Roderick

Hey, my point wasn't badly made! Don't all gang up on me just because I didn't put in a ten-page treatise I think it's a combination of lots of things that grows awareness with people. I do think people learn not to treat others badly if they themselves are the subject of injustice. Not all of 'em, but the awareness can certainly spread through first-hand experience. Education definitely has something to do with it, but it's a pretty cynical thing to think that people can't learn from bad experiences and only become bad themselves. That's just as unrealistic as the opposing scenario of them learning from it exclusively.

My post was about proposition 8, not about the elections. What struck me that so many 'immigrant' folks (for lack of a better term) voted against gay marriage, because it in fact amounts to racism, something they themselves should know better than anyone is wrong and hurtful.

What's particularly appalling about the whole thing is that the majority of the 'yes' voters was non-white. Apparently none of them made the connection that it's fucking racism. For some reason, little irritates me more than people with an immigrant background being conservative. It's like... you should know better.

I just came back from Quantum of Solace (and what the hell, I went in a black suit just for the heck of it) and what's remarkable is that the whole movie is just more build-up towards the now-inevitable sequel in what hopefully remains a trilogy. It's all building, building, building at a grand climax in which Bond will probably simultaneously blow up all Quantum headquarters on the globe. That said, I enjoyed almost every second of it. Especially the first half is delightful, with a few very strong scenes. The opening chase is intense and thrilling, because it takes with it the weight of Casino Royale's ending. Granted, if you only saw that one once, you won't get the same out of it. The first half also succeeds brilliantly in stacking the odds against Bond. You really feel like him and MI6 are outclassed and outnumbered, with enemies everywhere. There's a fantastic moment in the operahouse when Bond pulls away the curtain from Quantum. After that, in the second half, it all derails and the movie only focusses on the main villain, Greene, and his unlikely scheme. What's quite clear is that it's all been build-up for the next movie. That worked for Casino Royale and its sequel, but much less so for this one and the next. Still, there's much to love. M having a huge role, for instance. But I hope the next movie dares to defy the conventions again. Let Bond fail to get the girl, for instance!

Hurray for Obama! I stayed up through the night and then flicked on the tv again after a short sleep to watch the result. Parts of Obama's acceptance speech made me tear up, it was just so epic and such an amazing symbolic victory for bringing together different cultures around the world We'll have to see, but for the first time there's a glimmer of hope that we may have a future that doesn't involve countless wars all around the globe and America turning into a Big Brotherian society that keeps pushing countries into dangerous corners. Obama! Yes, we can!

Well, great. Now I can't live without a zombie sandbox game anymore, right now. Thanks a lot you guys

I don't think I've consciously experienced this. On a macro-scale, maybe that's why I'm not really interested in adventure games anymore? I played great quantities of them in my youth, and then I just couldn't get the patience to play them anymore. Even now I want a bit of action and jumping in my games. But that could also simply be shifting tastes. It doesn't feel like I O.D.'d on them!

Speaking of beards and the like, I was delighted at the hilarious choice of beards (and their descriptions) you have in Fable 2. Quoted one of 'em in my sig. Is Fallout 3 already in discount?

That's less than I thought! Because I had read those first few tomes three years back or somesuch, I'd assumed it was way more than that.

How many trade paperbacks did it run for, at last? I read the first five or so, then my supply ran dry. Which is to say, the guy who I borrowed them from stopped buying them.

Discuss.

Even without calculating, I already assumed precisely that =) Still gonna make over 6000 gold pieces by doing nothing, which is awesome.

No cool plans for your post-NC life with the boys, then? =(

I've got the game, woot! First impressions are pretty good; there's great atmosphere and you just gotta love the overall Britishness of the characters with their insane top hats. Negative points are the sluggish controls (you know you're in trouble when you'd rather navigate by turning the camera rather than actually steering your avatar) the graphical glitches (text not showing up, characters disappearing, overal choppiness) and the annoyingly depressing menu music. The music in the rest of the game is super great, especially Bowerstone has this cool rickety, industrious tune to it... so why go with the pensive, brooding stuff in the menu? It totally makes me not want to go there. The good stuff is all the things you can do aside the game. I've already worked a lot at the blacksmith and raised enough money to buy a few stalls on the bridge. This because I'll be going on a holiday soon, and the shops will actually earn me money every few minutes while I'm away. I fully expect to be filthy rich when I get back in a week.

Oh, my mentioning 'hardball' and 'industry insider' should be taken with huge quantities of irony since your current methodology is exactly why the podcast is so great to listen to. You almost feel part of the great atmosphere going on there, so please, go for people that are fun and interesting and have good chemistry in the group. Woohey! I mean Wuxtry!

Fair enough, I hadn't considered it from that angle. And anyway, I take it Steve was there more because of general cameraderie between you guys rather than being a special Industry Insider to play hardball with.

I would say a response in this case would be better than letting rumours like that fly wild. I didn't consider it being dirty laundry though, so it might indeed be inappropriate. However, if it's a topic of relevance in the community, surely it would cross a journalist's (or podcaster's) mind to approach it in some form? Especially if you've got a source sitting right next to you. I'm not asking you to grill the man I'm just surprised it didn't come up since it was so hot a few days ago here.

Finally! The long-awaited return of the sirens! Another quality podcast, guys. Having Steve Gaynor with you, couldn't you have used the opportunity to ask him about the wild rumours going about recently on Ken Levine's apparent impossibility to work with? Did the whole team really collective say: 'no more!' ? Get that man on the show again!

Firmware updates have always been supersmooth for me. Pop in the game, short load time, play the game. You honestly can't compare that to the many times PC gaming required hardcore DOS fuckery or the bazillion things that could and would go wrong with incompatible versions of DirectX, graphic software, audio, drivers of all kinds... no competition. No matter how much consoles will 'become like PC's' they'll always have much less problems than especially 90s PC software, because the games are developed specifically for their hardware, of which it is know exactly what's in the box.

Haha, that's exactly the reaction I had when I more or less switched to console gaming a few years back. Though there's also a sort of rebellious, nerdy pleasure to be had on getting obscure games to work on your computer by using all sorts of tricks and patches.

What's this resurrection about? Is there some sort of new type of presidential race show created by Endemol?

Hehe, but you know there's a difference between a forum that you've visited for years and years, which has an ecosystem of interesting people that you feel a connection with, and some random Youtube site visited by huge quantities of trolls who have nothing interesting to say except that they've posted first, or egregious oneliners.

Who in the world reads comments that other people leave anywhere? It's such a ridiculous practice, I can't fathom its usefulness. Regardless, Deathspank will probably be fun. Ron's been wanting to make this for quite some time, so I'm curious what it'll be. I will agree that the immediate premise is too vague to really know what's going to happen, but screenshots should remedy that. I still want to play the Penny Arcade games by the way.

Today I learned I shouldn't force the hand of my boss. I forced his hand because in World of Warcraft I refused to venture into Outland, but instead kept on doing low-level quests with low-level gear to acquire reputation with all the Horde factions. It's fun. But it also forced my boss' hand, and now he has renamed an Alliance Rogue "TomZarek" and migrated him to my server, with the specific plan of relentlessly hunting me down and ganking me continuously, until I am forced to go to Outland to gear up. I have the most amazing colleagues

Toblix obviously changed his post after my insightful, very true observation.