Humodour

Sega doesn't hire them; they're so mesmerised by Obsidian's awesome games they offer their services willingly.

Microsoft's ****ty new search engine they spent hundreds of millions on marketing for, because people weren't using the old one. The fact that their first attempt was so simple, intuitive and successful kind of speaks for itself.

Sounds like Microsoft hype, like Bing. I'd say it'll be a fail. Nintendo's on the right track with more specialised motion control devices, and they have a proven track record.

I'd suggest agents for a rogue regime. Considering NK has been withdrawing large sums from tax havens and secret banks recently to pre-empt the UN sanctions and assets freezes, it's probably them. Could also be Iran of course - lots going on there. It definitely has to be a country though. That amount is bigger than the combined cash on hand of Google, Microsoft and Apple combined.

So? You could do that in Fallout 1 and 2, as well. And Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 (super items). But the game was still hard. Having those weapons didn't make you godlike. So it sounds like a balance issue in FO3 (I haven't played it yet).

The Giants: Citizen Kabuto nude mode was pretty good.

monopolies cannot exist without government laws/regulations in the first place. Are you going to bother justifying that outrageous claim in any way or just let it sit there?

a) what part of what i said was contrary to this? b) what does a 4WD have to do with anything i said anyway? To both points: it doesn't. I wasn't arguing with you, but building on the thread in general. Quit being so anxious.

Obvious trolling? How many open source (read: volunteer) source projects do you know that failed especially due the will of a "project lead" that refused to force his decisions upon the team even in fields where he clearly lacks the expert knowledge? I'm with Krezack here: especially if you're working with volunteers you might want to let them decide about specific aspects how things are handled in their department instead of playing all-knowing dictator. You might have simply misunderstood the concept of subsidiarity: it actually means leaving the main decisions in a certain development department to the developers who understand the field best. You usually don't want to let your musicians decide what design patterns to use programming-wise. You don't want to let the programmers dictate all the gameplay elements. You actually got experts for each field, artists, programmers, musicians, gameplay designers, project managers, story writers. Why not use this expert knowledge and leave the majority of the decisions in each department to them? It doesn't mean that they're unwilling to listen to feedback; quite the contrary! It just means that it's a bad idea in general to let the designer of a car decide how the engine of a car should be constructed while he actually knows far more about design than about how to properly construct an engine. The project manager is responsible that each department properly cooperates with each other and that you get a working car in the end. So far - despite some obvious drawbacks here and there that are pretty much what happens to 95% of all open source projects - we seem to be on a quite good way. Of course I don't jump on the lets pat you on the back bandwagon so I MUST be trolling... can't be I say something out of experience or even project mgt 101 skills. That said, the very reasons you list is why commercial ventures are more times then not vastly more successful (as in get completed) then open source projects. The whole 'let run it as a democracy' (or there abouts) outlook which you apparently have. Sorry that is a poor way to get a job done. You are not trying to run a legislative branch of a govt. You are running a s/w project. Which includes you having vision, goals and as a project lead executing those goals and vision. Nothing wrong with getting feedback back and input from your team of course. But in the end of the day you need a strong leader to put his/her foot down and say this is the direction we are going, this is my vision and this is what you need to get done. And if someone isn't on board with that there is the door find someone who is. I lost count how many times I have seen open source teams try this concept of mgt and looking at sourceforge, for example, of the completed projects vs abandoned, unfinished projects I think the numbers speak for themselves. Certainly not wishing your project ill but until I see a working alpha or better I have no hopes this project will make it past the screenshot phase like the million other open source projects who claimed they were reaching for the stars yet never got off the launching pad. I really think your hands off approach of leadership style is not helping you either. A project like this needs a strong leader with focus and ability to delegate direction not someone who lets his team do what they want and turn critical choices and vision into a community vote. Um, get your facts straight: most open source projects fail because they are either trivial/bad ideas, or not worth the time. Because the barriers to entry are so much lower than commerical ventures (you don't need capital, you don't need to please clients or shareholders, etc), it's completely natural that you'll get a much higher number of people thinking their idea is the next best thing since sliced bread, start the project, then lose interest a month later. If your project is non-trivial, worthwhile, and your team is motivated, you've got a really good shot. I just noticed you used the sourceforge example. That's unfortunate, since nobody should actually think of that as a serious index of open source project success. I myself have 4 unfinished/abandoned projects on there. Again, barriers to entry mate. Anybody with a web browser can start a sourceforge project. It's even easier to abandon it.

Actually that's a very successful business model, especially in the open source world, and the only reason it'll become vapourware is if there's no team drive or coordination. But you don't understand his system anyway (it's laughable that you think you can make a judgement about the project's fate by trying to interpret a single sentence): just because project leaders seek consensus where possible (which is a GOOD thing since they often don't know the ins and outs of the thing they oversee, like engine code), doesn't mean they roll over paralysed at the first sign of deadlock in on a decision - they're fully capable of making decisions when they need to. And managing a project by consensus certainly doesn't mean that the leaders lack drive, motivation or vision.

It's the latter; we have a menu of missions that you select from in the safehouse. Mike warps to mission, beats up/stealthily passes by a bunch of bad guys, and then you return to the safehouse to check your news, emails, etc., and repeat the process. Wow that's disappointing. I was hoping for some exploration in some of the major cities and such im guessing the reason obsidian didnt want it free roam is because they dont want u going around killing people mindlessly because that is something u save for GTA.... Yeah, that's exactly NOT the reason. What the heck does that have to do with whether or not they have an open world? Fallout and Baldur's Gate had open worlds, and they were story based games. The reason there's no open world is because you need to put a LOT of time into making the fully explorable world. You often lose out in other areas when you do that (see any game by Bethesda). However they could of at least did a behind the scene transitioning system like VtM: Bloodlines, or Deus Ex.

lol, I criticised this bloke a bunch yesterday for being stubbourn and arrogant (repeatedly calling some poor kid stupid because he didn't understand a topic), and I walk into my first day at work today and he's my boss.

One upside of gaming coming to the uneducated masses: female gamers.

It's the latter; we have a menu of missions that you select from in the safehouse. Mike warps to mission, beats up/stealthily passes by a bunch of bad guys, and then you return to the safehouse to check your news, emails, etc., and repeat the process. Damn that sounds lame. Couldn't have at least integrated it seamlessly like Deus Ex?

iPod. If you don't want an iPod for some reason (don't say iTunes - there's plenty of third party music managers), then stick with Creative - they really know their ****. The Zunes are just crap.

Thirded. Make normal as pissy as you want, but give me a challenge on hard.

You haven't even played AP yet and despite the information that has been released, there's a huge amount that hasn't, so how on earth can you say that? Or are you asking for Obsidian to design a really unique, revolutionary new game like they were with Aliens before it was put on hold? Obsidian isn't going to do that for every single game. Even so I fundamentally disagree with your assertion that what we've been told about AP so far makes it any way generic, a re-hash, or unoriginal, besides the fact that they're not reinventing the wheel repeatedly. No they didn't. Take off your rose-coloured lenses for a second. Many of the best games were actually the best because they did one thing really well and/or integrated all their parts together better than any game before. I think you're struggling with another issue here, as well - you're seeking innovation for innovation's sake rather than for the sake of fun and entertainment. There comes a point in a technology or medium's development when new research or techniques becomes harder and harder. Just like it's hard to make a best selling game these days without millions of dollars and large group of people working on the game, it's also hard to come up with new ideas and features in games these days that haven't already been done before. Just like any maths proof I come up with these days is likely to have been already proved before (because we're building on history instead of repeating it), any new game out today isn't liable to include many innovative new features (and any game that does is liable to suck for trying too hard to push boundaries for the sake of pushing boundaries). 15 years ago I could take an FPS and go "wow, wouldn't this be grand if a few key characters had dialogue?". 10 years ago it was "wow, wouldn't this be grand if every character had dialogue, and a few key characters had multiple dialogue options characters?". 5 years ago it's "wow, wouldn't this be grand if every character you spoke to had multiple dialogue options and many of them meaningful?" Where do you go from there? It's not an easy question to answer. The same pattern has been evolving in every other area of computer gaming. So if every area of gaming has evolved since the days of yore, to the point it now takes a lot of thinking and eureka moments in the shower to come up with something truly innovative for just one feature, where do you go from there? My answer would be that you only innovate where it makes sense to. If you can make a perfectly awesome game by just incorporating all the awesome features of past games without adding a single new feature of your own, I say do so - you'll still end up with one of the best games of all time.

Also funny (what with the Iranian mass protests for freedom on the mind and all):

No. I'm sure it took a few good ones from Mass Effect and Deus Ex, and NOLF, and Fallout and KOTOR2 and NWN2 and the list goes on, which these games in turn took and refined from other games. Why does that bother you buddy?

Looks like they have competition (both in Australia and Britain) from a Europcar-Nissan partnership. Nissan plans to also rent and build charging stations in these countries plus a bunch of others: http://www.greentechmedia.com/green-light/...ric-rental-car/ My main concern is open standards and (obviously) standardisation. They guys will all have to get together and come up with a common method and form of recharging. E.g.: what battery specification will be used? What voltage? If we have 1 recharging station for ever petrol station, but only ever second one matches your battery type that would not be terribly good. I'm not sure there's any way to reconcile hydrogen and electric. Letting a hydrogen user park their car in an electric station to crack water into hydrogen would probably take hours (and be less efficient than cracking hydrogen industrially). I didn't even think they'd opt for hydrogen outside somewhere like Iceland (abundant geothermal) since the catalysis is amazingly energy intensive.

This scheme is being rolled out in Australia at the moment by some Israeli entrepreneur: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5il6f9U...0sQ-Ccd8vh5VANA Oh, except ours is batteries instead of catalytic fuel cells. cars like this really don't make sense outside of urban environments (not yet at least). imagine driving across 70 through the hell that is kansas in one of these and you'll quickly understand my point, refueling stations or no! taks But that's exactly the point: cars like 4WD don't make sense inside urban environments. Want to travel 320km and you've got a an electric car? Take a train or bus until the battery replacement network gets set up (and even then public transport just makes more sense, IMHO). Want to drive around an urban area 90% of the time? Use on of these, and definitely don't use a dangerous (for pedestrians and other vehicles) and petrol-guzzling 4WD. I bet people were saying the same thing about petrol guzzlers when they had horses and carts. "But what happens when the petrol runs out?!" A 4WD will always be better at handling horrid terrain than any urban car, of course, but I'm assuming that's not at issue here. Yep, but you've got to start somewhere right? In the past, you had to refuel at your house. Now they're penetrating major cities. Eventually it'll be suburban areas and then rural ones. It'll be interesting to see how this hydrogen network compares to the electric network in the early stages of roll-out over here. Will we end up seeing Britain on hydrogen and Australia on electric? Two mutually exclusive infrastructures and car models, no?

"Most gamers" aren't pirates so that's a blatant attempt at trolling. I'm curious how any of you were able to count them. We weren't. But it's highly suspect reasoning that most gamers are pirates!

I think most gamers are just excited to have opportunities to rationalize piracy. "Most gamers" aren't pirates so that's a blatant attempt at trolling.

Yes, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. But it goes without saying that if the game does not allow a crate as the main protagonist it's probably going to be an abysmal financial failure.