I Saw Dasein

One cool thing about the crafting is that it takes place in game -- you don't pause to craft or anything. For me, that is a way better and more interesting decision than having the crafting take place in a menu a la Far Cry 3. Watching your dude pull bullets out of his arm in real time, only to pause and craft a million syringes and bags and holsters in the midst of combat was the dumbest thing.

I saw "This is the End". The first 30 minutes or so reminded me of a filthy but awesome episode of Curb. The rest of the movie was a lot weaker, except for Danny McBride who owns everything ever. For that reason, I started watching Eastbound and Down, which is also highly amazing so far. Funny and super dark.

I think it's kind of like when Wile E. Coyote chases the road runner off a cliff. Coyote's fine, until he looks down.

How do you figure? I love digital media products. I don't have to worry about losing them, breaking them, or having them stolen. If I want to play something (be it an album or a game), that something is literally a click of a button away. I have a huge crate of a couple thousand CDs under my bed that absolutely depresses me, because I have no interest in ever again digging out a disc for any reason if I can avoid it. For this consumer, at least, digital games are a great.

sleep owns, food owns.

boss.

That looks hilarious and awesome. Questions: can you have multiple people paying on the same machine? XBOX Controller support?

lol internet dudes are such babies

How is that not a proper goal? I feel like you have a strange idea of what a win condition needs to be. For example, in a crossword, the only goal is to complete the puzzle. To me, that is a very compelling goal. Or in chess, the goal is to mate the other side's king. That too is a "proper goal" as far as I'm concerned.

AFAIK basically all rogue-likes have win states. I'm having trouble thinking of a game with permadeth that doesn't have a win state. I guess something like Tetris might count? If you screw up once, game over.

I like permadeath because win/loss conditions are fun. In games without permadeath there is really no way to actually "lose". What's the point of playing a game you can't lose? It's the same in sports- a sport is fun because you can win or lose, not despite the fact that you might lose.

The VCs don't know that though, and once you get the $$$ you can fix the project. It's all about the pitch dude.

ideal solution is replace all doors with bead curtains.

I feel like dartmonkey is kind of talking about "new sincerity," meaning a rejection of the ironic or "hip" in favour of unabashed enjoyment of a cultural property. So, Nintendo isn't necessarily forward thinking, but Nintendo first-party games are totally unpretentious and enthusiastic.

Finished Wolf Hall last night. I have some thoughts but I'll wait until bookclub thread. I started "I Captured the Castle" by Dodi Smith on my partner's recommendation, and so far I'm totally charmed. It's really well-written and has a lot to say about reading, writing, and (I think) philosophy, but it's also packed full of sympathetic characters put through amusing circumstances.

Idle Thumbs 110: We don't use jelly.

IIRC the archer's can't hit you if you're running. The only tricky part is once you get to the top of the ramp; then, as long as you have a good, high stability shield, you should be able to maneuver so only one of the archers can see you. Dealing with that archer is trivial once he switches to his melee weapon. It's a tough part, but like a lot of the tough parts in Dark Souls picking the right gear helps a lot (I use light armor, a high-stablity shield, lightning spear, and fog ring).

It's so ugly! It's either two-toned or half-matte, half-glossy, both of which possibilities are insane. It's also a rhombus for some reason? And then there looks to be a blue LED strip down the middle. Yuck.

Man, PS4 looks really heinous IMO. Why do consoles have such ugly industrial design? Still going to buy one...

Surely it would be a literary hat trick if we're going to do sports metaphors.

those cheekbones.

I guess I don't see how the consumer is disempowered or disenfranchised. I buy non-transferable games on Steam quite happily all of the time, because (1) I know the games are non-transferable prior to purchase; (2) Steam offers non-transferable games at a price I'm happy to pay; (3) I can always puchase an extra license if I want to share that game with someone (which I have done many times, especially in terms of 4-packs; and (4) the right to retransfer a game is of limited value to me anyways. I much prefer the Steam model of lower-cost, non-transferable licenses, and I'm happy to see consoles moving in the same direction. Of course, time will tell whether XBONE will offer cheaper licenses; if it does not, I just won't spend my money on that console. With respect to the hypothetical of a no-takeout-McDonald's, I think that might be a bad business decision, and I might not eat at McDonald's, but I wouldn't see that decision as unethical or unjust.

I don't see how any right is being taken away. You don't have a right to purchase any particular product. EA (for example) is under no ethical, moral, or legal obligation to sell you a game. If EA does want to offer you a game, it is under no moral, ethical, or legal duty to sell you that game in any particular form. It's like this: say McDonalds sold Big Mac Meals for 10 years. Included in that Big Mac Meal was a drink, a hamburger, and french fries. Now, it wants to change what it offers in a Big Mac Meal: it will offer a hamburger and french fries, but not a drink. Is McDonald's acting unethically by not including a drink in a Big Mac Meal? Should McDonald's be required to include a drink in the meal? In my view, there isn't any ethical dimension to this kind of business decision: either consumers are willing to purchase a drink-free Big Mac Meal, or they aren't. It's not a question of justice, but just a question of whether the individual consumer thinks the product is worth purchasing at the offered price. Of course you are free to dislike that practice, or organize a boycott, or whatever you want. I'm trying to explain why I don't object to current industry practices, and why I don't think you should object either.

I don't agree with this attitude at all. Games are a purely luxury good (particularly AAA games). I think its perfectly reasonable to expect consumers to not buy a game if they think the game is too expensive. They can buy a cheaper game, or they can purchase some other luxury good. In my view, games are a good industry to be "laissez-faire" about, since no one needs a game (compared to something like health care or transportation), the market is competitive (in that there many substitute-able goods), and the harm caused by a faulty product is basically the cost of purchasing the software (compared to physical goods, which cause physical injury and loss). If Microsoft sells restricted licenses and people buy them at the same price and the same rate that they do right now, that's a clear indication that people on aggregate don't actually care about the "anti-consumer" restrictions. Either people value transferable rights in software, in which case they will refuse to pay full price for a restricted license, or they don't value transferable rights, in which case there's really no cause for complaint. Speaking personally, I do care about transferring rights, but not very much. If I was offered a $50 transferable license or a $45 non-transferable license, I would prefer to buy the non-transferable license since I rarely (if ever) sell used games anyways; the right to transfer is worth practically nothing to me. I suspect many others are the same way. I don't see the connection between these kinds of consumer protections and the XBONE. It's not like consumers in North America have ever been able to return opened software (with a few exceptions). In North America, software has never had warranties in the same way as physical goods. We may wish that consumer protection applied to software, but the fact that it does not cannot be attributed to XBONE. I'm actually not sure that the kinds of consumer protection measures you're talking about make sense in the software industry. Certainly they would lead to more expensive software (e.g., the cost of a warranty will be factored into price).

In Canada, there is not necessarily any need to have a name in a written contract. There is technically no need even for a contract in writing (with some exceptions, e.g. contracts for the sale of land). There are three basic requirements to form a binding contract: offer/acceptance, certainty of terms, and consideration. If those three conditions are met, a binding contract is formed. There is no requirement to name either party or reduce the terms of the contract to writing. In terms of EULA, I think those are contraversial here in certain cases. In my view, they should be enforceable at least with respect to digital sales, because digital sales require you to read and accept the EULA before finalizing the sale. I also think that in terms of physical sales, if the terms of the sale are made available to you before you agree to the contract then those terms would likely be binding even if you chose not to read them.