Keyrock

Hopefully it's lightyears better than the group stage. That was a snooze fest, and not just beacause of the ridiculous delays between games. I could not name you one even slightly memorable match from the entire group stage. The whole thing is a blur of boredom to me. I like ReDeYe, but I wouldn't want him to host every Major. They should rotate it between him, Sheever, KotLGuy, and Soe. I don't know if Chobra has hosted DotA events before, he's mostly worked Starcraft 2 from what I remember, but I wouldn't mind seeming him host a Major. As for Yames, I like the guy and his uncouth humor. He's really good at getting panelists to loosen up and get a real genuine relaxed banter going, as opposed to the faux-casual banter you usually get with prim and proper production (you can't fake real relaxed banter, some can disguise faux-casual better than others, but I can tell). That said, I agree that an event the magnitude of a Major is probably not a good fit for Yames' brand of hosting, particularly given that Valve currently seem to be going after the ESPN crowd and given the current social climate, which is why I was so surprised they hired him in the first place. It saddens me a bit because I can see where Esports is headed in terms of broadcasting. It's the same path ESPN took. Many years ago when ESPN was still a relatively new kid on the block their broadcasts were a lot more casual and a lot more fun. The back and forth between the analysts and commentators was more relaxed. As the company got larger and more mainstream all that disappeared and their broadcasts got sterilized. Now it's at the point where I make a concerted effort to avoid all pre-game, post-game, half-time, warm-up, round-up, analysis type shows and only watch the sporting event itself from whistle to whistle, because those shows are all painful to watch with their lame jokes, forced laughter, and faux-casual banter. It's all disgustingly fake. One of the things that initially drew me to Esports was that it was still in the relaxed and casual state of broadcasting with people genuinely ribbing each other, joking around, unafraid to go off the script and off-color. It was like watching an actual conversation between actual relaxed friends shooting from the hip, as opposed to corporate drones pretending like they are having fun ad being casual while making absolutely sure everything is super duper safe and all jokes have a foam Nerf coating to protect the poor sensitive viewers. Deep inside I knew this day would come and Esports would eventually get sterilized, just like everything else does when it becomes mainstream big business and just like with sports I'll stop watching the pre-shows, post-shows, analysis shows, etc. I guess I had hoped we were still further away from the sterilization creeping into Esports, though that's greedy on my part, I guess, since the sterilization naturally follows something becoming widespread, and it's essentially me hoping Esports stays niche to cater to my tastes. I guess I'm just an Esports hipster, I liked it better before it went mainstream.

Sure, it makes sense you want a professional style cast for the Major, it's a big deal event. But then why hire Yames to host it in the first place? Valve knew exactly what they were getting when they hired him. That is not the guy you hire when you want a straightlaced host, that's just not him, never has been never will be. Presumably it was icefrog that lobbied to get him the gig and I get icefrog has at least some pull within Valve, being that he essentially designs DotA2, but ultimately the final call still comes down to the higherups. No matter how you slice it, it makes no sense to hire Yames if you want a straightlaced host. As for the production company, that falls on Valve too since they were the ones that hired a cut-rate production company in the first place. 90% of the time you get what you pay for. Sure, once in a while you'll luck out and get someone who does a really good job at a lower rate, but why chance that for such a big tournament? And yes, I get that mainstream sports commentators do banter and jokes. Those jokes are super duper safe and almost always completely lame and the banter sounds forced and scripted, which is why those shows are so incredibly boring to watch. That said, I get why Valve would want that kind of show, that's the established "standard" for sports shows and even though Esports are not sports, I get wanting to conform to those standards in the pursuit of luring over the mainstream public to your competitions. Again, why hire Yames to host if this is what you want? It makes no sense. They didn't have to go into specific details, but generally when a well known public company goes through something like this they either remain completely silent on the matter or they make a formal statement with carefully chosen and diplomatic wording. Something to the effect of "We have regretfully made the decision to terminate the contract of James '2GD' Harding. His level of professionalism and conduct did not meet our expectations and we felt it was negatively affecting our fans viewing and hurting our reputation as a company. Yada yada yada, stuff that sounds important and visionary but actually means nothing" I, for one, find it refreshing for a company head to be that blunt, that said, just calling a guy an ass makes Valve look rather unprofessional. Regardless, this tournament has been a disaster for Valve. Unless the main even goes flawless and we have a series of really exciting and memorable games (the games were dreadfully unexciting during the group stage), this event will be remembered tor the firing drama and the train wreck production during the first 2 days, and rightfully so. Valve are a big company with more money than God. Hopefully this black eye teaches them to put more effort into these things and to hire top notch production next time. One of your Majors is not the time to skimp on production costs if you want to look like a professional outfit. And if you want a certain kind of hosting style then hire the right person for the job, not the polar opposite.

By now, everyone into Esports has probably heard about the DotA2 Shanghai Major Firing Fiasco. For those not familiar with what happened, let me summarize what happened. First a little backstory: After TI5 (The International 5) Valve announced that they would be holding several big Valve sponsored tournaments called "Majors" a year leading up to TI (essentially the DotA2 World Championships). These Majors are big tournaments with serious money (3 million prize pool each) and significant prestige. The first major was held in Frankfurt last year and it went off, for the most part, without a hitch. The next Major is being held now in Shanghai. For this event, Valve hired James Harding to host it. James, commonly known as "2GD" or "Yames" is a well known and overall well liked host/caster/personality who has been in the Esports scene for quite some time in several games (Quake, Counter Strike, DotA2, just to name a few). He is rather famous in the scene for his casual hosting style which encourages banter between panelists and tends to include crass jokes and busting people's balls. He had worked for Valve before. In fact, he hosted 3 TIs in a row for them (TI2-TI4). Anyway, so the Shanghai Major starts and immediately it's one issue after another. The broadcast is plagued with a host of production problems: Sound problems, stream crashes, transition problems, computer crashes, delays. You name it, it went wrong. It's a train wreck. They get through the first day and the second day begins. Again, it's a production train wreck. Now I didn't see Yames' last segment live because it happened in the middle of the night, but I saw an abridged snippet video of it. The gist of it is that they are having yet another technical problem and the next match winds up being delayed for a ridiculous amount of time, something like an hour and a half. During the time Yames is trying to keep a conversation going with the panelists for an indefinite amount of time and keep things entertaining during this down time. As Yames does, he cracks some off-color jokes and takes shots at some of the players and some casters (it should be noted that he's good friends with many of these people). At one point apparently production was telling him to send it to just a screen with a logo and music playing but he ignored them for a bit because he had an interesting conversation going. Finally the delay ends and the games are back on. Shortly after that Yames is told he's fired. Sheever takes over hosting duties and Yames issues a Tweet telling people he'd been fired and he would eventually issue a statement on the matter but he would sleep on it. As you can imagine, the DotA community goes crazy and Reddit lights up with WTF just happened? Yames got fired! threads. (Apparently Reddit is still ablaze with that. I don't know, I don't go there). Gabe Newell himself pops up on Reddit and makes this statement: Valve also fires the production crew doing the Shanghai Major. (The subsequent days have been definitely better as far as production, though not flawless) After GabeN's statement Reddit blows up even more. Yames wakes up to see the statement from GabeN and finally writes his statement. (warning: it's a very long read) In his 17 page long statement he goes over his entire history with Valve and speculates on why he was fired. Those are the facts, to the best of my knowledge. From here forth I will be giving my opinion on the matter. In my opinion Valve comes off with egg on their face here. Regardless of who is actually in the wrong here, this all looks really bad for Valve. Valve has always been pretty poor at communicating with the public, usually giving little if any information about happenings, changes, etc. They're very curt. This works against them here. The statement issued by GabeN on the matter is very brief and extremely blunt. What's more, it defames Yames on one of the most public places on the internet and does it with somewhat crass language. Okay "ass" isn't all that crass by today's standards, and I personally find it refreshing to see the head honcho of a company be that blunt, but that doesn't change the fact that publicly defaming someone like that is rather unbecoming of a person of his standing. (Company heads tend to be very measured and diplomatic with public statements) What's more, it really doesn't explain why they fired Yames, it just states they've had problems with him before and that he's an ass. No details, no explanation, no nothing. (It should be noted that neither GabeN nor anyone else at Valve has given any further statement on the matter). By contrast, Yames' long statement tells a long story. Whether by calculated design or not, Yames' statement reads like a genuine pouring out of one's heart (complete with plenty of spelling and grammar mistakes) where he goes through all the events he hosted for Valve in the past, speculates on why he was fired, admits his own failings, and refuses to take a shot at GabeN, even saying he admires the man. He also reveals that he and GabeN had only met twice and only spoken to each other once. The problem here for Valve is that Yames' statement is all we really have to go by since GabeN's statement doesn't really tell us anything, so Yames' statement is naturally going to be more convincing since any information is generally more convincing than no information. What's more, GabeN's blunt manner and public defamation of Yames coupled with Yames' refusal to take a shot at GabeN makes Yames look like the better man here. Also, for the people watching the broadcasts it comes off like Valve took the embarrassment of the terrible production out on Yames as in many people's eyes, mine included, Yames was the one guy putting the train wreck of a tournament on his back and making the ridiculous anount of unscheduled down time entertaining to watch. Things also just kind of don't add up. It's a really odd situation. Yames is not an unknown personality, his antics are quite famous in the Esports community. When you hire Yames to host a tournament you know what you're going to get. His hosting style certainly rubs some people the wrong way, but it's also gained him fairly widespread popularity. Valve certainly knew what his hosting style was like, he hosted 3 TIs for them in the past, they knew exactly what he was about. I'm kind of thinking that maybe some stuff happened backstage that neither side has told us about because on the surface it looks like Yames was fired for his casual hosting style and crass humor and Valve wanted a host to be more professional and to play it by the book like the drones doing casts for ESPN and such for sports events, where the few jokes are super safe "family friendly" jokes. But if they wanted a host like that why in the world would they hire Yames? There are plenty of capable hosts that will play it by the book, Yames is the last guy you'd hire to play it by the book. That's not what he's about and everyone knows that. it's like hiring Miles Davis for an event then firing him because he plays the trumpet. It doesn't make any sense. Right or wrong, the vast majority of the DotA2 community is in the Yames got wronged camp. It's interesting to see Valve show some **** (Word that means cracks but is also a racial slur meaning Asian people that is CLEARLY not being used as a racial slur here. Friggin' auto-censor ) in their armor. For so long Valve has overall been the darling of the gaming world, the company that could do no wrong, the company most fans would defend no matter what. With this and the semi-recent paid mods debacle we've seen a couple examples where the majority of the public was angry and displeased with Valve. I wonder if these things will prompt Valve to improve their communication skills with the fans or if they'll just take them as rare anomalies and keep on keeping on as they always have.

Yes, the "we need to elect one of us" idiocy is a real thing, unfortunately.

That's not what I meant, for myself, anyway. I wouldn't vote for a candidate solely, or even mostly, because they were female. I am, though, very open to someone with a vastly different point of view, that, presumably, being a different gender from every other PotUSA would provide, taking top office. That candidate would, of course, have to have a platform that I am agreeable to and a good not completely awful track record. That said, I have no doubt there are plenty of people out there that would vote for Hillary based mostly on her being female. Same as there are people that would vote for Rubio mostly based on him being Hispanic. There are lots of idiots out there.

Because there's probably a contingent that feel it's time for a female president and Jill Stein has exactly a 0% chance of winning. Come on, Drowsy, don't you know it's current year? Edit: For the record, I don't disagree with the notion that it's about time a woman gets to "run the country" (I put that in quotes because we all know that it's the special interest groups that run the country"), though Hillary wouldn't exactly be my first choice.

This thread could use some nightmare fuel. Have some mouth eyes: You're welcome.

Wouldn't mind a proper ar pee gee in the setting though. Maybe with really awkward romances and temper tantrums just when the fate of the whole Zee is at stake. And I know just the right developer to do that Dear lord, I shudder at the thought of how a certain Edmonton based developer would butcher the setting.

Have you tried a trackball? I don't know about hand cramps, as that's never been a thing I had problems with, but my trackball does wonders to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome.

Sunless Sea has some of the most legitimately interesting writing I've seen in a game. The stories it semi-randomly strings together are better than stories in the majority of games with a set story. It helps that it takes place in a really weird setting that's so different from what we usually get. That game is really fun.

And now for a completely different 80s band:

The jam session from roughly 3:50 - 7:10 is pure amazeballs. Iron Maiden just goes ahead and drops a 3 minute and 20 second long epic progressive jam session into the middle of one of their songs. Why? Because they can.

Can't be much worse than John Kerry.

Some screenies for the upcoming Styx: Shards of Darkness:

My first captain, the intrepid Madame Lucinda, has already survived longer than I anticipated when I started Sunless Sea. There have been a couple times where I was cutting it really close on fuel and supplies on my way back to London, but I did make it back and I'm in decent shape now, after my latest voyage, though I still haven't made any headway in getting a better ship or better lodgings. It's definitely nerve-racking when I go far from London, though, and I kind of have little choice but to do so now as all the close proximity areas have been explored.

A little bit of moisturizer will clear that right up.

Maybe you're the gentle, tender half of Hitler? The misunderstood half. The half that just wanted to be loved. So I'm a mediocre painter who wants to live on a farm with a much younger woman? You wouldn't be the first.

Maybe you're the gentle, tender half of Hitler? The misunderstood half. The half that just wanted to be loved.

Wouldn't that be Moussolini (all hail our new rodent overlords)?

It's definitely significantly better than at release. That said, if asked the question "Why would I play this over X3?" I couldn't give you an answer other than prettier graphics. Rebirth is now a fully functional game, but still a rather disappointing one, unless the new expansion did something on the level of divine intervention to the game. Sadly, Rebirth is not fixable in my opinion. The problems with that game stem from the very core systems it was built around. On the one hand, I applaud Egosoft for supporting their game for years after release, something they've always done with their games. On the other hand, I kind of wish they had abandoned the game right after launch and put their effort into making a new game rather than trying to fix something that cannot be fixed. You can polish a turd all you want, it's still a turd.

Pokémon Coke and Pokémon Pepsi.

I'm 0% Hitler. I always thought of myself as more of a Mussolini anyway. http://www.gotoquiz.com/how_fascist_are_you I'm 18% fascist.

Somewhat off topic, but I have to mention that I get a kick out of the suggestive Mona Lisa-esque smile Hillary picture they used.