Tuesday, June 11, 2013
The PS4 Doesn’t Have The Xbox One’s DRM
PS4 will not put any restrictions on used games, Sony’s PlayStation boss Jack Tretton said today. Gamers can buy PS4 games, trade them in, lend them to friends or keep them forever. Loud cheers. He was drawing several points of comparison, obviously, to the Xbox One.
“In addition to creating an amazing library of new titles on PlayStation 4, we’re focused on delivering what gamers want most, without imposing restrictions or devaluing their PS4 purchases. For instance, PlayStation 4 won’t impose any restrictions on the use of PS4 games.”
The crowd of reporters and gaming industry people at the event cheered at the sight of a slide promising no restrictions on used games.
“Yes, that’s a good thing. We believe in the model that people embrace today with PlayStation 3 and continue to demand. We just heard you there. When a gamer buys a PS4 disc, they have the rights to the game, they can trade in the game at retail, sell it to another person, lend it to another friend or keep it forever.
“In addition, PlayStation 4 disc-based games don’t need to be connected online to play.”
More cheers.
“Or for any type of authentication. If you enjoy playing single-player games offline, PS4 won’t require you to check in online periodically. And it won’t stop working if you haven’t authenticated within 24 hours.”
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Arcade appeals to generations of visitors
If lights flash and dance everywhere you look, buzzers sound, children laugh and carry fistfuls of prize tickets, and that pinball machine in the back has eaten almost all your beer money — then you’re in FUN-LAND.
FUN-LAND Arcade and Snack Bar has been in business 63 years to date. And if you ask someone of age to bring their grandkids to the beach, three attractions have identified Panama City Beach over those years: Miracle Strip, Petticoat Junction and FUN-LAND.
“We have third generations that come in,” said Joel McDavid, general manager at FUN-LAND for 12 years. “There are baby boomers that come in to bring their grandkids and say, ‘When I was their age I was in here.’ ”
McDavid reflected on when he was 10 years old, coming to FUN-LAND, never dreaming of one day managing the iconic arcade.
FUN-LAND is the last surviving vestige of the three landmarks that embodied the desire for an amusement park-themed beach. Though technically not an amusement park, the clown logo and outside appearance was intentionally misleading to give the impression of a circus mixed with an amusement park — a marketing method to compete with the Long Beach amusement parks of the day.
Originally opened by Don Remsnider in spring 1950, FUN-LAND is the oldest arcade in North Florida, McDavid said. It was purchased four years later and has been owned by the same family since, only changing hands once from father to son in 1990.
Monday, April 8, 2013
Duo World, November/December 1993
Duo World, Issue Number 3, November / December 1993
Friday, January 18, 2013
6 Video Games Every Libertarian Should Play
Until recently, popular storytelling was an essentially top-down art: Novelists told readers how characters thought and felt, playwrights determined what they said, and movie directors subjected captive viewers to their own individual visions. The story you saw was the story someone else imagined, and audience interaction was limited to throwing tomatoes at the stage, or scribbling in the margins of a book. Even popular sports were basically passive: Fans might follow along in great detail, but the plays and their outcomes were determined by the actions of an elite few on the field.
But for the last 40 years, video games have begun to change all that. Games were built around interactivity: Players got what they wanted, not what someone else gave them. And as the technological firepower that makes video games possible has grown cheaper and more abundant, those games have increasingly focused on complex choice architectures designed to let players make their own stories. Game designers still build the playing fields, and some are more constrictive than others. But the arc of game design has bent toward expanding player choice. You are at the center of the experience, and you make it your own. The star of the show isn’t some writer or actor or player on the screen. The star is you.
It’s probably too much to argue that video games offer players freedom from the iron grip of the author—after all, games still have designers, and the old stories weren’t exactly forced upon their readers. But the rise of video games as a popular art form is surely a sign of the way that the broad universalized stories of yesterday have fractured into an array of niche narratives, each designed to serve an individualized interest.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Next Generation, Issue Number 27, March 1997
The March 1997 issue of Next Generation magazine:
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