[SWCollect] Cookie cutter entertainment

[Dan Chisarick]

A friend of mine from high school is an author of 2 books and has a third one coming out in the next month or so.  (Interestingly, he also did some contract work for Interplay on a game that was later shelved.  Wasn't his fault :)  Like most people, is annoyed at "the template".      In movies, the good guy always wins, gets the girl, etc.  Games are either RPG, first person shooter, or real time strategy (and now they're throwing the "online game" into the mix of the above).  Music is the worst, as I can't imagine how many CD's I have where every song is an uninspired piece of garbage except the one song they blasted on the radio 3 months before the release of the CD.  And for the one good one... it gives new meaning to "Music Construction Set".     Every outlet has their alternative: MP3's for music, shareware for games and alternative cinema for movies.  Certainly the more hardcore enthusiasts of their respective channels can cite multiple titles of superior quality, but joe blow has no clue.  Windows rules with an iron fist (most Mac games are ports, and Loki, who ported games to Linux, filed chapter 11 recently).     With multimillion dollar budgets on every title, production teams that take two pages to list, are we pretty much doomed to Windows-based, 24-bit color, gazillion polygons per second Nth generation graphics engines and next generation AI?  Help Chris and Jim!  (After Jim finishes his "Cheech & Chong" marathon perhaps ..)   Dan   PS - More frustrating than "rare" and "mint"?  SUPER Rare!  XRare!  XXRare!  999^N*10+e942 RARE!  Ug.