Zoraptor

SMAC is one of the games where I don't think the IP itself really matters as you don't have to call it Alpha Centauri or have Sid Meier involved. Call it Tau Ceti* or Epsilon Eridani or whatever, a rose by any other name smells as sweet. Given what happened with Wasteland there is the possibility of someone buying it from EA, but unless that someone is 2k/ Firaxis the Sid Meier part has to go in any case. *Hmm, have the Many instead of mindworms... He's currently unattached so far as I am aware. He was at Zynga (or some other FB type dev) but left recently.

Budget cuts and terrorism/ world police fatigue from the public means there has to be an enemy to point the guns you want funding for at. Also NSA devices with active 24/7 monitoring at every ISP- for your protection! etc etc. A lot of the China hacking stuff is pretty questionable really, not because it doesn't happen but in the impact. Your awesome new product will inevitably be manufactured or sold in China and as soon as that happens all secrecy goes out the window anyway. It's also perfectly fair when Echelon was monitoring them due to technological advantage, or giving Boeing details of Airbus's tender bids for that matter, so overall the US is just going to have to Deal With It as others have been dealing with it for a long time. Or start an ewar which will do them a lot more damage than the Chinese.

Are EA actually publishing games any more in the 'go out and find an external studio to make game x for $$$ y' sense? I thought pretty much everything (exc EA Partners stuff, which may be defunct anyway) was developed by internal studios now.

Personally I'd find Bioware with the Warhammer licence absolutely hilarious, and if my idea for a dynamo powered by refined butthurt comes to fruition, quite profitable too. It's not like there ain't connections, the WH MMO was done by EA and I hear that a Bioware employee was recently seen getting stuff signed by a prominent space marine. Unfortunately it's an unsourced "trust me guys, I got the good oil" post from a blog, so meh. Internet being the internet I won't have to wait long to try out my dynamo idea though.

I'm sure in that sense it has a purpose, and it's not like discussing it is pointless anyway except in as much as discussing anything on the internet is pointless- there just cannot be any sort of 'unified theory' to come out of it and the ultimate conclusion will always be a general trend rather than something definitive.

ctrl+F5 in firefox should do a hard refresh for a specific page.

Doing a mouseover of those links gives me r00fles, wonder if it was deliberate. And no one seems to have noticed either.

Why are all the rhymes that stick in my mind in terrible taste?

I don't think there's any real benefit to be had by trying to reduce 'how to win a war' to a simple formula- as whatever that formula is there will always be multiple counter examples. Application of successive superior force? Vietnam, where the ARVN/US won pretty much every battle. Better resources? Same really, but with more counterexamples. Will to win? Too often trumped by sheer weight of numbers, I doubt Poland had any less will to fight than Germany in WW2 and the Zulu had far better will to fight than the British, weight of numbers and technology told though. Preparation? Japan was far better prepared than the US for WW2. They're all contributing factors of course, but ultimately what decides who wins is either the two sides agreeing on who won/ lost or one side being incapable of fighting on, and that's all that can be said with any certainty. You could probably make some sort of algebra for it like a Paradox game- a = battle results, b = provinces held, c = 'war exhaustion', d = physical resources; if a/b/c/d are less than critical thresholds combined or individually then war continues- but it will never correctly fit every situation, and arguably not by a large amount too. Because there's also variable e for, er, entangibles, which by definition cannot be measured accurately. Because the primary role of any army is to defend their country rather than to be International Policemen, which is an optional extra. If you had a list of existential risks for Britain that the army needs to be prepared for I'd bet that the top one would still be Russia.

Asymmetric warfare (which I hate as a term only slightly less than collateral damage) is perfectly sensible when the alternative is taking your AK out into the field to be obliterated by some bloke in Nevada with a PS3 controller like a good 'honourable'- or let's be honest, really stupid- soldier would. The goal is to win, not accumulate karma. On the original question, it's far too simplistic a proposition. Defying expectations certainly influences winning battles or wars but it's not the be all and end all- Cannae defied expectations massively, but didn't win the war. Ulundi won the Zulu War but went exactly as expected; while Isandlwana, which defied expectations, had no long term effect at all.

I've been meaning to rewatch those, I know I enjoyed them as a little guy but about the only thing I can remember about them now is 'Paint it Black' and that Sergeant Zeke was in St Elsewhere (because my mum mentioned it every single episode). Might be time to see if I can find them, and Homicide: LotS for that matter.

On a related note, Gearbox and Sega are getting sued over the A: CM gameplay video/ demo fiasco. I normally don't like litigiousness of this nature very much (the attempt to sue over the ME3 ending was cringe inducing) but I'm a lot less down on it in this case. It's understandable when gameplay changes over the course of a game's development but this was pretty on the nose and clearly- from a non legal/ layman perspective- intended to give a misleading impression rather than just to accentuate the positive/ eliminate the negative/ latch on to the affirmative and not mess with Mr Inbetween as you'd expect from any advertising. And if it will stop resources being- in an end consumer sense- wasted on peripheral manipulations and Thief like diversions it may even have a direct benefit.

Should do, as the GOG version has it and apart from the unified download the GG versions are identical. I installed the CD version of IWD a month or so ago and had to redownload TotL and it is still readily available anyway.

Fontaine was objectivist 'agnostic'- and probably a plain old sociopath- for sure, but Ryan was not, he was not just a believer by The Believer. In the end Ryan took Fontaine Futuristics because he wanted it and he had the bigger army, not out of righteous indignation at the soiling of his dream, and once he had it he kept it in contravention of his own rules. From a philosophical perspective the Fontlas combination were the logical result of objectivism in the non-abstract, non-perfect 'real' world, Fontaine does not play by the rules in a commercial sense and Atlas does not play by the rules in a violent revolution sense. But Ryan is worse from the philosophical stand point, as he ends up corrupted and not holding to the tenets he purports to believe. At least Fontaine is consistently loyal to his nature... In a more religious sense it's like the devil tempting Eve with an apple. That's what the devil does. But if it were Jesus tempting Eve with the apple that would be a lot worse, as he isn't supposed to do that sort of thing. There's also a similar thing in System Shock 2. The Many is a collective, and supposed to banish want and hurt. Yet while the big cheeses like Korenchkin are perfectly happy being Psi Reavers the plebs clearly aren't happy being hybrids, as they run around saying 'kill me' and actively warning you before they attack. And that's pretty much the experience with communism as applied in the real world.

That was the supposed reason (ie the one Ryan used as a 'legal' justification), yes, but the telling part was that he simply seized all of Fontaine Futuristics for himself once he'd 'won'. Is a Man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No says Andrew Ryan, it belongs to him.

"No Gods or Kings, Only Men"- very first sign in B1, iirc. I never quite understand evangelicals. In a way I'm quite happy about that. Because "no dunk in a river will erase what I've done" is perfectly fine theologically, because it's clear that Booker does not actually believe, so has no faith. If you don't believe then a baptism is just a dunk in some water, saying otherwise is the same approach that sees people being converted at gunpoint to save their souls. And as much as I personally dislike Ayn Rand's philosophies the approach in B1 is actually exactly the same. Ryan doesn't follow Rand. He thinks he does, and at the end perhaps he does (paralleled, perhaps, by Booker finding 'faith' in a way at the end) but he has no actual faith or he would not have seized Fontaine Futuristics at barrel of gun for being too successful. That's made explicit by McDonogh's logs. In all Levine's games he takes potshots at extreme ideologies- Anarchism in Thief, Collectivism in SS2, Objectivism in B1- and it's clear that it's the extreme part that he's aiming at, not the belief itself. More than anything though, I could do a better job of dissecting games on a theological basis, and I'm basically agnostic.

Given WW1/ Versailles a war was probable if not inevitable. It might have ended up being vs Stalin rather than with him but the ultimate problem was that WW1 solved few problems and created a whole lot more.

And a bit more on some Squenidos problems wrt Thief. Not surprising that SE is in problems- or requiring such large sales numbers- if they're doing things like spending months making press demos that are incompatible with the base game. Everyone knows that it happens (eg the infamous 'Radiant AI' demo for Oblivion that simply could not happen in the finished game) but the length of time and resources taken...

EA distribute many LucasArts titles- they certainly distributed both KOTORs here. They didn't have any creative involvement though unless you count retroactive via Bioware.

Personally I wouldn't consider it proper to keep a sealed box and download a copy if I intended to sell the box at the end (like buying a cake, downloading a duplicate cake and eating it, then on selling the original), but if it is just to have a nice sealed box sitting on the shelf I have no issue with it.

Pretty good result for them in the end. I still wish they'd started a little bit later once SotA and Torment were done and once a bit more PR groundwork had been set, but they've worked hard for their money, to quote the great philosopher Donna Summers (?), and deserve it. I NEVER DOUBTED YOU LARIAN!

At least in Alpha Protocol I can wear a pimpin' hat with a big bushy beard, but I can't even make Thornton blond or a woman- where's the role playing there? Also it's based on Burn Notice and the bullets fly funny and don't go right where I aim, and it has too much dialogue and timers. It also does so have magic, sometimes when I make a mistake I disappear, which is awesome, or time slows down so I can pop caps into asses! I've never heard of Dues Ex or the others so can't comment on them, are they available on 360?

Dying makes me feel dumb, and I can feel dumb whenever I like. I play games to feel like a God for a brief while. The game clearly does not cater properly to all play styles. Some merchant tempted me in to a warehouse with the promise of lollies and then his friends killed me. I should be able to talk to them and get them to let me go, and give me all their money and stuff too. Next thing you'll tell me I won't be able to talk my way out of fights with rats. For some reason I feel compelled to reply to each line individually in a separate quote box, it's weird. Then why is it marketed as an RPG? Can anyone name a single RPG that doesn't have magic? Games like Skyrim and Oblivion have got it right, lots of character customisation- you know, actually playing a role- and fun stuff like riding around on horses killing stuff. I saw horses in the AoD demo, but I bet I can't ride them. If they want to sell well they need to have voiced dialogue and better graphics, and get rid of that slow and boring combat. Oh look, I stand still while some dude swings at me, then he stands still while I swing at him. Riveting! That's not how reality works. And I want something excellent to happen every time I press a key, not to fall asleep. First person view would be good too as that is needed for proper immersion. I'm only trying to help the developers by pointing all this out. Mr Dweller says he wants feedback, after all.

Our histories are pretty explicit about Freyberg insisting on the Abbey being bombed because he was worried about casualties. It would have needed approval from higher ups who may have been itching to do it anyway, but I'd still attach a fair bit of blame to him. I guess one excuse might be that throughout NA and Sicily there hadn't been much city/ town fighting so there was no experience of a Stalingrad style destruction resulting in good defensive terrain without killing off the enemy but consequences like not being able to use tanks effectively in the town (even given the terrain restrictions) really ought to have been considered. And the same sort of general thing happened regularly in WW1 which Freyberg fought in- massive bombardment to wipe out enemy, enemy not wiped out...

It is a bit bought-you-drink-at-bar, didn't-expect-marriage on the update front. Then again once I've stuck in the money I don't generally read the updates anyway. Virumor Drudanae's clearly contributed in order to get the updates, so he's obviously a warm and fuzzy closet romantic at heart despite his cold and jaded exterior.