Henroid

Chris just tweeted this out and it's pretty astute.

Really? When Inafune said things I saw plenty of people react. The thing with Phil Fish is he kinda made his internet-fame (or infamy) debut (as a personality) by saying some really tactless things. Like it's one thing to observe something about Japanese video game developers or development, and then another to just be insulting about it. He fell into the latter. And I held it against him (and if he still feels the same way, I'm still going to hold it against him). But not everything he says warrants that kind of reaction. And not every outburst is uncalled for, sometimes it's understandable. People don't like to think of others dynamically though so we partition them into "good" or "bad" and Fish got put into the "bad" category.

I had to deal with anger management issues throughout my whole life, and I still do (but it's way easier going than it used to be), so I guess that's why I feel the need to defend Phil Fish. I used to be aligned against the guy but as soon as I saw that brief moment a month or two ago when he opened up, I came around. There's this attitude people easily have over the internet that an asshole should be treated like an asshole. I don't necessarily disagree (see: Mitt Romney), but if you know that there's more to the picture you are actually harming someone. I've seen some people justify it as "tough love" and they clearly have zero experience in dealing with reactionary people. It's not about giving them a pass on why they have outbursts, it's about sitting down with them and figuring out why. You can do that without telling them they're OK to do what they do. Anyway armchair psychologist time is over I guess.

A member of the media, some interviewer, knowingly pushed Phil Fish's buttons. Phil Fish told the guy to kill himself at the end of a lengthy response he had, and people reacted to Phil Fish telling someone to kill themselves without really cruising beyond the surface layer of the event. Then Phil Fish reacted by saying FEZ 2 is canceled and he locked his Twitter account. Let me just copy / paste my response to this whole thing from elsewhere. A while ago Phil Fish had a moment where he expressed the pressure he feels from the internet and media now that he's in the spotlight as an indie developer. He did it without being inflammatory and I was totally empathetic to his plight. This doesn't change that. But the guy has got to start on some therapy (and if he already is, new therapist or maybe even meds are required). And I don't say that as a pejorative. It's not a slight against him. It's not to shame him (there's nothing wrong with therapy). He's overreacting in a big way to what's going on. Let me say this - the interviewer who made Phil Fish get mad is not innocent in this. When you go out to provoke people or be an inflammatory dick when you're a "member of the media" you don't get to hide behind that cover. If people want to say Phil Fish was out of line telling the guy to kill himself or whatever, it goes both fucking ways. And now the guy wants to hide behind a false act of being gracious. "Let's talk at PAX!" Stop being a blowhard. You knowingly pushed Fish's buttons, knowing he would react and that people would get on his case because people are waiting for something to get on his case about. It's paramount to bullying. Phil Fish's original outburst in this situation was telling the guy to kill himself. Like I said, that's out of line and all, but it's also something said a moment of anger. It can be dismissed. Have you ever gotten mad? Have you ever said something in the heat of the moment that you didn't actually mean or want to happen? People should get fucking real and stop acting like saints about that shit. You do it, you do it, and yes even you. The part about Fish's outburst that leads me to say he needs therapy (or to adjust any he may be getting already) is when he locks his Twitter account and announces he's canceled FEZ 2. Now he's being reactionary to everything and he can better control this part of the whole situation. I don't excuse the inflammatory shit Phil Fish says. But because he's so easily hounded for the littlest things, to the point that the wrongdoing of others is excused just because Fish is involved, I've come around to feeling the need to defend the guy.

Oh gosh I forgot to mention the Quake 3 story from my email, in case anyone missed it from whatever internet sources covered it. So Quake 3 Arena had a function for the AI where it would adapt to and 'learn' things you would do when engaging it. I can't remember how extensive or noticeable it actually was. But in this fake story, a guy started a server full of bots to test how their AI would adapt over time to itself basically. He remembered it years later and when checking up on things found the bots just staring each other down. The notion put forward is that they evolved to form peace. My view of it was that they evolved to form a cold war. And the two party-pooper explanations are that their scripting crashed, and also the truth that it's a fake story.

Sorry, I was rounding things out; it's 3GB for the XB1 and 3.5GB for the PS4 (but again, the quality of the PS4 RAM is arguably better). No word on what the PS4's RAM usage is going toward. I'm sorta not surprised it ended up being more than 1GB, but coming out to 3.5 makes you wonder. Some of it may be the built-in streaming properties.

The only thing we can foresee about the XB1 being a dev kit is that the function will likely require the always-online part. Which, I mean, I don't necessarily object to that. But I also understand in the long run it'll be futile. People will open up that debug function sooner or later. As for the gesture MS is making in allowing that, it's nice that they came around on it, but I think they can still be held accountable on the part of having to come around to it. I'm just a skeptical jerk expecting the other shoe to drop, and that's a result of this last generation leaving me jaded in a lot of ways. It's like when EA got rid of their projecct $10 online pass thing; I knew there was a catch and it arrived via the console devs saying publishers are free to do that stuff if they want (for a while there, MS seemed to be making it mandatory). Maybe I'm just frustrated that even after E3, when all the cards were meant to be on the table, we're still finding out things or seeing things change. Nothing is certain and that's frustrating to people who have waited a couple years more than usual for the next thing. On that note, it's coming to light that the PS4's 8GB of RAM is getting used up in a big way by the OS just like the XB1; only half the amount is actually available to games. Impressions until now were that 1GB or so was going to be used by their OS. I mean, don't get me wrong, 4GB is still way better than half a GB. And the RAM is still faster and better in general. But this is what I mean; these surprise things we find out about later.

EA has been upping the hate ante this year by way of the SimCity situation (lying about DRM, trying to mask it as cloud computing) as well as stating that mobile game players think that video games are all about micro transactions, so EA is going to give those players what they want in console releases (hence buying ammo or whatever in Dead Space 3). Gosh aren't they so considerate and not taking advantage of the misinformed?

I don't see how A/B's move to become independent can backfire. It means they have more control over the financial overhead, and unless Kotick gets greedy to the point where he matches the megacorp Vivendi's greed, it shouldn't be a problem. Activision has been real quiet this year for the most part, especially regarding the coming storm that was the PS4 / XB1. Now that popular support for one or the other has a much clearer picture they're likely going to start firing up their promotions for games in development. Activision's model may be to run franchises into the ground, and I would never give that the okay, but aside from this buyout they're doing for themselves they've had money in reserve for a while (though Vivendi's plan, up until this news broke, to cash out via forced dividend was going to bankrupt A/B). It's all in the air right now and I'm pretty sure A/B has a foothold to continue doing business. We may even see things change, considering how bold their main competitor - EA - has been in announcing their plans. As well as how much EA is getting hated more for those plans.

So Bobby Kotick is silent no longer. Activision Blizzard is making a huge play for themselves. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-07-26-activision-blizzard-goes-independent-as-kotick-leads-USD8-2-billion-buyout

But Han, if not traveling on a ship, had like double the travel speed. He could get across the galaxy in like 15 days, which is pretty fast. Because y'know. Par secs.

I was going to say, "The thing girlfriends in highschool jump ship to so you can't leave them comments anymore," but, Sick burn.

So things aren't looking so hot for Microsoft. They announced that they're going to allow indie devs to self-publish on the Xbone, but the function will not be ready at launch. Also not ready for launch is Kinect Sports, their sole in-house launch title meant for Kinect specifically. This is not the console you want to early adopt, regardless of what type of "gamer" you are.

What internet-goer hasn't had a Xanga or Livejournal or blog of some other sort? At least there's context for that tweet Nick put out asking if anyone knew any Livejournal employees.

I started a round of it a couple weeks ago, and on the first day Darth Vader sent a message saying two people he was with are Force sensitive and should train with him. Finding a Force sensitive character in a game is uncommon enough, but on the first day AND two characters at once? I hit some sort of lotto.

By the way in case anyone hasn't seen it yet, majesty:

I like how Nick went from saying Rebellion was a terrible game to saying it was good. Empire at War was really weird. It seemed to just be an RTS more than anything. They added ground battles and changed space battles to operate like simple RTS games. All the galaxy management stuff got removed. It was not what I was expecting, and not what I wanted, but the game was advertised as being similar to Rebellion. I felt lied to. If Rebellion got modernized it could actually be a great game. The "tactical" battles (space battles) and their interface are very unwieldy. When one is triggered, the game offers you a quick-result button just to rock-paper-scissors things, so I use that all the time. Aside from cleaning up the UI that's the big thing that needs fixing. People apparently complained that planetary assaults (ground battles) are always handled in that automatic fashion, but I guess someone (when making EAW) interpreted that as "oh people want an RTS." I do have another story about Rebellion; one of the conditions to win the game is taking over the enemy's headquarters. The Empire's HQ is Coruscant, and the Rebel HQ can move around like a ship. When you find the Rebel HQ you can sabotage it with commandos or assault the planet or bomb it. Those are the logical means you would accomplish this goal. But I found a new way to do this by accident and I can't come up with a narrative reasoning for it. One of the things you can do with your special agents is incite uprisings; this is a means of shifting the Popularity bar for planets you don't control. As a bonus, you get bits of information about the planet, like who is there, what military forces or manufacturing facilities are present, etc. I was sending out groups of commandos all over the galaxy to turn Rebel controlled planets to neutral. As one of the planets was nearing the point of neutrality, the informants told me it was the Rebel HQ. I was prepping a fleet to send that way, and suddenly the cinematic for destroying the Rebel HQ plays. I see the message about the planet going neutral in favor to either side. I thought, up until now, that the Rebel HQ would merely relocate to the nearest friendly planet (which is what happens if a fleet retreats from battle). Turns out it just gets blown up somehow. Also Nick is correct and incorrect about the game alerting you about every little thing that happens. It is definitely annoying. But you can right click R2-D2 or the Imperial counterpart and uncheck what types of alerts it should give you. You can also right-click C-3P0 / his Imperial counterpart and have them not translate the other droid for you. Which actually isn't necessary at all. If you get a manufacturing message, the droid beeps and boops are always the same for that. Popularity related messages? They have their own sound. What made it worse was that the translator droids didn't even have different ways of telling you what was said. "A manufacturing message has been received." That's it, no other way to interpret. It gets extremely repetitive.

It stuck out to me as a time I tried to make a lame reference to a thing said on Idle Thumbs once. I couldn't live with it anymore.

It seems weird to me. I don't expect anything to come of it. Right now the people that care about Total Annihilation are looking at Planetary Annihilation. If they did something with TA, it would have to stand out somehow while also retaining what made TA memorable. They also got Master of Orion btw.

I've gotta get into the habit of posting more things here to discuss with Idle Thumbs fans. Your folks' perspective on things is really cool (in that I'm too familiar with how other communities think about things in general, new is cool). This bit of news isn't new, it broke like a day or two ago, but Stardock owns Star Control now, as if those names couldn't get any more confusing. Technically they have the trademark of Star Control and the materials for Star Control 3. Toys for Bob, whoever that is, owns Star Control 1 and 2. Here's a source on that news. Also Atari auction info. Emphasis is mine.

There will always exist people who abuse and manipulate things to benefit themselves, just as there exists people who use those things as they are intended to be used. I don't condemn Kickstarter over the few bad stories that come about because that would rob us of the good things that come of it. The way to fix things is to develop a way to punish the abusive people and retract what they did, rather than just say shut the whole thing down. As an aside, that's shit people say in United States politics an it drives me up the wall.

That's very astute. Nice. Anyway delays in crowd funded projects don't bother me at all. There are only two things that bother me about crowd funding at this point. The first applies to the developer; it's when budgeting (despite surpassing goals by large margins) suddenly becomes an issue. It gives the appearance that they're changing the game's design to fit as close as possible to the max budget they actually received. I said this elsewhere on the net but unless they specifically stipulate that additional funds means a bigger game / more features, devs should not be committing themselves to this at all. That leads right into the second thing that bothers me; the expectations of those backing. Where a project does not clarify - or even specifically states otherwise - people like to fill in the gaps and apply some unfair expectations. Such as "more money should mean a WAY bigger game!" I asked someone earlier tonight if they ever consider the "should" part of this whole thing and they didn't seem to get my point (edit - as in, "you could add more to the game, but should you?"). Just because more features can be added doesn't mean the game is better for it. A game with 4 main goals originally that constructs those goals extremely well has better chances of being a positive experience than a game with 12 goals that are all far from the same amount of quality and care put into just 4 (granted, those could be handled poorly too) (I'm using arbitrary numbers here btw).

Okay, so Wasteland 2 has been delayed in similar fashion as Tim Schafer's latest project. Some friends of mine are now calling Kickstarter / crowd funding into question. I think they're jumping the gun on that judgment, and have told them as such, but some of what they had to say had merit. The big thing this brought up was publisher / developer relationships - specifically how developers can and do do this to publishers. That's not to say it's all the time, or that every instance is out of malice (unless your name is Denis Dyack). But it happens. The difference here is that developers are now doing it to their crowd funding sources. What can be done to prevent it (on the developers' part)? I got into a discussion about this when the Tim Schafer thing happened a couple weeks ago and suggested that, even if the original budget mark is surpassed, design should be kept conservative and not get crazy with ambition. I know video games often get choked on creative freedom, but there is such a thing as adding too much (because funds aren't infinite in nature). I know that budgeting isn't a precise science and all, but I imagine there are way, way safer methods of ball-parking your budgeting. If possible it'd be cool if Chris, Jake, Nick, or Sean could weigh in on this (not the Schafer or Wasteland 2 things specifically, just the nature of budgeting). Maybe I should email it in to questions.

I just watched the stream the Thumbs did of Rogue Legacy (via YouTube). I really love the art direction and animation on things in that game, gosh. Even just the run forward animation amuses me.

Oh my gosh, that was the best.