Tigranes

Got to wait until official confirmation, of course. But god, if true, we are steadily seeing a picture of a completely raped DA. Think about it. You have "every talent/spell is executed immediately", more gory death animations and the like, and the removal of the top down view - what you get is, basically, the game saying you want to control one character, you want to go around doing cool stuff on the battlefield, while the AI controlled party brings everything else down. It lets you be COOL and be IN THE ACTION, sure, but good bye to tactical party combat. Obviously I'll turn around and say good show if it turns out not to be true, but it's not encouraging that every tidbit of info so far comes together very cohesively to paint a general picture of where they're going - they won't be markeitng 'spiritual successor of BG2' on this one. And I won't be getting it. edit: Oh, there are positives too in that link, though, awesome! Less warrior-ish rogues, and companion interjection/involvement in some dialogues.

I guess you'd know all about this, Wals. Yeah, funding's the bit I think is the big big problem, and with PhD you're competing with all the bloody fourty year olds with experience and credibility trying to do theirs - uh, no offence. At least I'm NZ, so part of the commonwealth. Where're you doing yours and how excruciating was getting funding? Or that's too much personal detail?

OK. Background; The Wonder Girls were a massive girl pop group in Korea that actually made the jump to the US to try and break the market there. Asian music is virtually unknown - outside of some Japanese music that gets traction through anime now. The thing is, these guys have the best chance that anyone's had in a long while - if this gets off the ground. We are all going to hate this music, because it's unashamedly aimed at the pre-teen crowd - I think just below the Justin Bieber / Miley Cyrus audience. Maybe High School Musical crowd. Of course, hard for me or you to tell if it would do well there, kids are just insane at that age. The kind of stuff I thought it'd be interesting for us to look at is, how natural/awkward it felt to you guys - after all it's a bunch of Koreans trying to do a retro-American English pop music video for Americans. I'm getting feedback that the singing, at least, doesn't feel weird/Asian. Ironically, that's what the Koreans themselves are the most worried about - maybe it reflects their fetishstic obsession with learning English. I despise this kind of music (there's more... Girls' Generation, Tiara, Shiny, 2NE1 (twenty-one), and other barf names like you wouldn't believe), but this is really one of the 'smartest' and best prepared pushes to get Asian popular music on the US market for some time, so I'm watching to see if it opens any doors. So I wonder if it'll get far? edit: Song is simultaneously released in Korean, Chinese and English. Korean pop/dance is ridiculously popular in East & Southeast Asia already.

OK guys, if you have 5 minutes, watch this, then tell me what you think. I'll get some nice feedback, but more importantly, you'll get your share of 'I can't believe it's real' weirdness that is Korean pop music trying to break into the US Scene. Anyway, I had a good reason for posting this as well - I wanted to get a feel for how you guys see this video. What would your reaction be if you saw this on MTV in the US (which you will)? Obviously you're not the target audience and you won't like the music, but things like, how naturalised do they seem? Or just awkward? Is it their pronounciation? The lyrics? Something else? Do you see this kind of stuff gaining a foothold? It's quite interesting from a research POV... (P.S. This is not indicative of my personal tastes in music )

I am very serious, intent is to land for the 2011 year, as my masters is nearing the finish line. I'll apply to the 3 listed above, and a few others - I'm checking out King's right now. I'm not a journo / TV producer kind of media person, more a research/analysis deal, but yes, I want to work as consultant / analyst / etc., not bloody go into professorship straight off the bat. London would probably be the best, though a professor here who worked in the UK (De Montfort) mentioned a few other places - East Anglia, Sussex, Reading. None are too far away, from my memory? There's Leeds but that's bloody miles out. My only requirements in living environments are that (1) I can afford it, (2) I can play some football, (3) there bloody well better be some real Indian food to be had. If I can go watch the Arsenal all the better.

Media studies. Academically I'm pretty sure I have a good shot at admission to just about anywhere that teaches it, but the big stickler is funding - I'm not rich and my family isn't either. I passed on a MA at NYU because I couldn't afford it and the bastards offer basically nothing to internationals. I'm going to apply to about a dozen places and see if anybody will give me enough to eke out a living. Due to the nature of the degree, and I've been in NZ forever, I wouldn't mind London or NY or some other horrendously noisy metropolis, if not for the cost. I'm still checking unis out so no doubt a lot more names will float up in the future. Of course, I'm using the bloody Guardian rankings to go by...

Everyone gets beat up on there - Volo gets to be a lot angrier, too, so he knows what the game is. Anyway, looks like all is back to normal?

I'm seriously considering the UK for my PhD - I'm still scoping things out because I don't know much about UK unis, but what are your impressions about the following unis, and more relevantly, how it is to live around there? -> Westminster -> Warwick -> LSE I really only know Oxbridge, to my shame, so I'm doing a lot of research, but the top 2 are said to be great for my field.

This can only lead to argy bargies, so let's move on. If you want to comment about NWCon do so, if not...

I'll have a listen then comment. Just need to wait 36 years for my internet to load youtube. edit: Seems to confirm a lot of things i've read elsewhere and suspected. Just a thought though - and bear with me, because this is not gonna come out the way I mean it: I think a lot of times when we have industry people coming in and talking about the future like this, they end up giving fairly abstracted theories that are derived from a mix of their personal philosophies/grievances/etc, specific situations they're in or they've seen, and such. I'm not saying they're blindsided or raging or anything like that, but my point is when they tell me, essentially, things are ****ed up right now and they're bound to change soon, I can't really commit to that. Rather, my suspicions are - things are screwed up right now, but there's a good chance they'll just chug along like that for a good while longer. A few things will change - we might see some changes in the DRM landscape or the various pricing models, or even the way the next-gen hardware are designed & the infrastructure around them, but maybe not, say, the way publisher-developer relationships work, the way they fund certain games and certain styles, the bloated way the marketing is going, the employee treatment. I think in particular, the types of games that get funded, hyped, reviewed well and sell well, the blockbuster process, is very very set in stone at the moment and may not change for decades. The technological fetishism may slow down significantly (Wii isn't really proof, but a precursor) as the core demographics gradually shift out of the computer-literate, but with shifts to more persistent models of production & revenue pumping the investment of people and $ required may not downgrade overmuch. Make no mistake, I recognise that there are some major changes happening to the landscape of the products available, we're getting some good infrastructure set up for handhelds, download games, DLCs, etc., and it changes things. But... well, yeah, the whole "is the industry dying / going for a massive fundamental rehaul" bit is probably a little bit of sensationalism on the part of the video makers. I do think one of the areas in which gaming could change that is very hard to predict is its current embracement of social media. Gaming's already built up its own, very vibrant, very complex, social infrastructure for those who wanted to talk about their games, mod games, play together, etc. That's not the type of change you're getting here. In what way is gaming going to accommodate the social media stuff it's sticking on to itself?

Soooo, make-your-own softcore porn. Moving on.

It's not as good as his original ones, though. I think its part of a money-grubbing DLC pack.

Since nobody has anything constructive left to add, thread closed. Constructive discussion needs both sides to come out of the trenches and play the game. If you see the other side not come out to play, why bother? If you think someone is being excessively provocative, insulting or ruining the debate, use Ignore or PM the mods, don't go vigilante.

BG Trilogy Run continues. The party has now made it to Chapter 6, and fast nearing the end of Shadows of Amn - still amazingly fun. SCS's suped up, contingency-loaded mages also make life really difficult: even at 2millXP (~lv15), high level enemy mages are a walking disaster - often it's impossible to take down their defences within the first few turns, and they have free license to wreak havoc. I think it was a good decision to go with a more 'clerical' party - Keldorn's Inquisitor abilities and Jaheira/Anomen spells really help the party survive until it can lay the smackdown. The mindflayers were also problematic, I think SCS gave them an innate invisiblity ability - I don't know if that's kosher in PnP or not but it makes it even harder to get them down before Devour Brain gets my guys down. I ended up resorting to judicious uses of the Slayer. Currently the party is marvelling at the Monty Haul of crafted items you get after your underdark trip, getting ready to do Kangaxx and the Twisted Rune - the mages there will be absolutely brutal.

I need to watch the interview for myself, but yeah, the impact this 10-year flashback system has on the game will likely make or break DA2 for the likes of me and monte carlo. (No, not everyone, since millions of people inexplicably love what the ME series has done.) But I think its a legitimate criticism - ME series did what it did very well, apparently, while DAO did something different well enough to sell a lot of copies. From the consumer point of view there's no good reason to turn DA2 into ME... if they do. The more I think about it the hub system is the most likely solution to the challenges posed by a 10 year narrative, each hub in a different place and time and the travel between mediated through flashback narration. The other solution, and much more befitting the spirit of DAO / BG / etc, would have been a FF6 solution, where you have the entire gameworld open to you with stuff to do at a certain time, then after a central plot event, you are in the same gameworld but several years later. It wouldn't allow them to move back and forth as they please across those 10 years, but that would maximise the 10-year timeframe's potential to give you great C&C, keep the open world, etc. However, that would require the world to be even larger than DAO's, and I doubt DA2 will be larger in landmass - maybe similar or even a bit shorter. It would also require them to do storytelling in a more 'traditional' manner (i.e. the world lives, according to the rules of the video game, and there happens to be a central plot going on), whereas they seem to be going for a more controlled, interactive novel manner (i.e. the gameworld only exists for and as far as the central plot, which manipulates the gameworld for its purposes). Again, I have yet to watch the interview, but if they're going down the ME route with this then it basically kills half of DA. I didn't buy ME, why try to shove it down my throat with anothe rproduct?

Fair enough guys - I didn't think you'd be doing that all game. It was more of a comment on how overloaded it was with MARINE BADASS feel. The environments sure look good, though, and interface well designed as usual. I'm still mulling it about - I actually really love competitive online play, I'm no stranger to build orders and frenetic micro and such, either. I just don't know if I'll like SC itself, the core gameplay - I wasn't impressed by SC1 or WC3.

There's no watermark function, like in Word?

Just watched the first mission being played on youtube... what the hell? I mean, I'm sure I've forgotten lots, but in my head Starcraft was about 3 weird races blasting each other in space, first and foremost. Here you're on Earth (or some Earthanoid planet) and it's basically Call of Duty. Cheesy viva la resistance, Amerikan Badasses! for the entirety of... the miniscule ~5 minute mission. I always hated the missions in RTSes where you get about 5 puny units and one hero, because it's basically a tactical RPG but ten times less tactical and more boring. So that might be it... I assume the first mission was simple like that to be a tutorial.

That's... not what 'besmirched' means, Volo.

Don't be mean to Orogun. Sure, more people do. That doesn't mean its the grand immutable truth that you need to sermonise over and over and over again as if you were Missionary Stereotype #A. I mean, I know you can't stop yourself, but there are people out there who don't fall into that category, yeah?

100+ employees for something like 2.5 teams (or is it 3 / 3.5 now?), Volo. R00FLES! I think the most likely scenario is AP *has* sold 700k in the first month, and for SEGA that was not good enough.

You mean like that chick in NWN who is totally memorable and loveable? Hey, companies might think it makes business sense on a grand scale, but don't try and pass it off as The Truth. Anyway, where's this coming from? Obviously it's a pity they had to turn Flemeth into a clown with a nude fetish, but I'm more concerned about general design. After all DAO had the naked dryad (though that made more sense) - and the video game media went slobber slobber at how nekkid she was (bloody hell). Are we going to get wear-nothing elves, now? If not I'm not worried.

I don't know the stats for this ruleset, but I'd imagine you'd want it to be strong enough that the players would want to look for creative and extraordinary solutions, and not so strong that they'd simply hightail it without thought. Perhaps the information about the anaurocj you just gave us, plus perhaps a persosnal quirk of this one that can be used to their advantage, can be nestled somewhere for them to find. Or perhaps it's too complicating.

Christ, that's not that bad, is it? I understand the no-sequel diktat but 700k in one month isn't a catastrophe, it'll easily pass a million soon enough. I guess they were looking for it to pull in top notch RPG sales - if they did they were probably expecting double that. That said, Iron Man 2? I hate how we all sucker into brand purchases

Oh, I agree with plenty of your points, its just hard when you pair it with several dead horses, drive it up a dry canal and beat it with a vuvuzela. ()