Marek

SW: TOD seems like such a misguided game. It might turn out alright, but from the outset it's focusing on entirely the wrong things. "Story" (in the traditional sense like with all singleplayer BioWare games) is not what MMOs should really concern themselves with. Richer gameplay experiences, yes. More interesting worlds, yes. More community based stuff, yes. Story... ehhh? Not top priority. Also, you don't make a good MMO by throwing a bazillion content pieces at it. Who cares if it's got the content of KOTOR times a hundred or whatever claim it is they're making? That sounds like a hamfisted approach to MMO design that will inevitably lead to a bazillion 'kill ten rats' quests. I'm open to having my mind changed but right now I'm pretty skeptical.

The yo-yo was too innovative.

I'm on broadband but in the 3 times I've clicked the link I hear Remo say "wonderboner.... it b..." and then it already redirects. Idle Ballad works for me now! Woo!

I sometime call girls dudes or say "hey guys what's up" to a group of girls without really thinking about it. For some reason it's a really positive thing to do.

I'm having some trouble seeing this properly, though I can tell that it's probably awesome. Which browsers are supported? In Safari I see an image (garden of eden painting type thingie) stuck half way in that center frame and in Mozilla I don't see any graphics. I'm on a Mac though so maybe that borks it all. Seg and wunderboner sites are fantastic. Wunderboner could be improved slightly by delaying the redirect by 1 or 2 seconds. When viewed locally the timing is probably just perfect, but generally it takes 1-2 sec for the page to load from the server so it cuts off the end of the .wav. This is amazing shit though. I love this stuff!!!!

This ad is still in rotation at gamesindustry.biz: Someone should inform Intel that he's "pursuing new opportunities" now.

Yeah that's the story of Peter Minuit and it's believed to be true. The current day value of his payment would be around $1000 though, not $24 (it's still not very much). Lots of land purchases were made over a period of many years and the myth is often that they were made by giving the natives beads and trinkets, but apparently in most cases the natives were offered advanced tools and wares. Sadly what they didn't realize was that the natives had a different concept of land ownership. What they thought they were selling was 'territory', and implicit in that deal was an alliance, so when the settlers failed to help out the neighboring natives to fend off other tribes they got really pissed off. The Dutch colony was run by a bunch of jerks for most of the time but there were also a few good things happening. For instance, if you made a trade with a native that was unfair, you would be hung in public on the main square. Which is kinda cool. Also, FUN FACT, Americans eat cookies instead of biscuits because of the Dutch settlers (koekje). Also words like stoop (stoep) and boss (baas) originally come from New Amsterdam and were assimilated by the English speaking colonies. Also, we invented the District Attorney. Yeah. I'm clearly excited about this topic.

Yeah that actually does help.

Also Black Petes are not ACTUALLY black you see. That's just the soot from crawling through all the chimneys to deliver the presents. Underneath they're totally normal asians white guys. This fact makes it non-racist somehow. Or at least that's what everyone's telling themselves.

Santa Claus does indeed originate from the Sinterklaas tradition as celebrated in the Dutch colony on Manhattan (called New Amsterdam for most of its existence). There's actually a lot of things in American culture that are rooted in Dutch culture, but had its origins sort of covered up after the British took over. If you're remotely interested in this shit I recommend reading the book "The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America" (phew!). It's a fascinating read.

I had the same reaction actually. I know in the back of my mind that this game is going to rule totally, but the trailer didn't yet manage to make me excited about the gameplay (whatever the gameplay will turn out to be). It also wasn't a funny trailer, but maybe the dialog wasn't written to induce extreme ROFLs. That said though... Plz. Don't say that. Oh man. That trailer was the worst disingenuous piece of shit ever. ;( Great trailer in terms of editing etc. but the music? Come on... I guess it's a super subjective thing though.

I'm so sad about that guy's mansion. If I ever get loads of money (or: loads of time when I'm retired) it's my dream to build a house that has all sorts of cool shit in it, including (but not limited to) secret underground passageways, a tower with circling stairs, a greenhouse on the roof, removable walls, trap doors, etc. etc. etc. Which is kinda what he's going for too. BUT I would make it look like an awesome French cottage/castle and let ivy grow on it and create a cool homely atmosphere inside instead of making a Mickey Mouse house made of concrete and shitty chipboard and has some plastic skulls in a cupboard or something.

I'm currently reading Flow by Mihaly Chikzsenmihalyalyalyaly (fuck that guy's name) and it constantly refers to people of unknown gender as "she" and it's enormously distracting.

You are so deadpan

Whoa, I would NEVER write some kind of random email purely out of fanboyism.* Erm actually I think I emailed Tim regarding the fact that I was working on a post-apocalyptic biker game for a while and everyone kept saying it was "like Full Throttle, but an MMO", which made me super annoyed and fearing that people would think I modeled the game after Full Throttle somehow, even though it was totally nothing like it in the end, and I was just being an insecure junior designer who was way too worried about how his first game would be perceived (which was then cancelled anyway). So yeah anyway, that got Tim to talk about the term post-apocalyptic and how he never used it to describe FT himself, and a bunch of other stuff. I lost the email though.

That's what a lot of people say but apparently that isn't true and Tim Schafer objects to Full Throttle being described as "post-apocalyptic". He explained this once in great detail. I sadly forgot all this great detail but, erm, I believe it boiled down to FT just being meant to be set in this crazy bikers microcosm, but not necessarily one that exists after some kind of nuclear war or anything. It's just... there. I am officially outgeeking y'all, bitches.

Bonus random fact: Hoagie from DOTT and Ben from Full Throttle are brothers. I don't know if this super secret top classified fact was ever publicly unleashed, but at one point we had Tim Schafer confirming it on camera. So, it makes sense that Eddie is part of the same family. I am such a nerd for posting this post.

On destructoid.com (and other places presumably) in a little bit.

I can't fucking believe I just saw JB yell TIM FREAKING SCHAFER TIM FREAKING SCHAFER and Tim being brought onto stage in a chariot, and then Brutal Legend getting plugged to the max. I love it.

I don't think it starts until 1am GMT? There's a stream on their site.

Whoa, link? (I'm lazy)

What the FUCK? Is that Monopoly thing actually real?

If memory serves me correctly, that was arranged at the very last minute after another publisher dropped it. Also that was before EA Partners was established, the 3rd party dev publishing department that is being praised by everyone now.

Amazon's web services are exactly what's being looked at right now by Jake. Thanks for the suggestion though, it's a good one.