Thomas

pwned =)

Jack Thompson's worst fears realized. GTA inspired drivebys.

I'm gonna go continue laughing now.

And they call the PS3 huge. =)

@ 3&4

You both misunderstand what is meant by the "third place." Illustration below (Note: by "We" I mean Americans).

Think of two different people whom, if you saw them together, would incline you to a) do a double take, b) call the police, or c) shatter your reality. For instance, with choice b, a young child and someone who does not look like his/her father might cause you to call in a missing child. The third place is a location where seeing any sort of this combination together wouldn't be so strange; where meeting new people *is* the norm, rather than happy random chance. It's kind of like meeting people at a bar, only you might meet just about anyone rather than someone you're looking to buy a drink for.

If you're having trouble imagining this kind of place you're probably from the US (and this is why the study is significant enough to make the press rounds). As a nation, we tend to be much more isolated from our neighbors than our counterparts in other countries. We don't places the tendency is to meet new people for the sake of it. We lack Italian piazzas or French cafes or random encounters at crowded eateries in Mexico where any random two people might drop what they're doing to say hello and meet a new face.

Academics have actually been spending a decent amount of time fretting about where all the communities have gone in America. That two researchers found them in MMO's is actually pretty significant.

@darko82
Last I checked, they were both RPG's and video games. Remember last holiday season when every publisher in existence chose the same 2 month window for their year's mega hits? Metroid Prime 2, Halo 2, WoW, Half Life 2... Point is, if they're going to delay it, why not just wait an extra month to get out of the way and save some advertising dollars?

Are they kidding? Releasing on the same day as FFXII is probably sales-share suicide. These guys are going to get forced to work a *long*-tail of sales to realize the NWN2's full sales potential, which is going to wind up costing them a lot more on their marketing/advertising budget. As much as I don't want to see the thing rushed, it's going to hurt them a lot financially to compete against SquEnix instead of getting a solid 1-2 weeks of heavy sales and with smaller long-tail.

PC offers a lot of advantages over console. 1) Interface matters (for example: the Wiimote, FPS's). 2) Development costs are lower for PC than for consoles (so many smaller developers wouldn't want to move). 3) Gigantic user base http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Installed_base. I see little reason to believe PC gaming is dying.

As for one of Mark's questions, "Why aren't developers taking big bets on PC gaming?" My gut says (and guesses) that it's because console gaming is more mainstream than PC gaming (for instance, the massive sales of EA sports, the Halo 2 media blitz, GTA, etc.) due to, possibly in part, of the lower cost to the consumer. If anything, I think it's the console segment that's more regulated to the mass market than the PC one (excepting casual games of course).

On a side note: Originally ordered my laptop from Dell explicitly with a Nvidia chipset. That laptop died. (I kid you not, it self-ignited and smoke came out of the machine.) I sent it back to Dell to have it exchanged. The machine they sent back was an "upgrade" on the hardware I had. Intel graphics with more graphics memory. /owned =(

This'd be a great weekly item.