metadigital

Your ego is only as small as your imagination. :Eldar's mischievous grin icon: <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I confide that I shall rise to my level of incompetence. This must be your page? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No. Unfortunately.

Long-Bar.

ooo. Sounds v. interesting. Now if only I could get over the little pictures ... Learning is fun.

And ninjas flip out and kill everyone!

You need to control the cost of borrowing: How the Bank Influences an Economy ... Macroeconomic Influences ... regulate the level of inflation by controlling money supplies by means of monetary policy ... open market transactions that either inject the market with liquidity or absorb extra funds, directly affecting the level of inflation. To increase the amount of money in circulation and decrease the interest rate (cost) for borrowing, the central bank can buy government bonds, bills, or other government-issued notes. This buying can, however, also lead to higher inflation. When it needs to absorb money to reduce inflation, the central bank will sell government bonds on the open market, which increases the interest rate and discourages borrowing. Open market operations are the key means by which a central bank controls inflation, money supply, and price stability. ... Or, maybe you need to discover economics and the Free Market ... *quickly puts evil manual away before temptation overwelms ... *

... Except if you're a Idiot-box lemming ...

The biggest impediment to your argument is conceptual, and you don't seem to be au fait with it. Not everyone considers the sharing of their ideas as an act of theft. For example, there is an entire world that works, quite effectively, using something called the GNU Public Licence. Some music artists, for example, have found that the sharing of fans' copies of their music has increased sales (I think The Grateful Dead are one famous example). Sharing is an act of trust, so it won't necessarily be reciprocated, but then it may be. If I try a shareware application and I like it and use it, then I'll buy it, if only to get a warranty and show my support for the developers. Ergo, the concept that pirating is stealing is not altogether true and definitely not proven so. Now, I'm not defending the Hong Kong knock shops that have a thousand DVD writers churning out bootleg copies of Corel Draw 10; that's obviously designed to exploit the digital medium for their own gredy ends. But a pirate who breaks the copy protection scheme on an application or game is generally doing it for the peer credibility, not to make their first million bucks. I don't believe too many people who can afford to buy games actually pirate them. I do think a lot of kids who can't afford them do, and I do think that anyone given the choice would buy a rel copy, especially if it comes with a nice printed manual and (non-photocopiable) tea towel. You see, all the copy protection available now is a pale shadow of the nasty and ingenious technology used twenty years ago on the Apple ][. And the crackers were even more ingenious, too. And the best defence, then as now, was "hearts and minds": if the people WANT to buy your application, then they won't pirate it. Richard Garriott knew this, and he made a squillion dollars in the same Apple ][ marketplace.

Short answer: No. Long Answer: No, just loads of subjective research and even more conjecture. Only if they get ships with cannons...and a parrot that says witty things <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Best. Idea. EVAR.

Well, she was fourteen. Seems like there are just too many Gary Glitters out there ...

Sounds like an overheating GPU/CPU chip.

Washing hands with hot water and copious amounts of soap is mandatory. _Every_ time the hands touch something dirty.

I leik this. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah cool. I thought K2 did that. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The Duxn Tomb Raid/Battle for Onderon party split was one of the highlights of K2, but I don't think the importance of either was well explained, and it was just another piece of the four-part intermediate quest - I want something like this, but more complex and involved in the final conflict. I want to believe that my whole party was important - not just the PC. I want to achieve a minor objective in one path then shift to another, and see how one party's actions influences the others' objectives. While this is hard to script, it's not impossible - I did it a few times as a PnP RPG GM, and my players were on the edges of their seats for hours as the "final conflict" resolved itself in multiple places/settings with each PC's actions important to the final outcome. One possibility that this brings is meaningful sacrifice of NPC's (self-sacrifice for LS, or sacrifice by the choices the PC makes for DS). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, it needs to be expanded from a gimmick in K2, to a crucial decision and critical path to success in any sequel. I leik sacrifice. It doesn't have to be a self-sacrifice for LS: there is occassion to believe that it might be in the interest of the "greater good" to sacrifice some other party member ...

... they'll buy an X Idiot-box. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Fix'd.

The PC game is not meant to be sold and re-sold; i.e. there *should* be no second hand market for PC games, which I think has a major impact on the gaming market. If I can buy a game and then sell it after I finish it for a quarter of what I paid, then I get an effective 25% discount on the next game, which is a good incentive to buy a console. (Except for those obsessive-compulsives like me who want to keep all the games they like.) Perhaps the RPG example may shed some light onto the current state of the dynamic PC market. ...This has been the year when the massively multiplayer role-player truly crossed over. It has left the singleplayer game in a particularly perilous position, with 12 months of disapointments and consistent underachievement. For example, Vampire The Masquesrade: Bloodlines and Knights of the Old Republic 2 were released in a particularly shoddy state. The best example of the genre, Dungeon Seige II, is so streamlined that it's barely an RPG at all. The stage is set for Oblivion, then, to remind us exactly why the singleplayer RPG is still essential in the modern age. ... [Cut: lots of interesting and sobering assessments of both the quality of the RPG design and the quality of the product development process.] PC Format, December 2005, Issue 181, pp48-51 (This excerpt from p48). And another comment, further on in the same issue: Sid Meier's Civilization IV As David Essex once said, "Can't you just see it? Civilisation starting all over again ..." Nintendo has Mario, the Playstation has Tomb Raider and the PC has Civilization. It's a platform mascot, the one title that keeps coming back again and again in subtly different forms, yet retains its essential Civilization-ness, even 14 years after it first appeared. ... Issue 181, p86 Personally, my television is strictly for passive consumption: I like to sit back and critically analyze any media purveyed in front of me in the comfort of my sofa; for real interactive entertainment I have built a stupendous office space in which I may use the latest kit to manipulate the internets and any number of games and toys.

You are obviously failing at obsessive-compulsiveness. Go back and wash your hands again.

Sounds like a date, Jimmy. (Jimmy Chu, get it? O, never mind.) I still haven't had enough time / courage to pick up the DVD case / play the game again. The game seems to have enough complexity to make it almost endlessly replayable, even if some of the particulars aren't especially winsome. (Not sure what's going on with that 22% inflation: sounds like you've built a banana republic.) Darque: one proviso, I haven't played SMAC (yet).

Why you choose Jolteon? Umbreon sound cooler. And Espeon coolest. (Adjective, comapartive, superlative; I leik superlatives.)

Anything to avoid paying taxes to the British ...

Maybe the pirates will iron out the runtime bugs ... "

So, Eldar, I see you created and entire fiction and thread just to take a shot at me, hmmmm? Well, I can take it. :'( The subject of this report is Eldar ____ Standardized Attributes ranging from 0 (not applicable to subject) to 5 (subject exemplifies attribute): Intelligence: 0

I think you're going about this the wrong way. Implement *instadeathkill*, so that these characters fly through whatever module it is that the GM is playing. Either the GM will get overrun/frustrated/bored with the rapid progress of the PCs and call a halt, or the players will lose interest. If you time it right, you can interject precisely when they will be most receptive to the idea of playing with characters that have strengths AND weaknesses, so that they might play in such a way to emphasise the former and minimise the latter. Then volunteer to GM them in a game of Cthulhu.

Will that be with a Quake IV site licence?