Twig

Yes that is definitely what he is trying to say!

Dang. That's a great metaphor. Also, Jesus Christ, tsh. Get your shit together, man. I've been mostly silent throughout all this, but you need to stop being such a coward and just Be A Feminist. It won't hurt you, I promise.

If your friend doesn't refer to point and click adventure games as click-em-ups, then your friend is not a true em-up-o-phile. ("Explore-em-up" would probably be pretty apt for Gone Home. It's not a large scale explore-em-up, like, maybe Fez, I might call that an explore-em-up, but you're still essentially explore-em-upping in Gone Home.)

Huh. Most Kickstarters succeed with higher pledges that offer art books and art prints and shit. The in-game content, I doubt that really affects things as much as you, for whatever reason, believe. EDIT: Actually being able to participate in game development (design an item! get yourself in the game as a character!) is probably the most attractive pledge, which is why they're always the highest. Exclusive game content is, generally, on the lower end of things.

Man that was uncalled for.

Mmm, I don't want to go in that direction, heh. Obviously there are DEGREES of irritation here. A missing level would bother me way more than a missing +0.5% XP ring. But boil it down to the basics, and they're the same thing: missing content. On top of that, I have never been a fan of the business practice in general. I think it's exploitative, in much the same way many free-to-play games are exploitative. They feed on people's needs to have EVERYTHING. Of course, it works, and I can' begrudge someone doing something that works in a capitalistic society, but I don't like it, I don't approve of it, and I try to avoid supporting it.

What is your goal here? To find a line in the sand? I don't like it at all.

I didn't hear you mention it, so in case you didn't, it's worth noting that Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+ is now http://store.steampowered.com/app/236450/?snr=1_7_15__13'>on Steam!

If it affects gameplay beyond a superficial level, it shouldn't be exclusive in any fashion, except that maybe it becomes unlockable later on, instead of being unlocked immediately.

WALKING DEAD / MARK OF THE NINJA CROSSOVER, BY CAMPO SANTO

To be fair, you keep bringing out more and more ridiculous and unrelated examples, so it's hard to tell which ones are meant to be "serious".

HUH. SOMETHING LEARNED TODAY! Thank you for that, I've always wondered, and no one's ever given a legitimate answer. Now I know.

DREAMS. 1) We were all very thoroughly discussing the merits of a furry porn right here on these very forums. Um. Um. 2) Valve announced a Steam Porn Controller, with some weird wording I guess, because they followed that up with a clarification announcement that the controller would, in fact, NOT cause women to spontaneously grow a penis, and that women could masturbate without penises just fine, thank you very much. UM. UM. 3) I was working at some kind of space bounty hunter check-in stand. Every bounty hunter who came in dropped off one (1) dead body, except for one particularly badass bounty hunter who dropped off like a dozen live and a dozen dead bounties. Also all of the bounty hunters were giants compared to all the people working at the check-in stand, of which there were two. Me and my boss. My boss was a disgruntled old crotchety man, OF COURSE. 4) My friends (various male friends from various points of my life) were all going out after lunch to some sort of Thing. I followed silently, and they didn't tell me to stop, so we all went as a group to a... hospital, where a mutual friend named Evan was dying. Except we got to the room, all four of us, the dying man had a pigeon just sitting on his forehead, cooing. It jumped down to his chest and started eating corn out of his belly button. The nurse was yelling at the two women sitting on either side of Evan's bed, telling them to get this obviously NOT dying man the fuck out of her hospital. They consoled the nurse, saying that, UH, YES, HE IS DYING. Then Evan moved. (Oh, he was supposed to be comatose, as well, I think.) His head fell to the side and he grumbled a bit. One of the women by the bed just sighed, and looked over at the four of us who had just walked in. I didn't recognize her, or the other woman, or the nurse. Anyway, she looked over at us and said, "Huh, I didn't expect all your friends to be so cute," obviously talking to Evan. I turned around, and two of my friends were gone. The only one left was someone I didn't actually know, he had big ears that were purple, and a VERY round head. We shrugged at each other and walked out. IMPORTANT FACT: The man lying in the bed, whose name was Evan in my dream - his name in real life is Tristan. What a weird night.

I also trust Inafune to deliver a complete experience, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm happy with it. It's a dumb thing to do. And that's that! So the book comparison that only serves to work against you wasn't meant to be taken seriously. How convenient! It's difficult to have this conversation with you, because you keep treating everyone who disagrees with you like a whiny baby. You're about a million times more emotionally invested in this than me. I simply don't want to support what I consider a poor business practice. Get over it.

Like I'm for real excited about L4D3 now. I was marginally interested before, but this. Dang. More systemic stuff in that series, yes please.

jesus that was brutal

This is a brand new leak. I think it literally happened last night. I think they've got their months mixed up.. I THINK this is the first I've heard of Doug Church or Clint Hocking being on L4D3, and that makes me inordinately excited for L4D3.

This isn't the first time their tracker has gone public. Though I think before it may have been photographs from people visiting the studio? I dunno, whenever L4D3 and Source 2 were confirmed.

Are you kidding me here? That's not at all similar to ACTUAL GAME CONTENT. I honestly don't know how to explain it in a way that it hasn't already been explained. You keep offering counterarguments like limited editions as if that isn't the exact same thing and thus just as bad. Stop it. We're arguing about one thing, and one thing only: game content locked away from future users. Doesn't matter how it's locked away. Doesn't matter if it's limited editions, preorder bonuses, Kickstarter pledges, raffles, whatever. It's game content that is unavailable to the majority of users. It is an actual gameplay mechanic that only a minority of people ever get to use. You brought up the book comparison, and are conveniently ignoring it now that it's been made painfully clear that doing something similar for a book would be tantamount to ruining the book. Mington's example of losing out on two pages because you didn't preorder or whatever is EXACTLY the problem we're having here. It's not about it being "unfair". It's about literally losing out on content because you didn't jump in on time. What if you didn't get to play level three because you didn't preorder? The game just jumped from level two to level four because you didn't back at $100, and you're shit outta luck because "That's Life!" THAT'S the kind of example you should be using, because it's the same exact thing, on a larger scale.

As I recall, you can beat a number of dungeons in any order you want, but there are some dungeons that require items found in previous dungeons. Probably similar to this, except for the whole "item renting" thing.

It seems like the haptic feedback on these controllers is intended to be a whole lot more sophisticated than "rumble when a button is pressed" like on my phone, but whether or not it succeeds remains to be seen, I suppose.

Agreed. It's a business practice that I find incredibly gross and indefensible. I understand that it works and incentivizes a lot more purchases than might otherwise happen, but ugh. It's not the worst business practice in video games, but it's still not good. Purely cosmetic stuff is totally acceptable, but when it's a gameplay FEATURE that is only available to people who jumped in at the right time? "Hey check out this cool mechanic you'll never get to use!" Fuck. (I don't think it'll be a significant thing, for the record, but that doesn't mean I won't call it out for being bullshit.)

Well that's the whole shtick of the original game!

what's the second venosaur mega evolution CAUSE VENOSAUR IS MY BOY

Uhg. Now I'm glad I didn't pledge. Fuck that, I don't want to support that. Not that it matters, since it got a billion dollars.