algroth

I don't know about this. These 351 pages have three tweets per page, that means 1050 tweets across an indefinite amount of time (could be years) that he might have not even written himself and merely liked or retweeted (that's also what the search was after), and which based on the content of the few examples given looks to cover a very broad array of flags and interpretation of the same. And as Azdeus says, there's a lot of time to kill if one is unemployed. I agree that in general we ought to spend less time in social media in general and be more careful or have better judgement about what we upload to it, but at the same time this sort of twitter background check feels very extreme to me.

Today in "The Outer Worlds is a documentary":

Watched Parasite at the movies with a group of five, we all absolutely loved it. As usual with Joon-ho Bong, it's an expertly crafted, fascinating and unpredictable blend of genres that results in a film with appeal both to arthouse enthusiasts and mainstream viewers alike, with a clear sociopolitical backbone throughout. It's his High and Low, an utter masterpiece. Much like @Hurlshot, it's my turn to stan this movie and tell everyone to go see it right away!

nvm

Beautiful stuff. Also Mahavishnu's a monster on guitar.

Pretty great album all in all, this. It certain has no business being four hours long, but all of the material here (or most of it) has a purpose of being and is quite interesting in its own right.

Anyway, here's some excellent grooves from Burkina Faso:

I think it's brilliant myself, and it's grown in estimation over the years. I honestly find it a fantastic extension to Blade Runner, delving deeper into many of the more humanist and existentialist philosophies present in both. And from a pure aesthetic perspective, it's utterly insane. I love the use of time dilations and of "pauses" in Oshii's films - there's a particular transcendent quality in his films as very often the action or the diegetic time seems to come to a standstill in favour of a more abstract reflective plane. In Ghost in the Shell: Innocence and especially Angel's Egg it's taken to an absolute extreme, with entire chunks feeling like they occur in this contemplative, abstract second plane, but with Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor 2 for example, it really interesting how it's often woven into the action or into a scene to create a far more evocative effect (think the way the garbagemen chase scene in GitS opens up into a more dilated and oneiric moment when the puppet's left on his own, and then fighting an invisible enemy).

Shocking. R.I.P.

This is actually pretty crazy. A shot-for-shot stop motion recreation of the film. Mad props.

The life-death cycle of memes in two stages: Then...

A classic from one of the GOAT:

Terry Jones, 77.

I would say so because even with whatever criticisms you may levy at Deadfire in these areas, I can't think of many games that treat these aspects better, least of all the IE games, other D&D properties or the first game for that matter. Strongholds in the IE games are either not present to begin with or an absolute nonfactor that are completely divorced or outright antithetical to the main story (i.e. the story to Baldur's Gate II practically demands the player to be on the move and adventuring, their objectives lie somewhere completely opposite to settling or beginning an enterprise or joining some organization); in contrast Deadfire's stronghold system is pretty in-depth, deeply integrated into the game and rather seamlessly introduced and woven into the story and setting, out of sheer necessity of needing a ship to travel and so on. Contrary to you I *did* find skill checks largely impactful and I also appreciate the sheer variety of possible skill options and choices the game offered, which I do think far outnumber that of most games in the genre I've played thus far, possibly all. I'm curious which games you're thinking do a better job here, because far as I'm concerned this absolutely wipes the floor with some of the big WRPG titles I've played from around this period like Witcher 3 or Kingmaker, let alone the IE games which, again, were far more rudimentary in this respect. In terms of an ideal of what I'd like to see in these areas, Deadfire does a far better job than most, and the fact that most games that perform well utterly fail or forego these altogether makes me think they're not particularly important aspects in the minds of many. Similarly there's the fact that I've been following discussions on the game since before its release, and haven't heard much in the way of these complaints being voiced or shared all that often, even amidst people who disliked the game. To go back to a previous point we were discussing, I've seen the issue of setting come up far more frequently than any of these points you raise here - and even then it's a mixed bag, with plenty voicing their enthusiasm for it. The only two aspects that I see mostly negative remarks about are ship combat (which is a minor aspect of the game at the end of the day and which I like a lot myself), and the length/linearity of the main story (which I have some agreements with and could see as a factor yet, again, not big enough to account for the drop it experienced). I will add a pretty big caveat to all of the above which is that I've yet to play either of the Divinity: Original Sin games, and that's a pretty big blindspot for this discussion since the franchise is far and away the most successful of the isometric CRPG revival we've seen this decade. Regardless, I do think I've played enough RPGs to have a solid set of expectations going into these and have spent enough time discussing these games with other people to have an idea of what others look for or are attracted by in these, and in this regard I do think Deadfire measures up very well all around.

I would keep in mind that this thread is titled "Armchair theories on why PoE2 didn't sell super well". The thread is openly inviting us to speculate and no one is assuming otherwise. As far as speculations go, assessing the quality of the game and the effects it has on word of mouth and its public perception by extension is a fair point to make, but what we've spoken about earlier is that the word of mouth that is available or most immediately accessible through user reviews, aggregate scores, YouTube reviews and comments and whatnot, all tend pretty positively, so the evidence we have available doesn't align with the hypothesis. And whilst there are criticisms that could be levied at the game, they are *way* too specific for most random comments on social media to pick up on. It's one thing to say "ship stronghold is bad" (which I haven't read anywhere or not in any fashion so prevalent so as to stick in my mind as a common complaint), it's another to say, for example, "ship upgrades could have been better handled by being woven into a stronghold-specific narrative and made more significant that way, instead of being items free to purchase the moment you arrive to Neketaka": social media and word of mouth tends to move according to very essentialist broad takes on a certain piece opposite to the specifics, the talk about the specifics is something that usually only interests people who're already familiar with the game at hand. What Boeroer is getting to, I believe, as well as I, is that the criticisms may at best discourage a certain niche of players, but they would likely be a negligible amount in the greater scheme of things. Again, this is a game that saw a 70% drop from game to game and yet was positively received all around, and focusing on whatever nitpicks we have of it is too esoteric and losing the wider picture. I do agree that social media is a strong promoter for games and especially non-AAA games, and some of the fault can be placed there. I'm just a little hesitant of assuming "word of mouth" is the issue, or at least the resulting word of mouth of people who played the game (could be that a lot of people assumed the game didn't *look* very good and the continued voicing of their indifference cooled others who were mildly intrigued as well), since it was primarily pretty positive throughout. I have some other thoughts myself about potential factors here too, which I've voiced on another thread, namely regarding Deadfire as a streaming experience in a very streaming-driven era:

Again, there's an elephant in the room regarding Deadfire's dip in sales that no perception of quality can account for, I feel. The dip the franchise saw in performance wasn't a 10-20% or a 50% even, or a lack of continued interest or whatnot. From what I understand, the first game in the series has already sold about 2 million copies whilst the new one has struggled to make it to 400k. That's a 70-80% drop right there, and one for a game that, despite assumptions of the contrary, is generally rated quite positively across all user aggregate websites out there, including a 7.8 metascore, an 84% Steam user approval and a 4.4/5 GOG rating. Moreover, let's consider some notorious sequels to popular franchises: Dragon Age 2: roughly 2 million copies sold by August 2011 (down 50% from its predecessor) Mass Effect 3: roughly 1.5 million copies in its first month (100% up from its predecessor), roughly 6 million total (down from Mass Effect 2's 7 million) Mass Effect: Andromeda: an estimated 2.5 million copes sold across its lifetime (down 60% approx from Mass Effect 3) BioShock 2: 3 million copies (down 25% from the 4 million sold by its predecessor) Fallout 4: roughly 14.9 million units sold (up 50% over the next highest-grossing Fallout game, Fallout 3) Batman: Arkham Knight: 5 units sold in the first four months (down 17% from Arkham City by the same point) And more. It's arguable that all of these examples were met with much more vitriol from the gamer community and proved to be way more divisive if not outright trashed by the fanbase than Deadfire, yet the latter's drop far exceeds even the worst ones here. What's more, some games that were deemed disappointing relative to their predecessors even went *up* in sales relative to their previous entries as well, which goes to show how much the insular jabber of the diehard community often matters in these things. To be fair, Deadfire is a smaller game and thus likely more exposed to such talk - but again, when the talk wasn't even that negative to begin with, it's hard to point out to it as a major factor in the drop in sales.

Wonderful stuff.

Oh man, this is powerful. Somewhat akin to a jazzier/soulier Arthur Russell. Very cathartic stuff.

I do feel that The Farewell not making a single category was a pretty major snub, but I will say that I wasn't too surprised by the exclusion of the other names you mention here. Even Uncut Gems which has been generating a fair bit of buzz this last month was struggling to make the list in most awards predictions and ended wholly excluded from the nominations. Don't know if I'd call the others snubs considering the nominees went mostly as expected. I will say that I'm generally pretty okay with the nominees this year. All of the films up for Best Picture I've either liked or am at the least curious to watch, with even the most "Oscar bait" of the lot having a somewhat more interesting or appealing angle than, say, Green Book. I do think it's a much stronger crop all around than last year, where it felt like we had regressed back to the "tradition of quality" landfill of the 90s and early 00s. Would I have wanted to see more attention for Uncut Gems or The Lighthouse? Absolutely. But given how the list turned out, I think it's fine.

The early 00s are back, all we need is a nu-metal soundtrack.

Knives Out is great fun.

Neil Peart

Piss off, WB.