SecretAsianMan

My personal opinion is that I think devs probably should be getting some of the money. Similar to the Minecraft EULA thing, LPs and other such things are based off of someone else's works, so I think it's only fair that they get something out of it. I'm not saying all the money, or even a majority of it. But more than zero. In a way I almost see videos as something akin to mods in that they are new and unique content based off of existing content. That said I don't think that the default position is automatically that videos are equal to piracy. The bottom line is the thing that makes games different from movies and television, the interactivity. Watching someone play a game is almost never going to be the same as playing the game yourself. It might relieve you of the desire to play the game, but a review from a place like IGN is likely to do that as well. If watching a LP is enough to make you not want to play the game yourself, you probably would never have bought it anyway.

I have a few games on my wishlist but Wolfenstein is the only one I actually want, which is really surprising to me. All the accolades it's getting has me really curious. It's going to have to be a sizable discount for me to get it right now though.

Some actual weapons in today's update. Probably maps tomorrow.

I don't like picking out a single point and responding to it, but I partially disagree with you here. I agree that police and soldiers are separate and distinct, but I don't agree that a soldier's function is to kill. That sounds dangerously like the idea that soldiers are killers. Obviously they are trained to use lethal force and are often called upon to do so, but that's like saying a knife's essential function is also to kill. Even though they're both capable of it, it's not what they were meant for. A soldier fills many roles, only one of which is to actually kill, and hopefully that's the last resort. Unfortunately, it's also the role that makes them seem the most glamorous so that's what games and media show.

Extremely relevant RPS article

I'll agree that the piece is not especially well written. I dislike articles that are mostly quotes and that's what a lot of this one was. Like I said, it does favor the servers a lot and seems to have little from the dev side.

I think that's an overly harsh estimation of the piece. It definitely favors the servers in this case and I agree that seeing a more complete description of a business model would help understanding greatly. But the article does mention several times that servers can charge fees for subscription and cosmetic items, it just tries to emphasize that these aren't enough to support the current size of most servers (I assume, I know nothing about the Minecraft server community). And it does pose a valid question of what changed at Mojang to cause the enforcement now when it does seem like they've been aware of it for longer. I have no particular sympathy for most of these servers either because they were building on top of another person's creation. One could argue that the creator has some obligation to support his community, but he also has an obligation to his game and his intent for the game. A business that bases itself off of (mostly) someone else's work should be prepared for any changes that that work undergoes, including stuff like this.

If the rumors be true and the sale does start this week, I'll probably be sitting most of it out too. This month is bad timing for me, I don't have much spare cash. I might get a game or two if there's a crazy sale price on it, but not likely. What really bugs me is that I was initially planning to pick up a bunch of stuff on sale and run another giveaway contest like I did before. Nuts.

It's Pauling actually. Miss Pauling to be more precise. And apparently she was voiced by Ashly Burch of Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin' fame. Also yes, Miss Pauling is awesome and it would be rad to be her.

Once upon a time I used a program called Belvedere to do this, but that program hasn't been updated in a few years. A quick search for an alternative came up with DropIt. You'll have to tweak the rules to get what you want, but I think it might work. I haven't used DropIt myself so I don't know for sure how well that works. Both are free and open source.

So it's another multi-day update. Today was an amusing little video (at least I found it amusing) and the reveal of some gestures. Hopefully the next couple days will have some substance.

Klepek does say he'd rather have outspoken devs than ones who say nothing. He just mostly doesn't like that Notch tweeted it out there the way he did. He's not saying Notch can't do it or even necessarily that he shouldn't but there's probably a better way than a brusque tweet. I don't want to turn this into another debate that goes nowhere and just leaves everyone mad at each other (we've have too many of those around here lately) so I'll just say I wish Notch expressed himself in some other way and leave it at that.

Like I said, he's within his rights to do it, it just rubs me the wrong way. I'm not defending Polygon but I don't agree with Notch's actions in that specific case.

One thing I dislike about this is something Patrick Klepek hit on https://twitter.com/patrickklepek/status/478960928483184640 https://twitter.com/patrickklepek/status/478963096095305728 I think Notch is well within his rights to do what he did with Minecraft's EULA but I think it's in bad taste to publicly share the email like that. He of course had the right to do it, I just don't agree with that decision.

I made the same argument in my other post. I can understand the game's theme affecting some people more than others, but I don't think it necessarily means that the theme itself is any better or worse by comparison. I should say I don't care about Battlefield, be it cops or soldiers, so I don't have a particularly strong opinion in this specific instance.

While I would like to do MvM (and may anyway) I might also be up for some regular TF2.

I played Bayonetta on the 360 and the special attacks were performed by pressing two buttons at the same time plus some kind of quick time event thing if necessary. Presumably you could do the same with the pro controller. I still haven't finished Wind Waker HD yet, but I ended up using the motion sense for aiming specifically because it avoids the issue you described.

Let me ask this: what makes the cops and robbers theme any more or less important than soldiers in a battlefield? I realize this is a problematic question but I still think it's relevant.

There's currently a countdown clock on the TF2 blog. They've been talking about a new weapons update for a while, they even made a blog post about rejected weapon designs (such as the facestab knife). Hopefully it'll include some new maps for MvM. Even if it doesn't, can I try and interest people in some bot bashing this weekend? http://www.teamfortress.com/countdown/suspense.htm

The article itself mentions how they did it in Link Between Worlds. In that game, there were hint ghosts that were totally optional (I didn't use any of them myself when I played). That meant they didn't have to flood the game with needless tutorials for those that already knew how to play, but still had the information available for those that needed it. I don't think that was the most elegant solution because you'd still have to find the ghost who could give you the info you need, but it's better than endless text boxes telling me to push A a thousand times. Also I want other developers to start saying this too. I don't need a tutorial level for every game. I've played a shooter before. I know that left click/right trigger shoots the gun. It's just like every other game made for the last 10 years.

Also she's in Canada, so contacting the IRS probably wouldn't be much help.

If they went all out and made a 3D Broforce, that might be hilarious enough to make me want to play it.

And with it the next wave of misogyny and rape threats. I can't wait for the day that I can stop expecting that to happen as a matter of fact.

A lot of what I have to say about this topic has been covered by other people, but I'll say it anyway. I should also state that I haven't seen the video yet either for the same reasons as Griddlelol. I agree that the game is basically just a reskin and at the core concept, is really no different than shooting insurgents or soldiers or aliens or whatever. I think the thing that might make it uncomfortable for some people is the fact that this skin is a little closer to home than those other things. I think that a relatively small percentage of people who play games of this type have any actual military service (not to say that there aren't any at all). Even fewer of them have actually been in combat or in a front line scenario. However I believe that pretty much everyone has seen a cop, or knows where a police station is. It's been brought up before in other non-game topics that real life shooting incidents seem to be increasingly common. I don't want to debate that topic here, but my point is that this isn't in some other country or a made up location, these are in people's own backyards. A cops vs. robbers game is going to take place in a setting most people will be familiar with, possibly even one they lived through. It seems like it would be easier for most people to separate themselves from the soldier in the desert than it would be from the police officer on the street. That's mostly speculation on my part and I could be entirely off base, but it's what kept running through my mind as I read this thread.

I can't speak for other people, but I enjoyed Arkham City because it was just a lot of fun. The plot is of course ridiculous, it's practically mandatory in a game like this to have an absurd story. But I don't find the setting any more contrived than the depiction of Arkham Asylum. The way that place is laid out seemed fairly ludicrous to me (who puts gargoyles on the interior of a building?). And like Merus said, having Batman wander an open world felt better to me than being confined like in Asylum. Again, these are all personal opinions that you're totally welcome to disagree with. I do agree that it probably would have been better to place it in Gotham at large rather than a walled off chunk of it, but it seems like Arkham Knight is doing that, so I'm not really gonna complain too much about it now. And to answer the question of are there no ordinary citizens, no there aren't. Arkahm City is a big prison (think Escape from New York) and the closest thing to innocent civilians you're going to get are the political prisoners you sometimes save.