Henroid

Three people are having dinner with their father, talking about dad jokes. All of a sudden the dad goes, "I've only made three jokes in my life, and they're all sitting in front of me."

It's pretty much where the "not all men!" meme comes from. Well okay, in part. I've had to ask two friends now where I stand in their life because of their outright hatred toward men. Which I get their reasons and don't argue against it. I just didn't want to be a target. One was good about receiving that and letting me know she doesn't mean folks like me. The other stopped talking to me. Noooooo idea what I did right or wrong.

Andy Kaufman better be rising from the grave or some shit because this is just bonkers at this point.

"Of course we have support! We can't say who they are or what they do but they're there, we swear!"

This is all the worst while also being the best.

Everyone knows you have to be a member of the Feminism Cabal to have an operating site. Edit - I've been letting people know about Breitbart's shady history as a journo site and it's taking a lot of the bark out of GamerGate supporters. They still deny it / tell me I'm wrong, but I notice their enthusiasm / intensity drops substantially. It literally does stand against the very ethics they claim the hashtag is against. Edit Edit - It's just neat to see how powerful doubt is. Which they should have. I'm not doing this to be mean to them, it's actual cautionary, "Hey, this is bad shit you're walking along with."

It makes me sad that the GamerGate folks are turning to the Breitbart organization for support. A week and a half ago someone on Breitbart gave GamerGate recognition and I tried speaking to some folks, via Twitter, that it's not the kind of support they want (pointing out the organization's history of making shit up or disregarding contrary information, etc). But I guess now they're just wholly embracing it. At this point I've resigned myself to knowing that there will forever be this Tea Party style contingent on the net that will get involved in video game discussions. They won't always be called GamerGate or whatever. But they won't stop existing.

That's another big issue with this. But I mean, I can also understand start-ups not having the means to pay (as much or until sales revenue come in).

There's a lot of factors to consider. The angle I would take is drawing analogy to unpaid internships, where one gets experience working in a field prior to being able to work in it. Granted, if you look at things like radio you'll see abuse of that (where unpaid interns are just rotated in over and over, and not all of them get jobs working in radio). But that would be like big publishers doing that sorta thing. With small start-ups, that tune would be different. It gets your name on something, and another smaller company (not necessarily a start-up) or maybe even a mid-tier will be able to see your work. Basically the question is, are you willing to work on something for little to know pay to demonstrate your competency / skill at it? (All that said, I think unpaid work is a load of shit; I'm hyper sensitive to issues regarding poverty)

Oh boy I played Corruption of Champions. Any questions anybody? So going back to the GamerGate thing, guess what? Apparently they're now exploring the option of RICO, a law they likely heard about when watching The Dark Knight, to fight against... whatever. Only nobody can figure out how it possibly applies (the law is rooted in dealing with organized violent crime so actual wtf levels are critical).

YOLO YOY BTW I just read on Polygon that Paul McCartney not only did the music for Destiny, but he did it for free. http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/11/6136371/paul-mccartney-destiny-single Along with Activision somehow licensing Led Zeppelin's music (something Zeppelin almost never does and it's never about money) this game is now an enigma to me, regarding its funding. The $500 million dev / marketing cost HAS to be mostly allocated to its marketing.

August 2014 NPD numbers are available! Here's the NeoGAF link. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=893306 Notable things! - PS4 is still the #1 hardware seller - XB1 doubled its July numbers, thanks to the Madden bundle - Madden was the top seller combined across four platforms (PS3, PS4, 360, XB1), doing its best on the current gen - Watch Dogs on XB1 is still being outsold by PS4, PS3, and 360 versions - The Last of Us Remastered on PS4 was the best first party title - The Diablo 3 expansion sold its best on PS4, and it and Madden are the best selling 3rd-party titles for August - Minecraft is the 3rd best selling software (PS3 and 360) (wtf this game has infinite momentum) - No info on Nintendo hardware - No comments offered by Nintendo (yet?) - Hardware sales up 116% yoy, software sales up 21% yoy ; overall increase is 8% yoy for the industry YAY

Took me back to Zuma. Edit - Happy birthday Chris!

I am old. I can't keep up with the youth and tech anymore.

"The Dark Souls of Angry Birds" - I'm sorry but I had to pause while listening to point out that the bar has been raised on Citizen Kane.

We need publisher news, if only to demonstrate their personalities. Luckily for us Gamasutra supplies a little something for both. First up, Activision: Not surprising anyone they want to talk big about how well Destiny is doing. They've noted it has shipped $500 million dollars worth - note that's shipped and not amount of purchases - and they project that the game will earn $400 in September alone. They also project it will sell 15 million units by the end of the year, and that its day one digital purchases were record smashing. No numbers provided, of course. It's been a day only, I suppose we won't get any real details 'til late October. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/225310/Destiny_ships_500_million_on_day_one.php Next up, Electronic Arts! This one grosses me out because of how... leech-like EA is. Basically they're on board with the idea of the Apple Watch (which isn't new tech, Samsung has been doing it for a while). They wanna make games and other software for it and are already prototyping stuff. The thing that grosses me out is that they refer to the technology as "Wearables," which sounds like they want to coin a term (unless it's been used before) and that grates on my old-man age. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/225354/EAs_mobile_division_is_trying_to_make_games_for_smartwatches.php

Dan Marshall linked this via Twitter. https://storify.com/MorganRamsay/how-often-do-video-game-journalists-write-about-fe It's basically a guy who has cataloged video game journalist articles over many years, from 40 different sources (the only big source not included being Destructoid because of some weirdness). He went through it all with some search parameters to ask the question, "Is feminism taking over video games journalism?" The answer may surprise you:

It really goes against Notch's position in the past to do this, but I wonder if he's initiated the talks to demonstrate a point. Or maybe everyone does have a buy-out price. Two billion is a fuckload of money. I hate to sound all console-war-ish, but I wonder if Microsoft is wanting to capitalize on having a chance to cancel the upcoming PS4/Vita ports of Minecraft, a move motivated by them losing to Sony so far in installbase for this console gen. Thing is, setting all that aside, if this thing goes through we could witness another Zynga/OMGPOP situation. For those who don't remember, Zynga bought OMGPOP, and on the day the deal was finalized was the last day that OMGPOP's value was growing. It was at its peak; it then started to free fall and the brand name was picked up with no yield to really show for it. Mojang has one game under their belt with value. If MS tries to push a "Minecraft 2" even, it could be a disaster. Especially since MS will have many demands regarding platform availability and features. They're a big business - it's what they do. So I dunno. Maybe Notch sees an opportunity for a big pay-day, on top of success already had, and is going to start another company (but with WAY more funding, meaning team size). And maybe other employees are planning to bail after the purchase along with him (Bloomberg also reports that Notch is planning to bail when / if the purchase goes through). Minecraft's success can't last forever and this could be a mastermind play to get a corporation Notch doesn't care for to essentially lose money on a deal. I can't help but get tinfoil hat on this shit, because I hate mega-corporations a lot. In other Microsoft business news Japan's release of the XB1 was a flop, as expected. In two days it barely pushed over 20k units sold. The 360 sold 62k on its first day in Japan, by comparison. The Wii U and PS4, current competition, each sold 304k and 322k in their first two days in Japan respectively. As I said, this isn't surprising, because console gaming in Japan is on a downward trend and being replaced by mobile gaming. Pairing that with Japan not being receptive to Microsoft video games in the first place and you get this. http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/10/6130445/xbox-one-japan-release

It's kinda sad that this is the best Apple can do. Their watches are following what others in the industry are doing, and their next advent for the iPhone is typical tech enhancement, but hey if you're wealthy here's some multi-million dollar shit you'll replace when the next model comes out.

I dunno, he's pretty cool.

Holy shit, I think I'm done even so much as mildly prodding the GG tag or people who support it. Earlier this morning I saw someone claiming a dev doxxed someone for being transgender. I asked for information about what happened, and it came to light over the course of the conversation that no dev did any doxxing, nor was the doxxing a matter of someone being trans (that was revealed as part of the doxxing I guess). All the while, I was saying doxxing wasn't cool. But I was questioning whether or not it was the dev that did it. There was no proof, only some proof that she ended up linking to something that contained the info (which she then deleted). I got distracted by other shit going on like the Apple event, and before I knew it, other nuts came flying at me accusing me of being in support of doxxing, not even bothering to read the conversation. A few of them, thankfully the ones who made actual accusations using my name, retracted it all, apologized and deleted their tweets with those accusations. But there's still a contingent of internet rubbernecking chucklefucks who will just say that now. The conversation was literally, "Hey, let's be sure of things and not jump to conclusions," and it was taken with such hostility. It blew my fucking mind. God. I can only imagine what people who actually get daily, non-stop harassment feel. That was just an hour of pure bullshit. I'm so mad still.

It's been really slow for a while, not much in the way of big important news. The PS4 hit 1 million units sold in the UK after 40 weeks (making it the 2nd fastest next to the Wii), and it's expected to have some oomph from Destiny. And I guess the XB1 launched in Japan. But I came here to talk about something else. There was an interview done with Hajime Tabata, the co-director of Final Fantasy 15 and how it could weigh in on the state of RPGs. It was done over at Kotaku, but here's Gamasutra's piece: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224994/More_evidence_of_Final_Fantasys_existential_crisis.php But more importantly than that is a counter-point I read over here: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/counterpoint-japanese-rpg-final-fantasy The short of it is that RPGs in Japan aren't waiting to be rekindled or have their death knell sounded with FF15. It argues that Japan's console game sales have been ever dropping, even when it comes to Final Fantasy games (13 had a low buy rate and a high return rate). If anything, the future for video games in Japan rests on mobile games, which are what's taking off over there. I've had passing glances at sales numbers over the last few years and it makes sense. It's some weird food for thought, but all for a game that doesn't really have a release date yet as far as I know.

Twitter does have a privacy level where your tweets are only readable by those you've given permission.

It went as far as people comparing Sarkeesian to Jack Thompson. I did what I could to point out the difference; Thompson argued the creation of behavior, and Sarkeesian argues the reinforcement of status quo / 'norms' when it comes to views of women as members of society. It's a pretty wide gulf in difference. Of course, nobody listened.

There's a good write-up of the whole clusterfuck that was GamerGate over here. I wish I could write as well as other people when my sentiment is the same. http://deathofgamergate.tumblr.com/post/96929549057/why-gamergate-is-destined-to-fail Also Tegan that is the greatest thing.