Dogface

"Pfscht. Meteor. Is nothing."

that one of them might involve 60 seconds of a dog apparently enjoying music. That's how they get you, man. The soulless minions of orthodoxy, with their mind tricks. Google "Golden Eagle Snatches Kid"!! Find the truth!! On topic, this video is also fake: Crab Battle.

Hmmm, maybe. I'm still inclined to think there's some editing going on, to get from that general reaction to the solid, on-off control in the original. And I've seen similar denials from viral tie-in fakes in the past (like the can-throwers). Of course, even if it is purely shot in-situ, it could still easily be a product placement viral (like I said, he describes it as essentially a viral for his own site, at the least), but I admit the case for Budweiser being involved is less strong then. Then again, if this article is to be believed, by arguing about it I'm just helping it go viral for both parties... even if Bud never had a thing to do with it! Maybe I just have an icy, incredulous heart. Or maybe this is why marketers co-opting gossip and human interest is just another part of what makes them so shitty and insidious, throwing the honour of poor dear sweet innocent Golden -- and of fun, strange, or impressive videos in general -- into doubt. Obviously I'm hardly the only one suggesting this though, going by their reactions.

You know, that dog video has my cynicism hairs tingling. Smells like a viral ad for Bud Lite to me. It's presented as the dog's natural reaction to the music, but that's not how dogs react to music, at least not in my experience growing up with them. Head bobbing in time to a beat -- and especially, picking a steady beat out of a swinging, irregular riff like -- and smiling by just turning up the lips, aren't real canine reactions. The way the lips move, especially around the nose, seems fishy to me as well, but maybe I'm overanalysing that. There's also something about the way the shot is framed that just doesn't sell me as natural and spontaneous either. That big-ass logo arranged just so, the static shot that makes image editing so much easier, the fact that the dog doesn't get distracted or just generally dog around except when a director would want it to, the lack of humans reacting... yeah, call me a jaded killjoy, but I just don't buy any of it. I'd guess that the dog was filmed against a greenscreen, coached to do the basic expression-change thing a few times, maybe shaken lightly out of shot, edited to emphasise the smile and synch it all up with the music, and then superimposed in. The musician seems like exactly the kind of guy that would partner up with Bud for a bit of viral cross-marketing either. He has another video where he denies being a "Budweiser representative" but that's not the same as not having made a video with them. He does say it was "really meant to" drive traffic to his own sites, which the vid is caption-plastered with, so given it has about 10 million views he's either a marketing genius or a lucky son of a bitch, even if it is real, spontaneous and has nothing to do with Budweiser. But given the history of fake viral tie-ins, I'm going with the Bud connection. This has been your daily grinch report from dogface.

That's uncanny. (Or un-KANEY!?!?!?!???????????) I actually really love Kane & Lynch 2, for all its flaws, and this explains why better than I could. I need a dose of that now and then. Also, damn I'm glad actionbutton got rid of that horrible unreadable background...

Hi everyone! Hopefully this isn't too recruity, but if you all ever want to play with the Rock Paper Shotgun crew we have a pretty big presence and open membership. Outfit/schedule details are here! :3

Hi! I'd love to play some Arma 2 with all y'all Thumbs. I'm in London, so 5-8 hours ahead of the US contingent timewise, but if anyone's likely to be around during the afternoons -- maybe during a weekend? -- I wouldn't mind doing a bit of legwork to get things organised. This would presumably be for Arma 2 vanilla, though note that if you can get your hands on a cheap copy of Operation Arrowhead, you can still use the free version of Arma 2 to make Arma 2: Combined Operations. (I can give instructions if needed). Either way, I have access to a couple of servers that we could use, including plenty of nice co-op missions for however many people we can scavenge. I can probably pull in a few more folks from elsewhere to join us, too. This would be strictly a newbie-friendly affair. You would all also be more than welcome to join us RockPaperShotgun folks for our weekly sessions under Folk ARPS. We play Arma 2: Combined Operations on Sundays and Tuesdays at 7:30 GMT, which I believe is 2:30 Eastern time. It's a good time! There are also Invasion 44 nights, occasional ACE/ACRE nights and I believe some folks occasionally play DCS World together, which I can get the details for if anyone wants. Most or all of the info you need should be at that link, but if anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to help. The more the merrier!

Hey, I've run a few Dwarf Fortress succession games before. I haven't played in a while but I'd definitely be up for giving it a go with you lovely folks. Would anyone be interested?

Just read all of Nimona. Brilliant stuff!

Don't forget Tails Gets Trolled. It gets pretty epic. I'd prefer to forget it, actually. Oh god, what's happening. Why can't I forget. It's my.. brain.. what have you done!?! I usually use the phrase "extradimensional Jumanji from hell." Hah! Keeping that.

MSPA = Homestuck + Problem Sleuth Also technically Jailbreak and Bard Quest, which were earlier projects but frequently referenced in the later stuff. Fun fact: Andrew Hussie is also responsible for the Star Trek: TNG cutups on the jandrewedits channel... which are also referenced in Homestuck. I like to think this places them in the same universe and bizarro Picard will make a cameo at some point.

There's all the other webcomics, and then there's Homestuck. I'm not sure where I'd even begin to explain it, so maybe the best thing to do is just watch the video on the Kickstarter page. (Yeah, he got $2.5 mills to make a video game of it). There's also his previous thing (finished), Problem Sleuth, which is also crazy ambitious yet only adds up to a fraction of Homestuck. The whole thing started as a 'fake adventure game' project where everyone suggested the commands, but it became... something special. I genuinely think HS is one of the most interesting and impressive pieces of fiction I've ever read. It also has a fanbase that is both insane and insanely dedicated. I shudder to even try and estimate how many words have been written in the ongoing 'update discussion thread' alone, but it's easily millions and millions. They also release insane amounts of music, some of which is used in the comic. Homestuck itself is up to something like 700,000 words and 7,000 images, plus some extremely complex animations and even small video games.

Yeah, another tall+skinny person here -- it's pretty regular (maybe once a week or two) for me to sort of 'half-faint' when I stand up, especially if I've been sat/laid down for a while, if it's hot or I just had a bath, or if I'm stoned. I can feel my blood pressure lower, everything goes fuzzy and staticky and I usually go partly or mostly blind for a few moments. Because it's my visual-processing cortex going offline rather than a defect in my eyes, it's a very bizarre experience -- I'm not seeing black/grey/sparkles/whatever, I'm just... not seeing. Anyway, it makes balancing hard so I usually drop down in a 'runner at the starting blocks' position. Kind of an odd thing to have to explain to your friends why you're suddenly doing that. "Yeah, it's cool. I'm just, uh, blind for a sec. Chill."

I miss when Halo was funny, bright and colourful. I think it made a great foil for the drama and scope of the story. Yeah, the humans were big damned heroes, and the aliens were threatening and mysterious, but they were painted in gigantically broad strokes and the game was never less than cheerful about it. Even the 'serious' characters like Cpt Keyes in Halo 1 were pastiches of absurdly unlikely badassness. Only towards the end did this slowly give way to a more genuine sense of dread and emergency. In Halo 2 they clearly wanted to go for greater scope and detail, and I'm apparently relatively alone in thinking they actually did a pretty good job of it. Sure, the game had its weak points and was difficult, but I think they really succeeded in making everything bigger, richer and more developed -- not more profound, but more epic. Specifically, it managed to deliver on one of Halo's core design ideas by making the environments and the journey through each mission feel like part of something massive and important: saving a city, dropping a space-station into freefall, fighting through a massive space battle, etc. The foray into the alien story took away some of their mystique, but it was still a lot of fun to explore things from the other side. But by the time Halo 3 came around, I think things had gone too far in making things grim, gritty and serious. Especially because (is it just me?) the writing, acting, direction and animation in 3 were basically terrible and didn't sell the new tone well at all. Sure, the environments were more spectacular, the definition higher, the tools more varied, but I just don't think it was worth what they lost. Halo 4 does the 'serious military grah' thing much more competently I think, and they've developed a hell of a lot of atmosphere and backstory to back up the 'Spartans as Ubermenschen' approach. But it just doesn't really do anything for me. Because everything has been reduced to a straight-ahead heroic narrative with all the usual dramatic tricks we've seen played to death in Mass Effect, Gears of War and similar stories, there's no longer this wild, crazy, ridiculous element adding spice to the environments and the fights. It's just a series of cage-fights with some reskinned enemies and guns. The characters and storyline are flat and uninteresting. The only thing that saves it is the relationship between the Chief and Cortana, which I thought was pretty touching, and would have been a good fit for Halo 3 as the end of the original trilogy. But like I said, what they've done, they've definitely done well, and I daresay the tightened-up gameplay would be good in multiplayer.