tbresson - Slashdot User

What Game Devs Should Learn From EVE 270

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday May 20, 2010 @06:27AM from the watch-out-for-volcanoes dept.

An anonymous reader passes along this excerpt from Gamesradar about EVE Online's Council of Stellar Management (CSM), a group of elected player representatives that serve to facilitate communications between the developers and the community: "On the last day, the devs announced that after the earlier discussions about improving the CSM’s ability to effect change, the CSM was being raised to the status of its own department within CCP. This is revolutionary; in one swift move, the CSM went from what could be considered a glorified focus group to what CCP considers to be a 'stakeholder' in the company, given equal consideration with every other department in requesting development time for a project. That means the CSM — and the entire playerbase it represents — has as much influence on development projects as Marketing, Accounting, Publicity and all the other teams outside of the development team. This is, of course, the stated intention. But has any developer gone to such lengths for its fans?"

Cheap Cancer Drug Finally Tested In Humans 363

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 13, 2010 @05:16PM from the good-enough-for-the-likes-of-you dept.

John Bayko writes "Mentioned on Slashdot a couple of years ago, the drug dichloroacetate (DCA) has finally finished its first clinical trial against brain tumors in humans. Drug companies weren't willing to test a drug they could not patent, so money was raised in the community through donations, auctions, and finally government support, but the study was still limited to five patients. It showed extremely positive results in four of them. This episode raises the question of what happens to all the money donated to Canadian and other cancer societies, and especially the billions spent buying merchandise with little pink ribbons on it, if not to actual cancer research like this."

Comment Games are fine just too long (Score 1) 462

by tbresson on Thursday May 06, 2010 @09:00AM (#32110218) Attached to: Do Gamers Want Simpler Games?

IMHO most games are too long. It's probably because it takes time to make a good story, create all the graphics, sound etc. It would seem a shame to just entertain the gamer for a few hours and would be a waste of money. I think there's a solution on the way already - episodes & DLC. If you create all of the above but only release a small piece of it the game price could drop making more people try out the game and if you do play it through you'd probably want more. I prefer to play the game and wanting to play more instead of buying a game a never completing it. It probably depends if the gaming industry wants to take the chance that people won't buy more content because they tried it and didn't like it. Though I think it would balance out fine since you only need to make less content if you're unsure and you'd probably sell more games if it's initial costs is cheap because people can afford to give it a try. But who knows ? :)

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