P4: Gritty Reboot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_X-Wing_Alliance

Half-Life for me. Played each and every one multiple times, and it never gets old. Great stuff.

That word "only" you keep using... I do not think it means what you think it means.

Must... not... click... spoiler. I just finished the prologue to A Clash of Kings. Great stuff.

Hmmm 27th eh? Not too far away I suppose.

There are many great popcorn gifs, but this is probably my favorite.

Ah. Makes sense then. Bought A Clash of Kings last night btw. Thing is huge.

Herein shall we discuss climate change, drowning polar bears, melting ice caps, carbon credits, Al Gore, tidal waves, submerged coastal cities, and the like. There will also be tea and strumpets after the meeting is adjourned.

He's put out 5 books in 15 years, so it's about 3 years on average. If he can bump it up to 2 years he'll just make it in time. (EDIT: eh, more like almost 4 years, since the first book came out at the start of the 15 year period. Math is hard.)

I assume he's gotta have book six done in time for them to start working up a screenplay and casting, principal photography, etc.

Just popping in to say that that is the most ass-backwards way of paying writers I've ever heard of. It's hard to expect them to write good, thought provoking articles when that's the type of payment system they've got going on there. It's a website, not a freaking car dealership. Yeah it's pretty bad. It pretty much discourages writing about indie or niche games and emphasizes flamebaiting. I admit it's tough to find a good system (my site pays per word, which has the potential to encourage copy-pasting large blockquotes or fluff writing), but surely there's a better way. Maybe a base salary with small pageview or content bonuses?

That's exactly what the gaming industry on PCs is like. Lots of MMOs, the Sims, and we also tend to cling to our older games and squeeze a lot more life out of 'em than console install bases usually do. You are probably in line with what many PC gamers do. My sister for instance, not a gamer by any means, freshman in college, but she saw us playing Left 4 Dead one day and wanted to give it a try. So I bought the game for her when she got a new laptop, and now she joins us once or twice a week. Doesn't play any other games. The very fact that a modest laptop can run real games like L4D is a testament to the standardization of middleware and hardware. Joel's hypothetical scenario of homogenization simply doesn't exist, because we're already there. We're already at the point where casual and "hardcorez" games can be at peace with one another because the PC gaming market is so broad. There's no need to declare the death or marginalization of the "tinkerers", because they will always tinker regardless of what anyone else does. Gah Joel's article really bugs me. More later I suppose. I wonder how much money he lost from Reddit. The rumored going rate for writing at Kotaku is $7.50/1,000 hits. So for the 40,000 imgur hits from Reddit, he would have gotten some $300. Supposedly.

Wow. They ought to start reviewing Flash banner ad games. http://www.metacritic.com/games/ios

Sansa is a character I love to read about even though I hate her. Martin does a great job with those kinds of characters.

Love Jered. Great pitcher, but yeah that was a bad game for Anaheim. So, 3 games back after Texas' loss, and 19 to play. In 2004 we were 3 games back with 8 to play and made the playoffs. Hope we can pull it off this time.

Refers to PC gamers in the first person plural. Hardly touches the thousand games on his Steam account. EDIT: And Holy Half-Life 3, Batman; way to take a Gabe Newell quote out of context. He was talking about the need for technology companies to always be aware of changes going on around them to adapt, and gave a few examples in how tech is changing. He wasn't supporting Joel's idea of a console/PC freak Frankenstein machine at all. And his entire point was that he'd like Steam to lead the way in those arenas.

Alrighty, good to know. 1 was amazing so if there are a few even better than that, I'm very excited.

I got the 360 Hardened Edition from the Expo, but I am thinking of trying to return/trade it in somewhere for a PC version.

Thanks for the Tower of the Hand reference. It's really great. I'm a little concerned because the Amazon book reviews indicate the books get progressively worse. Any truth in that?

Some new screens for the Official Game of Game of Thrones. http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/09/07/a-game-of-thrones-genesis-release-date-announced-with-new-screenshots/

Yeah... so just finished book one. I'm still a little in shock from the endings to the various storylines; I guess when you're used to cliche fantasy tropes, the twists and turns that Martin takes you down can be a little startling. Overall, an amazing read though. Now I just need to get Clash of Kings...

Yeah, definitely looking into picking this one up soon. Co-op zombie slaying for me and the wife sounds like the perfect marital counseling.