Thursday Next

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.

Just to correct a couple of details there (trainee solicitor, so this stuff is all pretty fresh in the mind). A civil marriage is still a marriage. You are completely married even if you have never even set foot in a church. A civil partnership can only be same sex. Co-habiting couples can apply for certain rights, reliefs and protection, however, these do not automatically vest over a period of time, some form fillage is required.

Doesn't mean it's cool or okay. Can't just go "that was then, this is now, lump it or leave it". Not necessarily saying that it is cool, more that times change and you do have to "like it or lump it" or "take it or leave it" or your somewhat unhinged mash up of the two. Back in the day piracy was much less widespread, the pre-owned market was smaller and games were much cheaper to produce. Companies today spend LOADS making games and piracy and preowned sales are a global issue. So, they adapt. They release episodic content which gives a better ROI (profit margins on DLC are generally higher because a lot of the donkey work has been done in building the engine and assets for the main game) and subscription games to combat some of these issues.

I disagree on the randomness aspect. Non-thermodynamically speaking H(X) = E[i(X)] In fact your coin toss example is perfectly applicable here too , provided it's a fair coin that can be used in a Bernoulli Trial. As a side note all measures are human-made because our mind is incapable of thinking without measuring sticks. Think of anything that's based on human studies and you'll find there are scales and levels on which they are measured because that's how our minds work. Take away those systems and it's still random. It's not measuring systems, those are made by us mostly to measure uncertainty and they themselves are uncertain when we get to much smaller or larger levels. It's why Quantum Science today is in a state of flux. Note: I'm not discussing religion here, but you just brought up all my years of studying Engineering and Maths from nearly 10 years ago. Bah I remember wasting so much time on Theory of Computation and Algorithm Analyses. Is that entropy? I didn't study Physics past A level, or maths beyond GCSE, so that's a bit beyond me (other than vaguely recognising it). I like the idea that we change randomness into predictability by our nature to measure stuff, the whole observing an atom thing is awesome... Like I said, if there is a proof that anything that is supposedly random is random, then cool. I love being challenged and getting stuff wrong just means I've got an opportunity to learn. "Believing" that what appears random at the moment is not truly random is just that, a belief. I've got no evidence to base it on as I simply don't know enough, I have to choose one way or the other. Once I've learned a bit more, then maybe that belief will change. That's kind of my point about the religion vs. atheism thing. Religion can't (or at least technically shouldn't) change. It is in the past. I look forward so my beliefs change (or at least can change) with everything I learn. Being an atheist is great, it gives me a huge amount of excitement for the future.

Declaring that you are 100% sure that there is no god is not a claim to omniscience. I'm 100% sure that I exist. I'm 100% sure that the sun will rise tomorrow. I can't prove either of these, but it doesn't make me any less sure. With that, I am 100% certain that there is no deity, no after life, no higher power. As for my personal beliefs, I kind of think of existence as a big set of incredibly complex dominoes. When you toss a coin you may consider whether it is heads or tails to be a random event, but in fact it was decided the second the coin left your hand. In fact, it was decided by the neurons firing before that, and the chemical reaction in your brain before that, and so on and so on, all the way back to the big bang. In any belief system, including atheism, there has to be a leap of faith. Mine is that there is no such thing as a truly "random" event. I believe that the things we consider random, like the decay of a radioactive atom, are in fact measurable and predictable. We just don't know how to measure or predict it... yet. That said, I accept that I could be wrong, that the universe could be random. That's why I love to read about new discoveries, new theories, so that I can get closer to understanding how my world actually works. I think that's where I have a big disconnect with Religion. Religion tells us that we have the answers already, or that the answers are unknowable. To be forever looking back at what was said ~2000-6000 years ago and say, that's it, is very depressing for me. The idea of an "Ineffable" god who "moves in mysterious ways" takes all the fun out of the universe. I prefer my outlook, that everything is knowable, it's just waiting for us to discover it. P.S. That comment in the OP about failing the test of faith, and buckling under the pressure was HUGELY patronising. It would be like me saying that you relying on your imaginary friend to help you through hard times is nothing to be ashamed of. EDIT: For those interested, you need to look up "Royal Assent" for the Monarch's powers to refuse to adopt a bill into law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Assent the Queen did it in 1999 though, as noted in the article, it was moot anyway.

Hehehe... priceless.