Voice actors absolutely deserve to be paid, but picking a fight against AI in interactive media is just not gonna work.

The natural endpoint of games is where characters can react to unscripted situations. By definition, this is going to require AI voice generation. That, or you literally get the voice actor to record a line for every possible situation in every possible tone.

That said, I believe actors should retain the rights to their voice. They can license it for a game, but it doesn’t mean the studio owns that voice. The software industry has spent years arguing the difference between ownership and licensing, they should understand it.

Prez wrote on Jul 1, 2024, 22:03:
Very easy answer - simple regulation and a system not heavily weighted towards corporate interests. Without these sensible and very easy to implement controls I have little doubt that the Japanese would make American companies look positively gracious by comparison. They just aren't given the chance, and the results are very obvious. They are far from without problems but they are vastly superior to American companies.

Yeah, but protecting workers is clearly socialism, and then you’re one step away from pogroms, gulags and presidents having absolute immunity.

Darks wrote on Jul 1, 2024, 21:52:
Because the Japanese have a totally different mind set when it comes to work, unlike the lazy ass West!

Yes, gamedev in the west is a notoriously laid back industry where no-one crunches for months on end.

Sexuality is mostly muted save for a clear display of the transgender flag in at least one area

What the fuck is wrong with these people? A trans flag is not “sexuality”, it’s gender identity.

Morons.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jun 3, 2024, 21:44:

Prez wrote on Jun 3, 2024, 17:00:
'Well in videogames you are actually doing the shooting!" No, you are clicking a mouse or pressing the button on your game controller. Utterly baffling.

To give some real world perspective:

Over the course of my life, I have spent thousands of hours behind the trigger. There is zero equivalence to clicking a mouse button or pressing a controller button to the actual act of taking a shot.That's just pure stupidity. I want to see Joe Rando who has done nothing but play an FPS take his allegedly well trained skillset to a range and start keyholing shots at 100 yards with no prep. Oh, and he has to do it from the hip because aiming down the sights/through an optic is optional in many FPS titles. I mean, he's just sooooo well trained at that point, right? Recoil doesn't exist, wind doesn't exist, humidity doesn't exist, elevation doesn't exist, and, of course, every single round is perfect. Oh, yeah, all rifles just absolutely love and operate exactly the same no matter what ammo you feed in to them, so long as the ammo is the right caliber. Just like in an FPS!

Anyone who thinks that is even remotely true is, quite frankly, ignorant and clutching at their pearls based on that ignorance. All they're doing is blowing out a spectacular amount of bullshit.

Frankly, it’s a failure of the weapons industry not to project crosshairs onto the real world. RL no hud mode sucks.

🤣

Prez wrote on May 26, 2024, 08:39:

You agreed to the TOS, end of story.

LMAO! That's all it takes for people nowadays. Does anyone even think just a little before they type this shit?

Let me put this another way: remember when we bought games on DVD's? DVD literally means "DIGITAL video disc". Everyone speaking like a sage old system matter expert (you don't own anything anymore!!!! It's the DIGITAL age brah!!!) are not seeing the forest for the trees. The ONLY difference is where the 1's and 0's are stored. It's not complicated. Valve THINKS that because we live in a corporatocracy that they have an unimpeachable Killswitch option because... reasons. Not in my world.

Mate, I’m not talking about what you can do about it or whether it’s right or wrong, I’m simply stating the legal position.

This has already been tested, where people have tried to sell their steam accounts and Valve have simply disabled the account if they see it.

Are there ways around this? Of course.
And equally, you can’t just put anything you like in the TOS. But non-transferability of software licenses is a well established legal practice.

yonder wrote on May 25, 2024, 18:50:

Jivaro wrote on May 25, 2024, 12:53:
Unless Valve gets a copy of every death certificate in the world as they are produced...how in the world would they ever know? Am I forgetting when they fingerprinted me? If I die and leave my account to a friend or family member, I am pretty sure all they need is my login/password, my birthdate, and access to the email account associated to the Steam account. This seems like an unenforceable rule.

Of course, making it so they don't 'owe' the account operator anything after the original buyer dies does cover some bases for Valve. I can see why they make the rule and draw the line there as far as their "obligations". It's just clearly not something they can enforce all that well until the account reaches a stupid age.

I'm 95% certain this is just a legal technicality.
It's utterly unenforceable.

I'm just curious why they're doing it now... the day after the Microsoft news broke.

I would say it’s trivially enforceable. If Valve decide that the person using the account is not the person who signed up, they can shut down access with no problem at all. Legally, this is a no-brainer.

Morally is another matter, but legally? You agreed to the TOS, end of story.

soundeffects wrote on Dec 6, 2023, 12:39:
Dude is a liar, he’s probably beaten thousands of prostitutes to death and also played GTA

FTFY 🤣

Prez wrote on Jun 25, 2023, 17:38:
What I said:

It is not in fact more hostile than ever for minorities and other marginalized groups contrary to what the author claimed.

What was heard:

Life is a bowl of cherries and super easy for everyone not white and hetero and no further work needs to be done.

I love the internet so much. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

What the article said:
It’s not an easy time for transgender people right now. Anti-transgender laws are sweeping the United States and other countries, and abuse is rampant on social media platforms like Twitter.

So no, they didn’t say it’s “more hostile than ever”, they just pointed out some facts.

Laughing Man wrote on Oct 11, 2022, 09:32:

ChaosEngine wrote on Oct 11, 2022, 03:07:
So they’re trying to limit the number of free accounts people can create. I wonder if there was a way they could do that without all this phone number bullshit.

Maybe they could, and I’m just talking off the top of my head here, charge a fee to create an account? Maybe around $60?

And in return, you’d have a perpetual licence for the game and they’d unlock all the content.

Nah, never work.

I dub you king of the idiots.

🃏<- the joke








. <- your very tiny head

So they’re trying to limit the number of free accounts people can create. I wonder if there was a way they could do that without all this phone number bullshit.

Maybe they could, and I’m just talking off the top of my head here, charge a fee to create an account? Maybe around $60?

And in return, you’d have a perpetual licence for the game and they’d unlock all the content.

Nah, never work.

Quinn wrote on Aug 19, 2022, 12:13:
I think the subleties you talk about could've been implanted with more subtlety Same goes for your insinuation of what I desire. I don't need A to B either, but at least give a quest log. How the fuck should I know what somebody somewhere said 8 hours ago, and even if I remembered 50% of the time it was so cryptic even my 11 months old kid communicates better. But anyway, maybe you have the blindspot I was getting at? Souls games have a tendency to get immunity from any criticism from their fans. 🤷 Or you honestly like the idea that anything anywhere could be a quest or quest-step for something somewhere. I could understand that, tbh... but to me it's too vague.

To be fair, I think that obtuseness and vagueness are part of the appeal of Souls games to many people. It's a shared discovery experience. "Hey if you go back and talk to Bob the Unhappy Dog after beating Larry the Relentless you get a whole new questline!"

My issue with ER is just how lazy some of it is. They reused all the same sound effects from Dark Souls around health, hits, deaths, etc. The inventory management screen is still garbage (trying to figure out how many soul items I need is not fun, it's just boring). Some of the boss design is amazing to look at but boring to fight... looking at you final boss.

Hardline Mike wrote on Aug 18, 2022, 19:09:
Oh no not Children's Health Defense

And nothing of value was lost…

The macrons in the company name are there because “wētā” is a Māori word for a type of insect.

If you don’t have the macrons, “weta” means filth or excrement.

So I can understand them not wanting to be called “shit workshop”.

And just in case anyone reads this in the future, yeah that music article is still bollocks.
https://youtu.be/VfNdps0daF8

jdreyer wrote on Jul 25, 2022, 21:45:

ChaosEngine wrote on Jul 25, 2022, 19:17:
That music article was terrible. It's just typical old man yelling at cloud "youth of today" bollocks.

Music is fundamentally different today. Over the past 60 years, "popular" music was defined by the gatekeepers of studios, radio stations, MTV, etc. It was also far more tribal... if you listened to metal in the 80s/90s, you probably only listened to metal (same for pop, dance, etc).

Instead of a few massive artists dominating the charts, people spread their listening across genres, periods, etc.

And most importantly, when I was growing up, if you wanted to hear music, you either had to buy an album or like what was on the radio. Nowadays, most people have access to basically all music ever made.

Now, I am not a fan of most popular music made these days. But that's fine, it's not for me.... I'm in my 40s.

But there are still plenty of smaller modern artists doing great stuff... it's just not as big.

Popular music is quantifiably worse today than it was in the past.

You have listed some quantifiable criteria, but they are not objective standards and can never be, because art is always subjective.

You don't like the fact that musical variety has gone down or that people use autotunes or that 2 people write all the music. I probably even agree with you.

Who cares?

I could refute plenty of those points (labels and studios won't pay for recording many albums... so what.... record it at home on a laptop), but it would be a waste of time because all those measures are subjective. A classical music fan could easily find any number of metrics to point out the "inherent" superiority of classical over modern music ("you call that music... they only use 3 instruments! what a joke!").

To pick out some of your example bands, Dire Straits are way more musically complex than Nirvana.... which is the better band? Freddie Mercury has a vocal range that Eddie Vedder could only dream of... is Eddie crap?

The quality of this music is the reason that TV and movies go back 30, 40, 50 years to license it instead of using modern music. Because it's good.

or.... because it's the music that people my age like; who, coincidentally are the ones picking the music.

This isn't new. Movies in the 80s and 90s used music from the 60s and 70s (Tarantino movies, for example).

Besides, the most recent standout pieces (Stranger Things, Thor) were notable specifically because they were unusual. Most soundtracks are either generic orchestral pieces or use "modern" music.

That music article was terrible. It's just typical old man yelling at cloud "youth of today" bollocks.

Music is fundamentally different today. Over the past 60 years, "popular" music was defined by the gatekeepers of studios, radio stations, MTV, etc. It was also far more tribal... if you listened to metal in the 80s/90s, you probably only listened to metal (same for pop, dance, etc).

Instead of a few massive artists dominating the charts, people spread their listening across genres, periods, etc.

And most importantly, when I was growing up, if you wanted to hear music, you either had to buy an album or like what was on the radio. Nowadays, most people have access to basically all music ever made.

Now, I am not a fan of most popular music made these days. But that's fine, it's not for me.... I'm in my 40s.

But there are still plenty of smaller modern artists doing great stuff... it's just not as big.

going from 1080 to 1400 is nice, but going to 1440 ultrawide is amazing!

Hard to believe we are seeing better PC support on a playstation port than we got for Elden Ring

Quinn wrote on May 30, 2022, 02:32:
You sound a lot more reasonable than BoP in this case. Except for the gun vs bulletproof vest. If every kid in that Texas school was carrying, the psycho kid wouldn't have had a chance to inflict any real damage.
The problem with most Americans is that they don't see how fucking idiotically dystopian that sounds.

Yeah, call me crazy, but I'm not super keen on the idea that kids should need to be armed to defend themselves in school.