Henroid

Anyone know Davey Wavey? Yes? No? Either way, he had some awesome things to say regarding dudes getting all scared about a pink iPhone cover: Edit - Oh language warning.

Last time I checked on Gamestop their business was still growing. They may be pulling out of markets but that doesn't mean anything in the big picture necessarily, aside from what any given country's business surrounding video games are. North America is still prime for them to rake in hand over fist.

And in a bombastic decision, Gamestop announced it won't sell console bundles with digital downloads. http://m.ign.com/articles/2015/09/16/gamestop-wont-sell-console-bundles-that-include-digital-games It's transparent as fuck; they thrive on used games upsold at ridiculous rates, and you can't exactly resell digital content.

Keep in mind they're striking for this, which means the previous negotiation was a "no."

Just an aside comment on this - I think "click-bait" is starting to lose meaning.

Yeah nothing has changed the suicide skill at all. Everything that changed is the impact of mines specifically / alone. I'm actually interested to see how the Chaos Knight will rotate into matches now. His crit-based Desolator effect will have a huge impact on him alone since he gets all those nifty mirrors, but it actually adds up toward a team's effort. Plus, it skips the need to get armor reduction. Sure it isn't reliable, but it isn't hard to build up attack speed or more crit as a strategy. What I want to know is if his armor reduction effect will stack with other ones; I'm pretty sure they don't in this game, right?

You guys remember the Oculus Rift right? A lot of people, myself included admittedly, gave up hope for it when Facebook bought it out a year or two back. I've been dreading what terribly bland corporate scheme they had in mind for it. Well today I've been seeing all the buzz on Twitter about what that is. Apparently the best they can do is making movies watchable in VR. Not interactive software. Just shit you watch no matter which direction you look in. And of course it's 20th Century Fox they are partnering with to do this, because that's the EA of the motion picture industry.

Patch 6.85 has arrived. Notes here: http://www.dota2.com/685 I'm still reading through things (alphabetical order for Lords) but some notable things are that the bonus damage from Purge effects to summoned units is gone now, Chaos Knight has a crit-based Desolator-like effect, and Lesh has been nerfed to all hell. Edit - Oh my god click the mine. Also, Techies got some twisted changes applied to them. On one hand, they do half the damage they used to, no damage if they get destroyed by attacks (including the tree-clearing items now), and give 10 gold per mine. On the other hand, there's no longer a cap on mines. And while they can't be stacked infinitely on one spot, now that they have collision with each other, they can still be very, very close.

Yeah. But this definitely goes down the political path of how executive pay rates have skyrocketed while worker wages have dropped in growth substantially. And production / manufacturing has still grown. Like seriously, if executives took pay cuts, it would easily compensate for this. But y'know, why do that when you can hoard money? Fuck Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Mitt Romney, etc etc etc.

Y'know, I never saw the Elise part of that after all these years. And it's perfect.

Here's Bomb Voyage, and holy shit, how the fuck is anyone expected to be able to do this kind of playing?

A game being multiplatform doesn't require the voice actor to do that many more retakes of the lines. Unless, say, Nintendo were to say "can you change this one line?" But that would be done at the same time as the general development and recording for the talent. As for remakes, television and the motion picture industry alike do remakes all the time. And who gets paid for what is based on who was involved in making which particular iteration, with the exception of say a series creator (the top dog as it were). And on your point about when a game reaches those sales benchmarks and such... Hey, that would probably affect how often sales happen, or it may change how the price to consumers adjusts over time. Though I can't imagine the voice talent would affect a game's budget that much. Unless you're talking about getting Kiefer Sutherland to do some work. Which, by the way, affects the game in a different way - remember a couple Idle Thumbs episodes ago when they talked about how little Big Boss speaks in MGS5? I can promise you it's a direct result of how much Kiefer Sutherland is worth for x amount of line reads. They didn't cut into their other development budget much to accommodate having a big star; they reduced his role to save on money. Overall I think you're taking the 2 million number to heart too much. The other thing to remember is that when you're talking about millions of copies sold, at two million it's obvious that this is meant to target AAA production level (not that there's much voice acting going on in indie games). Unions are business oriented. They aren't talking out of their ass, they are likely researching things thoroughly before making demands. As much as I follow the business side of the industry, 2 million is actually a pretty damn good number to benchmark; I would say within 3 months or so, on average, that's when AAA games would have to start paying out this additional money to voice actors. 6 months at the latest. 2 million is not that big of a number for AAA games at all. And yet it's so weird when you think about the immediate cutoff that mid-tier games bring in on sales numbers. Advertising is a powerful thing. As is playing to target demographics (which is to say, Call of Duty and Assassins Creed will always sell to non-vg enthusiasts; general consumers matter).

That would be the smart thing, yes. You introduce an over-offer, and then work toward what you actually want or expect. And hell if you over aim and get it immediately then why not take it? Negotiation!

But sales are how the money is made. For movies, if an actor takes a scaled pay, their pay is based on box office performance. If the contract is right, home-viewing releases will be factored in as well. Again, all sales. What else is it supposed to be based on if not sales? Keep in mind this two-million metric is not the final line at the bargaining table. People go on strike to resume or start the bargaining process. I really doubt the two million sales mark will be the final decision. It could be higher, or lower, but in the end if it's agreed to it means the SAG actors will be okay with it. Even if they take a bad offer on this specific issue, it puts them in a better financial position than they are currently in.

I'm confused. Are you actually arguing against this because developers aren't being included in the pay raise? Because why would they and why should they? They are not SAG members, nor is SAG their responsibility to represent. Not everyone who makes movies / TV is represented by SAG either by the way. The behind the scenes folks are not on-screen talent. Again, I think developers need to unionize. I'm not saying that as a flippant dismissal. They REALLY need to, and have needed to for at least 20 years because EA, for example, is goddamn TERRIBLE to its employees.

That's up to developers to unionize and make their demands then. The SAG is a totally separate body that is contracted in to work. I have no problem with their demand by the way. Makes sense. Edit - It should also be noted that what they're asking for is stuff that other similar lines of work (cartoons, TV shows, film, etc) get these things. There's strong precedent.

It's all justified with that stupid, "first they came for the ______" mindset.

That's a good question, and actually I'm really curious about what's going on RE: Mario Maker and YouTube. I was really surprised to hear from IT that Nintendo was putting out a lot of take-down notices, but whenever I look up Mario Maker on YouTube there's no shortage of content at all.

So something worthwhile is the Game Grumps episodes on Mario Maker. They're playing levels made by Ross (a guy on their network of shows who is infamously a jerk) (and that jerkiness is definitely in his level designs).

I still endorse this game strongly for anyone who hasn't played it. The audio mix problem I mentioned in my last post here was actually fixed not long after, good on Sega.

After fighting through all the tech problems I was having, I beat Mass Effect. I have a lot to say on it, mostly from the perspective of delving into something that has a bit of a legacy now, but I'll write about it another time. Now I'm moving on to part 2 and it is a complete "what the fuck" for me as of the start. This better go somewhere good.

Oh man I forgot about this until moments ago. So before there was a Mario Maker there were ROM hacks for people to make their own levels. I dunno if this is the first automatic-Mario level, but it is one of the most impressive by a long shot. It has a medley of anime music playing to it. And all of the sounds from the level play along to the music:

Just until the Outer Heaven incident. NICK. TURN THE GAME CONSOLE OFF RIGHT NOW. THE MISSION IS A FAILURE.

Huh, my admiration for Koji Kondo just rocketed up quite a bit. I actually didn't realize before this latest episode how much I appreciated his work to begin with.

Konami has talked about this in the past, and it has come up again; a French report is forwarding that Konami is no longer making AAA video games. Except a soccer series. https://www.vg247.com/2015/09/18/konami-stops-all-aaa-console-production-except-for-pes-report/