I've watched every single episode of The Simpsons (including the one where Bart and Milhouse dies on every page), and I firmly believe that they should stop making the show.

Seasons 1 and 2 are great; a bit rocky at times as they're still finalizing what the characters are and do, but it's great vintage comedy. Seasons 3-14 are absolute GOLD. I don't think I've seen any comedy reach the heights The Simpsons did in that run. But when season 15 comes around, it sort of starts fizzling, and just... dies a few seasons later. The forced celebrity appearances, Homer turning into a vindictive moron rather than a clumsy, fat loving father; Bart and Lisa talking about things NO 8 and 10-year old has knowledge of... I dunno. The jokes feel much more forced, and by now instead of other shows saying "The Simpsons did it first", the tables have turned.

Let The Simpsons go in peace, Matt and James. Please.

It's really good to see that the U.S. is realizing this. In South Africa we're struggling with exactly the same problem, but the dialogue around this has started emerging the past 10 years. The biggest thing that emerges from this discussion is the idea of "white privilege", whereby even though you create equal (and sometimes black-advantaging) opportunities for all races, the fact that the average black person comes from a worse neighbourhood with a worse education and poorer parents automatically gives them a disadvantage over their average white counterpart. This means that they will have less on their CV, worse linguistic skills, less time to study and less knowledge of how to study effectively, etc, leading to black students underperforming on average. This has NOTHING to do with intellect, and everything to do with education.

Unfortunately, this isn't something that can be remedied in a year, or even a decade. At a MINIMUM it takes two generations to fix. You need one generation to make all the changes, iron out all the kinks, and one generation to start reaping the benefits. This is the responsibility of the government, and it starts at the primary (and even pre-school) level. It requires teachers who are competent LINGUISTICALLY, not just technically. And again, unfortunately, the South African government seems to be blissfully unaware of this, focusing 90% of their efforts on bringing racial equality to tertiary institutions instead of trying to reform the primary and secondary schools.

One way in which institutions have started trying to address this is by calculating an admission factor in placing new students. This factor is calculated mainly from academic marks, but these are modified by two other factors: the average mark of the student's class in school (giving bright students that had poor teachers a better shot), and the average income of the neighbourhood the student lives in (trying to account for poorer living conditions that might adversely affect marks).

The big problem I see with this game revolves around objective. It's going to be AMAZING to jump in a random direction and be the very first to explore planet SnapZu. However, after you've discovered your fifth planet and gotten the gist of how the planets are generated, you start to suffer from Backstage Disney Syndrome. The sense of wonder starts getting washed out, and the actual mechanics of the game are what remains.

The problem isn't that the mechanics are flawed; flight, combat and the FPS part all look solid. The problem is that all of these have been done better by a lot of people. So the only two remaining things that can be done to keep players' interest is customization and a quest system. The first seems to be very limited in NMS: it seems like very basic customization will be allowed (do you want a space station around this planet?), but very little in-depth modding will be allowed. And unless I'm missing it completely, there won't be much of a story, quests or major objectives that will provide that satisfaction high that draws the players back after 8 hours.

I LOVE space sims. Freelancer is one of my favourite games of all time, and I almost jumped out of my chair when I saw the original NMS announcement last year. I'm just worried that they're spending so much time on the technical details that the factors that should draw people back to the game get lost.