Amentep

I knew she was disliked, but I'm surprised by the vehemence seen from people on her passing.

I'd say that - in my experience at least - fandom in general is insular to a fault and it doesn't matter what you're a fan of. One of the more depressing things I've seen in fans is people making fun of other people's fandom. What a lot of hardcore people don't seem to understand - in my opinion at least - is that being hardcore doesn't somehow make them better; their being a fan of something doesn't make the object of their fandom superior to that which they are not a fan. But that's the thing, fandom for many is a refuge. And anything that is seen to "change" that refuge is going to be seen as an attack by a certain segment of the population who can't get past their own exclusionary tendencies and/or their own self-doubt about themselves or their fandom.

The big question - in this sense and in my opinion - is whether the barrier to their readership is internal or external. This isn't something that Walker addresses; he seems to assume its external (I'm not entirely sure; I avoided the site for years simply because I have trouble taking them seriously with the name "Rock, Paper, Shotgun as a serious game journalism site). This doesn't mean that self-examination or trying to raise points about larger issues is irrelevant, however. Anything that is advertising driven should either be casting as wide a net as it can or do very, very well with an advertiser popular demographic).

I find a lot of media related studies to be horribly skewed or weak in methodology in terms of generating results worth caring about. I'm not sure I'm against people trying so much as that often it comes down - in my experience at least - to the individuals using their own experiences and what "facts" fit what they think it the case. Most of them don't seem to start life as "How does media "A" do this" but "Media "A" does this and I'm out to prove it". I confess, I've never understood why anyone would care whether someone was a "casual" fan of something or not. Hell, I post here regularly and I couldn't care less if any one of you fine people liked anything I like. I do enjoy our discussion, but at the end of the day I could care less how "hardcore" you are.

To be fair, gender studies is going look at everything produced by a society to try to understand how it influences and is influenced by gender. I don't think there is any way to escape scrutiny in this sense as you suggest.

For a moment, I thought he said "Activision" and was thinking Pitfall Harry.

Interesting approach; I suppose this may be the crux of the difference between us in that I see the game mechanics as an abstraction that never approaches "real" but simulates same (in this case, equating "real" with "true"). So as long as the mechanics are relatively consistent within themselves I'm not terribly bothered with how faithfully they adapt the setting. Two questions come to mind - (1) "would you rather have no level scaling even if it makes the game worse for all experiences because it still reads as "false" in your verisimilitude test?" and (2) "If the RPGs main storyline is a fight against another adventuring party who has also been gaining experience during the time the player has, shouldn't the adventuring party have its own leveling system that equates to what experience it has gained during the time you took to get to it so as to be "real" within your verisimilitude test(ie level scaling)?" Or am I misreading your use of verisimilitude?

At a guess, I'd assume the argument is that the video in question (which - to be fair - I haven't seen either) is not a case of being a lone video that is easily ignored, but within context part of a continuing series of gaming ads that could be considered a systemic issue rather than a "lone ad in the wilds" issue, and thus less easy to ignore.

There used to be a number of prominent women posters on the old Black Isle site who just never transitioned to Obs boards (or who did but never posted much). Tess, Quixotic, GM, Aurora, and...um...the woman who ran her own irc channel and had multiple handles that for whatever reason I can't remember any of). That said, I seem to remember a few women from that time who took gender neutral handles and never really advertised they were women too, so as not to garner negative attention.* Mind you there are a lot of guys from that period (Onkel, Rayt, slowtrain, that young guy who was the first community mod whose handle I'm blanking on) who didn't come over or don't post any more either. I had a point when I started this, and I think the thing is that maybe there are more women posters here who either lurk or who don't advertise they're women because they don't want the extra (unwanted?) attention they feel they might get? *when we first got avatars on Obsidian and I picked an avatar with a woman on it, people assumed I was a woman and started hitting on me in PMs - strange but true!

From what I gather, their attitude is that its not a 'fund my life" kickstarter because there is an end product (the game) that is promised out of it; I'm not sure that I necessarily agree but I can see their argument, at least.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/grimoire-heralds-of-the-winged-exemplar?website_name=grimoireforever Funny, that link is for a game called "Grimoire", not "Wizardry" (and yeah, I know the history, but Grimoire isn't Wizardry 9, its Grimoire).

I think - reasonably - any Joe not part of the strike team could have survived. Sure CC says that they destroyed the Joes, but at that point they thought they'd killed all of the strike team too. Not unreasonable to think that others would have survived (if they want them to).

I'm not sure what you're experiencing. When I quote stuff i get a quote box and a scroll bar on the right and no problem room-wise. Also the quote box has an arrow on the right that allows me to expand the box. Perhaps this is a browser issue (or I'm misunderstanding your problem)? I only use BBCode to clean up quotes (because doing it outside of the code doesn't seem to work right always). It's mostly trying to do quote splitting, with the forum software hating anything more than 3 three separate quotes, and being tough to get those separate quotes. Yeah without switching to the coding, the system doesn't seem to add a space after quotes making it hard to type between multiquotes. it also seems to be real easy to accidentally delete the quote coding while working on editing a quote if you only want to reply to a part of it.

I'm not sure what you're experiencing. When I quote stuff i get a quote box and a scroll bar on the right and no problem room-wise. Also the quote box has an arrow on the right that allows me to expand the box. Perhaps this is a browser issue (or I'm misunderstanding your problem)? I only use BBCode to clean up quotes (because doing it outside of the code doesn't seem to work right always).

I want a soft-serve ice cream cone dipped in chocolate...

Yeah Yum! Brands is big on maximizing space (the nearest KFC to me is housed with a Long John Silvers, another chain Yum! divested themselves of like A&W). I dunno if the change was with trans fat or not - I know McDonald's fries don't taste 100% the same since they changed to lower trans fat.

They're cutting the chicken pieces differently at KFC. Not sure exactly why, but its difficult to tell 100% whether what you're getting is a breast or back piece (sometimes it seems like you get part of both). I've even had one where they left the neck on. A&W was bought by Yum! (who, IIRC own KFC now) and didn't do well for them so was sold to some of the largest franchisees, as I recall. Dairy Queen's always been an independent franchise chain with little of the top down management you see in other Fast Food Franchises; they tend to vary wildly between locations in my experience. Not familiar with Foster's. The internets comes up with a company called "Fosters Freeze" (apparently one of the classic restaurants built around soft serve ice-cream like my fave Zesto's here). Not sure if that's the company you mean though -looks to be a California only restaurant.

Er, they released them on DVD already. At least in the US; sure they were direct-from-laser disc copies, but they were released on DVD.

Carmine Infantino - probably best know for working with DC's The Flash and his stint as DC's publisher - passed away. http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=44738 Also passing this week was George Gladir, co-creator (with the late Dan DeCarlo) of Sabrina the Teenage Witch - http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2013/04/george-gladir-co-creator-of-archies-sabrina-passes-away/ As well as Fred creator of Philémon - http://www.lobservateurdebeauvais.fr/article/02/04/2013/puiseux-le-hauberger--deces-du-dessinateur-fred/6855

RIP Roger Ebert. He was always one of my favorite reviewers - one of the few who seemed to enjoy genre movies.

Yeah I hope that 1313 can find a home - more importantly I hope the employees can find new jobs quickly as well.

Yeah...well I didn't suggest that so I'm not entirely sure what your point is. In short, and to be perfectly clear, I have no problem with optional modes you suggest and I'd imagine most players aren't going to get upset they add extra difficulty at their choice. And if there was a "click here to have no level scaling, ever, in PE" I'd be pro that too so people could get what they want out of the game. That said, I'm not against scaling the critical path within a small frame of levels as Josh suggested. They expect you to hit the critical quest around level 5-8, making that encounter work for 5-8 level parties. If you're below 5-8 or over 5-8 you have to deal with the challenge/lack-thereof. Seems to me that isn't an unreasonable design and a lot better than the "level one rat in a sewer becomes a level 100 Wererat with Adamantine Armor and a vorpal sword when you visit later in the game" level scaling which is - I gather - the thing most people dislike about level scaling. Further to this, I can understand how people will - in ignorance - complain about games that allow them to do things that give them sub-optimal play - including professional reviewers. Its hard to click "Trial of Iron" button (presumably with a description like Heart of Fury mode) and claim ignorance and get much traction. Note I also have to say, I really don't care if reviewers do complain about the "difficulty" of the game. But I can understand from a designers perspective why you'd want to consider what kind of play experience the player will have on the critical path if the game isn't terribly linear.

It would not be difficult to have RGB customization. If you could do it with your UI menus in a JPRG in the mid 90s there's no reason you couldn't in a PC game in 2014. While I *think* it would be easy, not being a game programmer who has worked with any of the Obsidian programs they're using I don't *know* that its easy so prefer to hedge my bets.

Trial of Iron can lead to people dying and being horribly frustrated because they have to start the game from 0... oh wait, they selected the mode for it themselves. Right, in a perfect world people would take responsibility for bad choices. Unfortunately, in our world, people wandering some place and ruining* their experience in the game by either making it too hard or too easy for themselves leads to poor reviews, snarky videos and lots of accusations of "Obsidian can't balance their game properly" and "Obsidian's QA is hopeless". At least that's my experience. *I've never thought a game being too challenging or too easy was a deal breaker when it was my choices that made it that way, but that does not seem to be the case for all people.

If the option to change is trivial to implement I'm all for it as mentioned previously (Violet for allies! Yellow for enemies! Chartruse for neutrals!) But the default colors (and thus the only selection circle colors if creating a "change circle options" is not trivial to do) really should take into consideration red-green and yellow-blue color blindness (which, I believe would make the enemy-ally choices something like red-blue or yellow-green or something)