He works for the marketing department, he' s paid to insult our intelligence. The XBoned is just so blatantly ****** no amount of perfume can ever hide its smell. At this point I just find it comical. I just grab the popcorn, sit back, and watch them shoot untold amounts of bullets in their own foot. http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=586406
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Because it holds you back. It' s like saying "build me a Ferrari ... starting from this Beetle motor". Although you could improve a house/motor/computer just by adding stuff, without throwing anything out, building something truly greater is generally easier when you start from scratch. Not to mention they' d rather have you buy a new game than play an oldie. Ironically, backward compatibility is the very thing that holds Windows back ever since it exists.
I' m not sure letting us control an Ushiha Sasuke clone cutting his way through a world of plastic and zippers is any less of a desperate attempt at cattering to the average male teenager fantasies. ^^
That bit about using different shaders for each world sounds awesome. The thing is, dysney worlds have a fairly homogenous design, a simple cell shading as the one seen in the teaser would fit most of them. I sure would kill to see a crayon shaded world, like this (though atm I can' t think of a disney world that calls for it) :
Here' s the teaser, for those like me who can' t watch the stream : Can' t really notice any significant level design improvement, but the characters definitely look slicker. That heartless particle-like behavior is interesting, looks like fun !
We' re big romantics at heart, so naturally we like cluster****s.
Keeping inflation in mind it' s not that pricey compared to the systems that came before. And although it' s not a golden rule recession times are usually a boon for the entertainment industry : the grimmer the outlook the higher the need for escapism.
I' m not so sure casuals at large won' t mind the Xboned consumer unfriendliness at all, I know a lot of casual gamers who pirate more than I do (or, to be accurate, who actually pay much less stuff than I do) and/or mostly buy used stuff. Economy is a fickle *****. You can' t experiment at will and crash the system on purpose to make it a rocket science, you can only relly on past history and make a wild guess about what does or doesn' t work. Piracy is the umbrella term the industry blames its problems on when things go awry. You feel import hurts localization firms ? Call it piracy and region lock everything. Apparently buying or selling used games counts as piracy now. They haven' t openly labeled it as piracy yet, but they sure act like it is. Can they prove "piracy" is actually hurting them ? Nope, not in the big picture, but I can understand why they' d intuitively perceive it as harmfull. To counter all that the devs could have improved their distribution models, especially on-line. I would have been more than happy to buy digital if it was actually cheaper than buying a hard copy. It would hurt local business, but on the other hand it' d be more ecologic. You' d think they' d realize the cheaper their games are the more copies they would sell, or at the very least that selling digital at full price would be percieved as an obvious rip-off, but nope ... I' m not sure whether devellopers will adopt friendlier digital prices or not, but Micro$oft is biting the hands that fed them in too many ways for me to count anyway, Piracy and the used market are counterpowers to the cartel the video games industry essentially is, dicking around with useless DLCs wasn' t exactly the wisest way to prove they have a sound judgement on their products' worth. Personally if I' m stuck with them dictating how much what' s worth and exploiting it (which they' d be naturally inclined to do) I' m out, I' ll just boycott them. Whether most consumers feel the same way or not ... only time will tell.
Mmmh ... why 2007 ? I don' t remember what the third season finale was about, but i assume it was an open-ended cliffhanger obviously calling for one more season. I also wrongly assumed the series had ended but it was in 2009 : the fifth finale actually looked like a genuine ending. A year later one of my friends asked me if I was still watching Supernatural, and when I told him the series was over he said "but ... Igor just told me last week that he' s still watching it ..." I looked it up, and yup, to my astonishment it was indeed still going on. But anyway, your mom shouldn' t be sad, she should be excited. It means there' s six full seasons of awesome just waiting for her. You won' t find any full episode on youtube though *cough* search for torrents *cough*.
^ This. What is troubling however is not the fact that they have access to such a database in and of itself, it' s that they can access it warrantlessly. No questions asked, no counterpower whatsoever, they just tell you they won' t misuse that power and expect you to take their word on it. Sorry, I don' t sit well with baseless, unconditional trust. Sure, I suppose none of us here has anything to hide, but considering Obama' s administration allergia to any sort of transparency it is indeed troubling : when journalists start becoming targets you should really start wondering if you still live in a democracy. If they don' t misuse their power, then why would they fear transparency ? Can' t have it both ways dude.
Those 60 words I' m reading for the first time in my life aside, I did better than I expected to. I veeeery rarely have to actually speak English aloud. My accent is quite good for a Frenchman, back when I was a student I was often the only one bothering to try and get it right, but still, any native speaker could definitely tell real quick that I' m a foreigner. My French accent rear its head regularly, and I stumble a lot. Heh, maybe I shouldn' t even bother.
I think you should ask your mom to define "art" and "entertainment". As you implied it yourself those terms aren' t necessarily mutually exclusive, so I' m not quite sure where she' s going with this. Sure, most video games are just the product of an industry, if that' s what she meant, but then so is 95% of the art around us. Video games aren' t more guilty of that than any other media. If she' s saying they' re games first and foremost, merely using artistic components as a mean for that end, then I' d say she' s not entirely wrong. A lot of people bash Heavy Rain for trying too hard to be a movie and forgetting to be a game in the process. I enjoyed it for the hesitant experiment that it was but, knowing what to expect of it beforehand, I bought it second hand, combed through it in a few days and sold it back immediately. Some people enjoyed it thoroughly though, so ...
It might be easier when you target an English speaking audience and/or create content that takes little time to do (me and my webcam), but I had le Joueur du Grenier in mind (the French AVGN, he had a few Nostalgia Critic cameos in his latest vids). He said repeatedly that, as popular as he is, what he earns on youtube isn' t even close to minimum wage paychecks. As for what DA said, I forgot to mention that skipping ads is not exactly something people didn' t do before adblock. I was already barely giving them a glance in magazines and peeing or zapping during TV commercials. Surely I wasn' t the only one. Adblock just made me more efficient at skipping ads I wasn' t actively looking for, what really changed is that now they can see if I skipped them or not. As DA said, it' s up to advertisers to up their game.
I use adblock, but my laptop died on me a few months ago, Now I browse with my PS3 and I have to click skip on youtube. Btw, do they gain money if we click skip ? I hope they do : once I' ve seen the advertiser' s name the job is done, whether I bother sitting through the rest or not. If they didn' t manage to catch my interest in those 5 first seconds it' s their fault, no one else' s. Back when I installed adblock I had no idea youtubers could actually gain money from ads, and since I never ever click on any ad I suppose whether I can see them or not doesn' t make any difference. I just grew tired of those obnoxious popups. I' m willing to pay for good content, but I won' t sit through crap if I can avoid it. Sue me. This ad system is just too flawed. For starters the guy who uploaded a content isn' t necessarily its creator, Also, those ad revenues usually aren' t enough to make a decent living, not even close. I mean who really gets da big money in this picture, even if you do watch the ads ? Basically Google, Youtube, and providers, those who provide content access. The guys who actually create that content have to fight to get the few crumbles they left. Our politicians speak of creating an internet and/or computer tax, but how the hell would you share that cake ? It would be a nightmare to decide fairly who gets how much. For now I think you only have three options : become big enough to earn decent ad revenues, or make a name for yourself and then either get hired as a professional or start providing paying content. But then it' s not that different from any other artistic or journalistic endeavour now, is it ? Millions of wannabes and couldbes for a handfull of actuallyares. That industry has always been a game of musical chairs won by sharks or out of sheer luck, just because the internet now gives anyone and everyone its chance doesn' t mean that rule suddenly ceased to apply.
I played FF I, II and III just once, out of curiosity, they' re too basic for me to really enjoy them. I' m not a big fan of the straight line fiesta the series delivered lately either (X/XIII), even less of the Paradigm **** (XIII), but I have no problem with FF XII. Its airship are really teleport devices and we can see the monsters on the map, but the game is pretty much a ginormous world map. Want to go there or fight X, even though the game makes it really obvious you' re not remotely supposed to do that now ? By all means knock yourself out. I spent dozens of hours at the begining of the game fighting dinosaurs, morbols and elementals with Vaan alone, ignoring what I was supposed to do and instead going everywhere else, farming rare items along the way. Because why not ? None of the old school FF gave us that much freedom from starters, or at all really. I haven' t played XI or XIV, but they' re clearly branded as MMOs so ... do they really count ? FF XII aside, it seems to me SE doesn' t know what to do with the main series anymore, However Four Warriors of Light and Bravely Default are proof that old school turn-based games reusing previous FF tropes (jobs, chocobos etc ...) are still very much alive, SE just stopped labeling those as numbered Final Fantasy. Lost Odyssey also looks awfully like an unofficial FF to me, too bad it probably won' t ever have a sequel. As for the levelling system, the more complex it is and the more freedom to customize it gives the happier I am. Those people (I' m one of them) aren' t saying A-RPGs are bad, I like both action and turn-based RPGs, they' re saying two things : - One genre doesn' t have to shun the other out. A-RPGs are just as old as turn-based RPGs (*cough*Secret Of Mana*cough*), both have co-existed for years and I like it that way, I don' t expect to grow tired of either of them anytime soon. - Call me crazy, but when I order a croissant I don' t expect my baker to sell me a baguette and pretend nothing' s wrong. Yes, I like baguettes, but that' s beside the point. I like KH, but asking the series to become turn-based wouldn' t cross my mind in a million years. I don' t mind SE making action FF spin-offs (CC, Type 0), hell, I want them to, but I still don' t want the main numbered series to stop being turn-based.
I don' t know much about Sega, even less about PSO, but I wouldn' t be surprised if there was some truth behind those claims. I mean : That much at least can be said of many Japanese developers. Now don' t take me wrong, I realize that there are economic and marketing factors involved and that this simple fact doesn' t necessarily imply any nationalist motivation on their part. However I can' t help but notice that, 25 years after the "Here' s the game in English. Don' t speak it ? Sucks to be European." Nes/Master System era, Americans have drastically improved at localization. All their games now come fully translated, most often without any delay. Not to mention they' ve barely ever scraped any content from their European releases. However Japanese games released in Europe fully translated and/or without any delay are a very rare treat. After all the years they' ve had to catch on I can only think of three explanations : incompetence, stupidity, or nationalism. Or a mix of those. It doesn' t look good either way. Japanese are very nationalist overall, it' s not exactly a secret. Loosing more and more ground to western developers might have left a few of them a tad butthurt. Ever heard of Galapagos RPG ?
This is the only reliable method to get rid of phobias I' ve ever heard of : http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-a-Phobia-by-Deconditioning Unfortunately the nature of your fear makes it a ***** to devise a deconditioning regiment, if you plan things then you know they' re coming. I can think of two ways to get around it : - Think of public places that are bound to have unexpected loud noises sooner or later. Go there and read your favorite book or something. Try to focus on how great the book is (or on anything else positive : the nice weather, that pretty guy ...) rather than on the background noise. - Ask a friend to come to your place and spend the afternoon with you. Give him a balloon and a needle and instruct him to pop it unexpectedly, when you can' t see it coming. Next time he comes give him two balloons, then three etc ... up until ten.
Well, it' s not real music in the sense that it was made through a program rather than by performing something live. Same difference as between CG animation and classic animation really. The dangers are also the same : if you rely on the program too much people can tell, the result is soulless. The goal is to manage to breath life into it in spite of the mechanic algorithms you' re using. Electronic music is rather hit or miss for me. A friend of mine listens loads of it, on the minimalist side, and it often comes off as a bunch of loopy annoying weird sounds to me. Too loopy. I think I' m more on the progressive side, I don' t mind those looped samples as much when they' re mixed with live and/or full length performances. When electronics are a means rather than an end. That being said, being purposefully soullles has its uses. Enhancing pictures comes to mind.
Here too, and it might snow tomorrow. O_O"
