MrHoatzin

The enumerated is just the tip of the shitberg that is Troll 2. It is a must-see! -ign.com

Plan 9 is not nearly as bad as Van Helsing. They're both equally watchable as "awesome bad". Another movie I would suggest to the fans of awesome bad movies is Troll 2 which features no Trolls. In their stead are vegetarian cannibal goblins. The message of the movie is that vegetarians are evil and want to eat you. There is a sex scene in which popping corn is used as a metaphorical stand-in for orgasm (a trailer gets filled with popcorn). The movie is quite a something.

That is really my biggest tdown. I hope they stop doing that shiznit.

Man, almost as sweaty and caustic as the dick of Michael Eisner. At least Eisner's was a corporate dick with an open contempt for the art and craft of animation. Lasseter's is hella hypocritical to boot. A Bug's Life and Cars are two of my least favorite Pixar flicks. And the Toy Story movies are not all that exciting in the face of the other stuff the studio has created. Now I have a reason to actively dislike the dude's directorial dick rubbing. On a somewhat related note, Ponyo is a rad little film. Tups all around.

Sad how this thread has devolved into a huge pity fest. We suck.

Ack, I never realized how caustic his sweaty dick really is.

So, any hope for the PC version, this time next year or somesuch? Psychonauts almost made me buy an Xbox, now this shit will make me buy a 360.

Generally I haven't found it to be as annoying as in other types of games.

Enemies generally respawn in your standard Metroidvania paradigm.Also, didn't Orson Scott Card work for Lucas Arts in the early nineties?

Personally, if I am not playing in one of the extremes (and have horns or ethereal glow, or the golden retriever or the hyena that go along with either) I feel like I am doing a middling job of playing the game. If I play without paying attention to the sliders, I tend to end up smack in the middle, because I like compensation for services rendered, but am not a psychopath.

... and this is basically why Herzog the Vile reboot has been not-happening for two years now—only imagine, between going to sleep and waking up, a month of furious writing and brainstorming, and then repeat the entire pattern many times over, and, erm, also the pattern happens to Daniel as well, so it is somewhat asynchronous between two people... There is a large chunk of the story in the middle that alternatively feels like filler, and like it needs to be padded yet more.

They all woke up and couldn't remember the dream.

This whole affair just pisses me off, like all binary choices that force your hand in retarded ways. :( "MEAT IS MURDER" I AGREE!! I DISAGREE!!

Will there be a PC version, or are you being very subtly fatalistic and forlorn?

Feh, I dunno. On one hand, he did do the fancy infinite texture buffering wizardry in the new id tech, on the other, in the interviews I recall him saying something to the effect of, Well, I was shocked no one had done this thing yet, so I figured I'd take a stab at it.

Oh, I didn't register the quantum/biological computers bit. We've been hearing about holographic data storage for about ten years now and nothing is really happening on that front quite yet either, so yeah, ten years is a pretty improbable time frame. Twenty years may be a more realistic mark. For what it's worth, the very first Pixar movie can be run in realtime on fairly modest hardware nowadays. On the other hand, not much really changed in the basic architecture of computers in the last 20 years (a braver man would argue that nothing really changed in 30 years, but that is not my fight)—quantum/biological computing would be a far more revolutionary a shift than anything that happened in the last 20-30 years...

Think ten years back. We barely even had shaders and materials in realtime then, let alone objects casting shadows on themselves (whatever technical name for that stuff is).

It took me a while to get used to how low-key Wes Anderson's crap is. I used to think it was just subtle, but upon multiple watching I came to realize that it is very much not subtly, it just is not delivered screaming. I do hate all the quirky movies that try to channel Wes Anderson's style and fail miserably.

Some of my best friends are David Lynch! It is great that auteur films are actually watched in France and as a result StudioCanal invests in them. The only place I ever see their logo is on unmarketable or funky films that normal studios wouldn't touch, so whatever. I was really thinking of the top of my head about how he funded Eraserhead, and about the final cut support he got from De Laurentiis with Blue Velvet—which is not really free money, but is very much not the top-down de-risking Molyneux talks about. So fuck me, I am ignorant, I have no idea what I am talking about, and I am not sure any more what this whole thing is all about. I really fucking hate these internet arguments. So much unnecessary bile.

Dude, I've addressed both. I'm saying your scenario is kinof crappy. The reason Top Shelf Comics exists is not getting a single individual independent comic book in front of 2000 people, it is getting as many such small independent comics in front of as many people as possible—funding permitting. Their business model is a constraint that Chris isn't choosing to ignore—but you seem to refuse to acknowledge that they could be doing what they're doing because they want these little comics to have a venue, rather than simply making money. If they make money, great, if they don't, too bad, they tried. They have to hedge their bets, but it would probably be a far easier existence for them from the business standpoint to make and sell superhero comics, rather than whatever niche crap they do. They stay solvent because that allows them to continue doing what they love, it is not that they see solvency as the only fucking goal. I think there is some sort of fundamental truth about the nature of enterprise somewhere along the way that you're refusing to acknowledge... In the abstract, why is it ok for a patron of the arts to give 20,000 dollars to some painter, but not reasonable for one to give 20,000,000 to Terry Gilliam? Because businesses don't work that way, is a really stupid reason. David Lynch, for example, funds all his shit from largely independent artsy fartsy channels. People who invest in his films don't expect to make mad money off them. They just want to see him making more films.

This is ridiculous. No one is suggesting he should haemorrhage money for art. A better analogy to what Molyneux's saying would be going back to the artist and telling him to put more lesbian vampires in the comic because that is what Marvel, the umbrella owner of Top Shelf Comics (let's say for the sake of the scenario) thinks would sell well enough to warrant a 2000-copy run. What Remo is suggesting is that the other Chris should print enough copies to break even and get the comic out there. If this dude believes in this comic enough to bet the whole basket of eggs on it, so be it. But no one expects him to do this with every comic he does. Why would they? Why would he? You seem to think that Remo is advocating some sort of business model that defies the laws of economics, for art and the greater good. This is a weird way to read what he's saying. He is saying that sometimes aiming to break even is a lofty enough a goal. Sometimes people make things to make things. Sometimes making art doesn't mean that your team will end up begging for bread crusts on the street once you're done. Maybe they decide to work for a fraction of what they're worth or for uncertain payout because they like what they're contributing to.

What bothers me about his statements is that he's speaking in aphorisms about making games from the perspective of someone who has spent a little too long inside the video publishing world to the point where he no longer sees his job as "making a great piece of interactive entertainment for the people", and sees it as "making a piece of interactive entertainment that will not scare investors". It is a subtle distinction to be sure. What he's proposing is not dumbing things down for the lowest common denominator (I don't think), he is proposing dumbing things down for the suits. It is like an artist talking about making art that caters—not to the buying public—but to the for-profit gallery culture, its inside jokes and fashions; art that is formatted in a way curators really appreciate, art that is packaged just right and shipped with double-spaced installation directions, etc. People in power just don't know how to let hired professional do their jobs without meddling to the point where it probably gets hard for these underling professionals to separate their job (in this case making damn good games) from catering to these superiors. He has obviously had to deal whit this kind of shit a lot. Perhaps as far as he is concerned selling his superiors on an idea is his End Product, because after shit is green-lit he can lean back and let the team do whatever it is they do between pre-production and going gold. The rest of the points Molyneux tries to make in that dumbfounding interview read like random brain droppings from the middle of a more coherent, larger reflection that have sprung into an uninformed-conjecture-ridden forest of madness. These droppings entirely live in this milieu of "games suits will not fear"—because that is his job, his primary preoccupation day-to-day. As such, these are quite disgusting to me. I'm just a layperson who primarily cares about the awesome game he is making. I may care about the process of game-making, I care about the vision, the concept, the artistic integrity, the production, the fucking human interest and the gossip behind it all—and so on—but all this talk of eliminating risk shows too much sausage-making for my taste. It shows this stupid corporate game dev culture that fucks with what I really care about, and what, at the end of the day, all right-minded creative folk in the industry should be caring about if they want to connect with me and my ilk.

Toblix, what kind of crazy cinemascope monitor do you have? Every other time you post an image it breaks the site for me.

He's talking "sound business sense" rather than "visionary artiste", and that is kindof tiresome. There is a difference between "pitch your shit so it doesn't scare the suits" and "don't do shit that will scare the suits", and he seems to be in the second camp, vague as his words may be. It just makes me think that he's lost the sight of the big picture in a way. He is dwelling within the prevalent culture of the developer-publisher world, and forgetting to step outside and look at the creative product he ought to be thinking about.

ARRGHHGhghgahshfjakhkfjdnnbaslkdjf. How the fuck ack oy argh. Jesus.