Amentep

Should he be spitting on anyone?

Ultimately time will weed out all but the best of media from popular culture (books in particular, but I think its true with everything). 50/DaVinci are far too new to have the weight of history to judge them.

I'll admit, I used aimed shots to always shoot the groin in Fallout. Yes it had less advantage to eye shots, typically, but it was...fun.

I could see a case being made that the demo gives extra HP to characters so that the game can be showed off without the party dying. So I wouldn't say that this is necessarily an indicator that the final game is going to have artificial HP inflation. Not that it matters to me, a character getting hit for 7 pts with 26 hit points isn't statistically different from a character getting hit for 70 pts with 260 hps...it'd still take 4 hits like that to kill the character.

And that's a fair complaint in its way. But the problem is I see people complain that Bioware is recylcing their old games and then in the same breath that Bioware has moved away from the things that made their old games good. And just about every level of nitpick imaginable. And when that happens (IMO) the problem the critic has isn't really with the game anymore, they've got a grudge against the company that no game would fix.

I wouldn't say that but both books\movies do resonate with millions of people Twilight is more a teenager attraction but 50 Shades really did well with women of all ages for a number of reasons So no need for literature elitism...just because you have disdain for something it doesn't mean its subpar I think you completely missed his point there though, is the old adage that popularity doesn't always equal quality. You can push a lot of junk if you have good marketing, after all. Actually he didn't miss the point, his point was that just because something is popular doesn't mean it is subpar. Corollarily speaking, just because something is unpopular doesn't make it quality either. (Can't speak to either book, never read either). That said, a lot of the bioware hate reminds me of the old alternative music crowd where once an obscure band signed a contract with a label to make an album they'd sold out and worthy of only derrision. Perhaps I'm wrong, but often times the people who seem to pick apart the current Bioware game often criticise it for doing the same things that BG or BG2 did.

Its not like a person can't physically support multiple causes at one time - and its not like most of the stuff that GG has done to support "ethics in gaming" like emailing sponsers of websites they find have questionable practicises to take all that much time. Heck, a significant portion of the people who are regularly discussing Pillars of Eternity on this very board have probably spent more time discussing it than people did mailing/emailing letters or the like, I'd guess. There are, apparently, a number of people who feel that the national news in the US has pretty much come to that. Between reading company press releases and talking about what is trending on twitter, I don't see much else going on in US news...

Of course not. Poor representation of females and minorities is indeed an issue, a much greater one then "Ethics in Game's Journalism" But that's not Bruce's point. Bruce's point is that, say, "Islamic Extremism" dwarfs "ethics in journalism" in terms of importance. But "Islamic Extremism" would also dwarf "women's represenatation in video games". But that's not what we're comparing. We're comparing sex/gender in video games/video game industry (anti-GGs) and ethics in journalism (pro-GGs) and not the state of women in the world. And both of the formers dwarf in importance against, say, an Ebola pandemic. So because a person theoretically is working to improve games journalism means they can't also be working to improve other things that have nothing to do with games journalism? Are you really making that argument?

^IIRC the rights to Arcanum belong to Activision Blizzard (since Activision bought Vivendi who was the parent company of Sierra)

Thought this looked interesting: Made by some people from TellTale games and Disney who formed a new studio.

And then four more will take their place. Its the HYDRA way. Good return for AoS, I thought. Not a slam dunk, but good.

I'd say the interview Malc linked is relevant here. Perhaps it's elitist of me, but I'd take Jade Raymond's word on how the videogame industry is over that of relative outsiders. Archive for those who don't want to give Polygon clicks: https://archive.today/wBqeF I wasn't familiar with Ms. Raymond (having never played an AC game before). I googled her and one of the first links I found was a demotivational poster implying that she was the "leader" of the team because she was attractive, not because she was talented or skilled at game development. I bring this up because I think it dovetails nicely into Namutree's observation - I've been online since about 1993 (and boy are my wireless routers tired!) and there have been annonymous people spreading hate and death threats (or even just character assasination and aspersions) at that time. The idea that the anonymous person who gets their jolies from posting death threats or doxxing people is specific to gaming is wrong - its something specific to the internet. Now that's not to say its right, but I think anti & pro Gamergaters both have to be careful that people who really have no interest in gaming but a high interest in ****ting on everything they can don't hijack any legitimate point they have (and to be fair, both sides at their core have decent points to make even if they don't always succeed in bringing that signal forth due to all the noise).

Who's the new avatar? Hazel Scott, Jazz singer and pianist and briefly had her own 1950s music show.

Mostly single-player with occasional local co-op.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1578116861/toejam-and-earl-back-in-the-groove The return of Toe-Jam and Earl! Happy to see the idea returns to the original games' concepts; I really felt the sequels didn't capture that same magic the first one had.

And I'll agree - a smaller study can indicate where the need is for a larger scale study (or what direction a larger scale study might take). Its results might be interesting in and of themselves albeit not definative and I think its fair to caution using a small scale study to make broad conclusions. The mathmatician in me points out that's how you determine your sample's distribution curve and whether it is stable or not.

Well, in my opinion, gaming journalism is a joke, but it's essentially a harmless joke. On the other hand, publishers being incompetent, greedy and risk-averse to the point of games in certain genres being essentially interchangeable has harmed and will continue to harm the industry as a whole. Most entertainment producers are about maximising profits while minimzing risks. Its part of the creation of commercial art without the ability to predict what the public will want or be interested in (particularly with the long development cycles). I agree that a more diverse (in terms of plots, theme, gameplay) game development environment is a better one, but I'm not sure how much we can expect that from a big publisher.

If Trotsky had been a a female jazz pianist and singer, that is.

^I'm not sure its fair to lump all of the gaming press together as being "corrupt, unethical and poor writers" anymore than it is to do the same with gamers and the position that they are "mysoginistic neckbeards who stand for the harrassers of women and minorities in video games, trying to keep it an all boys club".

I think the argument would be that if a metacritic score is an important thing for a developer (and I believe that it has been, with regard to developer-publisher contracts) then there is an important weight to a game critics critique beyond whether one listens to it or not. Well, absolutely, but why should game journalists be held responsible for actually acting with integrity for once and assigning a score they feel is appropriate, regardless of the consequences for the dev team, as opposed to the publisher who made bonuses contingent on Metacritic scores, a notoriously unreliable way of assessing quality? Well I'd argue that trying to get the game journalists to be responsible would be the better way to "improve" the system as it improves several things, but YMMV.

I think the argument would be that if a metacritic score is an important thing for a developer (and I believe that it has been, with regard to developer-publisher contracts) then there is an important weight to a game critics critique beyond whether one listens to it or not. When I was doing an undergraduate sociology course, 27 people was considered too few. You could get 27 people in the class and still have 70 left over. Mind you that's why I never did any stuff involving people directly... Anyhow, this is one of those studies - regardless of what you think of the methodology or the sample size - where I think we can all agree that further study would be necessary before any really strong hypothesies could be developed.

See "Angel Heart" an early Mickey Rourke film or "Memento" I'm sure it's been done before elsewhere aswel. The 1987 film "Angel Heart" was based on a 1978 book by William Hjorstberg called "Falling Angel". For earlier - similar but not the same - ideas you can see the 1928 novel "The House of Dr. Edwardes" by Francis Beeding (made into the Hitch**** film SPELLBOUND) or "The Black Curtain" (1941) by Cornell Woolrich (made into the film STREET OF CHANCE) both featured amnesiac protaganists trying to uncover their past (and in both cases being implicated in murder as they start to uncover who they are).

THE LAZARUS EFFECT (2015) good basic idea, a game cast, but they kind of stuff it up by not really developing things very well (and often falling to horror movie cliches rather than trying to stick to what the movie was trying to tell). Also some plot elements go nowhere (I know there were reshoots - how much this changed the story for good/ill I dunno). THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977) In some ways its like a collection of "Bond" scenes strung together for a film. Barbara Bach playing off a game Roger Moore is what carries the film (their rivalry is fun). Jaws always coming back is also interesting. Too bad Stromberg is a snore of a villain, ultimately. STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (1986) I remember seeing this one in the theater, but its been awhile since I saw it. Sort of a collection of "Fish out of water" gags, some work, some don't. Its a somewhat silly story, in general, but its a lot of fun and the cast is clearly having a good time.

RIP Nimoy. I'd forgotten that he'd announced he had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

As I recall, the proposal for the new Aliens film is a bit of retcon, going back to post Aliens. RE: Alien 3 - Even though the extended cut is better, its still not a great film IMO. It tries to have the tension of the first film (which is a great idea) but it doesn't manage suspense very well (which I partially blame on the cast being so dwarfed by the setting, unlike the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Nostromo) and just comes off dreary. Alien: Ressurrection - I actually liked it pretty well other than the end*. I don't find that Jeunet "played it straight" - it plays a lot like some of his other films to me - dark humor, a little weird. Its not quite as out there as as Delecatessen is (and even less so than City of Lost Children) but I can see the connection between those films and Alien 4. The only really duff thing is the end, which just wasn't executed well. *To be fair, I saw Alien: Ressurrection on a double bill with Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and that film would make any other movie look good.