As a singleplayer only guy who runs Steam in offline mode with the in-game interface off, I literally couldn't care less what store I buy games from. Some nice deals here, especially on Outward and some pre-orders I was looking at. Will do some research. Very nice that the $10 off comes from Epic and not the devs/pubs.

Dunno if the offline mode is a deal breaker for you, but last I checked you had to have an online connection to play Metro Exodus.

nin wrote on Mar 30, 2015, 15:03:

(One guy had a STEAM level of 0 with no games. WTF?)]

I've heard, if your profile is private, like mine, you show as a 0.

I occasionally receive invites from level 0 guys and whenever I bother to check out their profile, they have it set as private. I just assumed they were f2p people wanting to trade TF2 items or a fresh account with malicious intent.

I used to be a sucker for steam trading cards. For Steam's 2012 Christmas event I played the markets and made around 20 cents. I'd probably still be into it if they didn't automate the system.

harlock wrote on Dec 6, 2013, 15:30:
"the institute" is part of fallout lore

Link on the fallout Nuka Pedia for those too lazy to google it.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/The_Institute

I could've interpreted your post wrong, but my take from it was that you thought MS didn't have Kinect-based ads and that if they took data from the Kinect that nobody would have the time or resources to examine the data or be able to draw conclusions from it. The Target article was included to support the idea that there are companies that might, as you put it

Do you guys really think SC Johnson has a team of mixed physicians and data analysts that can read this? Do you guys really think your pulse even rises that much during a 30 second ad? Or, if you think content creators want this, do you honestly think Paramount has any strong data analysts on staff with the kind of phd needed to go through this? Do you think they actually care?

I haven't paid much attention to the full capabilities of the Kinect, but I don't find it hard to believe that it's intended to be a part of the live advertising since MS is making a pretty penny over it. I don't know if it would yield any useful information, but I think there's people in advertising who would study the biometric data of people viewing different ads and ad campaigns.

Beamer wrote on Oct 6, 2013, 17:36:
It's the same reason the current Kinect isn't used for advertising - no one wants to bother. Microsoft approached many companies, asking them to pay a few million to create a Kinect advertisement, or an entire Kinect-based Xbox Live grid. No one took them up on it.

I have articles from Eurogamer and CVG that disagree with you.

I know many here disagree, but no one has thrown out a valid use for all this biometric data. Do you guys really think SC Johnson has a team of mixed physicians and data analysts that can read this? Do you guys really think your pulse even rises that much during a 30 second ad? Or, if you think content creators want this, do you honestly think Paramount has any strong data analysts on staff with the kind of phd needed to go through this? Do you think they actually care? Is this kind of data actually useful when creating a movie, or is it infinitely easier and cheaper to monitor and more useful to just pay attention to where Netflix users rewind and rewatch?

I'll just leave this article about Target analyzing shopping habits. To think biometric data could be useful for advertisers sounds plausible enough for me. There's probably firms out there willing to analyze the data for you if you don't have anything in-house.

The PA report did an article on XBox Live Advertising last year.

Thankfully, a source who would like to remain anonymous leaked the ad sales data from October 2011 to June 2012. Microsoft sells ads on the Xbox 360 Dashboard at a CPM of between $19 to $23, depending on the ad placement and the type of ad. You’ll pay an extra 20% for animated or video ads, and if you’d like to select specific demographics for those ads, you’ll pay an extra 15% per “targeting criteria,” with the maximum bump being 30%.

They already do targeted advertising. Using the Kinect to better refine that is a no-brainer.

I contacted Microsoft and asked how much advertising revenue impacted the profitability of the Xbox 360. “We don’t share this information publicly but we can tell you that, since 2010, the advertising business has grown 142%”

Mad Max RW wrote on Feb 20, 2013, 13:21:

ShadyPete wrote on Feb 20, 2013, 12:58:
i think devs have lost sight of what Alien is all about. why not do something like a survival/escape style game more in line with original film. allow the player to use the environment and available tools to plan and execute their escape. in the original film the crew only had weapons that they created themselves and they didn't know if they would have any effect at all.

mowing down waves of aliens with a pulse rifle effectively neuters what is arguably the most terrifying movie monster of all time.

idk just an idea..

That's exactly what one of the Obsidian devs was talking about at the RpgCodex forum yesterday.

The post for those interested.

...buff sequences featuring Iron Man, Hull, Captain America...

You might want to fix that so it reads "Hulk" Blue.

Krovven wrote on Aug 2, 2011, 14:42:
- Better looking, less barren world (don't use desert landscape, or at least have a variety), drop the vehicles, or at least make them fun and control better.

Drop tables, vehicle controls, and uninspired levels bugged me the most about Borderlands. The person at Bungie who designed the vehicle controls for Halo should be shot, and the person at Gearbox who came up with the idea of using the same vehicle controls as Halo should be severely reprimanded.

Hell, I have my own list of things I want:

• More ways to customize your character's visual appearance
• A place to stash your loot should be in the base game instead of having to buy DLC for the privilege
• Larger variety of enemies - reskins don't count
• Missions should be actual missions and not fetch quests or kill X number of enemies

Creston wrote on Aug 2, 2011, 14:26:
Yeah it was ridiculous. Especially in PT2 he's so absurd. He literally has like 500 million hitpoints. He can barely damage me, yet I have to sit there for 40 minutes firing into his fucking eyeball, only to have him drop 30 items, of which 25 are fucking ammo (as if to say "HAHAHAHAA YOU NEEDED THAT EARLIER, HUH??") 4 of them are white, and one's green. :-pissed-:

Toss grenades in his gaping maw whenever he opens it - I think it's the only time where I've seen grenades do crits.

Cutter wrote on Mar 28, 2011, 18:02:
It's called the moral majority for a reason. And most people, left, right and center have a pretty good idea where the proverbial line is.

ModDB says that people mistook the site for being the creators of the mod. We should use your argumentum ad populum logic there too.
I'm invoking Latin and am therefore invincible. I'm also a gluteus maximus and like to pet cancer.

Hyatus wrote on Mar 23, 2011, 14:58:

spindoctor wrote on Mar 23, 2011, 12:28:
Maybe in the past there was an argument for physical stock taking slightly longer to reach other parts of the world. However, that is no longer true. Publishers can get stock of their games to all countries at approximately the same time. And in either case, it is completely absurd when we talk about digital copies that are bought and downloaded through the internet.

Different countries have different historical media release dates. We could all probably get that stuff the day they go gold, but in the US we still have to wait until Tuesday. Also, if the games are boxed and published in the US, they have to be shipped overseas. You could yell at the publishers to do it all by air, but that's pretty expensive. I'm sure quite a few ship by boat(especially when we're talking about thousands and thousands of copies) so that would be the delay.

Don't big publishers have overseas production plants? This is a subject I know little about, but am slightly interested in learning.

PHJF wrote on Feb 24, 2011, 20:28:
So does this let you directly embed in forums without the hassle of data caps? I've been using a photobucket account myself for years but I'd be open to something better.

Since it has social integration I'm guessing you could copy/paste the url and be fine. If all else fails you could try Xfire.

PHJF wrote on Feb 7, 2011, 15:50:
As a game developer you're limiting your market by creating a game so difficult only a portion of your players can complete it.

I thought that's what a difficulty level was for.

eRe4s3r wrote on Nov 10, 2010, 22:14:
prize: $300,000 Value: 0$

Even more confusing as i have never heard of this MMOG - What makes them believe this stuff has any intrinsic value?

Because you can convert ingame money to real currency and vice-versa. That's the selling point of the game.

Entropia uses a micropayment business model, in which players may buy in-game currency (PED - Project Entropia Dollars) with real money that can be redeemed back into real world funds at a fixed exchange rate. This means that virtual items acquired within Entropia Universe have a real cash value, and a participant may, at any time, initiate a withdrawal of their accumulated PEDs back into real world currencies according to the fixed exchange rate, minus transaction fees, the minimum amount for a withdrawal is 1000 PED.

Zyrxil wrote on Sep 21, 2010, 18:22:
The chances of a movie-related game being not-shitty increase exponentially when it is released long long long after the movie is.

I agree with this sentiment. From what little I understand about the industry, games based off of movie franchises tend to suck partially because they have to be released the same time the movie is, regardless of what state the game's in.

I think this could have some promise as long as it isn't a direct movie tie-in and isn't rushed out the door.

space captain wrote on Sep 3, 2010, 10:20:
works really well - they added in a script for skiing so you can just hold jump instead of beating your keyboard to death

Where's the fun in that?

Eldaron Imotholin wrote on Jul 10, 2010, 06:29:
This has gone beyond patheticness.

I'd say "Welcome to Blue's News," but that might be taken the wrong way by Blue (No offense kind sir, please don't ban me)

Prez wrote on Jul 10, 2010, 01:40:
I do think there's an over-reaction going on - I've posted my name, email, and home city in forums on musician forums for well over a decade and have never once had a problem. I don't do it as some sort of "dare"; as a musician, it helps to display such information so that other musicians can see your info and, if they need to, contact you for jams, recording sessions, band auditions, gear sales, and other such things. Since I am so used to displaying the info on completely open public forums, it just seems like no big deal to do it here or anywhere else.

That's fine, but I can't quite agree when people compare this to Facebook or some other service where the main point is to network with people in real life. With WoW, there's more of a focus on doing quests, getting loot and whatever else. There's certainly a social factor, but it's usually limited to the confines of the game itself.

Prez wrote on Jul 9, 2010, 23:55:

I find it chuckle-worthy that if you find the hysteria about this to be over-blown, or just think that this is no big deal, you are labeled "anti-privacy"

That depends on a variety of things. The bottom line is that a customer shouldn't be forced to divulge their name to the entire internet if they want to participate in a fantasy MMORPG forum. If Blizzard wants to cut down on trolling it would be just as effective to tie players to their bnet account name instead of their individual WoW characters.