Thursday Next

GoW 3 and Uncharted 2 were great as playable intros go. Abe's Odyssey was a brilliant cinematic one.

GTA San Andreas was a pony ending too. After all that graft you end up moving back into your god awful neighborhood? No thanks. I didn't buy all that property to live in a shack and eat microwaved dinners.

I don't find them to be like Nazis. I think they are painted much more like Soviets. The "impossible to invade because the homeland is inhospitable" thing. The names are all Russian-y. Like Orlock, Volari, Stahl. The language looks vaguely Cyrillic. Not forgetting the questionable foreign policy. Like I said, it has the potential to be ambiguous and balanced, I wish they would capitalise on that.

I've always found it odd that such a balanced back story has such a one-sided viewpoint. I mean the Helghast were driven from their sister planet of Vekta and forced to live on the inhospitable Helghan. To be honest, I'd quite like to play as the Helghan in KZ4.

Somewhat ironically, I'm admittedly guilty of oversimplifying the broadsheet/tabloid thing. You should watch as much Brian Cox as possible. He's the most accessible physicist evahhhh!

I think there is a line between "misinformation" and "over simplification". My English teacher once explained the difference between "Broadsheet" and "Tabloid" newspapers as "Broadsheets will present both sides of an argument and try to leave the reader to choose which one they prefer whereas Tabloids will present the side of the argument that the author believes is correct." In essence, a Tabloid will simplify the matter. "I think this." a Broadsheet will not. This doesn't make Tabloids "bad", they just simplify the argument. Sometimes, people need a simplified argument because they don't get or don't care to get all the detail. Case in point:

Check out this link: http://muse.mu/page.aspx?page=christmas2010 360 degree videos (from numerous angles) of MUSE at Wembley. So much to love about this. Awesome band, awesome songs, awesome technology. I've seen them three times now and every time they just blow me away.

To say that a game cannot be art because it is written in C++ is as ridiculous as suggesting that a book cannot be art because it is written in English. Both must be readable, both have to conform to rules of spelling, syntax, and so on. Badly written books are no more useable than badly written games. This doesn't mean that all games are art any more than all written media is art. The cooking instructions on a microwave dinner are not art (I'll come back to this). From Cyber's quote: I agree that "Artistic Intent" matters. For example, "That Game Company" and "Team Ico" seem to build games from an artistic viewpoint. Their games feel "Arty", like there is something to be found beneath the layers of Coding. Titles like Call of Duty, Battlefield, FIFA, Pro-Evolution, Forza feel like they are less about "Art" and more about entertainment. There's no deeper message in these games, they can be taken at face value. I also agree with Commander Sheppard's point on "Artistic Interpretation". Take "Pong", at the time, just a paddle/ball game. Now it has a "Retro", "Minimalist" feel to it. Similarly, though I said that cooking instructions are not art, they could be interpreted as such. You can infer a sense of bleak despair in the instructions on cooking for one. Hell, if Tarantino is able to make a discussion on Global Burger Nomenclature into art, then why not lines of code? In conclusion, people who make games and want to call them art should feel free to. People who play games and want to call them art should feel free to. Anyone who disagrees, well that's fine too. Art is a matter of opinion.

I'm not offended, but I am a little confused: have I ever actually mentioned my own piracy habits? I thought I'd been careful not to, to only speak in theoretical terms. Oh well, I'll break my rule: I pirate to demo, but that's the only time I ever pirate (I know you don't agree with this justification either). Furthermore, I only pirate to demo in two situations: 1) there is no official demo, and I'm still on the fence about the game, even after reviews and word of mouth has come in, or 2) there is an official demo, but I didn't like the demo, and I've heard that the final game is better than the demo shows. In situation 1 I'm not going to buy a game I'm on the fence about without trying it, so either I pirate it or I don't buy it. In situation 2 I've already decided I didn't like it based on the demo, but I'm giving the full version a second chance to change my mind. In either situation the pub/dev stands to benefit because in the absence of the piracy I'm not buying the game (at least until a future price drop), but the piracy may get them a purchase out of me. Apologies, perhaps I infer it as you tend to argue pro-piracy (in some situations), and "Hypotheticals" are in my experience often confessions by another name. @Johnny: Don't think I was "being a dick", I just didn't sugar coat it. There's not much point pretending you and I get on when we don't is there? Doesn't mean we can't be civil and have to resort to name calling does it?

I'm sure this would have been sorted eventually without my involvement. If I helped speed the process along, so much the better. It's quite possible that it was a case of human error where the person who cancelled the account didn't restrict it to the forum only by mistake, but I honestly don't know. As the situation has been resolved I'm not going to ask any more questions.

@Dean & Cyber: When I ask why the call for more regulation, I mean, why should regulations aimed at publishers be any more effective than the laws that you regularly ignore because you don't agree with them? @Ethan: Agreed. Technically binding, but eminently challengable in court. @WTF: You're right in that EA's focus is more console than PC, especially for multiplat games. BF3 is a huge exception to this rule. It's a PC title through and through. P.S. I've told CS that I think this was a little OTT, it's being flagged to CS management.

I have invested as much as I can (which isn't much) in buying games. I buy mostly indie titles nowadays, but I own a lot of Valve games, some even bought as soon as they were released (L4D1/2, prolly Portal 2 as well). I think the only EA game I own which I got for my birthday is Bad Company 2. Crap like numbers of activation, needing to be online or DLC exploitation is enough for me to not warrant a purchase. I was considering saving up money for Dead Space 2 eventually, but this event is making me reconsider my decision. (You could argue that "I just don't need to post on forums," but if I put up with this, I'll blame myself for contributing to whatever publishers' methods will evolve into.) There is a reason Valve gets my money and most other publishers don't. Most publishers consider pirates scum and go from there and eventually we get all these workarounds like day-one DLC, DRM and whatever else. Valve considers pirates unhappy costumers and go from there and end up with everyone owning a copy of Half-Life, Portal and/or Team Fortress 2. That doesn't answer why you think more regulation will fix a problem, when you consider regulation to be optional, or to only apply as far as you want it to.

EULA's are a contract between the customer and EA. They are legally binding just like any other contract you agree to anywhere, that said, they can be challenged in court. I'm not aware of any EA games that require an "always on connection" our games almost always use 5 x Activations. Any game he has Activated should work fine so long as he doesn't go online. You're not so much getting banned from a forum as you are getting banned from EA's services, this includes forums and game activations. Anyways... I'm having a little nose around CS to see if I can find anything out. @Cyber Rat: Given how you and many others openly flout copyright laws, I'm curious as to why you think any more rules will make a difference.

I don't know the details, but, the guy did something stupid. Think we can all agree on that. The terms of service are pretty clear and EA haven't done anything outside of their (admittedly broad) powers. Chances are, the guy caught a Moderator on a bad day and is eating a ban because of it. Another day, another mod and it may have passed without incident. The guy can still play his other games, he just can't activate his new ones or play online. EDIT: I am loving that RPS is in the middle of a DAII marketing takeover by the way.

Flatland is amazing. It was one of the inspirations for the guy who wrote the novels which provided my user name.

A minor oversight. I think there's a difference between "Banter" and "Trash Talk". For example, someone on Hot Pursuit said that my Bee Yellow Camero was a piece of crap car and that he was gonna bust me first. I told him he was going to feel rather silly once I was done kicking his arse in a piece of crap Bee Yellow Camero (I've never been so glad to win a race). It was all good humoured and inoffensive.

Piracy. Hate it. Can't stand it. Don't agree with any of the justifications for it. To the point where my opinion of a person drops the when they say they do it. Take for example, Dean and Ethan, both good guys, get on well enough with them on the forum, but I actually flinch any time either of them mentions their piracy habits (mostly because I respect them both and I always feel a little disappointed in them), and Johnny, who I don't particularly know or like, probably due to the frequency with which he refers to his copyright infringing ways. Other than that, manners, in all forms. From forums to in-game, trash talk to griefing. But that doesn't really count because it applies to the world in general not just gamers. There's a huge deficit in people generally being decent to one another, to the point where people are actually surprised when you thank a waiter for bringing over your food, or hold a door open for someone. NOTE: Dean, Ethan, Johnny, I'm not going to patronise any of you by claiming no offence was intended, I'm well aware that you may be offended by my comments. I'm just being honest so let me add here that I do respect all three of you for being honest, not just about the piracy, but of your opinions in all things on the forum, I just don't agree with you on some points.

PC is not inherently a buggy platform and I can't believe you even implied such a thing. Sorry, but plenty of PC devs deliver games with minimal bugs. It is not the fault of the platform. How on Earth did you get from "It is impossible to test all the near infinite combinations of hardware and software inherent to the PC platform." to "PC is buggy by nature."?

Not sure how these count as insightful commentary on gaming tropes rather than just being gaming tropes. To avoid the trope the character would have to acknowledge that they are doing so. For example, if you are going to subvert the trope of arbitrary or artificial time limits then you would need to draw attention to that specifically. As in: "We've only got 10 seconds to kill the bad guy." "Why 10 Seconds? He's driving the car we're following, what's gonna happen in 10 seconds that a rocket launcher can't fix?" It sounds to me more like the game follows obvious gaming tropes and that the developers are not sure how to cover it up. Superman's antagonist was a balding weakling and that was never painted as absurd.

I don't know the maths well enough to make a determination, my gut says nothing is truly random, I get the distinct feeling I need to read up on this more. Overall, I have the same attitude as you, I'll follow the weight of evidence. If someone wants to take some time to explain a proof for randomness, I'll gladly listen. I'm a believer in Higgs Bosons, but, much like yourself, I'm not gonna continue to believe in them if the evidence tilts against them. Like you said though, it's gonna take a lot to shake the SM.

No probs.

Either? Where else is it not coming?

The industry has adapted. Consumers changed their habits from buying a game and keeping it, to buying a game and trading it or pirating a game. The industry adapted its model to supplying post launch content, subscription services, free to play games, ad served titles and microtransactions. It's up to consumers now to adapt to these changes by adopting their preferred one, this will then guide the industry's next move.

Woo! Yeah! Bring it! My wallet is ready. please be true.

Cheers Deano! Also thanks WTF for the comments Agreed there is a lot of uncertainty, it's part of why I find the subject so interesting. Part of me wishes I'd carried on with physics rather than going in to Law (I do love the law though so I'm happy with the decision). Would like to hear more on your thoughts on life as a projection, if you have an opinion on it.