Zoraptor

There was some indirect help from the US aligned- Misha's Georgia wasn't particularly keen on shifting some Chechen camps from its territory, the usual suspects for supporting muslim radicalism supplied the Chechens with weapons, and the US press was... somewhat partisan, and less understanding with regards to the Russian approach to Grozny than it was to the US's very similar approach to Fallujah a decade later. But what won the Chechens round 1 was Russian stupidity coupled to their general unity- not any outside support- what lost them round 2 was that by that point there was no Chechen unity, and a far more effective Russian approach. When it comes right down to it the US actually used the Russian's MKII approach to stabilise (well, 'stabilise') things in Iraq by buying off the locals that could be bought to help fight the ones that couldn't. The pipeline is a bit ironic as well, since as much as there are people convinced that the Chechen/ SC problems are sponsored to effect the northern pipeline there were also people convinced that the War of South Ossetian Liberation was all about the Russkies blowing up the new Baku pipeline. As for the two suspects, at this point it's pretty pointless speculating about their motivations and how much their ethnicity and background played into things. The Caucasus would certainly not be the best place to grow up, but they also had a decade in the US which is overall a very good place to grow up.

"You're not going to believe this. They killed 16 Czechoslovakians. Guys were interior decorators"

Probably Sega then, given the Relic connection. (I've actually been told it's CDProjekt. But I'm pretty sure my leg is being pulled...)

Depends on how it is done and what the laws of the country are. Peter Jackson sued (successfully) New Line for profit shares of the LotR movies that they tried to obfuscate, for example, but there are multiple examples of people not having the money to dispute such things- often precisely because they've been stiffed by Hollywood Accounting.

It came off as a rant to me as well, which is why I stuck it here. My presumption was that the Greenlight thread should be kept, uh, 'clean' since it is what it is and the system has to be dealt with as it is. No point obscuring any projects that deserve publicity beneath yet another steam argument. When it comes right down to it they need consistent- and consistently applied- guidelines for submission and a transparent approval process, for a company that wants to control the PC market it does not fill one with any confidence whatsoever to look at greenlight and see that they have a system with obvious flaws, several of which could be fixed with almost no effort whatsoever. If you want to do that you have to be fair and not cherry pick stuff that benefits you only, as you've made it so that other people's livelihood's depend on your whims. And some of their criteria are just utterly baffling. Drakensang from ValuSoft is on steam, Drakensang from dtp has to go through greenlight- and they're the exact same game. Why, Valve? Why? If Steam did not have such a dominant market position their arbitrariness wouldn't matter, but they do, so it does. It isn't a fundamentally terrible system in theory, but the implementation is woeful and it is specifically designed to maximally benefit Valve as they still get to apply whatever criteria they like but can send everything else to greenlight, and it saves them money by getting the general public to filter games for them. And if people complain about being declined? "Not Valve's fault, you don't have enough votes!" thus shifting blame from Valve to the apathetic fans/ unpopular game. It's also good, free, market research, same as getting people to 'like' facebook pages. And it rubs me up the wrong way as it's more special snowflake treatment for steam that it would not get away with if it had smaller market share. There will never be a perfect system since 'deserving' games is a subjective criterion and many of the factors involved cannot be looked at objectively, but at present and as above, Valve shows little interest in fixing even the most obvious issues.

For reference, that Gamersgate bundle is identical to the individual GOG versions; they all use the GOG installer but have a unified download.

Greenlight: an ingenious way to avoid the responsibilities and costs of Valve's closed marketplace (ffs, you'd think with their market share they could actually employ some people to vet games) while garnering goodwill for the 'openness' of their approval process. Which is still a lottery of one off, arbitrary, no greenlight needed approvals based on god knows what; games that are already on steam having, arbitrarily to submit (Drakensang/ RoT); submission guidelines that, arbitrarily, apply to some but not all; some developers that already have multiple titles on steam having, arbitrarily, to submit (eg Wadjet Eye) while others, arbitrarily, don't; and at the end it's still the same old, arbitrary, selection that results in borderline scams/ crapware like WarZ getting a no questions asked pat on the back Special Backstage Pass while far more deserving games are ignored. Why anyone has any confidence in Valve as the arbiters of PC gaming is quite beyond my comprehension. Yeah, was going to post that in the Greenlight thread, but don't want to overly offend any tender sensibilities.

I don't think they made it here, I know they had some involvement from the original writers (and some of the original actors), and I've heard good things of them. We have had weird licensing issues here, DVDs of Blake's 7 are $100 a series, about 4-5x what a season of GoT/ Breaking Bad/ similar costs. The named writer for the reboot is one of the writers for Heroes. If it had been mainly writing for season 1 that might be a positive but from what I've heard he was mainly season 2-4, which weren't great.

I don't particularly dislike the idea of new JA games without ex-SirTech input- and they sound a lot better than BiA- but I am not very likely at all to contribute. The Shadowrun thing has soured me towards any publisher influenced KS, I'm not particularly keen on BitComposer using KS as funding for their IPs (or buying up stuff post KS really, though I'm a lot less negative on that front; it's free and risk free money for them so understandable they try it on) and I'm not particularly keen on BC after their attempt to gazump the rights to Stalker- along with accusations they hadn't paid due royalties for CoP. Does make me wonder if it was BitComposer who approached Feargus about doing a kickstarter for them prior to P: E

Yep, same as Bioshock Original; set in a decaying underwater city and there's zero swimming or pretty much anything else involving water, they show big, uh, surfacescrapers in the cutscenes/ waterboxes but the levels are pretty much all standard flat sprawling x/y levels. It's very pretty and has very good art direction, but after a while plausibility/ belief suspension starts fraying badly and the whole thing ends up feeling, well, shallow and, um, lacking in depth. In some ways that (and the plotting) is actually worse than the alternative as it reminds you that it could have been genuinely excellent, but isn't. It's rather like going to a Michelin starred restaurant and being served poisson et frites. It may be dressed up nicely and cost a lot to make, and even tastes nice enough really, but it is, at heart, just more fish and chips.

I believe the overemphasis on Cristopher Ecclestone's gurning is also lamented - at considerable length - by Armando Ianucci. From the description and as Karen Gillen ain't middle aged it must have been Tate/ Tennant rather than Ecclestone- who did a pretty decent job considering every episode of his except those with gasmasks was terrible. Especially those with fart jokes and laughable green aliens. My main problem with nuWho was Russel T Davies' I think, more deus ex via 'Power of Love' than Frankie Goes to Hollywood's third most well known song. For both his run and Moffat's the best episodes have been from independent writers rather than the core team, ironically most of the early ones from Moffat himself (saw The Girl in the Fireplace recently and noted the parallels to the later Pond storyline) but the Curtis and Gaiman eps from the Smith (who I like a lot as the Doctor) era were my favourites. And tangentially related, there's a Blake's 7 remake that has been approved for Syfy. Can't say I'm overly enthused at what I've heard of it but since I had Avon as my avatar for ages pre Macho Man I feel obligated to mention it.

That's the problem with all the Bioshock games, and to an extent System Shock 2 as well. I don't have much of a problem with Ken Levine as a writer as he's far better than most writing for video games but he does have rather a tendency to end up ultimately disappointing, even if it's mainly disappointment that it 'should have ended up better than it did' rather than it being bad as an absolute. But gameplay wise they're the equivalent of Bethesda for story- heaps of options heaps of breadth, but zero depth.

I've got no problems at all with how Eisenwald handled things, and them I would definitely have contributed to if the International Date Line wasn't difficult (in fact they're the main reason why I don't wait to the last day to contribute any more). Any [contributor] who doesn't, er, expect unexpected problems is a bit naive, so long as they're honest about it it's fine. Some using KS are a bit inured to the old/ standard publisher style ways of doing things though- something that does not work well if your model relies mainly on goodwill.

The Bam (which is an awesome name for a city) quake killed tens of thousands, and ruined a rather nice mud brick castle rather badly. I think only Haiti or Sumatra (indirectly) in the last decade or so were definitely worse in terms of casualties.

There isn't much offensive in the thread, IIRC- though given the subject of the game there's a fair bit of Edginess whenever it comes up- mainly there was a very long, very pointless and very boring back and forth immediately prior. I've regularly gone for digital tier rewards on a 4GB monthly plan, so I pretty much regard anything contributed as a gift, which I may get reciprocated at some vague point in the future. A lot of people contribute to such things on the principle of the matter though, whether it be no publishers, DRM free or whatever and they will be upset if their principles get betrayed. If I'd contributed to Expeditions I'd probably be peeved mightily at the delay and the reasons for it, and be very suspicious of the 'unsolicited' addition of MP; but I don't fundamentally care about using BC to get onto Steam (so long as it doesn't mean Everyone Gets to Benefit!!!, I think at this point everyone understands wanting to circumvent the Greenlight Lottery) and I'm willing to cut them some slack on the other issues. OTOH, I'd want a refund from HBS, as I don't see them as having either much integrity or much competence by this point.

Some interesting discussion at the Codex on kickstarter related issues. It's primarily related to Expeditions: Conquistador and them picking up BitComposter as a publisher but it is worth a read, features Vault Dweller, someone from LoEisenwald and a guy from BitComposer on his own time. Their 'Kickstarter Drama' news thread is also worth a read, though much of it has been more or less covered in the Shadowrun thread here. ***For anyone unfamiliar with the Codex be aware that there may be bad language and people who make you feel stupid andor despair for the future of the human race. Discretion and an ability not to Take Things Too Seriously always advised*** though the linked thread is almost entirely fine on those regards. [edit: specifically, go forward in the pages from the linked p25 to avoid any tardery]

I certainly won't dispute that the 7 million figure was laughable, there was a time when TR was a genuinely AAA+ property and might realistically have got those numbers but those days are long gone. Their expectations seem to be all over the place though, both SD and Hitman 'failed' as well, DXHR (which had 4+ years development, a new studio etc etc) supposedly did OK without actually selling that well, and DS3 met expectations on a lower budget. For TR specifically there might be some baggage wrt to it being originally a part of Eidos, though that would be true for DXHR as well- and the problems with the bread and butter FF franchise can hardly help so there may be some wishful thinking involved in finding a replacement/ backup.

Yeah, there are two issues: Did TR make money in an isolated sense? and Did TR make the money it needed to make? We know the answer to the second question, the first would be conjecture. The first is to an extent irrelevant though- despite me bemoaning it being a 'failure' despite 3.4 million sales- as TR is part of Squenidos and has to exist that way until sold off or the company fails. If they need it to sell 7 million copies, even with the proviso that that is a silly number based on a 'value' for TR that has been gone for years, then half of that is a 'failure' even if in isolation it made money.

They're at least partially publicly listed though, aren't they? They took over a company (Optimus?) specifically to get on the Polish stock exchange and a quick check suggests they have shares for sale.

Tomb Raider sold 3 million+ copies though, didn't it? In that case it's rather difficult to characterise that as 'failure', there aren't many games ever that have sold better. The failure part has to be the expectations and cost control that mean that 3 million+ is not profitable, else 99% of all games ever made are failures and there are a handful of successes; Assassin's Creed/ BF/ CoD/ Diablocraft/ Skyrim/ GTA etc. That fundamentally cannot be a sustainable situation. Either argument is a bit circular (we need to spend more to compete, and get more sales! We need to spend less, to budget against lower sales numbers!) though.

Yeah, Morrowind (which I quite like otherwise) was terrible in its implementation, shame that Bethesda made such a cop out 'fixing' the problem though. I don't really have a preference for any of those types except as above, they all can work well in different situations. As with most things the good or bad is mostly in the implementation, how well, how consistently and how appropriately it is handled.

Clearly the game name needs to be changed to Torment: Numenera Numenity then; publisher backed market research suggests that's a far better name. The sequel can be called Torment: Numenera 2 though.

They're less complicated if using checkpoints, as there are fewer coordinates and they don't need things like AI states and positions to be taken into account. As a consequence they're also (potentially a lot) smaller in terms of memory requirements. It's pretty weak reasoning though- you'd hope that sort of attitude was not applied elsewhere.

They should have dressed up the checkpoint system as being a defence against save scumming, really.

If you want a rogue specifically for the trap skills Safiya's familiar can detrap etc and you can pick a different class. Having said that, I played a rogue(/swashbuckler, iirc) last time without any problems.