A Thought

... Remember saying something about an "ideal" combination of role-playing games & The SIMs ?

Apparingly someone was crazy enough to actually do something into that direction ... :

http://www.thesimsmedieval.com/
 
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Had to activate "Two Worlds I" last evening.

There was nowhere stated I had to do this.

I was quite angry because of that, because I permanently want my "gaming PC" to be off the internet all of the time ! I just don't want … things to creep into it, no matter what.

To me, as an offline player, this is just … an insult.

So … I just thought : "What is the most effective way I can make people angry about this 'activation' like I became angry about it myself ?"

I found it out.

Via postcards. Via "snail-mail".

"In order to be able to play this game you must activate it first by sending us the accompanied postcard including your address.
It might take several days until our letter with the activation code reaches you."

This would cause exactly the same kind of anger.
 
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I just had ttwo different - very different thouhts today.

One popped into my brain just some minurtes ago. It goes like this :

"Why aren't there the same as web comics for literature ?"


The other one was rather half-sleep kind of daydreaming … I was making up a very lively dream of an Unicorn RPG … You play a unicorn, which grows over the time and becomes more and more powerful. And your party consists of nothing but unicorns.

It was … well, kind of a mix between Dragon Age reversed … replace all of the blood elements within the Dragon Age UI etc. with glittering fairy glimmer … so to say … But not too much, because that would look childish. Only so much that it retains the image, the feel of another fantasy world … The exactly same reason why all of these blood spots were introduced into Dragon Age to give it a feeling of darkness, hopelessness, and - of course - of War. Against the "Blight".

In my daydreaming, I even imagined - very lively, again an exact model of the Dragon Age camp. "My Unicorn" was in the middle, the party-leader, and several other forms of unicorns were assembled there … - a black one, a fire-red one (entanngled in flames, as this was a sort (not demonic at all) that was in common with fire, like a sorcerer would be if he or she was constantly "playing with fire") , a striped one … All of them ith different traits and abilities.

This was an army against "the blight" of which the heroes of Dragon Age would NEVER EVER hear of - because these unicorns would do their very best to keep themselves out of the sight of the humans and of other sentinent beings.

This would be a "War Of Nature" (similar to TDE's "Peraines Bane" of the island of Maraskan against the corruption caused by Borbarad and his allies) against "the blight", one, of which neither humans nor dwarves would ever hear of … only Elves, and they not even likely, because these unicorns would keep themselves out of their ways either.

In my daydreaming, I also had a very lively image of "my" unicorn in this game, having and using spells, and the spells and other special abilities (like for example to "ride" someone down, or pierce an enemy with the horn) would kind of "grow" and develop = become stronger over time, too. Which would be put into as skill points.

And of course, they would only talk to wood creatures. There wouldn't even be humans, dwarves, elves etc. in the game, because it would be just a game about wood creatures.

And their fight against "the blight" or against some other kind of … opposition.

I would love to make such a game. It would be very different from what we see today, but yet in its plot still be recognizeable.
It would in principle even be a "generic" RPG - only with different ( *very* different) protagonists.

And then I remembered that Fairy RPG …


Edit : I know that I'm thinking too much … Why not call this "Unicorn" RPG just

"Unicorn : The Maskerade"

? Because of course they don't want to be seen …
 
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LucasArts rating regarding TFU II :

ESRB: TEEN with Violence and Mild Blood

There is actually thing like "mild blood" ?

Is this something like "being a bit pregnant" ?
 
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More like being only slightly dead, I should think!! :)
 
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:lol:

I saw a novel about an undead young person in today's world yesterday … Don't remember the title, though.

The summary was that he was "undead" after a car accident, and he was so ugly after that that his parents locked him up into the cellar … But he wanted "a life" and find a girl-friend, too …

Sounds sort of interesting … ;)
 
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:lol:

I saw a novel about an undead young person in today's world yesterday … Don't remember the title, though.

The summary was that he was "undead" after a car accident, and he was so ugly after that that his parents locked him up into the cellar … But he wanted "a life" and find a girl-friend, too …

Sounds sort of interesting … ;)
I have seen a movie quite close, it's a sort of road movie, where the guy is slowly becoming a zombie and the girl don't want quit him or let him quit. It's a sort of Bonnie and Clyde with the zombie theme. And beside a rise of violence there's also the rise of dark gore humor merged with a love story that becomes less and less possible. Not bad at all.
 
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Today I found a great quote from one of the Picar founders in the local newspaper :

I translate : "Computer animation is only a tool", says John Lasseter, "and the tool alone can not entertain an adience alone.
It's always about the figures and their story."

I think that this hits my own belief pretty good on the nail, so to say : The story should imho always be more important than the graphics alone.

Another quote from there, translated by me : "Pixar's secret is, that it isn't operated by bean counters."

This is to me a proof of my theory that money accountances shouldn't control the gaming area, too.
 
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Because of these addictive properties and the companies' genuine desire to further improve them in order to sell more, I actually hope that video game regulations will become more strict in the near future. I would appreciate it if games specifically designed to be addictive would become illegal or at least less accessible. At the very least the most important factor for rating systems should become a game's addictiveness and not how much nudity or violence there is.
 
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All the 5 points in that article are just about the same thing, looked at from a slightly different angle. The "Skinner's box mentality" of game design is nothing new, it has been around since the dawn of video games, the only difference is that game designers are getting better and better at using it. High scores were just a simple way of getting us addicted, leveling up in the earlier CRPGs from the 80's were a slightly more sophisticated way. While the early final fantasy games just told you that you had reached a new level, a more sophisticated game, like World of Warcraft gives you a nice flash of light, a fanfare of sort and tried to make you feel special for reaching this amazing new level, same basic idea, but Wow is more refined.
 
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After this article I … think I get a small idea how pathological gambling begins …
All of these gambling machines …
 
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The 5 points are only about the same thing in the sense that they are all methods to get players addicted, but there are important differences and I doubt they all abuse the very same psychological mechanism. For example getting recognition online from having certain "achievements" has a social component just levelling up in a singleplayer RPG does not have.

Sure, you can boil down everything in life to "it's just about the rewards", but that simplifies a lot of issues and is not very helpful.

I agree that some of the mentioned mechanics were already in place and used in arcade machines in the 80s, but arcade halls are now age-restricted throughout most of the civilized world and even illegal in some countries. So I don't see why video games should be held up to a different standards, just because they might not (yet) have the same financially devastating effect as a "normal" gambling addiction.

I see video gaming as one of the most detrimental factors for the generation composed of today's 15-25 year olds. And the issue is further complicated by an older generation of gamers who don't suffer from the same consequence and who subsequently reject the idea that gaming is a very dangerous influence for children.

But the situation today is very different from what it used to be. Gaming has less social stigma attached to it and has permeated various social groups and not just geeks, who tend to be more academically focused and therefore more educated and qualified. In the globalized economy of today the necessary degree of qualification for a high-wage job has risen while the actual wages are decreasing in every segment in first-world countries, without most people realizing this, so that there is an expectation of a wealthy life that is in reality unattainable for most youths today. The modern youth culture also values the idea of appearing autonomous while being academically ignorant higher and indirectly (for example through nihilistic tendencies in metal/goth/emo subcultures) or directly (for example in hip-hop) encourages slacking off to an extent that is not paralleled by previous anti-establishment youth cultures.

While all these influences and factors can be considered detrimental, I argue that gaming is unique and can be considered the most important for the people that are affected by it, because it actively rewires the brain's structure for rewards and potentially scars a gamer for life, since rewiring the brain and changing established patterns is exceptionally hard in later stages of one's life.
 
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But the situation today is very different from what it used to be. Gaming has less social stigma attached to it and has permeated various social groups and not just geeks, who tend to be more academically focused and therefore more educated and qualified.

Hm, it partially depends on the country, I guess. You could actually see very, very, very few visitors looking like being 30-40 plus on the Games Com.
 
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I had a thought today :

A game is originally being distributed so that it requires Steam.
Now the makers decide that the impliite copy protection that is called Steam ishould no more be necessary, since this game has reached its life-cycle end.

Now, what happens in my imagintion is this : The game needs Steam to download and install this patch that removes its copy-protection that consists of its Steam-connection.

... But one day, in the distant future, Steam is no more ...
 
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I had a thought today :

A game is originally being distributed so that it requires Steam.
Now the makers decide that the impliite copy protection that is called Steam ishould no more be necessary, since this game has reached its life-cycle end.

Now, what happens in my imagintion is this : The game needs Steam to download and install this patch that removes its copy-protection that consists of its Steam-connection.

… But one day, in the distant future, Steam is no more …

Are you serious? Steam is only the first phase. All PC games in the future and all console games in the future with have online copy protection like Diablo 3 where the ai and other content are server side. Perhaps they will remove the copy protection when there arent enough people playing to justify the servers, but most games will last a very long time with this protection.
 
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maybe the same to you

Of course I will be one day no more.

Who has said a different thing ?

Are you serious? Steam is only the first phase. All PC games in the future and all console games in the future with have online copy protection like Diablo 3 where the ai and other content are server side. Perhaps they will remove the copy protection when there arent enough people playing to justify the servers, but most games will last a very long time with this protection.

Of course it will be like that.


Several days ago I made an interesting observation : The higher the development of humankind is, the higher developed < - > and at the same time much more fragile the methods used are - in media, for example.

An rough overview :

First : real instruments
Second : Vinyl (or other material) for music records
Third : CD
Fourth : DVD
Fifth : Blue-Ray

What comes next ?

But the main question is this : If we are striken by an asteroid, how much of this music will get lost ? In an Fallout scenario - how mny CD Players will not only survive, but also be able to play their mediums ? And how many CDs will survive ?

Same goes for literature

First : Stone
Second : Printed Books
Third : Energy-driven readers for so-called "E-Books"

As soon as the energy sn't there anymore (Fallout-scenario), those "E-Readers" won't work anymore.

Same goes for Radio and TV.
Harddisks and Blue-Rays.


The higher the humankind evolution is, the more fragile the technical solutions are.
Which is perfectly in balance with the animal evolution : They become more fragile over time, too. Bacteria will survive LONG after humankind is no more.

And that's why I love Board Games. ;)
 
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