Hurlshort

I finished up Alpha Protocol. What a delight, I'm still questioning some of my decisions, but at the end of the game I felt pretty comfortable with the path I took. Now I'll probably spend some time with LotR Online and maybe back to Red Dead Redemption. I also bought Fear the other day and plan on giving that a bit of time.

They were probably expecting Assassin's Creed numbers for Mirror's Edge. They spent a lot of money on it. I think AP will not get a sequel because it does not seem like Obsidian and Sega have a great relationship at this point. I would be surprised to see them work together again. Thankfully Obsidian is already moving forward and working with other publishers, but I doubt Square Enix wants to do AP2.

Actually I was originally calling it futbol, but Monte (who is English) was addressing the sport in the US and called it soccer, and I felt for the sake of continuity it was best to refer to it as soccer. It's a pretty silly thing to get upset about. Everyone knows that it is the same sport no matter what you call it.

I want to bump the thread and give a short update. I am down to my last few student drawn comics, so I've been brainstorming on how to make my own comics without them looking like utter garbage. I decided to go with bitmap comics using Grafx2. Feel free to stop by in a week or so and see my first strips. Here is my first shot at it: http://www.waltersland.net

I wonder what number they need to hit to be considered a success? I would think around 300k or so would be a good number, but I could be way off.

I don't know as much about this stuff as you guys, but I do watch a lot of Law & Order. If you want to work Major Case, you need to develop a personality tick of some sort.

We like soccer, as an international competition at least. The World Cup matches have had good ratings considering the time of day they are on. What we really don't go for is professional league soccer like the MLS or any of it's predecessors. When team USA is playing though, it does get attention. If we get into the final round or even (gasp) the championsip match it will get ratings that will make any Super Bowl proud. BTW, only around 65% of Major League Baseball players are from the USA. We get a lot of players from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia, South Africa, Puerto Rico, The Dominican Republic, Venezuela, etc. The US also has a gigantic youth soccer movement. The problem is when they get into their young teens, the best athletes gravitate towards the sports that pay big. But Landon Donovan is a pretty top-rate player, so maybe you will see a few more youths sticking to soccer to be like him. Donovan is the first noticeable US soccer player I've seen in my lifetime.

Hey look at that, Donovan came through in the 91st minute. So looks like US and England advance. I don't follow much futbol, but is it common to disallow goals?

I'm not one to throw down the ref victimization card, but the US has had two goals disallowed for phantom offside calls. How hard is it to video review just the goals? It's not like there are that many.

I'm not entirely sure how the business model works here, but the CD-keys are likely a matter of bookkeeping, and that is very important. Steam sells products for other publishers. They need to be able to keep track of all that meticulously, or else the publisher will not do business with them. The CD-Keys are likely the easiest way to do this. EA gives a bunch of CD-Keys to Steam. They track the keys, and when they are activated, they send Steam a bill. Again, I'm speculating here, but I imagine it works something like that.

Thanks, I really like the display on that Acer unit. I know it won't be totally relevant in a year, but I figure it is good to start educating myself now.

I wasn't a big fan of the NWN2 stuff. But Alpha Protocol has just knocked me on my butt with amazement. It is filled with choice and consequence, difficult decisions, and moral gray areas. There isn't another developer in their league in those departments, Bioware is the only one that comes close. I have a hard time believing that only old people enjoy these aspects of gaming, but if that is true, I hope it is a niche we can keep in development.

I'm preparing myself for my next computer, and it is clear that I need a good gaming laptop. I currently live out in the country and my internet is weak, so I think I can get around that issue by having a more portable gaming rig. It will also be nice to have on RV trips. So what do you tech folks think is the best bet? I'm not worried about weight or portability. I want a good size screen. As long as I can carry it somewhat I am happy. I want it to be high powered, but hopefully not melt too soon, a lifespan of about 3 years would be ideal. It needs to be able to handle the current top software. I've used Alienware in the past and I like it, although I know they are pricey. I can spend up to about $2,000 on the rig. I also have about a year before I buy it. Any suggestions?

I would think Steam would have something in place to prevent selling games that they don't have keys for. But it seems like a rather minor issue. Plenty of folks probably didn't even have the game downloaded by the time the keys came in. The key system is necessary here from a business standpoint. EA can't just let Steam sell copies of the game willie-nilly.

I know a little bit about teaching as well. As an aside, after you get your BA, you can get a substitute teaching credential easily enough. You can probably sub a day or two a week while going to law school, and you also get to see if you enjoy teaching and what levels you like. But that's like 4 years away, and a lot can happen between now and then.

I didn't say anything about sales. When I say ported over with a good deal of success, I mean they played well, looked great, and were warmly received. I remember GTA3 and Vice City actually won quite a few awards on the PC back in the day because they looked superior to the console versions.

I was under the impression that all the GTA games were ported over to the PC with a good deal of success. Why would RDR break from that?

This isn't really a DRM issue. Steam was selling more product than they actually had on hand. The problem is they collected your money, then released they did not have the product, and then had to go get it from the publisher. I understand this is all a bit different in a digital medium, but Steam still has to pay for every unit of a game that they sell.

Why is it signed Katherine Cheng? What are you? IIRC it's not Hurlshot that draws but his students so... yeah, he's a corrupt teacher who uses his students for his own profit. Yep, the art is done by my students. I just storyboard the ideas for them. I only have about two weeks left of student comics though, so I'll be illustrating a few myself after that.

I would say Big Sur is a must see. After that is probably Alcatraz.

I'm playing pistols and melee. It's going quite well.

I just watched Daybreakers as well and agree with Monte's review. I really liked that vamps who starve or eat other vamps turn into these feral bat nosferatu looking things. My wife called it a B-movie with good production values. I don't disagree with that either.

I live a bit further south of that red circle, but I drive to Cupertino for work.

SW:TOR won't have any trouble selling millions of copies at release. If less popular IP's like Age of Conan and Warhammer can have a huge releases, then a Star Wars property by a popular developer is a very easy bet. The struggle of MMO's is to maintain the numbers from the first few months. Almost every MMO released has had a precipitous drop in subscribers after the first couple months. That is what separates WoW from everyone else, it grew stronger over time and has still maintained a very high subscription rate.

While I would say that it is definitely in development, it is still probably about two years away from any announcements, and likely a good 3-4 years before any type of release.