alanschu

I don't entirely understand his concerns. He mentions that the atmosphere and whatnot is very vital to the game (I haven't played the Dead Space games), yet these things undermine that. Isn't this a case of "don't buy them then?" (If you're against Day One DLC, I encourage you to not buy them anyways) Looking at his comments, he seems to feel that the option of these easier modes will make the game easier and reduce the tensions. Isn't this a bit disrespectful to the gaming population? I have no problems if someone DOES find the game too scary (or whatever) but otherwise enjoys it paying for stuff. It's his money (seems like a waste of money to me, but I rarely buy DLC at all) and if that makes him enjoy the game more, should we care?

I'm guessing you like her as PM.

Which makes the difference between ultimate victory and embarrassing defeat.

If you wish to argue that the government process is undermined due to things like Lobby groups and whatnot, and that the US is truly a financial oligarchy based on the influence money has on US politics that's a different matter altogether and not relevant to the democracy vs republic discussion. Although some of the authors that put forth the oligarchical criticism actually state that both oligarchy and democracy operate within the US system. The government system and electoral process of the United States is a democracy. And a republic. Which is what the smug bastards always try to make a distinction about when they state that the US isn't a democracy, it's a republic! If you don't feel the US is a democracy, it's place as a republic is irrelevant to that. You can have an oligarchical republic or a democratic republic. Both are republics, or "representative republics" if you will.

Haha I hadn't heard that, but I could see it.

The best thing about Dead Rising 2 is the combination. It's a game that is fun because you realize you can attach chainsaws to a kayak paddle, or a whole host of absolutely bizarre and hilarious combinations.

I may have it backwards then... although when I see "democratic republic" I always think of "Communist" states. There's no shortage of governments that are decidedly NOT democratic that call themselves so simply because it's a term that people consider "ideal." It's not like we should expect a political entity call themselves "The Oppressive Inhuman Police State of Absolute Rule" or anything. What countries may call themselves is often not very useful.

Eh, I'm not familiar with that term. Could be a cultural language thing, but a google search in my neck of the woods returns "Democratic Republic" when I search for "Republican Democracy."

There are few signs as tell tale that someone is brainwashed or uninformed than someone using that term. Just to be clear, the US is a democratic republic. Simply stating that the United States is a representative republic is ambiguous, since a country can be a representative republic but not hold any sort of election for the representatives. Democracy is straight up defined as: A country does not need to be a direct democracy in order to be classified as a democracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_types_of_democracy#Types_of_democracy The US is both a democracy and a republic. The terms are not mutually exclusive.

Everything Gabe said just reinforces my sentiments that everything heavily controlled and centralised - Consoles, Corporations and the European Union - suck and have no future. The future are Internet economies, personal 3D Printers and TF2 hats! Gabe said so therefor I will follow! I was actually hoping for some level of actual synopsis, but whatever.

I don't have an hour at the moment. Is Gabe saying he's going to do something like Paradox did with Gamers Gate?

Sorry, I disagree with the idea that there's both micro and macro perspectives of tyranny. If you get one person that is all "boo I hate our government," that is not a reflection of the government being tyrannical. Tyranny requires some level of large scale consensus. Some guy that goes "I can't murder people without the government getting pissy! What a tyrannical hell hole I live in" is a poor indicator as to whether or not the government is believed to be tyrannical. Social contracts exist for a reason. The word becomes meaningless if someone wants to thump their chest and go "we live in a tyrannical police state" because they're an anarchist and the overwhelming amount of people that live in said state completely disagree with him. It's straight up fear mongering because these people realize that it's the places like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that were police states, and if they can convince people that we're just like those states, then they can help gain momentum for their movement.

Would this mean that any level of social contract indicates a police state? Note that tyranny requires oppression, and oppression is the exercise of power in a cruel and unjust manner. As such, for something to be tyrannical the people must consider it tyrannical. Do citizens of any democracy feel that requiring driving licenses is an example of oppressive behaviour by the government, defined as an exercise of the government's power in a cruel, and unjust manner?

Beat Mike Tyson this time!

More seriously... I think it's an interesting idea, but poses some challenges with infrastructure and delivery. There's undoubtedly the optics that would have some people upset. If a company were to try some sort of "buy them all, get a deal" type, I think there'd be some heat there too. That is, have the sum of all the parts be $70, but if you just buy "the game" it costs $60. I don't understand the people that are pissed at models like this in SWTOR and other F2P models, since it exists everywhere else in the world. Even if it was perfectly piecemeal, the integration of it all to make sure it's fair and so forth would be very challenging I think, and introduce some extra cost overhead. In an ideal world, I do think it'd be interesting to see how it plays out. It will provide some ammo for more flamebait crap (not that a dev should care), because even if romances sell 5000:1 over some "core" feature, someone's gonna get super defensive and fire off those cognitive dissonance defense mechanisms to assure themselves that what they like is the bestest, and what what other people like is wrong and lame. Despite the fact they got precisely what they paid for!

Oh, you were thinking Tali? We probably could have sold that for $1000+

Try not to preface an opinion with the term fact. Handguns get their share of ire too. If you're curious why they are talking about the semi-automatic, large magazine rifles, it's probably because they have the unfortunate distinction of being used in the mass shootings recently.

Fair enough. I'll stop.

And a $25 option to hide it after?

In other words, you *are* expecting the PC to be treated differently (based on its status as a superior platform).

Like it or not, the people that post here are the ones in that "small segment of gaming." PC gaming may have the largest revenue in total, but it's so diverse. Does anyone here feel that the PC gaming industry is a better place because some F2P Facebook game can rack up huge amounts of money? Unless World of Warcraft is a "gateway drug" of a game that has people wanting to buy other AAA PC titles, do you or I really care that it helps WoW make absurd amounts of money and its contribution to PC gaming? There's a huge influx of PC gaming rigs being bought in Asia, which certainly does help the install base. But what types of games are they buying? When dealing with the larger profile titles, consoles have historically been the more successful market. PC gaming has historically an advantage in that it tends to be consistent year to year, whereas consoles have peaks that come and go with the generational changes. Maybe that changes, but it's a bit silly to effectively just declare "Software developers are stupid in that they are neglecting the platform that would ultimately make them more money than the consoles." It's easy to use logic and conclude that it must be the case (look at the PC install base!), but empirically it's not been the case. Maybe that's changing now, but we won't know for some time. Things like Kickstarters/crowdfunding certainly help appeal to us in that smaller niche, and the transformation to digital is a HUGE benefit for PC gaming's resurgence, but we'll see when the next waves come in where the biggest titles end up. As a PC gamer, I do agree that PC gaming is certainly misrepresented as being a market that is not viable. That's not true at all. But the big money in PC gaming is not really in the types of games that a forum like this tends to want. The one problem that big publishers have is that they have such a dependency on sales metrics (although I can certainly understand why) that there is always a degree of latency and over dependence on sequels and imitation. If PC AAA gaming is now becoming the principal market for AAA games, they're going to be inherently cautious to jumping in too aggressively simply because of the risks and opportunity costs involved. Unsurprisingly, however, someone (like Obsidian or Paradox) slides in since any "neglect" currently in the PC gaming space means opportunity since it's not like the market isn't there. I'm betting Obsidian ran into just this. They likely had a business model that would be profitable, but the opportunity cost of it wasn't ideal for a big publisher. Which sucks, but fortunately other avenues are now coming to light.

I don't mind MMOs, but I think I have just outgrown them. I played a lot of WoW, and even though I enjoyed SWTOR, it just couldn't keep me in. Neither does WoW anymore.

I disagree with the last part. If Star Citizen sells like gang busters there'll be some experimental foray into the space. Whether or not it's successful is another story. A Privateer/Elite game in the universe would certainly be something different, however. It'd probably even work in a post-ME3 setting.

Sam has had some flashes in the circle, but yes he is still inconsistent there. All in all his game does seem to have taken a step up this year though.

Yakupov with a nice batting average this season.