This board sounds like refugees from ve3D. Blue's news used to have cogent discussions on the messageboards, but i suppose that sort of thing went out of style a while ago.

Even though this game isn't flash, the idea of eking performance out of flash for extra framerate intrigues me. How long until there's like blit-rate tweaks so you can get that extra 5fps out of the kung-fu-stick-figure-fighter thing?

It'll be a sure sign of Armageddon when websites start requiring specific special-purpose hardware.

You ever play Leisure Suit Larry? Pretty funny series, though not exactly A+ material. And guess what? ALL about sex.

Not to mention that the attraction of games is as widely varied as the attraction of film: You see some movies, say Bowling For Columbine, to get your thoughts moving. Others you see for the sheer style (Femme Fatale, maybe), or even just because you want to see a predictable genre flick (any one of the recent action/comedy/romantic comedy releases). Similarly, not all games have the same draws. I'd hardly call the draw of a story-driven game like Grim Fandango or Baldur's Gate 'mastering the system'.

It's not that sex has no place in games, it's just that publishers these days are too juvenile to incorporate sex into a game without making a huge deal about it. I recall a big brouhaha over Citizen Kabuto, about the Delphi character not wearing a top. Putting the top on didn't exactly detract from gameplay, but neither did having the top off. I, for one, would rather experience the product the way the designers intended it.

damn, it's like anyone on the internet with flash is making one of those. I'm getting desensitized... what happens when a rabid shrew really pops out of a poster in front of me? I won't even bat an eye.

Slow down there, meatpole. You have no knowledge of how much cache the processor will have - it could easily have twice as much.

Also, since they're releasing a 64 bit fix, you could bet the code is optimized for 8-byte pointers.

One more thing - they tout backward compatibility, so I would bet 4-byte pointers still work just fine. My guess is that the chip can just ignore the upper half of its adress space (or applications can, at least).

Sorry, son, but most movies these days are made 'just for marketing and sales' as well. In fact, I would warrant the majority of films that contain nudity do so because it sells.

I personally commend acclaim for attempting to loosen up our stuffy, hypocritical culture a bit. For chrissakes, people, they're breasts! Everybody has them!

of course, NP-complete just means that there's no known efficient solution on a computer. But our heads are a bit different...

The problem with your analogy is that the game isn't replicating the events of 1984. It's more like if someone, 5 years from now, made a game where you attack gun-wielding businessmen in a large building suspiciously reminiscent of the World Trade Center. I'm sure some people would be offended just by the presence of the WTC in a violent game, but these are the same people who get bent out of shape from just about anything.

It's not like the game is making a specific reference to the 1984 happenings. In fact, I could almost guarantee that the temple in hitman is only superficially similar to the temple referred to by the Sikhs. And really, its inclusion in the game is more of a tribute to its fantastic architecture than anything else. It's a bit unfortunate they fell to the standard stereotype of turbaned Sikhs as thugs, but I suppose there's a ready analog in the devout Catholicism of mobsters as portrayed in the Godfather or countless other mob movies.

This is just one more example of hypersensitivity spiralling out of control. I thought it was a problem endemic just to spoiled Americans, but apparently it's a global plague.

The cost of games is more or less determined by the break-even point. A game that isn't a blockbuster, and sells only 50k copies (as a PC game) needs to have a price that's going to mitigate the cost of development somewhat. At 50 bucks a pop, 50,000 copies translates into 2.5 million, which after marketing and publishing, puts probably less than a million dollars into the pockets of the developers. Now, when you consider that an average game has around 20 people working on it, for an average salary of 50k a year (at least), for 1.5 years (at least) you end up with a development cost of at least 1.5 million. So, right there, the development team took a hit of 500,000 dollars, and that's assuming they see half of the money from the sales, which would be pretty damn good.

Now, imagine if games cost 25 bucks instead. No developer would be willing to take the risk of their game not doing well. This is doubly true for more innovative games like NOLF (which was a bit of a commercial dissapointment) which don't have blockbuster cachet.

If you're all for knockoff games and a blockbuster industry, we could cut the price, sure.

Also, something to note is that the video games industry's revenue numbers include console sales. 10 million ps2s @ 300 bucks a pop is like 3 billion in gross revenue. So a significantly smaller portion of that 6 billion figure you see is software.

*I* heard assault got axed because it was offensive to mothers and children. I also heard it got axed during a drinking game between the UT 2k3 designers.

While it's a shame that the media is milking this for all it's worth, it's more of a shame that people are buying it. If nobody watched TV tomorrow, that would send a nice message about how we're sick of being pandered to like children.

Of course, who am I kidding? For millions of Americans who haven't ever done anything in their life, this offers an opportunity to grab hold of a purpose that's government-sanctioned and politically correct. Plus, it's easy to stick a plastic flag on your car or hang one from your window.

I find it interesting that the Oklahoma bombing, which was still a horrific event, is merely a sideline, and the US Embassy bombing a couple years ago is all but forgotten.