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Every Wednesday I ask you to Ask Me Stuff. If you have a burning question about the games industry, leave it in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer it this afternoon.
I’ll be doing this every Wednesday.
Now, fire away with those questions.
NOTE: I’ll be out of the office all morning (hint: you won’t be able to reach me) so I’ll get to your questions this afternoon.
So I was trying to get Qubert up and running (loops reminded me of that game). I played it way back on my xt8086 for hours at a time, good times, good times… So I got to thinking, if I wax my chest hair, is it true it grows back thicker?
Not sure what your hinting at either, some kind of flip-top head toothbrush game announcement?
Negative. Waxing of chest and back hair will, over time, reduce its regrowth thickness. This is unlike shaving, which will in fact increase hair density akin to a well maintained fairway.
The use of a toothbrush of any type has no discernable difference upon hair density apart from a pleasant minty after-taste.
Now I’m confused… Are you saying that if I shave, it will create more hair folicles, or make existing hairs thicker? The amount of hairs (density) and thickness (thickness) are two different factors here.
I think we need Daves wisdom to sort this out. Oh, and in Russia isn’t toothpaste strawberry flavoured? These are all vital questions for those of us wanting minty/and or berry smelling well manscaped gamer bodies.
no you can’t shave your balding head and magically see more hair when it grows back. cherish what little hair you have.
What’s your take on the latest fiasco between Adobe and Apple (and potentially Unity and any other engine that exports to iCrap technology?)
I was wondering whether it would be better to head to Universities than Colleges, like University of Technology Sydney, or Qantm college.
Lets not forget Buck Bumble on N64 either.
He was a cyborg bee, but still a bee no less.
Mario Galaxy had bees and Mario had a bee suit.
And I’m pretty sure Bumble Bee has been in a few games, thou technically not an Bee.
There were bees in Zelda 3: Link to the Past. They weren’t main characters, but you could use them as weapons. Best game ever, by the way.
What is happening with AFL 2010? I am so pumped for the game but it seems to have hit a point where it was an idea but no further development.
Can you explain to me the technical reasons MGS4 can’t port to a 360.
That and GOWIII are the 2 games I shed a tear for missing out after buying said 360.
(I guess Mass Effect, Blue Dragon, Lost Oddyssey, Perfect Dark and Shadow Complex make up for it.)
I believe it’s cause the PS3 can hold larger amounts of data, especially when it comes to texture and background rendering which ensures that there aren’t any pop-ups in-game. (correct me if i’m wrong, but i think that’s the reason he gave ages ago)
There is no technical reason why MGS4 couldn’t be ported to 360. However, Konami took advantage of Blu-ray’s larger storage capacity to ensure the game’s audio (and possibly textures, Andrew, although I do not know for sure) was uncompressed. I’m sure there would be ways to compress the data to fit on a DVD, or even release the game on multiple discs, assuming there weren’t any streaming issues.
The other matter is, of course, the (finanacial) agreement Konami has with Sony over it remaining an exclusive.
also i believe from memory the blu ray disc was so full they had to comprimise and reduce the audio quality from surrond to stereo or sumsuch
On the field:
Currently the Crows are having a crappy start to the year… whilst the Saints continue to dominate.
Off the field:
It’s a whole other ball game.
Hey Dave,
With the absense of the Indie Channel on Xbox Live, what chance do budding game designers in Australia have to crack the market?
There doesn’t seem to be any point in actually attempting to make xbox indie titles because the Australian public and developers won’t necessarily see it. Developers these days want to see examples of previous work, so does that mean that indie development (specifically community development) for the xbox is pointless?
Also, have you heard any plans on bringing the Indie Community to XBL AU? Have Microsoft cited why this hasn’t already been done and/or any plans on brining it down under?
The reason you won’t be getting indies any time soon is because of ratings. Anything that goes on sale needs a rating, which costs something like $200 per title. The vast majority of Indies don’t make nearly enough money to warrant microsoft or the developers spending that kind of money.
Try somewhere around $1,000 to $2,000, depending on the content of the game. You can pay lower fees if you’ve passed a training course before making submission, but independent developers are unlikely to have gone through that.
If the fee was just $200, I could imagine some hobbyists absorbing the cost just to get their product out there.
The lack of the Indie Games channel is hardly an impediment to indie designers in Australia. They do, after all, still have access to the XNA Creators Club (or whatever its called these days) and can still sell their games via the channel overseas, which is where 99% of sales are going to come from anyway.
On top of that, XNA projects can be developed to run in a PC environment extremely easily, which gives you the option to demo your tech demos to prospective employers via the PC medium. It just happens to be what I’m currently doing myself.
I love Final Fantasy VII (FF7), but I think a remake is a bad idea. For me the cute but super-deformed characters, and the lack of voices, is what helped me connect to the characters. That any emotion at all could be conveyed by these simple character models was really clever. And it was operatic in its drama.
I think hi-res graphics and (I assume) the adding of voices will destroy it for me.
But it got me thinking that what makes a game great is not just the game its self, but its place in history. FF7 for me was unlike anything I had played before – that’s why I think it’s great.
So what are your thoughts on the mertis of ranking games as best ever?
How can we tell a youngin’ that (as an example) ‘Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time’ is the best game ever made? How can they look back at old school graphics and gameplay and understand?
I think ‘most influential’ or significant game of all time would be a better heritage to bestow on our (my) beloved classics.
What do you think?
Absolutely. Nothing is more important in terms of cementing a game’s place in your personal canon than to have played it when it was first released. For you it’s FFVII, but for me it’s Ultima IV – the one game that was so far beyond anything else I had played at the time. It still holds a special place in my heart, even though today it appears primitive in so many ways.
I think such games should always be included on any “best of” list, whether you want to call it most influential or most important or whatever. We need to recognise these milestones in gaming history.
I’d like a remake done in the style of Perfect Dark. Keep everything exactly how it is just update the visuals.
That prolly won’t work with pre-rendered backgrounds tho.
Maybe theres a way.
The remakes of FFIII & IV really helped me play those games. I tried playing thru IV on PSX but gave it up in favour of other games.
Is it a case of Logitech being too stingy or Microsoft to anal for the reason why we don’t have an awesome steering wheel setup on the 360?
The Logitech G25 is probably one of the best wheels I’ve ever used, and with the G27 on the horizon, you’d think you’d be able to be play it on PC, PS3 AND 360 ??
Why doesn’t Microsoft allow 3rd party products like this? I’m certainly not buying 2 sets of wheels.
1 for Forza(360) and one for GT5(PS3)
it is MS all the way.
your only other option is waiting for Fanatec to get off their asses and release the turbo s downunder, around october last year they said they will open a AUS web store in the new year.. this year is no longer new. and then maybe knock a couple of hundred of the asking price and you have yourself the best wheel out there.
your talking about the company that revoked 3rd party mem units on the 360 i mean who do you thinks the cause
do anyone else find it strange that the aus classification board passed Heavy Rain under the M rating so easily?
Have finished the game recently and I think it has all the ingredients that’d fall under R rating – drug use, violence, nudity, sex scene..etc
another great example of the inadequate games rating system we have…
Play through GOWIII and that’ll blow your mind.
Boobs aplenty, (implied) interactive sex scenes, and more gore and giblets than you’ve ever seen in your life. It really is as though they just tried to push the bounds for the sake of it…
The game is MA, but overall… it’s really quite tame and will try and dance around a few story elements…
Drug Use – most likely refering to Norman Jayden here and him being able to take a ‘trip’… while the phrase is known as slang for certain drugs, the drugs he is taking is not a real substance, fictional is generally okay. Rememeber Fallout 3? Morphine was one of the biggest issues, they changes that to a fake name is was okay after that.
Violence – There is probably only one instance within the game that goes close to the edge, within the 3rd Trial, but at the same time, it cuts to a different angle when it’s actually done. Otherwise there is nothing really that shocking that isn’t in something else.
Sex & Nudity – Madison’s shower is probably not required within the game, but the only other few instances were within context. There have been instances of things like this passing before. Fahrenheit (David Cage’s previous game), is another game that has similar levels of this.
Most games that have extreme levels of certain issues mainly are games that not only fiction, but the presentation is also not so realistic. This is one game that is made to make you feel it being in a real world setting and the main issue is the Adult Themes of the game. The game’s slogan is the best example of this, “How far would you go for someone you love?”
When you play this game, you ask yourself the same questions, Could you do what Ethan is asked to do?
For the issues you raise I don’t feel they rated incorrectly, I would agree that this game is for adult audiences though, the themes in the game are confronting and I would also be wary of some people over the age of 15 playing this game. Just don’t think they really can rate a game based on themes alone.
Whoops, I’d forgotten all about it. Will announce the winner by the end of the week.
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