Wrayfield

I stopped pirating games when I started working for the industry. Very simple decision of not shooting myself in the foot, though I probably wouldn't buy most of the games I work(ed) on, my personal perception of it changed. Though I know quite a few colleagues who still do it on a massive scale. I stopped pirating music when I realised that whatever I pirate I hardly ever listen to. A strange sense of devaluation where stuff I haven't paid for isn't worth that much. There are a few exceptions to that, but really just a few. This, strangely, only applies to music -- I rarely had that problem with games back in the day. I still download US and UK films and series, albeit on a fairly small scale -- not that that ever was an excuse -- for the simple fact that I don't want to wait until they're available in the country I currently live in. In general, it helps to not be a student anymore and be able to make my own purchase decisions. This is not to say students can't, but their financial situation often dictates such decisions, at least such was the case with me. These days, I've grown quite a bit disappointed with a lot of AAA titles out there so the pure consumer in me decided not to shell out the money for most of the stuff on day 1 anymore -- few exceptions aside. It also helps that I am not much of a multiplayer gamer and generally patient to wait for price drops (unless it's post-apocalyptic, a weakness I'm unable to cure myself from). PS: @Dean Funny Adobe story for you: One Indian vendor we used on a project (not game-related, but still development and localisation) also did a pretty big project for Adobe. When they delivered the stuff, Adobe was obviously aware of the fact that their vendor pirated their stuff and kindly asked them to purchase "at least a few licenses" for the next assignment. I'm sure the reaction would be different had it been a US company or so, but it still shows a certain sense of realism on Adobe's side.

Is there a way to click on the last page of a topic straight from the Portal area? I am not around here much, so if it's too much kung-fu, just leave it. Or, maybe I'm missing a setting. Thanks!

Old men evening with a few good friends I don't see often. Drinks and NBA Jam on PS3.

Hehe, cf. Fallout 3 where the changes went further than just localisation needed actual circumventing or removing of events such as the option to blow up Megaton.

Localisation, which is fairly familiar to me, is the unwanted child of 90% of game developers and/or publishers who are often in charge of that. It's rarely accounted for properly in the development cycle, managed by people who have little to no knowledge of it and often rushed out of the house because ultimately "the customer doesn't care so much" or there is not enough money for it. It's refreshing to see that people still care, even if they're linguistically not affected. <3 A different perspective than Derpy's, but still valid: I think Europeans who at some point in their life haven't spoken English (or still don't) appreciate the effort companies make in presenting their product in their language. There are even those who localise their US version for the UK market -- would you believe such insanity? Funnily enough, those EU markets shrink from a localisation point of view, while new emerge, like Portuguese/Brazilian and Russian.

I have something for you then:

Yeah, so are DSi games if I'm not mistaken so this is not exactly news. Sucks for those westerners who speak Japanese, imo. They were able to get themselves some nice gems before (especially those not released "overseas") and enjoy the western stuff at the same time. I just hope the online shop will have plenty of stuff, but I guess that's a tad naive...

Picture or it didn't happen

Don't believe anything they say on google tv But honestly, DSi with wireless connection and everything else switched on to max will probably be somewhere around 5-6 hours (again, I can't confirm because I don't have one). I wouldn't be surprised if the 3DS was around those values minus 10-20%. We'll see, I guess, but I know Nintendo as very conservative. Let's say they like to be wrong to their own advantage, if that makes any sense. I find the 3DS design quite ugly though. I think I will wait until Lite/XXL/3DS/Phone/nPad as well. Edited for retardedness in spelling.

I'm bored, I'm playing Tales of Vesperia. Bought it ages ago and forgot, then fancied some Namco RPG with those trusty, cringe-worthy dialogues. Ha!

Stroking Picard's ear in bed was quite bad-ass

I wouldn't worry much about battery life -- N. has always calculated more conservatively and has a good history of taking care of that. It will be similar to DSi, I guess, but I wasn't able to verify it this time though As for games, there is no must-buy there for me and the 3D effect is nice but not enough to make me buy this system. I will probably have a look at Pro Evo (at least I think a 3D version comes out) to see if it maybe changes my mind. Some Street Fighter fans will probably also fall victim to temptation there.

I look forward to reports of people passing out, puking or just plain playing Pokémon on it

The classic

I hate cash-ins for sports games so much -- getting an actual competitive advantage because you paid defies what sports games should be about. DLC for story-driven games has to be at least roughly planned during the dev phase. I think Fallout makes an 'interesting' approach in kind of moving the location entirely away from the original map, so you could theoretically add infinite scenarios, even after the original game is long finished. That doesn't change the fact that their DLC stories don't add up much with the original story unless you count higher level cap and additional items. That said, unlockable DLC on disc is taking the piss. DLC weapons and armor... lazy cash-ins you guys talk about, I dunno, I just couldn't bring myself to pay for that.