Bjorn

Okay, if you aren't listening to Tone Control: 1. You should be.... 2. ...because, Steve dropped the most amazing story about having linked the worlds of System Shock, Bioshock and Gone Home through his work on Minerva's Den and some easter eggs in GH.

Okay, this is seriously the best Tone Control yet, and that's saying something. I hope you have more than 20 listeners, the show deserves it. And I concur with everyone else, the connection between GH, SS and Bioshock is amazing and makes me so happy.

Sorry if that came off as overly aggressive, I've just been seeing that argument brought up again and again in the last couple of days without a lot of rebuttal against the logic of it. The somewhat funny thing is that there are a bunch of examples where the attempt to enforce a trademark is ultimately what kills it (like Edge or when Windows was almost deemed generic). Being overly aggressive in defending a mark is an invitation to scrutiny on the value of your mark. Like in this case, the USTPO is almost certainly going to get more petitions for opposition to the Candy mark than they would have otherwise, and may well end up taking a closer look at the Saga request. King likely would have been better off if they would have kept their mouth shut until the opposition period for Candy had expired. Oddly enough, this other Polygon piece offers a much more nuanced view of what trademark really means, particularly pointing out that the practical ability to threaten other companies is much more valuable (and desirable) than actual litigation. Video games represent a specific oddity in trademark as well. You can't trademark the title of a movie, novel, TV show or play. But games still fall under a good or service definition, like other computer programs, rather than a creative work. It's an unfortunate leftover from when games were seen as toys rather than creative, artistic works.

That's a truism that lawyers and PR people have propagated, but it's not exactly true. It's a twisted truth that covers their crappy behavior. I'm no lawyer, but I can't really think of an example where a company has lost their trademark because they didn't harass companies that had a vaguely similar name that happened to use one word. The biggest historical danger to losing a trademark is to allow it to become a generic term (see Escalator). That's the thing you really need to combat as a company. Common words like Saga are already common, so they can't become genericized. Next, companies lose trademarks because they never should have had it to begin with (see the App Store as an example or when MS almost lost their Trademark on Windows after a court started digging into the history of the term during the Lindows lawsuit). And companies can lose trademarks because they were obtained fraudulently (see the Edge trademark in gaming). I don't know of a single example where not trolling other companies ultimately resulted in losing a trademark. That argument was used in the Windows vs Lindows case, and ultimately played a very minor roll in the direction of that case. This argument about defense also covers up their poor forethought in naming or branding. If you put some thought and planning into your branding, you don't find yourself having to fight these specious battles over other products. You can read through the actual USPTO (pdf) guidelines and recommendations to see how it's not true. To me, the section on descriptive marks seems to cover the use of Saga in a game like Candy Crush. Saga was added later to convey the larger experience over the older version. Which is what Saga as a word is intended to convey. It's analogous to the USTPO's example of using Creamy as part of a mark for yogurt. And that's not even crossing into the territory about the historical use of a word in an industry, strong vs weak trademarks, etc. There are multiple games previously that used Candy and Saga in the title all predating Candy Crush. It is, by definition, a weak trademark that the USTPO advises against attempting to register. Now the office never should have granted Candy in the first place (and it can still be openly opposed and rejected during the review period), and they have never ruled on Saga. King is just trying to make sure that no one else gets a trademark that has Saga in it while they are fighting to lock it up for themselves. That's not defending a mark, it's being greedy and controlling.

Ermahgerd 2D Mass Effect. I approve.

From Kotaku.

AC4's surprisingly positive female addition, Bechdel Test and all.

I had heard about the thumbs during their hiatus, but didn't want to start listening to a "dead" podcast. Then the Kickstarter happened. I didn't contribute, but that got me into listening to a couple of early episodes, which got me hooked on listening once they started back up.

Well this is looking like it's going to backfire gloriously for them.

Ladies and gentlment, I give you Spelunky: Far Cry 2 edition! I only make it to the Black Market, and die in the dumbest way possible. This was generated using a 32-Bit seed based on "Far Cry 2". Highlights include apparently lots of money, a dark level, and a number of early scorpions. This is only the second level I've played using the seed tool. Both were completely playable, though feel slightly different than natural seeds. Like the key placement in the FC2 run, I've never seen that before.

You're probably thinking of Day One : Garry's Incident, which has no relationship to Garry's Mod, but is very "conveniently" named. Also, for what it's worth, Rust has equaled 40 percent of the profits that Garry's Mod has made in its entire lifetime. Mod has been out for 9 years, Rust has been out for a little over a month.

The levels are still randomly generated, you're just providing the seed. But if you find one that's amazing, easy, or special in some other way, it lets you "save" it since you can just reuse the same seed. Although...OH MY GOD...the way it calculates seeds is that you can enter any combination of characters into the seed field. That... That means.... That means that we can play a level that was seeded with Lord Chris Remo's name. We can play Congrats Nick Breckon. We can jump and whip our way through Sean Vanaman, feeling his seething hatred for Spelunky from inside the game. We can seed a game with Far Cry 2. The circle is complete.

Hmmmmm... Not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, awesome to be able to play with seeds and share awesome discoveries. On the other, it takes some of the faith out of the community that any future amazing runs/seeds weren't generated using a tool like this.

I think that Orange is the New Black does it well. Mostly Sofia is just another character, though there are a few arcs that deal specifically with the kind of challenges and specific experiences of being a trans woman. Those challenges include her ongoing hormone therapy and the relationships with her family. The writers seem thoughtful about her character, and made it a point to find a trans woman to play the part. I would assume that the actress, Laverne Cox, is helping to make sure the character is shaped in a believable way. As for how you do it in a game, that just seems like it would depend so much on the context of what the game is. It could be as easy as having a trans character and letting them be a character, without overly dwelling on their gender. Like Bill's sexuality in The Last of Us.

Does that game already have a thread?

Unfair, probably. But I could also just broaden the statement to say that I cringe at thinking of any AAA developer writing a transgender character. We don't yet have a history of any mainstream developer dealing well (or at all, really) with a transgender character, and that's reasonable cause for concern.

This is just ridiculously amazing guys!

A good boarding crew is the most powerful tool in the game. You don't even need much of a weapon if you can get an experienced crew of Mantis/Rock people rolling. Even with no atmosphere ships, you just send the rock people in and upgrade the cooldown on your teleporter fast enough to pull them out when they need a breather.

I don't necessarily want "crazy adventure" logic, but I would like to have something a bit more robust than mostly just knowing exactly what the solution was. Of course, I was playing with my wife and my daughter watching, and any puzzle I didn't get quickly, they would spot in short order. So maybe not fair to judge puzzle difficulty when 3 people are all contributing.

I've heard that rumor. But this is Kojima....though whether that is a good or a bad thing is nigh on impossible to tell. He has included multiple male gay/bi characters in the past in the MGS series, often with little fanfare. Sure, they were the typically insane characters one expects from MGS, but they were just gay the way most characters are just straight. He was doing that before anyone else in mainstream development would have considered it. And Peace Walker had these goofy "dating" side missions, one of which was a same-sex date between Snake and another man. But I have to admit I wince a little at imagining any Japanese dev writing a transgender character. The only one I can think of that is even close is from Deadly Premonition, and that's one of the most cringe worthy parts of that game (and not necessarily transgender, it's not clarified).

After beaing Olmec on Friday for the first time, I haven't been able to get past the Jungle since. This game confuses me.

That's a bloody terrific article.

Listening to a Tone Control interview with Randy Smith, and just heard Steve say that they seriously considered making a Catlateral Damage style DLC pack with a magical reading cat. Please...pretty please?

Yo dawg, we heard you like Dead Rising, so we put some Dead Rising in your.... I'm sorry. Not really.

Maybe it's just a perspective thing. I never viewed that as a "free move" but as a kind of overwatch that is unique to the enemy. Call it "Reposition Overwatch" (RO). They are sitting there, on RO, and when they see you, it kicks in and they run for cover. You wouldn't just sit there turn after turn without overwatch while suspecting that an enemy was creeping up on you. So why would the enemy? But players would probably find them being on true overwatch to be even meaner than having them move. You would lose scouts on more missions than not. And without RO or true overwatch, finding pods ends up being overbalanced in favor of the player. There is a mod that allows you to disable it. I actually tried it for one mission late game and found it to be gross. My squadsight sniper with ITZ just obliterated ever enemy before they could even have a turn. Plus with the three flavors of cloak in the game now, you easily decimate those pods of enemies since they will not run until the first shot is fired. That said, there is a Second Wave option that gives them a 50/50 chance to either move, or fire on you. I haven't tried it, as I favored them moving over firing at me.