Gromnir

don't be ridiculous... or more ridiculous. you is talking 'bout individual works o' sculpture. am not suspecting you realize just how silly your observation is... 'cause ANY tangible object has just as much potential to be rendered as art. is not that the game is art. am suspecting you already forgot the call o' the question. when/is computer games gonna be taken serious as an art form. try not to distract yourself. HA! Good Fun!

You know very good i was talking about computer/console games... and they are definately not older than human species doesn't matter what you were talking 'bout. games has been 'round probable back before cro magnon, and games ain't gotten the benefit of doubt as an art form in all that time. makes harder for computer/console games to somehow change. HA! Good Fun! All right, then. Backgammon: is it art? no. neither is chess or monopoly or poker or any other game we can think of at the moment. maybe some folks consider chess an art, but not most folks. computer games can combine elements o' film and literature, but they is still viewed as games. no matter how good the game there is gonna be some resistance to use o' the art label. HA! Good Fun!

You know very good i was talking about computer/console games... and they are definately not older than human species doesn't matter what you were talking 'bout. games has been 'round probable back before cro magnon, and games ain't gotten the benefit of doubt as an art form in all that time. makes harder for computer/console games to somehow change. HA! Good Fun!

1) you is dreaming if you believe that ps:t will ever be considered an artistic masterpiece = starry night. ... really. am not even gonna argue this. ps:t is our fave game, but if you thinks ps:t ever gets cred as genuine art from some significant portion o' public and academia, then you is deluded. HA! Good Fun! To be fair, no videogame has managed something of that magnitude yet. because games are about 70 years younger than movies and more than few hundred years younger than books games is probable older than human species. HA! Good Fun!

what greater population is you talking 'bout? the greater population that Gromnir knows does not think that writing without pictures equals art. get a bill in the mail from electric company. not art. memo from boss 'bout excessive bathroom breaks or misuse o' lunchroom microwave. not art. similarly, am not certain o' the public you reference that believes pictures without writing is art. picture of a crappy desk that somebody is trying to sell on craigslist for $200. not art. picture of what your lawn will look like if you use Miracle-Gro. not art. you people is being silly. pictures and writing not got some kinda wacky Art free pass from... anybody. has nothing to do with pictures and writing. is more than a few illustrated kids books that is probably considered art by mainstream. ever seen what some o' those pre-printing press illustrated bibles auction for? is Comics that ain't easily embraced as art. what is difference 'tween comics and other forms o' illustrated books? not much, but perception is hard to shake. even so, is no writing + pictures = crap. is Comics = crap. is no different than pr0n. is any reason that pr0n can't be art? probable not, but given the target audience and fact that there ain't no widely accepted Art pr0n, the genre faces a serious uphill battle in gaining recognition... not that the pr0n industry is concerned 'bout lack o' academic respect. regardless, quit with the silly pictures + writing nonsense. HA! Good Fun!

who refers to comics as the 9th art? is probable some euro-trash affectation. we thinks some comics has risen to level o' art, but am not gonna go so far as to suggest that our personal belief is common or accepted by a significant % o' academics. however, the numbers o' academics who has begun to accept comics as potential art is growing. we saw the beginnings of a shift occur during late 80s. weren't no sea change or anything... HA! Good Fun!

1) you is dreaming if you believe that ps:t will ever be considered an artistic masterpiece = starry night. ... really. am not even gonna argue this. ps:t is our fave game, but if you thinks ps:t ever gets cred as genuine art from some significant portion o' public and academia, then you is deluded. 2) van gogh were a single artist a single artist can live and die for his work. james joyce had many offers to publish Dubliners, but every publisher wished to fix. joyce refused. 10 years joyce refused til he finally met a publisher who would print and distribute Dubliners without revision or alterations. can you imagine an indie developer doing same? black isle is a particularly bad example 'cause they were the crpg development arm of interplay, a for-profit company with stock... public traded stock. the goal o' interplay, first and foremost, were to be making money/profit for stockholders. maybe some years down the line you can get 'nuff money into game industry such that a developer or publisher is willing to release one or two art films each year... prestige pieces. or maybe some developer manages to slip an art game past publisher and such release complete alters the industry as a whole. dunno. what we does know is that ps:t did not make interplay stock more valuable... on contrary, it helped push interplay closer to brink o' collapse. again, ps:t is our favorite crpg, but as a commercial product it were a miserable failure. interplay weren't trying to sell ps:t to posterity... were trying to sell to customers in winter of 99. HA! Good Fun!

am not sure what you is talking 'bout. there were loads o' print and on-line previews for ps:t leading up to release of game... is a long time past, but you can still dig up the multi-page and extreme positive previews of ps:t from ign and gamespot. am recalling 1 and 2 page advertisements in cgw... and those ain't cheap. there were a 5' tall cardboard ps:t display at our local game store... had nameless one and most o' the joinables near life-size and in bright shiny colors. traffic at interplay's ps:t boards were pretty good--josh were the interplay board monkey at time. ps:t were hardly some unknown enterprise on the fringe o' the gaming world. btw, one reason why ps:t were such a disappointment were 'cause it were not simply a small budget endeavor. sales for ps:t were particular disappointing 'cause o' the Big investment by interplay. ps:t failed. is many reasons why it were a commercial failure. revisionist history won't make it any less of a failure 10 years removed. HA! Good Fun! side-note: am willing to concede that the ps:t advertising were poorly conceived. is not that there weren't enough advertising, but is possible/probable that many were confused by interplay's adverts. if you were not familiar with the planescape setting, then ps:t advertisements maybe did little to create anticipation for game.

that assumes that you would have to "keep firing" people... which is unlikely. fire a couple malcontents and the rest get the message: nobody is irreplaceable. HA! Good Fun! You'd be surprised, not a general case, but sometimes the firing's backfire and you create more malcontents. It happened in my last job, company got mismanaged to death, team kept losing developers due to the manager's wannabe hardass-ness. Was funny to see them go from happy to describing to me how they'd cut the manager's throat, though, hehe (frankly a poisoned Jos Loius was the best option). this is a different economy. is not like it were even a year ago. unless you is in a highly specialized industry, the boss can be a complete harda$$ and many/most employees will willingly take because they is happy to have a job... and if they ain't happy to eat crap and grin, you can very easy find somebody who will. *shrug* the harda$$ model works well in this kinda economy, particularly if you does the good cop & bad cop routine. usually is mid-level manager or supervisor who gets the bad cop role, but Gromnir thinks the method works best when immediate supervisor gets to be the good guy... "Yeah, the boss is an 4-hole, but if we don't finish up this project on schedule, both you and I may be looking for work. Look, I know that you need a couple of days off next month, and I will make sure that you get them if you complete your work by Friday. We're all in this together, right?" only real drawback is that the employees feels more loyalty to their immediate supervisors and managers as 'posed to the Evil Boss/Company. have to fire or transfer the manager and you can be faced with problems. in any event. Gromnir ain't feeling bad that some exec wants to treat game development like a business rather than a kindergarten class. sure, is tough to squeeze art out o' a bunch o' scared sheep, but this industry produces damned little art anyway. when you got duty to stockholders, you better be darn sure you is producing a product that will makes return on investment... leave the amusing art pretensions to the indies. Gromnir may prefer games made by those indie ne're do wells, but Gromnir is a purchaser rather than an investor. HA! Good Fun!

that assumes that you would have to "keep firing" people... which is unlikely. fire a couple malcontents and the rest get the message: nobody is irreplaceable. HA! Good Fun!

darth vader works pretty good in this sorta economy. whenever there is a sharp decline in employment, overall production actually increases. 'course this means that even when economy turns 'round business not immediately start rehires. am recalling a story 'bout building of Hoover Dam(n) during the depression. work conditions were horrendous and fatalities were common. eventually 'bout 1/3 of the +7 thousand workers created a work stopage. the Hoover Dam project manager simply fired the malcontents and replaced 'em the next day... though he did incrimental improve working conditions afterwards. HA! Good Fun!

This explains the motivation for every single thing he said. I would like to hear him trying to do a motivational speech to the developers. "Thank you for showing up this morning. The coffee we provided is terrible, but the bear claws are pretty good. Feel free to grab a pastry on the way out. This pep talk isn't going to take very long, so the bad coffee should still be warm and the boston cr

to be fair, is not "getting" sad. the decapitated head slide down sword bit is not new. am recalling that when Gromnir first heard all the criticism o' the violence trailer we went to bio board to catch up on recent da news... people were speaking of da joinables we didn't have information regarding. so, we goes to the official da site to see what bio had posted 'bout their da joinabales... is when we first saw the head and sword bit. is not "getting." is from pre-e3. fact that rubbish is old rubbish not make it any more palatable, but keeps in mind that the biowarians already went through whole explanation 'bout how some o' the advertising and presentation o' da at e3 and elsewhere were giving folks the wrong impression o' game contents. the wacky part o' bio response to violence trailer and da site blood splatter motif were their expressed surprise and disappointment that fans would accept the extreme nature o' the recent advertising while ignoring years o' developer posting. how coulds all you fans possibly think that da were a campy gore-fest (with some clumsy soft-core porn thrown into the mix) when gaider and priestly and kirby had been describing the For Reals DA on a daily basis these past few years? ... is a fine line 'tween willful obtuse and stoopid. HA! Good Fun!

am not minding that you folks don't like the bio characters... though you ain't got near 'nuff to judge. the thing that we find irksome is those 'mongst you who laud obsidian characters, but slam bio. am not sure how many times we has heard how fantastic chrisA is as a writer. fine... but if lack o' originality bothers you, then fact that ravel has made an appearance in every obsidian game since ps:t should be worth comment. fall-from-grace is the redeemed whore and mystery-that-is-woman character. nordom didn't exactly inspire with growth... had more lines than bio's hk-47, but served same comic relief function. gann? jolly rogue womanizer with mommy issues? similarly, who woulda' given a damn 'bout dove character if she had been human, 'cause the paladin type who figuratively sees world black & white is made interesting by making literal see black & white... and adding wings? that blind sith in kotor2 with her fortune-cookie dialogues that could be exhausted in your first on-ship conversation, were a real fantastic example o' character development. am not minding if you folks pre-judge characters without playing game... 'cause that is what people do. some o' you has already decided that you like or dislike da so it genuine won't make much difference once you plays game. you already gots mind made up and the actual play experience will justify your deciscion regardless. even so, some o' you folks prove to Gromnir why we loathe the gaming community. originality o' characters for you is based not on what they says or do in game, but rather is based on physical character design and a 3-line summary. make an amorphos blob with mpd from different dimension the new love interest and no doubt you peoples would think is kewl, regardless o' how actually developed. bah. HA! Good Fun!

clean install of nwn2 or does you got mods/fixes? we got no genuine advice save for what we always hears first from the tech-heads when a strange bug pops up so long after release: remove all mods. HA! Good Fun!

the capacity o' human memory is staggering... when proper directed and motivated. the school we referenced, the one that did mary poppins, made a big production out o' their yearly play. the school librarian and music teacher devoted considerable hours and effort. every year they did similar plays, and they actual had A & B casts and multiple showings. were damned impressive for elementary school. no winging or bluffing. ... am recalling some o' the guys we played football with in college. am not sure how they got into school, but they were pretty damned unmotivated as students... tutored a few that couldn't write a paragraph much less a multi-page essay. nevertheless, these jokers could memorize a +100 page playbook. fatigue. assume spells with levels o' complexity 1-6. cast a level 1 spell costs 5 fatigue. cast a level 2 costs 10. etc. must be a super smarty character to cast level 6 spells, but is unlikely that super smarty player is gonna be able to manage a pool o' more than 40 fatigue points even at high levels. on the other hand, the less smarty mage who were more physical oriented maybe boosted fatigue to 65 points... but he can only cast spell levels 1-4. smarty mage can cast 1 level six spell and a single level 2 spell during course of ordinary combat encounter. on the other hand, the buff mage can cast 3 level 4 spells and a level 1 spell... or some other combo o' spells with a total fatigue cost o' 65. added complexity to system: the character can convert health points into fatigue points... but am not sure how would work in rt combat. 'course combat actions also got fatigue costs. fatigue regenerates slow. health regenerates hardly at all... and fatigue and health boosting items/potions typical increase rate o' regeneration rather than simply resulting in an instant boost to fatigue points. is not exact how Gromnir has implemented in past (our pool o' fatigue points tended to be greater so that magic types and combat types could do more stuff during extended combats,) but with a fatigue system we ends up with a much greater array o' viable mage builds and encounter tactics tend to be more challenging too. HA! Good Fun!

"British and Australian swearing and such is a lot better. " Gromnir enjoyed our visit to australia, but your idioms is puerile... an assault on the ear. makes brooklyn garbage collectors seem cultured and urbane by comparison. brit cursing... am not sure. a study in extremes. is either extreme vulgar or extreme stoopid. swearing is 'posed to be extreme, so am guessing it is ok. typical American swear is a crutch for a deficient mind or is simply punctuation. in either case is unnecessary. 'course, noncoms in US military has turned vulgarity into an unparalleled art form that we has never seen replicated in any place we has traveled. we may not dominate at the olympics no more, but our noncoms is still unrivaled in the art o' profanity. *shrug* if you wants sense o' gritty realism, then swearing is kinda understandable. you want to depict soldier-speak? you got realistic police? heck, go to bar where trial lawyers congregate and you will pick up some whiskey inspired profanity that could blister the paint off a church. regardless, we beg game developers to avoid australian idiomatic swearing as am positive that such dreck has destroyed more brain cells than alcohol and syphilis combined. HA! Good Fun!

fantasy crpg weapons has always been oversized. am still trying to imagine how peoples could wield a bg1/bg2 warhammer. even so, there is a point where weapon size becomes cartoonish... seems out of place if you is promoting dark and mature. wanna impress us with dark and mature while we sees a character swinging 'round a 50lb sword? is getting as bad as those jrpg and anime weapons we has seen. big weapons? yeah, is a minor annoyance. weapons that would be near impossible to lift, much less wield? is cartoonish... which is fine if you is going for a cartoonish look and feel. do WoW with the bright vibrant colors and impossible proportions and the comic book look? good, but the ridiculous big weapons and armours just not seem congruous with the rest o' the aesthetic. HA! Good Fun!

as much as many of us snobby old timey pnp players complain 'bout d&d, it is tough to ignore the impact d&d had on any role-play game that were to follow. d&d evolved from tabletop wargaming, so is not surprising that virtual all rules for d&d were combat related in some way, shape, or form. role-play were almost a misnomer when attributed to d&d as the rules didn't genuine deal with role-play. d&d were a squad-based tactical combat game... the role-play elements were pretty much left up to player and dm discretion. even so, is very few exceptions to the Combat First kinda aspect o' most pnp rpgs... and is even more rare with regards to crpgs. does crpg needs combat? 'course not, but is unsurprising that people have come to expect good squad-based tactical combat from their crpgs. after all, the combat is pretty much an established convention o' the genre. ps:t is an intriguing example. am recalling a couple o' posts from chrisA in which he disagreed with notion that ps:t combat were lame... 'course he were kidding himself. in any event, ps:t did have combat, and a good amount o' it too... whcih ain't a shock considering ps:t reliance on d&d rules. the thing is, even for folks who thought ps:t were sooper-groovy-keen, is few that thought ps:t combat were a positive feature. maybe ps:t didn't even need combat, but the fact is that it Did have combat. if you put combat in game is it not worthwhile to make that combat engaging and challenging? Gromnir's favorite crpg is ps:t, but it would be more favorite if combat weren't teh suck. likewise, while we found kotor to be an entertaining game in spite o' its flaws, the combat were horrible. is no question we woulda' enjoyed kotor more if combat were better implemented. rpgs not need combat and Gromnir can enjoy games with lame combat. nevertheless, if developer adds combat, why not make combat... good? btw, feel free to restrain self from naming the handful o' pnp systems that don't use combat, 'cause Gromnir is already aware o' such systems. HA! Good Fun!

untrue. crouching considerable steadied sniper shots. once you put loads o' point into sniper rifles it didn't genuine matter if you were crouching or not, but near start of game crouch made much difference. 'course the sniper rifles is way overpowered anyways, and as mentioned already, crouching only helped at start o'' game. also, crouching did offer considerable cover benefits early in game when your character were relative weak... and have vague recollecting that on highest difficulty setting we got some use of crouch-type cover in the dlc. most locations offered equal cover benefits for standing as crouching, but there were a few exceptions. 'course obvious fix is to simply alter those game areas that woulda' made crouch your best option... get on rail car at new eden encouraged crouch, but not take too much imagination to replace waist high cover with larger pylons or columns or wahtever. benefits o' crouch were pretty limited, but were useful early in game, particularly for snipers. HA! Good Fun!

why can't you like 'em all? if they is good, then there is no reason for you not liking one of 'em. is tough to imagine somebody liking or hating all six equal, but am not sure why you think is beyond reason to like all 6. am not actual reading details on any origin as we wanna give da and bio a fair shot at impressing and surprising us. even so, if bio does their job well then we can expect to have six good origins, right? given fact that most people only play these games once, bio better win on each player's first choice... whichever that choice may be. otherwise they probable won't get no second or third shot at trying to dazzle or impress the average fan. heck, if first origin sucks there is a good chance even Gromnir's preternatural patience will be insufficient to compel us to try a second-choice origin. HA! Good Fun!

Yes. I can understand that. I don't go to the Bio boards so I'm not at all familiar with the crazy annoying people there, but on the boards I do go to gay romance is mostly brought up as a negative. I'm not really for or against romances in RPGs, but I guess I'm pro-gay romance in Bio games simply to oppose the homophobes who freak out about it. Someone mentioned appeasement earlier, and I'm certainly against Bioware removing gay romances or limiting romances to straight characters in an effort to appease their homophobic fans. am agreeing that if bio genuine thinks gay romance makes for a better game, then they should ignore complaints and protests and opinions to contrary. whether it is cave to gay activist or cave to homophobes not matter in least. do what is best for game. HA! Good Fun!

1) is always an issue of resource allocation am not least bit interested in ANY of the tangential romances, but the more man hours spent on gay romance means necessarily less resources is devoted to other stuff. bio romances, as far as Gromnir is concerned, is suck, but given their popularity we can understand the time and energy spent on such stuff. but other than something less than 3% of the population that is homosexual, and a handful o' teenage girls, who is genuine interested in gay romance 'tween male characters? 2) am not bothered by gay romance in games. aside from the aforementioned questionable zots allocation, it doesn't bother us in the least if there is gay romances in da or any other bio game. done right, gay ain't inherent bad, and as you mention, we can skip. no harm. what DOES bother Gromnir is that virtual every romance thread at bio becomes a Gay Rights thread... and there is a sickening number o' romance threads. reminds us o' our time in berkeley... bus fares go up or is an increase in tuition and somehow it were a conspiracy 'gainst the local gay community... which were 10%, 15%, 18%, 25% or 110% o' the population depending on which angry activist were protesting at the time. is not the gay romance that irritates Gromnir so much as it is those lobbying for gay romance. for kotor, je and me, Gromnir were largely unconcerned, but moderate supportive o' gay romance inclusion. unfortunately, the omnipresent activists complaining o' disenfranchisement has made us complete sick o' the entire subject. as we rare ever post at bio no more (under an alt o' course) the bio boards should not concern us, but much as karzak's dual-wielding thief crusade got kinda tedious after the 100th post, so to has the gay rights activism. am now anti-gay romance in bio games, simply 'cause we not wanna give positive reinforcement to arguably the most obnoxious element trolling the bio boards. "Gamestop has sold out of their Collector's Edition for the PC and XBox360. " something special come with the ce? maybe a small faux blood pack that you can use to create splatter effect on monitor screen whilst playing... makes game more "dark and mature." HA! Good Fun!

bathing weren't universal 'mongst hunters and sieges were far less common than your movies and fantasy books has led you to believe. you not think those hunters and gatherers were territorial and warlike? hunter-gatherer worries 'bout getting eaten by beasties were probable minor. on the other hand, a sprained ankle or a broken arm... or any ailment that keeps you laid up for days or weeks... far more likely to be = death than in an ag society. pre-ag affords a frighteningly tenuous grasp on life. *chuckle* the most successful hunters & gatherers were post-ag... 'cause then they could add banditry into the equation... which ain't genuine hunter-gatherer no more. Gromnir's ancestors were hunter gatherers relative recent, and we got no illusions 'bout just how harsh and uncompromising the lifestyle were. heck, pre-horse it were even worse. HA! Good Fun!