vraddict.com

For those of you who remember, it used to be that the only place to play a decent video game was at the arcade. Back then, if you died, you didn’t start from your last save – you started from the very beginning of the game. Yet you kept putting quarters in that one one-dimensional game so that you couid finally get to the part were the alien ships were no longer a boring rectangle and instead became a cool octagon.

I know we live in a culture of instant gratification, but the more I have to strain my rational and creative faculties to beat a level, the more satisfied I am with the result. And 1 personaily play all my games on hard mode – not because I want to show how coo! I am, but because I want to keep playing the really good games for many years to come. I still have games on my hard drive from over five years ago. While some you cruise through the best games of all time, just to say you finished them, people like me are still blissfully anticipating the thought of playing them.

I found it quite interesting that so many of the leaders in game design feel the same way about things.

I am surprised [by] the complaint of standardizing PC hardware. I wasn’t aware of a massive problem in this area. Granted, I have noticed compatibility complaints before, but nothing on a large enough scale that would generate a complaint from game designers. I didn’t know such a problem existed: I assumed that the hardware was standard enough across all manufacturers that such a problem would rarely be found, and if il were, it would be the fault of the manufacturer’s drivers and not the game designer.

I’m also surprised [by] the complaint about the price of games. Graphic design elements being more complex I can understand, but the complaint about the budgets surprised me. I thought It was the developers who were pushing for the bigger budgets.

The proposed method of fixing the budget problem was disappointing to me. Like the developers, I too notice very few games that are in the “in-between” market, where they are neither big-budget nor nearly free. The thing is, I don’t want games to sacrifice graphics for gameplay; rather, I want the gameplay to match the graphics quality. It s frustrating for me to see “pretty” games pass me by because I’m forced to play dated-looking games to get a good story I fear that perhaps by limiting graphics quality to allow more focus on gameplay, the developers wdl be killing that which they are trying to save, just with a different method. Granted, a good story does a lot more for me than pretty graphics, but I don’t think anyone can honestly state that graphics aren’t important to a game these days

Apple is sued over potention hearling loss. Apple hasnt indicated any warnings about potential hearing loss with their ipod players. Cnn writes that the devices can produce sounds of more than 115 decibels, a volume that can damage the hearing of a person exposed to the sound for more than 28 seconds per day, according to the complaint.

The iPod players are “inherently defective in design and are not sufficiently adorned with adequate warnings regarding the likelihood of hearing loss,” according to the complaint, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., on behalf of John Kiel Patterson of Louisiana

The suit, which Patterson wants certified as a class-action, seeks compensation for unspecified damages and upgrades that will make iPods safer. Patterson’s suit said he bought an iPod last year, but does not specify whether he suffered hearing loss from the device.

Patterson does not know if the device has damaged his hearing, said his attorney, Steve W. Berman, of Seattle. But that’s beside the point of the lawsuit, which takes issue with the potential the iPod has to cause irreparable hearing loss, Berman said.

An Apple Computer Inc. spokeswoman, Kristin Huguet, declined to comment.

Apple was forced to pull the iPod from store shelves in France and upgrade software on the device to limit sound to 100 decibels, but has not followed suit in the United States, according to the complaint. The headphones commonly referred to as ear buds, which ship with the iPod, also contribute to noise-induced hearing loss because they do not dilute the sound entering the ear and are closer to the ear canal than other sound sources, the complaint states.

Were you aware that there is a risk of hearing loss when purchasing your Ipod ?