Calax

Applied to two more jobs. One is through the school and and would net me a class B drivers license (bigger vehicles and commercial driving), although I'm not sure I can get it because right now I'm in a sort of academic limbo with them. The other is to be a counter monkey at an adult store. Hey, I take what I can get so I can quit my current job right quick.

Squeenix, Capcom, Konami, etc. I wish Konami would get off their asses and do another Suikoden. This is Konami... they're scared of earning money (Zone of the Enders for example). Honestly, I think over the next 6ish years the industry is gonna have to shuffle around their business model. A publisher recently gave an editorial on kotaku where he made the point that the reason EA and other companies can take chances on things like Dishonored, Assassins Creed and Mirrors Edge, is because they have a dev studio or two that are pumping out things like Call of Duty. However, the big thing for them is that they're gonna have to scale back the massive budgets that are around, and get tighter controls on their publishers so that the companies can't keep putting things off for more money (like Eternal Darkness 2s development being almost entirely funded by money from Xmen Destiny). At the same time they also need to get more realistic about their schedules. I know one year is a phenomenally short dev cycle, but it's starting to feel like the devs are trying to sell games with unrealistic schedules and by promising the world, when they know they can't provide. That sort of culture needs to be shot and abandoned at the side of the road because all it's doing is creating tension and incomplete products. PR is a big deal too. Companies seem to be attempting to change their business models, but are going about in such a way that they come off like complete ****. The ME3 ending and "Day 1 DLC" is a perfect example, with the ending having been concocted entirely separate from the rest of the story and ignoring the core promises of the franchise. The DLC debacle was entirely avoidable if they'd just said "have it as our gift". Yes, it would have cost a little money in the short term, but would have also built up a better feeling among the fans, and the DLC seems pretty necessary to the plot overall. >.> I need to stop throwing out these business models.

It's mcdonalds. Everyone there is some form of mentally deranged just to deal with all the BS that we're put through. I'm just itching to be done with it and move on. Which means that I have to get the Wells Fargo job, or a school job that requires a CDL to act as a campus driver for them. Both are 10 or up, although I think I'd prefer Wells because it means that I have better transferrable skills and can transfer within the company where i choose.

Eh, either way, I'm hunting for another job so I can say "So long suckas!" within a month.

Great Brain Robbery ftw.

Expansion on events at work: I got accused of sexual harassment! Why? I can kinda see how it could have happened (I tend to be a bit racy at work), but the way they came down on me, and the language that was used was so shaky I think it's from an ex-employee who quit because one of the now ex-maintenance guys thought that they were an item. To the point he was asking for oral pre-shift from her. She complained, and tried to back it off, but ultimately nothing happened, so she quit. I found out today that this girl was talking to a cop about the guy and the harassment in general, which leads me to assume that the cop is investigating, and went to my bosses, who assumed it was me because at one point he'd asked me to tone it down, and some of the younger girls think I'm a "creep". Also because I got pissed at one particular crew member because she'd slack off any way she could (spending 10 minutes futzing about with 2 sleeves of cups, and just finding excuses to sit in back and talk while "working")

Due to events at work, I'm feeling a bit like Boo Radley.

No love for Clancy Brown?

As Orogun mentions Its not odd - as I understand it Elizabeth can only open alternate worlds if she existed - however briefly - in two different realities at the same time. Other reality hoppers never get the ability to manipulate the tears and I think this is the reason. Realistically, though, there should be an infinite number of Elizabeths who exist but never have the power to open tears because their Booker never tried to stop the deal. Elizabeth indicates that she once thought she was calling into being worlds she wants to have happen (which is part of why she breaks down at one point). More likely her ability allows her to pick the timelines that she wants; ie one in which a deal was made and has the guns. They don't ever really "know" the deal is on - even when Booker takes the deal he doesn't really know if Fitzroy will renege on it or not. I'm not sure the story actually plays out as if they're in the PRIME universe. If they were in the prime universe the Vox would never have their weapons so it actually couldn't play out the way the game does. What they do get is a succession of worlds that gives them the outcomes they sought - even if ultimately I think they might not have wanted those outcomes if they realized what they were asking for. I think they stop caring because they realize by the time things get rolling good that they're not going to be able to get what they want by going back to the original universe. By the time they get the gunmaker, there's no way for them to actually get the guns (the Vox have them IIRC). Then there would be no reason for the deal to have started in the first place. And the universe where the Vox are already rising, Bookers been dead a while, so the deal wouldn't have been started.The deal only works in the first universe, beyond that there are so many holes in the idea that it's stopped making sense that your characters would act this way. I mean if they'd avoided all the plane hopping nonsense or just had then nip into another universe, assemble a pile of guns, and then gate back to the first one, it'd have felt better. As it is I just feel like the characters are idiots.

It also seemed like a shortcut to take the city from "intact peaceful (except for Bookers mucking about) city" to "revolutionary hellscape" because they wanted to have the stupid plot cul-de-sac instead of actually having us see the revolution kick off.

You know whats odd to me though? Anna has always lost her finger... but you're swapping between alternate timelines like crazy. I feel like the Anna you see jump through the portal shouldn't have been the Anna you spend the game with. ANd another point, How is it that Anna and Booker keep thinking that their deal with the Vox is still on, when they've dimension hopped twice? Finally, and I realize this is more personal, I can't help but feel that the dimension hopping takes wayy to much from the story. You're in one dimension and everything is fine, and then you hop three dimensions (where there's an alternate Booker and Anna), and yet the story still plays out like you're back in the "prime" universe. It makes that entire bit of the story just feel... wrong.

Yeah, Optimizing would just be making sure everything works on newer systems, and fits in well with Steam. And honestly? It would, mainly because of the Duke Nukem debacle. It's a similar situation, although they'd be starting from scratch rather than building on the work of years of constantly changing design goals. I mean, the last game they made that had any form of maturity to it was in 2008, with a Brothers in Arms game. Ever sense then it's been rather immature and sophmoric games that are either great quality or really really really bad.

I don't think I even opened mine. ... Now you've got me wondering where I put my Obs shirt (that's now to small for me to wear)

True, I think if THQ hadn't been in such financial woes, Relic would have had another crack at it. I remember that Relic was very happy when THQ managed to get the rights to the game from Vivendi, it's just that they were focused on both COH and Warhammer at the time and didn't have the money/people to build another game. Crimson: No, there's no new homeworld as Gearbox just got the IP. However, Gearbox is going to try to monitarize it better by optimizing the first two games for digital distribution and putting them on sale. I suspect part of the reason they're doing that is to prove to the suits that the series still has potential as a profit site, so if it does well on Steam/Origin/GoG/whatever they'll get green lit to explore a Homeworld 3.

True, but then it'd be more relevant if the game was in development. Right now we're just discussing how we think that Gearbox isn't gonna be a great option for this.

There's a better chance of them tossing out something good (Stardock or Paradox) simply because of their work within the Genre. And honestly, I could see paradox making Homeworld into more of a theatre thing, and it working out really well

That's my point. They've never done a RTS before. Why dismiss them so easily when we don't know their skills yet? All great RTS designers started with their first game. Give them a chance. Yeah, but for the most part people don't start with a franchise that's got a cult following and a very specific aesthetic and scope. Gearbox hasn't done anything that'll make me think that they can catch the feeling of Homeworld and get it down enough to produce a proper sequel to the first two. Instead we'd probably get a Halo Wars level game.

Mkreku, you're a game reviewer, you should be able to look through their catalogue of games and realize that they don't make RTS's At all. Instead they make shooters that have been working to become more and more quirky in recent years, or absolute garbage. They have Duke Nukem, Borderlands, and Brothers in Arms as their only real games of the past 10 years. So expect the next Homeworld to be "marching through ship corridors shooting at aliens while outside the skybox shows a massive Bentusii ship slowly dying" rather than "command a fleet to save/return to home" Unless they decide to hand it to another company, which is unlikely overall. Only minorly good thing that could come out of this would be Homeworld turning up on Steam.

I said at work that dany is contractually obligated to have her breasts out at least once an episode.

I love how photoshopped oby's images are.

I have never seen so much pretentious hogwash written about a computer game (games journalists = contradiction in terms) as I have about Bioshock Infinite. According to the online hivemind it was like John Paul Satre meets The Seven Samurai. I watched a live feed and it looks like a very average steampunk-ish FPS. WTF? Because most games set the bar fairly low for that sort of thing. As I said in my long points about it, the game isn't really about the "philosophy" of everything. It's about the two primary characters with a bunch of imagery thrown in for imagery's sake. The themes and imagery are AMAZING, but ignored, and just having those puts it a step above most of it's competitors in that department.

Psss, Guess What? That question isn't just being asked by the "libertards" in Scandinavia and London. It was the subject of one of Jon Stewarts monologues on thursday. Almost the exact same idea, although he did it mainly while questioning the legislators on why any regulation on the 2nd amendment is "off the table" but they seriously widened all political branches power in because of terrorism. With 40 years of terrorism deaths in the us barely equaling 1/10th of gun related deaths in a 30 year period.

Well, I made it past the first screen for Wells Fargo apparently. They've got me automated in the system for a phone interview, but I have to have them re-set the times because I'm working the day that they gave me times to pick when they'd call.

There was my entire "Board question" thread.

Twas CNN. They had that going for an hour or two before an FBI "Contact" of one of their journalists said (basically) "KNOCK IT OFF!" From what I could tell in the clips shown by the Daily Show, it was literally one of their guys on a cell phone texting with his "contacts" and reading it aloud on air without even checking the validity of this stuff.