alanschu

I'm curious how it works if there's a good faith attempt to deliver a product, and it fails and the company goes bankrupt.

I was a bit surprised that there was an IP dispute (resolved peacefully) with a game being called Wasteland Kings.

For myself, the game was most enjoyable playing with either 1 or 3 friends (group of 2 or group of 4) with no class overlap. I loved sharing stories with my friends.

You ran into huge issues on Tatooine's plot, IIRC, didn't you?

I find rewards like this a bit interesting:

Coming on my previous post (and LadyCrimson's), I'll have to ask what it means to improve happiness levels on a permanent basis? If it's obvious, why the quick dismissal by some people? It seems obvious to you, but not to others. And here we have a genuine analysis as to what could be a confounding variable (as opposed to simply stating an intro level social science mantra of "correlation is not causation."). Thank you! In this situation, perhaps the people in the video do not regularly express their gratitude, and as such they are more likely to feel the benefits in this situation. You mention that you regularly express your gratitude, yet do not typically feel happy. (There are others: What were their baselines happiness levels (the least happy person seemed to benefit the most, although you consider yourself to be typically unhappy)? Would someone that already feels elated see as much of a benefit? Would they otherwise remain at a state of elation rather than tapering off?) Turning this towards yourself, do you think that maybe your expressions of gratitude are simply so common that, for yourself, they aren't really an expression of gratitude and more just the way a human being should behave?

The idea that happiness is only happiness when it's away from your status quo. I think that that is probably the case, and you can see it in a large scale with respect to our society. The new <whatever> that we got is now stale, and getting something that we consider equivalent (even if "new") doesn't give us the same euphoria that we received with the first item. You'll see people bitch because their phone is reverting to 3G instead of staying on an LTE network, while someone in a different part of the world receives a large meal and they feel elated because of this. I actually agree that there's a bit too much focus on being happy (and equivalently, I think that there is too much emphasis on people being depressed), although what I got out of this video (which I shared mostly because it wasn't an idea that I had really considered before) was more the idea of reverting yourself away from unhappiness. In that, a relatively simple act could see someone see some significant improvements in one's current mood, even if temporarily. A sort of thought experiment into grounding oneself when faced with unpleasant circumstances.

This must have been where we got it from. There's actually a link in the video description to the study. Apparently the University of Pennsylvania is a hive of pseudoscience that somehow worms its way into reputable scientific journals. http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/articleseligman.pdf That said, one study alone cannot be considered concrete confirmation of a hypothesis. Correlation is not causation, as so many laymen fail to understand. To be fair, it's not the only study. There is one here too (I have not read it yet): http://www.psy.miami.edu/faculty/mmccullough/gratitude/Emmons_McCullough_2003_JPSP.pdf Correlation is not causation, but neither does it omit causation (indeed, causation requires correlation). With respect to the experiment shown in the video, the control group are people that recalled their gratitude, but we not able to express it. These results were compared with those that recalled their gratitude, but were able to express their gratitude to the person listed. Though we can't really state that the experiment is not sound, unless we can expose faults with the experiment in the video. Which would require more information than the video provides. Note that it's perfectly valid to be skeptical of the experiment they performed without knowing this information, but we can't really elaborate on potential confounding causes. Also note that a singular study is irrelevant to the claim "correlation does not equal causation." A singular study simply means that there's less confidence in the hypothesis being true, and that it would need to be repeated. If the only difference between the control group and the experiment group is whether or not they were able to share their gratitude with the person in question and reasonable assurances could be made that no other confounding variables caused the issue (and random sample, etc. etc.), then it would be a causal relationship, even if no one else did a study on it. Though I suspect there are probably a lot of issues (probably sample size) given it was done for television. Unless they did the study, in general, in a more appropriate location for other people. We don't know the testing methodology really. What are some confounding variables people feel have caused the difference in results?

Is there a particular aspect of Game Design that interests you, or is it still just a sort of notion that you feel some part of it would be right up your alley? (both positions are valid, by the way).

Obsidian has me in pretty hook, line, and sinker. I cannot click "Like" enough for this game idea. Hey Aaryn.....

Probably way too early to say, at this point, unfortunately (I honestly don't know the answer). A decent predictor would probably be whether or not Battlefield 4 supports it, however.

Maybe he has PR training? I remember a friend of mine pointing me to a forum where some people were discussing BioWare's response to the ME3 ending (where I was engaging with fans), and it was interesting seeing the conclusions that people posted. The BSN doesn't screen developer posts (TOR's did, actually), but I did take it as a compliment when I saw a post that suggested that I "clearly" had several layers of PR passes over my posts. The reality is that I saw that there was a lot of outrage happening, and I thought "man maybe someone should do something?" and then concluded "I am someone... why don't I do something?" and I started talking with people. Though with ME3 it was easier than DAO and DA2, because I had zero personal investment in the game aside from a tertiary "it's success is important to BioWare." Fair enough. And yeah, there are a variety of things that people consider affronts. You can include camera angles, play styles, control schemes, and loads of other things as well. By the same token, I'm specifically talking about those that feel that a company is acting with a lack of integrity and taking advantage of you (royal "you"). It's part of the problem with people's tendency to go so extreme in order to make their perspective's louder/clearer. Apologies. It can be hard to disassociate because I do get the feeling that people actually feel the way that you described.

It's an evaluation. If the game is worth $100 to you, and you can pick up the game and all of its available content for less than $100, is Day One DLC for that game really an issue? If you still buy it (and especially if you still buy the Day One DLC), you definitely send a message that "it's not THAT big of a deal to you. Note that you're the one that is saying this, not me. I explicitly stated that there's no need to keep quiet. Even when Woo was still with the company, I think people overstate the effectiveness of arguing with him on the BSN regarding something like this (especially since even this issue is not unanimous). Actually, in general people overstate the effectiveness of arguing about anything on the forums anyways. What you see on the BSN is a small subset of people that buy the games bring it up. Unfortunately, people seem to think that if they keep bringing up the same point, they will get more votes (me seeing the same person bring up the same points, regardless of any topic, doesn't give me any more credence to their perspective on the topic). And because it's the internet, they start getting increasingly extreme with their reasons, often to the point of "BioWare/EA is taking advantage of consumers" or "BIoWare/EA is being exploitative." If you ever think that a company is exploiting you, I do strongly encourage you to not support that company. That type of discussion is certainly less useful and only gets hostile on the BSN, and the discussion always goes the same way and ends up getting hostile with people on both sides taking on increasingly extreme and hostile stances in order to be louder than their opponent. In this sense, repeatedly bringing the topic up literally just starts to become noise and is a thread that I go into to make sure people aren't being insulting, as opposed to the content of the discussion. The situation becomes complicated because to the people that don't have an issue with Day One DLC see the solution as a loss of content that they'd otherwise get, which obviously they don't want. They are the types that are willing to pay $100 for the game, and that they only have to pay $60 + $10 they consider themselves to be getting a deal. Although now, arguing with Woo does nothing. He doesn't work for BioWare.

Is it pseudoscience simply because it's merely a 7 minute video that doesn't go into the full details of their test methodology? Or do we have insufficient evidence on their testing methodology to actually conclude that it wasn't a scientific experiment? I mean, the video didn't even show people that were unable to actually contact the person, though they mentioned it at the end which gives an indication that more went on than what we saw in the video. At 43 seconds they spawn up a link to a study, Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions, which I am reading right now. Or are you critiquing that study too? In retrospect, your allegations are vague to me. EDIT: Nevermind that your conclusion demonstrably fails to indicate an understanding of the thesis. You state "all those times I felt so happy that I needed to thank someone for what they did to make it so were cause [sic] by expressing gratitude," which wasn't the argument put forth.

I found this really interesting.

A colleague shared this on Facebook (Most of the information is new to me as well, so I can't really elaborate on anything. I only know what's in the slides too) http://www.slideshare.net/DICEStudio/battlefield-4-frostbite-3-mantle

Thanks!

Last 3 parts are now up: youtu.be/73vGBV9GaCA http://youtu.be/vPboe0s6JzA http://youtu.be/aEYjH5aKJK8

The globalization of the marketplace has allowed people living in countries with lower costs of living (for whatever reason) to have a competitive advantage in terms of their pricing. To take an extreme (and hypothetical) example. Say that you need $50k/yr to live a comfortable life. But, some guy in another country can live a life of equivalent relative comfort for only working for $5k/yr. As such, he can take advantage of enjoying a relatively more comfortable life (relative to his countrymen) for, say $10k/yr, be very happy with his compensation, and charge roughly 1/5 of what you feel is your absolute minimum. Note, however, that I don't necessarily consider this a "bad" thing. (I'm actually pretty neutral on it mostly on account of not giving it that much thought)

I didn't know about that. It could be that, though yeah I think that that one is a bit less interesting.

Also, jobs at Obsidian: http://www.obsidian.net/jobs

I'm actually curious if Half-Life 3 is Friday's announcement.

You actually contradict yourself here: Realism is not always better. Play an FPS and have almost any wound be incapacitating, and the number of people willing to engage in that game will decline. It's part of the reason why a game like ArmA II is not nearly as successful as many other games, despite its goals of being hyper realistic. In fact, ArmA became popular with the creation of a zombie apocalypse mode, which inherently shifts the game away from realism. Realism IS a goal for some. But I also feel that some people that call out for realism aren't actually fully realizing what it is they are asking for. There are plenty of people that do not believe in things that occur in reality, though.

I didn't say you have to quietly not buy. As a counterpoint, you also send a very mixed signal if you buy the DLC despite feeling taken advantage of. Buying the base game but not the DLC will say something too, but I have a hard time encouraging someone to buy something that they feel is incomplete and that they feel is not right. Ultimately, both of those feelings will lead to disappointment by the purchaser. If you are someone that doesn't like the idea, but still enjoy the base game for what it is, then the "don't buy it" doesn't really apply to you.

I actually met a woman at PAX that was in the USMC. I *think* she may have been a platoon leader, but I can't remember. She had an amazing cosplay of Aveline. EDIT: I have no clue what her actual role was though. If I understand this, however, it doesn't sound like women were allowed to enter infantry training?