Quote from: LordVreeg;469030Bradford notes that since the advent of television and the computer, people don't drive to the theatre and stare at a movie screen or play together instead of staring at it alone.

What is fascinating is the Box Office and attendance at plays. The digital Armageddon did not destroy them. Live music concerts are wildly popular, even at crazy ticket prices. I fully expected for the internet and DVDs to have taken a much larger chunk from them.

Were these more popular pre-TV? I wonder if we have enough data to make an accurate answer. There are so many factors to consider.

Quote from: LordVreeg;469030I do think that he's right, making gaming mobile will, in fact, allow many couch potatos to game online from their home.

I am unsure.

I think an online RPG table would allow those gamers who are already couch potatoes to get back into RPGs gameplay. Among those left in the hobby, I wonder how many would stop attending sessions.  We are such a small group now and WoW already stripped us of the potatoes.

Also I can see an online RPG table increasing face to face gameplay.  

One of the biggest complaints online is "I can't find players" and if WotC or Paizo or whoever creates an online table, it only makes sense to have it bundled with a Player Finder zip code search so suddenly, the "I can't find anyone" guy is hooked up with 8 others in a 10 mile radius.

Quote from: Simlasa;469052The path of technology so far seems to render most forms of entertainment into commodities... with a few expert participants and lots of passive consumers.

I never understand why more football fans don't play football. I love playing football and find watching it dull.  Although watching millionaires hitting each other has an appeal, it makes me daydream about MMA matches on Wall Street.  

However, the counterpoint to passive entertainment is the trouble TV is having getting young males to watch programs because they rather play video games. Also, an entire generation has been raised on creating amateur YouTube content and sharing it instead of just waiting for the pros.

I believe that DIY has a strong future....in part, thanks to new tech.  

Quote from: Soylent Green;469053So now I buy my music on CD. I might rip the CD as soon as it is purchased but the physical CD still acts as the ultimate master copy.

I am battling with this myself. I have iTuned my entire collection, but I am hesitant to toss my CD collection because one digital whoopsie and it would cost several thousand to replace. But on the other hand, I don't like stuff collecting dust.

Quote from: GRIM;469195The more demands you place upon a single person the higher the barrier to entry.

True.

Did the original poster mean like this?
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?541618-BotA-IPad-App-Consumer-Opinion-Thread...
Barbarians of the Aftermath on iPad.
=

Quote from: GRIM;469195It's more that it's a very different skill set and MC is no longer a one man show.

I already do design, writing, layout, editing and publication. I don't have a coding brain. The more demands you place upon a single person the higher the barrier to entry.

Mojang only has one other guy working on MC now, and he only does minor bugfixes, Markus still does all the main dev work.

The other point is sound though.  Most of the people running a game company aren't also code nerds too, so for someone like you it's just not something that will ever happen, and if it became the norm it would put you out of business.

But there are companies out there that could do it, and probably other companies who could at least manage to bring one or two more people on for such a project.

There's just no money in it. No one who has the skills to really do something like it well, is going to waste their times on the kinds of insulting pay they'll get even from someone as big as Wizards.

Quote from: Spinachcat;469221I think an online RPG table would allow those gamers who are already couch potatoes to get back into RPGs gameplay. Among those left in the hobby, I wonder how many would stop attending sessions.  We are such a small group now and WoW already stripped us of the potatoes.

As much as I am a fan of Serial Experiments Lain (ahead of its time in terms of the philosophical/social issues surrounding the digitization of human interaction), I think most predictions are far too cynical.

A lot of video-game play is social, with people drinking together, talking together, and generally doing other things together in between digital bouts.  Sociologically speaking, if you are a young person and do not partake in video-games a medium for social interaction, you are more likely to have psychological issues or otherwise being a social outcast.

QuoteHowever, the counterpoint to passive entertainment is the trouble TV is having getting young males to watch programs because they rather play video games. Also, an entire generation has been raised on creating amateur YouTube content and sharing it instead of just waiting for the pros.

I believe that DIY has a strong future....in part, thanks to new tech.  

Ditto.  It's made it easier for people to be creative and share with eachother in new ways, just like printed media did centuries ago.

QuoteI am battling with this myself. I have iTuned my entire collection, but I am hesitant to toss my CD collection because one digital whoopsie and it would cost several thousand to replace. But on the other hand, I don't like stuff collecting dust.

I keep my disks, too, but I just don't buy disks anymore when it's trivially easy to backup digital content.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;469208I just started watching my I Claudius dvds again. Its been rought ten years since i last watched them. The image quality is way down.

I looked into this more closely yesterday.

I dug out some older dvds I had collecting dust, which I purchased around a decade ago back in the early 2000's.  (These particular dvds had a manufacturing date from the late 1990's to early 2000's).  These are titles like "Terminator 2: Ultimate Edition", "This is Spinal Tap", etc ...

So I used isobuster to copy the entire dvd directly to the computer into an iso file.  (A similar program on linux, would be "dd").  If there's any significant deterioration in the actual dvd disk, it will show up as read errors on isobuster.

It turned out, these older dvds did not have any read errors at all.  But playing these iso files on the computer and onto my lcd big screen tv, the video quality of these copied dvds did not look overly impressive.  (Playing the actual dvds on a real dvd player and onto the same lcd big screen tv, also had an identical video quality).

More recently several months ago, I picked up two Star Trek dvds ("Generations" and "Insurrection") and "Cheech & Chong's Up In Smoke", which all appeared to have production dates from 1999 or 2000.  (There's no indication of what dates these particular dvds were manufactured.  I found all three in the bargain bin at a supermarket for 2 dollars each).  Copying these two Star Trek and "Cheech & Chong" dvds using isobuster, they didn't have any read errors either.  But when watching the iso files on the computer on my lcd big screen tv, the video quality was not particularly impressive either.  The video quality was in fact similar to my "Terminator 2: Ultimate Edition" and "This is Spinal Tap" dvds.  (For lack of a better description, I'll call this "early era dvd" video quality).

Looking at some more recently released dvds I have, such as "Transformers" (from 2007) and "Stargate Universe: The Complete First Season" (from 2010), the video quality was a lot better than the "early era dvds".  This was the case for watching the iso files on a computer and using an actual real dvd player, both using the same lcd big screen tv.

Re-releases which had the original producers putting a lot of effort into remastering their older movies (such as Star Wars and Blade Runner), seemed to have significantly better video quality than the "early era dvds".


In summary, I suspect the "early era dvds" from the late 1990's and early 2000's, may very well have been reflective of the technology which was available at the time for production/mastering of dvds.  I wouldn't be surprised if many of the dvds which were produced back in the late 1990's and early 2000's, were largely "rush jobs" to capitalized on the booming market for dvds.  Every movie company wanted to get their stuff released on dvd, for a quick buck (and mostly likely doing it on the cheap).

"Early era dvd" video quality seemed to look fine on CRT tv screens, but may not look as good on later lcd big screen tvs.

Spinachcat,

Live music and plays are still popular; thank god.

But I am sure we are just at an intermediate point in the development of online rpgs.  I happen to think that mapping and drawing and sound effect apps/programs will increase the prevalance of online gaming by increasing the quality of it.  I have already partially migrated.  I never intend to give up the live gaming, but I will tell you some of the side effects never occurred to me.  There is nearly zero 'ooc' dialogue. I get more done in 2 hours online than in 4 hours live.

It does NOT replace the friendship, interplay, humor, etc.  Nor the 5-8 bottles of wine that an average session entails at my table.  But my Steel ISle online game just hit session 86.  Any gaming is good gaming, and this is better than just good.

If I want an electronic game then I go play one.

If I want a tabletop rpg to hang out and game with people in person I don't want everyone sitting around all focused on thier own little fucking gizmos.

Hell if yer gonna do that just stay at home and play by skype or something.

Machete keeps the pen and paper in tabletop rpgs.