Zoraptor

Planetscape: Tournament: Enhanced Edition with added dialogue and content from their new employee, Chris Avellone.

They put up with it because the balance from the $7 (or whatever it now is) licensing fee is getting a below cost/ below effective cost console. If you buy a console and then only buy second hand rather than new software for it they don't get that licensing fee and you don't pay it anyway. The console is- essentially- an equivalent to selling an automatic fly spray dispenser below actual cost because once sold the person is likely to buy lots of refill cylinders for it. Though the console can also do other non essential value added stuff too, as MS rather overemphasised during their initial on3 presentations. PC does have similar (in effect/ result) practices which are put up with too- CPU throttling and even turning cores off, video card rebranding so the 8800 exists in four different 'generations' and the like, large profit margins for premium cards etc. They're different economic models since PC has no central authority to charge license money*, they want to fit budget, medium and high range product ranges in to maximise coverage and profits and they'll massage their product lines to achieve that, if necessary. If they felt they could license graphics cards- and they'll likely try at some stage- via a below cost sale and periodic fee they would do so. Fortunately that is practical anathema at present. *Well, there's the 30% that a DD vendor will take off every sale on PC, which is considerably more than the ~10% licensing fee. But it isn't levied by a central authority unless you count steam as such.

The latter is referring to the 'entitlement' argument, I believe, why do gamers feel entitled to... a working game, refunds, whatever. It's an utterly illogical shilltastic argument, but it is also very common, depressingly so. Basically, it isn't a problem with the journalists or the product, it's just a problem generated (unfairly) by those complaining. More generally, the big difference between journalists and interested parties of any sort is that you don't really have an expectation of 'ethics' from an interested party, like a game publisher, their obligation is not to be 'ethical' but to make money, publicise the game or if the interested party is an 'interest group' rather than a commercial one, to push their agenda. Companies will be ethical so long as it's compatible with making money, legalities and (to an extent) with generating intangibles like goodwill, but there's no real expectation of anything beyond that. That is why publishers sometimes tend to get lesser flak over such issues- though for Arkham Knight WB is still getting massive, and deserved, flak- people simply expect them not to really have their best interests at heart, whatever they say. In contrast, journalists, at least theoretically, do have an obligation to ethics and to 'the truth' rather than to making money- they fundamentally ought to be a disinterested party. Ill thought out arguments against refunds parroting those made by others and ignoring that piracy will always be cheaper and easier than refund rigmarole strongly suggest that the person is not a disinterested party but an interested one. From a disinterested/ logical viewpoint there's very little to dislike about a refund policy, especially on a DRM system like Steam where removal of the refunded goods can be enforced.

To put it in perspective, if someone decided to pull all movies from their store featuring the Confed Battle Flag it would include movies such as Glory, if they pulled all TV series it would be toodles to Ken Burns' Civil War series etc. Every time corporates pander to sjws their knee comes straight out through the top of their desk- though its utterly unsurprising a hipster sjw outfit (slave labour based production notwithstanding and to be ignored, can't have sjw without the requisite hypocracy after all) like Apple knee jerks like they've been wired up to mains electricity if they think there's some PR in it. Plus as others have pointed out, veneration of the confed flag is a symptom, not a cause and this is all feel good treatment of an easy symptom because dealing with the cause is hard, might require some self examination and require some actual changes to be implemented after some proper thought is put into it. Far easier to blame anything else and pretend that it can be fixed by hand waving.

Could have at least picked some gaming examples instead of Rocky. Did Mike Thorton give up after he was betrayed by his employers, nearly killed and had everyone under the sun misspelling his name? No, he persevered and kept going, succeeded then went off on a speedboat into the sunset with his love interest. And yes, I'm counting Steve Heck as a love interest, he's the most bromantic guy in existence. Evils of capitalism? Try playing Baldur's Gate where your equipment falls apart and you're trying to scrape up the money to get a resurrection from those extortionate Goldman-Sachs wannabe charlatans- but no, if you actually disbelieve you're going to The Wall, and not that cushy Game of Thrones winter holiday park wall either. To quote the well known libertarian and agnostic Ronald Reagan: Mr Kelemvor, tear down that wall!- in the local temple of Ilmater where despite being a destitute dragging several corpses around while half naked I need more signs of impoverishment to get a simple resurrect- that's real hardship. And where if you have SCS the enemies are all horrendous goose stepping powergaming munchkins, let alone that for the first dozen hours you're one critical hit from an xvart away from restarting or needing a resurrect. Still, persevere and you yourself can become a god, or retire happily with your love interest. Who will still get brutally killed if she's black, whatever you do. System Shock 2? You can't even simply pull the trigger on a shotgun half the time and have to hit people with a plumbing implement, and when you can pull the trigger the evils of capitalism and its lowest bid mentality mean it will stop working after a dozen or so shots then you get eaten by a bloody over sized spider or a howler monkey a supposed scientist describes as a 'chimp'. But persevere and you get... Ken Levine saying 'nah' in a poor in game engine video and a hook for a non existent sequel. Maybe not the best example. But hey, don't sell the rights to Sunset, you never know if the game might sell 1.4 million copies*, fifteen years after it would have been useful! Planescape Torment? You're a complete dong, albeit an amnesiac one, who has asterisked up the multiverse and has to live with that over and over. Or go fight in a perpetual (until a later edition tamely ends it, at least) war, forever, in penance. Merely quitting the game industry is pretty tame in comparison to fighting a perpetual demonic war, so chin up. *Seriously, System Shock 2 has sold 1.4 million copies since its re-release.

While steamspy isn't 100% accurate, it is a close approximation. As a game developer, I can confirm that the numbers on steamspy for our game is very close to the numbers that were sold on steam. Well, are you saying that he didn't get his "kickstarter backer" numbers from Steamspy after all, then? I mean they are obviously wrong as the numbers presented by the game devs themselves in the actual games are, of course, unimpeachable. If I had to guess the 80k for DivOS could come from early access + kickstarter, ie people who owned the game before its 'official' release. Of course, I'm not up to date on whether that is publicly queryable data, I'd assume so for a public profile but I don't use steam so can't really check. Easy for someone else to though, if a game has a 'purchased on' date visible it would be trivial to get early access sales numbers. In any case Steamspy ought to be pretty accurate in most cases, statistically speaking it's doing the same thing as political opinion polling. Its inaccuracies will be the intrinsic sampling error all polling has, which is why some sales figures seem to go down sometimes; and whether there is a fundamental systemic bias in profile availability, ie it can only poll public profiles, not private ones. If there is a substantive number of private profiles and a significant difference between what they vs what public ones own then you get inaccurate estimates, not really anything that can be done to fix that sort of error either.

I'd not seen that, i've just looked up the clip on Youtube and must say I might purchase the Blu-Rays and starting watching the Next generation if they're of the same quality as shown there. Thank you. That is a very well regarded 2 part episode (unsurprisingly it's one of my favourites) so they definitely aren't all that quality- especially so in season 1, so be warned there. Overall though TNG is well worth a watch and has held up pretty well.

The Star Trek version of that was rather good even if you knew it was derivative, always nice to see Patrick Stewart and David Warner working together. Though their best known video game efforts could scarcely be more disparate quality wise (Emperor from Oblivion vs Irenicus from BG2). I find it very difficult to have a reasonable conversation.. Well done Bruce, self realisation is the first step!

Pretty sure that Brain Fargo was making complaints about metacritic bonuses and similar practices beforehand, with Avellone just confirming they applied to Obsidian/ FONV. Most of the stuff that would potentially annoy Beth/ Zenimax actually came from Fargo as part of his pitch for WL2, iirc, as he used Obsidian as an example to whip up some anti publisher frenzy. In any case, while there are plenty of examples of very sharp practice coming from Beth/ Zenimax (including the metacritic stuff but also accusations of constructively bankrupting/ trying to bankrupt developers so they could buy them up cheap and save on costs; per Arkane where it worked and Human Head where it didn't) the accusation that they got MCA fired seems extremely unlikely- not least because Obsidian doesn't seem to have enough spare staff to be doing a nuFallout scale project if more than half are on Armoured Warface [sic, but I'm not changing that typo].

Nah, the difference in attitudes is more from one side of the hater/ fanboy continuum. If you went to the codex pre about 2007 you might get the impression that many hated Fallout 2 and BG2, but many also liked them. In general the same people still like them, the haters just hate them less. Which is understandable really, if you hated F2 because it was too silly or whatever you'd certainly have a far better target for your hate in F3, now, and that has quite logically shifted attitude to F2 as being at least less bad than F3. Of the new recent RPGs the vast majority of them have been well received (in general) by the codex: DivOS, Lords of Xulima, Serpent.., somewhat more equivocal for WL2. The only game that has taken a big hit is PoE and games that aren't really aimed at the codex at all like DAI, and many of the criticisms levelled at those two at the codex have been had elsewhere including here as well.

I'd suspect Ubisoft did OK out of it, while it took a long time a lot of that time/ money was put into it under THQ and Ubi bought it from them for only 3.2M$. On the other hand, no next gen version suggests it didn't sell well enough to justify them financing that version. That list is probably right though, except perhaps PoE and that hasn't been out long.

The term 'movement' is a rather subjective one and is a sliding scale depending on personal opinion but to my mind you need three things to have a movement 1) an organisation, and crucially self identification of members with that organisation 2) an agenda 3) external recognition Both groups fulfil those three criteria, imo. I can see how people might disagree with the organisation crierion, since neither has a particularly set hierarchical structure or with them having an agenda since there is a fair bit of methodology wiggle and variation in goals within those groups, I simply disagree with those conclusions. My counterpoints would be that you don't need a strong hierarchy to have an organisation- and certainly not to have a movement- you just need it to be organised enough to be broadly identifiable and coherent; and you don't need everyone to agree wholly with an agenda- the Democratic Party doesn't stop being an organisation if some vote for and some against the TPPA, they just have to generally agree. Both sides have reddit groups and do stuff on facebook or twitter and organise campaigns and the like, both sides largely self identify as the 'positive' version of their group (eg 'pro gamer' or 'progressive' or 'feminist') and both sides (and to a reasonable extent, people outside those groups) broadly speaking recognise each other as distinct groups.

Yeah, which is why if I were really pushed to pick the most accurate (though perhaps least inaccurate would be fairer) label I'd call the 'Cultural Marxism' phenomenon 'Cultural Fascism' instead due to the belief that some people are just inherently 'bad' due solely to the accident of birth. To be fair though, they don't really have identity as being immutable, hence the number of mtf transsexuals who are sjws and who are readily accepted. That's a pretty large change to require for acceptance though, certainly. They're definitely a movement every bit as much as gamergate is, they'd just label themselves as being 'for social justice' or 'progressives' or whatever instead of being the rather more perjorative 'sjw' their opponents call them. That's pretty much the same as GGers calling themselves 'pro Gamer' instead of 'GooberGobblers'. Nope, it should have been managed a whole lot better though and the world would be by far the better for it. But in any case few actual Marxists have a hard on for the USSR, rather appropriately it was far more about absolutism than class struggle or anything else, as Eric Blair Orson Welles showed so well in 'Animal Farm'. I'm way incompatible with soviet 'communism' and actual Marxism anyway, I always come out as a left libertarian on political tests- you're far closer to the USSR's actual philosophy than I am.

Firstly, a timer is not a railroad. A railroad is what it implies, a forced progression of A->B->C where you have no choice in the matter whatever. Gameplay wise it tends towards linear corridors or the actual rail shooter, narrative wise it's a non branching story. While the waterchip is effectively a choke point decision you have a wide range of different approaches prior to that. If you take that as a railroad then any narrated game is a railroad except ones with an emergent narrative- BG2 has a 'railroad' where you need to raise money and have to go to Spellhold even if you hate Imoen, Planetscape: Tournament you have to go after Ravel who has to die, Awesome Brotocols you have to return to the AP base at the end, Ultima But Thou Must, VTMB LaCroix forces you to obey him etc etc. None of them are actual railroad narratives though, they are just points at which the narrative meanders rejoin into the main stream; something with an actual railroad narrative would be, say, FEAR because every time you play it it has an identical, linear progression where the only choice is to progress in a predetermined manner, or stand still permanently, or quit. Secondly, the main reason why F1 and F2 have better narratives than F3 is not just because F3's story makes no sense and is an illogical mess of cliché and what Bethesda thought would be cool- the main plot in F1 and F2 certainly has elements of cliché and what would be cool itself after all- it is that every town has a story which is at least reasonably well thought out and internally consistent; F3's in contrast are almost all theme parks with one problem that can usually be solved in an utterly trivial manner. The actual world design of F3 is certainly its saving grace at least up until the point you get bored of it, but its narrative is just awful.

The crucial word being absolutist, which is not exclusive to Marxist doctrines by any stretch at all, not exclusive to Marx and most certainly not invented by him. Might as well say that it's Cultural Randism because of the absolutist producer/ parasite type labels she applied to people, or Cultural Torquemadism, or Cultural Fascism. Absolutist theory is completely left/ right agnostic, rightists just like using Cultural Marxism as to them anything left = bad, because it jerks knees or because they're lazy. The phenomenon labelled 'Cultural Marxism' does exist though, it's just that the label name itself is inaccurate propaganda, at best.

Yeah, the PoE expansion is basically confirmed as an announcement. Poorly kept 'secret' anyway since it was an added extra of the kickstarter. Doesn't seem like anything else except perhaps some Armoured Warfare stuff is imminent though: "Armored Warfare [tank MMO] is looking great, hitting more than 15K simultaneous people playing it last week; [the Pillars of] Eternity [Expansion] has a ton of cool new things; and we'll have a couple of fun things to announce in the next few months." Ah, Orwellian refers to ORson WELLes, I always wondered where it came from.

Wonder why... Because Ubisoft generally uses internal studios and inherited sp: tsot with Obsidian from THQ when they went bust. It's about as surprising as Assassin's Creed: Iteration being made by an internal Ubisoft studio.

Well, it is at least somewhat refreshing to hear a 'journalist' admit he's just a glorified governmental PR person even if it is simultaneously rather depressing that he basically just wrote what he was told as tritely as someone from 1938 Pravda denouncing an unperson would. Indeed, the lack of threat of receving a 7.62x25 to the skull from Beria if you refused makes it considerably worse.

Some GoT/ asoiaf book spoilers below, may or may not turn out to be show relevant

So, there's going to be a new South Park, and it's being made by Ubisoft San Francisco? Is this the thing you earthlings call irony or will the game implode in a cloud of smug? (bonus: I always have a laugh at wikipedia's "too many primary sources!!!" complaints)

His leaks didn't benefit Russia or China at all, practically- plenty of perfectly normal people had a good idea of what the NSA et al were doing, you can guarantee that the FSB/ SVR and equivalent Chinese agencies especially knew what was up. The famous example is Putin, ex FSB, who is known to be almost impossible to monitor because he avoids electronic communications as much as possible on principle, and always has. The only benefit to them was people knowing their governments were a bunch of privacy invading panty sniffers and the resulting drop in regard for those countries- it's suddenly not mass monitoring but mass collection, because they aren't going to look at it, promise; using the absolute classic pedophile defence technique. If there's any practical benefit to Russia/ China it is from the pretty terrible security of the agencies collecting all the data that the NSA uses to monitor people, and there's nothing Snowden can do about that, indeed it's been one of his major points that they weren't using proper security and had very lax monitoring, per the stories of contractors passing around nudes and spying on their partners or exes with impunity. And again, they haven't cracked aes256, it's as definite as anything can be. The anonymous source is clearly lying about the source of any leak. Frankly, if they'd broken aes256 and had a list of spies (monumentally stupid if there even was one) then it would be too late to move them anyway. Cracking aes256 would go a long way to bringing down the financial system even without evidence of an active breach, the necessity of security and the appearance of security is that serious. In general though, they are relying on people being gullible with these sorts of stories. Same as the Miranda "we found his password written down!!!- actually we can't crack his file" and the Assange/ Manning "people are dying because of this!!!- actually nobody has died" they're perfectly willing to lie in the knowledge most people will just accept whatever they say. But still, I know it makes me feel secure, knowing the same people who lie blatantly for their own benefit and protection have access to everything everyone has said online, clearly they'd never abuse it...

any more details on that? Take with grain of salt. It's well pre E3 and they certainly got the Andromeda part right though.

.. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky .. Bit of a nitpick but StalkerCS actually does have health regen, I'm playing it at the moment and it's definitely there. It's certainly not as fast as in most fps though, would take about 5 minutes to go from ouchiepuffed to full health. It's a bit silly, but nowhere near as silly/ annoying as those asterisking grenades and every random enemy being a professional trick thrower.

I think I really would have preferred if the albinos had bought it rather than the McCawleys, they're the most illogically plotted group of the lot and really ought to have died last season. Defiance is perhaps the worst plotted serial I've seen, they have a habit for writing themselves into corners and dropping threads or having weird or no consequences on a week to week basis. Still, it's oddly enjoyable and consistently entertaining even at its worst.

Yeah, that is presumably what Bethesdanet or whatever their new steam clone is called is at least partly for. The problem with that dialogue system is minimal compared with the likely quality problem of the writing itself. If the writing is "Have you seen my dad, middle aged guy?" quality again it hardly matters what the dialogue system is, if the writing is good then the system may be a bit limiting, but shouldn't be a major problem.