Merus

I'm just distracted by the boob-socking going on on that page. Artists (looking pointedly at the men here): you can't draw cleavage on material that goes across the breast

I think the last word on the Hugo fiasco. As with most articles I like, it starts off with something I didn't know (specifically, that the Sad Puppies slate was less successful than the Rabid Puppies slate) and then just keeps building: http://www.philipsandifer.com/2015/04/guided-by-beauty-of-their-weapons.html For those of you who aren't sold, here's just a taste of where it leads:

I'm looking at the Australian Apple website, getting it to pull up the full specs for a machine, and then comparing that to equivalent PC parts from MSY, which is where I buy my parts. The algebra might be a little different depending on where you live. I don't know if it matters too much: I was detecting a full whiff of early 2000s 'Apple is so overpriced because they use non-standard parts'. These days, they're the single most important consumer of electronic components and are ruthless when it comes to securing needed parts (up to the point of buying out the world's supply of components), so for MacBooks, at least, the prices are fairly close to what you'd pay for an equivalent pre-built PC laptop. (Where it falls down is that Apple don't do the low end, so it's possible to buy much cheaper PC laptops that don't meet the specs of the lowest-end MacBooks.) I'm assuming something similar applies to Mac desktop hardware, at least on the low end. (I can't imagine you're getting a good deal on the high end no matter what happens.) I know PC parts are significantly cheaper than buying a pre-built computer. However, there's probably a performance improvement on Macs over directly equivalent PC hardware (partly because Windows is still kind of rubbish, partly because Macs have specific hardware profiles and Adobe can and probably does write specifically for them, in the same way that game developers can write specifically for a console) so you need more PC than you would Mac to get the same result. Put all those in a blender, and I'd be surprised if you can literally spend a third of the cost of a Mac to get the same performance from a PC. Building a PC being cheaper than a Mac? Absolutely, but that's not the statement in question. (Honestly though we really should call PCs Oranges.)

As I learnt when I was still capable of doing 5K, that's not actually sucking at running. You might be wheezing and exhausted but there are a lot of people who'll go, 'wow, and you made it? I couldn't do half that distance'.

A third seems like an exaggeration - the desktop Macs seem capable of running After Effects in a performant fashion, even the lowest end, which is A$1200. You can't even buy the CPU and motherboard for a third. So long as you get the right driver onto the Mac, based on my Googling, they run fine, and because Adobe can optimise for specific hardware profiles, the performance is always going to be slightly better than on a directly equivalent PC.

So I think the impulse to try and layer in meaning in abstract games has a laudable intent. I think many of these developers start off with the theme relatively early, and are trying to work out how to express a particular dynamic entirely through gameplay. The thinking goes that a game is made of rules and procedures, so if you're going to do storytelling, if you're going to express a theme, that theme should be baked into the rules of the game instead of using rules that could work for any game and just painting your themes over the top, like adventure games do. Of course, then you have to frame the game so that people will notice that the rules are supposed to have thematic resonance, and it's probably okay for the game to be cookie-cutter in the parts where it's not trying to advance its theme. Which is why we have so many indie platformers about breakups! I imagine there'd be more acceptance of using story and character to develop theme if it was more common to use mechanics to advance theme. It's a criminally under-used tool for storytelling, particularly because there aren't a lot of people who want to use games for storytelling who also believe that use of mechanics is more important to games than dialogue and characters. (Ian Bogost doesn't count; he apparently has little interest in storytelling in games.)

As it's gone on, my faith in Tom Siddell's ability as a storyteller has been rewarded handsomely. He's not devastating his characters for nothing, because he is too good to set up a storyline that's purely meant to upset or surprise the audience. Annie is stoic to a fault, so what would it take for her to let the mask slip, to not be able to cope? Gunnerkrigg works because underneath the robots and crazy gods, there's a lot of darkness. (Siddell's pre-Gunnerkrigg ideas suffered from being too dark; spending most of the time in the light then turning directly into the void works a lot better for him.)

It'll be interesting to see with the EU standard - they're pushing through a law that requires phone manufacturers to comply with standard specifications, but I don't know if they'll manage to update that specification or if the law's written in a way where the details of the specification can be updated to Type-C ports without having to change the law that enforces the specification. It'll be interesting if phone manufacturers want to move to Type-C en masse but can't because of the EU.

I find that difficult to believe, based on the significant barrier to entry for these games. The way Guitar Hero and Rock Band got over that barrier the first time is through novelty; now that these games aren't new, and most people have given it a go, are people still going to be willing to spend at least a hundred dollars for a guitar that only works on one game they've sort of already played? Harmonix is used to making games for a niche audience (in this case: people still playing Rock Band 3), and they are apparently intending to ensure backwards compatibility with the standard instruments, but Guitar Hero Live has a different button layout so the home console versions will require a unique, expensive peripheral. My concern is that they didn't; they had the right strategy to begin with (that the fake plastic rock genre was a fad that always had a limited shelf life) and then felt irrational regret when it eventually collapsed, just as it was always going to. Harmonix has a sustainable long-term business through Rock Band in the same way that you can still buy Beanie Babies - there's always going to be a few people out there who actually like the thing that everyone else is done with. Honestly I think the smartest thing they're doing is not limiting themselves to making a game that requires a plastic instrument - it might not feel as good, playing the game on an iPhone, but the barrier to entry is low enough that you'll get some people giving it a whirl and it's not like rhythm games have collapsed.

Like, I could guess that Correia actually has received harassment because there is at least one fairly vicious left-leaning troll in sci fi, but they're hardly representative of how everyone feels.

Yeah, I'm specifically responding to the lack of USB ports, although there's a part of me that thinks it's bullshit that Apple change their power solution every few years, because parts stay expensive and rare.

I was convinced that Guitar Hero was brought back purely because Rock Band was back. Rock Band is back because for Harmonix, Rock Band is a platform, and even if the fake plastic rock genre is dead, there's still money in it and it's still something they'd have an emotional investment in. Guitar Hero, by comparison, was positioned as a fad, so Activision released a fuck-ton of them, as physical products, into stores where regular people would buy them, and moved on when the fad died. I'm actually a little upset that Activision's been working on this for three years, because wasn't the whole point that Guitar Hero was a fad that they'd exploit as long as possible?

That's when the first iPhone came out - far as I'm aware, their build quality has been improving as they've been able to tighten the supply chain. This is particularly difficult because I think the new MacBook is a major misstep for them - it is underpowered and the USB/power solution is lousy. I quite like my MacBook Air (it's pretty damn great having a *nix based operating system that's polished and easy to use) but I wouldn't buy one of these new MacBooks.

I'm lucky that I basically liked two of the Star Wars films and I acknowledge only one of them as being pretty neat so I am completely immune to the trailers going 'remember Star Wars? Well guys we're bringing back your childhood!' because basically everything in my childhood is either still around and hasn't changed, is never coming back, they tried bringing it back and it caused an international incident over how ill-advised it was, or it's Space Quest. I'm legitimately trying to think what they could possibly bring back that would send me into nostalgia paralysis, and I can't really think of anything. Maybe it's depression talking, though.

This is an awfully large discussion about a relatively minor point, but I think you're attacking a strawman here, tberton: my issue is that Zaheer's philosophy is incoherent, not that it doesn't quite match with real-world ideology. It's frustrating only because Zaheer actually tries to express a philosophy that has resonance, but he's by no means the only one who has an incoherent ideology - Kuvira's argument about unity and making the tough decisions has holes you could drive a train through, and Amon's equality agitations had a pretty obvious response that was not "but bending's awesome". The series is filled with perfunctory, one-sided arguments, with villains (and allies) who the show consistently makes out have good reasons for doing what they do, but those ideas are never challenged. I don't expect a philosophical argument from my children's TV show; the only thing I want is a reply, and I don't think that's too much to ask. As I said, mixing up anarchy and libertarianism appears to be a problem with American writers - the movie adaptation of V for Vendetta makes the same mistake, although it's more excusable there because the movie also changes the central conflict to be about the American religious right instead of the British Thatcherite conservatism. Having finished the series, I think I gave some of the writing short shrift - a great majority of the jokes land, which is not nothing - and as I think I mentioned, Varrick is a multi-faceted character that works. I still think the series reaches for something it doesn't grasp, and so I'd still consider it a failure even though it definitely had its moments. I think, on reflection, a lot of it is that they tried to do too much - with a shortened season and the standard running time, they can't afford to split the party to try and run multiple plots simultaneously, and I think it never worked out exactly how to balance advancing the season's plot and giving the world and characters room to breath.

Does any podcast need six hosts though

Roosh isn't technically an MRA - he's a pick-up artist, and they've got a Judean People's Front thing going on - but he isn't a gamer and is basically trying to build his personal brand by appealing to horrible people.

My heart dropped. One of the things I've been saying all through this thread is that Gamergate's tactics aren't new, they aren't inherently conservative, and they cannot be tolerated. The manipulations that Bee is apparently responsible for, the grooming of friends, her willingness to excommunicate, to decide who is and is not valid, are tactics that we see elsewhere, in Gamergate, in evangelical circles, in cults and re-education camps. The process of dehumanisation is deeply dangerous. If even half the stuff I'm reading here is true, and I'm inclined to believe it, then being anywhere near this - for years - is the sort of thing that I hold against people.

God it's excruciating in the best way, isn't it. Tom Siddell's at his best when he's been ruthlessly sabotaging expectations and I think, in hindsight, the comic's been building to this for a while. But jesus it's brutal.

It's not so much that they don't track with real-world ones, and more that they don't have any internal logic to them. That's a problem. The show makes world leaders recurring characters and the application of power a major theme, but then it's completely uninterested in how or why leaders do what they do or what makes a leader good.

Which is interesting, because people tend to stick with those they feel an affinity with, even if those people are terrible. One of the nominations for the Hugos this year is this takedown of liberal shitheel Benjanun Sriduangkaew, who had a lot of support because they felt a lot of her vitriol was going in social-justice approved directions and weren't really able to deal with the possibility that her other accounts would attack rape survivors and smear hostile remarks over safe places for marginalised people. (Follow-up.)

's true though

Team Bondi closed after LA Noire. There were rumours that many of them were now associated with George Miller's production company, but they were working on a game called Whore of the Orient, which I don't think anyone thought was a good idea. Australia has a development culture more like France than the US. The idea of working 60 hour weeks is straight up bullshit, and that's what's expected of AAA. We also don't have any publishers with arms in Australia that aren't just distribution and marketing, so having a team based in North America is inherently more attractive because the publishers can go and visit. This has been coming for a long time - in 2009 something like 80% of Australian developers lost their jobs, and the few holdouts were expected to fall eventually. Australian developers generally did outsourcing, but most Australian developers these days are independents. PAX Australia is a huge deal because many of these developers have the opportunity to build their audience, finally, in a way that they weren't able to before.

Thinking about it more, the non-linear design avoids a big issue I have with many puzzle games, where they present the puzzles in a linear order. Having the puzzles arranged the way they do, where they're in a group, linearly arranged, but unlocks are tied to specific pieces, means that if you start to feel the game's a little simplistic, you can look around the hub, see where the yellow or green pieces are, and just do those puzzles so you can unlock something cool. Within the hub, you also get the choice of which puzzle to tackle next, which is a little arbitrary but I appreciate having a little choice. Ooh, that one looks interesting! Hmm, let's leave that one till last. Also, I really, really like how there's no collectibles tied to the copious Easter eggs. Finding secrets is not a puzzle, it's not tracked, so each one is a discovery, and because the game is ruthless about making sure you're clear on what is a puzzle piece and what is not, you don't find Easter eggs when you thought you were solving a puzzle, so each one manages to delight. I like to pretend they read my article about collectathons. Also also, it's a really interesting choice to have the start of almost every puzzle be a game of find-the-puzzle-piece. They didn't have to do this - they could have put all the components you start with right at the entrance - but it means you have to explore the puzzle at least a little bit before you start solving it, but the game is then absolutely clear about what all of its components do after this.

Anarchists aren't really about freedom from coercion, but about the illegitimacy of coercion. Zaheer acknowledges the legitimacy of the Avatar but believes that it shouldn't matter; an anarchist Zaheer would feel that the Avatar is illegitimate, that no-one can represent the link between spirits and humans or be the source of balance. Zaheer attempts to smash the state, to remove the power of the Earth Queen with the belief that balance will arise from the lack of order, which is very much an anarchist action; this doesn't fit with his talk of liberty, which assumes that power is granted to the people to distribute as they see fit. Lots of little islands of order is not what Zaheer wants. (Also, Zaheer's not nearly selfish enough to be a libertarian.) Or at least what that's my (limited) understanding of anarchy as a political concept would suggest.