you had to find another route...because Paris Hilton was there talknig about "Diamond Jewel Quest Extreme" or whatever the name she screwed up.
I loved Heat.
Besides the firefight scene, what I remember most was when the Pacino and Diniro meet in the diner early on. That made the movie.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12597190/?GT1=8199
read that. those were the things that "managed to stand out amid chaos of video game show" ????
Quote from kleinlukathats all? you write like a book about BIA:HH's demo and all I get is a one-liner? tisk tisk tisk tisk
I only saw it for a few minutes. It's a familiar theme of CTs and hostage rescue and everything we love about Clancy squad based games (thematically that is). Your team was repelling down the outside of a building to recon the action inside through the glass. You invert on the rop and have option to shoot with your pistol, but you go back up, and get all your team members in position. Then you fast rope down several yards and crash through the window guns blazing and ankle a few Ts. Well done.
Me tired...say more later.
Quote from Fletchawwwwwww. that's touching, man.
huggles
Well I saw it up close today (thanks Mike for letting me cut the line.)
The monitor was HUGE so it actually showed TOO much to be sitting that close, so you could see the pixels, which is a bit ironic because it still is a great looking game.
MUCH more importantly, the feel of tension was clearly there. If you are looking for the closest match to the "Band of Brothers" characters/drama in the small moments of WWII, this game delivers better than anything to date, and there have been MANY WWII games. think that's important because you get a sense of character in the soldiers. I saw the demo twice in a row (again, thanks Mike...oh and Mike ran the demo both times) and while I can't say I got to know individual characters I can say that your comrades feel much more human in their simple dialogue, gestures etc than just about all games I've seen. It's these little moments of flavor that remind you that these guys are human beings. Did I get some big emotional connection with the NPCs while watching the demo? No. But it effectively laid the groundwork for it, much more than most other games. This game is a smart, good step in the right direction.
I'm not trying to giz Gearbox love, I'm saying that Gearbox's goal of personalizing the experience of war though humanized NPCs is the best yet in HH. I only saw a 10 minute demo, so I cannot comment on the entire game, but if the rest of the game carries the same spirit, then I trust that the game is going to deliver. Mike and I talked for a bit after, and he has that passion for what he's doing so I know it will deliver. I also got to meet Randy very briefly, but I could tell he had such joy presenting the game that was very distinct from the "respect my l337ness" attitude so many industry pros have.
Anyway, to wrap up this fuzzy post, this is a game that we should pay attention to for those little things about the NPCs that immerse you in a whole world. Oh, gameplay feels more evolved too. 
watched it again today at E3...on the big screen....and while the trailer is a great piece of entertainment...it's a trailer. i need in game footage but hey we say that every time a new MGS appears at E3.
