Zoraptor

Pretty obvious approach really, they've been demonising Greece for years about their economy, might as well demonise them for not being able to cope with the millions of refugees places like Germany are handling so very, very, well in comparison. It's not like Germany has simply 'lost' hundreds of thousands of refugees or suchlike, after all and I'm sure if they have it's just different for some reason that we don't need to know about but just believe them it's the near bankrupt country with 20 million people's fault for not protecting poor, unfortunate, under resourced Germany from the refugee hordes. It's like we're all meant to forget/ pretend that Merkel's open invitation to refugees which actively encouraged them (n)ever happened. Heaping all the blame on the country least able to actually do anything about it due to having 3000 islands, a massive maritime border (with a Turkey who has actively encouraged refugee movements as a political tool), no money and few resources is an utterly scum move designed solely to insulate those at very least as much to blame as Greece such as Merkel and Erdogan from as much of said blame as possible. It's politically expedient, utterly cynical and totally understandable- and also a spineless, gutless abrogation of responsibility and ostrich like denial of reality.

Yeah, I chose my wording quite badly - since most of the article Mamoulian War linked was discussing effect of the games pricing model on its success, that's what I was trying to expand upon. Majority of those sales actually came from the console versions tho - I wonder how much do these 'internet dramas' influence sales of PC versions. PC would be far more influenced by such things than console, certainly. Much of the EA/ Ubi/ whoever hate is about things which console users simply don't get or don't 'get'- always online, limited activations drm, multiple clients, monetisation and genericisation of games; and console games have largely been 'disposable' commodities which you play for weeks then stick in a cupboard or trade as opposed to PC where there are plenty of disposable titles but also many titles with better longevity due to factors like mods and differing popularity of genres (and broadly speaking, more/ wider genre) to console. You don't get to decide what "the right way" to play a game is for me. No one does, not even the developer. How someone plays a game is a completely individual preference. People derive enjoyment from games in different ways. Attributions bro- Ganrich said that, I didn't*. Understandable though, the quote system is... not the most consistent. *Would though in certain circumstances, trying to play Planetscape: Tournament as a deep tactical combat simulator may not technically be the wrong way of doing things but it certainly isn't the best or most rewarding approach available.

It's... pretty difficult to argue that 10 million plus ain't successful or popular. It's pretty obvious why those two are picked in general as examples, they're EA titles and 'everyone' hates EA, they're Origin rather than Steam on PC and people here tend to think that only PC counts. I know there's massive hate out there for Battlefront in particular, but it's kind of odd watching people all over the internet contorting themselves into knots trying to prove it 'failed'. Sheesh, I saw people insisting that it having an early discount 'proved' it was tanking- said discount just happened, coincidentally, to be the same time as JJ Abrams latest arthouse flick whose name escapes me was released in cinemas. It's like asking if Bethesda's customers will learn from Fallout 4 being a shallow simplified illogical mess- seems unlikely, and Bethesda certainly won't.

Or not, as it seems that the MSD, which PYD is the largest member of, has turned down their invite. While it's brave there's little chance of the UN calling Turkey's bluff (which to be fair is probably not a bluff, so it would probably by a FOAD instead) and belatedly inviting any PYD members and the US will probably cope with the mild embarrassment of having their most consistent Syrian ally against ISIS of the past 18 months ostracised by Erdogani fiat rather than expend some political capital against Turkey and Saudi. End of the day it's more good news for Assad and more good news for Russia as it clearly illustrates that the west cannot be even minimally relied upon by the Kurds; and makes a bilateral agreement between them and the government under a Russian aegis even more likely.

The PYD/YPG (ie 'Kurds', or their most significant group) will be at the talks in some form, probably by having one of their umbrella organisations which include other groups invited as a 3rd party to the FSA/ moderate Al Qaeda group and the government. It won't just be the Saudi vetted group going but will probably not include anyone who would overly provoke Turkey. It would make the western politicians look rather two faced if people knew about it but it's unlikely to pop up in a 30 second news report- and it is likely that those well enough informed to know about it already think politicians are two faced. It's certainly impossible to argue credibly that the kurds shouldn't be there, or that they should be included in the government delegation as the Saudis tried to argue. Seems that shooting that plane down really was the worst thing Turkey could have done for the rebels in Latakia too, they're pretty close now to being wholly ejected from the province having lost their two most important strongholds there in the last week or so.

I rewatched B5 a month or so ago so will be interested in any reactions. It's a series I should theoretically love and did for a bit, but I ended up disliking it enough that I never finished watching its initial run and struggled to finish the rewatch. I had a similar reaction to BSG (remake) for that matter.

Nah, as things stand Iran basically cannot 'go with' the west even if it wanted to- while UN sanctions have/ are being lifted the US still has its own set in force and most western companies don't want to fall foul of them due to US courts' tendency to randomly hit them with massive fines. Waiting for those to go means Irans would be standing still for even longer, so Russia and China it is since they don't give any asterisks for the unilateral US sanctions and never have. Plus of course there are many members of congress and presidential candidates saying they'll bin the agreement that should eventually lift those US sanctions, so betting on western investment is a poor option at present. Militarily, Russia has the best SAM systems available which are very important if you're worried about being bombed by some moronic McCain wannabe or Bibi trying to attract right wing votes. They're also demoing a lot of arms in Syria to pretty good effect and which are if not being used by are certainly being seen by lots of Iranian proxies and irregulars. In the longer term Iran could look at trying to split the US/ Saudi axis or the US may look at switching to Iran from Saudi which would lead to US arms and US investment, but that's years off realistically.

Well, that is an explanation at least. Not exactly a great one given that as Sakai said, the objective truths all to often are subjective truths instead but there's limited point arguing about that. If I wanted to make some sort of cheap point myself I might just dismiss you as a rambling 'moral absolutist' due to your belief in those absolute truths, but that is of course a cheap tactic and it's unlikely you'd accept the parallel anyway, so I won't. The guy posts here like anyone else and you talk he cannot read your post. That's just weird. It's not weird, it's just designed to get someone ignoring him to re-engage rather than anything else.

Pitcairn? Worthy of a solid golf clap.

Mate, that couldn't catch a sardine. progrssive: noun, syn 'nazi sjw'.

Please, you're coming off as the right wing equivalent of Bruce (OK, with better grammar, spelling and fewer inane smilies) and frankly have been for some time. I find it hard to believe that's what you're aiming for but if it is please let me know. 99% of the time when people complain about 'relativism' they don't have a clue what it means and it's because someone has just challenged them and they don't have an asterisking clue how to respond so are looking for a cheap bail out that allows them to not wonder why they don't have an asterisking clue how to respond. Yeah, you're somewhat better than the hard edge SJWs are because you aren't trying to impose your views on others* but so what, if you think being mildly better than people you deride is great then you don't have very high aspirations at all and should accept that others are going to point it out. Which is pretty much exactly what TN was saying about GG. "There are no wrong tactics, only wrong targets" is a load of bollocks no matter who says it. *though it has to be stressed, often those labelled as sjws aren't actually trying to impose their views either but just hold a 'progressive' view point.

RANT TIME: ..it was always defending bad practices from publishers that practically abuse their game dev employees because otherwise you're "attacking gamers", taking the side of utter corporate ********s like Bethesda and UbiSoft over game devs that actually needed support. [..] Absolute tripe like Hatred doesn't become a runaway success [..] #GamerGate injects more arm-chair politics into gaming than feminists were ever able to, and companies are using it to promote games consumer lifestyle, not a promotion of game merit. Always about defending publishers? The most defended publisher equivalent by far is Steam, and even it's copped a lot of flak over the past year (nowhere near as much as it deserves, but fanboys gonna fan) let alone how much usual culprits like Ubi and EA have taken. Most of the defence has been pointing out that publishers fundamentally aren't your friend and are there to make money off you so can be expected to be arses as opposed to journalists who (theoretically/ ideal(istic)ly) examine things critically and inform their readers. You're right, absolute tripe like Hatred doesn't become a runaway success. Hatred hasn't even cleared 100k sales despite all the supposed frenzy. Being a crap game has trumped all the exposure it got by being over the top and deliberately triggering. It's an indie game, runaway success there is defined by the Legends of Grimrocks, FTLs or pre MS sale Minecraft- or at least something like Shadowrun or Banner Saga, and it hasn't got anywhere near those sales. For those who did buy it you can always fall back to the the old adage about fools and money; so no surprise they'd be loud and idiotic about other things too. Certainly, people piggyback their beliefs onto GG but then people piggyback their beliefs onto My Little Pony or The Smurfs. It's what people do- and it's also what you've done here. Probably what I've done as well, for that matter. (Yes, I know it was a rant, it just makes a nice illustration) Dude, please. He's 100% right that the vast majority of your contributions have been politicised stuff of questionable value almost as much as any sjw's has been. If your argument is that you are battling politicised drivel in games with your own politicised drivel then you're no better than them, if your argument is that you're being ironic then I'd point out there isn't much difference between irony and hypocracy, if your argument is that you aren't doing either but are instead 'dropping truth bombs' or similar then you're delusional about not bringing your own politics into games and using cringe inducing language to boot. Frankly, you've been doing the same thing with the immigration issue as well. Breitbart or the Daily Fail are not friends of the gamer, they're politicised clickbait that happens to be anti sjw- and anti immigrant, for that matter. (meta: obvious troll thread is obvious except on Obsidian forums iteration 25673/ ?????????)

'Untertouchen' sounds like something Adolf would have as being verboten in Mein Kampf, not something as innocent as dunking. Also, bright yellow splash patterns are not a good look for a swimming instruction pamphlet where the reader may not be fluent in german.

Steven Moffat will leave Dr Who after its next season (2017, no non Xmas episodes for 2016) being replaced by Broadchurch's Chris Chibnall. I do hope Moffat stays around as an episode writer, he had major flaws as a show runner due to his tendency to hand wave more than a gaggle of Queen Liz impersonators at a street parade but they were largely masked in his standalones. Not that keen on Chibnall as a show runner, Broadchurch S1 was decent enough but his standalone episodes for Dr Who have been average. Having said that there really isn't an obvious successor this time around.

Not altogether unexpected after he left Dragon Age last year, good luck to him in his future career at Larian/ Obsidian/ Bethesda/ InXile/ Paradox/ [Kickstarter]/ microbrewery; his work on BG2 and DAO (plus PDM for Vic2) has certainly earned him plenty of good will from me.

It's not meant to be workable though, it's meant to be... aspirational, for want of a better term. How will it work? Very well. Practicalities be damned. Sure, for anyone who looks at it critically it looks monumentally stupid but it isn't aimed at people like that but at people who will go "yeah, that guy knows the real problems and how to get things done!". The sort of person who voted Bush because he'd be a nice guy to have a beer with (history of substance abuse and privileged son of multi millionaire family be damned) and because he wouldn't put up with any crap from anyone. That's a perfectly good group to aim for and no matter how silly it may look it's a strategy that has worked so far. And no one thought to make them debate why Mr. Cameron porked a piggy? I think it has to be couched as something that Parliament can debate/ have an effect on, such as Trump's supposed hate speech. So you'd have to find a way to make Dave's quasi-amorous deceased porcine interactions politically relevant rather than just amusing/ embarrassing. I don't think even something like "David Cameron's, uh, 'private member' is haram, and thus would be offensive to the Saudis or other muslims if he met them" would fit the, hm, bill. Unfortunately.

Looks like the Trayus Academy and Malachor V from Kotor 2 are going to be recanonised via the Rebels TV series. Doesn't necessarily mean anything canon wise for the overall game, though it does at least mean someone knows about it.

The Heroes reboot had largely the same flaws the latter seasons had. Incoherent plot made more disjointed by lots of different groups with little to no reason to care about any of them- with the exception of Noah Bennett- which consequently made it very difficult to follow the plot or care about the characters. It even has the exact same super power problems (inflation/ deflation depending on plot requirement) and to an extent at least the same senseless heel/ face turns as the original series, albeit not to the contortionate extremes they went to with Sylar. I've actually still found it fairly enjoyable despite its flaws, but it should have been far far better than what we got and I cannot blame anyone for rolling their eyes at it.

They've definitely lost nett territory over that time, but they have also gained territory over that time- Ramadi (until recently, and it still isn't wholly retaken even now), Palmyra and Qaryatayn were all taken post intervention. The air strikes have actually done what they were supposed to do very well, it's just that what they were asked to do wasn't what most people thought it was up until recently- destroying ISIS wasn't the aim because that would benefit Assad especially, funnelling ISIS against regional enemies on the other hand was a great idea. Everyone knew that oil tankers were going from ISIS areas to Turkey, usually via intermediaries in the mainstream rebels and had been doing so for a long time benefiting Turkey/ rebels/ ISIS by millions per month, but nobody did anything about it until Russia got peeved and started doing it. (Makeshift) Oil refineries were regularly bombed though, for obvious reasons. About 60 abductees seems to be the real estimate. Not surprised that the Daily Fail went with the higher number, of course. Things in Deir ez Zor might get interesting though, there's a sandstorm at the moment and a major ISIS attack (really an extension of the one above) coinciding with it. There's supposedly about 200k civilians in the government controlled area.

I always thought Bush v3 had a far harder task than either previous iteration or than most pundits thought. 8 years wasn't anywhere near enough to forget Bush v2 and he never seemed to have the folksiness of his brother or the slickness of someone like Bill Clinton, basically he looked not very inspiring or likely to get people in general to want to vote for him. He's precisely the sort of candidate that pundits pick because he checks boxes and they themselves would vote for him. If anything I'd say that the chart makes the large donors look particularly silly, much like that pair of utter Kochs backing Scott Walker so early made them look a bit silly when he dropped out.

Obama is hamstrung on Syria because nearly all his regional allies are militantly anti Assad and they fund a lot of media and think tanks plus provide a lot of their regional intelligence capabilities, a situation he inherited and cannot change significantly even if he wanted to. I rather think he has let himself be convinced into a lot of international adventurism somewhat against his better judgement- Hillary plus Nick the Hungarian plus Gulf States were the main cheerleaders for Libya and the latter were so for Syria as well. Personally, I couldn't care less if a leader is 'weak' if being strong also means being a moron. Given the strength of the various rebel factions we'd probably have ISIS with a capital in Damascus now if he'd followed the 'strong' line espoused by sock puppet buffoons like post 2000 McCain whose answer to a blocked toilet would be advocating for it to be bombed back to the stone age (but at least that makes him look 'strong').

The circumstances are rather weird on the face of it, but neither party wants to make an issue of it and it's difficult to imagine what kind of covert action they might have been doing anyway.

Doublish post, but this is somewhat more specific than the previous one. Here at least most of the people doing so are trolling, and getting butthurt over it is exactly what is wanted. One user who posts inflammatory crap here has the lowest (semi) legit rep on the GOG forums, pretty much everyone lower than him has been dogpiled by scammer alts and another is basically doing a Let's Play the Obsidian Forums for the codex. The GOG one gets a far better and more numerous response here needless to say, and neither is particularly subtle about it. Back seat modding is obnoxious though (plus I genuinely like the mod policy, personally, gives people enough rope to hang themselves) and the problem is at least as much people's knee jerking reflexively in response as anything else. There's always been a lot of, uh, robust debate on serious issues and trolls have always got an enthusiastic response here, GG threads haven't changed that one way or another. ISIS, economics, the refugee crisis or ethics in game journalism I doubt there would be a huge difference in response between now and 2008 when I joined or 2004 (?) when I started reading these forums. Whether here or elsewhere people like stating their genuine opinions, mostly, some people like riling others up for a laugh and some people like feeling outrage at being rarked up. Ignore the bits you don't like, maximise the bits you do.

Low barriers of entry on the internet makes it easier to find 'media' that support your position, whatever that position may be and easier to establish said media, economics dictate that either clicks or zeal maintain that media. (Near) Instant response time allows plenty of posting while angry/ drunk/ (permanently or not) afflicted by teh dums/ getting stuck in escalating arguments, and the instant response massive broadcast of social media (theoretically) allows everyone to be heard; there are additional factors like the 140 character limit of twitter that makes any nuance difficult but leaves plenty of room for stupidity or nastiness. Twenty years ago your options were phone someone, write a letter to the editor, newsgroups if you happened to be one of the few on the internet or what the vast majority did- doing nothing. It's all a bit self reinforcing and self perpetuating but for 95% of those involved it's more of a mildly unpleasant circle than a vicious one. If you're a chemtrailer you're probably predisposed towards interesting takes on things in real life and if you get upset about criticism or people disagreeing with you on the internet you're probably a delicate snowflake in real life too; or you're trolling and don't actually care. In any case the idea of 'containment' on the internet is unworkable for anything opinion based, since usenet it's been the town square where everyone can drag in a soapbox to shout from. Most people ignore chemtrailers because their theories have certain eminent flaws, not because they're 'contained'.

Like the containment forum strategy worked with gamergaters? (Ie. it emboldened them to spew their bull**** all over everything else as well.) 'Containment strategy' showed a fundamental misjudgement of the issue when applied to GG, the situations really aren't comparable at all. Perhaps the biggest differential is that there's a significant grouping who aren't really pro GG at all but are anti anti GG (or anti SJW)- not a phenomenon you get with chemtrails etc.