SecretAsianMan

On the topic of strange video game promotions: At a PAX before Far Cry 3 came out, I remember the booth for the game they had a promotion where if you got your hair cut at the booth in a mohawk like the game's villain they'd give you a code for a free copy of the game. There was also the "Sin to Win" contest by EA to promote Dante's Inferno where Comic-Con attendees were encouraged to "commit acts of lust" with the booth babes (by which they meant take a picture with them).

When I was a kid I thought that women peed blue because in tampon commercials they always used blue liquid to show the absorbency. I continued to think that for far longer than I honestly should have.

That's what bums me out about missing PAX as well. It's literally the only chance I get to hang out with you! ...oh, and other cool Thumbs related people too I guess. Speaking of foods near PAX, I saw Steve Gaynor point out that Cyber Dogs is closed. I never ate there but it that kinda stinks because I loved the name if nothing else.

Getting the secret monsters in YMBAB involves stuff both in and outside of runs. A couple of them require you to tap on a certain thing, a couple are unlocked by taking certain actions during combat, others are by meeting certain criteria. There's really nothing in the game that tells you how to do any of these.

It's been a while since I played YMBAB but I agree with all that.

Does anyone else like to trace back conversations to see how you got from one topic to another? Whenever I'm in a conversation with someone and the discussion starts on topic A and ends on topic Z, I always think in the back of my mind "how did I go from A to Z". The sequence of logic is interesting to me, as is the fact that I usually can't remember how it happened even though it was only a few minutes ago.

I'd certainly say it counts as a video game. Something had to be done to make the computer able to play Go. If it was an interface for connecting you to another person to play against, then maybe you could argue that it's not really a video game and just a method of communication (like playing chess by mail or something) but even then I'd still call it a video game.

It's a common tale in any industry. A company does well and they want to keep the momentum so they quickly try to expand. If they've judged things correctly, it will pay off but a lot of the time what happens is they overestimate what they're capable of or they misunderstood the reason for their success and can't replicate it. Then things take a turn and stuff like large layoffs happen. Video game companies are just as subject to this as any other company. The biggest difference I'd say is the speed of the turnaround. With companies that produce physical goods or services it might take a while longer for those repercussions to take effect while a company that deals almost exclusively in digital media is going to feel that impact much faster.

I'm prepping another snack package for the Thumbs. It's earlier than I would usually do it, but I wanted to get another round in before Danielle moves across the country. Last time I got Spaff a big bag of taffy, which he said he liked (although most of them ended up in the stomachs of Double Fine), but he also said he'd also be up for trying other things. I'm once again soliciting suggestions. Preferably something either a someone from the UK would enjoy or maybe something they don't have. At this point I have everyone else covered, except for maybe Nick. I've never heard any feedback from him regarding his candy selections so I'm still pretty in the dark.

I dunno, four hour check-ins for a mobile game seems pretty average to me. If you're just stopping in to gather resources, you can do that in seconds. Doesn't seem terribly unreasonable considering most people have their phone with them all the time. Of course your situation may be different. I remember playing a game of Neptune's Pride a few years ago and waking up at 3 AM to manage my fleet. Now that was ridiculous. Power is usually my number one consumed resource, at least until I slowed down my expansion rate. Even then despite having the largest capacity, it's the least filled. I've never had a person die on my while exploring even after days, but I'm flush with stimpacks and radaways so they always leave with the max. One of my vaults got lucky early on and I had a guided missile launcher drop in a lunchbox. That made my explorers practically unkillable. The fact that you can resurrect using a common in-game currency rather than forcing the use of some kind of special currency or real money seems pretty forgiving to me, at least in comparison to the vast majority of F2P games. It's one of the things that surprised me about Fallout Shelter. Despite having microtransactions, it's maybe the least obtrusive implementation. But perhaps I've become used to the shitty practices of other games and it's actually terrible.

Kind of bummed there wasn't a Fallout Shelter segment this week. I got the Android version last week so I was interested to hear more stories from Chris. Specifically, I'm wondering if he recreated Vault 69 yet.

Question for anyone who upgraded then did a clean install: Is your new install activated yet? How long did it take for that to happen?

Chris's description of HackNet reminds me a lot of the Introversion game Uplink except with console commands instead of Hollywood style screens. Windows 8 BSOD

I share the same worries. I like Matt Damon. I don't think he's the best actor, but I for some reason really enjoy watching him. I haven't read The Martian although I'd like to given what I've heard about it. I think the trailer looks good but it also gives me the impression it's going to be full of artificial drama. Every scene with Jeff Daniels looked incredibly cliche. I'm still interested though.

I'm of the impression that the investors they're looking to attract are somewhat small scale. I don't think they're looking for a single investor to sink millions of dollars into a game to ensure it gets made. It seems to me like a higher tier of backer that gets money returned on an investment instead of a t-shirt.

I would also imagine that the devs would still (largely) get to make the final call, but it is a little different because investors have a legal recourse they can pursue if they feel they've been misled while backers don't. Not that I would expect you could sue if they didn't change the character's name to yours or anything like that. It certainly makes things... trickier though.

It's kind of a mix of both. There's still the "traditional" crowdfunding model where there are backer tiers and rewards. It looks like maybe it's separate from the investment side although I'd imagine you could do both if you were so inclined. They also said that developers would be able to choose not to have investment open if they wanted in which case it would be the same as the current crowdfunding model. What I'm wondering is how much influence investors will have over development. With backers, they'll often take polls or ask for opinions or offer rewards that affect the game, but usually only in a minor way. Ultimately they don't actually have to do any of that because they have no legal commitment to what the backers want. But those rules change once you actually have a financial stake in the product.

In order to invest, you have to be an Accredited Investor as well as investing a minimum of $1000. I assume it's taxable, kind of like selling stock. Don't know about other countries.

A new crowdfunding site has been launched, but this one's a little different. Fig was founded by Justin Bailey, formerly the COO of Double Fine. He's teamed with Tim Schafer, Brian Fargo of InXile, and Feargus Urquhart of Obsidian to create the site. The difference between Fig and other crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter is that Fig will be curated, specifically for games, and backers will also be able to buy equity in the game or developer meaning that they can actually make money if the game does well. Gamesbeat interview with Baily and Urquhart

Your posts in the quitter's club are part of the reason why I posted in the first place.

I don't think the trailer is quite as bad as most people are making it out to be, but it's definitely not nearly as good as the first one. Gears of War was the game that convinced me to get a 360 and Gears 2 horde mode almost single handedly justified Xbox Live for me. I kind of soured on the series by 3 and never played Judgement.

So [insert Remo musical stinger] I've been playing Fallout Shelter. Despite barely relating to the actual series gameplay, it really makes me want to play Fallout 4, something I'll admit I wasn't particularly excited about before. I think I'll load up New Vegas again.

I decided to do a clean install of Windows 10 while I still had a relatively small number of applications installed. A couple of quirks I had to deal with such as a few drivers and devices not registering properly as well as having to reformat the drive a couple times, but so far it seems to be ok. It hasn't activated yet, something I'm hoping will resolve itself in a day or two. I'm hoping its a server issue with all the systems trying to get registered.

What folder are those files in? They might be part of a recent language update or something.

Meet the Okilly Dokilly's, the world's first Ned Flanders themed metal band