A human trying to explain to some aliens what a bachelor party is in a bar.
The real joke is he's trying to throw one for a Salarian, a species with, and I quote, 'no concept of romantic love, sexual attraction, or the biological impulses and social rituals that complicate other species' lives.', He is not, in fact, getting 'married', or any equivalent for it, or even mating with anyone, as his species doesn't do that. If you read the in-game codex and know about his species, it's clear he has, instead, received permission from his government to fertilize some eggs. And the human has, inanely, gotten him a table dance.
Likewise, in the same bar IIRC, there's a turian whose stuck in a 'let's just be friends' relationship with a quarian who's complaining to him about her failure at her love life and not picking up his hints. It's hilarious to eavesdrop in ME2.
I don't know anything about Suikoden, but I will attempt to answer your question:
- Large casts of colorful characters, with a core set of characters that receives a lot of development
Hrm. I don't know what 'a lot' is in this context. They sure as hell are colorful (As I mentioned elsewhere, yesterday I had to break up a damn fight between them. Seriously, don't make me turn this ship around.)
If you actually take the time to talk to them, and do their missions, yeah, they get a lot of development.
And I don't know why you thought the characters didn't have much effect on the plot. The two other humans, sure, they were just soldiers along for the ride, but most of the others had good personal reasons to be on your mission.
- Old-fashioned, turn-based combat that has a few twists due to the weapon, formation, and spell mechanics, plus the army and duel-style battles for a bit of variety
No. No turn based combat.
- Intricate plots that are highly political in nature with magical influences; very rarely do the games concern themselves with the common "save the world from the ultimate evil" trope
I'm confused by this, as you said you played Mass Effect 1.
'Highly political' doesn't even begin to describe that game. In fact, ME2 is a bit of a relief in that you don't have to deal with those asshats anymore. (You instead have to deal with your morally ambiguous and lying boss, but at least he's not trying to score political points.)
- A very original, intriguing history of the world
This is almost the definition of Mass Effect.
- FPS-style combat that was repetitive and bland compared to "pure" FPSes; you fought the same enemies over and over again, just on a differently-colored planet
ME2 is actually appearing to have much less combat, period. Or maybe I'm just misremembering ME1.
- Boring, frustrating Mako exploration sequences
Gone. No Mako at all. (Which sucks, as the combat areas with the Mako rocked.)
- Predictable plot with few twists; from almost the beginning until the end it's all about saving the universe from eradication, and you don't really even manage to do that
Erm, you found the plot of Mass Effect 'predictable'? Really?
There's a lot of really weird stuff going on that it would be, frankly, amazing to guess that's what's happening.
- Most of the "choices" you make in the game aren't between good and evil; they're not even between different shades of gray, they're just between being nice and being a jackass.
Well, that's a problem with every alignment system. Either they take speech into account, at which point you can be some sort of tower of virtue simply by being polite, or they don't, and you can play as a jackass in speech, and a nice person in actions and be fine, which really doesn't work either.
However, there were plenty of actual choices that really did matter. For example, on the planet with the 'possessed by the plant' people, you could either try to traq everyone, or you could just blow them away. The later, of course, is not a very moral choice, but much easier. Likewise, there were plenty of places you could blackmail or extort your way into a solution, or, hell, just into some quick cash. There were plenty of places where you could turn criminals into the authorities, or work with the criminals.
I'm not quite sure what you're complaining about there. All that did was open was additional dialog choices that often gave you better solutions to problems. It was a sort of 'experience for morals', and about as reasonable as any other alignment system.
In fact, moreso, because you could go in both directions at once, you could be a person who'll bully a criminal but help someone who deserved it, which in most alignment systems would end up canceling out. (You can look at 'paragon' as 'good' and 'renegade' as 'chaotic'. It's not exact, there are plenty of paragon choices
ME2 fixes that somewhat by allowing you to solve side quests after doing the main thing, but also feels much weaker in its main plot, as there is not much discovery going on and it lacks an antagonist.
Erm, it does?
Okay, I've not actually beat the game yet, or embarked on the final mission, so I don't want any spoilers, and also I don't want to spoil things:
But everyone in the game, and all the supporting material, seems to be implying that the mission you are working towards going on is, in fact, a suicide mission. An actual, literal suicide mission.
Now, there is an accomplishment you can unlock for surviving that, (and one for everyone surviving that.) but the game itself actually seems to imply you are, in fact, expected to die even if you beat the game.In fact, the current pre-release material for Mass Effect 3 says, flatly, that you can import Shepard from ME2, and play as him, if Shepard survived.
So I'm not entirely certain you should plan to 'solve side quests' after you have, in fact, solved the major plot in the game. You should, in fact, plan to be dead.
Also, 'lacks an antagonist' is just dumb. The game has both a 'race' of enemies, like the Geth in the first one, who shoot at you in the first damn cutscreen, and a major enemy in charge of them.
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system
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Review: Mass Effect 2
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The new conversation "interrupt" system is fun, too. Cutting a bad guys rant short by throwing him out a window was just too much fun to pass up.
As I'm playing a paragon, I'm not allowed to do that, I end up stopping people from shooting other people and giving first aid before they die while talking to me. (Finally. Letting people die while they're talking to you was always a somewhat idiotic premise in a universe with the tech of Mass Effect. You can Unity squadmates back from the dead, but can't save someone slowly bleeding to death from an gunshot?)
I need to finish up my renegade game in ME1 and get her over to ME2 also, so I can bust some heads.;)
But, yes, it is very nice to actually have input during cutscreens and feel like 'This is really happening, and I can make something else happen if need be', instead of just 'Here is the plot. Listen until you are done'. A very slight change, but it does provide more immersion than either straight cutscreens or dialog trees.
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system
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Fuel costs money? Do probes? Seriously? How much?
I'd never actually noticed. Although I am continuing from ME1, so ended up with an assload of credit...although, actually, only about 300,000, IIRC, and as I've repeatedly spent 75,000 on various upgrades, and still seem to have plenty to buy stuff with, I'm forced to admit it doesn't really matter.
The thing that I always seem to be short on is eezo, to build stuff with. Other stuff, I can find by scanning easily, but eezo seems rather elusive. (Which makes sense, in game, but it's annoying.)
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system
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Review: Mass Effect 2
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Yeah, someone is playing the game rather odd. Running around openly like a one man army doesn't cut it in ME2. And, frankly, it didn't really cut it in ME1, unless you were overusing health packs.
Perhaps more to the point, it really shouldn't have cut it anyway. This isn't some FPS. This is an action RPG. You have to _plan_. That means getting behind something and deciding what to do. Half the time, it's not even 'shooting', it's something like 'throw them across the room with biotics' or 'AI hack them to shoot each other', or, at least, 'shoot them enough to get rid of the shield and armor, and then do that'.
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system
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Review: Mass Effect 2
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the game would STILL score over 90 because of all the other non-combat aspects that are so fucking awesome.
No shit. People, Mass Effect is how you do action RPGs. Awesome universe, amazing plot, incredible characters, awesome acting. And the sequel managed to be at least a good, without being a cookie cutter of the first game, and while continuing the plot.
Now, you might not like action RPGs. Perhaps you like only pure RPGs where no combat skill is required. Perhaps you don't like RPGs at all. Fair enough. You like the genres you like.
But if you like action RPGs (A term I am trying to coin to mean 'RPGs where combat skill is required.'), then the Mass Effect series is the best at the moment in time, period.
It even manages to beat Fallout 3, and that's pretty high praise from me. (Specifically, it has much better characterization, and somewhat better plots. Fallout 3 is technically very good, but falls down in the writing.)
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system
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Review: Mass Effect 2
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Sniper rifles are also better handled in this game. While being more powerful and faster, the limited ammo keeps you from solely relying on them.
See, that's what's driving me crazy. Because I do solely use sniper rifles.
I would be much happier if they had a 'less powerful, but more ammo' rifle. I thought I ran across one, but it's more a 'much less powerful, and accurate, but faster and more ammo' rifle. I don't mind the speed, I don't mind if it's less powerful, but I do mind if it's less frickin accurate, as that the entire point of a sniper rifle.
Look, I'm sorry, but 11 shots are not enough for anything. (And I think 1 of those is from a research project that gave me 10% more ammo) Half the firing rate, half the power, whatever, but for God's sake give me enough ammo to actually kill everyone.
And the damn pistol isn't much better. When i run out of sniper ammo, I switch to that, except that I only get, what, 24 shots with that? And they're like a third the power of the sniper rifle? So it's the same amount of killing power?
Seriously, this isn't some survival horror game. I'm getting really tired of absurdly having to switch to automatic weapons or heavy weapons to finish a level, or wander around for five minutes finding damn 'heatsinks'. (Hey, here's an idea. If they're 'heatsinks', why don't I save them so I can use them when they cool off?)
Also, sniper rifles aren't more powerful than in ME1, although you do start with a better one than you started with in that game. In that game, headshots pretty much killed anyone, too, and certainly anyone without shields.
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system
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Review: Mass Effect 2
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What do you mean? I can tell squadmates to seek a defensive position quite easily. Aim your crosshairs at a defensive position, and push Q or E. They run over there and take it. Do you mean you can't order them to take any defensive position, you have to pick one? They automatically take defensive positions, in my experience.
I'm not sure how to make squadmates generically attack someone, but I suspect it's possible. The AI seems pretty smart in who it attacks, they attack people who can attack them or other squadmates first, and then work on the people they're shielded from. The only trouble I've had are 'boss fights', or whatever you call them, where sometimes they decide to attack something that is invincible or regenerating because something else needs to happen first, instead of attacking other things where they'd be useful.
All in all, there's maybe been half a dozen times where I've needed to say 'No, not that guy, get this other guy', and I usually just have them use a power or get in a different position and they're fine.
Also, you don't have 'flat levels'. Most of them are somewhat flat, but there's plenty of places where they aren't. For example, you can walk up four floors at the Citadel. So it's not some sort of game limitation.
It's only flat compared to the first game, and the first game was absurdly unflat because of the loading gimmick elevators. Yes, sometimes the characters talking in them was hilarious, but there's plenty of character interaction, all over the place, so it's not much of a loss. (Yesterday, I had to break up a damn fight between two of them on the ship.) Complaining they changed the 'elevators' loading screen to a different loading screen seems somewhat silly, as the elevators locked them into some weird area layouts to justify them.
And while straight grenades are gone, you do have an RPG. Sadly, it's a heavy weapon, so only people with heavy weapons can carry it.
See, I always thought such an argument was stupid when I was in school. And to some extent, it is.
But what I hadn't realized was the teachers weren't actually talking to me. They were trying to make a argument that incoherent people would understand: If you keep communicating like morons, no one will ever take you seriously.
I thought they were claiming that if i didn't double space after the damn address before the salutation in a resume cover letter, exactly as the book said, people wouldn't hire me. (Or whatever the book actually says.)
I don't particularly want to work for a grammar Nazi, or a clothes Nazi for that matter. I try to dress 'one level above the required workplace dress', but if they don't want me because I wore a clip on tie or they don't like my ponytail, they can go to hell. If I screw up some formatting on my cover letter, and they don't want me because of that, they can go to hell. I don't want to work for those anal people.
But that wasn't what the teachers were attempting to get across. What they actually were trying to communicate, to other students, is that you shouldn't start a resume cover letter with 'hello im writing because i think i could help ur company if you hire me i am a good worker! and almost never get sic', and that you shouldn't show up at a job interview wearing a 'Juicy' t-shirt.
My school got back around to it in 10th grade or so.
After, yes, about four years of no grammar.
It doesn't help that, for some reason, literature and grammar classes tend to be conflated into English, which makes about as much sense as combining clock-building and history, or chemistry and lunch.
A case could be made that writing classes should have literature in them, as a study of 'how creative writing works', but not grammar classes. How to spell and physically build a sentence is not the same thing as how to creatively write a story, or formally write a complaint letter or resume, or what the plot of Hamlet is, and teaching them in 'English' just confuses the issue. It's actually multiple classes:
How to write grammatically should, essentially, be an extension of the 'spelling' classes we had when younger. First spelling, then more complicated grammar over the years. This, and only this, is 'English' class.
Creative writing should be an 'art' class, like the other arts. Just like the other arts, students should be required to do a very small amount of it, just like they have to do a few drawings, and learn to keep time in chorus, and participate in a few elementary plays, so they can find out what they're good at, hopefully by high school.
And there should be a 'historical literature' section of each history class. Possible that should be a class by itself. For the love of God, pick interesting books.
And how to write formally should be part of the non-existent 'life skills' we should be teaching students, along with how to change a tire and how to cook for themselves. And, as this is an uncommonly used skill, a lot should go into teaching 'How to recognize when you need to do this, and where to look it up online so you get it right'.
But, instead, this is all 'English' class, with weirdly rotating yearly schedules of what you do each year.
The joke-on-other-people expression 'Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.' is so difficult to understand that most people end up with the wrong mental context for the second half unless they've heard it before. (If your mental image has fruit moving through the air, you got it wrong. Remove the word 'fruit' and read again it. Then add it back.)
And, of course, that expression is grammatically correct. And a very simple expression, no grammatical tricks or oddities. One sentence is 'Noun verbs like another verb', and one is 'Nouns verb noun'.
It's just that 'fruit' is both a noun and an adjective, 'flies' is both a noun and a verb, and 'like' is both a verb and preposition, and your brain can't make the context shift fast enough from the first sentence, and misreads the second entirely.
Calling you 'Mr.' instead of 'Dr.' or 'Prof.' isn't a grammatical error at all. It's a etiquette error. That's understandable, and it should be mentioned that, in many places, it is not required to call professors 'Professor'. (And it's often unclear who, exactly, qualifies for that.) Plenty of my college teachers introduced themselves as 'Mr.'.
And it's entirely possible they are simply unaware of your doctorate.
Call you 'mr. smith', in lowercase, OTOH, is pretty stupid.
As is sending you an email with your own name in the subject line. But that, likewise, is not a grammar issue per se. Strictly speaking, it's not even an email etiquette issue, as the email, technically, was indeed 'about you', so the subject was 'correct'. However, in the real world, people automatically assume emails directed to them are 'about them' in some manner, and thus normal people don't use the recipient 's name as the subject. (Or the sender, who would have an equally valid claim.)
It's such a dumb thing that no one's ever bothered to define that in email etiquette. I can just see the etiquette guide: The subject of an email should be related to the email inside, but not just the person's name. They already know their own name, you idiot.
Although it's entirely possible they simply don't understand how their email client works, and think one line is for the email address of the person you're emailing, and one line is for the name of that person. The way to format email address+name on a single line is fairly convoluted, and often clients don't appear to have any way to do it automatically.
Only 30 years ago, when you were writing a list of things, there was a comma between the second to last item and the "and" preceding the last item. (One, two, three, and four.) Today, that has depreciated to the point of being improper.
I say "Fuck that.". I'll put a damn comma if I want to. I pause when I say the list, ergo, I put a comma there. (Yes, yes, that's not always correct, but that's why I put a comma in the rest of the list.)
They removed it because, in theory, you don't need to pause. Except you do, or certain lists sound idiotic, like 'peanut butter and jelly, turkey club, and ham and cheese'. (And that sounds even stupider if PB&J are second-to-last, so stupid they had to make it now officially 'wrong', like all lists can be randomly resorted with no problems.) What we should be doing is teaching that pauses/commas/semicolons are part of grammar, and people need to pause correctly when giving lists, not inventing hypothetical grammar rules that keep us from having to.
Likewise, I quote like I quoted "Fuck that." at the start of the first paragraph. Yes, in theory, the period should come inside the quote, but that is a) confusing, and b) a damn new rule invented with movable type to make things 'look better', and any sane society would have gotten rid of it by now. Sane rules would say "Put exactly the quote, including punctuation, inside the quote marks, treat it like a noun, and finish the rest of the sentence regardless of what happened inside.".
But there's a difference between stylistic choices and grammar. If I want to use a damn comma instead of a semicolon with a 'therefore', whatever. If I want to use a single quote mark for words instead of double quotes, bite me. Despite what people try to assert, writing the same sentence in different ways is not actually a grammar issue, but style. Language is 'speech', writing is just a way to store speech. As long as you can decode the speech back from the writing, you're good.
Hell, there's a difference between important grammar and non-important grammar. Using sentence fragments or run-on sentences in speech, or informal writing, is fine.
Being a grammar Nazi about those things just turns people off the entire idea of grammar and spelling. If all that was wrong with society was people kept using commas splices, I think we'd be okay.
Spelling, however, is important, because reading relies on spelling. Bad spelling slows us down. And uppercasing letters correctly is the same thing as spelling; it's how we read quickly. Conjugating verbs is likewise important, as it makes people sound like idiots when they do wrong.
There are levels. There's a level that no one should write or speak below, and, sadly, a lot of people are far below that. There's a level that people should be able to step up to formal writing or speaking, and a lot of people can't do that either, and many people are apparently not even aware they should try. Neither of those levels are 'perfect grammar', just 'reasonably good grammar and very good spelling'.
I think I should point out that comparing domestic college students to foreign college students is statistically stupid. Foreign students are self selected to be a) at least average intelligence, or they couldn't get through all the 'student acceptance and visa' crap, b) possibly higher, as they're often from cultures where only the very intelligent are expected to go to to college, and c) highly motivated to learn, as they moved to another country to do that.
Also, 'public debate' is not such. We have a couple of very vocal morons and a news that covers them as if they were 'public debate'. That's not 'public debate', that's 'slander to get fence sitters to pull the level for the other guy' and 'blatant lies to rile up the base'.
Actual people themselves, however, still have plenty of reasonable stances on issues.
People shouldn't be taught the test answers, they should be taught the basics in the subject and how to learn.
<dalek voice>Blasphemy.</dalek voice>
But, actually, that's exactly the problem here in the US. We've decided to tie funding to standardize test results, resulting in schools, quite reasonably, teaching the test, and just the test. Granted, they don't have exactly the test beforehand, but they teach as close to what where appear on it as they can figure out.
No kidding. As a nerd, I've had a lot more conversations on the internet than most people, but my grammar and spelling tend to be better. I often wince at the writing I see on facebook statuses from high school friends who probably didn't even own a computer until 2004. Why?
Because I spent years chatting on MUSHes, where those things were valued, instead of IRC or some other place where those things are, bluntly, not.
This is distinct from slang, like 'LOL' and whatnot. That's an easy choice to add or remove to writing.
When I actually do write in places where time and space are a premium, such as tweeter or SMS, I may do things like abbreviate 'are' as 'r' and stuff like that, but it's a conscious choice I make, a decision that the sentence is too long or I am chatting too slow.
Of course, I suspect the problem isn't that people learn to write 'badly', it's that they often aren't taught how to recognize different speaking and writing styles and when different ones are appropriate to use. Humans do some of that subconsciously, changing 'levels' when the other person changes, but that doesn't work when writing a paper, and it requires a level of knowledge and understanding of the rules that some high school students just don't have.
You know, when I was going through high school, they actually tried to teach this, and I always thought it was stupid. "I'll talk how I want to talk, damnit, and screw the other guy if he thinks I seem uneducated."
However, I apparently wasn't who they were talking to. They were talking to the guy thinking 'fuk that shit, im not with fancy talk 2 impress' or something.
Oh, I wasn't wasn't trying to compare it to Alias. I was just trying to explain what I meant by 'mission based'. An example like 'Burn Notice' would have worked as well.
Was it ever determined who programed echo to talk to Ballard?
Not technically. The person leaking info to Ballard was Boyd, as part of his plan to get Ballard in the Dollhouse protecting Echo. That's who the programmer claimed to be, so probably was.
Boyd probably realized Ballard was fixated on Caroline via November. (The Doll Adele was using to make sure Ballard didn't get too far, probably standard operating procedure.) So Boyd figured that he could use Ballard to protect 'Caroline', as Boyd had been assigned to another position. (He could have fixed that, but not without raising suspicions.)
What this plan was to get Ballard in the Dollhouse is unknown, as Alpha screwed it all up.
At least, I think that's what happened. It's hard to figure out a show where all the main cast except Topher were secretly 'traitors' in one way or another.
Actually, the narrative of Dollhouse already ended. The week before last.
Of course, this being a Joss Whedon show, they saved the world, everything is happy, and then we timeskip and see the apocalypse happened anyway. Doh.
What's happening this week is the second part of the epilogue, the first part of which was on the season 1 DVDs, then was mentioned halfway though the season, and then was glimpsed at the end of the last episode. Almost everyone has stopped being 'people', but is there a chance for humanity at all?
And, likewise, I was rooting for TSCC instead of Dollhouse, despite being a Joss fan.
OTOH, now I'm really glad Dollhouse won, as the ending was spectacular. Dollhouse really screwed up in how it started and how slowly it tried to build. I mean, yes, if it had seven seasons at that speed, at the end, we'd all be amazed how the universe itself developed along with the characters...but as it is, we had an extreme slow-speed season and a quarter, and then everything jammed in the last ten episodes.
I think if we'd started out with maybe two 'This is the premise of the Dollhouse, and how Dolls are supposed to work' shows, then show some breakdowns like the amnesia episode and the 'goes back to reclaim her baby' episode, and had Echo 'composite' into full-awareness halfway through the first season, the show could have actually had enough viewers to stretch out three or four years. Introduce Alpha at the end of the first season, have him the big bad all season 2, get rid of him at the end of the second, etc, etc.
Instead, most of the first season, it was often a normal 'mission' show, like 'Alias' or 'Tru Calling', with a really weird character premise, a character who simply was not actually a person.
I knew and trusted Joss, and kept watching, but if I hadn't, I'd given up on it already, and I quite understood why the network was thinking about killing it.
Should I point out that Joss Whedon has done almost exactly that, or were you being sarcastic?
Granted, it wasn't a 'share alike' license, instead was streamed for free off the web, and people bought it on DVD instead of donating money.
And he actually financed it himself, and hence it's only three episodes, but, OTOH, he makes all the profits, too.
But baring those two things, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is essentially what you just described.
And his model was Felicity Day's 'The Guild', which is almost exactly what you're talking about. They made three short episodes, ran out of money, aired them, got enough donations to continue. Later seasons have had a commercial sponsor at the start.
Of course, Dr. Horrible has a grand total of 45 minutes, and each episode of The Guild is between 3-6 minutes, so in the total is probably around 60 minutes for three seasons.
So it's sorta starting out like independent film making, where everyone funding it themselves and costs have to be very low, so the running time is very low. Like a lot of independent films, which had 20 minute running times. In fact, 'The Guild' is arguably just 3 independent films, one a season, in episodic format. But eventually, investors will catch on.
Although I don't think it's going to work like you think. I suspect it will be much like investors in plays and whatnot....people come in, give $3,000, expect hopefully $5,000 to be made, along with a single commercial sponsor who gets to put a 15 second ad at the front and doesn't expect any money back.
That's not to say they won't ask for small donations, too, but it will probably be for stuff like early access to the episodes and extra features, and of course DVDs will be for sale also. People don't want to have to keep track of ten thousand investors owed microscopic returns, that's way too expensive.
Also, while 'share this with your friends' sounds cool, in reality, until this actually takes off, every 'viewing' needs to count, so they can show their investors and sponsors, so it's all going to be streaming for now. (Plus DVD sales.)
If by 'his attitude with studios' is 'does not like when they tamper with his shows', yeah.
It's worth mentioning that the show they weren't able to tamper with, B5, did significantly better then the show they totally screwed with (Crusade) and a lot better than the show created he so they could screw with and did a little (Jeremiah.)
And, I will repeat this as loudly and as long as I am permitted: Fox purchases sci-fi shows to cancel them. They do not deserve any props for this.
Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, a network was just starting. This network managed to, through essentially luck, to end up with some hits. Namely, The X-Files and Married with Children.
This network then apparently forgot that both those shows had a slow start, and then set about constantly trying to recreate them, buying every sci-fi series it could, and then canceling it as soon as it wasn't instantly X-Files material. (They did the same with sitcoms, but those were crappy dime a dozen things no one cared about.)
Other sorts of programming, Fox is fine with. But, as I said, TV studios are incredibly dysfunctional, and operate solely on perception, and everyone who 'sponsors' a sci-fi show gets it compared to the X-Files in its heyday, season 7 or so, and off course they massively fall short. Either it gets canceled out from under them, or they manage to pawn it off on someone else, who can safely kill it by juggling it around and not promoting it. (But it doesn't matter, because it wasn't 'their' show.)
Incidentally, I think this is why Fringe is doing so well inside Fox, being an almost outright clone of the X-Files. The ratings are fairly okay, but I have a feeling if this had been a different type of sci-fi show with those rating, it would have been toast already.
What doesn't help this fact is that sci-fi shows have a perception of high costs, even if they're set in normal world with maybe a few ten thousand dollars of CGI each episode. For example, the season before last, Fox was going to cancel either Terminator:TSCC or Dollhouse, citing costs, and ending up scrapping TSCC. Well, Dollhouse has absolutely no more costs than any other show (Post-apoc episodes aside) and TSCC likes to blow a car up every three episodes, and that's about it. (I have no idea why Fox thinks this, as The X-Files didn't have a high FX budget either. I think Fox means 'compared to reality shows'.)
But, essentially, what's going on is that executives at Fox really really really want another X-Files, and when they don't get one, they cancel it. Their purchasing and canceling every sci-fi show ever is an idiotic combination of higher demand at Fox and higher expectations.
Sure, if it wasn't for Fox 'giving sci-fi a chance', a lot of it wouldn't make it to air...although a lot of that shouldn't. Sci-fi can be bad, too, and even good sci can have a shitty viewership. And it doesn't help that Fox Studios, which operates as a separate entity, has a rep for making good sci-fi, and Fox network gets first dibs on those shows. (And they will always regard passing up Buffy.)
But the actual remaining good stuff would be picked up by other networks and aired, like some of it was. And that stuff, because other networks don't have some sort of executive sci-fi inferiority complex that Fox has, would actually be compared to other, non-genre shows on merit, and treated the same as other shows.
For example, Heroes, which has just been limping along in the ratings for a while, will probably be canceled soon, as the recent aggressive ad campaign didn't produce any results. I like the show, but this is entirely reasonable for it to be canceled, because NBC is treating it like a normal show. They don't move it around, they do advertise for it, but they do expect it to carry its weight. (OTOH, it's probably going to get a reprieve as NBC has recently found itself short five hours of programming, so as long as Heroes isn't losing money, it's okay.)
In fact, this is somewhat backwards of 'not counting'.
If I was an advertiser, and two TV shows had the same ratings and audience, but one had half the commercial time of the other, I'd try to get into that one, assuming the same price.
Why? Well, people are less likely to skip ads when they are shorter. Seems obvious to me.
OTOH, it might not be the same price...commercials cost more at the start and end of the break, and less in the middle, I believe, and a show with less commercials might not have a middle slot.
None of this is really relevant to the Nielsen ratings not wanting to merge in Hulu views, though. That's the same show, aired with less commercials, and an argument could be made it would have less viewers if it had the standard amount, so it's unfair to count it the standard rate.
People who can't vote are still counted, to this day, which is just stupid for many reasons.
It's especially egregious with areas with large prison populations, where they cannot vote but count as 'residences' for the purpose of allocation representation.
People often forget that that, legally, who can vote is up to the states. They are forbidden for using certain criteria for this, but could easily say 'No one can vote' or 'Only people seven feet tall can vote.'.
The really funny thing is that, legally, you can end up with a congressional district with no legal voters at all, at which point the constitutional sigsegs and the country crashes, I believe.
I think we should have a constitutional amendment saying that you only get congressional representation for each registered voter, as of the last census. (And that's a compromise, as I'd really like them only to get it for each actual voter, in each congressional race, averaged over the last decade.)
Ratings were important when it was 'Which of these shows will take up valuable time on the channel?' We even talked about 'prime time'. If one show was making a profit of $500,000 an episode, and you thought a different one could make $600,000, sure, cancel the first.
But it's goddamn stupid when you stop living in the idiotic 'broadcast TV' world. You should make both shows. In fact, you should make anything that makes you money, or at least has a reasonable chance of doing so. Because it makes you money. I cannot stress the whole 'it makes you money' concept enough.
The sad thing is, TV networks already know about this. It was 'syndication' long before DVDs came out, wherein TV studios make shows without having a network committed to buying them. Although that market was a lot smaller, and shows had to be very low-budget to make a profit on just that.
Bu they already had the model. They should have logically been able to make the leap to DVDs.
A lot of the problem is how TV studios are structured. Everyone wants 'their own' shows to be wildly successful, so a) often don't care about show they get handed by other people, and b) don't care about 'small' money makers they have. (And, of course, apparently corporations have no fiscal responsibility to their stockholders, you know, actually make that $500,000.)
Everything is all about who is credited for the next big hit. No one actually cares who makes money. Film studios are completely dysfunctional.
The future is looking good, though. We've had independent film makers for quite some time, despite there being less stupidity in the film industry...and we're just starting to get independent 'TV studios' as it requires less and less upfront costs for equipment and whatnot.
Slashdot Mirror
A human trying to explain to some aliens what a bachelor party is in a bar.
The real joke is he's trying to throw one for a Salarian, a species with, and I quote, 'no concept of romantic love, sexual attraction, or the biological impulses and social rituals that complicate other species' lives.', He is not, in fact, getting 'married', or any equivalent for it, or even mating with anyone, as his species doesn't do that. If you read the in-game codex and know about his species, it's clear he has, instead, received permission from his government to fertilize some eggs. And the human has, inanely, gotten him a table dance.
Likewise, in the same bar IIRC, there's a turian whose stuck in a 'let's just be friends' relationship with a quarian who's complaining to him about her failure at her love life and not picking up his hints. It's hilarious to eavesdrop in ME2.
No, the phonograph is staying in sync fine. Perhaps you need to check your needle alignment.
I don't know anything about Suikoden, but I will attempt to answer your question:
- Large casts of colorful characters, with a core set of characters that receives a lot of development
Hrm. I don't know what 'a lot' is in this context. They sure as hell are colorful (As I mentioned elsewhere, yesterday I had to break up a damn fight between them. Seriously, don't make me turn this ship around.)
If you actually take the time to talk to them, and do their missions, yeah, they get a lot of development.
And I don't know why you thought the characters didn't have much effect on the plot. The two other humans, sure, they were just soldiers along for the ride, but most of the others had good personal reasons to be on your mission.
- Old-fashioned, turn-based combat that has a few twists due to the weapon, formation, and spell mechanics, plus the army and duel-style battles for a bit of variety
No. No turn based combat.
- Intricate plots that are highly political in nature with magical influences; very rarely do the games concern themselves with the common "save the world from the ultimate evil" trope
I'm confused by this, as you said you played Mass Effect 1.
'Highly political' doesn't even begin to describe that game. In fact, ME2 is a bit of a relief in that you don't have to deal with those asshats anymore. (You instead have to deal with your morally ambiguous and lying boss, but at least he's not trying to score political points.)
- A very original, intriguing history of the world
This is almost the definition of Mass Effect.
- FPS-style combat that was repetitive and bland compared to "pure" FPSes; you fought the same enemies over and over again, just on a differently-colored planet
ME2 is actually appearing to have much less combat, period. Or maybe I'm just misremembering ME1.
- Boring, frustrating Mako exploration sequences
Gone. No Mako at all. (Which sucks, as the combat areas with the Mako rocked.)
- Predictable plot with few twists; from almost the beginning until the end it's all about saving the universe from eradication, and you don't really even manage to do that
Erm, you found the plot of Mass Effect 'predictable'? Really?
There's a lot of really weird stuff going on that it would be, frankly, amazing to guess that's what's happening.
- Most of the "choices" you make in the game aren't between good and evil; they're not even between different shades of gray, they're just between being nice and being a jackass.
Well, that's a problem with every alignment system. Either they take speech into account, at which point you can be some sort of tower of virtue simply by being polite, or they don't, and you can play as a jackass in speech, and a nice person in actions and be fine, which really doesn't work either.
However, there were plenty of actual choices that really did matter. For example, on the planet with the 'possessed by the plant' people, you could either try to traq everyone, or you could just blow them away. The later, of course, is not a very moral choice, but much easier. Likewise, there were plenty of places you could blackmail or extort your way into a solution, or, hell, just into some quick cash. There were plenty of places where you could turn criminals into the authorities, or work with the criminals.
I'm not quite sure what you're complaining about there. All that did was open was additional dialog choices that often gave you better solutions to problems. It was a sort of 'experience for morals', and about as reasonable as any other alignment system.
In fact, moreso, because you could go in both directions at once, you could be a person who'll bully a criminal but help someone who deserved it, which in most alignment systems would end up canceling out. (You can look at 'paragon' as 'good' and 'renegade' as 'chaotic'. It's not exact, there are plenty of paragon choices
ME2 fixes that somewhat by allowing you to solve side quests after doing the main thing, but also feels much weaker in its main plot, as there is not much discovery going on and it lacks an antagonist.
Erm, it does?
Okay, I've not actually beat the game yet, or embarked on the final mission, so I don't want any spoilers, and also I don't want to spoil things:
But everyone in the game, and all the supporting material, seems to be implying that the mission you are working towards going on is, in fact, a suicide mission. An actual, literal suicide mission.
Now, there is an accomplishment you can unlock for surviving that, (and one for everyone surviving that.) but the game itself actually seems to imply you are, in fact, expected to die even if you beat the game.In fact, the current pre-release material for Mass Effect 3 says, flatly, that you can import Shepard from ME2, and play as him, if Shepard survived.
So I'm not entirely certain you should plan to 'solve side quests' after you have, in fact, solved the major plot in the game. You should, in fact, plan to be dead.
Also, 'lacks an antagonist' is just dumb. The game has both a 'race' of enemies, like the Geth in the first one, who shoot at you in the first damn cutscreen, and a major enemy in charge of them.
The new conversation "interrupt" system is fun, too. Cutting a bad guys rant short by throwing him out a window was just too much fun to pass up.
As I'm playing a paragon, I'm not allowed to do that, I end up stopping people from shooting other people and giving first aid before they die while talking to me. (Finally. Letting people die while they're talking to you was always a somewhat idiotic premise in a universe with the tech of Mass Effect. You can Unity squadmates back from the dead, but can't save someone slowly bleeding to death from an gunshot?)
I need to finish up my renegade game in ME1 and get her over to ME2 also, so I can bust some heads. ;)
But, yes, it is very nice to actually have input during cutscreens and feel like 'This is really happening, and I can make something else happen if need be', instead of just 'Here is the plot. Listen until you are done'. A very slight change, but it does provide more immersion than either straight cutscreens or dialog trees.
Fuel costs money? Do probes? Seriously? How much?
I'd never actually noticed. Although I am continuing from ME1, so ended up with an assload of credit...although, actually, only about 300,000, IIRC, and as I've repeatedly spent 75,000 on various upgrades, and still seem to have plenty to buy stuff with, I'm forced to admit it doesn't really matter.
The thing that I always seem to be short on is eezo, to build stuff with. Other stuff, I can find by scanning easily, but eezo seems rather elusive. (Which makes sense, in game, but it's annoying.)
Yeah, someone is playing the game rather odd. Running around openly like a one man army doesn't cut it in ME2. And, frankly, it didn't really cut it in ME1, unless you were overusing health packs.
Perhaps more to the point, it really shouldn't have cut it anyway. This isn't some FPS. This is an action RPG. You have to _plan_. That means getting behind something and deciding what to do. Half the time, it's not even 'shooting', it's something like 'throw them across the room with biotics' or 'AI hack them to shoot each other', or, at least, 'shoot them enough to get rid of the shield and armor, and then do that'.
the game would STILL score over 90 because of all the other non-combat aspects that are so fucking awesome.
No shit. People, Mass Effect is how you do action RPGs. Awesome universe, amazing plot, incredible characters, awesome acting. And the sequel managed to be at least a good, without being a cookie cutter of the first game, and while continuing the plot.
Now, you might not like action RPGs. Perhaps you like only pure RPGs where no combat skill is required. Perhaps you don't like RPGs at all. Fair enough. You like the genres you like.
But if you like action RPGs (A term I am trying to coin to mean 'RPGs where combat skill is required.'), then the Mass Effect series is the best at the moment in time, period.
It even manages to beat Fallout 3, and that's pretty high praise from me. (Specifically, it has much better characterization, and somewhat better plots. Fallout 3 is technically very good, but falls down in the writing.)
Sniper rifles are also better handled in this game. While being more powerful and faster, the limited ammo keeps you from solely relying on them.
See, that's what's driving me crazy. Because I do solely use sniper rifles.
I would be much happier if they had a 'less powerful, but more ammo' rifle. I thought I ran across one, but it's more a 'much less powerful, and accurate, but faster and more ammo' rifle. I don't mind the speed, I don't mind if it's less powerful, but I do mind if it's less frickin accurate, as that the entire point of a sniper rifle.
Look, I'm sorry, but 11 shots are not enough for anything. (And I think 1 of those is from a research project that gave me 10% more ammo) Half the firing rate, half the power, whatever, but for God's sake give me enough ammo to actually kill everyone.
And the damn pistol isn't much better. When i run out of sniper ammo, I switch to that, except that I only get, what, 24 shots with that? And they're like a third the power of the sniper rifle? So it's the same amount of killing power?
Seriously, this isn't some survival horror game. I'm getting really tired of absurdly having to switch to automatic weapons or heavy weapons to finish a level, or wander around for five minutes finding damn 'heatsinks'. (Hey, here's an idea. If they're 'heatsinks', why don't I save them so I can use them when they cool off?)
Also, sniper rifles aren't more powerful than in ME1, although you do start with a better one than you started with in that game. In that game, headshots pretty much killed anyone, too, and certainly anyone without shields.
What do you mean? I can tell squadmates to seek a defensive position quite easily. Aim your crosshairs at a defensive position, and push Q or E. They run over there and take it. Do you mean you can't order them to take any defensive position, you have to pick one? They automatically take defensive positions, in my experience.
I'm not sure how to make squadmates generically attack someone, but I suspect it's possible. The AI seems pretty smart in who it attacks, they attack people who can attack them or other squadmates first, and then work on the people they're shielded from. The only trouble I've had are 'boss fights', or whatever you call them, where sometimes they decide to attack something that is invincible or regenerating because something else needs to happen first, instead of attacking other things where they'd be useful.
All in all, there's maybe been half a dozen times where I've needed to say 'No, not that guy, get this other guy', and I usually just have them use a power or get in a different position and they're fine.
Also, you don't have 'flat levels'. Most of them are somewhat flat, but there's plenty of places where they aren't. For example, you can walk up four floors at the Citadel. So it's not some sort of game limitation.
It's only flat compared to the first game, and the first game was absurdly unflat because of the loading gimmick elevators. Yes, sometimes the characters talking in them was hilarious, but there's plenty of character interaction, all over the place, so it's not much of a loss. (Yesterday, I had to break up a damn fight between two of them on the ship.) Complaining they changed the 'elevators' loading screen to a different loading screen seems somewhat silly, as the elevators locked them into some weird area layouts to justify them.
And while straight grenades are gone, you do have an RPG. Sadly, it's a heavy weapon, so only people with heavy weapons can carry it.
See, I always thought such an argument was stupid when I was in school. And to some extent, it is.
But what I hadn't realized was the teachers weren't actually talking to me. They were trying to make a argument that incoherent people would understand: If you keep communicating like morons, no one will ever take you seriously.
I thought they were claiming that if i didn't double space after the damn address before the salutation in a resume cover letter, exactly as the book said, people wouldn't hire me. (Or whatever the book actually says.)
I don't particularly want to work for a grammar Nazi, or a clothes Nazi for that matter. I try to dress 'one level above the required workplace dress', but if they don't want me because I wore a clip on tie or they don't like my ponytail, they can go to hell. If I screw up some formatting on my cover letter, and they don't want me because of that, they can go to hell. I don't want to work for those anal people.
But that wasn't what the teachers were attempting to get across. What they actually were trying to communicate, to other students, is that you shouldn't start a resume cover letter with 'hello im writing because i think i could help ur company if you hire me i am a good worker! and almost never get sic', and that you shouldn't show up at a job interview wearing a 'Juicy' t-shirt.
My school got back around to it in 10th grade or so.
After, yes, about four years of no grammar.
It doesn't help that, for some reason, literature and grammar classes tend to be conflated into English, which makes about as much sense as combining clock-building and history, or chemistry and lunch.
A case could be made that writing classes should have literature in them, as a study of 'how creative writing works', but not grammar classes. How to spell and physically build a sentence is not the same thing as how to creatively write a story, or formally write a complaint letter or resume, or what the plot of Hamlet is, and teaching them in 'English' just confuses the issue. It's actually multiple classes:
How to write grammatically should, essentially, be an extension of the 'spelling' classes we had when younger. First spelling, then more complicated grammar over the years. This, and only this, is 'English' class.
Creative writing should be an 'art' class, like the other arts. Just like the other arts, students should be required to do a very small amount of it, just like they have to do a few drawings, and learn to keep time in chorus, and participate in a few elementary plays, so they can find out what they're good at, hopefully by high school.
And there should be a 'historical literature' section of each history class. Possible that should be a class by itself. For the love of God, pick interesting books.
And how to write formally should be part of the non-existent 'life skills' we should be teaching students, along with how to change a tire and how to cook for themselves. And, as this is an uncommonly used skill, a lot should go into teaching 'How to recognize when you need to do this, and where to look it up online so you get it right'.
But, instead, this is all 'English' class, with weirdly rotating yearly schedules of what you do each year.
The joke-on-other-people expression 'Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.' is so difficult to understand that most people end up with the wrong mental context for the second half unless they've heard it before. (If your mental image has fruit moving through the air, you got it wrong. Remove the word 'fruit' and read again it. Then add it back.)
And, of course, that expression is grammatically correct. And a very simple expression, no grammatical tricks or oddities. One sentence is 'Noun verbs like another verb', and one is 'Nouns verb noun'.
It's just that 'fruit' is both a noun and an adjective, 'flies' is both a noun and a verb, and 'like' is both a verb and preposition, and your brain can't make the context shift fast enough from the first sentence, and misreads the second entirely.
Calling you 'Mr.' instead of 'Dr.' or 'Prof.' isn't a grammatical error at all. It's a etiquette error. That's understandable, and it should be mentioned that, in many places, it is not required to call professors 'Professor'. (And it's often unclear who, exactly, qualifies for that.) Plenty of my college teachers introduced themselves as 'Mr.'.
And it's entirely possible they are simply unaware of your doctorate.
Call you 'mr. smith', in lowercase, OTOH, is pretty stupid.
As is sending you an email with your own name in the subject line. But that, likewise, is not a grammar issue per se. Strictly speaking, it's not even an email etiquette issue, as the email, technically, was indeed 'about you', so the subject was 'correct'. However, in the real world, people automatically assume emails directed to them are 'about them' in some manner, and thus normal people don't use the recipient 's name as the subject. (Or the sender, who would have an equally valid claim.)
It's such a dumb thing that no one's ever bothered to define that in email etiquette. I can just see the etiquette guide: The subject of an email should be related to the email inside, but not just the person's name. They already know their own name, you idiot.
Although it's entirely possible they simply don't understand how their email client works, and think one line is for the email address of the person you're emailing, and one line is for the name of that person. The way to format email address+name on a single line is fairly convoluted, and often clients don't appear to have any way to do it automatically.
Only 30 years ago, when you were writing a list of things, there was a comma between the second to last item and the "and" preceding the last item. (One, two, three, and four.) Today, that has depreciated to the point of being improper.
I say "Fuck that.". I'll put a damn comma if I want to. I pause when I say the list, ergo, I put a comma there. (Yes, yes, that's not always correct, but that's why I put a comma in the rest of the list.)
They removed it because, in theory, you don't need to pause. Except you do, or certain lists sound idiotic, like 'peanut butter and jelly, turkey club, and ham and cheese'. (And that sounds even stupider if PB&J are second-to-last, so stupid they had to make it now officially 'wrong', like all lists can be randomly resorted with no problems.) What we should be doing is teaching that pauses/commas/semicolons are part of grammar, and people need to pause correctly when giving lists, not inventing hypothetical grammar rules that keep us from having to.
Likewise, I quote like I quoted "Fuck that." at the start of the first paragraph. Yes, in theory, the period should come inside the quote, but that is a) confusing, and b) a damn new rule invented with movable type to make things 'look better', and any sane society would have gotten rid of it by now. Sane rules would say "Put exactly the quote, including punctuation, inside the quote marks, treat it like a noun, and finish the rest of the sentence regardless of what happened inside.".
But there's a difference between stylistic choices and grammar. If I want to use a damn comma instead of a semicolon with a 'therefore', whatever. If I want to use a single quote mark for words instead of double quotes, bite me. Despite what people try to assert, writing the same sentence in different ways is not actually a grammar issue, but style. Language is 'speech', writing is just a way to store speech. As long as you can decode the speech back from the writing, you're good.
Hell, there's a difference between important grammar and non-important grammar. Using sentence fragments or run-on sentences in speech, or informal writing, is fine.
Being a grammar Nazi about those things just turns people off the entire idea of grammar and spelling. If all that was wrong with society was people kept using commas splices, I think we'd be okay.
Spelling, however, is important, because reading relies on spelling. Bad spelling slows us down. And uppercasing letters correctly is the same thing as spelling; it's how we read quickly. Conjugating verbs is likewise important, as it makes people sound like idiots when they do wrong.
There are levels. There's a level that no one should write or speak below, and, sadly, a lot of people are far below that. There's a level that people should be able to step up to formal writing or speaking, and a lot of people can't do that either, and many people are apparently not even aware they should try. Neither of those levels are 'perfect grammar', just 'reasonably good grammar and very good spelling'.
I think I should point out that comparing domestic college students to foreign college students is statistically stupid. Foreign students are self selected to be a) at least average intelligence, or they couldn't get through all the 'student acceptance and visa' crap, b) possibly higher, as they're often from cultures where only the very intelligent are expected to go to to college, and c) highly motivated to learn, as they moved to another country to do that.
Also, 'public debate' is not such. We have a couple of very vocal morons and a news that covers them as if they were 'public debate'. That's not 'public debate', that's 'slander to get fence sitters to pull the level for the other guy' and 'blatant lies to rile up the base'.
Actual people themselves, however, still have plenty of reasonable stances on issues.
People shouldn't be taught the test answers, they should be taught the basics in the subject and how to learn.
<dalek voice>Blasphemy.</dalek voice>
But, actually, that's exactly the problem here in the US. We've decided to tie funding to standardize test results, resulting in schools, quite reasonably, teaching the test, and just the test. Granted, they don't have exactly the test beforehand, but they teach as close to what where appear on it as they can figure out.
No kidding. As a nerd, I've had a lot more conversations on the internet than most people, but my grammar and spelling tend to be better. I often wince at the writing I see on facebook statuses from high school friends who probably didn't even own a computer until 2004. Why?
Because I spent years chatting on MUSHes, where those things were valued, instead of IRC or some other place where those things are, bluntly, not.
This is distinct from slang, like 'LOL' and whatnot. That's an easy choice to add or remove to writing.
When I actually do write in places where time and space are a premium, such as tweeter or SMS, I may do things like abbreviate 'are' as 'r' and stuff like that, but it's a conscious choice I make, a decision that the sentence is too long or I am chatting too slow.
Of course, I suspect the problem isn't that people learn to write 'badly', it's that they often aren't taught how to recognize different speaking and writing styles and when different ones are appropriate to use. Humans do some of that subconsciously, changing 'levels' when the other person changes, but that doesn't work when writing a paper, and it requires a level of knowledge and understanding of the rules that some high school students just don't have.
You know, when I was going through high school, they actually tried to teach this, and I always thought it was stupid. "I'll talk how I want to talk, damnit, and screw the other guy if he thinks I seem uneducated."
However, I apparently wasn't who they were talking to. They were talking to the guy thinking 'fuk that shit, im not with fancy talk 2 impress' or something.
Oh, I wasn't wasn't trying to compare it to Alias. I was just trying to explain what I meant by 'mission based'. An example like 'Burn Notice' would have worked as well.
Was it ever determined who programed echo to talk to Ballard?
Not technically. The person leaking info to Ballard was Boyd, as part of his plan to get Ballard in the Dollhouse protecting Echo. That's who the programmer claimed to be, so probably was.
Boyd probably realized Ballard was fixated on Caroline via November. (The Doll Adele was using to make sure Ballard didn't get too far, probably standard operating procedure.) So Boyd figured that he could use Ballard to protect 'Caroline', as Boyd had been assigned to another position. (He could have fixed that, but not without raising suspicions.)
What this plan was to get Ballard in the Dollhouse is unknown, as Alpha screwed it all up.
At least, I think that's what happened. It's hard to figure out a show where all the main cast except Topher were secretly 'traitors' in one way or another.
Actually, the narrative of Dollhouse already ended. The week before last.
Of course, this being a Joss Whedon show, they saved the world, everything is happy, and then we timeskip and see the apocalypse happened anyway. Doh.
What's happening this week is the second part of the epilogue, the first part of which was on the season 1 DVDs, then was mentioned halfway though the season, and then was glimpsed at the end of the last episode. Almost everyone has stopped being 'people', but is there a chance for humanity at all?
And, likewise, I was rooting for TSCC instead of Dollhouse, despite being a Joss fan.
OTOH, now I'm really glad Dollhouse won, as the ending was spectacular. Dollhouse really screwed up in how it started and how slowly it tried to build. I mean, yes, if it had seven seasons at that speed, at the end, we'd all be amazed how the universe itself developed along with the characters...but as it is, we had an extreme slow-speed season and a quarter, and then everything jammed in the last ten episodes.
I think if we'd started out with maybe two 'This is the premise of the Dollhouse, and how Dolls are supposed to work' shows, then show some breakdowns like the amnesia episode and the 'goes back to reclaim her baby' episode, and had Echo 'composite' into full-awareness halfway through the first season, the show could have actually had enough viewers to stretch out three or four years. Introduce Alpha at the end of the first season, have him the big bad all season 2, get rid of him at the end of the second, etc, etc.
Instead, most of the first season, it was often a normal 'mission' show, like 'Alias' or 'Tru Calling', with a really weird character premise, a character who simply was not actually a person.
I knew and trusted Joss, and kept watching, but if I hadn't, I'd given up on it already, and I quite understood why the network was thinking about killing it.
Should I point out that Joss Whedon has done almost exactly that, or were you being sarcastic?
Granted, it wasn't a 'share alike' license, instead was streamed for free off the web, and people bought it on DVD instead of donating money.
And he actually financed it himself, and hence it's only three episodes, but, OTOH, he makes all the profits, too.
But baring those two things, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is essentially what you just described.
And his model was Felicity Day's 'The Guild', which is almost exactly what you're talking about. They made three short episodes, ran out of money, aired them, got enough donations to continue. Later seasons have had a commercial sponsor at the start.
Of course, Dr. Horrible has a grand total of 45 minutes, and each episode of The Guild is between 3-6 minutes, so in the total is probably around 60 minutes for three seasons.
So it's sorta starting out like independent film making, where everyone funding it themselves and costs have to be very low, so the running time is very low. Like a lot of independent films, which had 20 minute running times. In fact, 'The Guild' is arguably just 3 independent films, one a season, in episodic format. But eventually, investors will catch on.
Although I don't think it's going to work like you think. I suspect it will be much like investors in plays and whatnot....people come in, give $3,000, expect hopefully $5,000 to be made, along with a single commercial sponsor who gets to put a 15 second ad at the front and doesn't expect any money back.
That's not to say they won't ask for small donations, too, but it will probably be for stuff like early access to the episodes and extra features, and of course DVDs will be for sale also. People don't want to have to keep track of ten thousand investors owed microscopic returns, that's way too expensive.
Also, while 'share this with your friends' sounds cool, in reality, until this actually takes off, every 'viewing' needs to count, so they can show their investors and sponsors, so it's all going to be streaming for now. (Plus DVD sales.)
If by 'his attitude with studios' is 'does not like when they tamper with his shows', yeah.
It's worth mentioning that the show they weren't able to tamper with, B5, did significantly better then the show they totally screwed with (Crusade) and a lot better than the show created he so they could screw with and did a little (Jeremiah.)
And, I will repeat this as loudly and as long as I am permitted: Fox purchases sci-fi shows to cancel them. They do not deserve any props for this.
Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, a network was just starting. This network managed to, through essentially luck, to end up with some hits. Namely, The X-Files and Married with Children.
This network then apparently forgot that both those shows had a slow start, and then set about constantly trying to recreate them, buying every sci-fi series it could, and then canceling it as soon as it wasn't instantly X-Files material. (They did the same with sitcoms, but those were crappy dime a dozen things no one cared about.)
Other sorts of programming, Fox is fine with. But, as I said, TV studios are incredibly dysfunctional, and operate solely on perception, and everyone who 'sponsors' a sci-fi show gets it compared to the X-Files in its heyday, season 7 or so, and off course they massively fall short. Either it gets canceled out from under them, or they manage to pawn it off on someone else, who can safely kill it by juggling it around and not promoting it. (But it doesn't matter, because it wasn't 'their' show.)
Incidentally, I think this is why Fringe is doing so well inside Fox, being an almost outright clone of the X-Files. The ratings are fairly okay, but I have a feeling if this had been a different type of sci-fi show with those rating, it would have been toast already.
What doesn't help this fact is that sci-fi shows have a perception of high costs, even if they're set in normal world with maybe a few ten thousand dollars of CGI each episode. For example, the season before last, Fox was going to cancel either Terminator:TSCC or Dollhouse, citing costs, and ending up scrapping TSCC. Well, Dollhouse has absolutely no more costs than any other show (Post-apoc episodes aside) and TSCC likes to blow a car up every three episodes, and that's about it. (I have no idea why Fox thinks this, as The X-Files didn't have a high FX budget either. I think Fox means 'compared to reality shows'.)
But, essentially, what's going on is that executives at Fox really really really want another X-Files, and when they don't get one, they cancel it. Their purchasing and canceling every sci-fi show ever is an idiotic combination of higher demand at Fox and higher expectations.
Sure, if it wasn't for Fox 'giving sci-fi a chance', a lot of it wouldn't make it to air...although a lot of that shouldn't. Sci-fi can be bad, too, and even good sci can have a shitty viewership. And it doesn't help that Fox Studios, which operates as a separate entity, has a rep for making good sci-fi, and Fox network gets first dibs on those shows. (And they will always regard passing up Buffy.)
But the actual remaining good stuff would be picked up by other networks and aired, like some of it was. And that stuff, because other networks don't have some sort of executive sci-fi inferiority complex that Fox has, would actually be compared to other, non-genre shows on merit, and treated the same as other shows.
For example, Heroes, which has just been limping along in the ratings for a while, will probably be canceled soon, as the recent aggressive ad campaign didn't produce any results. I like the show, but this is entirely reasonable for it to be canceled, because NBC is treating it like a normal show. They don't move it around, they do advertise for it, but they do expect it to carry its weight. (OTOH, it's probably going to get a reprieve as NBC has recently found itself short five hours of programming, so as long as Heroes isn't losing money, it's okay.)
In fact, this is somewhat backwards of 'not counting'.
If I was an advertiser, and two TV shows had the same ratings and audience, but one had half the commercial time of the other, I'd try to get into that one, assuming the same price.
Why? Well, people are less likely to skip ads when they are shorter. Seems obvious to me.
OTOH, it might not be the same price...commercials cost more at the start and end of the break, and less in the middle, I believe, and a show with less commercials might not have a middle slot.
None of this is really relevant to the Nielsen ratings not wanting to merge in Hulu views, though. That's the same show, aired with less commercials, and an argument could be made it would have less viewers if it had the standard amount, so it's unfair to count it the standard rate.
People who can't vote are still counted, to this day, which is just stupid for many reasons.
It's especially egregious with areas with large prison populations, where they cannot vote but count as 'residences' for the purpose of allocation representation.
People often forget that that, legally, who can vote is up to the states. They are forbidden for using certain criteria for this, but could easily say 'No one can vote' or 'Only people seven feet tall can vote.'.
The really funny thing is that, legally, you can end up with a congressional district with no legal voters at all, at which point the constitutional sigsegs and the country crashes, I believe.
I think we should have a constitutional amendment saying that you only get congressional representation for each registered voter, as of the last census. (And that's a compromise, as I'd really like them only to get it for each actual voter, in each congressional race, averaged over the last decade.)
No shit.
Ratings were important when it was 'Which of these shows will take up valuable time on the channel?' We even talked about 'prime time'. If one show was making a profit of $500,000 an episode, and you thought a different one could make $600,000, sure, cancel the first.
But it's goddamn stupid when you stop living in the idiotic 'broadcast TV' world. You should make both shows. In fact, you should make anything that makes you money, or at least has a reasonable chance of doing so. Because it makes you money. I cannot stress the whole 'it makes you money' concept enough.
The sad thing is, TV networks already know about this. It was 'syndication' long before DVDs came out, wherein TV studios make shows without having a network committed to buying them. Although that market was a lot smaller, and shows had to be very low-budget to make a profit on just that.
Bu they already had the model. They should have logically been able to make the leap to DVDs.
A lot of the problem is how TV studios are structured. Everyone wants 'their own' shows to be wildly successful, so a) often don't care about show they get handed by other people, and b) don't care about 'small' money makers they have. (And, of course, apparently corporations have no fiscal responsibility to their stockholders, you know, actually make that $500,000.)
Everything is all about who is credited for the next big hit. No one actually cares who makes money. Film studios are completely dysfunctional.
The future is looking good, though. We've had independent film makers for quite some time, despite there being less stupidity in the film industry...and we're just starting to get independent 'TV studios' as it requires less and less upfront costs for equipment and whatnot.