Wikipedia uses the same picture for Down Syndrome and Do it yourself.

littlechinaman · 2 months

Wikipedia has an effort to correct systemic bias in their image choice by intentionally using people of various discriminated-against minorities, such as the mentally disabled, where normally they would not be used. The image here is an example of that.

</boring explanation>

MattyMcD · 2 months

Using one game as an example

That's cute. Anyone can come up with a single example to support a claim. The market as a whole is incredibly focused on casual gaming.

MattyMcD · 2 months

As well it should. I only took exception to this idea that competitive players will bring in more money, which is delusional. Game companies aim for widespread appeal, including catering (where possible) to competitive players, but they don't (and shouldn't) focus on them exclusively.

MattyMcD · 2 months

You fail, once again, to consider that you are not who I am talking about.

Consider the opinion of those 'fan boys' and 'n00bs' (who spells it with zeros? Really?), who vastly outnumber you -- they must, as after all, Call of Duty is the best-selling modern franchise. These people view Halo as a 'kiddie game', and say those who play it are 'losers'. In their eyes, Call of Duty pros are worthy of greater respect. Realize that these players are not just more common, but are (due to their numbers) more profitable, and therefore more likely to be catered to.

Please, at least attempt to take alternate points of view into account, or acknowledge that you are not a representative average gamer.

MattyMcD · 2 months

You prove yourself to be worthy of positive regard.

No, wait, I mean the opposite of all those words I just said.

MattyMcD · 2 months

Larger playerbase = larger interested audience = more fame.

MattyMcD · 2 months

I actually specifically stated to look up "orders of approximation" before you responded, but I didn't expect people to listen, so there we go. My statement meant that pro players made up less than one one-hundredth, and possibly less than one one-thousandth, of the playerbase.

You may take solace in the fact that I have no irrational grudge against competition, merely players who seem to think that only competitive play is worthy of 343's attention, and all others are somehow lesser, peons who scrabble in the dirt and should avert their eyes at the passing of a Knight of Competitive Gameplay, He Who Has The MLG Flag As His Emblem. It's ridiculous, and players of that sort tend to demean casual players despite these 'casuals' controlling the interests of the gaming industry. It's egocentrism of the highest order.

Addendum: Furthermore, I am not 'immature' because I don't care about pros or want to watch them play. I have no interest in watching someone else play a game when I could be playing it. It's not fun to me. This does not make me immature. That preference is called an opinion, and humorously enough, your derisiveness towards people holding that opinion is immature.

MattyMcD · 2 months

Alright, here, let me say this first off: Competitive gameplay is wildly less popular than casual, and casual players dictate the tone, pacing and content of a game. This will not change now or in the future.

I know, I know, this enrages you. It infuriates you. Your ass is greatly pained and you want to pound your keyboard, saliva flying from your lips, as you spew insults towards my parentage or intelligence. The thing is, though, it's true. Consider the following:

1) The most popular games of all time on virtually every console have been casual games. Virtually every console, with the exception of the original Xbox, has its most popular game as one with no competitive scene to speak of. The most popular game of all time is still Tetris on mobile phones. Zynga still reels in so much money that they could replace their dicks with precise golden replicas, and they don't have a hardcore scene at all. Minecraft is one of the most popular and fastest-growing games of all time, and its competitive scene consists of a few PvP servers with little to no traffic.

2) Halo's competitive gametypes, which your type tend to defend religiously as "real Halo", have the lowest player-count. TU ZB Slayer rarely gets over 500 players at once, while Living Dead (the most casual of casual) rarely drops below twelve times that. BTB is one of the most popular playlists, and this may shock you: the reason people play it is because it's fun. Yes, fun. The thing that most people, by far, play to have.

3) To a first-, second- or even third-order approximation, professional players don't exist. (You may not know what that means; I'd encourage you to look up orders of approximation before replying, saying "of course professional players exist".) Players that play for money or in competitions are so vastly outnumbered by players that just hop on to spend time with friends or blow off steam that catering to them makes no financial sense. A few niche games target competitive players, but most will find it desperately unprofitable. This is why more games nowadays intentionally limit the advantage that a good player will get over a bad one: less-skilled players will have more fun, leading them to pick up the DLC and sequels to the game and making the developer more money.

4) Casual players may 'come and go', but so do competitive players. That's why the Halo competitive scene is in the tank. They came... and they went. There is more money, more prestige and more fame in Call of Duty, the IP du jour, and so most console competitive gaming has moved to that.

Last but not least:

5) Basic economics should tell you that catering to a smaller portion of a fanbase over a numerically much-superior one is a bad idea. The greatest source of income for developers is the launch cost of a game, not longer-term income sources like DLC. They want to get more people buying it and enjoying it, not a few people buying it and really liking it. Success is not tied to service paid to the competitive scene; if anything, the inverse is true.

EDIT: I should also note that my rebuttal's point is this: The notion that catering to competitive gaming will bring sales is ludicrous. If you want to say "I prefer competitive gameplay", feel free, but if you want to say:

Why do you think Halo 3 had such huge numbers? Because Halo 2 was so successful and H2 was the most entertaining competitive FPS to watch AND play by far at that time.

I'm going to have to shoot you down. Halo 3's success was directly due to popularity with the masses, which is a function of how well a game appeals to everyone. Mass-market appeal will always target casual players. I am willing to hypothesize that very few players bought Halo 3 because they liked watching people play Halo 2, whereas I am also quite confident that many players did buy Halo 3 because they and their friends had fun playing Halo 2 online.

whydidshedoit · 3 months

You were not even a small contributing factor to all this. Every day, people commit suicide. You just happened to be an observer of this one (if she did actually kill herself, and I doubt she did).

ScreamThief · 3 months

"Invisible sword douchebag". It speaks for itself.

LizardRock · 3 months

Decomposition of Regular Planar Objects into Multiple Irregular Constituents for the Purposes of Non-Consenting Biological Pseudo-Reproductive Acts

PanRagon · 3 months

Supreme Commander 2 is not shit. Supreme Commander 2 is actually a very good RTS that just happens to be nothing like the thing it's billed to be the sequel of.

coppersink · 3 months

As I said:

the 60ns difference between expected and observed arrival times was just a small fraction of the total travel time, which points to a possible timing error

If the timing was off by several milliseconds or so, the error required for such a large timing discrepancy would have to be monumental, therefore much more easily caught, therefore it would be less likely to have survived so much experimental overview.

As it is, 60ns is the error of a dozen meters of travel at c or so, which (to me, and to the OPERA team) immediately hints at some very minor error that may have been missed.

coppersink · 3 months

You seem to misunderstand what the usage of the standard deviation is. When someone is so-and-so-many standard deviations from the mean, it describes how likely it was that they would end up that far from the mean by chance. Sigma is always probability.

coppersink · 3 months

This was a massive experiment with millions of potential points of failure. They knew it was likely an experimental setup error, but it's hard to check that many potential problems.

coppersink · 3 months

People come here who are easily swayed on what to believe about topics of scientific discussion. I don't believe it's asking all that much to avoid chipping in (and contradicting someone who's right!) if you don't know what you're talking about.

coppersink · 3 months

That's irrelevant. High-sigma means "how likely is it that these results were just statistical flukes?" Sigma only measures the certainty that the results accurately represent the outcome of the experiment as it is set up.

What he is pointing out is that the 60ns difference between expected and observed arrival times was just a small fraction of the total travel time, which points to a possible timing error (it's easy to lose track of 60ns).

Also, you're really not very scientifically-literate. "FIVE SIGMAS AWAY FROM THE EXPECTED VALUE" is a nonsense phrase. That's like saying "the result was one chance in a billion away from the expected value!" The expected value was a unit of time, sigma is a unit of probability. Dimensional analysis: Learn it.

Pi31415926 · 3 months

Yeah, in the beautiful days before 9/11, I went on a tour of a nuclear power plant. Those fuel storage pools terrified young me.

TheChrizby · 3 months

I've got a code, PM me for one.

EthicalReasoning · 3 months

There's a bizzarely active OS/2 community. I wouldn't knock them. It's rumored that they have the power to command ATMs and some old systems that vendors say wouldn't be cost-effective to upgrade.

thatfreaksam · 3 months

Correct. SmokeyTheRobot oversimplified way too much, but for addicts abandoning them can be the only thing that turns them around.

Bout_It_Bout_It · 3 months

Mario has changed, but LoZ games are essentially the exact same formula each time. It will never change. It never has changed. I'm not saying they're bad (Wind Waker is one of my favorite games of all time), but they are largely identical.

Jargo · 3 months

AAAAAAAAATATAT -- oh hey, the first one killed him.

Well now I just feel awkward.

Ucibius · 3 months

If you plan to upgrade within the next two to three years, 8GB should last you. I'm on a three-year upgrade schedule, so (for instance) my situation doesn't benefit much from getting more RAM now.

CaptainRon19 · 3 months

When I played Halo 3 I figured out that the trick was to not track the target. That makes you too nervous and prone to missing. Instead, charge while keeping your target somewhere on your screen, then snap the reticle over the target for the actual laser shot. Much easier, less stressful, gives the enemy less warning.

I never made much use of that trick (it's my firm belief that Halo 3 is the worst Halo game, so I didn't play much) but it still works wonders in Reach.

chromium24

TROPHY CASE

Three-Year Club	reddit mold
Verified Email

chromium24

TROPHY CASE

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login