Zoraptor

Which episode of Buffy/ Angel is that from? I did rather like Legend of the Seeker TV, and not just because seeing local actors hamming it up at the Hunua Falls or Piha is always amusing.

There actually is a monetary reason to kickstart as well. While there are cheap pledge options, but a lot of people dish out far larger pledges than they'd ever normally spend on a game (I know I did). The average pledge for PoE was about $54, that's a better deal than they're getting from current sales. KS also has a lower cut than 'traditional' pre order systems. Pre order through GOG or Steam and they'll take 30% of the $40 price themselves so Obsidian or whoever is only getting 28$ of that money (minus Paradox's publisher cut too for non backer site PoE pre orders) while KS takes a far smaller proportion. That is somewhat balanced by needing more admin for KS and especially any physical rewards but still, it is ~45$ nett per kickstarter pledge which you can also earn interest/ use of money on vs $28 at most per normal pre order. In many ways once you've got the stuff set up for handling a kickstarter you'd be foolish not to run them as basically a pre order system. That is, more or less, how InXile or Harebrained Schemes have been using KS.

lolwut Volo. You're not checking the lists proper like if you cannot find PoE at all. It's ahead of WL2 (significantly) and DivOS (marginally) despite only having had 1 or 2 sales. Put in some effort son. We do know how many DivOS has sold total (1M+), and can extrapolate from SteamSpy how many of those copies were on steam (~850k). As such DivOS 'must' have sold 150k+ on GOG. And since the vanilla PoE SKU alone let alone kickstarter/ royal etc is ahead of DivOS on GOG there 'must' have been 150k++ sales of PoE on GOG.

We do have a pretty good idea of how it would likely be set up from previous similar situations. But yeah, there's a lot of 'likely's and 'typically's necessary and nothing is definitive. To illustrate, Steam actually is a distributor, and they definitely collect their cut before passing the money along. It's most likely the same will happen with Paradox, it's also what happened with boxed copies of Valve games that were distributed by EA, the retail money went to EA then was passed along to Valve. The relationship is not typical publisher/ developer in the FONV mould but that is not the only alternative. Ironically and also to illustrate, Paradox became a publisher because they were originally relying on a distributor themselves, and they believed they were getting diddled out of money by them since the distributor was getting both sales figures and money and they weren't. That's why they/ their owners originally created Gamersgate too.

I'd compare it to taking pre orders, and pre orders without having to pay 30% upfront to steam/ gog + x% to Paradox if they are used as publisher again. In many ways you're dumb if you don't take the 10% KS (or equivalent) cut over the normal pre order one. The only way it's a problem is if you get KS fatigue equivalent for a second project you want to fund at a similar time as may have happened with Bard's Tale for InXile. Though that may also just be a less attractive game than WL or Torment. They could do early pre orders through the backer portal without a KS, but they wouldn't get the advantage of extended coverage that way.

It's definitely not the FONV model, that requires the publisher to own the IP and pay someone to make the game under contract; Obsidian owns the IP and Paradox was involved late when development was well underway and largely funded. But as the publisher the money should first go to Paradox, they would then take their cut and send the balance to Obsidian under whatever terms their agreement specifies. Obsidian would get per sale money, but it would have to go through Paradox to get to them.

The Paradox statement does imply it's Steam only, but doesn't state it outright: "..over half a million players have purchased the game worldwide, making it one of the best-selling games on Steam this year." Though it certainly also says it includes kickstarter backers. Though given it is Paradox I wouldn't put it past them to have forgotten that alternatives to steam exist. The money from PoE almost certainly goes to Paradox first, as they are the publisher. That would exclude KS and backer site sales but would include everything GOG/ Steam/ Origin and non backer site pre orders.

Yep, source with full statement. Though I'd put pretty much any amount of money that PoE has sold closer to 700k to this point than 500k. Paradox may well have only paid out on 500k copies to this point though or as their full release implies it has had 500k steam sales only. Steamspy's methodology is pretty robust and the figures for DivOS don't leave much room for PoE selling less than 150k on GOG.

Proper STV is a great system, us going for mixed member proportional instead when we switched from first past the post was a horrible decision.

I'd suspect there are tax breaks involved, but then I'm pretty cynical.

It's the first time ever it's been all southern hemisphere. Probably shouldn't have been given the admission that the final penalty in the Aus v Scotland game was incorrectly awarded but results are results. Shame really, an Argentina/ Scotland semi would have been a pretty cool result.

"Boring to who [sic]. Our personal opinions are irrelevant."-- Volourn; Avellone working on DivOS2 thread 3 Oct 2015, Obsidian forums Computer & Console subforum. This quote is going to get some usage, I think.

At least Christiansen was less annoying than Jake Lloyd as Anakin. Really though, Sir Laurence Olivier couldn't have spun silk out of the pig's ear prequel dialogue, that and the 'faster, more intense' direction is on Lucas. McGregor and McDiarmid managed to do well despite the material, albeit in McDiarmid's case by playing the panto villain and alternately mugging the audience/ chewing the scenery but Portman, who is a pretty good actor in other things had similar problems to Christiansen in the prequels. As for the trailer, well, it's Star Wars and I have to admit it makes older me feel like I'm ten again so mission accomplished there.

Heh, we've only lost one final, in 1995- in the other ones we didn't even make the final to choke there. Ironically the French are probably the biggest final chokers since they've lost three and won none. Doesn't look like we'll choke this time but then again it didn't look like we would in 1999 either. Bit of a shame for Wales in the first match, especially given their injuries and that they were leading with only five minutes to go.

You'd be best waiting for a discount probably, and unless you're desperate for a game to play. If you didn't like the demo that is usually a good indication. The story does get 'better' the more you play, but the graphics won't and in order for the story to get better you have to want to play; if you don't it won't.

Australia should beat Scotland handily, though Aus weren't exactly stellar against the patched together Welsh and the Scots are one of the few teams actually playing near their potential. RSA should beat Wales as well, would be near 50/50 or slightly to Wales if Wales weren't so badly effected by injury, but they are and in crucial positions. Wouldn't be surprised if Argentina upset Ireland though Ireland would be favourites, Argentina are limited in attack but they also have few weaknesses. ABs should beat France though neither team in that match up has been playing well lately. It's a worse French team than in either 1999 or 2007, but they've got a pretty good chance if the ABs keep playing like they've stuck in 2nd gear for 60 minutes a game, keep dropping the ball and giving away idiotic penalties and yellow cards from players who should know better like Read and McCaw.

Civilisation and Europa Universalis were both originally board games, and fairly well known. It's McIntosh anyway, he'll be hyperbolising same as always.

Various Zidane headbutt gifs were classic- the Mortal Kombat one and the death star destruction ones I remember in particular. I suspect there isn't a person who has played Italy who hasn't wanted to flatten one of the Italians in similar style (and what style) at some point during the match.

Slight over exaggeration, and slight overestimation of how much thought most people actually put into the internet. You get that sort of thing for sports stars getting injured, people actually dying and all sorts in between; doesn't mean they're Iosef Dugashvili reborn it just means that they're a muppet. The internet warrior of 2015 would soil themselves repeatedly and hide under the bed for days if they got the slightest inkling of actual Civil War Russia.

Nah, 99% of the time I just ignore you, so the last thing I'm going to do is trawl through pages of you following Sensuki around from thread to thread or whatever. Much as 99% of the time if there's a game I don't like I ignore it rather than wandering in to (not so) randomly diss it. Just thought people who weren't aware of your background and chip on shoulder with respect to the Codex/ VD etc needed to know where you were coming from.

Would anyone really be interested in criticism of other countries though? I do it a fair bit on here but I don't imagine that people really care much about New Zealand's internal or external policies because we're simply too small, not something you can really accuse the US of being. Fair suck of the sav, cobber, you've got a bonza little country over there and that's fair dinkum.

That rather depends though, if they were planning on selling T shirts or other merchandise with 'Diesel Stormers' on it then it would (or could for general merchandise) be a legit challenge from Diesel. The bigger issue is giving too broad context trademark protection to common words- as with 'Scrolls' or 'Saga'; albeit the 2nd seems to have failed, no more hail to the King Inc if you want to use it- in the first place.

I'd say that if there is one thing kickstarter has shown it's that there is room for a lot of small scale RPGs, it's not like the funding for DivOS(s)/ InXileRPG(s)/ POE or smaller scale stuff like SitS/ LoX means that there's no money to buy AoD, quite the opposite. They aren't really in competition when there's still one release every two months on average, indeed that may well encourage more buyers by getting more traction for the genre overall than the times when you might be lucky to get one RPG release every six months. And of those RPGs listed probably only SitS is in genuine competition with AoD which no one expects to sell even on the WL2/ PoE scale let alone the DivOS one. When it comes to RPGs the Codex is pretty hipsterish, big scandal when they voted DAO as RPG of the year and much navel gazing reflection. They all play Skyrim seven times while feeling dirty about it and claiming to do so only so that they know the enemy and most own consoles too. They're basically a boycott CoD steam group, though entertaining enough. Oh, and Gromnir hates them and has Pavlovian response to anything associated with them. Given Vault Dweller's long time association there it's no surprise he's in here saying how much he hated AoD, it would be a surprise if he weren't.

It went yesterday, sorry. Should really have edited the post to show that but I forgot the grace period for editing had been extended.

With Hillary I cannot shake the feeling that if someone were to write a politician AI it would look a lot like her. Everything seems to be politically calculated, tailored and vetted. It was probably the same with Bill too in practice, but Hillary lacks the charm and skill in delivery that he had. That was evident last time she ran as well, Obama isn't actually the best speech writer nor maker nor is he a particularly good off the cuff orator but he had the big advantage of not sounding as if some PR agent was using him as a ventriloquist's dummy most of the time.