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More like moderation. re dictator: yeah, supporting a local tyrant has the advantage that in a few years you can come back and kick his butt if you're feeling like it - all in the name of FREEDOM. - A martyr for FREEDOM dilligently serving American interests *salutes*

Fine. For you, purchasing a game you haven't played, relying on hearsay and marketing to form an opinion isn't making a blind purchase. For me, it is. Maybe you have heaps of cash to spare and wasting $50 is no biggie. Say. Would you guys buy your running shoes without trying them on first, just asking the salesman if they are any good? Would you purchase your shirts just by the impression you first get when seeing them on the coat hanger? A perfume? A car? Etc.

We've been over this. We don't know and discussing it further is pointless. Were you following the discussion? Aside from the cost issue, the impossibility to know whether a watermelon will be good beforehand is why the example is so absurd. You cannot demo a watermelon without making it unfit for sale but that is not the case with a game. Comprende?

You brought entertainment in general to a discussion of DA in particular. When talking about DA, your only options are to purchase without knowing or not purchasing. Please outline any other options that apply to DA, that I haven't listed. As far as DA is concerned, it is. A Watermelon costs a fraction of what a game costs and there is no way of knowing beforehand if it's going to be good or not. You are actually supposed to substantiate your claims, not just repeat them. Does that usually work in court? How am I supposed to research my purchase? Using your own example, that's like asking the grocer whether I'm going to like the watermelon. Too easy, Grom!

I'm going to throw this post right in your face next time you accuse me of going off on a tangent about semantics, Grommy. The watermelon comparison is silly, even for you. Especially considering that if you want you can sample the fruit before buying it! So drop the "force" from the arguments. You are still left only with those two options. I was just following in on the idiocy of comparing a Broadway play to a videogame. You figure out the rest man, I don't share your enthusiasm for the absurd.

Yeah, but what if the good Afghans want you to up and leave? Because if that isn't the case now, it'll be soon enough.

That's nice because I remember one particularly unpleasant experience I had with hash. That must have been the second time I ever did it, and my last. The point with MDMA isn't that's deadly in the sense coke can be, but rather that it's a psychoactive substance that acts directly on the neurotransmitter receptors, and anything that ****s with your neurons like that can't be good in the long run. If it were a substance intended for therapeutical use, it would have been thoroughly researched and put through standarized criteria before being approved.

^^I hope you're not condemning abortion!

Purkake, that's the Magical Volo you're trying to reason with.

Never had a bad trip? Pot is cool and all... but MDMA is no joking matter.

And I don't think you have thought that through. Oblivion is the same whether you play 2 hours or 200, the game doesn't change and you get what's advertised - you get bored, but nothing the developers can do can change that. A good demo gives you a good feel of how the game plays. This is 100% subjective and no review can substitute that. What the hell man? Isn't that what I said? The options you are left with are to purchase blindly, or not purchase at all. I'm not saying that automatically grants the right to download the game, or that EA is putting a gun to anyone's head. You are forced into that in the sense that no other options exist. Also, when they make 80-hour long plays, I'll demand they make a demo, too.

I bet Brezhnev is laughing pretty hard from his tomb.

You mean you have other options outside of those two? So what are they?

I don't know. I purchased ME and it wasn't a mistake, but I got it for 20€. It would have been a mistake to pay 45€ for it. No, this is making the assumption that making a demo will result in increased sales and/or less piracy. An assumption for which, on the other hand, I have no evidence. More sales (with a demo available) = more happy customers, though. It's difficult to analyze the actual effectiveness of different marketing strategies, as said effectiveness is often gauged based on the success of the product. WOD's argument has merit: a demo is a deciding factor for potential customers. It's probably a more sound business strategy to market a brand than a defined, transparent product. It's not surprising that people download the game to try it, if the company offers a deal that effectively amounts to an act of faith. Evidently. If EA had stated they are planning on releasing a demo, I wouldn't be saying that it may be a good thing to release a demo.

Uh, so what? TV ads are absurdly expensive, too, and they purchase time on air for the big hits. It all comes down to the amount of money and effort you want to invest in marketing. It's not like making demos is a budget-breaking enterprise - especially not for EA. I don't want EA to make me a demo (and I'd appreciate you stopped trying to represent me as a child with a fit, otherwise we'll stop discussing the topic and start discussing each other). I'm simply pointing out how demos can appeal to a) people who would rather play games than read what some brain-dead reviewer thinks, and b) people who may be interested in the game but are turned off when faced with the prospect of $50 going down the drain if the game isn't their cup of tea; those people may think of checking out the warez releases to give the game a spin. In short, demos have a deeper and more lasting impact than just words and video clips. They are, unsurprisingly, more expensive to produce. DUH! I'm not going to continue the speculation on what shareholders may demand to "protect their investments" or whether they prefer silk or cotton for their undergarments, it's a pointless exercise as neither of us is on the EA board.

I must have missed your point, because I don't see where I have a "problem" (wow, I actually like playing games!), or how the raison d'

I don't like reading about games. I don't like watching videos about games (except for some AVGN clips). I like playing games. The character creator was a step in the right direction, but it had no actual gameplay at all after a ~400Mb download. I'm not too sure about your point about BIO RPGs, because BIO and their games change over time (see pre- and post-KotOR), and it's possible that I may like some of their games but not all. I couldn't get into JE, for instance. Further, I'm a long-time fan, but is it unconceivable to think that there may be some people that have never played a BIO game before? *gasp* What is pretty silly is that EA is willing to invest in the tech support and PR nightmare that is SECUROM, but a demo is too much to ask. People may like free, illegal stuff off the internet, but they also like not being treated like pirates after purchasing a game and not being stuck with a product after being forced into a blind-purchase or no-purchase situation.

I doubt it will. Still, I think that releasing a demo would help lower the appeal of warez releases.

I'm not really interested in reading Soviet-backed propaganda. I started reading that, and couldn't finish because it reads more like a pamphlet than an academic recounting of facts. The same old, "it's all the bourgeois saboteurs fault!", all over. But in truth, it was gross incompetence and indifference on the part of the central government of the Soviet Union and the officials in charge, who were more interested in revanche than in efficiency and results - a staple of revolutionaries worldwide. I could look up some passages from the Black Book of Communism to counter, but let's not go that way. Not sure how one thing follows from the other. Stalin's aim was to neutralize any and all possible political adversaries, and to take a proactive stance towards potential political dissent. Looks fairly similar to what the Nazis did, but Mussolini was still (nominally) subject to the authority of the King.

Yes, but it appears to be natural only when communists apply POWERFUL THINKING to agrarian management, as the Great Leap Forward had a similar "natural" famine, and implementation in North Korea failed catastrophically too. I doubt those mass famines were used as deliberate extermination tools, but the idea that they were "natural" as hurricanes or earthquakes is hard to swallow. The Semana Tr

Um, yes it is - retribution and punishment are fundamentally the same, they are synonyms. Simply adding "just" doesn't change that, especially given the arbitrariness of the notion. Oh, I remember now. The LAW is the LAW and nobody is above the LAW.

Hahaha. Okay, professor. So, now not being "as genocidal as they could have been" (just how genocidal could have they been, pray tell?) is now somewhat of an excuse for war crimes, as we're apparently using Nazi Germany as a basis for comparison. Anyhow, why don't you end this debate in one fell swoop and show me these groundbreaking secret sources that prove beyond any measure of doubt that Soviet war crimes have been grossly and systematically exaggerated by Western sources, as a propaganda tool for use in the Cold War, even though the cold war ended two decades ago? I'm waiting. And your blatant Soviet war crimes apology doesn't work at all when you insist in portraying yourself as fair, unbiased, and better informed than most academic sources. Something is bugging me: how do you manage to fit your monstrous ego through doors?

You are aware that after the fall of the USSR, a lot of files have been declassified, aren't you? But yeah, every western historian is deeply biased and will cherry pick his sources, because he is from the west, while you are quite obviously possessed of a fair and neutral point of view. Right. Also, the Soviets DID abuse their power as they advanced. Read up on a little town once known as K

In a sense, you are implying that all humans are evil robots...

The lighting's been set up carefully, yes. But bad lighting making people uglier is a problem IRL, too. It's not realistic to expect lighting to make all characters look good, always, when the real thing doesn't... That's the default male head too, so it's likely that a much greater effort has gone into that, than into making randomly generated heads look good with that sort of modifications.