Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure • Hacker News Board

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#131

Post by ppseafield » Wed, May 23, 2018, 11:48 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #107

emodendroket wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was at least in some cases explicitly about rentals. That's why the difficulty was jacked up for US releases -- Nintendo was successful at getting game rentals legally banned in Japan, but not the US.

Weird that the internet opinion is that the Japanese release is the harder one because Americans don't have the patience for super hard games. Examples include Final Fantasy (that simplified the item system) or the "Lost Levels" of Super Mario Brothers.

A counterexample: Resident Evil was actually harder in the US because they removed the auto aim feature, specifically so US game renters would have a hard time beating it. I'm sure there are more examples of both kinds of modifications for the US market.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#132

Post by andrepd » Wed, May 23, 2018, 11:51 PM UTC

FooHentai wrote: post #129

I'm currently going through a phase of setting up a games room, and acquiring a bunch of slightly older video game consoles and games to populate it. I've settled on PS2 and PS3, and Xbox/360 as the sweet spot for this. Partly due to price (they're not old enough to be worth much, but not new enough to be hawked at retail prices). But a factor just as big as price is how, from about mid-360 and PS3 onwards, gaming st…

It's indeed sad. My only consolations are (i) like you said, indie games are still an oasis of bubbling creativity in a desert of insipid money-makers, and (ii) there are more brilliant old games I'm still yet to play than I could complete in many many years.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#133

Post by andrepd » Thu, May 24, 2018, 12:02 AM UTC

ManFromUranus wrote: post #62

andrepd wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There are no thieves or bad actors in socialist utopias? Of course there are. Socialism doesn't work now and never will work given human nature. Face it: bad people exist and they will do bad things in whatever context they find themselves in. You are just complaining about the ones you see in this context. However they would just be a different kind of bad actor in a socialist context.

Do people not speed even when there are red-light cameras? Of course they do. So does this mean we could start handing out rewards instead of fines, for speeding, and people would keep doing the same, because it's in their nature to speed or something? No, that's crazy. Of course that a system that rewards certain behaviours will result in a higher incidence of those behaviours, whereas a system that disincentivises them will result in the opposite.

Don't you see how basic your comments are? I would suggest you be a bit less sure of your own righteousness, and a bit more receptive to listening what others have to say. As it stands you're only embarrassing yourself, and worse, you're polluting this website with comments that clearly indicate you're not interested in an honest, thoughtful discussion, but only in blindly defending the position which you've already decided to hold.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#134

Post by ryan-allen » Thu, May 24, 2018, 1:08 AM UTC

FooHentai wrote: post #129

I'm currently going through a phase of setting up a games room, and acquiring a bunch of slightly older video game consoles and games to populate it. I've settled on PS2 and PS3, and Xbox/360 as the sweet spot for this. Partly due to price (they're not old enough to be worth much, but not new enough to be hawked at retail prices). But a factor just as big as price is how, from about mid-360 and PS3 onwards, gaming st…

For those interested in some cool indie games (on Steam), check out these for a start: Not A Hero, Mother Russia Bleeds, Death Road to Canada, Streets of Rogue, SPACEPLAN, Cluster Truck, Stick Fight by Landfall.

There are so many!

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#135

Post by fzzzy » Thu, May 24, 2018, 1:10 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #87

emodendroket wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was at least in some cases explicitly about rentals. That's why the difficulty was jacked up for US releases -- Nintendo was successful at getting game rentals legally banned in Japan, but not the US.

If that's what Nintendo were trying to do they did a piss-poor job at it. I beat Super Mario World over a single weekend's rental.

Nintendo hard described the NES era, not the SNES.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#136

Post by AdamM12 » Thu, May 24, 2018, 1:15 AM UTC

Might be because I just finished reading it the other night but kinda reminds me of "Brave New World."

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#137

Post by MrFoof » Thu, May 24, 2018, 1:40 AM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #107

emodendroket wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was at least in some cases explicitly about rentals. That's why the difficulty was jacked up for US releases -- Nintendo was successful at getting game rentals legally banned in Japan, but not the US.

Weird that the internet opinion is that the Japanese release is the harder one because Americans don't have the patience for super hard games. Examples include Final Fantasy (that simplified the item system) or the "Lost Levels" of Super Mario Brothers.

Many games, not just the original SMB2.

Rock Man 2 (Mega Man 2 in North America) had one only difficulty in the Japanese release. In North America, Mega Man 2 offered a "Difficult" option, which was the original Japanese difficulty. "Normal" was the default difficulty for the North America release toned things down quite a bit, as Capcom felt the game would be considered too difficult by the North American market.

There's well documented lists of games that were significantly easier for the North American release, with only a few harder for North America.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#138

Post by k4ch0w » Thu, May 24, 2018, 2:35 AM UTC

I know I usually don't see gifs on this website but this completely sums it up.

https://i.imgur.com/5lKYfh6.gifv

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#139

Post by emodendroket » Thu, May 24, 2018, 2:59 AM UTC

fzzzy wrote: post #135

bitwize wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's what Nintendo were trying to do they did a piss-poor job at it. I beat Super Mario World over a single weekend's rental.

Nintendo hard described the NES era, not the SNES.

It happened with sixteen-bit games too.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#140

Post by emodendroket » Thu, May 24, 2018, 3:01 AM UTC

annywhey wrote: post #127

jandrese wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird that the internet opinion is that the Japanese release is the harder one because Americans don't have the patience for super hard games. Examples include Final Fantasy (that simplified the item system) or the "Lost Levels" of Super Mario Brothers.

In fact, the difficulty tuning was usually harder within the first release of the game(regardless of location). So games that saw a US release first were hard there, while games released in Japan first were hard in that version. And since the majority of the NES library derives from Japan-first releases you get the "Japan version is harder" effect. There are some exceptions to the rule of course, but it usually holds…

Games adjusted to be harder for the US can have really punishing levels of difficulty though. Like the US Hard Corps release is excessively hard.