I loved HL2. But I was disappointed with it.

That's an excellent description, precisely how I felt too.

I don't think you can bring the Sony thing in

Seriously agreed. It's like comparing someone who, at worst, might hold your toy where you can't reach it to someone selling copies of your house keys and handing personal invitations out to felons.

I've questioned Valve's judgement about as often as I've questioned either id's or Epic's ... and I don't think any of those companies would do something as stupid and irresponsible as what Sony has done. Course, I didn't think Sony was stupid enough to do what Sony has done either ... but I'm just hoping the stupidity is a fluke and not becoming some kind of corporate philosophy.

I'm guessing the seven odd lawsuits Sony is looking at should prevent the latter from occuring.

Your aversion to Steam has become not only tiresome but also borderline irrational.

Being a fanboy is irrational.
Not wanting to ask permission to play a game I paid good money for? Rational.

You can look that up if you like.

The Steam haters will have no choice but to adopt Steam eventually

I find that highly unlikely, but I suppose if 100% of all the games in the universe required Steam, I'd be likely to adopt it, yes.

I would still, of course, complain about it. So nobody gets off that easy.

what exactly was the matter with what Sony did? Doesn't a corporation have a "right" to protect itself or does the "rights" of the consumer override that?

Your views on Steam suddenly make complete sense to me now.

And I was looking forward to Spector's new stuff.

Now I guess I won't get the chance.

Well, I for one, am definately glad to see Darwinia get more exposure.

Course, it sucks that I won't be playing it now, seeing as I refuse to allow Steam back on my computers. Does anyone kow if I get a boxed copy that will ask Valve's permission to play?

More importantly, did you know you can finish DX:IW without killing anyone? Or using a weapon at all?

Yeah, well.

Have you ever actually tried to play the game that way?

I have, and it's inanely frustrating and not very fun. Heck, if anything, it teaches you that violence is a simpler and more efficient method of problem solving, not to mention more entertaining.

Plus, IW was more Harvey's work than Warren's. Deus Ex? I dunno about you, but I was one violent mofo from time to time during that game. So being an invisible, cybernetic killing machine with a laser sword is fine ... but being a street gangbanger is not?

While they might be miles apart artistically speaking, to declare Deus Ex's violence as "good" and GTA's violence as "bad" is more ludicrous than the comparison itself. Hell, in Thief I would systematically assassinate people and hide their bodies so that I could better investigate areas. What, that's OK in polite society these days?

If people are going to get all pious about violence, they should check the color of their walls. Might be more of a glassy substance than it seems.

In his clarification, at least, Warren backs off on the violence angle and strikes more of an opinion about outdated genres and motifs in general. That's a far easier pedestal to take these days, although there really isn't a need to single out GTA for it.

So what? So the media is presenting a one sided report, what else is new? They've been doing that on every topic for as long as they've existed. None of the media reports matter one bit in the long run, despite the "influence" that Jack Thompson ascribes to himself.

It's not that it's one sided. Jack actually doesn't present a valid side in this debate.

He just presents the loudest and craziest.

Look, take three people on the street. One is playing a GameBoy and mostly minding his own business. The second has some research papers he'd like to discuss with you.

The third has a sandwich board on his chest proclaiming that the end is near and screaming that devices connected to televisions will train children to kill you.

Who gets the most attention? Sadly the third. But the people who actually do the work and research on the real sides of this debate aren't involved with him and increasingly want to have nothing to do with him.

So the only thing the mainstream media is accomplishing here is granting a lunatic a platform. They're not even airing the real debate.

Not necessarily.

It's not uncommon to sign for the option of a sequel, but it's no guarantee that the actors will appear. They've just agreed to come back, if asked.

That said, this is the kind of movie which wouldn't precisely surprise me for not killing off main characters. Might take some dialogue or something ...

What happened with Serenity?

It just didn't break the profits it needed in order to secure a sequel, by a wide margin. It's first two weeks probably needed about twice what it took in.

Universal will make it's money back w/ overseas and DVD sales ... but I think it was hoping the existing fan base would spread the word and make the opening weekend killer.

Silly Universal. Firefly fans have already bored all of their friend with how great the show is. Instead of all the sneak peeks, they should have done a much better promo+trailer campaign. You Can't Stop The Signal? WTF was that?

Definately will have a quick, but powerful, breakdown if Doom sees a sequel but Serenity does not.

The real point they miss out is that Jack is crazy.

That's not a euphemism. Any man who makes serious references to "cranial menus" and honestly believes that Doug Lowenstein is worse than Saddam and Bill Gates is partially responsible for the Malvo killings is just insane.

Sure, he can have a phone conversation without going off the deep end. That's doesn't make him a legitimate voice in this debate. I used to work at a crisis center and can tell you that sometimes it takes schizophrenics a few hours before they start mentioning the angels in their radio.

Jack's words speak for himself. He is a total nutjob that the media trots out to make total nutjob statements because they're entertaining and good for ratings. That's pretty much the sum of his value to society.

I give valve credit for not just sticking us with a crappy product, but instead continuing to devote resources on fine tuning what was, from the start, supposed to be a multi-company, collaborative effort, that has instead been brought in house for them to reap the benefits of. Thats a smart move, it puts them at risk for the financial troubles previously mentioned, but its going to pay off, like it or not. Why criticize?

Damn I'm tired of Valve apologists. Why should I give them props for taking a business risk? WTF do I care about their business risks? What I care about is how the product works.

If it works for you, great. It sucked rocks for me. You know what is helpful for software that requires a login? A freakin' login dialogue. Guess what you have when Steam forgets how to draw one, like it did for me? Big useless chunk of hard drive, that's what.

So don't expect me to excuse Steam simply because Valve hired a couple of MBA's. I have games on CD from a decade ago that I could play today if I wanted to, but because of Valve's implentation I wasn't able to play a game a purchased in a store weeks earlier. What does that have to do with digital delivery? Nothing, that's what.

I think digital delivery could be the bomb, if it's done right. I don't think Steam is doing it right and thanks to my experience with it I will probably avoid Valve products from here on out.

I love how if a Derek Smart game has problems with it's copy protection everyone and their dog on Blues has a field day cramming it down his throat, but if people report problems with Valve then we get a dissertation about how they are innovating the industry.

Why criticize? Because it bricked my game and nothing in their tech support covered it, so I deleted and won't trust it again. If that's not a reason to be critical of something, nothing is.

This comment was edited on Oct 12, 12:10.

Does this one include the feature where if I buy a game from a store I don't need to ask Valve's permission to play it?

No? Then to hell with it.

"Further, the eyes does not need shadows to decipher depth cue. OK, who came up with that mind numbling stupid shit?"

Actually, nobody.

It was just suggested that shadows are an important visual clue to register depth, not that they are a mandatory part of it.

Who invented the word numbling, anyway?

but wasn't the Vampire release held back until after HL2 shipped

Yes, but I believe that was a marketing decision and not a technical one:

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=54444

Now, I'm not sure if Valve would have allowed a Source powered game to release before HL2 regardless - so maybe there's that. There were games though that were using some features of the UT2003 "engine" before UT2003 ... because Epic makes very distinct builds available.

I wonder what the deal is with U3 engine games if the actual game slips (like HL2 and D3).

Like Vampire, it probably wouldn't matter much. They aren't waiting for the game to ship, if anything they're just waiting for Epic to deliver any critical patches or features ... and there might not be a lot of those. Epic has been pretty smart about layering their technology on so that licensees can take advantage of features as quickly as possible, as opposed to Valve and iD who seem to only license completely builds.

More than the engine though, Epic is very developer friendly. A lot of the stuff they've added with UE3 has more to do with production pipelines than rendering tricks it seems.

Tribes Vengeance?? Why make an expansion for a game nobody is playing?

This comment was edited on Sep 22, 13:33.

Sweet.

I guess it's more trouble to right click on steam and close it than it is to uninstall and then bitch about it every chance you get. Fuckin morons. Slamming steam and valve must be the new fad around here.

When something sucks enough that you're forced to uninstall it, then it's pretty damn natural to slam it.

I got sick and tired of messing with Steam just to play a game that I had I already purchased enough on the second install. Now if Valve wants to become a digital publisher, they'll have to figure out a system that doesn't annoy the shit out of people in the process.

I think video cards have a better life span than we give them credit for. I've got a Radeon 9700 Pro that I probably paid a hefty amount for about three years ago. It's holding up just fine. And my PC has consistently looked better than any of my consoles since I got it. So maybe not five years, but probably four.

That card can be had for like $80 on eBay these days. I just cobbled together a PC which seems to be handling modern games just fine for about $300, tossing some old parts I already had laying around. That's probably kept me from getting a 360 at launch.

It's completely inane, and utterly useless. The vast majority of video games played by kids are purchased by adults anyway, so even if there were a massive epidemic of 10 year olds playing San Andreas, this would do nothing to stop that.

Nor is there a massive epidemic of kids playing San Andreas, nor is there any casuality to show that even if there were a massive epidemic that it would seriously be a problem.

So in recap, this is legislation designed to stop something which isn't happening in an attempt to prevent something that probably wouldn't happen anyway.

I'm perfectly willing to believe that video games aren't the best thing in a kid's life. I'm willing to believe that for some kids, they're probably downright detrimental. But they aren't a health risk. Parents who ignore their kids are a health risk.