Stereotypes don't come out of nowhere. I can already hear some of you sputter, but bear with me. Studies of very small children (i.e. without significant cultural imprinting) have borne out that boys tend toward toys with moving parts, wheel, and the like - toy cars, in short - while girls tend more toward anthropomorphic toys - dolls. This is a small propensity, mind you. But our ancestors will have noted this propensity, and it got codified into our societal expectations and cultural norms. So girls are now expected to like dolls, and boys are expected to like toy cars. A boy who plays with dolls is derided, and a girl playing with toy cars is seen as unfeminine. This is, of course, a problem.

Boys need the freedom to play with dolls and develop that side of themselves as much as girls need the freedom to play with toy cars. It's actually a feminist thought - why is a boy derided for playing with 'traditionally' feminine toys? Are they bad, somehow? To have equality of the sexes, the roles of the genders need to be considered equal, and they're not. Yet.

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

Originally posted by wizyy

I think this person is abusive and deserves a warning or a temporary ban. Moderator?

 

This is the forum equivalent of running home to mommy. Pathetic.

And this, then, is the forum equivalent of not knowing why forums have moderators. Abusive behaviour is not something to cultivate, anywhere.

Although, I prefer to simply use the 'report' link, and not post about it unless I myself am directly involved. It's, well, cleaner.

 I played the crap out of Fallout and Fallout 2. Gods, but did I ever. Found the crashed UFO (velvet Elvis picture and all), got the car. They were excellent games, and Black Isle was an excellent studio. Interplay was not an excellent publisher, but oh well. I didn't care so much back then. So then Bethesda bought the Fallout license. I worried. Would they be able to do a 'real' Fallout game? I decided to wait to buy it. Finally I did get it. I was not disappointed. FO3 is IMNVHO entirely as good as the first ones. Is it the same game? No, but then time has kinda run away from the isometric turn based RPG a bit. It has its flaws - what game doesn't? But I can live with those. Moving the action to D.C. was a stroke of genius. The story itself feels eminently Fallout-esque, and the game system, while changed, fits very well.

I honestly do not get what people are complaining about here!

 To the reasonable observer it must. But that seems like standard procedure these days. Europe is only just now getting the Playstation 3's movie service, for example. Games are commonly released between a few months and a year later here - if at all. And MMOGs often divide their communities into EU/rest-of-world seeming to specifically firewall us dirty Euros away from all the others - and then of course neglect the European community, even when they lavish events and special stuff on the other one.

Bitter? Me? Noooo. What gave you that idea?

Sending packages back and forth between the US and Europe is, these days, trivially easy. I can't vouch for Asia, Africa or South America, but Europe, at least, is easy, and not hugely expensive - at least it hasn't been the innumerable times I've sent packages to the US, or my mother-in-law has sent packages to my wife here in Sweden. So 'shipping constraints' sounds a bit thin, to me.

---

Originally posted by ghstwolf

300 people (12% of a <2000 person pool)

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To some people, everything should be free, I guess. Never mind that that $15/mo pays for regular, pretty cool upgrades of the game, which introduce new, long-sought-after features. And mind you, you don't pay a penny for those updates themselves, like you do with other games *cough*WoW*cough*. The extras, well, they're for people who want all the goodies there are to get, and who think that putting some cash into a company that's proven its track record with making a cool game and then supporting and evolving it through five+ years is a good idea. So people like me.

I'll be getting GR, just like I'll likely also get Champions Online.

Originally posted by Nahnar

I agree with you.... in some part... but lets think on other players too to have fun, example: PVP mystery game.... evry1 could have fun, evry1 happy.

How would that work? I am having some trouble reconciling the ideas of (ultimately non-violent) mystery solving with (rather violent) PVP. Give us your thoughts on the matter, I'm curious. :-)

Originally posted by Yamota

Also, most games, cater to the young male audience (young being anywhere from 15-35) and that audience likes, fictional, violence so a non-violent MMO would not cater to the majority of the audience. Possibly would it appeal to the female audience but isnt there already such an MMO, Sim something? Where you just live and do nothing special. Sounds pretty boring to me. *shrug*

RTFA. The Sims Online died horribly in flames.

Also, please don't paint people with that brush of yours - it's a mite wide. 15-35 males may play MMOGs with violence, but then, so does a large proportion of females. This is well documented in various studies. And similarly, I for one (at 31) would definitely play a mystery MMO - likely together with my wife, who also loves the adventure/mystery genre. It just remains to be seen if it can be done right.

Some of the ideas that have come up in this thread sound promising (NYPD Online, as told above being the prime example IMO), and generating content can be done, if you know your coding and your software design, and have a few bright ideas. A Clue/Cluedo style setup, where the elements of the mystery are generated on the fly by the game from a number of prefab pieces would work quite well. Clue has IIRC 6 murder weapons, six suspects, and eight or nine murder locations, and it's a rasre thing that the same mystery comes up. Now, instead, have 20-30 different possible weapons, 30 motivations, 50 suspects, and a bunch of pieces of evidence to add into the mix, and a murder mystery can be generated that has a 1-in-20-million chance of ever being seen again. Then add other types of crimes or mysteries to solve. Suddenly, guides are much less useful, and player mystery solving skills become paramount. Cooperatively, you could work as a team on it, some players interrogating suspects and interviewing witnesses, some  finding clues at the scene of the crime, some doing lab work, etc. Solving the crime means having the evidence to present a criminal case, or similar, for which the whole team would then get credit.

No violence involved. But lots of thinking and putting pieces together.

Originally posted by hogscraper

 [NYPD Online]

 

I would play the shit out of this game. People would start wondering where I was and stuff.

Being fat is not funny.

Being fat and dressing up as a Spartan from 300 is funny!

There's lots of costumes an overweight man with a little self-awareness could pull off. A Spartan is not one of them, and just like a (hairy, skeevy-looking) man dressing up as Faye from Cowboy Bebop is funny, so is this. It's not the fat - it's the complete incongruity of character to player.

Originally posted by Zorvan

I'm a certifiable butthole in real life.

Glad you said that, and not me, buddy. ;-D

But you have a point. It goes both ways. Some people, offered anonymity, become, as Gabe of Penny Arcade puts it, 'utter f***wads' [bowdlerized to protect the guilty]. Others go the opposite way. It makes for an interesting look at society - how much of people's good behavior is enforced solely by the threat of being shunned by their peers? And how many of us hide good hearts under hard exteriors for whatever reason?

Originally posted by japo

Reward players for discovering "X" number of places with cool looking stuff.

Give special gear for completing 100, 500, 1000, etc quests.

Give eye candy stuff for "x" number of hours in game.  This rewards people who play a bunch but RP or do other things besides getting toomax level.

Give rewards to crafters that create a ton of stuff.  Sure they get cash from selling stuff, but give them cool robes or cloaks....stuff like that.

Yes. This is sensible thinking. CoH did some in  this direction with its badges (that could be used as name 'epithets' of sorts) for all sorts of things, from defeating certain enemies or missions, to exploration, to crafting, to trading on the marketplace or spending a certain amount of time in a zone, but bigger, better, more of this!

The game that's gotten me closest to feeling like a Big Damn Hero is the appropriately named City of Heroes. Fighting stiff odds and prevailing because you and your friends make a good team makes you feel accomplished, like you're doing something out of the ordinary. Back in the day, I ran in a three-man team most of the time - a Tanker, a Blaster and a Defender. Three of us took on spawns meant for full eight-man teams, and came out on top. Some times it got pretty damn hairy, some times we got in over our heads, but at the end of the day, we prevailed. Infinity Force won the day, etc.etc.

I'm hoping I can get a similar feel from Champions Online when it drops. There's a difference between feeling heroic, and actually being a hero. The latter is difficult to achieve, and requires a lot of work, great sacrifices, good luck, or all of the above. The former, though, can be achieved by making the player feel like they pulled something off they by rights really should not have been able to.

Originally posted by Punkre  

3.Girly companies : Hello Kitty, Barbie, and Hannah montanna need to get out of video games altogether, when will game companies understand that girls dont play video games until they are older and roped into MMOs by their boyfriend / husband to heal them.

Um... My fiancée would like to give you a hearty cup of STFU. While she has no time for Hello Kitty or Barbie, she's been a gamer since she understood the concept of video games, pretty much. And there's plenty of games she's way the hell and gone better at than I ever will be. As well, what do you care if there's a Hannah Montana MMO? It's not like you'll be tied to a chair and forced to play it.

So take your misogyny and shove it where the sun don't shine. I have no time for it, and neither does anyone else.

Originally posted by Redtah

Sure these games are good but their not great. If I can beat a game in 4 hours without knowing anything about it prior then why am I spending 60 dollars on it, when I can wait for a half decent RPG to come out spend the same 60 dollars and get an exponential amount more out of it?

You spent $60 on Portal? Where? How? I've never even seen the Orange Box at a higher price than $45, myself, and that's Portal, HL2, HL2E1 and E2, AND Team Fortress 2... :-O

Originally posted by kaydinv

Saying "Nigger" in some situations might be perfectly acceptable and completely offensive in others.

Tell me of one situation in which I, with my pale skin, could say said n-bomb and it would be acceptable. I sure as sin can't think of one. If the situation where it would be acceptable is "the speaker is possessed of a high melanin-count", then there's something very wrong about the whole argument, there.

As well, you undermine your own argument by calling your opponents immature and the like. This does not make it more likely anyone will take you seriously. Insulting people is not a great way to get them to listen.

KirinRahl: You illustrate some serious issues, there. Zero-tolerance policies tend to cause more problems than they help, and banning someone for praising another player emphatically seems, well, extremely dumb. A more sensible attitude towards the use of language in general might behoove these companies.

Freedom of speech... That means that you can say whatever you please (within certain sensible limits) and the government can't fine you, imprison you, or otherwise punish you for it. That really is all.

Basically, it means that you're allowed to talk smack, but I'm allowed to consider you an asshole for it, too. ;)

Originally posted by Zorvan

You know what, Mr. Sweden? Why are you discussing racism in the U.S. when you don't even live here? Did you read about us in a book or seen us on the news and now are the authority on how things work over here?

I'm marrying an American woman next Saturday. She's actually faced the problems of AA herself - it meant she could not get into the school mshe wanted to, basically. I also know a whole bunch of Americans of all stripes, types and colours, beside her.

We're fundamentally in agreement about AA's problems. We have a similar system to it over here, and it actually works, because the greater inequalities have largely been evened out. In this case, it ascertains that minorities can get educations and jobs at the same level as the majorities. An example is the system ensuring that women have access to science Ph.D scholarships, which is necessary because the tenured professors making the call on who gets these slots is pretty much exclusively male, and this prevents any bias from causing problems. It also, at worst, means that a male student who wants a Ph.D. very badly will need to wait a year more for it, but can then rack up some real-world work experience all the while, improving his chances the next year. This only works, in the first place, though, because of the system of free education and so on and so forth we have here.

I really wish you'd take a less confrontational tone, Zorvan. We're really not disagreeing a lot here, and you do have some good points. We should be able to discuss these things amicably, I think.

Originally posted by Zorvan

Sorry, but your the one who needs to take a step back.

So everything is so "unfair" to others that aren't white?

I think Obama pretty much blew your argument out of the water. Everytime you or somebody else wants to pull the "I'm being held back because of my race" card, I'm going to refer you to Obama. Or maybe Colin Powell. Or Clarence Thomas. Or any of the others who somehow managed to do what you apparently think can't be done.

And affirmative action does not make things equal. It in fact widens the divide and causes more resentment.

And if I'm so privileged, why aren't I making 100k-200k-1 million dollars a year unlike many people of other racial backgrounds? It couldn't possibly be because those people put in the time and effort to get where they are instead of listening to how "held down" they were, could it?  I mean, everything is handed to us "white folk", ain't it?

You make me laugh and cry at the same time, dude. Wake up and join the future.

With one hand you hold up Obama and Powell and the rest, who have accomplished what they have not because of, but in spite of the system they faced. Their achievements are something to be proud of, not something to take away from, but you do, when you talk about affirmative action.

I don't know how much you make a year. Probably less than some people with darker skin than yours. But you probably also make more than a lot of other people with a different teint, as well. The privilege you have is not a monetary one, it is cultural. It's the simple fact of being a member of the majority culture of the nation you live in. Now I know there's examples of affirmative action meaning that people who are not minority-members get screwed - scholarships being all but impossible to get, schools being practically closed to non-minority people, etc. But those are symptoms of broader problems within the US society, as I see it. They're a problem because while advocating for black rights, asian rights, gay rights, etc. etc. is all good and well, people are failing to take into consideration human rights.

The American society is geared towards keeping the poor poor, and the rich rich. This benefits the rich a lot, and since they can then keep the poor entertained and distracted from real problems, noone else cares. As well, a lot of anger that should rightfully be directed against economic oppression is instead pointed at, say, the black guy who got a scholarship, or the asian chick who managed to get into some school, or something. Instead of agitating for a system that ensures a high level of education for everyone (like, say, Sweden's) all the people whom it would benefit best spend their time at each others' throats over tiny, relatively inconsequential matters.

The worker's movement in the US was basically defeated by racism. White workers went on strike, were replaced by black workers, causing a schism in the unions, making it about white against black, rather than worker against capital. That did not happen over here (Sweden). As a result, we have five weeks vacation, months of paid sick days, and a year's paid paternal leave, while you have two weeks vacation if you're lucky, no paid sick days, and any paternal leave is unpaid as well. Basically, the poor people got screwed by being turned against each other. The end result is that noone noticed who was really getting their jollies at the cost of the working class.

Do I sound like a socialist? Sure. I am one. Socialism, you see, means more people with higher educations, better health, and higher salaries, meaning more taxes get paid and more money gets pumped back into the economy. It's simply good business sense on a societal scale.