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The Almighty Buck

How Do You Measure a Game's Worth? 188

Posted by Soulskill from the if-it's-frags-per-dollar-then-quake-live-wins dept.
RamblingJosh writes "Video games can be very expensive these days, especially with so many great games on the horizon. So I wonder: how exactly do you get the most gaming entertainment for your dollar? '... the first thing I personally thought about when approaching this was money spent versus time played. Using Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions as an example: I bought the game for about $30 Canadian, and played it for roughly 85 hours. That comes out to 2.83 hours per dollar spent, a pretty good number. In this case, the game was a lot of fun and it was cheap, and so the system works fairly well. There are so many other things to think about, though. What if the game wasn't so good? What about the fact that it's portable? ... What about the new content? Multiplayer?'"
Games

Correlation Found Between Brain Structure and Video Game Success 110

Posted by Soulskill from the correlation-does-not-equal-yadda-yadda dept.
kghapa writes "Still want to argue that video games shrink your brain? While video games have been previously shown to stimulate brain activity and improve coordination skills, a recently published study has directly linked structures in the human brain with video game aptitude. And yes, apparently size does matter in this case. Quoting: '... each subject received 20 hours of training to play a video game specifically created for research purposes, called Space Fortress. It's basically an Asteroids-type arcade game, in which the object is to knock down and destroy an enemy fortress while dodging space mines. However, the game has lots of extra twists that require close attention. Some of the players were told to focus exclusively on running up a high score, while others were told to shift their priorities between several goals. The result? The subjects who had more volume in an area called the nucleus accumbens did significantly better in the early stages of training. Meanwhile, those who were well-endowed in different areas of the striatum, known as the caudate nucleus and putamen, handled the shifting strategies better.'"
Education

Ocean-Crossing Dragonflies Discovered 95

Posted by samzenpus from the incredible-journey dept.
grrlscientist writes "While living and working as a marine biologist in Maldives, Charles Anderson noticed sudden explosions of dragonflies at certain times of year. He explains how he carefully tracked the path of a plain, little dragonfly called the Globe Skimmer, Pantala flavescens, only to discover that it had the longest migratory journey of any insect in the world."
PC Games (Games)

EA Shutting Down Video Game Servers Prematurely 341

Posted by Soulskill from the sixty-dollar-yearly-fee dept.
Spacezilla writes "EA is dropping the bomb on a number of their video game servers, shutting down the online fun for many of their Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3 games. Not only is the inclusion of PS3 and Xbox 360 titles odd, the date the games were released is even more surprising. Yes, Madden 07 and 08 are included in the shutdown... but Madden 09 on all consoles as well?"
Science

Antarctic's First Plane, Found In Ice 110

Posted by timothy from the ice-tractor-cometh dept.
Arvisp writes "In 1912 Australian explorer Douglas Mawson planned to fly over the southern pole. His lost plane has now been found. The plane – the first off the Vickers production line in Britain – was built in 1911, only eight years after the Wright brothers executed the first powered flight. For the past three years, a team of Australian explorers has been engaged in a fruitless search for the aircraft, last seen in 1975. Then on Friday, a carpenter with the team, Mark Farrell, struck gold: wandering along the icy shore near the team's camp, he noticed large fragments of metal sitting among the rocks, just a few inches beneath the water."
Bug

Are Complex Games Doomed To Have Buggy Releases? 362

Posted by Soulskill from the where-did-my-face-go dept.
An anonymous reader points out a recent article at Gamesradar discussing the frequency of major bugs and technical issues in freshly-released video games. While such issues are often fixed with updates, questions remain about the legality and ethics of rushing a game to launch. Quoting: "As angry as you may be about getting a buggy title, would you want the law to get involved? Meglena Kuneva, EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner, is putting forward legislation that would legally oblige digital game distributors to give refunds for games, putting games in the same category in consumer law as household appliances. ... This call to arms has been praised by tech expert Andy Tanenbaum, author of books like Operating Systems: Design and Implementation. 'I think the idea that commercial software be judged by the same standards as other commercial products is not so crazy,' he says. 'Cars, TVs, and telephones are all expected to work, and they are full of software. Why not standalone software? I think such legislation would put software makers under pressure to first make sure their software works, then worry about more bells and whistles.'"
Image

The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza 282

Posted by samzenpus from the equal-distribution-of-the-pie dept.
iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."
Games

NYT's "Games To Avoid" an Ironic, Perfect Gamer Wish List 189

Posted by Soulskill from the more-or-less dept.
MojoKid writes "From October to December, the advertising departments of a thousand companies exhort children to beg, cajole, and guilt-trip their parents for all manner of inappropriate digital entertainment. As supposedly informed gatekeepers, we sadly earthbound Santas are reduced to scouring the back pages of gaming review sites and magazines, trying to evaluate whether the tot at home is ready for Big Bird's Egg Hunt or Bayonetta. Luckily, The New York Times is here to help. In a recent article provokingly titled 'Ten Games to Cross off Your Child's Gift List,' the NYT names its list of big bads — the video games so foul, so gruesome, so perverse that we'd recommend you buy them immediately — for yourself. Alternatively, if you need gift ideas for the surly, pale teenager in your home whose body contains more plastic then your average d20, this is the newspaper clipping to stuff in your pocket. In other words, if you need a list like this to understand what games to not stuff little Johnny's stocking with this holiday season, you've got larger issues you should concern yourself with. We'd suggest picking up an auto-shotty and taking a few rounds against the horde — it's a wonderful stress relief and you're probably going to need it."
Games

Over 160 Tutorial Videos Created For Unreal Dev Kit 48

Posted by Soulskill from the how-it's-done dept.
As a follow-up to Epic Games' release of a free version of the Unreal Engine last month, the company has now posted over 160 video tutorials which demonstrate the various uses of the Unreal Development Kit. Roughly 20 hours of footage were created by technical education company 3D Buzz, with topics ranging from user interface to game physics to cinematics.
Space

Herschel Spectroscopy of Future Supernova 21

Posted by Soulskill from the that's-a-big-star dept.
davecl writes "ESA's Herschel Space Telescope has released its first spectroscopic results. These include observations of VYCMa, a star 50 times as massive as the sun and soon to become a supernova, as well as a nearby galaxy, more distant colliding starburst galaxies and a comet in our own solar system. The spectra show more lines than have ever been seen in these objects in the far-infrared and will allow astronomers to work out the detailed chemistry and physics behind star and planet formation as well as the last stages of stellar evolution before VYCMa's eventual collapse into a supernova. More coverage is available at the Herschel Mission Blog, which I run."

Comment Re:All mine were cheap! (Score 1) 1259

by WagonWheelsRX8 (#29793643) Attached to: Student Loan Interest Rankles College Grads
Mod this guy UP...that is SPOT ON how I feel about the subject of education in this country (the US) as well. Unfortunately our country seems to be headed downhill, global competition is as great as its ever been and those pressures will only increase. College isn't for everyone, but for those people that it IS for they should have easy access to it. In the meantime, our students care less and less about math and sciences and more about who Flava Flav dated last season, and maybe those people that only care about Flava Flav might actually be more interested in education if they actually got a taste of WHY they're learning what they are (instead of just being told 'yeah you'll need this because this syllabus someone made says you will). As an example: It's one thing to read about how an engine works, but an entirely different thing to get in a shop and actually get to use the tools used to troubleshoot one. Who knows, maybe that experience inspires that person who'd otherwise be watching Flava Flav to design a more effective engine troubleshooting tool...all because he had the oppurtunity and ACCESS to experience a form of education that fit him the best.

Comment Re:Intended for abuse (Score 1) 792

by WagonWheelsRX8 (#29432223) Attached to: Congress Mulls Research Into a Vehicle Mileage Tax
Then you are reducing a major incentive to get a hybrid (reduced fuel prices), which seems counterproductive to the 'use less oil' mantra that is quite popular these days (and rightfully so). Also, this won't be an issue for a long, long time, as market penetration of hybrids is very low (less than 5% of new vehicles sold are hybrids each year...and this doesn't count all of the non-hybrid vehicles already on roads...so the total number of hybrid cars in use vs. conventional is quite low). Lets not forget, hybrids still use gas, thus reducing this impact even further. Link to PDF illustrating market penetration of hybrids As far as electric cars go, I won't even bother commenting on them because the average joe can't go buy one right now, and they won't be a serious factor for a considerable amount of time. This proposed idea is horribly wasteful (250 mil...come on seriously? No wonder you need a new tax...you've got to pay for your new tax study!) and terribly intrusive and as several other posters have stated will definitely be used for reasons other than intended (slippery slope/law enforcement/etc.). If fear of reduced revenue due to less gas being consumed is such a big deal, why not spend a bit of money on looking at ways to increase the efficiency of building our current infrastructure (and I wouldn't mind seeing an audit of where the current gas taxes get spent as well)...

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