Look at all of the "rebooted" movie series.

To be fair, the American reboot of "Old Boy" was pretty great, I thought.

But generally, I agree.

However, I don't mind one bit if a game company reuses assets from a successful game. I thought Saints Row IV was one of the best games to come out that year (in fact, it was my GOTY), even though it was the same location, the same character models, the same voice talent (with a few additions) and the same textures.

Hey, I'm all for companies looking for ways to get it done cheaper and more efficiently, as long as the product gives real value for the price, which SRIV most certainly did, IMO.

I guess it's not about "reboot or not reboot" so much as it is about, "Make your goddamn products worth their price for a change".

The need to obtain venture capital to launch a decent game has created an atmosphere stagnation in the genre

The need has always been there. What's lacking today is the desire to obtain venture capital. In an atmosphere of Kickstarter, which is maybe the worst thing to happen to gaming this decade, why the hell should anyone worry about convincing people to invest when you can get people to just give you the money you want, whether or not you actually build (or finish) a game.

The phenomenon of "Early Access" games that never, ever make it to final release occurred simultaneously with Kickstarter, and not coincidentally.

Nah, the requirement to get money to make a game has always been there. But today there are too many shortcuts. And it's everywhere in the corporate world. Why do the hard work of selling an idea to investors, hiring people, getting facilities up and running, etc etc? The goal for most of the corporate world today is obfuscate your income stream so well that people don't realize they're the product. Like google or Facebook. It's one reason you have so many people unemployed and underemployed. When there's so much money to be made by NOT providing a product or service to people who think they are your customers and hiding who your end-users really are, it makes sense that they'd go this route.

The problem is this shows a deep hostility for your customers and/or users. And it's not sustainable.

I hope that whatever Romero is doing doesn't turn out to be Free-2-Play or co-op or with multiplayer focus.

The beauty of his best games was that they were single-player, with some very fun multiplayer as a bonus. The current gaming industry mode seems to be co-op or multiplayer primarily with maybe a very short single-player campaign thrown in.

I understand that this trend started primarily as a way to prevent some kid in Estonia from having a nickel in his pocket that didn't belong to the gaming industry, and I don't fault them because their nature is to be money-grubbing monsters who basically hate their customers. But somehow, the great single-player games managed to make a nice profit. Nice enough to finance a stinker like Daikatana.

Oh, and there's a new meme going around the gaming industry and the domesticated, corrupt gaming press: The notion that someone current games are too long and give players too much to do. You'll hear phrases like "shorter, more focused game experiences" which basically means they can spend less on development (and let's face it, the gaming press is mostly made up of wannabe indie game devs). If they could figure out a way to sell a $59 game that lasted 45 minutes, they'd do it in a heartbeat. Yeah, it's going around. You're hearing about how "players don't want long games" and "gamers would rather have an intensely fun one hour game than a grindy 100 hour one", as if those were the only two choices. Of course, this ignores the wild success of games like Skyrim and even current ones like Divinity: Original Sin.

Anybody who observes consumer culture knows where this is going. It's not a new concept. Give people smaller boxes of cereal for the same price as a large box and maybe they won't notice or care. Start with a subscription-only service which markets itself as "commercial free" and then start slipping in commercials, as if it were always inevitable (maybe it was).

No, I'm pretty sure the big difference between the successful game publishers of today and the old-school types like Romero is that Romero actually seemed to like gaming and gamers. The level of cynicism in F2P, co-op, Day 1 DLC, etc etc is pretty shocking really when you step back and look at it. Until people start to understand the enormous power in their consumption choices, it will only get worse, and the industry is doing everything it can to make game customers feel helpless in the face of these inexorable industry changes. When in reality, they are anything but helpless.

I hope consumers wake up at some point, but I won't hold my breath.

They really should make things better for the small busniessman and declare dialup as broadband also.

Lot's of people don't need anything faster, so why not?

Then we can all have broadband.

It's even like not buying what is advertised. I won't.

Wait, what? I don't know which question you're talking about. What I'm saying is that we've got some example of handouts (as in, things given to people with no strings attached and which are in no way "earned") that produce lasting positive results. There's a trend recently in charity for this too - some of the most efficient and productive charities allow contributors to directly transfer cash to people in impoverished areas, with the idea that poor people know what they need the most, and will thus be the best qualified to decide how to lift themselves out of poverty.

I have no doubt that conservatives care very much for people, and many of them truly believe that smaller government, limited handouts, etc, is the best way to fix our country's problems. The thing is, I think that belief is, in some cases, totally wrong. And, I think there's an incredibly powerful rhetorical apparatus that keeps producing these arguments that appeal to basic values (of course everybody is for personal responsibility) while having very little merit in terms of producing effective policy.

Sure I do. Let's limit government when there are clear problems. Let's cut military spending and limit cost-plus funding. Let's cut back some government regulation of nuclear power so there are less barriers to entry. Let's limit congress's control over NASA - allow them to set a budget but not control decisions and funding on specific programs. My thing is, I think ideals are all well and good, but they need to be secondary to what really matters - finding the best and cheapest way to accomplish a given goal. When appeals to personal responsibility are used to justify policy that is both more expensive and less effective, we have a problem.

So, you don't believe there are external costs to things, like the cost of protecting the oil industry by fighting Middle Eastern wars?

Do you believe the cost of the Fukushima cleanup should be figured into the cost of the electricity the plant produced? Do you believe that there were any costs associated with lead being used in paint for decades?

Of course there are externalities. You are the first person I've even seen deny they exist.

Yeah, I'm not ready to buy a power company telling us how great they are as proof that they're not dumping the scrubbed pollutants into ash ponds.

I'm not sure why I put the gasoline thing in there. I was drunk. It was the first Sunday of football season and was drinking gasoline with mercury in it.

I agree that 4mbps is generally "good enough" if that's the minimum. But often ISP's make their stated numbers the average, meaning sometimes you may get 2mbps, which is crap, especially for Youtube. (Note that posted videos have been growing in resolution of late, so current metrics may not be worth much soon).

Thus, a compromise may be to require it be at least 4mbps say 95% of the time to qualify as Broadband.

I consider that to be the exact opposite of quality. In large part of why I moved my machines to libre office. I don't have those problems now.

I have spent many hours correcting bitched up Office files. In Office. Some real quality there.

Wow, you really don't know anything about Linux, do you? TTFN

Nothing in science should ever be taken as anything but conjecture until ther is no possible doubt, and any and all competing theories are completely disproven,

You know, like the Bible. Every word correct, proven absolutely true without error since October 4004 BC.

Which until science proves otherwise beyond any shadow of a doubt, must be taken as how things happened.

Second, it is a buzzword that is used to get gullible suits to think that they can get rid of their IT depatments.

It's not like all this hasn't been proven already.

What do you call both forks? The portable one "linux" and the server one "LINUX"? At least it would be easy to remember which is which, although googling with a difference may not work so well since Google mostly is case insensitive.