Drowsy Emperor

I think the point that most people (well, reasonable people) are trying to say is that Guns are ok in america, but Assault weapons and automatic weapons are not. https://www.youtube....h?v=f0BVxO_61HE A question on assault weapons from that election thing that we've moved on from (thank god). Illustrates my person views pretty well (well, Obama does. Romney's "Get married for gun control" isn't really my position). That's a superficial and unimportant difference. A trained shooter with a Glock can kill a room full of people just as fast as someone with an assault rifle. An assault rifle is an army weapon designed to kill people at a 100-300 meters. Those are the demands of modern combat. As most shootings happen at close ranges all the advantages of an assault rifle, its additional range and precision, are lost. When firing on unarmed and unprepared targets all guns are equally deadly. In short, it makes no difference whether the shooter comes with two glocks or one AK if he's shooting up people at 0-15 meters. Yes but the majority of people who commit these acts are not trained shooters, they are not military personnel . They are normal people who have suffered from a mental breakdown so once again the the choice of weapon is relevant to the overall causality list The point is not to have 19 dead instead of 23 but prevent these things from happening in the first place. You people seem to forget that if they can't get a gun next time they might mix up a simple bomb or something. Where there is a will there's a way, and if these people were lacking in willpower they wouldn't do the things they do in the first place.

I think the point that most people (well, reasonable people) are trying to say is that Guns are ok in america, but Assault weapons and automatic weapons are not. https://www.youtube....h?v=f0BVxO_61HE A question on assault weapons from that election thing that we've moved on from (thank god). Illustrates my person views pretty well (well, Obama does. Romney's "Get married for gun control" isn't really my position). That's a superficial and unimportant difference. A trained shooter with a Glock can kill a room full of people just as fast as someone with an assault rifle. An assault rifle is an army weapon designed to kill people at a 100-300 meters. Those are the demands of modern combat. As most shootings happen at close ranges all the advantages of an assault rifle, its additional range and precision, are lost. When firing on unarmed and unprepared targets all guns are equally deadly. In short, it makes no difference whether the shooter comes with two glocks or one AK if he's shooting up people at 0-15 meters.

He has a point. Forbidding something so widespread and in certain cases even useful, as a what, a plan to prevent a random, rare, event? You could use a hammer to kill that ant that's walking over your kitchen counter but if you can't come up with a better idea you might as well not bother. Not that guns are going to be restricted in the US ever anyway. It might seem like its an issue up for debate, but its not. To prevent these tragedies (but without the illusion that they're ever going to totally disappear), should be the goal. Prevention consists of better integration of individuals in society, and better relations between them. A person that can spend hours contemplating revenge for sleights real and imagined is obviously stuck in a psychological dead end and only friends and family can dig them out of that hole. Not shrinks and particularly not tablets. When I went to an american school, though it was in Africa I quickly noted how extreme alienation could be. The cool kids and uncool kids syndrome left to some individuals being semi-permanently left out of school social life. The teachers did what they could, what they were paid for - but they can't fix that climate where genuine ostracism is practiced. On the other hand, we don't get that here in Serbia - there's the odd black sheep of the class but they're never really isolated from their peers. There has never been a school shooting here, and guns are semi-available (many people own them legally or illegally) - and we get as many crazies as any other society. The health system is falling apart and the institutes dealing with mental health are surely better funded in the US. So its not the availability of guns, and its not lack of therapy. Draw your own conclusions.

You'd be hard pressed to find a Sociologist with a degree to agree with you. The laws may have changed for those who were previously discriminated, but the story of modern society is one of ever tighter control over the mind and political liberty of the individual - worldwide, not just in the US. Manipulative techniques used by today's political and business institutions make Goebbels Nazi propaganda look amateurish.

Uhm, no. You killed innocent civilians, wrecked yet another country's infrastructure, instigated the murder of its head of state (regardless of who or what else he was) and installed a puppet government to gain a hold over its considerable oil reserves, amongst other things. No one with an above room temperature IQ is fooled.

Let me fix that for you:

Judging by what you intend to play you don't need more than a genius 5$ mouse. A gamer mouse is only useful for competitive FPS gaming, and even there I recall the most persistent players decimating everyone with the cheapest mice available.

Teflon stickers are easily available over amazon. Your mouse is probably suffering from the "gone out of fashion syndrome". The only cure is to spend a lot of money on your next mouse.

The guns angle is wrong. It serves no purpose but to drive the discussion into a dead end street. Psychiatric care too. These aren't typical psychiatric care patients, and they can't be treated by doping them up with whatever drugs are available. The root cause, amongst other things is the horrible social dynamics at play in school and in the office. Competitiveness takes precedence over cooperation and honest communication, getting results whether they be grades or profit over any moral dilemma and employee rights. The results are stressed individuals out of which a certain percentage will not be able to cope, of which the majority will behave in a damaging way to themselves (alcoholism, mood altering medication, drugs etc.) and a minority which will place the blame on society and snap back. Its the result of the system you've put in place (particularly the downward cultural and economic spiral of the west since the 70ties) and now you have to live with it. Its not going to get better and no amount of additional security or contingency planning is going to change it, until the state or a cultural [r]evolution enforces the notion that the dog eat dog rules and norms of business are not acceptable for societal interaction, particularly amongst children and teens who are not yet fully formed individuals.

Its still a demonstration of extreme callousness, questionable morals and borderline sociopathic behavior. That the general public doesn't feel that way and instead elects people of this caliber answers all the questions posed in this thread. Its oh so convenient that the "socially awkward", "loner", "unpopular" individual should be the perpetual monster. No need to look inward then, because that's surely not one of us, eh?

Its amusing how its always the guns that are to blame, as if they were anything more than a tool. Anyone who really wants to get a gun and go on a spree can do it, anywhere in the world, regardless of whatever law is in place. Serbia had a lax policy on guns during the 90s and the same restrictive policies most european countries have are in place now, and have been for a while. It made no real difference, except that it left honest citizens defenseless while the criminals are as well armed as they ever were. The issue in the US is not the guns, its the cultural acceptance of violence. The US embraces the idea of justified killing (you could just see the jubilation when Bin Laden was killed) and just wars - and the old eye for an eye principle.Every country in the world could be considered guilty of this at some point or another, but with the US its systemic. Taking a gun out to solve a problem may not be acceptable by law, but its so common that it can only be considered (at least partially) socially acceptable. So the logic (in the minds of these killers) is simple: They (whoever) wronged me > I'm going to get back at them > How am I going to do it? > I'm going to get myself a gun and shoot as many as I can Social isolation helps. The more modern a country is the more of the old bonds of extended families and such are broken. In a traditional society few people are really socially isolated - in a modern one, many are. Its much harder to snap and go around killing people when you know each and every one of your supposed victims. To wonder at the results of violence is the US is to embrace a voluntary blindness as to how violent and cutthroat the US system is, internally and towards other countries.

It was probably a mistake to not have a more powerful CPU, and again Nintendo focus on gimmicky peripherals for core gameplay, pressuring developers to support them. With that install base, with that amount of pain in porting to the Wii U, this isn't surprising. Hardware is not the issue, the CPU has been proven capable by the Wii hacker dude. You only need to look at Pikmin 3's gameplay videos and its pretty obvious that anything that works on XB and PS3 should easily work on WiiU. The issue is the install base which needs time to grow so that the cost of development and the risks undertaken are deemed worthwhile by dev studios. The numbers are looking good so far, but we'll be well into 2013 when they're as good as they need to be for major publishers. That's basically what Reggie Fils-Aime said himself.

That's good, it was a pretty interesting game. Although I imagine the lifetime sub folks are a bit upset about dropping a couple hundred on it. lol @ "a bit upset"

And I personally like the experience of going to a brick and mortar store and buying a game. I liked it more when the boxes were bigger, but its still less alienating from my pov than digital shopping.

What is it that Valve does right exactly, now that I think about it? They have a damn restrictive software platform with Steam, unlike say GoG games which might not have all the perks but at least you own the product you're buying and it doesn't need their software to run it. They haven't made a groundbreaking game since the original Half Life (and please let no one say Portal, the game is about the same length and quality as a well made mod). Excuse me, what exactly is restrictive about Steam? Um you can only play games you bought on it - through it as opposed to retail or services like GoG? You know, the sort of thing you didn't have to do for years before Steam showed up like having to run a client in the background just to get your games going? Look, I'm not on an anti DRM crusade. Since I don't care about multiplayer or game centric communities, or play games in several different locations Steam is just a pain in the ass for me without any real advantages. If you have a particular reason why Steam is so good, that's fine. To me it seems obvious that Steam is all about controlled distribution, a tool for the people making money in this hobby - not in any way about gamers. That's all well and good, I'm just not seeing real reason for enthusiasm, as a consumer.

What is it that Valve does right exactly, now that I think about it? They have a damn restrictive software platform with Steam, unlike say GoG games which might not have all the perks but at least you own the product you're buying and it doesn't need their software to run it. They haven't made a groundbreaking game since the original Half Life (and please let no one say Portal, the game is about the same length and quality as a well made mod).

I was going to say something of the sort but you just beat me to it. Seriously though, what's the point of a PC that can only run Steam and other apps Valve "generously" gives out. The only real incentive to get a console is because its: a) cheap (if you already own a TV, and the presumption is that you do) b) desirable exclusives I don't see Valve getting or making exclusives for their console and shutting themselves out of the PC market. I don't see PC users forsaking the platform's flexibility just to run Steam on it. After all the PC, through emulation - has the largest catalog of games there is. Everything bar a few PS3 exclusives and the new Nintendo console runs on it on through emulation or simply by being multiplatform. To dump all that just for Valve exclusivity would be beyond stupid.

Well if it works through Steam that's sort of crap. Steam prices are insane most of the year. Plus you can get steam on a PC anyway. It would have to be significantly cheaper than a custom made PC for it to be an acceptable trade off. Otherwise it makes sense, TVs and monitors have been interchangable for a while now.

No. Dawn of War is one of the best RTS's ever made. DoW 2 is a hybrid title no one really liked.

I don't see the point. Torment is a finished story (as he himself notes), the universe can't be licensed - so what is a new game going to have in common with Torment anyway, besides trying to push the nostalgia buttons? If he can tell a story that's as good as Torment, he doesn't need the Torment IP to do it - if he can't, getting the IP won't help him, it will just invite comparisons. I hate all this hollywood style necrophilia. Make good new IP or GTFO. While I still consider the BGEEs to be a good thing, I fully agree with you here. I have nothing against updating an old game or even a full 3D remake. I have often wondered how good Torment would look remade with AAA production values. But what Fargo is talking about sounds like something else entirely.

I don't see the point. Torment is a finished story (as he himself notes), the universe can't be licensed - so what is a new game going to have in common with Torment anyway, besides trying to push the nostalgia buttons? If he can tell a story that's as good as Torment, he doesn't need the Torment IP to do it - if he can't, getting the IP won't help him, it will just invite comparisons. I hate all this hollywood style necrophilia. Make good new IP or GTFO.

Yeah when Dan Brown was all over the news I was like: jeez we already covered this in Broken Sword and GK3. And better too, in GK3's case. Made me feel a bit sorry for Jensen, her tale is arguably better than Brown's but apparently Brown was what the public wanted just a few years later.

Zelda is a game that puts all those to shame. I should know, as I've played all of them.

It doesn't matter whether they did it on purpose, by accident or ****ing Zeus intervened. The point was that turn based was dead and left to fanatics and JRPG's of which the latter imploded after the PS2 era. DnD is a tabletop ruleset that makes no sense in a fully interactive 3D computer game. That's why the big RPG's of this generation are games like Mass Effect (which I still detest) and not any tabletop based, rules strict games. Progressive RPG's that is, not spreadsheet simulators like WoW.