I've seriously written down at least a dozen ideas for gelatinous cube security guard webcomics and I'm in hysterics in my bed, tears running down my face

Half of them end with "hey, this door's locked"

Salvation122 wrote: »

So we lost the awesome family share stuff so you can get fucked over at Gamestop again.

Nice job breaking it, heroes.

If you don't like living in a world with Gamestop, you should just move to a better planet TBH.

And that's a death sentence grade? Seems fine to me.

Astaereth wrote: »

I've used them to differentiate before, but it's really not a good concept. I feel like it fosters wrong thinking on both sides of the divide, allowing the "film" people to look down on movies as popular trash and the "movie" people to look down on films as snooty, impenetrable [forbidden word] art.

And I think it lets "movies" off the hook for adhering to low expectations. Any movie should be judged more on whether it fulfills its intentions than what those intentions are; but too often the idea of, "it's just a movie, I'm not looking for Shakespeare here" means making allowances for shoddy execution. Independence Day is a fun movie, but it's also bloated, illogical, and cliched; to excuse it by saying "it's not a film, it's just a movie" is to forget that there are great fucking "movies" out there that deliver accessible fun through quality execution.

We'd do better to not be so divided, and instead talk about what each individual movie is trying to do, and how, and to what purpose or effect. Because fundamentally, both Amelie and Independence Day are trying to thrill, amuse and entertain us; they just approach the task in vastly different ways.

I think each of those things are actually equally important. There are a lot of really bad movies that "fulfill their intentions" pretty well. I think most Michael Bay films do so, for example. Transformers intended to be a big, loud movie where shit blows up and robots run around turning into vehicles. It wanted to have some easily-accessible humor based on low-hanging fruit. It didn't care if it was plausible or even internally consistent, it just want a bunch of action set pieces with some stereotypical characters bleating some one-liners. It did exactly what it wanted to do, it's just that what it wanted to do was crappy. If I want to take a dump on a piece of cardboard and use it disgust people, it doesn't make me a master artist when I succeed.

If we look at Transformers vs Terminator 2, we see two very different films. They are both loud summer sci-fi blockbusters with lots of stuff exploding, they're basically the same genre and have largely the same target audience. (Admittedly, Transformers skews slightly younger, but the ways in which T2 succeeds over Transformers have nothing to do with the age gap.) But while Transformers just tries to move from set piece to set piece to justify more action scenes, T2 maintains a plot that is coherent and well-managed and mostly consistent, at least by the standards of time travel plots. Where Transformers just pencils in some broad character archetypes and fills in the gaps with almost-offensive stereotypes, T2 manages to flesh out its characters and give them some nuance. Compare Sam Witwicky, who is basically motivated by "I want to bang the hot chick and not die," to John Conner, who is motivated by a desire for survival, the conflict of whether he wants to - or even can - connect to his mother, his need for a father figure and the fact that the best man for the job is a robot designed to wipe out humanity.

While both films are trying to be entertaining, and neither one strives to be high art, Cameron understands that a good movie needs to provide emotional resonance for the viewer to truly engage. It wants you to care about these people, because the awesome action scenes are made that much more awesome. In T2, you're rooting for Conner in a way that you never do for Witwicky. You care about the T-800 in a way you don't about Bumblebee. When the T-800 dies, you care. When Bumblebee gets torn apart (or maybe that was Transformers 2 or 3, whatever, they all suck), did anybody really give a shit? Outside of the "oh, hey, I guess I'm supposed to care now" sort of way? Doubtful.

Transformers and T2 both succeed at what they set out to do, and yet Transformers is a shit movie. Because what it strove for was such low-hanging fruit that admiring it was like admiring someone for managing to tie their shoes. It's really only impressive if the guy tying his shoes has no hands, or is functionally retarded.

I think it's fair, when judging a movie, to look at its intentions first and foremost. Ask yourself: given what this film tried to do, if it succeeded perfectly, would I enjoy it? If you're honest about Bay's intentions for most of his movies, he's going to fail every time, because even perfect success would make for sucky movies. He's the guy crapping on cardboard. I can tell you, right away, that I'm never going to admire any artwork that consists of cardboard and poop, and so you may as well just keep your pants on.

Ugh, today has been bad for me. Samus (my daughter) is all different types of fussy. I'm having a horrible reaction to the sun. My dog won't stop shitting in the living room. And I haven't been able to get to a keyboard since all of this went down (been phone posting).

So here's my thoughts on how this whole thing went down.

A month ago I feel Microsoft played their hand too soon. Sony, from what I've gathered, were on the fence about doing DRM similar to the Xbox One, and through Microsoft blinking first, Sony was able to see that wasn't going to fly. And Microsoft saw it too, but didn't want to go back on what they had initially announce. Why bother? Sony's going to do the same thing.

So they plugged along on the same lines, watching as things got worse and worse for them in the press. Sometime around E3, they started doing feelers to their engineers, seeing if there was a way to make the 24 hour connection go away. But they didn't know if they could. They also didn't know if they needed to. So they canceled all press interviews for after E3, not only waiting to see if Sony was holding the same cards, but also waiting to see if they had any sort of viable solution.

After the bombshells at Sony's keynote, Microsoft went into pure panic mode. They started saying some really dumb shit. They didn't have an answer to the 24 hour connection, to military personnel, to launch territories, even to their one good feature (the family sharing plan). So the whole division was on panic mode. The support twitter, Major Nelson, their heads. They were all spouting off whatever they could, no one knowing what to do. They had a plan in place for everything, but it all hinged on Sony following suit.

And then yesterday, the finally had a workable solution. And they announced it.

So why did it take so long?

Because they were trying to figure out what they could reasonably keep and reasonably lose. The 24 hour check-in had numerous reasons to be in the system.

The first one (and the major reason for the connection at all) was to make it so retail games acted just like digital games in all ways except for allowing a secondary market. They wanted to allow for installs without needing the disc. They wanted to allow for a mobile library without needing the discs (don't ask me how this would work out bandwidth wise for playing the games on other boxes in any timely fashion, I never have figured that out).

The second is making it fairly reasonable for any game to make use of the cloud, whether it being online made sense for the player or not. I still don't buy that the whole cloud bit is bullshit.

And the third is to allow for Digital Downloads to compete more evenly with retail releases. I do believe that we would (or possibly may still) see steam like sales on the Xbox One. This was their transitional console to an all DD platform. Part of doing so is taking away or crippling the advantages of retail releases (portability, resale, ext).

The first one is the most important reason, and the other two are secondary. Here's how I think these three things are going change based on this turn.

1. Retail games will work like retail games on the 360. Digital games will work like digital games on the 360. Digital games will have two licenses, an account level and a console level. The account level will require an online connection (so if you're on a different console, be prepared to be online), while the console level will allow anyone on your console to play (just like on the 360). They'll have the same license transfer tool and everything else. The mandatory installs on retail releases are still going to be required, but now the disc will have to be in the drive.

2. The cloud will still be used. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see single player games that require an online connection, or at least features that require an online connection for the single player component. Multiplayer games will make heavy heavy use of the cloud's dedicated servers. Instead of requiring online on a console level, there will be releases those without internet are just going to have to avoid. I feel the PS4 are going to have releases that operate in much the same way, even for traditionally single player games.

3. They'll make DD games competitive anyway. This is where the future is heading, and it's going to take a lot of experimentation on the part of content providers to get the right method down. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all know this is where things are headed, and every single one has a different level of control over their digital content. One locks it to the system. Another locks it to a certain number of consoles, and Microsoft seemingly was going to make it a community library thing with laxer controls. However, this doesn't mean that Microsoft or Sony are going to be lax on competitive pricing for their DD titles. They're in the same game here, they're competing with eachother (especially now that they're on more equal footing feature wise). We see Sony offering PS+ members so much, and Microsoft is taking their first step into experimenting with that model. We see both experimenting with sales, we hear anonymous sources saying that Steam like pricing is in the works. So I don't see this going away one bit, if it was in the works. It didn't rely on the 24 hour check-in. It was just aided by it.

And now to how I feel about all of this. I've been fairly consistent that while the 24 hour check-in doesn't bother me, I certainly see how it could bother others. It made me on the fence, especially after Sony's E3 presentation. And to some extent, I'm still on the fence. I want to see how far Microsoft goes with this. They have to know this is only the first step in winning back the gamer's trust, and I hope they're going to continue to be in panic mode right up until release. This, to me, is what strong competition and passionate voices can cause, a better deal for everyone. This also shows me that Microsoft is in this space for keeps. They don't want to release an unpopular console and have to crawl their way up like the PS3 did. They want to release as strongly or stronger than their competition.

I was expecting a reversal on the 24 hour check-in, but I thought it would happen after release. They got on this as quickly as a international corporation with numerous fingers in numerous pies could. Way faster than expected. If this is the way they plan to play ball, I can't wait to see what the next few months have in store for us. Remember, they were already holding back details about this console to release over the next few months. There still may be (good or bad) things we simply don't know yet. To that, I say, bring it on. And I hope for everything they release that makes the Xbox One more appealing, Sony does the same. Lets get this console war thing working in our favor for once.

shryke wrote: »

There is something deeply, fundamentally wrong with you.

I'm putting you on my list of "Forumers who I will not be shocked about when it comes out they kill hobos and eat their flesh".

These sorts of responses desperately need to stop. They are already long past the "not being amusing" stage.

petition riot for a ping that signals teammates to check their privilege

LIBERTY PRIME

The only way to truly know dudes is to grasp their straws. You are on the right path.