Blarghagh

That's German efficiency for you.

Not a spider. Possibly correct that it's not an insect, though - I don't know if it does fall under the arachnid order.

I have to admit I find the decision to not show stuff to backers to be questionable at best. Even when I google it I can't find any clear coverage of the E3 demo, as if backers aren't allowed to see it or anything related to it at all. I am aware Obsidian was concerned about spoilers, but any sort of preview for the backers would have been good. EDIT: I don't know if everyone has seen BAdler's response, so I wanted to post it again so everyone could see the reasoning behind the choice not to show it to backers. You may not agree with it, but it is what it is: "Since this has grown into a contentious point, I wanted to address it. We will not be showing a video of the demo. The footage has quite a few spoilers in it and it isn't ready to show to the backers yet. We want to show you guys something much more polished and we aim to do that sometime between now and our backer beta. Just so you guys are aware, it will likely be closer to the backer beta. When we show you things, we want it to be the real deal - no hacked together footage or faked content. I can remember seeing the gameplay video for Shadowrun Returns and being hyped up over all of the cool stuff I was seeing... only to be let down when a lot of that stuff never made it into the final game. I want to make sure that from this point on, if we are showing something to you guys it is representative of how it will be in the game. To do that means we have to focus a large amount of polish on a very specific area we want to show. This ends up hurting other areas in the game because they will tend to get less polish overall. We did have to do this for the E3 demo, but because we were showing off a few key areas, it is work we had to do anyways. Since we will show you something off of the critical path, it means we need to be much more careful over what get shown. When we get more information about showing gameplay you will hear about it from us first. No need to speculate. That said, I know that some of you are disappointed that we are showing gameplay to the press first. While you may not agree with our reasons for doing it, please know that we are showing to the press in this manner because we feel it is the best for the game. I will try to explain those reasons in more detail in the next update. I know we sound like a bit of a broken record, but we truly do appreciate the support you guys have given us - in helping to fund the game and in giving us feedback. Thanks for everything." - BAdler

I think if mainstream gamers don't read written media anymore, and mainstream gamers don't play text-based, system heavy RPGs anymore, that leaves the door completely wide open as to how effectively this will work for Obsidian. A game like this, crowdfunded and built outside the system, has never been at E3 before. You simply cannot know how effective it will be. This is all new territory in an industry that's rapidly changing. Obsidian was going to E3 anyway for Armored Warfare. It's absurd to say Obsidian should have kept PoE away from it when they had an essentially free oppertunity to take it along and show off their baby for all the journalists and fellow developers to see: "hey, look at this cool stuff we made without dealing with all the publisher nonsense you guys have to deal with". If anything, that goes a much longer way into changing the industry than a 4 million kickstarter that barely registers as a blip on the radar for giant publishers dealing with 300 million budgets. This is what I really have a problem with (well, other than the first post constantly replacing I and me with us and we). You keep saying Obsidian has changed or will change their vision of the game to appeal to the masses, to pander to the E3 crowd. There is absolutely no evidence of this. It's hipster nonsense about "selling out". The entire point of the Kickstarter for Obsidian was to make their artistic vision come to fruition and they have no publisher hanging over their head that can go "people at E3 disliked this part, you better change it". Obsidian is in full creative control. Like I said, Obsidian was going to E3 anyway, they took PoE with them because they wanted to show it off, not because they wanted to gauge journalist reactions. Obisidian knows who their audience is.

Disclaimer: Obsidian is not responsible for the projections and expectations of people who decided Obsidian should change the world when all they said was "give us money and we'll make you one cool game". As far PoE not appealing to anyone at E3, I think you were out of luck from the start. During the media coverage of the actual Kickstarter, a significant amount of industry journalists backed the project. They were just as excited about the game as you were - it appealed to them from the very beginning.

That's very strange. Seems like the problem is on your end, though. I've had similar problems because of antivirus or adobe plugins like adobe air. That's the next place I would look.

Have you tried using a different browser? Still not having any issues.

What game is that?

I haven't seen any issues. Did father's day stuff for most of the day, first the in-law and then my own.

Animation, sure. But for everything else with related to project management and their cycle with an eye to their timelines, eh, not sure he's an authority on that (that and him not being motivated by an agenda). Perhaps not, but as far as I remember, the representative said that they started making female avatars, but they stopped because it would take 8000 extra animations. That what it said in the OP article, anyway. The main problem was the animation, but that doesn't make sense. Male and female MoCap isn't all that different. Since the male MoCap was cleaned and optimized anyway, all they would really need to do is to alter their male rig for female character models and boom, all your MoCap works for female characters with some minor tweaking.

Are those wings on top of your helmet, or a giant moustache?

I made something for you. Feel free to use it. :D It's your new avatar. And if that's too much orange for you, here is a toned down version: Haha, thanks but no thanks.

Yeah, the problem is that Ubisoft's representatives were just complete idiots and they made this situation much worse for themselves. That former Ubisoft animator works for Naughty Dog, they have some of the highest animation standards outside of film, so I don't doubt his statement either. So Ubisoft pretty much brought this on themselves by being dishonest.

Judging from what people tell me (like I said before, I haven't played Assassins Creed so that's all I have to go on), I don't understand why it would bother people in this game since you play a specific character. It's like saying "Ripley is a woman in Aliens? Well, I want my own version of the movie where Ripley is a man!" even though it destroys the characterisation and theming. On the other hand, I clearly remember a few years ago when my girlfriend and another female friend both refused to play the original Fable because you could not play a female character. What's the point of "BE the hero!" if you can't even be your own gender? Power fantasies sorta fall flat if you can't identify with them. That's generally my rule of thumb now when it comes to whether a game should have both genders as an option. The Last Of Us, at it's thematic core, is the story of Joel and his unresolved fatherhood issues. It's the story of a character. Same for the latest Tomb Raider, it is Lara Croft's story (though I felt it was badly done). Again, the story of a specific character. However, your sandbox games, power fantasies where you're supposed to live an adventure through your customized character, etc. are simply failures by default if they don't allow both genders.

Like Elerond says, personal experience doesn't very often translate to statistical truth. Personally, I know more women gamers than men. Which bodes well for the future of gaming, since a large portion of those are game design students. On the other hand, some of them aren't, including my girlfriend (playing Diablo on her laptop next to me as we speak), my sister-in-law (who routinely wins money in DotA 2 tournaments) and my mother (who has been playing games since before I was born).

How about Uncharted? I think that series comes closer to being Tomb Raider with a male protagonist. I've never played Assassin's Creed, how important is the identity and personality of the lead? Assassin's Creed doesn't look like it is all about customization. How story and theme based is it? I think that is the key factor.

It may be hard not to get swept up into the renewed Oranje fever that swept up the country - everyone was expecting the worst but now the orange decorations have come out in full force. But I don't want to be a fair weather fan, so I'm going to continue to expect they'll choke horribly and start ninja kicking people again in desperation, just like last time.

Don't worry, I haven't been wrong so far:

Huh, I think Spain lost morale or something. They started out so well. Oranje is playing much better than I thought they would.

We're getting Mr Sinister?

I'm not sure if the rules of evolution apply in a world with gods.

You mean catnip?

Not really. Maybe this years selection is more sportsmanlike than the incarnation of Oranje in the last European Championship, but I'm not holding my breath. Still haven't decided whether or not I'm actually going to watch it.

Sounds like the referees are working hard to lobby for video support.