totally hypocritical "i ain't readin all that shit" post coming up: after the snes days, my parents never bought me another videogame-related item again. not for christmas, not ever. i think it made me want them more. the reasoning is that it didn't teach me moderation because i simply had nothing to moderate in the first place. so when i did earn money for something or got to play something new at a friends house, i'd splurge. i'd simply play the thing to an unhealthy level. now there's an upside to this, too. because i worked hard for these games and systems, i learned to research into what game i wanted and deliberate them very carefully. if i bought a lousy game that wasn't fun, i had just worked outside in the sun for eight or more hours for nothing, depending on how expensive the game was (i remember working all christmas break for loz oot when i was twelve, but that one was way worth it). not only did i learn about making sure to choose quality products, i'd allocate my time to playing a few games on a higher level--rather than playing a lot of games and just brushing the surface. this is a trend i see with people these days. they'll buy a game, beat it, and then move on to another game. this is why i put so much stock into time/score attack. win/lose should apply to multiplayer, not single player. this type of system preserves ongoing depth. so anyway, basically i'm saying the best way would be to teach your kids moderation and then do "meet you half way" kind of stuff so that they learn the value of what they choose to spend their time investing into. but this guy is really just criticizing videogames because he says kids waste precious time and productivity, what a moron. use videogames to teach them about competitiveness and how effort leads to improvement. you'll have a say in what your kids play, so choose multiplayer games they'll need someone to interact and compete with, either their friends or their family. that's the most fun way to play anyway. if it's single player, make sure the game focuses more on skill and less on just time-invested (use ct's test: the more disappointed you are if you lose your game data, the worse the game). on a semi-related note, i was thinking about something alexey was saying in one of his interviews about pure puzzles. the difference to me between tetris and hexic is similar to the difference between an impulse purchase and a prudent purchase. impulse marketing is more about speed and efficiency, and it is becoming more and more important in today's economy. think mcdonalds, atms, etc. may seem like tetris is bad, but it's definitely more relevant to today's reality. /end random accumulated thoughts
Then The New Tetris sucks (fast skins take hundreds of thousands of accumulated "lines" to unlock), and so does Animal Crossing. Worse yet, so does the metagame of video game development; imagine if I lost the source code to Lockjaw.
Aww, someone remembered. I like that test. The only time it's failed me so far was when my beatmania USA save got corrupted and I had to unlock all the songs again. It's like an hour of tedious boredom before the real fun can start again. Let that be a lesson to future game designers: making everything an unlockable is a retarded idea.
First see Meta and Metadata on Wikipedia, as well as Meta in . If metadata means data about data, then a "metagame" might mean a game whose objective is to develop computer game software. LOCKJAW: The Project Objective: Develop an engine for computer ochimono games. Save file: Source code of game engine. Scoring: Number of users who praise the software. Players: Anyone with a compiler, or anyone who makes skins (including myself, Lardarse, cdsboy, Rich Nagel). NPCs: The rest of y'all So c_t, is there a condition under which you would like a social sim game or an MMO game?
to be fair i should be taken off that list xD. Its been quite a while since i've compiled lockjaw, and don't even have a mac to do so now.
Sure, I'd play a social games with friends. When I shared a house with 3 friends, we also shared a full town in Animal Crossing on gamecube. But, in such cases, it's great friends more than great gameplay that makes the experience worthwile. And likewise, losing save data isn't the end of the world, because you still have your friends and your memories. The better games of these types realise that's it's the users provifing the content above all else, and try to build a medium for interaction with others more than building any sort of "game" with objectives.
Hehe, my folks never bought me a videogame... 'course, that was before their time. In my youth, presents consisted of things such as "Silly Sand" and "Lite Brite", anyone here old enough to remember those <LOL>? P.S. My first videogame (excluding handhelds, which my first was the original Mattel Football) was an Intellivision http://tang.cmoo.com/~snor/weeds/Intellivision/ - Hehe, just an FYI @All, I actually *DO* play the game quite a bit as well <G> -
WARNING: For the sake of all that is good and holy, do not buy this game! Especially not for your children!!
