Open Source the Answer?

Let's face it, costs are running too high for the videogame industry. One way a company could try to reduce costs of producing a game is to base it off another game engine. Doom 3, Source (the engine for Half-Life 2) are two huge engines in which are being based around for other retail games, as well as a slew of mods. The problem, none of these engines are truely open source, companies have to pay to use them.
This is where Nintendo comes in. If there is one thing that Nintendo has a great advantage in, it's that they have an excellent first party line up. Microsoft relies on second parties to produce their games, and the same thing happens for Sony.
So here is something that Nintendo could do: Make their games open source. They already make plenty of games themselves, so why not share the love? I'm sure that one company or another would like to base a game off of the Twilight Princess engine. The only stipulation would be that the game would be a Nintendo-console exclusive.
The problem with this isn't anything to do with Sony or Microsoft, but with Nintendo. Nintendo has been a very secretive, often too afraid for their own good.
Also a problem is the types of games Nintendo goes into. While Smash Bros. could be a decent engine for fighting games, they don't have a fast racer (at least haven't done one since F-Zero X) or a first person shooter. If anything, they would have to go to second parties, making open sourcing a bit difficult (more parties in which one has to deal with obviously would make any process more difficult).
But as a first party, they would have more to gain from open sourcing games in this way. Whereas other companies would like to have the extra money from leasing out engines, Nintendo would inherently get such dollars though the regular fees for making games on their systems. Not only that, it would put more exclusive third party games on their system and fewer on Sony's or Microsoft's.
But if their current known secret (Revolution controller) is any indication, I doubt Nintendo would do such a thing.

Too...Much...Bad...Stuff...

Well, playing off a Daily Show segment, we are now at Catagory 5 of Hurricane News Coverage.
Everyone, even the local news casts, had ONLY Hurricane Catrina. There wasn't anything even on the news tickers.
I do understand that this is a major hurricane and that far too many people are and will be effected, but aren't there other things that we should know about. How about Iraq, where their constitution is having problems? What about the rest of the nation, something has to be going on that isn't related to hurricanes.
News channels should at least take a break every hour for general news, instead of showing a guy fending off the wind and rain. Or at least give that ticker a good reason to exist.

Are Children Being Left Behind?

I have a mom who is a teacher. There is much that is either misunderstood or just myths about what a teacher does, can do, and their effect on students.
One thing that falls in a similar catagory is "No Child Left Behind." Just as the school year is starting, schools are having to release a watch list, a list in which each school has failed in at least one catagory of testing.
Not even talking about how much lack of control a teacher has over a student's success, the school has to continually improve in these scores year after year.
The trouble starts when these schools can't meet those standards, no matter how high they get. Going off the Washington State's Office of Superintendant of Public Instruction's press release on which schools got on the watch list, here is the following penalties:

Step 1: Schools must inform parents that their school has made this list and give the opprotunity to transfer students to a school not on the watch list; transportation must be provided.

Step 2: In addition to the penalties in Step 1, a school must give low income students the opprotunity free tutoring services.

Step 3: A school district must take direct action to improve the school's education. This can include such things as ciriculum and instruction changes.

Step 4: A school district must plan for "alternative governance"

Now, Steps 3 and 4 can go about hiring and firing teachers or other staff, something in which teacher unions obviously don't like. It also isn't that good of a thing, since there is a teacher shortage, often due to the low income a teacher gets.
But it is Steps 1 and 2 that has me worried. Both include thing in which add to financial problems that most schools already face. Tutors, while would be a good thing to have, are often very expensive. Transportation also can easily be an expensive endevor, especially with today's gas prices. This is all alongside possible losing all Title 1 funding if a school fails.

But it is Step 1 that is the crux of NCLB. Supply-side economists try to come up with free market formulas in non-market circles. This is one of them. The idea is simple, have parents choose which school they go to, have the tests inform them which are doing the best, and cut out schools that fail those tests too much.
The problem with this idea are many fold. First, funding is something schools already lack, especially at the elementary level. Forcing schools to fund tutors or transportation will take money away from other things that would directly help teachers teach and students learn (well, at least all students).
But by also giving parents not only information on which school is doing the best and forcing all students into the school uncaring of space, we hit a class size problem. People always want smaller class sizes, but if one or two schools are doing much better off then all the others, class sizes will be at unmanagable purportions.
I already had to go through just one year of a over-crowded school. I would not like to go through that again.
This isn't even mentioning (until now) that the funding in which Bush promised isn't there, although he doesn't legally have to meet it.

No Child Left Behind has too many problems in which the average parent just doesn't see, and often doesn't even care to look at. They see it for what the title says, but don't realize it's effects are dramatic enough to cause irrepairable harm.

Advertising in Games: Wrong Models?

Advertising has been something integral to the entertainment industry for ages. Radio at first didn't have advertising, but then ads were put in and since hasn't turned back (although there is the exception of satilite radio such as XM). Television hasn't gone a day without ads.
Videogames thus far had trouble implementing ads into games. Some games have tried to put ads into games with little success. I believe it was the latest SWAT game that had Sci-fi's Battlestar Galactica posters put into the game, but players found it ackward and out of place.
When it comes to in-game advertising, Tony Hawk has been one of the more successful. Their ads don't look out of place, but it still is appearent.
The problem is that those ads are static, never changing. Television, radio, and movies get new ads from companies whenever they want to advertise either a new product, a sale or price reduction, or just advertising their company or product as a whole. Only the last can be done in-game.
One solution is something I believe game companies are afraid to do, take a break. Recent consoles and computers have been trying to reduce or eliminate loading times, which would be perfect to put such ads.
However, I wouldn't mind taking a ten or twenty second break between levels to view an ad, as long as I know that it would go toward me not paying either a fee (in the case of online games) or to play a reduced or free game. With episodic formats being explored, I would love just to buy the basic pack for instalation (with the "pilot" episode of course), then get subsequent episodes for free. Then again, I don't mind watching ads on Yahoo's music videos simply because I know it then makes the service free.
But then again, ads on television has been getting into trouble themselves. With more and more people getting Tivos, people have been taking the option to skip any ads that they can. Because of this, televison broadcasters have tried other means of getting ads in, often intruding on the show in which they are broadcasting (FX I have found to be the worst, being they add sound to those ads while the show is playing). Seeing this, such breaks for advertising does seem like an unpopular idea.
The reason I point this out is that the game industry needs something to reduce the costs of development and actual game prices. With Microsoft's recent announcement of no increased prices for next-gen games (see previous post: http://www.livejournal.com/users/political_gamer/18657.html?mode=reply), it seems like we have missed the bullet on gaming prices for now. But I can't help but worry that the future still shows games with far too high prices and developers that need exceedingly high budgets.

First Post Here

I already had this profile for another purpose, but decided to start using this as a mirror for my Livejournal blog. While I will be mirroring posts from now on, I won't be retroactive. As such, you can view any previous posts on Livejournal at http://www.livejournal.com/users/political_gamer/.