Grand Theft Auto

hint

party record with a siren
(Revealing my age) I remember the Bitmap Brothers....
They were the first coders to try & brand themselves as anything other than faceless geeks or maths geniuses (dark sunglasses & black leather jackets: coolest of the cool :p)

Very true - I'd forgotten them. Leather jackets indeed! :)
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"there is always one big change, year to year, in football games and if you can't work out what it is and why its important then there's no hope for you."
If you mean hope of being induced to spend forty quid on something I've already got then I guess you're right.
 

tom lea

Well-known member
I'm afraid that's totally wrong, a glimpse at any of your favourite bittorrent trackers will reveal a top 100 downloads list stuffed with recent blockbusters and new games in nearly equal measure. Even consoles can be modded in various ways to accept downloaded games (at least the last generation could, not sure about xbox 360 / PS3 but if you can't do it yet you will be able to soon). Cracking computer games probably goes back as far as home taping.
yeah but really, nobody takes the time to do that. probably less than 1% of the people who know how to download music for free know how to download a video game and make it work for free.

my laptop can play playstation games now, but my mate had to show me how. and i think he's the only other person i know who knows how to do it. where as 90% of people i know could probably download the latest beyonce album or whatever like that. it's available, but it's not easily do-able.
 

UFO over easy

online mahjong
I wouldn't say that, it's not as big as with music, but there's a massive computer games ripping community and i know loads of people who don't pay for games but play loads of them. They're the same people who don't go to the cinema but stream every new movie for free off ninjavideo.

Emulating console games on a PC is a bit more difficult though for sure, but that's different.
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
i used to be big into arcade and video games when they were 16 bit (sf2, mortal kombat etc etc), particularly the nintendo but when everyone switched to the PS and xbox etc i totally lost touch. i might just need more practice but i never fully got used to the controllers with a million buttons on it. or all the ultra violent games. got a nintendo ds but thats for kids. games are way too easy. i do feel like im missing out though so might try and get my hands on a psp or something just to see whats happening. ive only played GTA maybe twice in my life.
 

tom lea

Well-known member
I wouldn't say that, it's not as big as with music, but there's a massive computer games ripping community and i know loads of people who don't pay for games but play loads of them. They're the same people who don't go to the cinema but stream every new movie for free off ninjavideo.
when i tried to chip my ps2 i stopped half way through because i was convinced i was going to break it. i know there are places you can take them in and get it done for you (or there certainly used to be), and i am woeful with anything that involves a tool kit, but it requires a different level of effort (and also, crucially, requires money) than it does to download songs on limewire, or hit play on a stream on tv-links/ninjavideo.

like i say, when i was at uni, everyone downloaded or streamed movies all the time. everyone downloaded music. with games a few people would download the new football managers (on pc rather than playstation though), but i only knew one person who know how to download playstation games. and even then, that was for emulation rather than playing them on a chipped machine.

obviously it's gonna differ depending on who you know, but surely downloading movies/music and video games are worlds apart in terms of simplicity and popularity.
 

tom lea

Well-known member
yeah, i mean they're easy to download. but i don't think they have a massive cultural impact in the same way playstation ones do. i could be wrong there though.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
(Revealing my age) I remember the Bitmap Brothers using a Bomb the Bass remix of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 for Xenon 2: Megablast on the ST in 1989, then using John Foxx to do the music for Gods a couple of years later.

Flashback!!

They were the first coders to try & brand themselves as anything other than faceless geeks or maths geniuses (dark sunglasses & black leather jackets: coolest of the cool :p) and their games were the first I'd seen that seemed to consciously tap into the huge ST & Amiga demo & electronic music scenes.

Oh my god, I used to WORSHIP that game! And I can still see the gronky late-80s graphics whenever I hear that Bomb The Bass tune. Bitmap Brothers rocked. :)
 

Blackdown

nexKeysound
I'm afraid that's totally wrong, a glimpse at any of your favourite bittorrent trackers will reveal a top 100 downloads list stuffed with recent blockbusters and new games in nearly equal measure. Even consoles can be modded in various ways to accept downloaded games (at least the last generation could, not sure about xbox 360 / PS3 but if you can't do it yet you will be able to soon). Cracking computer games probably goes back as far as home taping.

Not got a massive amount to add, as I have never really been into games at all, a childhood with no consoles and then later the family computer being a mac has resulted in a major lack of nostalgia for them. I live in a student flat though and we have about 5 consoles under the TV so score one for ubiquity I suppose. Oh and one flatmate actually has one of the GTA soundtracks on (illegally downloaded of course) MP3. Not sure how much it's influenced his taste though.

ok well like i say i dont know a lot about computer games, but how does that explain 2million sales of a console game in one weekend on one hand and the music industry dieing a death due to p2p on the other?
 

DougD

Rogue Trader
ok well like i say i dont know a lot about computer games, but how does that explain 2million sales of a console game in one weekend on one hand and the music industry dieing a death due to p2p on the other?

A game for Xbox360 or PS3 will be many, many gigabytes (which can take days or even weeks to dl from a torrent site depending on traffic) and then has to be burned specially to a disc and shit... pain in the ass.

An album is like 80 megs and plays instantly in a universal format.

Basically, it's less of a pain to just buy the game, especially if you want to be playing it at release.
 

4linehaiku

Repetitive
No sorry jumped in without thinking properly, I was mainly talking about PC games, which really are as easy as download and double click. Downloading and playing console games is a fairly elaborate process, and probably doesn't apply to many people. So yeah, for the purposes of GTA discussion you can ignore all that.

Not sure the music industry can blame their problems entirely on p2p though, much as they would like to. (off topic I know)

Oh and about the football games etc, I'm not trying to be funny, is the difference player / team stats or something along those lines? I really don't know, but that would seem most likely. Surely that's a tiny downloadable update, not a compelling reason to shell out another £40 for a new game / disc?
 

luka

Well-known member
look the difference is this, every year teams get relegated and promoted. players get sold and brought. part of the appeal of those games is the realism. you don't want to play a game with beckham and phil neville still in the utd line up, or one with norwich in the top division.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"look the difference is this, every year teams get relegated and promoted. players get sold and brought. part of the appeal of those games is the realism. you don't want to play a game with beckham and phil neville still in the utd line up, or one with norwich in the top division."
So basically what Haiku said then? That obviously ought to be an upgrade rather than a whole new game.
 
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luka

Well-known member
yeah, but its not. and if it was they wouldn't make half as much money, you asked why people kept buying the games each year and i told you. football teams maybe shouldn't put out new shirts every year, maybe tampoons should be on the NHS. maybe we should go back to a barter society.
 

Alfons

Way of the future
So basically what Haiku said then? That basically ought to be an upgrade rather than a whole new game.

obviously there are graphical advances and stuff too, maybe not too drastic from year to year but they still advance dont they? I remember when fifa 98 or 99 came out which was the first 3d one, never been a fan of these kind of games but remember being pretty awestruck by it then.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"obviously there are graphical advances and stuff too, maybe not too drastic from year to year but they still advance dont they"
But by the smallest imaginable amount. They don't want to push it on too far or else there won't be anything left to add to the next update. I imagine them sat around deciding which tweaks to put in now and which to hold back so they can spend the next year relaxing without the pressure of having to think of anything new.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
they shouldnt be allowed to sell fizzy drinks in hospitals

But what else am I supposed to pour in open wounds?

I think those football games do get slightly better every time - the play becomes smoother etc... Probably would see more of a quantum leap between each installment if it wasn't for the updating of stats/teams etc. which is what people are really interested in. One of my football mad mates never tires of telling me that Player Manager is so well-researched that real football managers use it to scout players. And I never tire of tiring of it.
 
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