Marek

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About Marek

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  1. New forum: Movies & Television!

    Whoa, only just noticed this forum. This is awesome! The megathreads were a little too intimidating. This forum and Important If True will probably make me check in here more often again. I don't play video games as regularly as I once did (it's just kind of part of the mix now, in a much smaller way), so I'm enjoying this continued branching out of Idle Thumbs.
  2. I used stayfocusd for some time and liked it a lot, though I'm now using Cold Turkey which is multiplatform and also supports scheduling. It's a paid app but I've found it to be worth it. (I'm currently trying to avoid news and social media at least until noon, and in the hours before going to sleep.)
  3. Regarding film announcements vs. game announcements: I think a lot of that is actually down to how films are usually financed and produced vs the completely different model that the game industry typically uses. Everything about film is done on a per-project basis. A script might be going around Hollywood for years, gets touched by various different writers, and has different directors attached at one point or another. It's not always one financier (e.g. a "publisher") but multiple financiers that have to get behind it. When it's finally put into production, the whole team is assembled from scratch based on who's available. In that kind of ecosystem it makes sense to be totally open about what's in various stages of (pre)production. I suppose Hollywood could operate under some kind of hugely elaborate NDA system, but practically speaking people just need to be able to read Variety and find out what's cooking in different places. That's how these ad hoc collaborations can form more easily, it facilitates financing and dealmaking, casting calls can be made, etc. etc. In the game industry the team is usually already assembled. There's no pressing need to make details of a planned project public, as the team that's going to make it is already there, and no one outside the publisher or developer really has any need to know about it yet. Better keep a lid on it and use the announcement much later purely for marketing purposes. At least, this is what I'm guessing these different approaches to project announcements come from. As a side note, it's true that with films you might know of a project's existence waaaaaay in advance of it actually releasing. The example was mentioned of the new Mad Max having been in various stages of development for like 10 years. But that's usually all you really know... maybe the title, maybe the main guy who is working on it, but rarely any assets or any significant details. The actual marketing ramp up for films actually seems to be *shorter* to me than in games. Often it's 1 teaser trailer for a film and then a whole lot of silence, followed by the actual trailer and a frenzied 3-6 month marketing push. For some movies I guess there's now the 'Comic Con reveal', but this feels like a relatively newer thing.
  4. If that's the case then you are almost certainly right as it makes far more sense. I was not aware of consciousness being used in that sense... and this made me go off on a totally ridiculous other path. lol...
  5. Regarding the McCann ladies meeting, I think the exact quote was "only conciousness lowering (drink gesture)" which I took to mean "we're just having drinks, no mind-expanding shenanigans here". Maybe I'm wrong but it felt like a weird 70ies flavor thing. Contrary to most people I really don't mind Diane. I know she's a very late introduction, but to me that seems like the point so far. She's not the warehouse magnate lady whose name I just forgot. She's a random waitress who Don is trying to convince himself is actually more significant to him. I think it all works great in showing Don's desparate clutching at straws. There was a moment two or so episodes back with Don and Diane where it almost seemed like Don could hit the reset button once again and sort of use Diane to mask the fact that his life is secretly a void. Being with a new woman is Don's go-to escape, but I love that this temporary satisfaction (or at least distraction) is being denied to him now. His apartment is empty/sold, he's reaching all these dead ends with Diane, SC&P is gone... where is Don going to go from here? I think Diane works very well as this big red herring for Don.
  6. Its beginning to look a lot like GOTY

    I'm still catching up on this year's games (was abroad until Sept) but so far my GOTYs are: Divinity: Original Sin It's refreshing to play an RPG that is 'just an RPG'. It's not trying to be over-the-top epic: the main questline is just a murder investigation. I like that the combat is challenging and non-grindy. Using magic and the elements to your advantage is not optional and I found myself having to re-play some encounters a couple of times to get it right, but not minding this at all. I'm 60 hours in and admittedly my interest is waning a bit, but it kept me enthralled long enough to make it my GOTY. South Park: Stick of Truth I'm amazed how much it feels like playing a giant episode while also being a good game in its own right. I wish it didn't have to take a South Park license for games to be more creative like this though. Every now and then I would like other games to just decide 'fuck it, '. Valiant Hearts The gameplay is not always the most compelling, but I'm fascinated by how this game pulls off being lighthearted while also taking on the full weight of WW1. I thought I knew a thing or two about the history but Valiant Hearts had a lot of educational value to me. Near-GOTY: Banner Saga I love nearly everything about this game, but what stopped me playing was the horribly impenetrable dialog. My eyes just kept glazing over from all that woolly fantasy tropey bullshit (sorry). When you have to read a sentence three times just to parse a character saying hello or whatever, I'm out.
  7. Yeah is it weird that the foliage is the best thing in those videos? I keep being amazed by... plants. I'm a gameplay-first kinda guy but can't deny that Uncharted always gets me with its visual effects. The first time I walked through water and saw Nathan's trousers staying wet I was happy. This foliage is having the same effect on me. Their waterfall tech has made a huge jump as well. (About 1min into the gameplay video)
  8. Not necesserily an exciting trailer, but I love how faithful this remastering is going to be. Just seeing Manny in hi-res makes me very happy. Are those background at their original resolution though? I was hoping that had them rendered out at higher res back in the day. Can't tell if the artifacts are part of the video or part of the background images. It'll be great to see the re-encoded cutscenes which were pretty blotchy even at the time of release, but with the uprezed characters the in-game backgrounds now feel grainy in comparison. But whatevs I'm 100% buying this. Haven't replayed Grim in years.
  9. Day of the Tentacle Special Edition

    Man. Excellent cosplay. If I saw that at a convention I would want to give a thousand hi-fives.
  10. Day of the Tentacle Special Edition

    Could they redo it as vector art? That way you could play DOTT on an 8K display in the future or whatever. In my mind's eye DOTT SE looks like this in-game http://bantza.raah.fi/junk/dott_poster.svg
  11. The e-sports videos linked here are fascinating. Wow. I was just looking for some CS:GO gameplay footage and the first video I found was this tutorial. I played CS back in the day but never knew the stuff this guy explains in the beginning about recoil. I always thought recoil meant 'you always have to shoot in short controlled bursts, and you only use long burst in super close quarters'. What I never knew was that people actually move their mouse in opposite directions to compensate for recoil. Holy crap! This is surely CS basics, but it kinda blew my mind.
  12. Spacebase!

    Yeah that's true, I can see how it's different coming from a multi-project studio where you're specifically invested in one of their titles. It must have been a difficult call for them. It's still a shitty situation though, and one that sadly happens all the time the game industry (though often in much less visible ways). Yeah for sure. Didn't mean to poop on the emotional aspect of this. You really want the game to succeed, you're invested in it, and then suddenly it fizzles out Lame
  13. Spacebase!

    It seems like it would be difficult (and you could argue impossible) to do things like Early Access if it had to come with guarantees about the final version of the game. It's a risk you have to be willing to take if you buy Early Access games or fund games on Kickstarter - some will totally deliver on their theoretical potential and others might just sadly fizzle out despite all the best efforts.
  14. Feminism

    I tried to engage with some of the shitbirds on twitter because, well, I feel so powerless in the face of the gaming community being so crappy right now and what else am I going to do? The responses are just staggering. People do seem genuinely convinced that Anita Sarkeesian has not only orchestrated the attacks on herself but is also a scam artist who has found some kind of get rich quick scheme. The analogy of this being like arguing with someone who thinks the moon landings were a hoax is not an exaggeration at all. None of this should be surprising at this point, but facing this stuff head on makes it so much more real and saddening. Maybe I just forgot what it feels like to step into the fray as it has been years since I actively engaged with any trolls. I felt myself slipping towards shittier and angrier tweets. In the back of my head I know that things are going to change for the better, and slowly but surely people will have to grow up and get wiser (both in terms of how to debate/disagree as adults as well as the substance of the issues of sexism and misogyny). But I wish we could get there much faster, and I wish there was something I could do. I almost feel like I don't want to identify with the gaming community anymore because of this horrible minority (??) of 4channers. Sorry, this brings nothing new to the table in this thread. I'm just feeling frustrated.
  15. Twitter :)

    @gwarek !