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They got sued already, Epic isn't fucking around with their cash cow.

I'm kind of okay with counterfeits as long as it works as advertised, and the originating talent gets a cut (which I know isn't the case). Sincerely put, if you're going to counterfeit, cut the devs a check why don't ya? Slip em a fat nickel every time you get a download please. Devs, please consider open sourcing your game apps after like 5/10 years, or when the hardware they're designed for is no longer physically made or otherwise inaccessible. Games should have a timer to enter public domain. Sharing is caring: https://www.rockpapershotgun.c...

First, it looks like AMD Vega 20 is going to outperform Pascal.

Wow, a GPU with no actual release date (but predicted for a second-half 2018 release) might be faster than a competitor's product from mid-2016?! How compelling!

Based on remarks from nVidia's CEO, the next-gen Turing architecture is probably going to be released in 2019.

There are reference samples with partners already and even in the links you posted the best guess is that we might not see Turing-based Geforces until 2019.

Since Vega 20 will probably be out this year, for the first time in a while AMD will hold the GPU performance crown for about one year

Or one month depending on when they are released or perhaps not at all if the rockpapershotgun author's guess is wrong.

To sum it all up, things are not looking very good for nVidia right now.

Really? They have the performance crown in the gaming space, they dominate the datacenter space with P100 and V100 chips and dominate the machine learning space too from datacenter to processors for self-driving cars. Add to that samples of their next generation architecture are already out in the field with partners. The only real threat is the rumor that intel might compete in 2 years time, of course intel does not have a good track record in this space.

First, it looks like AMD Vega 20 is going to outperform Pascal.

Wow, a GPU with no actual release date (but predicted for a second-half 2018 release) might be faster than a competitor's product from mid-2016?! How compelling!

Based on remarks from nVidia's CEO, the next-gen Turing architecture is probably going to be released in 2019.

There are reference samples with partners already and even in the links you posted the best guess is that we might not see Turing-based Geforces until 2019.

Since Vega 20 will probably be out this year, for the first time in a while AMD will hold the GPU performance crown for about one year

Or one month depending on when they are released or perhaps not at all if the rockpapershotgun author's guess is wrong.

To sum it all up, things are not looking very good for nVidia right now.

Really? They have the performance crown in the gaming space, they dominate the datacenter space with P100 and V100 chips and dominate the machine learning space too from datacenter to processors for self-driving cars. Add to that samples of their next generation architecture are already out in the field with partners. The only real threat is the rumor that intel might compete in 2 years time, of course intel does not have a good track record in this space.

This is probably nVidia's response to the market heating up.

First, it looks like AMD Vega 20 is going to outperform Pascal. Based on remarks from nVidia's CEO, the next-gen Turing architecture is probably going to be released in 2019. Since Vega 20 will probably be out this year, for the first time in a while AMD will hold the GPU performance crown for about one year, maybe more if Turning doesn't deliver. On top of that, for the first time in a decade Intel is now a big wildcard. Current rumor is Intel will be releasing a discrete GPU in 2020. Intel hired the guy from AMD that lead the development of Vega, so chances are Intel actually means business this time.

To sum it all up, things are not looking very good for nVidia right now. So they are acting early to prevent journalists from reporting a possible fall from grace if it were to happen in the near future.

This is probably nVidia's response to the market heating up.

First, it looks like AMD Vega 20 is going to outperform Pascal. Based on remarks from nVidia's CEO, the next-gen Turing architecture is probably going to be released in 2019. Since Vega 20 will probably be out this year, for the first time in a while AMD will hold the GPU performance crown for about one year, maybe more if Turning doesn't deliver. On top of that, for the first time in a decade Intel is now a big wildcard. Current rumor is Intel will be releasing a discrete GPU in 2020. Intel hired the guy from AMD that lead the development of Vega, so chances are Intel actually means business this time.

To sum it all up, things are not looking very good for nVidia right now. So they are acting early to prevent journalists from reporting a possible fall from grace if it were to happen in the near future.

Fromt his link That’s because something went terribly wrong a couple of decades ago, when the melting of the permafrost released a long-dormant alien virus into the oceans. That virus is capable of mutating any species it comes into contact with, which leads to an initial wave of horrific aquatic creatures, reminiscent of Terror From The Deep, and eventually makes its way onto land..

It's almost impossible to eradicate cheaters in CS:GO and similar games for one important reason: CS:GO servers send you full information about all the gamers who're playing the match with you, which means it's quite trivial to intercept this information and modify certain game engine variables to e.g. make other players visible though the walls (wallhack) or to make your bullets always reach the destination (aimbot). Now even if you don't send all the information, the game still has to show other visible nearby players to you, so dealing with aimbots seems like a lost game.

Speaking frankly I've got no idea if this problem can be fixed at all except for controlled LAN matches (but even then we've had reports that certain cheaters made through by bringing their cheat programs inside their mice - the mouse is connected via USB which makes it trivial to extend its internals to include a mass storage device).

To give Valve credit they're now testing an AI to detect cheaters. They do it because it's virtually impossible to detect cheat applications using any sort of matching (like antiviruses do).

I think the most interesting thing is it will bring VR to notebooks - most current notebooks doesn't work with VR, even if the GPU is strong enough to support it. Problem with VR on current notebooks:
“The problem is that even if the dedicated card generates an image, the integrated card is what outputs that image to a monitor,” Lyons told me. “With VR, that monitor is your headset. Unfortunately integrated cards just aren’t powerful enough to output images to a VR headset without latency. There are workarounds to make VR work on a laptop with Optimus, but since the HDMI port is connected to the integrated card there is no way to bypass it.”
https://www.rockpapershotgun.c...

Problem solved with geforce 10 series notebooks \o/
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/...

The alleged review doesn't exist, there is zero evidence that their relationship resulted in any favourable coverage at all. The only time he even mentioned her game was before they got together, when it was on a list of 49 other indie games.

Totally no favourable coverage at all, oh, except that time where he named an article after it, gave it top billing, and posted its screenshot over 50 other games. He certainly didn't have a relationship with Zoe then, right? They must not have known each other at all, right? Then why is he in Depression Quest's credits? No conflict of interest at all.

How about you post a link to the actual review, or an archive copy of it? No need to go to secondary or tertiary sources here. I've been asking this question since gamergate broke and no one has pointed me to a review of the game.

At this point, I have concluded that the review does not exist and the whole thing is a lie.

If you've been asking this question since the beginning, then you should know the true answer. While people often make a technical mistake of saying there was a "review", the game received glowing coverage that any game developer would covet. As the article puts it, and you can verify yourself:

"Before GamerGate was even a glimmer in our eyes, Grayson wrote about Zoe Quinn's Depression Quest, a glorified choose-your-own-adventure meant to make you feel sorry about not having a mental disorder. Grayson gave this snooze-worthy wankfest top billing on an article for RPS about games which had recently been greenlit on Steam. Out of fifty games featured, Depression Quest not only comprised the first mentioned and most praised game there, but got the header image slot as well. It's a text-based game! Grayson even made the article title a play on the X-Quest theme, pulling out every stop to make sure this particular game would get noticed."

> What do you mean I can't load all 48GB of Titanfall on my 16GB phone?

Most of that was uncompressed audio data. Before you go "that's dumb" they tried to justify it with this excuse:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.co...

"We have audio we either download or install from the disc, then we uncompress it. We probably could have had audio decompress off disc but we were a little worried about min spec and the fact that a two-core machine would dedicate a huge chunk of one core to just decompressing audio."

"So... it's almost all audio... On a higher PC it wouldn't be an issue. On a medium or moderate PC, it wouldn't be an issue, it's that on a two-core [machine] with where our min spec is, we couldn't dedicate those resources to audio."

I guess the dev's were too lazy to guarantee there there was a thread available and decompress it at run-time. Classic case of size vs speed. So it's not (entirely) incompetence.

Yes, GOG did, and still does a lot of work on old games. When they can, they acquire the original source code to make them work on newer systems, fix some old bugs and remove the DRM. A lot of source code gets lost though, so they end up doing a lot of this through modifying the binary code directly.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.co...
However, they are moving away from the name God Old Games, as they now also offer movies and newer/new game releases.

As for Night Dive Studios, they are doing the same thing, just relying on other companies for distribution. Both companies have documented the fun of trying to track down the rights for these old titles and getting them to run. I can only see this as a good thing that more people are trying to track down the rights and make them work on current platforms as this just increases the chance of us being able to play our favorite old games.

The review does not exist. If it does, I'm sure you can post a link

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/08/admission-quest-valve-greenlights-50-more-games/

That's the Link. The top banner uses a screenshot of the game in question, the name of the Article is a play on the name of the Game. It's by Nathan Grayson, the responsible party, there is no disclosure, and the game is mentionned in the opening Paragraph with only 2 other games out of the list of 50.

That is the coverage at issue, people were simply asking why there was no disclosure of Nathan's relationship with DQ's developer.

Can we stop pretending it was a "review" and that "it doesn't exist" when it's still up, linked from Deepfreeze and available for all to see ?

Still absurd nonsense, lacking any grounding in fact.

The point stands that they had an agreement, she violated it, and it revoked their agreed consent before the issue. What is sex without consent?

Big fan of Brogue and I find that the author did a great interview explaining how it works in his game here:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/07/28/how-do-roguelikes-generate-levels/

He gets more into how the terrain is generated as well.

That is a MUCH better article. Brian Walker has a good overview of dungeon pathfinding too.

http://www.roguebasin.com/inde...

Plenty. You can start here.

The wikipedia article on this subject is rooted in controversy, up to the point that some of its editors were both topic and site banned from Wikipedia. At this point, no, I won't start with it as it's obviously not a neutral source.

we read what you write...
because you fuckers SHITPOST...
you really are so stupid...

What's this YOU stuff ? Who are you talking to ? You're assuming things about me... for instance :

in your own words on 8chan, /r/KIA, and under the #gamergate hashtag.

I never visited the chan's, and have neither Twitter nor Reddit accounts. So those words can't be mine.

Now, let's review your list of allegations, all of which have no backing or evidence :

- Do everything possible to prevent discussions of women in tech. Because that has nothing to do with "ethics in gaming journalism".

Where have you been prevented from discussing women in tech and how have you been prevented from doing so exactly ? I mean, if you try to inject "women in tech" in discussions unrelated to women, I could see how people would dismiss you and downvote you, but in actual discussions about women in tech ?

- Harass female game devs constantly, because that has nothing to do with "ethics in gaming journalism".

Do you have any evidence showing these female game devs were not harassed because of ethics in gaming journalism ? It seems the whole issue that launched this (outside of years of build up with things like Doritogate and other growing concerns) is the fact that Nathan Grayson wrote this favorable piece :

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/08/admission-quest-valve-greenlights-50-more-games/

It seems to me that the issue people have is not that the developer is a woman, it's that Nathan Grayson (a man) used a screenshot to feature prominently the game of a person he had a personal relationship with, without disclosing said relationship. On top of that, it seems Nathan participated in making the game as his name is part of the credits, so essentially pushing his work.

Rather shoddy for a journalist.

- Talk non stop about so-called "SJWs" and never mention journalists. Because that has nothing to do with "ethics in gaming journalism".

Looking at one of Gamergate's projects, http://deepfreeze.it/, all the listed journalists seem to in fact be journalists.

I mean, I could see where SJW (a pejorative term used for people who use Social Justice causes to label and attack other people, with little care to the actual cause itself) could be used to describe some more fringe "journalist" like Jessica Valenti of the Guardian, because some of her opinions are pretty extermist in nature (nothing to do with her gender before you draw the conclusion it's because she's a woman) though.

- Demand Slashdot ban discussions related to diversity in tech. Because that has nothing to do with "ethics in gaming journalism".

Do you have a citation for Gamergate asking Slashdot (specifically) to not discuss diversity in tech ? Because Slashdot doesn't seem to have listened, we have diversity in Tech articles all the time.

- Call JACK THOMPSON "BASED DAD", a lawyer who has actually tried to ban games, while calling Anita Sarkeesian a "censor" or "authoritarian", because she produced a video identifying tropes she feels are sexist in various video games. Because that has nothing to do with "ethics in gaming journalism".

I'll have to ask for a citation on this. In fact, looking at GamerGhazi's (which seem to be a group that opposes Gamergate) post about this situation,

They can randomly freeze your account and prevent you getting access to 600,000 Euros of your money, though, if you make the mistake of trusting them with large sums.

I do wonder if ridiculous amounts of VRAM may end up being useful in game engines that are currently only on the horizon - for example, Outerra's 1:1 scale planet engine renders mostly in GPU. One wonders too about RAM demand of something like Euclideon's "unlimited detail" engine (assuming it isn't vapourware). If we're moving to games that do more in the GPU, then maybe stupid amounts of VRAM might actually get used? Then again, I expect if that were to happen (using complex GPU-based world generators), the compute performance is going to matter too...

I can still remember when I couldn't understand how you'd ever fill a 2GB hard drive... (this was before video on computers was a serious thing, obviously). 12GB VRAM is just bonkers.

How's there less of an excuse? UE4 isn't going to force anyone to produce high quality output, if its dev tools are easy enough to use then it'll just add to the ever increasing heap of shit that is poorly made commercial early access games on steam, often Unity3D's domain in the past. No bars will be raised, only floodgates further opened, a port of the slaughtering grounds to UE4 isn't going to stop it being a massive steaming pile of shit.
Meanwhile, people make quite interesting and thoughtful stuff with gamemaker, RPGmaker, twine and such.

I often wonder why we've not heard a peep about Half Life (2: Episode) 3. I understand the concept of Valve Time, but even taking that into consideration we're closing in a decade since Episode 2 (and the whole episodic started with the claim that they could put out an Episode every six months). To have nothing, not even a single screenshot or even an official "yeah, we're making Pikm- er, Episode 3", in 8 years, seems really bizarre. At best we had a blurb about "Ricochet 2" as a thinly-veiled explanation of the HL3 lack of information in 2012. I understand that they want to get it right, but at this point they risk "Duke Nukem Forever" syndrome, where the vacuum created by the lack of information is filled by user hype and it will become impossible to meet gamer's expectations. (I don't expect the eventual HLF3 to be as poor as DNF was, though.)

My assumption as this point is that a small group is quietly tooling away at HL3 using the Source 2 engine (perhaps co-developing). Once both HL3 is more-or-less done, they'll sit on it and just keep the graphics updated. Right now Valve has so many things its trying (like SteamOS) and is still getting a ton of attention/money from Steam trading cards and marketplace, TF2 hats, and DOTA 2 that the company itself doesn't need HL3. Thus it will maintain and use HL3 as its "Final Fantasy" if it feels the company could be in financial trouble within two years. They could release it on the N-Gage and it will still sell millions of copies, so it's like one funds where you put something in and can't touch it for 20 years.

Over the years I've learned that I can rely on two factors when it comes to games - word of mouth and development staff. Somebody who knows me and knows what I like probably isn't going to recommend something outside of that sphere (or if they do it's due to incomplete information, for a laugh, or for reasons unrelated to gameplay), and if I like a game or series of games it's usually a good indicator that I'm going to like whatever the people that made that game work on next - usually but not always.

I agree on "multiple reviewers per game" - different reviewers have different priorities and play styles and that can subtly skew impressions. While I find Rock Paper Shotgun reporting on FPS games to be solid and reliable, my impression of their review of Just Cause 2 - which I read after playing the game - was "Did we play the same game? o_O"

Over the years I've learned that I can rely on two factors when it comes to games - word of mouth and development staff. Somebody who knows me and knows what I like probably isn't going to recommend something outside of that sphere (or if they do it's due to incomplete information, for a laugh, or for reasons unrelated to gameplay), and if I like a game or series of games it's usually a good indicator that I'm going to like whatever the people that made that game work on next - usually but not always.

I agree on "multiple reviewers per game" - different reviewers have different priorities and play styles and that can subtly skew impressions. While I find Rock Paper Shotgun reporting on FPS games to be solid and reliable, my impression of their review of Just Cause 2 - which I read after playing the game - was "Did we play the same game? o_O"

And you can of course consult RPS for the first of Grayson's PR pieces as it is still up:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.co...

I see you're willfully misinformed about the TFYC incident also.

Here are the facts:

Zoe Quinn had a boyfriend. They had a pretty rough relationship apparently. They broke up. He was angry and felt like she didn't live up to the ideals she claimed to represent, so he wanted to make sure as many people as possible saw her as a hypocrite like he did. So he posted a long diatribe in which he accused her of cheating on him several times. He named 3 specific people that she slept with while he thought they were exclusive. One was her boss (not a journalist). One was a sound designer (not a journalist). And one was a writer for Rockpapershotgun and Kotaku (by the time he posted this, just Kotaku). And two other unnamed persons.

Only the one game journalist is of interest here. However, if you look at the dates the boyfriend supplied (in order to establish that she slept with them while he thought they were exclusive), and the dates of the articles published by the journalist, all of the articles he wrote that mentioned Zoe Quinn were a month or more before their affair. Not only that, but none of those articles were any more glowing or supportive than other articles covering the same subjects. One was a list of 50 Steam Greenlight games for that week on Rockpapershotgun. Looking at the article, Depression Quest is literally the only one I'd heart of on that list, and at this time it had been getting a lot of buzz in game jam and indie game circles for a while already. So naturally he gave it the top spot *because it was the most noteworthy game*. The second article he wrote was about a reality show/game jam that had gone bad in which Zoe was involved. Except like 20 other sites also covered the same incident because it was a pretty huge blow-up in the game jam and indie game scene at the time. And Zoe Quinn wasn't even the most prominent person in the article because at the time she was contractually prohibited from talking about the show (other people on the show had refused to sign the contract with the embargo on publicly speaking about it, and were able to legally freely talk about it, so obviously got way more attention in news stories about it).

After the time of the supposed affair, he never wrote another article about her or even mentioning her or Depression Quest again for either Kotaku or Rockpapershotgun. The supposed affair occurred in "May or June." The game jam reality show incident occurred in March. The article about Steam Greenlight games occurred in January.

So the entire supposed breach of journalistic integrity literally never even happened.

You mean like all the great references from the article? Hey let's ask the people that are trying to downplay this situation what their take on the whole thing is?

But here you go: reference. He didn't review it. He just gave it title spot and listed it as a stand out.

I found this by actually following one of the references from the article.

What I found out by following those references: she started sleeping with him in May. This article was published in January. To quote Gjoni's account:

To be clear, if there was any conflict of interest between Zoe and Nathan regarding coverage of Depression Quest prior to April, I have no reason to believe that it was sexual in nature.

(source)

It is therefore irrelevant.

She even admitted flat out on twitter to having sex for publicity,

Link please. This information is missing from most accounts I've seen that I consider credible, so I would certainly like to know more about it. Preferably including precise phrasing and context.

and yet not a single time has the issue journalistic integrity of video game reporting been raised.

And in all the analysis I've seen of this, nobody has pointed out a single published article that appears, based on the timeline published by Quinn's ex, to have been unduly influenced. Which is probably why journalistic integrity isn't being raised in many places: it just doesn't look like anyone has actually done anything wrong.

There exist obvious and blatant conflicts of interest in several of her endeavors and the media that actually cares to report this ignores this fact.

Like? Please provide actual examples, rather than allusions to the existence of such things along with unjustified claims as to their obviousness.

The 'allegations' are actually facts, and what I care about is that she slept with those people for publicity she did not deserve, that was taken from more deserving games

Please provide a link to publicity she received from somebody she was sleeping with at the time of publication, or in any reasonable period of time prior to publication. Note: this article doesn't count, as by the most reliable accounts available she didn't sleep with its author until 4 months after it was published.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

I see the words "objectivity", "mpartiality", and "fairness" all included as part of the second paragraph as common parts of established journalistic codes. I'm pretty sure when you have had a sexual relationship those are going to be very difficult things to maintain when speaking about that person or their work. I wouldn't actually expect anyone to say in their article "We shagged and they were awful in the sack, but the video game was pretty great." I would instead expect the journalist to either state that they had a more than professional relationship with that person, or most likely just abstain from writing about them or their game. He should have told his Editor that he had a non-professional relationship with her and had someone else write any articles regarding her or her work, or including plugs for her work.

You see, that's the interesting thing about this story: everyone assumes that he wrote about her games at some point while they were together. But he didn't. As far as I've been able to discover, he last mentioned one of her games in an article he wrote in January (link). He also mentioned her on a personal level, but didn't discuss any of her games, in an article he wrote in March (link). Yet according to her ex's account, he only started sleeping with her in May. So what exactly is unethical here?

shameless plug of depression quest.

What's false, apparently, is the accusation that she got any publicity from their relationship. Apparently, the guy never wrote a review of her game. A quick google search seems to confirm this (the guy's name is Nathan Grayson if you want to confirm for yourself). You will find a couple of articles where he mentions the game in passing (for example, this one). According to his twitter feed, though, that was posted before they had a relationship.

You mean like all the great references from the article? Hey let's ask the people that are trying to downplay this situation what their take on the whole thing is?

But here you go: reference. He didn't review it. He just gave it title spot and listed it as a stand out.

I found this by actually following one of the references from the article.

>be the games journalist who never wrote a review, or even a single word, about Depression Quest http://www.rockpapershotgun.co... Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's a myth borne out of people being unable to use a search engine properly. What's funny is that Grayson himself lied about having written anything about it: http://inagist.com/all/5004497...

That's what the controversy is over? "Here's a list of 50 games, and oh yeah, this is one of them"? Geez. Are you going to start demanding long form birth certificates from everyone now?

Sure, he didn't write a full-blown review, so he's not technically telling a lie, but he DID give her game preferential treatment in an article he wrote about Steam games being greenlit and there is ample evidence (pictures and video) that Grayson and Quinn were spending private time together prior to that article. I'll let the readers be the judge of whether or not Grayson's choice of her game as cover art was influenced by their relationship.

Well, when you're done clutching your pearls, we'll get you a glass of water so you can calm down. I mean, the way you were carrying on, I thought there was a review, not a "here's 50 new Greenlighted games".

>be the games journalist who never wrote a review, or even a single word, about Depression Quest

http://www.rockpapershotgun.co...

Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's a myth borne out of people being unable to use a search engine properly. What's funny is that Grayson himself lied about having written anything about it: http://inagist.com/all/5004497...

> Nathan Grayson @Vahn16
> also, google 'nathan grayson depression quest review.' if you find anything, congratulations, you live in an alternate dimension

Sure, he didn't write a full-blown review, so he's not technically telling a lie, but he DID give her game preferential treatment in an article he wrote about Steam games being greenlit and there is ample evidence (pictures and video) that Grayson and Quinn were spending private time together prior to that article. I'll let the readers be the judge of whether or not Grayson's choice of her game as cover art was influenced by their relationship.

If you want to go for fun tabletop games, forget this smoking pile of s*** that is Catan. It was nice 15y ago, now it's just clunky, random and too complicated at the same time.
So, if you want all fun and no brain, Munchkin, Dobble or Smash Up. If you got time on your hands (2 or 3 hours), Talisman is still pretty intense. If you want something brainier, but still fun, 7 Wonders is a quick learn and fun. Rab and his cardboard children features on RPS would be a good pointer for other cool tabletop games.
For console party games, Mario Kart, Rayman Raving Rabbids, good ole Super Bomberman 4 or 5, or even Street Fighter IV will do the trick.

Another one to watch:

http://www.ultimaratioregum.co...
http://www.ultimaratioregum.co...

"It's an incredibly exciting project that could end up in the same rarefied sphere as Dwarf Fortress - a complex simulation of ASCII worlds that have history, detail and depth. The current release is capable of generating a world and the basic history of the cultures that have evolved upon it, but there isn't a huge amount to do beyond the procedural riddle puzzles contained in scattered ziggurats. A typical early feature of many games, eh?

As for the rest, it's all detailed in the development plan and a new announcement suggests it'll be on the road to completion sooner than expected. Developer Mark Johnson will be working on the game full-time for a year from September. And there isn't a Kickstarter in sight."

http://www.rockpapershotgun.co...

Well, my biggest time waster is now on Linux, without having to fiddle with WINE or anything. I guess I can now relegate this commercial OS to a seldom used secondary partition. Woot!

Also:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/06/10/sid-meiers-civilization-v-now-available-for-steamos-and-linux/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/06/11/civilization-5-linux/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rockpapershotgun%2Fsteam+(Rock%2C+Paper%2C+Shotgun%3A+Steam+RSS)

I did RTFA and he had some public domain paintings in the article. Can anyone identify this painting? http://www.rockpapershotgun.co...

Not only are they trademarking (and actively pursuing against) folks with "Candy" in their game name, but also anybody with "Saga" in their name. Such is the case where they are pursuing a block against the trademark filed for "The Banner Saga", which is a nordic influenced, turn-based strategy, RPG game. See reference articles at:
http://www.escapistmagazine.co...
http://www.rockpapershotgun.co...

Notch takes Infiniminer

Sorry, bullshit. First Minecraft video posted by Notch on 2009-05-13. Infiniminer source release on 2009-05-16. This means that Notch had been working on Minecraft for some time before Infiniminer's source code was released. Also, Infiniminer: .NET, Minecraft: Java.

So he didn't plagiarize anything more than the basic idea of a big world full of blocks. But Notch actually followed through to completion (more or less), while Infiniminer didn't.

As Steve Jobs was fond of saying, "Real artists ship."

And only there. In the country (MY country, by the way), where *everybody* can get a banking license. Why do you think all the banks come here? We have more banks than the USA has burger joints. In and around the capital city, there are areas where more than 50% of the buildings are banks. And what banks. "Second International Bank of Nigeria"... Residing in a nice two-family house on a side-street.
Yeah...

PayPal insists that it isn't a bank anywhere else. Only then can they just steal money from people with the excuse of "suspicious activities". Like sudden spikes in income. See: Notch, of Minecraft fame.
This would be illegal for a bank. But not for PayPal. Which is the point we're making.

Ah, the invincible pink scorpion. It appeared fairly early in the game, which was probably a good idea. If they'd put it in too late then pirates might have been put off (more so) from buying the game, but since it was so early it gave pirates a chance to get a feel for the game but not have to replay too much if they decided to buy it.

Don't forget Serious Sam 3, who's DRM manifested as an invulnerable pink scorpion.

This is what happens when games are made by gamers. It's mainly the big, long-disconnected companies that think DRM will save their games from pirates; everyone else just acknowledges it with a little fun.

The always-on requirement implies that they won't have that control. When I was younger (I know...) I'd play Quake (1, 2 and 3, usually a CTF mod) at all hours, and between that plus goofing off on USENET, I practically never logged off.

I don't game anymore (well, almost never), but the very thought of keeping a connection open just to get permission to use a product I paid for? Hell, my skin crawls at the thought.

Little wonder the more passionate gamers are up in arms at the idea.

Just food for thought.

Well, it doesn't look much better on the PC front, at least if you go with Valve's Steam Shenanigans.

I mean, imagine if you said something in the heat of battle that got you kicked from the Quake server, and could never play it again...

Executive summary of this post. When big wigs shoot from the hip recklessly it can be costly: http://oldforums.eveonline.com/?a=topic&threadID=1538881

This reminds me of the Eve Online where they were introducing a new currency Aurum, had an internal newsletter (Fearless (Greed is Good)) That debated the pro's and cons of virtual currency. The playerbase was upset for a number of reasons:

1. Pay to Win was not ruled out e.g. special ammo (some argue that PLEX is the same but I disagree).
2. Price on current virtual items was limited and overly expensive (Monacle Gate - $60 U.S. for a virtual monocle for one character).
3. Players felt that they were getting milked and non of their current fees were going back into development/bug fixing of Eve Online (Some milking is to be expected but the "perception" was all resources were going towards White Wolf MMO in Atlanta).

The internal (leaked) response from the CEO was basically don't listen to the players watch what they do. The public response from one of the developers was some diatribe about how $1000 dollar Japanese Jeans makes one feel (no seriously - http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/24/eve-clothes-defense/ read the italicized text).

The players then started mass rage quitting their subscriptions, the CSA (Player representatives) were flown and conference called to Iceland for an emergency meetings, CCP mea culpa'ed - reversed course on the most egregious issues and saved themselves from imminent death. However, CCP did not come out unscathed, they re-orged layed off a ton of people in the U.S. Atlanta that were working on White Wolf MMO which would not be cannibalistic to their core product. This was a bad call in my book but I don't have all the stats. They chose to keep developing DUST 514 a FPS for the Play Station 3 (Not sure how that is going) that can affect and be affected by Eve Online proper..

There are very very few review sites (if any?) now that review honestly and independently.

I can't promise that they're completely independent, but the reviews at RockPaperShotgun are not the usual fawning affair.

They're not even traditional reviews. No scores. No awards (except the 25 games of Christmas). Just discussion on upcoming games, and the journalist's thoughts on the released game that he/she just played.

The journalists also participate in the discussions on each article, addressing any challenges to the article, giving a little more info, etc.

If you want non-PC game reviews, I've no idea where you should go. But if you want high quality commentary on PC gaming, including indie, kickstarter funded games, major blockbusters, the good and the bad, and the weird little things produced in a 48 hour game-jam, try RPS. They do PC gaming.

Lets face it, Square Enix probably didn't pay for this review:

This narrative, which offers not a single twist, surprise, or even interesting notion, is shoved down your throat at every opportunity, the controls constantly wrestled from your hands as it crucially needs to take over to stop you from doing something it might not like. This is so deeply at the core of every element of the game that you can't even shimmy along a ledge without the game doing the bits where you go past a pillar for you. Run toward a building and scoooop, control is stolen, the camera jerked upward, because you might not have looked up at the pretty thing they drew. It feels like a combination of arrogance and deep paranoia. "You might play the game wrong! Let me do it!"

(shamelessly lifted from http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/06/wot-i-think-tomb-raider/ )

No, seriously. Show me one time where this was the case. Show me a single road bump this sort of thing has ever caused in either Ubisoft's or EA's business plans. ... Yeah. You won't find any examples. You CAN'T find any examples. I know you can't.

There ya go. Took me about 10 seconds on Google, by the way.

"Do: agree to an industry wide standard on the location of save games. Save games are not a secret. They are not a treasure. They’re something most right-thinking people want to be able to preserve after a game’s uninstalled. They’re something many people need to get at when building a new machine, or simply continuing the game on another machine. They aren’t a DRM risk. We just want to know where our save games are, and we don’t want to have to trawl through seventeen different possible locations in the very bowels of Windows, trying to discern which lunatic name you’ve filed them under. When I install a game you let me choose the install location. Can you guess where I want the save games to go to? Here’s a hint. It’s not in C:\Users\John\AppData\Local\Roaming\Documents\Programs\Features\Gardening\Knitwear\Publisher\Developer\GameName\Sausages\X34265\"

I've been boycotting all the games with DRM and DLC for over a decade and it hasn't done shit.

Odd, seemed to work just fine with Ubisoft. Since they were really the first big target of PC gamers and their "always on" DRM solution, I'd say it does work.

I really disliked Cities XL. On the surface it seems like a reasonably polished product, but certain game concepts seemed kind of weird. I definitely didn't like the method of zoning - zoning residential space for 'working class' or 'business' workers is one example.

Sadly, I'm such a fan of the SimCity franchise that I'm likely to buy this always-on Internet shit. I get the impression SimCity is moving to a persistent online franchise like WoW is, where you just end up purchasing additional content packs and over the years we'll see incremental graphics improvements to match increasing screen resolution sizes, etc. I'm assuming the only way they can combat annual operating costs for the multiplayer experience is to sell more content to existing customers unless they gain X number of new players per year. I can't see it growing indefinitely, but there is likely some upper limit of subscribers.

I'd imagine a game like WoW has a shrinking user base now considering that game was released almost 10 years ago however according to this article they still have 10 million subscribers, which is only slightly down from their peak of 12 million. That's still $1.7 billion in revenue per year ... I'm sure EA would love to replicate this milking machine.

An MMO that is controller only.

An MMO that isn't coming to PC, because no one likes to use keyboards and mice anymore.

The shark, it has been jumped.