Wrath of Dagon

Foreign policy - Obama pretty much the same as Bush, except with more apologizing. To be fair Obama would've been unlikely to go into Iraq. Romney - who knows?, probably similar to Bush, but hopefully less naive/idealistic and more competent than either. Domestic/economic - I'm not sure how you differentiate between those two, Obama has gone crazy with the spending compared to Bush. I think Romney understands the problems we're facing and is experienced and pragmatic enough to deal with them without putting his own reelection before the interests of the country. I have to note here that Obama almost made a deal with the Republicans on deficit reduction but backed out at the last moment due to political considerations, apparently mostly because of pressure from the Democrats in the Senate. Security - Bush was doing what he believed would be in the best interests of the US. Obama is about to go through with huge defense cuts which many experts (including his own Secretary of Defense) claim with cripple our military. I have to note that Congressional Republicans are also responsible for this, but at least they are trying to find a solution. Romney has critisized both for the mess they created. Social policy - Both Bush and Romney are fairly moderate on this, Romney more liberal than Bush, Obama more liberal than Romney. Of course being the Republican candidate Romney had to take more conservative positions and hence has been critisized as a flip-flopper and not a true conservative (which is true, he's a pragmatist).

The whole thing, including the murders, was a planned set up to celebrate 9/11. No one ever heard of the video until it was shown on Egyptian TV. The role of our "friend", Saudi Arabia, should also be investigated here. Apparently they're still financing our worst enemies : http://www.theatlant...m-movie/262567/

But there's not a snowflake's chance in hell of them ever making their investment back.

TOR only failed recently, don't know when their options went live.

Bioware purchase + cost of TOR got to be over a billion dollars total! That's has to be the biggest financial disaster in gaming history. No wonder heads have to roll.

Since a lot of people have more debts than they have assets, comparing wealth in this way is pretty meaningless as has been pointed out. The more meaningful question is what the standard of living is, and here I think the average American does quite well by world and even Western standards.

You're using Obama's slanderous propaganda as your evidence? Romney's tax rate is low because his income is mostly capital gains, which is taxed at 15%. Explain to me please how Romney manages to use Bahamas and Monte Carlo to lower his taxes. Simple, they're tax havens. So he puts his money there, earns interest and a few other goodies on it, but doesn't get taxed by the USA because it's technically not a domestic earning, and is taxed at MUCH lower rates (single digit percentiles) by the country that the money currently is located in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven What you don't realize is that US citizen has to pay Federal taxes on all his income, whether it's earned domestically or abroad. The only way he can avoid US taxes is to give up his citizenship (like that Facebook guy) or to hide his foreign accounts, which is what Democrats are trying to imply without any evidence. Of course if he was trying to hide his accounts, he wouldn't have declared them on his tax return, which is how people who made those ads you trust so much found out about them. @Nepenthe : Yes I did mean all sources of income, not an entirely flat tax rate, although a "flatter" tax rate is very desirable IMO.

You're using Obama's slanderous propaganda as your evidence? Romney's tax rate is low because his income is mostly capital gains, which is taxed at 15%. Explain to me please how Romney manages to use Bahamas and Monte Carlo to lower his taxes. No true, the top rate was 28% under Reagan. Federal tax revenue as a percentage of GDP may be at a historical low (if your history starts afer WW2 or so, remember there used to be no income tax at all). Also a lot of that is because of stupid giveaways like the payroll tax cut. But I agree with you otherwise. Yes, he did make his entire fortune himself. The money he inherited from his father he donated to charity. To be fair he did have a privileged upbringing, so he didn't exactly start on a level playing field. Some Republicans believe in the idiotic idea of making the capital gains rate 0%, Ryan may be one of them. I completely disagree, all income should be taxed equally. The purpose of taxes is to raise revenue, not to punish and reward. But Ryan doesn't want to raise taxes on anyone, he wants to eliminate deductions, which supposedly enable the rich not to pay their fair share.

The point of lower tax rates is to increase economic growth, which also benefits the "poor", while welfare only make them poorer and dependent on government. Lower tax rates in exchange for elimination of deductions were also recommended by the bipartisan deficit reduction commission which Obama himself created. Government revenues would not decrease if everyone shares the tax burden in a more fair way. Government spending has exploded tremendously over the past few years, and any attempt to rein it in is always met with the charge of "hurting the most vulnerable" by those who are trying to protect their own special interests. And really you should make $250 million and run the Olympics before you call Romney " ignorant and dim witted".

Top down economy being capitalism I guess.

I disagree- Bioware has never been about 'artistic integrity' for its own benefit, it's always been about money. They've made hard nosed business decisions like cutting off Interplay and produced utter tripe (NWN OC) without any input from anyone at EA/ EP. Almost everyone in business wants to make money, it's a matter of where you place your priorities, and from following what they said about starting to make "event games" and trying to appeal to a huge audience and similar quotes around the EP purchase, combined with the fact that's when they started to make crap games, I draw the conclusion that that was the breaking point. Also you normally wouldn't sell your company unless your goal is now to cash in. If they really wanted to cash in they'd have quit by now. They'd probably have quit as soon as contractually allowed to do so. On the other point, both KOTOR and Jade Empire were attempts to go with more mass market 'event gaming' types, and they were both well prior to EP. There's pretty much a direct line from the more trad RPGs to them, and to the Mass Effects. It's unfair to push stuff that was clearly decided upon by people at Bioware (like the ME3 ending) onto EA and even things like TOR being an MMO rather than a genuine K3 must have happened at the very least with LucasArts approval even if it weren't suggested by/ a condition imposed by them. EA can be blamed for some stuff like MP in ME3 or Origin (if it floats your boat) but that's comparatively minor. Even DA2's short dev time was at least partly because Bioware took so long to make DAO. Well, I certainly didn't mean to imply it's anyone's fault other than Bio, the owners were the ones wanting to cash in. KOTOR is a very high quality game, regardless of target audience, Jade less so, and after that it's just one naked money grab after another.

I disagree- Bioware has never been about 'artistic integrity' for its own benefit, it's always been about money. They've made hard nosed business decisions like cutting off Interplay and produced utter tripe (NWN OC) without any input from anyone at EA/ EP. Almost everyone in business wants to make money, it's a matter of where you place your priorities, and from following what they said about starting to make "event games" and trying to appeal to a huge audience and similar quotes around the EP purchase, combined with the fact that's when they started to make crap games, I draw the conclusion that that was the breaking point. Also you normally wouldn't sell your company unless your goal is now to cash in.

Now that TOR has tanked, Riccitiello's EA days are numbered anyway. I believe the decline of Bio began when they sold themselves to Elevation Partners, not EA. It all became about money grabbing then. And btw, the head of Elevation at that time was Riccitiello. Sounds very cool, I was hoping for that for a long time. We have to support the developers if we ever hope to get better games.

Subconscious password : http://www.joystiq.com/2012/07/21/guitar-hero-clone-used-to-teach-unknowable-subconscious-passwor/

A flat tax can be made fair by exempting a certain amount of income form taxation, thus there still would be progressivity up to a certain point, and the poor would pay no tax. Having said that our spending is too high to be have a flat tax with a reasonable rate, so probably the best thing is to have a 15% and a 25% bracket. With elimination of all deductions that would not only bring in sufficient revenue but also improve economic growth due to the higher efficiency of a flatter tax. Not that I ever expect that to happen, the voter is too stupid and selfish to understand or care of what's best for the country.

It's less a function of purely redistribution than it is of that higher incomes pay more tax, and per capita incomes are generally higher in the "bluer" states. Also, locations of major military installations make a big difference in terms of where money gets spent. As for the "extra economic growth" thing, well, good luck with that. Sounds like wishcasting to me. Those taxes are for redistribution though, miltiary spending aside. I'm not gowing to retread the economic growth argument, but that would be one way to find out, if historical evidence isn't enough.

I knew someone would bring that up eventually. I think we'd be fine without the redistributionist subsidies, they always do more harm than good anyway. The extra economic growth we'd get from sane economic policies would more than make up for that. Why is it the job of the Federal government to redistribute income between states?

England is part of Great Britain, so are Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. None of the latter are English, but all are British. Britain and England are not the same thing. Scots are Wals' countrymen because Great Britain is the country they belong to. Edit: Actually I have to correct myself, Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom but not part of Britain I believe.

Scotland is currently part of Great Britain, or what else do you mean?

That's nor really the point, I find the situation amusing more than anything else. I've long ago stopped expecting creativity from mainstream games, although once in a while there's still something decent. You have to admit though, it's a bit depressing to think how much has been lost. It's like a post I saw, game developers used to be gamers making games for other gamers they themselves wanted to play, and now it's all about corporate profits.

I wish some of our more liberal states would declare independence.

This article sums up what I was thinking as I was watching E3 amazingly well: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/172088/From_the_Editor_E3_2012__The_E3_of_Disillusion.php (saw the link on RPS)

Version 2 of the public beta is out http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,2488.0.html

I would like the aliens RPG revived without the license (i.e. under a different name and without the IP)

It's the only major game I'm looking forward to right now. Getting a very strong "Thief" vibe from it.