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Stupid Games and Gameplay Questions

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Our Lady Has Left the Building

16:34 / 16.08.05

So... Why does the Glazer takeover of Man U seem to upset people more than Abramovich doing much the same with Chelsea? Isn't this an inevitable by-product of clubs becoming businesses, much the same as those dropping out of the Premiership find it difficult to stay afloat? Is this a British Anti-American bias being exhibited through sport, especially when the Americans don't care for 'soccer'?

16:39 / 16.08.05

I think it's partly anti-Americanism and lack of belief in their motives but it's also the fact that they have run up massive debts in buying the club. Debts which they have passed onto the club. Abramovich apart from seeming to display a love of and knowledge of football paid cash.

Jake, Colossus of Clout

19:02 / 16.08.05

You have reason to be worried. Although Glazer's Tampa Bay Buccaneers (American football) won the 2003 Super Bowl, that was the first year he owned the franchise, and they did it using the previous ownership's players. Since then he has balked at paying his stars high salaries and let them drift off to other teams who will pay them realistic salaries. The Bucs are now a poor-to-middling franchise with no real star power and a snowflake's chance in hell of making the playoffs, let alone making it to the Super Bowl to be fodder for the Patriots.

He also got rid of their cool old orange and white color scheme and rad Errol Flynn-inspired swashbuckler logo. They were replaced by generic "badass" red and black and a poorly designed pirate flag logo. Something tells me Man U fans wouldn't take kindly to that sort of thing.

He also got a new stadium, but it was paid for by taxpayers. And he's raised ticket prices every year, as the quality of the team he fields declines. Look out.

nedrichards is confused

21:09 / 16.08.05

As noted above it's all about the debts and who owns them. When Abramovitch took over Chelsea he took over their huge debt, they were about 2 weeks away from doing a Leeds, and wrote it all off. Glazer has taken on hundreds of millions of pounds of debt and put it all into the club (rather than himself) meaning that if things go wrong they could go *really* wrong.

22:59 / 16.08.05

I have a Stupid Question for non-U.S. posters/game developers.

The primary argument against the viability of Adult Only games seems to be that WalMart won't carry them, but as I understand it WalMart is a North American entity. Why should overseas markets be subject to the vagaries of a corporation that doesn't have a presence there?

How does Steam or Amazon change this?

Does the UK have its own ESRB or does it use the US one?

I understand that economies of scale directly effect what is produced, but surely if Japan can churn out one hundred dating sims a year Europe could find a market for one?*

*Actually there have been two produced in Germany, Single and Singles 2, both of which have gotten lousy reviews.

ONLY NICE THINGS

23:53 / 16.08.05

Bit more on Glazer - the point is that the debt that has been incurred by raising the finances to buy the club has been placed on the club, which could only be done because the club is now wholly owned by Glazer - £265m or so of debt is heading straight for the club's balance sheet. Because of the level of gearing involved, the institutions loaning Glazer the money can impose stringent conditions on the financial performance of the club and the repayment schedule, and there is skepticism that the plans the Glazer vehicle showed are actually crdible - they assume a huge increase in Asian revenues, for example. So, the takeover is not popular with Manchester United fans because they are suspicious that the assets of the club may be sold to meet debt repayments - the interest alone on tat kind of debt is huge - and wages limited. Glazer maintains that the allocation of debt is good business strategy, and that this will not harm spending on players. This also ties into other ambivalences in United fans - the aging of the golden generation, a series of disappointing performances, the manifest helplessness of Ferguson in the face of Magnier and MacManus, former large shareholders who stiill owned far less of the club than Glazer, and a suspicion that both manager and team may no longer be up to it, which have been exacerbated by this takeover.

Chelsea fans, meanwhile, have an effectively endlessly wealthy chairman, no debt risks and a manager who can apparently spend what he likes to get the team he wants. Also, since Michael Harding was dead and Ken Bates largely happy to take the money, the transfer of ownership was itself pretty smooth. So, while fans of other clubs may fear that Chelsea has bought dominance of the Premiership, Chelsea fans themselves are largely delighted. At the time of the takeover there _were_ protests, but nothing on the same scale...

06:33 / 17.08.05

The UK doesn't use the ESRB. We have our own, European-wide standards body, which can only give advisory ratings. In general, those are 3+, 7+, 12+, 16+, and 18+. The last of those is very rare, especially in this country, for one simple reason:

the British Board of Film Classification also classifies games.

To wit: Halo 2 is classified under the advisory scheme as a 16+ for violence, meaning anyone can buy it, but parents have an idea of what's in it. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is classified by the BBFC as an '18'. This means the rules that apply to 18-rated films, videos and DVDs apply - specifically, that it is illegal to supply such a product to a minor. Our ratings - at the higher levels - are never advisory, unlike the R-certificate, you see. So we don't quite have the problems with GTA that the states have; we have newspaper articles about 'why are kids playing sick 18-rated games?' but never 'why is this not illegal for my child?' because, well, it is.

The BBFC are classifying more games than ever at the moment, and not just at the highest end of the scale. Still, for recent interest: God of War, Killer7, GTA:SA were all rated '18'. This also means that shops have no problems carrying them because they can refuse to serve anyone they want. Unfortunately, when it comes to games, they rarely say no - but basically, there's a whole stack of legal protection the way the UK rates games.

nedrichards is confused

10:12 / 17.08.05

Other things re: WalMart. Games in the UK is primarily and export industry (that's why you don't see any remakes of SkoolDaze, although Bully may be similar), it's very difficult for Western devs to sell in Japan (although getting easier with the new partnerships with Japanese publishers) and the US sells approx 40% of the games in the world (as I remember).

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

10:34 / 17.08.05

Has anyone played Nanotstray? Is it owt decent?

17:27 / 18.08.05

How does the offside rule work?

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:57 / 19.08.05

Is that a serious question, Quants? Because I can explain it, but it may take a little time. You might be better off asking GGM on Saturday.

08:16 / 19.08.05

Hmmmm interesting on the BBFC's role in games classification. There is of course the additional rating for pronography that means it can only be shown in a licenced sex club (and occasionally cinemas are granted a licence to operate as a sex club for the purposes of showing such films) - how do people think such regulations would play on any potential sex games?

Goodness Gracious Meme

09:45 / 20.08.05

If that is a serious question, Q, I will demonstrate on Hove Lawns for you.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:37 / 20.08.05

It's easier with three-dimensional learning aids.

Goodness Gracious Meme

10:54 / 20.08.05

Yeah, takes about 30 seconds to explain the offside rule if one has some props, eg glasses/mugs, to use as marker.

12:49 / 20.08.05

Everything's better with glasses and mugs.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:56 / 20.08.05

Also cigarette packets. The one time I had the offside rule explained to me (also by a gurl, oh the shame) I sem to remember the Silk Cut dude was very important, but I couldn't for the life of me tell you why. Or was it the Lighter Guy?

All Acting Regiment

17:13 / 20.08.05

Off side is about stopping people from scoring when they get a goal, if that goal is too "easy", right? It's to make it more difficult to score. In a really complicated way.

ONLY NICE THINGS

23:37 / 20.08.05

Not exactly. It's about preventing a player from "hanging" in the goal area, in order to receive the ball from a long pass and score. It forces players to behave imaginatively in order to move the ball into a scoring position. Note that this is why even notionally "boring" teams which achieved success still tended to have creative midfielders and/or tricky wingers - the most obvious example is George Graham's "boring" Arsenal, which included David Rocastle, Paul Merson and Michael Thomas.

The very short version is that a player is offside if, when a ball is played (that is, when it leaves the boot of the player making the pass), there are one or no defenders (including the goalkeeper as a defender) between that player and the goal line. Note that it is not illegal to be in an offside position, only to receive advantage from being in an offside position or interfere with the play while in an offside position.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:12 / 21.08.05

...naah, not getting it. Glasses, mugs and fag packets, please.

Oh, and possibly a lighter.

21:08 / 21.08.05

Imagine if a ketchup bottle is the keeper, a pepper pot the last defender, and a salt shaker the attacking player, a brown sauce bottle the team mate of the attacking player and a tub of mustard the ball. If the brown sauce bottle knocks the mustard pot to the salt shaker when the salt shaker is between the pepper pot and the ketchup bottle (presuming that the ketchup bottle is on it's own side of the table, and in the goal area), then it is off side. Basically.

Oh, and Haus, it's MATTHEW Harding.

23:27 / 21.08.05

Would anyone be able to tell me the name of an ace sega saturn fighter that incorporated both fighting vipers and virtua fighter characters?

00:38 / 22.08.05

I would be able to tell you that it was called Fighters Megamix

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:24 / 22.08.05

Was Matthew Harding, Benny. Was Matthew Harding.

18:52 / 22.08.05

Yay Thanks Triplets!!

22:11 / 26.08.05

i was having a discussion with my wee bro the other day about the costs involved in the running of a major football team.
inspired by a commentator mentioning that real madrid would be making a loss in a particular game, we started throwing about sums and making educated guuesses.
i came to a vague figure of about a million to run real for a game(or a week-sometimes the same thing, i guess)

was i miles off?
does anyone know how it breaks down?
how many tickets is break even?
would they be able to get by on ticket sales alone?
we reckoned they field about a third of the players they pay each week, clearly their biggest expense.
the other costs are a bit of a mystery to me.
they'll be paying non playing staff, air fares, hotels, etc.
but how much does all that come to?

i am kinda intertested in general knowledge of the average team's costs, but i reckon real or one of the other big guns would be more interesting.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

06:12 / 27.08.05

Well, by average team do you mean UK Premiership or lower divisions, or European? How many of those European superleague cup things they are involved with would also be a factor I'd expect, and whether they own or lease their home ground.

I have no idea to be honest, but as I doubt there's any such thing as 'an average team' I'll say that, for you squire, £50 and the promise of a kiss.

17:41 / 27.08.05

average team of premier leage status, i guess.
something like halfway between manchester united and sunderland but from all over europe.

All Acting Regiment

11:57 / 30.08.05

Right. I'm interested in finding out about this PC game that came out roughly 4-5 years ago- possibly. I'm really not sure of the date (but what I do remember is that Magic The Gathering: Portal was just released (or re-released) at the time because a friend's younger brother had some).

Anyway. It was in 3D, it was top down, it was a real time strategy of sorts, and it revolved around building these giant robots and arming them in various ways. There were about a dozen of these robots on-screen.

It also had little tanks/artillery peices that you could create as well. They were much smaller than the robots, but there were much more of them. As I remember, most of these things were red, though that might have been just in that instance.

The main thing was that there were three distinct "areas" of play that you could flip between: you had an underground layer, with little digging machines tunneling through earth, a surface layer, and a sky layer, with aeroplanes and flying robots. You could only see one at a given time.

I can't remember if these layers could affect eachother or not, but they may have been able to- perhaps you could tunnel into an enemy base or do an air-strike, I'm not sure.

Anyway, if anyone can shed any light on this I'd be grateful.

13:11 / 30.08.05

Could that be Metal Fatigue by any chance? (review)

All Acting Regiment

19:58 / 30.08.05

That'll be the one. Thanks Mouse.

11:26 / 31.08.05

any ideas about the costs of running a major football team?
any idea where one might go a-googling?

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:38 / 31.08.05

Deloitte and Touche publish an annual report on the financial status of the British game. Might be worth starting there.

20:23 / 31.08.05

Here's a silly little question. You know in UT2004, when you have the minigun, it sounds different if you use FIRE to when you use ALT-FIRE? Is there actually any difference? I have this idea that ALT-FIRE is slower but I could be imagining it.

21:10 / 31.08.05

Fridge: you're right. The alt-fire of the minigun in UT2004 is more controlled, more accurate, but at the expense of rate-of-fire. It used to be the other way round, IIRC, in earlier UTs.

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