Zoraptor

Presumably it's his opinion rather than knowledge garnered from careful perusal of peer reviewed articles in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Gaming. There's next to no credible research about gaming at all. It doesn't even sound much like an authoritative statement, generally there's no need to write IMO at the end of every post, it's implied. While I agree with the statement that stopping piracy doesn't translate into sales, I'm not convinced the above statement is correct. I look at digital piracy as magpie-like hording that has nothing to do with whether or not the persons involved are without financial means of purchasing games. Most of those who pirate don't do so exclusively, so they can afford some games. There are two groups doing the pirating, those who have a limited budget and those who just don't want to pay but could if pushed. You might get some extra sales from the latter- not all that many, I suspect, $60 a pop for something that used to be 'free' and hence disposable is a big difference- but from the former you're just more likely to have them spread the limited cash they have around more thinly. So instead of buying, say, Fallout 4 and TWitcher 3 for $120 and pirating otherwise they'll buy a dozen older games at $10 a pop to spend the same amount and play the same number of games; even some of the people with decent money will do this too. It's already what many people who don't pirate do. Most of the sales gained are likely to be at low price points, not high, and hence well after the success of a game has been determined1. 1 Oraptor Z, Bruce V & O'Flies L 2016; PRSoG 7(1): 42-5 (Inspiration has deserted me on article titles, couldn't even come up with a decent acronym for the journal)

Who owns the rights to Wizardry right now? A Japanese firm called Gamepot. They have been doing some stuff with the Wizardry IP since Wiz8 though I believe it's all been exclusive to Japan.

Truth of the matter is that dictatorship and democracy both have weaknesses. Democracies tend to be smug and absorbed with a sense of their own superiority to the extent that they don't look critically at themselves and believe that the mere act of voting perpetuates their superiority, their leaders are easily manipulated and controlled plus short sightedly populist because of the electoral cycle; dictators are, well, dictators so they have little to no control exerted over them- potentially a great thing if the dictator is a great leader but if the leader is stupid, mad, paranoid or whatever else then it's not a great situation for the country. "When you have a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail"

It's an MTV show, immaculately pretty girls were inevitable. So long as they can act decently enough (jury is out for that) I can't say that I mind. Raithe's comparison to a typical CW show is pretty apt really. Maybe Arrow would be more appropriate than a high school drama though, given two of the cast have been on that.

Yeah, in Britain a century ago it would be the Irish getting the same response and in the US it would be 'negroes'. Lay the smack down on the people doing the crimes irrespective of race and creed, and don't lump the majority who don't do anything wrong in with them. I think the ad hoc stupidity that is the european refugee/ immigrant policy is utterly moronic, but it isn't so because the refugees are muslim. lolwut, The Torygraph is neither liberal nor left leaning, it's about as conservative (and Conservative, hence Torygraph) as they come. It's also pretty crap nowadays.

Watched the first couple of Shannara episodes, pretty good overall. Can't comment on how well the books are followed as I've never read them but it was enjoyable, not atrociously acted (well, mostly) and the CGI was... better than you'd see on some full network shows.

Gamersgate is about ethics in selling you steam keys when they have their millionth compound pricing error and want 5c for Skyrim. Gamergate is the one about ethics in games journalism, people with coloured hair and flamboyant gay Breitbart writers. Maybe, but if SYRIZA had been more honest/ brave (or perhaps if the Greeks weren't so wedded to having to be in the Euro) the main 'risk' would be... some sort of anarcho marxism or similar rather than fascism. Too many people hate the nazis still, the main right wing party is relatively intact and the main left wing one is, theoretically, already radical left. SYRIZA probably has shot themselves in the foot over that though as Greek default and leaving the Eurozone is still pretty much inevitable, it's just been delayed until they've had every ounce of Germany's pound of flesh extracted and there's nothing left to take.

Atheism is more ideology, the ideology that spirituality is ultimately meaningless. Otherwise ideology and religion are pretty much the same in that they encourage people to support unreasonable stuff and blind to the obvious. I don't think atheism holds spirituality to be ultimately meaningless, though many atheists probably do it isn't an inherent tenet of atheism- an active unbelief in god is all that is required for that. Lack of spirituality or the belief that it is meaningless probably fits nihilism best, nihilists are by their nature almost always atheist but not the reverse.

I doubt anyone high enough up to comment is available. It is Christmas day. By the same measure who rolls out a new caching routine- supposedly what went wrong since they have now made a statement- on Christmas Day? OK, so it isn't like xbox/playstation where kids get given one for christmas and it's the busiest day of the year for their internet infrastructure as everyone sets them up but it still seems a very odd time to be tinkering with such stuff even so. You've got both people working on 'improvements' on Christmas Day and rolling out changes, surely there would be better days for it let alone a quick way to roll back any stuff ups. Amateur hour, and not just the PR aspects.

Zahran Alloush, head of Jaish al Islam killed in an airstrike (while everyone is saying it was Russian it may well have been one of the few Syrian precision strikes). Probably the number two/ three Islamist leader in Syria behind Jolani (Nusra/ Al Qaeda) and Baghdadi/ Ibrahim, JaI is a large factions with ten of thousands of troops. Very big development considering that the Ghouta pocket he ruled was already under more pressure than any time since its inception and he was Saudi's main proxy. He was also decidedly and unreservedly sectarian calling for the 'cleansing' of minorities, not something that you'll find on most media sites who seem to be trying hard to market him as a 'moderate' and anti ISIS hero, when even a cursory glance at the name of his faction (Army of Islam) suggests he was a card carrying Salafi dingbat let alone his own words that confirm it.

..was money very well spent. If there's one thing that practically guarantees that Pakistan will never have a genuinely Taleban like government it's their love for cricket and the knowledge that those killjoys would want to get rid of it due to it 'competing' with religion; getting the same sort of mania going in Afghanistan would work wonders and many of the refugees in Pakistan had already picked up their love of the game. The Afghans not only qualified for the Cricket World Cup but actually won a game there (sadly the numpties in charge of the game promptly changed the rules to exclude all the minnow nations, but that's besides the point). Better value than half an F-35 wing or an Osprey rotor or whatever 850k would be spent on otherwise. (lol 38 page pdf on a page with a borked script? thanks for the present Rand, you really shouldn't have)

It's always going to happen? Who says? Not that this whole scenario isn't a bit misleading as government welfare isn't the only or even best way to help those who could use assistance. People being "lazy" is hardly a major issue anyway. The biggest problem is by far people whom reach adulthood with no marketable skills. This is usually the fault of bad parenting and a broken education system; especially in high schools. Not necessarily, there's plenty of stuff that required real skill and qualifications that has been obsoleted by advancing technology or changing circumstance. If you were a car assembly guy in his mid fifties who got replaced by a robot in year 2000 there wasn't really much you could do- as a 20 year old in 1965- to know that the job you were getting and the skills you were learning would be obsolete a third of a century later, and not much you can do to upskill as a 55 year old in year 2000 either when employers are looking for younger people. That has been a big problem here since the 80s, we imported lots of cheap Pacific Island labour to do what would now be regarded as basic labour in factories and the like and when there was no more protectionism those people who had made honest choices based on the world they lived in at the time suddenly found that they had no desirable skills in the New Zealand of the late 80s and have never recovered from that. While it's nice to think that people who find their skills obsoleted could all start successful businesses or whatever current right wing theory believes such people should do it isn't even slightly practical for everyone which leaves being a Greeter at Walmart or other crap 'job'.

I suspect there's a schism between the two that predates Rumsfeld and that it is schism between the career military DoD and the whole civilian apparatus rather than just the CIA. I can only imagine the facepalming that went on amongst actual generals who understood what firing a quarter of a million+ trained soldiers would do when that moron Bremmer disbanded the Iraqi Army, for example, and the costs of that decision were not borne by Bremmer/ Rumsfeld/ Bush/ Cheney/ Blair but by the army. And people in the region as well, but certainly not be those who made the decision, indeed they've done everything they can to duck even the mere responsibility.

It's a bit of a balance certainly. You don't want to leave the big questions unanswered but at the same time the desire to actually ask additional questions or ponder the (answered) questions further is a critical component in a good/ compelling story- if you finish a PST type story not wanting to ask any questions about it and not thinking about it then the story has generally failed because it hasn't left you wanting more. If I were to use something from Kotor2 to illustrate a 'good' unanswered question I'd use the Kreia/ Handmaiden relationship. You're clearly intended, if you pay attention, to think that Kreia may be her mother but there's too little information to be sure either way. That isn't due to cut content (well, so far as anyone can tell) but is deliberately crafted to be almost easter egg like with consequences for how you view Atris and Kreia if you pick up on it. Certainly not a deep philosophical question nor one that has to be answered in order for the plot to make sense but one that adds to the world building and adds nuance to characters and situations.

It would explain the clusterasterisk that was the DoD run moderate rebel recruitment program though, if they were deliberately sandbagging the effort. There's been a massive disparity between the DoD efforts and the CIA ones when it comes to Syria.

Indeed. I've made the switch to quail and I've never looked back. (lol at the 'mere' 17% defence spending)

Indeed. PST leaves unanswered questions primarily because you want to ask them and seek them out, and because it elicits actual thought about the subject matter. It's not because of any cut content or such. KOTOR2 is normally a decent comparison to PST for obvious reasons, but it was utterly butchered when it came to cut content unlike PST. It's lazy and facile to compare unanswered questions generated by increased interest in the subject matter to questions posed by plot holes/ cut content. No story can- or should- answer every question unless it's utterly simplistic plus it's 'unrealistic' for you to learn everything; and it's far worse to end a game (with a story/ philosophical focus) with zero questions because that almost always means you simply don't care about that story which is meant to be a primary focus. That's not true for all games of course since many don't have a set narrative or it isn't the focus, but it's true for any game with pretensions towards philosophy especially, questions are kind of intrinsic to proper philosophy, or story depth.

The genuine crusaders against corruption would still care, and there are a few of them at least- they just don't have any power. But yeah, I don't think we'd have the US judicial system throwing a wobbly if they were hosting. And to show that FIFA is still FIFA the favourite for Blatter's replacement is from a hereditary absolute monarchy and implicated in torturing protesters and (about the only thing that actually could be used against him at FIFA) football players who were protesting for democracy a few years back. Might as well kill two birds with one stone by seeing if Bashar Assad fancies a stint in FIFA instead of being President of Syria.

Yeah, though that's mutual- Clinton loved the drunken incompetent Yeltsin every second he was running Russia into the ground. But it is definitely true that a 'recommendation' for any US presidential candidate from Putin is no reason to vote for them, even if it is a genuine recommendation rather than diplo-trolling. He's giving it for his own (or country's) benefit, not anyone else's and certainly not for the benefit of the US.

Because Bosporus and it's unthinkable for anyone to leave NATO unless you're France and have air quotes around 'leave', let alone be chucked out. Russians opened their Su24 black box couple of days ago, it was pretty munted though it should be readable with a electron microscope if they really want to embarrass Turkey and are sure of what it will show. And the basis for a peace agreement has been decided at the UN. With minimal contribution from the actual warring parties and none at all from some of the largest ones, which makes it all a bit of a joke.

Well yeah, the media landscape is garbage. But the Daily Fail and Rupert Murdoch aren't the edges by any stretch of the imagination, they're just mass market outrage bait and the opposite side of the coin from archetypal 'Nazi SJW Daily News' 'progressive' outrage bait, they could both just as easily be run by Gawker. They're as much part of the problem as the agenda pushing media you disagree with. It's infectiously stupid, lazy and designed to hook people just as much as any drug is. I'm equal opportunity when it comes to media analysis; I hate the spineless, censorious, preachy 'progressive' press and the arbitrary, dishonest, differently preachy 'conservative' press with an equal passion; and both sides obsession with writing what might as well be fairy tale narratives rather than facts.

When Putin wants a worthy opponent he just looks in the mirror. Dude, a continuous litany of fauxnews and daily fail articles? At best you'll give yourself an ulcer worrying about bollocks designed to get page views from knee jerk reactionary morons, at worst you'll rot your brain worse than a gallon of methanol a day and spread the infection like a slavering zombie biting poor innocents and giving them a yearning for poorly written absymally 'researched' pseudo journalistic crack equivalent. They're a gateway drug to Alex Jones, Breitbart et alia. Just Say No to Stupid Fear Mongering; it's time to declare a War on Clickbait; Friends Don't Let Friends Read the Daily Fail or Fauxnews (Unironically, At Least).

He said couldn't have done it. Which leaves three basic interpretations 0) They pitched to Disney, not EA. Seems unlikely though, since everyone knew about the exclusivity deal with EA 1) They pitched to EA, but EA is contractually obligated not to subcontract Star Wars titles and he found out about that after leaving 2) They pitched to EA, but EA has a directive not to subcontract any titles to external studios and he found out about that after leaving 3) Bioware/ someone else is already making Kot(O)R so a pitch was pointless, and he found out about that after leaving IIRC (and I may not because, honestly, I don't pay much attention to this stuff) Obsidian/Fergus indicated they planned to pitch/pitched KotOR to Disney before the EA deal was announced. So my (totally baseless) speculation (based on vague wording that everyone interprets differently) is Disney were already working on/finalizing the deal (or had but hadn't announced finalizing it) with EA when Obs pitched so Disney wasn't in a position to approve such a pitch OR Disney plonking everything in LEGENDS but the films and TV cartoons with no plans to continue any of that stuff meant they weren't ever in the market to do more KotOR so the pitch was pointless regardless of the EA deal. I would have said those two were probable as well, but he definitely seems to say directly that he learned the pitch was impossible after his departure which was June (?) this year. The EA deal and EU -> Legends were both known well prior to that. There's also the (Legends) TOR itself which is still being developed, though he could have learned that it was an exception to a 'no more Legends' policy as an ongoing product after leaving. There's definitely another option too, though it's definitely not likely- Disney themselves have unannounced plans for the KOTOR era for comics/ tv/ movies.

I've got a GOG code for Divine Divinity as well, if anyone wants it.

He said couldn't have done it. Which leaves three basic interpretations 0) They pitched to Disney, not EA. Seems unlikely though, since everyone knew about the exclusivity deal with EA 1) They pitched to EA, but EA is contractually obligated not to subcontract Star Wars titles and he found out about that after leaving 2) They pitched to EA, but EA has a directive not to subcontract any titles to external studios and he found out about that after leaving 3) Bioware/ someone else is already making Kot(O)R so a pitch was pointless, and he found out about that after leaving