[geeks] Games, was Re: Ubuntu partition on Bootcamp Mac?

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 03:41:14 -0700
Jon Gilbert <jjj at io.com> wrote:

> On Jul 30, 2007, at 7:33 PM, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> >> Or is it just that, to you, it's not "work" if you are spending long,
> >> frustrating hours programming something that is in 3D as opposed to
> >> 2D HTML/Flash sites?
> >
> > Uhm, where'd that come from?
> 
> Well, the only main difference between say, Toyota.com, and Toyota's  
> sim in Second Life, is that their sim in Second Life is in 3D. Both  
> are business-related. How is it that someone who develops Toyota's  
> area in Second Life is anymore a "gamer" than the person who makes  
> Toyota's website (using 2D and flash)?

When I played "F.E.A.R." there were advertisements on the walls in the game
made by real professional artists and advertising companies.

I can create a world in Neverwinter Nights that also let's people have a
virtual life, interact with others, get married, run a business that makes
real money, and you can even write code and do professional design work.
Perhaps not as flexibly as SL, but that's a technological limit which could
be removed.

Granted, the focus is on a medieval world, but that's only an argument of
timeline, not whether or not it is a game.

I could even argue that you don't have health bars or anything and that it is
real because the D&D combat system uses real-world statistics to model
actual death and injury.

Of course, I'd be wrong, but I'd be presenting an argument that is only
different from yours in the details and limitations of the particular game
engine.

Given the time I could expand NWN to have every thing SL has in it.

Would it at some arbitrary point become not a game?

> It's not a game. It has games within it, but it also has a lot of non- 
> games within it. I mentioned the bit about the gaming industry  
> because even if it was a game, that would not make it unproductive in  
> a "work" sense.

I think you just take too much offense at the term game.

SL is a game.

Falcon 3.0 is a game.

A $100 million military simulation I saw one time that included a full
working economy, virtual lives and armies... it was also a game, though I had
to talk to a guy just like you who spent endless hours trying to tell us that
it wasn't.





-- 
shannon           | An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto 
                  | one blade of grass and not fall off the face of the earth.