Zoraptor

Arguably monkeying around with your currency is a sign of maturity because you can only really do it successfully (well, with minimal problems) if you're big enough to get away with it since no one really wants a confidence crisis in an important currency. That doesn't really look like it's what Gorth was saying though, I'd presume he was more meaning that China's perpetual growth cycle had to end at some point- China has been manipulating its currency basically forever, it has never properly floated in recent history because they think it would ruin their international competitiveness and they don't have enough of a domestic market to support their industries. Basically, they're worried about becoming Japan 2.0 and going from remarkable sustained growth to stagflation and atrophy. That's been the death of many governments in Japan, for obvious reasons the Communist Party doesn't want that for China. They haven't been quite as bad in their currency manipulation as the US has suggested, but they've been pretty bad at it. To an extent it is also responsible for their problems as as with many other of the manipulations in China's economy it has lead to some pretty significant artificial/ bubble growth in the manufacturing sector which has contributed to their stock market's artificial bubble. It's not like China is the only one doing it either, both the US and Europe have and are generating a lot of magic money from money printing and super low interest rates which immediately looks for a return in property (hence the ludicrous bubbles in many cities eg houses being sold four times in three months, with 33% appreciation...) or the stock market. It's supposed- kind of, at least- to contribute to more 'real world' 'productive' investment instead of 'theoretical' stuff, but the theoretical stuff has a far larger return so that's where most of the money goes whether it be China or anywhere else.

They're almost certainly using Ubisoft's in house 2d engine rather than Onyx. The look of the engine is the look of the TV series and that isn't difficult to mimic since they have the base resources from the TV series available, as well as any graphics resources Obsidian developed. Ubisoft does have a pretty good 2d engine- used for Child of Light and a Rayman game plus a supposed forthcoming PoP title- of their own available, there's no reason they'd licence Onyx as it would be unnecessary expense.

Everybody's TPP strategy is to keep it on the down low. The current security situation for reading it is not that far off viewing top secret material- no recording or electronic devices, no note taking, very limited number of people able to view it even under those conditions. That seems to be entirely about being able to waffle vaguely about it being 'transparent' and 'beneficial' with a perfect excuse for being vague about how plus claim it won't have negatives; and to shut down questioning since there's no detail. From what has been leaked of the text it's perfectly clear it has little if anything to do with 'free trade' that's for sure, but for joe public reading even the bits that have been leaked requires a visit to wikileaks.

Selling on your own website also has discoverability issues, whatever system is being used. Even in a theoretic 'flat' system where you start off without a steam/ itunes/ amazon or whatever you still have dozens/ hundreds/ thousands of potential vendors and little meaningful method of sorting them short of a self reinforcing and gameable popularity type sorting method which is likely to lead to the system we have now one way or another. You're still going to end up with some sort of skewed system because information sorting is an inherently hierarchical process- else it wouldn't be sorting- and people are not pure economic animals seeking the best mutual deal, many will settle for a decent deal/ product which is convenient over a better one that takes more effort to find.

Everybody who says that would be wrong. Theoretically near every economic system is 'fair and free' because that is what sells it to the masses who, whatever the system, will inevitably be the ones at the bottom. Yes, this is the silly argument that socialists would have to make in order to "say exactly the same thing" about socialism, but no, it's not the argument I'm making. Well.. we'll see. Frankly, I am expecting as idealised a system as 'perfect' socialism or any other kind of theoretical -ism but I'm open to persuasion. Well, I've seen, and I'm not persuaded. It's about as idealised a system as it's possible to get; where the magic hand of the market waves and everything is fair and free with no barriers, no conmen, no power aggregation or monopolies created and the glories of hard work and reticence are rewarded as they so richly deserve and laziness and profligacy are righteously punished. It's pretty much the exact (economic) flip side of anarcho marxism or anarcho syndicalism where it's easy to design a perfectly (theoretically) free and fair socialist system by hand waving- everybody gets an equal slice of the pie doled out monthly/ weekly and is free to spend that pie however they want with strict rules to prevent aggregation or graft; and enforcement officials who can only be elected once or are balloted. Couldn't get more hand waving in a Queen Liz montage- for either idealised system.

Plus socialists would say exactly the same thing (to all practical purposes) about socialism. My ideal system would be so good that no repression would be needed, everybody would be so ecstatic about living in my [econo-societal model] utopia there would be no dissenters and everyone would freely opt in to its intrinsic awesomeness!

Some interesting stats on steam usage and the PC game market via steamspy and the dude who runs its blog. eg only 1.3 million 'core' gamers on steam own 33% of all games there (107+ games); 80% of steam users own four or less games... Though I do suspect that this is one case in which steamspy's methodology breaks down at least somewhat, I'd strongly suspect that 'core' gamers and those with more games are far more likely to set their profile to private (which steamspy cannot see so don't get counted in the stats) than to public, and the stats are skewed towards more casual users as a result.

I'd take that with a grain of salt unless the people actually admit to it. Someone signed our Prime Minister up to the site, there's no authentication required.

The third pack is a bit weird. Menzobarranzan and Dungeon Hack? Does make me wonder if they were going to have Stone Prophet at least included as well.

I would have thought it was over 500k including kickstarter/ slacker backers, probably not quite if you exclude them though. In terms of GOG sales numbers, PoE is doing twice as well there relatively as DivOS is doing- DivOS has 2x the sales on steam but it and PoE have near identical sales ranking on GOG; and KS backers are excluded from those numbers for PoE but not DivOS as well. If we assume steamspy is correct and that Larian would announce one million sales that puts the upper limit of GOG sales for DivOS at around 100k and therefore the upper limit of PoE sales at around 100k as well or roughly 20% of Steam's sales numbers. Particular types of title certainly sell better on GOG than others, eg despite being steam key bundled multiple times System Shock 2 still has more sales on GOG than Steam. But even as someone who dislikes steam it's hard to see GOG getting much more than 20% of sales on a new release title unless there are very specific circumstances for it.

I said it last time this infographic turned up: Lehmann Brothers went bust when Bush jr was still president. I'd almost certainly vote for Sanders were I a citizen of libertyland and find Hillary to be... disingenuous, at best, but it is pretty misleading comparing Hillary's spending from a full term run in 2008 to someone else's spending in a race that hasn't even had a single primary yet.

They don't need the money because DivOS did badly though, they need the money because of other factors- Dragon Commander plus one cancelled game iirc. If DivOS made them $20 million dollars and they had debts of 20 million dollars then they'd only be back to parity despite DivOS's success, it would just have cancelled out the failures. It's like saying that Thief(s) and System Shock 2 failed because LGS went out of business or Saints Row 3 failed because THQ did; actually the companies failed because of self publishing Terra Nova/ a multi title deal with EA that saw no SS2 profits go to LGS and deciding a Wii peripheral would be awsum and a must have on other consoles. You're also misrepresenting things in, ironically, a positively Brucesque fashion. The kickstarted games are not Diablo killers in the way you mean, they just have the consequence that you don't 'have' to lease some festering AAA dreck because there are literally no other RPGs available, a situation which was pretty close to accurate a few years ago.

"YOU DO NOT NEED WOW NUMBERS TO BE A SUCCESS." NO, YOU NEED DIABLO NUMBERS TO BE A SUCCESS. IF YOU DON'T DO DIABLO NUMBERS YOUA RE FAILURE.

His inner Trump would probably have been clotheslining them off the stage, since Trump seems to be treating the entire race as an extended wrestling promo. It's pretty obvious why they chose to crash Bernie's rally, while it may get less attention they are a lot less likely to get stomped by security or be literally or figuratively clotheslined off the stage if they tried the same at a Republican rally or a Clinton Chardonnay Soirée. He's an easy target, basically, and precisely because he is more sympathetic to them.

I'll inevitably back this, despite not having played the first. I will though soon, glorious 150Mb/s connection with a half way sensible data cap means I won't be paying more for the download than for the game any more.

Steam keys have actually worked in some cases, but they aren't supposed to.

It's EA, clearly by 'taxing' they mean that they want to charge you a 'tax' every time you change your power management options- it's a microtransaction but they want to call it by a more acceptable name with better connotations; ie 'tax'.

I pretty much agree with certain differences in emphases, I'd observe that the reverse is also true and calling for censorship on a privately owned site is also baffling. While that isn't what you're doing it is what Bruce is doing. That may be a philosophical difference though as by and large I have far more sympathy with people complaining of censorship than those wanting for others be censored.

The problem with a 'friendly and welcoming community' is that all too often it goes far too far the other direction and becomes the forum equivalent of a Potemkin Village; merely an edifice of civility and niceness with no meaningful discussion at all. People 'getting along with each other' because everyone who doesn't agree with the consensus gets banned- per neogaf, the Bethesda forums etc. You must have the ability to offend when posting, because any opinion is likely to offend someone. And it isn't just about offending people just for the sake of it, it does serve a purpose of sorts. Anyone who gets offended easily will not be able to contribute anything but drama at the codex anyway, better for all concerned that they don't go there or don't stay long. Rather surprisingly it works well* to promote discussion precisely because the people there don't get offended at every little thing; about the only opinion you don't find there much at all is the censorious one, for obvious reasons. *So long as obvious drama threads and posters are avoided, at least.

In this case that is a point on a parallel argumentary line, since no one is saying that people have the right to say whatever they want wherever they want, just that censorship doesn't work. You can easily agree that someone has the right to do something without thinking that they should do that something. The fundamental difference between here and the codex is that the codex isn't trying to sell you games. Well, except its steam curator/ Infinitron and at least theoretically they don't benefit financially from that. Obsidian is though, they have a vested interest in not needlessly offending customers, conversely the codex revels in offending any and all delicate unique snowflakes as part of its unique appeal- and that is in very large part why people say those offensive things, precisely because people like Bruce will profess to have their panties bunched by it. Personally I always make the distinction between little c and big C censorship. If censorship is fairly applied and 'sensible' it almost always falls under the little c subset. I may think the naughty word filter is a bit silly for example but it isn't a big deal. And we can hardly say that there's no trolling going on on these forums.

I very much doubt that he actually has the 'core beliefs' that would allow such a progression. He was never an actual nazi, he just said stuff at the codex to seem cool- and failed at that, given that a lot of the codex 'nazism' is people taking the mick out of the few people there who do believe in it or people who take enazism dead serious and get offended. Similarly he almost certainly was never an actual sjw, he swapped sides after GG attacked his income streams/ advertising and pointed out some... potential irregularities in his competitions. It was almost immediately after that he went silent on the sjw stuff. His prior behaviour has also shown a propensity towards broad commercial interests over beliefs, eg his contributions to reddit where he was caught shilling and his about face on Hellgate: London.

Yeah, Rex is a weathervane, that's really his only significance and always has been. His volte face simply means that he sees the proGG- or perhaps anti sjw more accurately- as 'winning' in the area which is important to him, nothing more.

The Soros style attacks don't work unless the government props up the currency artificially, as with trying to keep the pound in the ERM. Given the disaster that the Euro is the UK should probably be saying thank you to Soros anyway, I know I would be. We had an attack on our currency a few years ago, our reserve bank let them run out of steam then bought up lots of nzd at 60USc to sell off when the currency reached 87USc; nice profit, thanks guys. Same thing happened with Russia late last year/ early this year. Do it right and while there may be some short term problems longer term the country makes money because the currency is being artificially devalued and will rebound.

Exactly the same thing is happening here. My sister's house has appreciated 30% in a year, theoretically great for her except all the houses have appreciated near that much or more so unless she wants to cash up and move to Nightcaps* it's only of theoretical benefit to her. The government refuses completely to monitor who is buying the houses so it's pretty obvious they know what is happening, and there is an artificial housing/ accommodation crisis. The real problem is that the Chinese investor class is greater than our entire population, plus our lack of capital gains tax or stamp duty; first is an absolute must and has been for ages but it's political poison because property owners as a whole are selfish morons. Plus, because cow juice has fallen in price we keep getting interest rate cuts. I wish the effects of the Chinese government's need to meddle was limited to their own market and their own very obvious bubble share market- which has only dropped to its value in March/ April, and is still up around 70%, year on year- and wasn't infecting everywhere else as well. I don't know if there is going to be an actual crash, it seems more likely that China will simply shut down the market or otherwise apply controls but China has always been a rather contrived success story. Not at the bottom end where very genuine improvements have happened, but their insistence on constant extreme growth rates via artificial mechanisms is likely to make the correction a lot more extreme, when it does happen. *famous for selling houses for $50, no missing zeroes, in the 1980s.

If you truly believe that then boy, you've swallowed the Antizionist narrative deeply. David ben-Gurion admitted to it being a matter of policy in his book, and he certainly wasn't an antizionist. And Israel regularly voted in Lehi/ Stern Gang members- overt ethnic cleansers and overt terrorists- into positions as high as Prime Minister; Menachem Begen and Yitzhak Shamir, as well as Ariel Sharon who was found guilty of complicity in actual genocide against Palestinians.