Zoraptor

I'd have somewhat more sympathy for RPS' stand on the subject (or rather their approach to the subject, since I broadly agree with much of what they are saying) if they were quite as gung ho about things that could potentially blow back on them and where it could potentially hurt them/ cause them difficulty if they actually made a big deal about it; Doritogate- where one of their own contributors got the shaft from their ad provider- got a delayed, tepid response on the main site because it did not pertain directly to games, to whit: If they were consistent it would be fine, but apparently gaming metacommentary like sex biased wage gaps in the industry is relevant to RPS, but for some reason whether or not gaming journalists are getting bungs isn't relevant. It's easy for them to characterise those who criticise them as cave men or whatever, and assert they aren't just doing to for the page impressions or to get their legs over with Feminist Studies majors but- by their own words- things like the wage gap are not things that RPS ought to be covering. As such, they invited questioning of their motivations.

tritto. I actually came close to cancelling to to put the cash towards the Divinity KS, but I know I'll end up buying Torment anyway so meh, might as well do it now.

Yeah, let's get back to our regularly scheduled discussion of how EA sucks... (Don't care about SI much, it's stupid but meh, ignorable stupid is ignorable. A zombie apocalypse would have been better though)

Uh what? XP has DirectX 9. It isn't very surprising, given what happened with Bioshock (1). "A Man Chooses, A Slave Obeys" and all the metacommentary about railroading in gaming and the last few levels were every bit as much 'you must obey the voice in your head' as it was when it was Fontlas saying your command phrase.

Yep. I would have killed the Force in Kotor 2 and pulled down the Wall in MotB for exactly those reasons, had they been options.

The price varies depending on how many (D&D) games you own or are purchasing- it's $12 if you own no other D&D games on GOG down to $4 if you own all the other titles.

One of the big things about SW EU, as opposed to the Star Trek one for example, was that it counted and was as much a part of canon as the movies, so long as they were compatible with the movies. Having that removed would remove a lot of the 'point' of them. It wouldn't make them any worse quality wise in an absolute sense- the equivalent would be to something like Han Greedo Both Shot Simultaneously Shot First. You can still try and imagine that Han Shot First, and maybe enjoy the original if you've got laserdisks or whatever, but officially the ridiculous looking CGI mess from the DVDs etc is what actually happened.

Would have been better than Sunset Invasion.

I agree the timing could have been better, but the response has still been pretty good. They're already 76% of the way to their funding goal, they'll reach it easily, and both TToN ans SotA end this week. Hopefully this means that they'll have good steady funding throughout the next couple of weeks and a great big surge for their final few days, assuming no other big time project launches around that time to take attention away from them. I still think they can double their funding goal. We can only speculate as to what they could have gotten had their timing been perfect. I'm guessing 1.25 million-ish. I find it rather adorable why they launched early- I cannot imagine there's anyone else who'd treat RPGWatch as if it were GameInformer/ Gamespot/ IGN/ Kotaku, but it would have been far more sensible to just wait the two weeks until SotA and Torment were out of the way. You should aim for a different billing/ pay cycle and they have been a bit swamped PR wise as well. I actually think they are doing well under the circumstances, but they deserve to do better given the quality of their pitch. They got my money anyway, but they were always (well, barring steam exclusive) going to get that. I suspect they'll end up with a million+ and have a relatively larger kick at the end but I think given the quality of their offering ought to get 2 million+. I agree with Lady Crimson that its approach of being more of a straight 'pre-order with bonuses' rather than 'fund us so we can make it at all' is likely to limit things, and Larian does not have the cachet of Obsidian or KS pedigree of inXile- but to balance that they have a huge amount more to actually show and demonstrate than either of those did.

It's the playtester effect. If you don't tell people they can/ should do it they will presume they can't- see the feedback on Dishono(u)red and Bioshock's playtesters. And sexism.

Yeah, scratching my head a bit here, since obviously there's "publisher" between the two models they seem to be referring here, but it would appear that you're right. Obviously there's a lot of alternatives they have, no way they're letting anyone have an exclusive license to, say, Star Wars, anyway. That's certainly the way it reads, and given Disney's own less than stellar record in games it'd be sensible. But it isn't their modus operandi for just about anything else. Almost exclusively when they have made purchases they have internalised everything as much as possible and avoided licensing. They also have the very LucasArts approach to gaming where they change management and approach every two years. In 2015 the new head will probably be talking about going all internal again.

Yeah, they could hardly be better on the saying the right thing and showing the right things front. OTOH their timing is atrocious which is almost certainly the reason for the rather more tepid response than they deserve.

Is there even a single bit of concept art/ render for thiaf that actually shows Garrett's lips anyway, apart from about 1/4s in the trailer? Everything else I've seen has him wearing that ludicrous faux goth black gauze over his lower face. No wonder Squenidos is losing money hand over fist if they're squandering money on that sort of thing, and it doesn't even make a lick of sense. They're not Peter asterisking Jackson, Garrett ain't Gollum, and if they applied those standards in general then Bart Simpson would be a middle aged woman, Mark Hamill could not voice The Joker and a bunch of other similar stuff.

Heh, I can see why he disagreed with jtr7 a lot.

I am currently replaying Alpha Protocol since I mentioned it a few days ago then noticed my newest save game was from exactly two years (where does the time go?) previous. I may even get around to playing the complete asteriskwit Mike I've always meant to and see how low I can get everyone's reputation with me. I also have a game of IWD on suspension on the Barrow Isle which I will get back to.

Steam sells MMOs which was what I was thinking of primarily- Steam does not say they have 'always online' DRM and their justification for that would be that, well, they're online games, duh, they have to be online. Which is exactly what EA is saying. Simcity 4 was best part of a decade ago, and even Societies was six years ago- it took less time for WC3 to become an MMO. Why doesn't Blizzard offer an offline mode for WoW since offline MMOs do very well for Bethesda, after all? For all practical purposes it is for the exact same reasons as EA made Simcity always online or Valve has a client or companies love the idea of MMOs- DRM, captive audience, metrics, three things that companies love. I'm not defending EA in particular, I'd far prefer an offline Simcity personally and practically, and haven't (and likely won't) buy it due to the online requirement.

The hopes and dreams of LGS fans for a good thief sequel, at the least.

EA would say that is isn't equivalent to steam games in general though. After all, you don't need to be online to play Origin games in general either- and Origin's offline actually works consistently rather than randomly deciding to stop working whenever most inconvenient- but you do need to be online to play some steam games as well. Valve would say that they're games that are designed from the ground up as being MP games, but that is exactly what EA says about SimCity as well. ie both would claim that they don't use (always online) DRM but the games are fundamentally designed around MP instead. And in any case, any game that requires Steam (or Origin/ Uplay for that matter) to be running at the same time is using DRM whether it's always online or not.

They've obviously been learning from Paradox's "our games are DRM free. Oh sure, they come with mandatory Steam, but that isn't DRM, it's fluffy bunnies, waving daffodils and a warm breeze wafting off the Mediterranean, not DRM. Because our games are DRM free ergo anything that comes with them aren't DRM! Quod Erat Demonstrandum, fra'". They're both using spinning like a top.

The US ultimately supported the UK, tepidly. But they did try to persuade the UK not to respond as they were worried about the stability of Argentina's pro west dictatorship if it lost, and what would replace it.

I can certainly understand wanting shorter games in at least one respect. I like Gothic 2, it's a good game but I have never finished it despite getting a long way into it on three occasions. Each time it was because I had to suspend playing for a while due to time constraints and I completely lost the thread of where I was and what I was doing when I got back. If it had been 10 hours long instead of 80 hours long I would have finished it those three times. Not finishing wouldn't happen with a shorter game that gave me equivalent enjoyment, something like AP maybe, as there is a lot less chance to get distracted over that shorter time. Personally I don't really care that I haven't actually finished G2, I've played G3 so I know what happens, but there is a certain satisfaction is knowing that something is finished.

We've got it here as well, though apparently it isn't law and we were not supposed to know about it. At least our banks avoided the problems and the last one to fold was in 1991 (bailed out at around $600m, iirc It now makes that amount of money per annum off us for the Ockers). Unsurprising, our government is run by a banker and only really believes in the free market when it's small local firms getting run over by multinationals, as soon as it's a bank or Warners* or Rio asterisking Tinto** throwing their weight around they fold quicker than an Origami savant on speed. *"Change employment laws or we'll take our Hobbitses and go home" **"Give us cheaper electricity or we'll pack up our aluminium refinery and go home"

Neither did I. It wasn't the most memorable of experiences but it had new(ish) ideas that differentiated it from the base game in a more 'constructive' way than many of the ideas in DA2 managed. I might have felt differently if I had paid an expansion rate for it but since I got the Ultimate Ed it was a nice bonus at the end of the game. I did have a very annoying bug where the interface/ inventory stopped responding a few times though.

I'll let P.T. Barnum explain: "There's a sucker born every minute." "Hello, I am the honourable George Ndongo. I am the former minister of Games Devlopment in the Nigerian Govenment/ Please help me obtain funs to release best game ever! from IMF World Bank illegal holdings! Only $40,000US required! for bets game ever. Reward tier $100 (limited 419 of 419 remaining)"

I'll have to see how much I can contribute. Timing seems a bit off given there are two other big RPG kickstarters running concurrently. Supposedly they got a bit gazumped, but they probably should have waited the extra couple of weeks. They've also done a good job of engaging with relevant communities ('Codex, RPGWatch etc), and have a pretty good reputation- rather similarly to Brian Fargo- in terms of populist stuff like slagging off publishers.