alanschu

How do you balance realism vs. artistic style? We had made shifts to a more artistic style that may have some unexpected/exaggerated features in an attempt to make the art seem more unique and recognizable, while still being fantasy. This met with some mixed reviews (unsurprisingly). I'm typically a proponent that ardent adherence to realism isn't necessary, but I know not all agree.

I actually enjoyed Vega too. Garrus is probably my favourite character of the franchise, in large part because of the third game (I thought he was really well done). I agree with Allers too. Seemed like an interesting concept, but ultimately wasn't a fan of Chobot's performance (at all) and to me it is quite evident that she is not a professional voice actor when held up to the rest of the crew (or game in general).

Ultimately it still comes down to sales numbers. While I think that there is some benefits (especially socially) to the PC being a TV gaming machine, that's not the only advantage a console may have.

And here I was thinking I was being a bit of an ass!

Fair. At this point it's different schools of thoughts arguing and we might as well be a couple of stuffy economists that disagree on the other's model.

This is just wrong. Sorry. People desire something, they place a value on it. If something imposes a cost (price) that they do not wish to pay, they don't acquire said good. If something has a cost that is less than the perceived value they do. From Wikipedia (emphasis mine): Just think about it, instead of blindly ascribing to neoclassical models. The entire concept of a product going on sale is to place the price below the value someone places on the product. In actual reality, it is typically impossible to always precisely set it at the specific marginal value where the supply and demand curves perfectly intersect. This results in either consumer or producer surplus. Pirating game software is not an example of acquiring a product that provides no value. It's an example of the consumer maximizing their consumer surplus. They are getting more value for their dollar, because they have an implicit value on the game software. Here's another thought experiment. Say you like steak. You're willing to pay $10 for a steak. If you come across a producer that is willing to sell a steak to you for $2, you'll happily buy it. It doesn't mean that you now value steak at $2. You just received a consumer surplus of $8. The price for something is based on an estimate from the aggregate value of the market as a means of maximizing revenue/profits. Ideally the price point of everything is sold at the exact value that someone is willing to pay (for obvious reasons this doesn't happen in practice). So unless you are suggesting that everyone that goes and buys a product for X dollars all values it equally, it's a bogus statement. I have. You apply it too rigidly (in a neoclassical way) and incorrectly equate marginal value for actual value. Air is readily available and in such a large supply that it's marginal value is worth nothing. It's actual value is quite high. Deny yourself some air for a few minutes, however, and see if you still consider it something of no marginal value. By extension, if piracy were to be eradicated, lets see if all those people that pirate games feel that games have no marginal value. The foundation of marginalism is built around things like the water-diamond paradox. If something truly had no value, it's marginal value would always be zero. Marginalism also encompasses the marginal benefit associated with your decisions beyond just the product. There is marginal benefit to purchasing computer software because it provides financial compensation to said software creator, which then encourages the future production of goods that I demand. I directly benefit from doing so, and is a part of the marginal benefit I receive from purchasing a game rather than pirating it (This is a point you even acknowledged by the way). Even then, marginalism influences how we make our decisions based on assessing the marginal value of a decision against the marginal cost of making said decision. Which is exactly what pirates do. The marginal value to any individual is non-zero, and significantly greater than the marginal cost (which, as you say, is negligible). As marginalism focuses on marginal value/cost, it's the marginal value that equates to the price, not the actual value. Marginalists acknowledge this with things like the water-diamond paradox, in which it's explicitly stated that the value of water is significantly greater than the value of a diamond, yet the price of diamonds is much more than water. If value = price, then you contradict the claims put forth by the marginal theory of value. Finally, if the value of a video game was truly 0, then the marginal benefit of obtaining it would be zero. For people to actively seek to acquire an item that provides no actual marginal benefit (which is what you're claiming if the value of something that is free is truly zero), is contrary to what the marginalism suggests in how people justify their decisions from an economical point of view. I think it pretty clear that I don't believe in all the neoclassical explanations of value (since a neoclassical perspective is value = price), and subscribe more to the models of subjective theory of value. Although, I tend to prefer to combine elements of both the intrinsic and subjective theories of value. Subjective assessment of value is important, but if the subjective value of said good can only be made and sold at a price point that is below the intrinsic components to produce said good, then it's not a viable commodity (for now at least). It's trivial to point out that there's no point in selling something for $80 if it costs you $100 to make it. You either have to find a way to lower the cost of making it, or you find a way to change how people value the product so they are willing to pay more money for it (this is pretty much what De Beers did). Natural rights are defined by human beings, the same way as laws (legal rights). The reason why some people consider it a natural right is literally because John Locke said it was and some power brokers agreed with him. It's also an idea that has been challenged (especially when compared to the right to life and liberty). This would be true if the source of piracy always came from a sold good. Do you think that day one piracy (or even prerelease piracy) is a result of someone legitimately buying a game and cracking it, then distributing it?

I actually find it interesting that the NeoGAF critics are effectively asking for marketing materials, when IMO a big thing about the Kickstarter model is that the need for such things isn't paramount at all.

I wouldn't describe Rob's response as angry at all.

Yes I know that.

You're playing Civ5. This excuses dropping other games. Also. Multiplayer

To echo on what Diagoras was mentioning, we are already starting to see this with alternative monetization methods. Software as a service, microtransactions, and so forth. Certainly, a service-based industry is much harder to "pirate". That is side-stepping the issue, though not all industries can (or even should) be service-based. Steam I don't think would be quite as successful as a subscription service, but does many things to correctly tackle piracy, even if it's just one big annoying DRM itself. Steam, in and of itself, still provides a service. While some of the hardcore may dislike it, it does do things like autopatch, assist developers with things like achievement integration (and other Steamworks benefits), is a product delivery mechanism, and incorporates things that I find useful like the Steam overlay (although they were even nice enough to make that available for non-steam games). In many ways Steam provides a service both to PC gamers, as we ll as PC developers. It doesn't need to be monetarily subscription based in order to be a service.

Well, I wouldn't have given you any points for originality if you did Note that this was Dragon Age: Origins timeframe too I did have to laugh because it was my first day and I was mostly kind starstruck and she's apologizing because I wasn't going to be on some project I didn't even know existed 3 days earlier and was put onto DA instead XD

I was actually hired for that project, but it was literally shelved the day before my first day. I remember Theresa in HR apologizing to me because I was actually beind assigned to Dragon Age, and not the new project that she had hinted at in my phone confirmation.

Nope, you didn't. But Forbes has been championed by many of the hater crowd, yet many conveniently ignore that he was their enemy literally one day before release. Essentially, the Forbes article is a columnist that can write whatever he wants, as Forbes pays him based on traffic (Forbes doesn't hide this). People seem to grant it some extra degree of legitimacy simply because it's a columnist that posts on Forbes. You also seem to think you're educating me on the matter, and bringing me up to speed on things that I don't already know. Yes, I know that there's articles on Forbes. They were championed on an almost daily basis (since the author agreed with them). Yes, I know that there wasn't exactly a small group of people upset with the endings. You linked me to movements that I already know (and there was several more that you missed). That BioWare did anything is a direct acknowledgement that BioWare agreed that it wasn't some trivial group of individuals that happened to be very loud.

I'm well aware thanks. In fact, I spent large chunks of my time voluntarily talking with the fanbase (of a game I myself didn't actually work on) figuring out what it is about a lot of aspects of the endings that I didn't like. I did learn that there wasn't actually consensus on what people were actually upset about (I found that I could typically categorize people into 3 different subgroups, though). Just don't forget that the same writer is a big fan of Day One DLC too. I agree. On principle I don't have any serious issue with the ending being a "downer," and based on the fact that my favourite endings have been leads me to believe that these types of endings may be the type that I prefer. But then, I still enjoyed DAO's. Although it has some shades of uncertainty within it at well, and my favourite epilogue slide was the on regarding Harrowmont's reign of Orzammar. This was very much the way I saw it. I also was a few days behind and had received ample heads up that something awful happened at the end, which undoubtedly also lowered my expectations and made me more receptive to virtually anything. That the Crucible existed (a plot device that I didn't so much care for from the get go) also prepped me for "the ending is going to have some unexpected stuff happen" simply due to the cryptic nature of the crucible. I was also the type of person that considered the Destroy ending to be pretty unequivocally "winning" (in that Reapers are now dead). I just didn't get into the galactic doomsday that a lot of other people started running with. At the same time, however, the sadness aspect of the ending was easily the most common theme. Likely a result of combined unhappy ending for Shepard, as well as a perceived unhappy ending for the galaxy as a whole (which I think gained a lot of momentum simply because fans were mad and suddenly jilted, so they started piling on other aspects that they may have been more lenient about otherwise). There was a ton of bargaining going on, and the existence of the Catalyst was very commonly an aspect people were willing to accept, as long as it meant blue babies or building a house on Rannoch. For these people, seeing a universe that they fell in love with end on such a tragic note was much more painful than I figured would have been possible. I typically consider myself someone that gets pretty emotionally invested in games, but compared to some I am pretty tame. I think it's typically the best bet to restrict your what happens later type of stuff, particularly concerning the PC. I love that Fallout didn't touch much on it, since it couldn't know what my Vault Dweller would do. The consequences for the individual areas, however, is fine.

To echo on what Diagoras was mentioning, we are already starting to see this with alternative monetization methods. Software as a service, microtransactions, and so forth.

Value is different than price. Consumers will always seek to pay less than the value they place on an item. Otherwise it's not worth the price. This is fundamental to how people motivate their purchasing decisions. There's microscale influences which may cause hesitation when the price is below the value threshold, but this is how people pay their price, and it's why things like Steam sales are so effective. Coupling it with a finite offer, people will pick up games based on the justification of "If I do play it, it'll probably be worth $3!" People will not pay more for something than the value they place on it. Note that the value placed on an object is not static. Nope, this isn't what I was saying at all. This is just a red herring. Determining whether or not someone feels any moral justification is irrelevant to this, however. When I discuss purchasing products and supporting an industry that I am interested in, it's trivial to recognize that leeching off of it undermines the entire industry and ultimately hurts me in the end. You've even acknowledged this. As such, a moral implication is not hard to connect when it's someone that has put time into the game, if I wish to experience it, subverting their wishes of compensation simply because it can be acquired for free only serves to provide disincentive to provide said goods simply because people are not able to invest their time doing so simply because the opportunity cost of doing so is prohibitive. Especially if it starts compromising basic needs. This doesn't mean that the value of a product is equivalent to labour input. If someone spends the same amount of effort making something highly desirable to me, I am placing higher value on it and am willing to pay more for it. If another person spends the same amount of effort making something I feel is worthless, they won't get a penny from me. Nor should they. I'm not giving them money simply because they put effort into it, nor do I think that anyone should. This is different than taking something that I do find desirable and paying nothing for it (without the consent of the author) simply because I can. Under this line of thinking, theft has no moral implications either. Being purely utilitarian, if you can steal something you want, you should. Tragedy of the commons is still heavily influenced by morality. It can only be determined a tragedy if some sort of "right/wrong" is ascribed to the action being taken. Yes, but those aren't law, are they? Copyright is a specific law with a specific purpose based on a specific chain of reasoning. Moral discussions are entirely relevant - we don't have copyright because artists inherently deserve to have monetization done on their behalf or something. Depends. Lying under oath breaks a law. There are situations where cheating will get you legal trouble as well. That something is a Law is more a reflection of a society's current morals. It's just been codified. If people unanimously agreed that free access and distribution to all information was a good thing, Copyright Law wouldn't exist. Again, I'm talking about the reason behind the law. Your private actions can be for whatever reason, but I'm talking about the reason that we'll take people who copy things without permission and lock them in jail for years. We don't do that because of your desire to make money - as cool of a guy as you may be. We do it for a compelling economic purpose to society as a whole. The problem with this is that Law's aren't created by non-human automatons. They are created by human beings and it's impossible for them to not implicate their morals into it. It's why there was no issue with slavery at one point (the power brokers had no issues with it. There was no moral implication at the time), but eventually that changed. Laws are also simply used as messaging during socialization. I have no doubt that there are people that do not pirate simply because there's a Law against it, and by virtue of the Law's existence there's a moral lesson imposed: "Copyright infringement is bad. Don't do it." Yeah, I think we can agree that DRM is a very bad monetization route. SAAS, crowdfunding, microtransactions show way more promise. Crowd funding works now, but the jury is still out on it IMO. It should be noted that there are laws in places to protect against fraud (which is a very serious risk with crowd funding). This is done for financial reasons as well, but it still has a moral foundation: "It's wrong to take people's money in trust and not deliver on what was promised." I'm waiting for some high profile ****storms that happen when crowd funded games aren't what some contributor's imagination told him he was promised. SASS and microtransactions are systems that certainly feel their share of resistance right now. Unfortunately by their very means they end up becoming exclusive, which means people WILL be left out. But yes, they are often done to help combat piracy (and second hand sales), although depending on who you ask, stuff like SAAS is just another type of DRM.

That people can acquire something for free doesn't mean they don't place value on it. They clearly do (otherwise they wouldn't spend time, a resource in and of itself, acquiring it). In fact, the mere fact that they are acquiring it only demonstrates that they feel that price by which they are acquiring it is below the value that they place on said product. You're nitpicking the example. You cite that copyright has no moral foundation and the only reason people may think that is because there's a Law for it. I was addressing the idea that things typically get rules put against it because society deems it so. If our society highly valued cheating and lying, it wouldn't be considered immoral to do so. In this case I'd disagree. As a content creator, the advantages around the ideals of copyright pretty clearly serve to help provide me with some security that the motivation for substantial financial reward is a potential outcome. You can argue until the cows come home if this is actually accomplished with current copyright laws, but the I disagree that it's not about morality. When I realized I wanted to become a content creator is when I decided that I should stop pirating because it's not something that I would want done to stuff I made. Given that I was able to experience an ethical conflict with my actions, it's trivial that it's a moral consideration. If it wasn't, people couldn't be morally influenced by it. TL;DR I actively do not pirate because I feel it is wrong to do so. Not because there's a Law that says I shouldn't. Especially given how trivially easy it is to circumvent such laws and come up with justifications to prevent any cognitive dissonance. This is why, to use game development, game developers themselves often implement ways to undermine piracy (and have been doing so for decades) to help monetize the product. If a pirated/bootlegged copy was unusable, then the pirated user would then have to reevaluate whether or not they wanted to play the game with the cost of a legitimate copy and determine if the expected value obtained is worth the cost. Of course, this DOES cause issues for the legitimate owners, especially with more modern forms of DRM. Which is, perhaps paradoxically, despite being a content creator my stance has significantly softened on DRM.

I could see it. My understanding comes from second hand accounts, in that I had a roommate that actively torrented a lot. Was frustrating to have my bandwidth compromised for it! XD. Most of my exposure to western piracy is through p2p methods.

You could argue that the reason why it's self-defeating is because you are exploiting someone else's work, who put that time in with the hopes of some sort of compensation, and willfully do so despite this recognition. Similar to the idea of cheating on an exam or copying someone's idea and presenting it as your own (regardless of the circumstances - you could say "hey I think we should go work in a soup kitchen" and if I go off to our friends and suggest it and take ownership of the idea and claim I came up with it, there's no law against it but if people find out it was your idea they're not likely to think I'm a stand up guy for taking credit). That it's in response to a law (or more generally, a rule) doesn't undermine its ethical considerations. Indeed, rules/laws come into existence because of a society's moral compass. Though we're starting to enter the realm of moral relativism here. I'd be willing to open to the idea that someone that is ignorant and not aware of the self-defeating nature of piracy is likely not acting immoral. I don't have any idea of the breakdowns of how common this is.

Actually I wasn't even talking about the leechers that leech hurting the "industry" but rather the piracy scene itself (although some of the cracking groups do hate the idea of people that pirate games, enjoy them, and don't buy the game). Piracy itself benefits when people properly set up their torrents and don't excessively restrict their uploads and don't simply disconnect when they have 100% of the file.

It's self-defeating. Taking it to the extreme, imagine the viability of the games industry if all games were free (i.e. 100% piracy rate). Even some piracy circles agree with this notion that leeching is detrimental, in that they require users to NOT leech in order to have access to their software. I agree that piracy is mostly about the consumer getting something they want for as low of a cost as possible (which is a fair expectation of what a consumer should do). This is starts to delve into the area of tragedy of the commons, and it could be argued that self-regulation isn't viable since those that choose to violate the self-regulation typically benefit more (to the long-term, less immediate detriment of all).

This is where there's always going to be some level of disparity. While I don't care for the execution (existence of the Catalyst and so forth), I *do* like the idea behind the ending. Had the game offered the same 3 choices, but presented in a way that was less Deus Ex Machina (and probably a bit more diverse depiction than was shown in the original release), I think I would have actually very much enjoyed the ending. I have a feeling that while you're probably not a fan of the execution, you probably also don't enjoy the choices nor the implications of each of them either. If you're disappointed at the ending because you find things nonsensical with the Catalyst and whatnot, then you'll find me listening both as a gamer and as a developer. If you're disappointed at the ending because you find it sad or otherwise a downer, I get some level of hesitation. Granted, we can reflect and say "Evidently many of our fans don't care for this type of an ending," but it's a situation where I'm really only listening as a developer, but not as a gamer. Then again, I'm a host of contradictions. I love player agency (that is, allowing the player to make choices), but dislike the notion of the player outright driving the narrative to the detail that he or she wants (this isn't the same as player agency). That is, I love that a game actually provides you a choice that's off the rails. That said, barring extreme circumstances I think it's entirely valid for making that choice to result in a game over. I wish MORE games did stuff like this. Like, there's a huge mob coming to Lothering. Well dammit, we're going to take a stand. Except you get overwhelmed and die horribly to wave after wave of surging Darkspawn. Forcing the player to not be able to make that decision is unfortunate. Allowing the player to make that decision and have it pan out the way the player would like it to is worse, IMO. It makes no sense for the player to be able to stand up to those kind of odds on his own at that stage. So I'm not the one that feels that there should necessarily be different endings simply because someone wants there to be a different ending. I really wanted a different ending for Lee in The Walking Dead, based purely on my emotions and my attachment for Lee as a character. But I honestly don't think they could have done the ending to that series any differently and had it be superior to what we were given (it should be noted that its execution is phenomenal too). Then again, I think BioWare is too fanservicey at times. I actually prefer the ambiguity of the original ending in this regard. I can understand why EDI would die with destroy (impartial energy beam that doesn't discriminate), but liked the idea of the Catalyst being imperfect which was validated with the differences between low EMS ending and high EMS ending consequences on Earth, as well as Shepard's capability to still survive. I would have preferred they left that ambiguity in.

Just to put in my "vote," I have always considered it to be some level of abstraction, so "oversized" weapons never bothered me (and the farther you go from close up perspectives of games like Dragon Age and the like the less important scaling becomes IMO). As such, I'm glad that you're not strictly adhering to realism.

<snip> Sorry, before I respond to the overtly inane, inaccurate ramblings, I'm going to need a response to my dissections of your incorrect math. I'm very sad that you just ignored it.