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Comment Re:You overestimate WoW (Score 0) 86

by MBlueD (#26781935) Attached to: <em>Vanguard</em> Dev Talks About the Game's Future
I don't play MMOs (yet). I do, however, play a lot of PC games. Quoting your last line:

That's a lot of people who have already decided they like MMOs and _are_ looking for a new MMO to play...

Define 'new'? My impression is that 'new' means it actually brings additions/changes to the known formula.
If the players who leave WOW were looking for more of the same, why leave in the first place? I will pay for a good clone of X-COM 1 or 2 (silent prayer), but what really excites me is the next game I will find that will be as dear as X-COM is to me while being entirely different.

Let the Vanguard team try going wherever they want. I read a quote once that goes along these lines: The greatest advances in science aren't the ones that came after a "Eureka!", rather the ones that came after a "That's funny..."
(Points to whoever comes up with the original quote and/or whoever said it)
Games

Simulating Emotions Within Games 47

Posted by Soulskill from the dreams-of-electric-sheep dept.
Gamasutra is running an opinion piece about the way video games handle simulated emotions. Most often, an non-player character's emotional state is used to either tell a story or to drive gameplay. The author suggests that as both concepts become more complex in modern games, the simulation of emotions must also become more dynamic to remain interesting. Quoting: "Most of our emotional simulations use a simple sensation/calculation/behavior loop. Someone says or does something to a character; this influences his emotional state; he acts upon his feelings. His emotional state then reverts to a more neutral state over time (I was angry half an hour ago, but I've calmed down now), or changes again in response to another sensation. If these systems are really simple they produce absurd results: a character is furious one moment and cheerful a second later, like a Warner Brothers cartoon character. This is the kind of thing you get with finite state machines. This approach doesn't take into account the fact that behavior itself changes emotions. Behavior is not merely an output to be exhibited; it also affects how we feel. It feeds back into our emotional state."
Education

Teachers Need an Open Source Education 440

Posted by timothy from the yer-darn-tootin' dept.
palegray.net writes "Teachers are sorely in need of an education in what open source software is, what it isn't, and how it can benefit their students. A recent news story at the Reg discussed the case of a Texas teacher who accused those distributing Linux to students of committing criminal acts. A HeliOS blog entry exposes a 'higher education' culture of apathy, lies, and fear of open source software. Things have got to improve, and that improvement needs to start with misguided teachers getting their facts straight."

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