jrkerr wrote:friend code available
ff3
giant killer
master black, white, red mage, freelancer, ranger,
thief, bard, geomancer, black belt, etc
you can have the reward item before you master the job
if I send you a card.
castlevania portrait of ruin
I have 99.7% of all items, so I can sell you
new york steak, the 3 rare foods, etc
which you'll need for lv 25 or lv 1 hard runs
where 9 of each potion just won't cut it.
Obviously I need to trade for similar and it requires somebody
smart enough to have stockpiled this stuff, set up a wifi connector,
and discerned that the free server doesnt store shit so that we'd
have to co-ordinate being on at the same time.
jrkerrdog at hotmail
cheers
MonkeyM666 wrote:Oh, haven't I posted about this?? Ok, I'll do it now since this is kinda a thread about network gaming.
Ok, I will but when I get home, god damn work firewall!
Basically in South Korea they've nearly finished building a custom made stadium for video games. Lan games in particular. With the countries pro gamers dressing like a F1 racer and having cheer squads and cheerleaders the industry needed a profitable large venue for these events.
I'll find the link and post it, it is a bit obscure though, so it may take a while for me to find.Video game players score big money in South Korea
Seoul -- Choi Yeon-sung avoids going out most days, and when he's on the street, he puts his head down -- to dodge the whispers, the stares and the pleas for autographs.
Such are the hardships of a celebrity video game player in South Korea.
Choi has 90,000 members in his fan club. He pulls down $190,000 a year in salary and winnings combined, in a country where the average annual income is $16,291. At 23, the boyish-looking professional gamer has achieved a level of fame bestowed elsewhere on movie idols, soccer stars and Olympic champions.
Video game competitions draw hundreds of thousands of avid fans who watch on massive indoor screens, or on one of two game-only cable channels broadcasting 24 hours a day. An estimated 18 million South Koreans, more than one-third of the country's 48 million people, play video games online. That adds up to an $8.7 billion industry, with the government spending more than $100 million each year to promote, research and develop the market.
The pinnacle for professionals like Choi is the annual World Cyber Games, which was founded in South Korea in 2000. And this year Choi won a gold medal in the game he plays almost exclusively -- StarCraft, developed by Blizzard Entertainment of Irvine.
The games, held in Monza, Italy, in October, saw 700 competitors from 70 countries, competing for $462,000 in cash and prizes. South Korea won the Grand Champion title followed by teams from Russia and Germany, with the U.S. tied for fourth.
What accounts for the success of pros like Choi?
"In Korea, many people study so much, spending 10 to 12 hours each day studying for the college entrance examination," said Kim Hyun Seok, chief executive of International Cyber Marketing in Seoul, which produces the World Cyber Games. "That's the kind of attitude they're accustomed to. So they can practice games for 12 hours a day."
What a life... he's what they look like.
tapehead wrote:Doc Holliday wrote:I'll trade you one Thread, barely used.....
What's that - you've got one of those?
Oh.
What's the reserve price for this thread?
I'd buy that for a DoLOLar...
ThisIsTheGirl wrote:I've heard of people selling virtual items on eBay - some people even claim to make a living out of it. I find it all a bit odd, but that's partly because I just don't have the time to devote to that kind of game....
Reuters wrote:Video game playing may fulfill innate human need
January 18, 2007 09:52:48 AM PST
Playing video games can satisfy deep psychological needs and, at least in the short term, improve people's well-being, new research shows.
The more a game fulfilled a player's sense of independence, achievement and connectedness to others, the more likely he or she was to keep playing, Dr. Scott Rigby of Immersyve, a Florida-based virtual environment think tank, and colleagues from the University of Rochester in New York found. And the more fully a player's needs were satisfied, the better he felt after playing.
"We think this is really one of the first validated models of what is going on psychologically when people are playing video games," Rigby told Reuters Health in an interview. To date, he noted, research on video games has focused on their potentially harmful effects, such as promoting social isolation, addiction, and violence.
While the findings don't prove that "video games are always good for you," Rigby noted, they do help to provide a more balanced understanding of people's motivations for playing them. "We're trying to in some sense normalize how people look at video games, rather than seeing them as having some mystical power to addict."
In four studies reported in the journal Motivation and Emotion, Rigby and his colleagues sought to understand people's motivation for playing the games and the games' immediate effect on well-being.
In the first study, they had 89 people play a simple game involving jumping to different platforms. In the second phase, the researchers compared the experience of 50 people who played two 3-D adventure games, one very popular and one less so. In the third study, 58 people tried four different games, while in the fourth the researchers surveyed 730 members of an online gaming community who were experienced in playing "massively multiplayer online" games.
Players' enjoyment of games depended on whether the games made them feel competent and independent, and, in the case of multiplayer games, connected to other players. Players who enjoyed their experience showed increases in well-being, self-esteem, and vitality after playing, while those whose needs weren't satisfied reported lowered vitality and mood.
"Video games we think have tremendous potential to impact people, particularly today's video games which are incredibly rich and complex," Rigby said. "This creates very fertile ground psychologically."
Mastering challenges in video games can be a healthy way of coping when opportunities for feeling independent or competent are scarce in the real world, he argued.
"Video games in some ways are very good at satisfying these psychological needs," Rigby noted. "Often times real life is not as clear...real life often can make you feel ineffective."
GAMING NEWS UPDATE: Microsoft and Sony battle in the desert; Nintendo DS leads sales
Monday, January 22, 2007
By Lou Kesten, The Associated Press
News from the virtual world:
CASINO ROYALE The Consumer Electronics Show may be, to quote Stephen Colbert, a "high school science fair on crank," but it's nirvana for gadget geeks. Video games are just a small part of the gigantic trade show that takes place every January in Las Vegas, but there's always the promise of some good smack talk when Sony and Microsoft are both in the house. This time it was Bill Gates' crew throwing most of the punches.
First, the Microsoft chairman dissed Sony by telling TV Tokyo, "We see Nintendo as our toughest competition."
Then Microsoft execs Peter Moore and Chris Satchell ganged up on Sony's online service in interviews with the GamesIndustry.biz Web site, with Satchell calling it a "disaster."
"It's going to take (Sony) a couple of years to get up to speed on this, and I'm not sure that they necessarily have the talent," Moore said.
Sony spokesman Dave Karraker fired back, telling GamePro, "I would argue that consumers worldwide ... have decided whether or not Sony has the DNA to deliver hardware, software and services to suit this industry."
So maybe CES isn't a science fair -- it's a schoolyard brawl.
GIVE ME YOUR DIGITS: Once CES wrapped, the industry analysts at the NPD Group stepped in to deliver some hard numbers on the next-generation console war. Let's look at the sales figures for December, the first full month in which all the new consoles were available:
Microsoft's Xbox 360 led with 1.1 million sold, followed by Nintendo's Wii (600,000 sold) and Sony's PlayStation 3 (490,000).
Of course, plenty more Wiis and PS3s could have been sold if the companies could have made more. All three consoles were outsold by Nintendo's portable DS (1.6 million) and the six-year-old PlayStation 2 (1.4 million). And Sony sold 950,000 PlayStation Portables.
For all of 2006, U.S. sales of software, hardware and accessories hit $12.5 billion, up 19 percent from the previous year. The year's best-selling game was EA Sports' "Madden NFL 07," followed by Nintendo's "New Super Mario Bros." and Microsoft's "Gears of War."
APPLE CHEEK:Despite all the CES hoopla, the gadget everyone was drooling over last week was introduced 600 miles away, at the Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco. Of course we're talking about the iPhone, Apple's music-playing, Internet-surfing cell phone. But does it play games? Not yet, but everyone who's seen the device's graphics and touchscreen technology seems to think games are inevitable.
Meanwhile, Microsoft vice president Peter Moore promised games for his company's Zune MP3 player within the next 18 months.
Here's hoping one of the companies can take cell-phone gaming beyond "Tetris" clones and solitaire card-playing. Right now, neither the iPhone nor the Zune looks like much competition for the DS; then again, no one's ruling out an iGame or an Xbox portable sometime in the future.
VANISHING ACT: In 2004, Microsoft commissioned an "alternate reality game" -- a contest incorporating Web sites, telephone calls and real-life events -- called "I Love Bees" to promote the release of "Halo 2." Now Microsoft is using the same type of campaign in advance of the release of its new computer operating system, Vista.
It's called "Vanishing Point," and its Web site includes dozens of very difficult puzzles as well as links to cities around the world, from Los Angeles to Berlin to Singapore. First prize is a ride to suborbital space -- "the ultimate vista," according to Microsoft. You can play along at vanishingpointgame.com.
NEW THIS WEEK: There's something new for just about everyone in stores this week.
Online role-playing addicts get "The Burning Crusade," the long-awaited expansion to Blizzard's hugely popular "World of Warcraft." Wii owners get Nintendo's "Wario Ware: Smooth Moves," another fast-paced collection of microgames. For DS players, there's Capcom's "Phoenix Wright, Attorney at Law: Justice for All," a fresh batch of cases for the dashing lawyer. And Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 gamers get "NCAA 07 March Madness," the latest edition of EA Sports' college basketball sim.
Inspired imitation
This article over at The Escapist magazine details an interesting thought experiment:
"[W]e tried to work out the smallest number of films we'd have to remove from existence to destroy the game industry in its current state. With a short-list of six thrown into the void, the industry would be barely recognizable, full of designers stroking their chin and thinking, "You know, I know we have to drop our soldiers from an orbital vessel to the ground in some manner of ship, but God knows what we could use."
Their list of most-pillaged films includes Dawn of the Dead, Saving Private Ryan and Star Wars. But top spot goes to Aliens: "where the majority of developers go when their creative well runs dry...the billowing smoke and blue light that director James Cameron fills the corridors with are modern games' default atmosphere."
Great fun. But what about the other way? The Escapist's writer suggests that: "original bits of game culture integrated [into movies] go no further than the occasional first-person shot in a movie like Doom."
I think that's a bit pessimistic. I don't think the ultra-acrobatic fight sequences that grace every action movie today would be the same without the influence of classic fighting games like Street Fighter. They taught us to expect a slicker class of move. Do you agree? And can you think of any more examples?
What geek wouldn't want to be a Jedi?
Or cast spells like Harry Potter? Well, now they can, because the era of mind-controlled video games for the masses has arrived at this year's Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco.
Behold Project Epoc, a wireless headset developed by Australian start-up Emotiv Systems. The electrodes embedded in the set read your brain waves, figure out what you're thinking and, yes, allow you to bend objects on the screen to your omnipotent will.
The software package that Emotiv will be releasing to developers includes three programs, each giving the user a slightly different flavour of mental control over what's happening on screen. In the "Expressiv" software, an onscreen avatar blinks when you blink, smiles when you smile…even winks back when you wink (without the aid of any cameras or optical input).
The "Affectiv" software is basically a graph that Emotiv's scientists tell me measures the user's general level of "excitement". During the demo I went to last Friday, the researchers encouraged me to ask rude questions of Dave (the user) to see if I could make the graph flinch.
Asking Dave how he felt about minorities, and whether he was attracted to men, seemed to excite him somewhat…
But I was there for the video games, and the kind folks at Emotiv delivered. Using a modified version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire I navigated Harry through a level using a standard PS2 control pad. When I got to a place where I needed a spell, Dave took over, moving blocks and casting fireballs with his mind. Way to go, Dave!
Let's be clear, though: Epoc isn't anywhere near as easy as picking up a control pad and learning to play a game. The software uses adaptive learning to figure out what your brains' electrical signals look like when you're thinking about lifting, pushing, or rotating objects. That takes time (which is why Dave used the headset and not me).
Still, I think I'd be willing to sacrifice an hour of my life for a taste of the Jedi's power.
The effect is amazing, after all - c'mon, this is mind-control people! - but I find myself wondering whether the twelve different 'telekinetic' functions and ability to flirt with your avatar for a while will feel worth it a month or two after Epoc has left its $250 hole in your wallet.
Ultimately, I think it will. As Nam Do, Emotiv's CEO said, this type of thing can have all sorts of implications for how people interact with their computers. Social networks and massively-multiplayer environments could be transformed with real-time emotional input from its denizens.
From here...Professor tries to establish a formal video game canon
By Nate Anderson | Published: March 25, 2007 - 11:36PM CT
If you took stab at drawing up the video game "canon," what 10 games would you start with? That was the question facing Stanford professor Henry Lowood, who curates the History of Science and Technology Collections at the school and has an abiding love for video games. Seeing that games are ephemeral (storage media goes bad, systems become obsolete), Lowood has been one of the people pressing to get the Library of Congress involved in game preservation. To that end, he announced the first 10 games of his proposed canon a few weeks ago at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and urged that they be preserved first.
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Games have gone mainstream enough that the New York Times covered the conference and Lowood's presentation in particular. The talk, called "Ten Games You Need to Play: The Digital Game Canon," featured Lowood along with designers Steve Meretzky and Warren Spector, Berkeley researcher Matteo Bittanti, and Christopher Grant, the editor of joystiq.com.
The first 10 titles they would like to see covered are:
Spacewar!
Star Raiders
Zork
Tetris
SimCity
Super Mario Bros. 3
Civilization I/II
Doom
The Warcraft series
Sensible World of Soccer
Canon formation is rarely as simple as announcing a list, however. Although a canon can sometimes be imposed by an authority, this doesn't work for most disciplines, and certainly won't hold true for games. In fact, the most interesting result of Lowood's presentation may come years from now, when gamers of the future compared this list of influential titles with their own list.
Each generation modifies the canon of an art form to suit its own needs and aesthetic sensibilities, and even within generations, there is plenty of disagreement. In literature, one need look no further than the general disfavor shown towards the 18th century, especially toward "sentimental" works like The Man of Feeling, which used to be quite important. Or the rise of Donne and the Metaphysicals after long centuries of relative neglect.
The same process of canon formation will take place in the gaming community. It's possible to imagine a day in the future in which a game like SimCity won't be seen as a liberating title, but one which led gaming down into the dark alley of unwinnable "sandbox" games. Such arguments are all part of the fun, and lists like these often seem designed to provoke discussion as much as to lay down the law.
If gaming does become an art form that is studied by students across the nation, though, the gaming canon could quickly move from an object of spirited debate to a divisive partisan issue, as it has in other fields. That's because, suddenly, the list no longer exists purely for fun. It is used as the basis for course offerings; it determines what researchers will get jobs and grant money. Progressives are pitted against conservatives, proponents of gameplay against proponents of stunning visual effects. Bitter departmental fights break out and voting blocks form, and then some people wonder why only certain cultures seem represented in the course offerings, and then the very definition of "game" comes into the question.
For now, though, it's only a list. Let the argument over its contents begin.
MonkeyM666 wrote:I'd love to get in on it but I just don't have the time or the graphical horsepower (I think). It'll end up being like GOW, I'll get my self sorted log on and everyone's moved on to CC4 or something.
Kaga, can you give us a sceen grab of your character? Tell us all about it, why is it so good?
PlayStation's creator to retire
Friday, 27 April 2007, 09:45 GMT 10:45 UK
The man behind the Sony PlayStation console is to retire, after the electronics giant sharply cut shipment targets for the PlayStation 3 (PS3).
The "Father of the PlayStation", Ken Kutaragi, is stepping down as chief executive of Sony's computer entertainment division.
Sony's PS3 faced a string of setbacks which caused delays to its launch.
The system faces fierce competition from Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox 360 consoles.
Analysts said Mr Kutaragi's departure is an indication that Sony may not be satisfied with the initial success of the PS3.
Huge costs
Mr Kutaragi, 56, designed the original PlayStation, which was born out of his frustration from a cancelled deal for Sony to create a CD-Rom drive for Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Super NES).
It went on to become a key source of revenue for the Japanese icon since its 1994 launch, selling more than 100 million units.
Mr Kutaragi designed the follow-up PlayStation 2 which has also sold more than 100 million units, and the PSP portable console, also seen as tremendous successes.
But he was demoted from Sony's board of directors in a 2005 and replaced as head of consumer electronics.
He also gave up the day-to-day running of the games unit last year, as Sony incurred huge costs due to the investment in the PS3, the console that is considered by analysts as vital to the company's future.
'Powerful visionary'
US sales of Sony's PS3 have trailed behind Nintendo's Wii
"I am happy to graduate from Sony Computer Entertainment after introducing four platforms to the PlayStation family," said Mr Kutaragi.
"It has been an exciting experience to change the world of computer entertainment by marrying cutting edge technologies with creative minds from all over the world."
Sony chief Howard Stringer hailed Mr Kutaragi as "a powerful visionary and entrepreneur in one figure".
"Not only has he created a multi-billion dollar business for the Sony Group, he has brought the industry into a new dimension."
Sony shipped 1.84 million PS3s worldwide last year compared with 3.19 million sales of Nintendo's Wii in the same period.
Mr Kutaragi, who will become an honorary chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment, is being replaced by Kazuo Hirai, who is currently the unit's chief operation officer.
Reuters have reported NPD’s March 2007 sales figures, and when you see them, they’re quite eye opening.
508k - Nintendo DS
280k - PlayStation 2
259k - Nintendo Wii
199k - Xbox 360
180k - PlayStation Portable
148k - Game Boy Advance
130k - PlayStation 3
22k - GameCube
silentbobafett wrote:FACT: PS3 will be a success as predicted and it will be the most popular console across the age range of gamers. Froms chool age gamers to adults who like a race or a shoot-em up or a challenge are a hard day at work.
silentbobafett wrote:How on fucking sweet muther loving earth did 69 million people by a Gamecube in the first quarter of 07?
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