Henroid

Today was my first day on the job, and they decided to give me full-time for this week. No idea if that applies as a "from here on permanently" thing. But I'll say this; I haven't had full-time hours for a job since early 2009. I'd cry from joy, but really I'm just relieved.

Oh yeah? I heard Zoe Quinn is responsible for Mega Man Legends 3 getting canceled. BEAT THAT.

"I've quit better jobs than this. GHOSTBUSTAHS; whaddya want?!"

So PewDiePie. I'm not a fan of his content. BUT! Apparently, he's going to start up his own company. In a recent interview he spoke about his troubles when working with Machinima (mostly in that they didn't contact him ever, nor did they even realize he was one of their folks) (a problem I'd heard from other friends partnered with them), and how he's leaving his current partnership with Maker Studios (now owned by Disney). I dunno if this business is going to be just for himself or if he's gonna have it available for other video game streamers to come up in. I honestly hope for the latter, because if he does things right, it could add much needed stability to that, er, profession? http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/227034/Popular_YouTuber_PewDiePie_is_looking_to_strike_out_on_his_own.php

Speaking with their dollars and speaking with words have different weight. So far, Intel is sided with a hate campaign.

They should've taken the XBox One route and just call it Window.

I mean, the concept of "doing everything we can to brainwash people into liking it" sounds like a goal rather than "yes we do that." But it's still fucked up to propose. Luckily he doesn't really get into specifics. Though if he did, maybe people would see he's full of shit; the marketing just runs broad like summer blockbuster film marketing does. All that said though. Him leaping from video games to "hey maybe the government should try this shit" is stupid as fuck. I guess that's why his writing job is for the Call of Duty series. Edit - I mean it's clearly him going, "Hey our marketing is SO GOOD that" - but the shit he says to make it sound awesome is super poor taste.

Holy shit that is terrifying.

So while I'm not exactly the happiest person when it comes to family, my brother got his hearing aids today at long last, and they work and I'm happy for him. It isn't necessarily a general-volume thing. He's actually lost the ability to hear things at particular frequencies / pitches (though there is some general muting). He's spent the better part of 10, 11 years like this, with it getting worse over time. The doctors told him with the aids it'll take him a couple years to kinda get familiar hearing particular words again since it's been so long (the brain is a funny thing). Also, the batteries only last for 10 days (when you account for 8 hours for sleep-time on each of those days) so that may be a bit of a bitch to get through financially. But it's store-bought stuff and my brother figures he won't use the aids ALL the time. At any rate it's a resolution that was a long time coming, and two years late due to certain family members bailing on their collective promise to help fund the whole thing. Leave it to Medical to solve things where my family couldn't!

What's funny is when you apply that sorta logic to other things. "America has a gun violence problem." - Everyone knows that doesn't mean every American is waving a gun around shooting people. I've seen friends throw that example at GGers and seen two things - ignoring the point willfully, OR jumping into hysteria about "now you're saying gamers are violent." Basically most counter-arguments I've seen take words from sentences and rearrange them to change the meaning. It's frustrating and difficult to argue with in good faith because it's just a bunch of purposeful negativity.

Christ, so pretty much the entire exchange is Chris addressing things TotalBiscuit says, but TotalBiscuit just ignores questions or things Chris brings up to him (that require input back) just to push whatever narrative / opinion he wants. It's very hard to have discussions with people like that. "What ethics were breached?" - a question Chris asks regarding an opinion piece (Leigh's) that TB never, ever answers. Instead, TB just keeps saying something about past articles or some shit. Edit - TotalBiscuit is like the Bill O'Reilly of internet personalities.

Meanwhile there's a sci-fi Tetris movie in the works.

The Daily Show had a report tonight on catcalling / sexism tonight, with Jessica Williams. It wasn't over any specific incident that happened recently, it was just a general awareness piece.

Sean already got the It's though.

I was just going to say, Rovio actually took the long-term success and trustworthy route. Which is important, because after the bubble bursts people will want to come back. Like according to that chart, do you really think things will last like that for King and Supercell forever? Fuuuuuuuuck no. Those guys are gonna crash and burn hard. See: Zynga. Rovio cutting 16% of its workforce is not insignificant, but it also isn't a sign of end times or whatever. The companies that abuse the new frontiers in video games are the ones that gross me out.

Holy crap he was unrelenting.

Honestly the only thing I cared about in that video was the command prompt changes. But I mean yeah, if it behaves like a regular desktop otherwise then I can dig it. I've never needed my OS to be anything more than the layer everything I do sits on; I don't need the OS itself to be fancy or entertaining. Edit - And thanks for the video link!

We're a couple of weeks away from getting September NPD numbers but there's a few things to note, all via Gamasutra; First is that to date, the XB1 has sold less than 30k units in Japan, and while MS isn't happy with that they're still determined to let people know how important the XB1 is (yes, they said important). http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/226896/Microsoft_comments_on_poor_Xbox_One_sales_in_Japan.php Next, Tencent (the Chinese mobile app company) apparently trumps the likes of EA, Apple, Sony, etc. in gross income. "The report is based on game sales data culled from public earnings statements from January through June of 2014, and sees Tencent's revenues jumping 40 percent year-over-year to $3.5 billion for the first half of the year -- over a billion more than EA, which takes second place in Newzoo's revenue ranking." http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/226849/Report_Tencent_trumps_EA_Sony_and_Apple_in_terms_of_game_revenue.php Last and most Idle Thumbs relevant news is that Star Citizen has surpassed $55 million in funding, and its dev staff is now more than 280 people (outsourced and internal). Chris Roberts said in response to questions about the funding that Star Citizen isn't a normal game, not being developed normally nor funded normally. Whatever that means. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/226871/Star_Citizen_hits_55_million_and_280_devs_as_funding_rolls_on.php

Unhealthy, yet tasty. The only thing I am strictly against there is the "Crunch Wrap Supreme." It barely has anything inside it; they just use the tortilla and some diced tomato (not much) to puff it up.

So as someone who missed the announcement, where should I go to read what's new / better / worse? Or, if it's easier, is there a bullet point list someone can make? Is it still a mobile interface on desktop (which I -loathe-)?

I dunno if it happened to any of you, but some GG people are searching mentions of Intel to argue or otherwise shit-talk to people talking about what's going on. An ollllllld friend of mine made her two tweets about it, and now her name is being passed around for organized harassment, because she 'lied' and said it was a harassment campaign. So y'know. This shit isn't getting better.

By the way, that drop down list lets you identify as things you don't have to prove, like being an investor and such. So I wonder how much that shit got abused to get attention.

Steve linked the Steam page for Road Redemption so I sat myself down for the trailer. I'm a little wary of there being guns, but it's very much like a revival of what Road Rash was with a lot of additions. And it's only $20 so I'm in on that like a motherfucker. Edit - http://store.steampowered.com/app/300380/ Also I wonder what the music in the game is like. If it isn't (butt) rock, I may have to custom playlist things up.

In the last twenty minutes or so my Twitter feed has exploded with people shaming Intel on this decision.

I've got the DS port/remake of this. I only have... I think like 30 stars, if that? I don't have any given level where I've collected all the stars. I'm not entirely sure, it's been a while since I've loaded it up. I'll take a look later today. But yeah as others have pointed out, the camera makes this game kind of a pain in the ass to play. Like unintentional difficult to overcome. Which is the worst difficulty to overcome.