User comment history
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| News Comments > Remember Me Trailer |
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| 1. |
Re: Remember Me Trailer |
May 17, 2013, 20:08 |
Sho |
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| The future is amazing! The energy you can have and the things you can pull off despite obviously suffering from an eating disorder. |
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| News Comments > Shadowrun Returns DRM Clarified |
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| 117. |
Re: Shadowrun Returns DRM Clarified |
Apr 16, 2013, 20:03 |
Sho |
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Flatline wrote on Apr 16, 2013, 19:53:
Or are you suggesting that Hairbrained put a giant skull and crossbones at the top of their page and say "MAY CONTAIN DRM!" in 90 point font?
Oh come on, stop cranking up the volume. If you accuse others of hyperbole, restrain it yourself :). My posts should make pretty clear that I try to have a measured response to this; I don't have foam at my mouth here.
Okay, so here's how I would have liked that FAQ response to read:
"While the details are still being worked out, we hate draconian DRM as much as the next guy. This means we'll try our best to keep DRM out of our game -- however, we're working on a licensed product, and as such, we are not stewards of the brand. Negotiations with the IP owner are still ongoing, and until they are concluded, we cannot offer a firm promise that no kind of DRM will be required."
Plus they could have mentioned further up in the Kickstarter, under the infographic describing the license history, that they're still negotiating.
Basically, they should have been more upfront about the degree they're under MS' heel and the insecurities of their position at the time. That still would make it a bummer that MS decided to force DRM on them, of course -- but it would have avoided the loss of trust in Harebrained. |
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| News Comments > Shadowrun Returns DRM Clarified |
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| 115. |
Re: Shadowrun Returns DRM Clarified |
Apr 16, 2013, 16:23 |
Sho |
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Beamer wrote on Apr 16, 2013, 16:13:
Again, it is not an investment. You are not an investor. In fact, the words "invest," "investment" and "investor" are deliberately NOT used on the Kickstarter site.
You are a "backer" in their words, a donor in reality.
Yeah, I know that's how it works in a legal sense, and I'm not really going to argue against that reality. I'm not saying they committed a legal offense or anything like that. In fact, I even agree that Kickstarter backers generally knowingly take a risk/gamble with backing, and that caps the amount of whining they're allowed to do after-the-fact :).
But I do still think there's a human case to be made here where people are well-justified in being unhappy with how this has shaken out. Because one side to the whole Kickstarter promise, as a social phenomenon, is certainly that it's supposed to usher in an era of a more consumer-friendly games industry, and for most gamers - and backers - DRM isn't considered consumer-friendly. If you put your money behind that cause, and things ultimately don't transpire that way ... well, it's ugly and sucks.
That's why I think Harebrained, in riding that wave, should have been more up-front in their communication about how they're not really going to be all that publisher-independent in this endeavour. Yes, they did very very quietly mention that they'd have to license from Microsoft, and yes, I can even understand not wanting to call attention to that fact to avoid scaring backers away - but while I can understand it, it still feels disingenuous and cagey to me now. I'm not sure I'd back future campaigns from them.
Kickstarter later added a required section to pitch pages where projects have to explain the risks involved, but the Shadowrun campaign predated that. Wonder what Harebrained would have written there? |
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| News Comments > Shadowrun Returns DRM Clarified |
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| 112. |
Re: Shadowrun Returns DRM Clarified |
Apr 16, 2013, 15:00 |
Sho |
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It's frustrating how few people here understand that Kickstarter isn't a shop, it's projects pitching to investors. The reason you can be legitimately pissed off at this, as a backer, is that you might have backed this because you wanted to support a DRM-free trend in the industry - and now it turns out you didn't get all the info up-front and this game, as a product and how it's going to be marketed, won't deliver on that front. That backers still get the game DRM-free is entirely beside that point.
They should have included a big fat warning in their pitch that they didn't know yet what sort of constraints MS might put on them. |
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| News Comments > Shadowrun Returns DRM Clarified |
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| 10. |
Re: Shadowrun Returns DRM Clarified |
Apr 13, 2013, 15:24 |
Sho |
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Ok, let me clarify: I believe they should have publicized the details of their licensing agreement with Microsoft with regard to what it allows them to do and what it doesn't. I'm getting the impression that they did not do that, which feels rather cagey to me.
You don't think that's relevant info for a potential investor? Kickstarter isn't a shop. It's a funding round. Investors have broader stakes than getting a pre-defined set of goods.
Edit: Posting overlapped with your edit covering the timeline. |
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| News Comments > Op Ed |
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| 41. |
Re: Op Ed |
Apr 6, 2013, 21:05 |
Sho |
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The other thing I don't get is, why is criticism of sexism supposed to be only valid if it's motivated by selflessness, and automatically invalid if the desired outcome serves the critic in some way? Like I said in the earlier comment, a major reason it annoys me that the industry keeps turning women away is because I feel my own experiences with the hobby would be improved if there were more women considering gaming as leisure activity, because it's been true in all other areas of life. Gaming is often social, be that the actual playing of them or discussing them, and it's boring to only have male minds around much of the time (and so is the disproportionate amount of games that deal exclusively in male viewpoints; it's interesting to get exposed to other stuff too, and games, being interactive, can do it like no other thing). And I think that's a perfectly fine reason, even if completely selfish, to complain when folks like Sony create environments hostile to women. And that's just about having the empathy to conceive that with shit like that gaming might not stack up very attractively vs. all the other things one can chose to spend one's precious time on.
This comment was edited on Apr 6, 2013, 21:15. |
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| News Comments > Op Ed |
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| 39. |
Re: Op Ed |
Apr 6, 2013, 19:42 |
Sho |
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Dunno, I keep seeing stuff like Sony's PSP Vita ad likening the device to a four-breasted woman which can only serve to remind women that the device was conceived without their consideration in mind. And that's far worse than any single game purposely limiting its audience because it's an entire platform and affects anyone developing for it. Of course women are capable of shrugging off an ad like that, but why would they bother? Gaming is a leisure activity, and there's plenty of those to chose from which are equally fun and valid; if a social scene and/or market was constantly and actively messaging me that it doesn't care about me I wouldn't exactly feel compelled or have the energy to go up against that, or feel it deserved my attention, either. It doesn't surprise me that it's not worth the asking price for a lot of women right now.
And as a man I think that's a shame, because I enjoy socializing and sharing my hobbies with men and women alike, because individuals of both genders have a lot to offer, and unique perspectives shaped by their different experiences in life.
As long as there are bullshit artificial impediments against that like that ad I'd say more power to the people who point at it. And if it makes them feel good about themselves I can totally live with that. |
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| News Comments > April F-f-f-foolin' 2013, Part 2 - Punked by Square Enix Edition |
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| 13. |
Re: April F-f-f-foolin', Part 2 - Punked by Square Enix Edition |
Apr 1, 2013, 14:51 |
Sho |
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| But if you're craving more it's because the last serving was good, so wouldn't you rather laugh with the cooks than be pissed at them? That's kind of the point, I care about Deus Ex myself, and the people who made this gag seem like they care too, so it's all good ... I might be more pissed off at the lack of competence if I didn't have so much goodwill toward them, but even then it's just an April's Fools. |
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| News Comments > April F-f-f-foolin' 2013, Part 2 - Punked by Square Enix Edition |
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| 9. |
Re: April F-f-f-foolin', Part 2 - Punked by Square Enix Edition |
Apr 1, 2013, 14:40 |
Sho |
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Rhino wrote on Apr 1, 2013, 14:36:
It has nothing to do with "entitled". Nobody here claims to be entitled, acts entitled, and this is nothing more than you tossing out the word for no other reason than you feel differently.
I'll admit it's a hypothetical since I missed out on the premature tease, but I'd like to think that I'd still have rolled with it and tried to get some entertainment out of the devs of one of the best games of the last few years poking fun at themselves. Makes my day better than being pissed off at an imperfectly deployed friggin' April's Fools gag. It's that contrast in attitude that has me puzzled. |
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| News Comments > Tomb Raider Patched |
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| 15. |
Re: Tomb Raider Patched |
Mar 11, 2013, 13:32 |
Sho |
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I'm playing it on a 660 Ti with WHQL drivers and have had no technical issues, aside from a Direct3D initialization error when Exclusive Fullscreen is checked (which I don't care about). Not a single crash here.
Edit: To be clear: Still have to apply the patch.
This comment was edited on Mar 11, 2013, 13:38. |
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| News Comments > SimCity Marketing Campaign Paused |
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| 12. |
Re: SimCity Marketing Campaign Paused |
Mar 8, 2013, 16:38 |
Sho |
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ASeven wrote on Mar 8, 2013, 16:37:
This gets better and better, like a joke that never ceases to be funny despite how long it gets told.
It's definitely hilarious how this launch seems like it was made for proving the critics right ... |
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| News Comments > SimCity Marketing Campaign Paused |
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| 8. |
Re: SimCity Marketing Campaign Paused |
Mar 8, 2013, 16:32 |
Sho |
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Redmask wrote on Mar 8, 2013, 16:28:
God forbid they give the refunds they said they would or stop selling the game though. Here's your token effort community, we stopped advertising it for a week, now shut up!
Halting advertising for a week directly after launch is a huge deal. This is hurting them immensely in lost sales. It's the sort of stuff that stops money people from sleeping at night -- you can be sure EA is in emergency mode right now. This may even be unprecedented. |
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| News Comments > Lord British Announces Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues |
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| 50. |
Re: Lord British Announces Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues |
Mar 8, 2013, 16:20 |
Sho |
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Not going to back this. The pitch video set off all sorts of red flags for me: Talking about realtime graphics while showing a prerendered cutscene (not talking about his game, but still, that sort of handwavy, careless stuff rubs me the wrong way), lots of buzzword bingo, "we're already making swag for you to buy later", skirting around addressing important facts like the exact format of multiplayer, etc. The video just made me mistrust him and gave me the feeling that I'd have no idea what I'd be putting my money on the line for.
I'm basically sad this is going to meet its funding goal. OK, I guess it's fine for folks to take a gamble, but OTOH I also think we should be really tough on asking Kickstarter pitchers hard questions. They want our money after all.
This comment was edited on Mar 8, 2013, 16:25. |
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| News Comments > Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter Passes $2MM |
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| 35. |
Re: Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter Passes $2MM |
Mar 8, 2013, 13:10 |
Sho |
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Although it's worth pointing out that the reasons behind that contrast goes deeper than "publishers are solely manned by evil dicks". Rather, in the traditional publisher model, games are funded _at risk_, which e.g. does reasonably make piracy a factor that you need to consider in your calculation, because you need to make your money back post-release to break even. Even ignoring the desire to maximize profits (which is a pressure acting on publishers stemming from shareholders etc.) that alone creates an incentive to try to eliminate piracy e.g. by moving parts of the game server-side.
Kickstarter improves on this not so much because it cuts out a layer of evil dicks, but on a conceptual level - unless pitchers lie about their funding goal, getting funded before production even starts eliminates risk and removes an incentive to care about piracy.
The risk is when pitchers try to have their cake and eat it too, i.e. set the funding goal too low in the expectation of post-release profits. That's why we (the potential backers) have to remain vigilant and ask hard questions of pitchers. We have to educate ourselves more about how game budgets really work (e.g. by paying attention to which of these projects fail). |
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375 Comments. 19 pages. Viewing page 1.
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