I live in Ireland. Let's be clear here that the Irish people (hereafter referred to as 'D'Oirish') themselves are to blame. Internet access in Irish public libraries is already heavily censored yet if you point this out to an Irish person, they think you're making a fuss about nothing.
Ireland does not have the same level of security paranoia existing in other countries, where you can get beaten up or shot at by the police just for having a noisy demonstration where a politician might hear it. But in Ireland, D'Oirish never call their government and associated lackeys to heel and enforce anti-corruption laws. Political AGMs in Ireland are an exercise in group love, nothing else. The culture here is to never to cause trouble or speak out against the status quo.
I think this is one reason why D'Oirish are so technologically backward (seriously, go into a supermarket and see if one person in ten knows the difference between a kilobyte and a gigabyte. You might as well ask them which is heavier.), D'Oirish are essentially infantile (nothing solves a problem in Ireland like cracking a joke about it, then doing nothing.) and D'Oirish keep voting in the same power-elite every election, for the sake of spurious quickly forgotten local issues.
Everytime something goes wrong here, D'Oirish moan and whine and do nothing about it except hope it'll go away. No paedophile priest had to go into hiding for fear of his personal safety (fear of getting his face in a paper, maybe), nor banker nor corrupt politician, polluting industrialist or crooked developer. The only culture in Ireland is the culture of business. The government here (and that firmly includes the faux 'green' party) truly believe there is nothing that can't be run as a business model. When they figure out a way to monetise fresh air, will D'Oirish finally do something?
Lastly, doesn't anyone realise that there is already a form of net censorship in Ireland?
It's the appalling internet services that make downloading anything larger than 100Mb an exercise in anger management.
...some kind of tipping point for corporate bullshit? A point when the most zealous of fanboys (or fangirls) realises that their beloved corporate overlords are just too evil, stupid or evil and stupid to be allowed anyone's money anymore?
I live in hope.
My dartboard/shuriken target needs a new hate-face. Does anyone have a decent photo of Ubisoft's current CEO? Preferably smiling slimily but grinning inanely will also do. Must be headshot sized.
I'm 42 and for my games PC, graphics PC and general house PC I have a huge 21 inch CRT monitor, a 19 inch and a 17 inch respectively. I use them because they give a sharper more 'colour true' image and they use less power than a plasma TV. If your users won't 'go back' to a CRT because they're worried about their (status) image yet insist on struggling with fuzzy displays, why don't you stop wasting time with the display and focus on the user's stupidity/noobiness ?
Seriously, age isn't the issue for old PC users. It's inflexibility, conservatism, ego and basic overall stupidity. (It's also the issue for most other PC users as well, mind.)
Hello all you steel workers who shop in Wal-Mart!
China has been buying America's (and everyone else's) resources as fast as the money classes of those countries will sell them. They've been buying because they always knew there would be a shortage in the future, which would allow them to either corner the market or possess industrial resources everyone else had run out of.
Well that sounds completely negative and even... shill-like.
Never underestimate the ability of a gamer with coding skills. If we want to play Shadow Of The Colossus on a PC or a modified Xbox, we will, and Up Your Arse, Mr. Lawyer.
I think you're confusing abstraction with realisation.
Yeah, it's true that a lot of older games had incredible depth. Lords Of Midnight on the 48k Spectrum could take weeks to complete. Ultima VII could take months (and it did when I played it) but most of that sense of freedom was engineered through your imagination. It usually wasn't possible to add the graphics and art to show you the scope of these worlds - you just imagined it when you suspended your sense of disbelief and followed the story and the characters.
It's also true that most modern games (even the 'sandbox' games) really are too restrictive. Call Of Duty 1 - 5 for example, still forces you to accept the tedious bullshit that you, the near-invulnerable superhero, capable of winning the war all on your own, can't climb over a metre high fence.
But it's not because the hardware can't make it so, it's obviously because the developers are being conservative and/or just plainly lazy.
They want you on a track because they don't want to bother with all that game-testing and possible bug-fixing and they want the ga- sorry, product out on the market asap.
And that's the nub of the problem. EA set the standard/plumbed new depths (take your pick) in safe, derivative, marketshare seeking populist drivel around the time that most of the great games mentioned here came out. Clearly, it didn't hurt them financially one little bit, so anyone thinking that they'll show any respect now for the artistic sensibilities and originality of games like X-Com or Alien Legacy, is kind of misguided.
Well kids, ever since people had to fight for space by the cave fire, the 'Magic Word Of Power' has always been the best way for the weak and crafty to take control.
Simply wait until the tribe is gathered together and then jump up and shout the Magic Word Of Power at your enemy and watch as the feral mob rips the schmuck to bloody pieces.
So what is the Magic Word Of Power?
Why, it's simply whatever worst thing you could possibly be accused of in front of a gullible mob of violent conformists. That's all there is to it!
Say you don't like doing your homework. Just point at your teacher and say paedophile! and watch as he or she disappears from the school forever! It's easy!
You might know that your parents used to use older Magic Words Of Power, like 'communist', or 'homosexual' or even 'atheist' but those words don't work as well as they used to. Not to worry, your parents are sure to invent new ones for you to teach to your kids some day!
Remember now, the bigger and more stupid the mob, the better the magic!
Using 'entertainment time' as a measure of a game's worth isn't valid. Portal was only about 3 - 4 hours long but it was almost-perfect as a game. Counter-Strike was free and how many hours did that one eat up? It too, was almost-perfect as a game. Also, Portal has almost no relayability, but it rewards on pretty much every level. You could play Counter-Strike for a month and still be in love with it but then... you kind of need a decent internet connection and some good players.
I'd say that making good games has little to do with how much money the developers and publishers get. It arguably gets worse after they start rolling in the cash. Look at Sony and EA.
If game developers want to remain profitable then they should please please stop churning out 'product' and go back to making good, bug-free games with decent packaging and no DRM.
I'd have paid 60 for Portal and COunter-Strike, no problem. I want my money back on Bioshock and Spore.
Bioshock never worked properly. Crash bug after crash bug after crash bug and despite the purty grafiks it's just a derivative rip-off of System Shock (1 and 2) with puzzles that wouldn't tax a 10 year old.
When you seem so eager to run out and buy more from the same company, why complain when the games suck?
Firstly, just like Morrowind (and worse because I expected more from Oblivion), I wander around the towns wishing I could enter all those locked up buildings with their indestructible doors and windows. I don't feel like I'm in a medievalist fantasy world, I feel like I'm in a backlot set made from boxes dressed up to look like buildings.
Secondly, why does everyone have the same voice? OK, because to be fair you'd need about a hundred more voice actors. So why does everyone look the same then? Where are the really fat people, the short people, the children, the handicapped and the elderly infirm? Sure, I know there was a mod to add children but Bethesda should have done that. Also, for a medievalist fantasy world made in 2007, there aren't a lot of animals. I think there were as many animal species in Unreal (circa 1998).
Thirdly, one answer to the niggles above is that Bethesda would prefer to focus on the magic, combat and questing parts of the game. They're probably thinking that the players prefer fighting demons to hanging out in the village square listening to people gossip. Well if that's so, why did they nerf the combat and questing so much?
It's like this: There are no thrown weapons (daggers, darts, spears, javelins, etc.) because allegedly, Bethesda wanted to showcase the archery mechanics. Archery mechanics in which a bow fires an arrow about 20 metres. A lot of medieval tech weapons are missing. There are no long spears, pikes, halberds, caltrops or crossbows.
The questing is broken because its difficulty is linked directly to the mechanic by which the player's power and ability is assessed. Through a numbered levelling system. Yeah, that corny old rubbish. You can never be unique, you can only be less-than-or-equal-to the highest number value available in whatever limited range of class types are made available.
So far so creatively conservative, only now you find that - for no reason other than Bethesda are dumbasses - the dangerous fauna of Oblivion are spawned IN DIRECT PROPORTION to your class level. Its been pointed out that if you started the game and played it for ten minutes or so, then used a cheat to make yourself max level instantly, suddenly, Weynon Priory would be surrounded by hordes of Liches and Xivilai.
And it's that last point that kills Oblivion for me. Not the glass armour (wtf??) or the boringly similar countryside, but that In-Your-Face levelling mechanic. How can I feel like I'm in a fantasy world when I can almost hear the game engine shifting gear everytime I level up?
One last gripe. Only the most infantile fantasy RPGs have Luck as an attribute. Think about that. You can be lucky or unlucky, but how can anyone actually evaluate luck?
...I'd like to see more time spent on making the game world more realistic to be in, not look at.
We already have (for example), games with beautiful reflective water, swaying foliage with real-time shadowing, stunning skies and scenery. With character modelling the way it's going, we're well on our way out of the uncanny valley too.
The problem is that none of this stuff matters if you - the player - is basically a camera pole mounted on tracks with a couple of utility arms tacked on.
You can swivel your vision around, you've got a gun for shooting stuff, you've got some kind of 'use' tool (most of the time) and you can alternate speeds and posture. I.e: Walk, run, crouch and jump a bit (usually without ever getting tired).
But you can't climb over that metre high wall, lie on your back and watch the sun rise and set in real-time and you can't dance.* You can't really interact with the game world at all except to "activate" stuff with your 'use' button. It's like being a brain in a robot body.
I'd like to see some basic physical interaction with the environment along the lines of things getting wet from water, fires started in grass and bush actually spreading by the wind, and then the scenery staying burned afterwards.
I'm not interested in how my gun fires individually modelled bullets or the floppiness of my enemies' corpses.
*Jumping up and down on the spot and shuffling/running around is not dancing. Unless you're a punk or high.
Well any magnetically based storage medium that uses moving parts and electricity and gets hot enough to need a cooling fan has a pretty good chance of failing. And by 'pretty good', I mean usually before the lifetime of the rest of the computer has passed.
How we use our drives differs from person to person and the drives themselves vary from model and manufacturer. The one constant I look for is the warranties the companies offer. They're usually only good for 12 to 24 months.
If my drive was the only storage for my family photos and music collection, yeah I'd replace it every 5 years or so at least.
You're an idiot. Sorry if that sounds like a personal attack but perhaps I'm just wrong about you.
Perhaps you have actual consumer choice and the democratic power to change those consumer options. Perhaps you like being a slave dork. Perhaps you're not just a shill for some telcom.
Like MOST PEOPLE I live in a country that's whored itself off to some greedy international name-brand run by a bunch of secretive shareholders, someplace.
You want to see how 'the market' is magic? Try http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/29/0044216&art_pos=1The Greenlight example.
You'd be amazed how many people in my social circle think that SMS Telcom-related communication costs are 'reasonable' and 'within technology expectations'.
Actually... you probably wouldn't be amazed.
I had tried SUSE Linux 7.1 for the first time and I was so enthusiastic about it I bought a copy, rushed home to install it on my PC and went about setting up the partitions manually.
I'd already put three Windows partitions on that machine, so of course I was an expert in partitioning. What could possibly go wrong?
What went wrong was that I entered the same value for the end of one partition and the start of the next (like: 5000, 5000 when it should have been 5000, 5001) and I lost access to all three Windows partitions.
Shortly afterwards, I remembered I had a college project on one of those partitions.:(
Don't forget the ISP effect.
If you have a crappy home internet connection (and thanks to the greed and bullshit of the world's telcoms, how many don't?) how can you seriously be expected to share obscure and possibly eclectic media for long enough for that media to become reasonably well distributed?
Try finding 'Up In Town' starring Joanna Lumley or a pre-2001 documentary from the BBC or Channel 4 on The Pirate Bay.
Vested interest groups still control the culture.
Nick Yee http://www.nickyee.com/
I came across this guy's work about six years ago when I took part in a survey on.... MMO addiction. I'm surprised no-one seems to have mentioned him so far.
When I was 17 I worked in a supermarket that made a big deal about the quality of its beef.
One day, a pissed-off butcher for whatever reason accidentally-on-purpose left a mamagement memo on the sweet tray at the checkout. The memo advised butchers on how best to remove aluminium streaks caused by the shipping containers from the meat and how to disguise 'greeness' (from mould) with gravy.
When I was 21 I worked in an American owned animation studio that enforced a quota system which rewarded quota achievers with extra money and people who worked for quality, with the sack.
One day someone (accidentally-on-purpose?) left a memo from company HQ in a photocopier tipping management off to a plan to tell staff they would have their jobs for at least a year more, while actually our budget was being diverted to Los Angeles.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in Ireland. Let's be clear here that the Irish people (hereafter referred to as 'D'Oirish') themselves are to blame. Internet access in Irish public libraries is already heavily censored yet if you point this out to an Irish person, they think you're making a fuss about nothing.
Ireland does not have the same level of security paranoia existing in other countries, where you can get beaten up or shot at by the police just for having a noisy demonstration where a politician might hear it. But in Ireland, D'Oirish never call their government and associated lackeys to heel and enforce anti-corruption laws. Political AGMs in Ireland are an exercise in group love, nothing else. The culture here is to never to cause trouble or speak out against the status quo.
I think this is one reason why D'Oirish are so technologically backward (seriously, go into a supermarket and see if one person in ten knows the difference between a kilobyte and a gigabyte. You might as well ask them which is heavier.), D'Oirish are essentially infantile (nothing solves a problem in Ireland like cracking a joke about it, then doing nothing.) and D'Oirish keep voting in the same power-elite every election, for the sake of spurious quickly forgotten local issues.
Everytime something goes wrong here, D'Oirish moan and whine and do nothing about it except hope it'll go away. No paedophile priest had to go into hiding for fear of his personal safety (fear of getting his face in a paper, maybe), nor banker nor corrupt politician, polluting industrialist or crooked developer. The only culture in Ireland is the culture of business. The government here (and that firmly includes the faux 'green' party) truly believe there is nothing that can't be run as a business model. When they figure out a way to monetise fresh air, will D'Oirish finally do something?
Lastly, doesn't anyone realise that there is already a form of net censorship in Ireland? It's the appalling internet services that make downloading anything larger than 100Mb an exercise in anger management.
...some kind of tipping point for corporate bullshit? A point when the most zealous of fanboys (or fangirls) realises that their beloved corporate overlords are just too evil, stupid or evil and stupid to be allowed anyone's money anymore? I live in hope.
I'm going to Canada!
If I looked as old and ugly as Rupert Murdoch I'd hate the world too.
... when Microsoft is run by Steve Ballmer.
http://twitter-marketingonline.com/twitter-marketing/steve-balmer-eat-my-shorts/
http://www.silicon.com/technology/software/2004/10/05/steve-ballmer-qanda-microsoft-ceo-on-security-piracy-licensing-and-the-digital-future-39124699/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer/
Couldn't agree with you more.
My dartboard/shuriken target needs a new hate-face. Does anyone have a decent photo of Ubisoft's current CEO? Preferably smiling slimily but grinning inanely will also do. Must be headshot sized.
I'm 42 and for my games PC, graphics PC and general house PC I have a huge 21 inch CRT monitor, a 19 inch and a 17 inch respectively. I use them because they give a sharper more 'colour true' image and they use less power than a plasma TV. If your users won't 'go back' to a CRT because they're worried about their (status) image yet insist on struggling with fuzzy displays, why don't you stop wasting time with the display and focus on the user's stupidity/noobiness ?
Seriously, age isn't the issue for old PC users. It's inflexibility, conservatism, ego and basic overall stupidity. (It's also the issue for most other PC users as well, mind.)
Hello all you steel workers who shop in Wal-Mart! China has been buying America's (and everyone else's) resources as fast as the money classes of those countries will sell them. They've been buying because they always knew there would be a shortage in the future, which would allow them to either corner the market or possess industrial resources everyone else had run out of.
You're saying you'd stand back and watch others suffer because your sense of selfishness is more important? Spoken like a true anonymous coward.
Well that sounds completely negative and even... shill-like.
Never underestimate the ability of a gamer with coding skills. If we want to play Shadow Of The Colossus on a PC or a modified Xbox, we will, and Up Your Arse, Mr. Lawyer.
I think you're confusing abstraction with realisation. Yeah, it's true that a lot of older games had incredible depth. Lords Of Midnight on the 48k Spectrum could take weeks to complete. Ultima VII could take months (and it did when I played it) but most of that sense of freedom was engineered through your imagination. It usually wasn't possible to add the graphics and art to show you the scope of these worlds - you just imagined it when you suspended your sense of disbelief and followed the story and the characters.
It's also true that most modern games (even the 'sandbox' games) really are too restrictive. Call Of Duty 1 - 5 for example, still forces you to accept the tedious bullshit that you, the near-invulnerable superhero, capable of winning the war all on your own, can't climb over a metre high fence.
But it's not because the hardware can't make it so, it's obviously because the developers are being conservative and/or just plainly lazy. They want you on a track because they don't want to bother with all that game-testing and possible bug-fixing and they want the ga- sorry, product out on the market asap.
And that's the nub of the problem. EA set the standard/plumbed new depths (take your pick) in safe, derivative, marketshare seeking populist drivel around the time that most of the great games mentioned here came out. Clearly, it didn't hurt them financially one little bit, so anyone thinking that they'll show any respect now for the artistic sensibilities and originality of games like X-Com or Alien Legacy, is kind of misguided.
Well kids, ever since people had to fight for space by the cave fire, the 'Magic Word Of Power' has always been the best way for the weak and crafty to take control. Simply wait until the tribe is gathered together and then jump up and shout the Magic Word Of Power at your enemy and watch as the feral mob rips the schmuck to bloody pieces.
So what is the Magic Word Of Power?
Why, it's simply whatever worst thing you could possibly be accused of in front of a gullible mob of violent conformists. That's all there is to it!
Say you don't like doing your homework. Just point at your teacher and say paedophile! and watch as he or she disappears from the school forever! It's easy!
You might know that your parents used to use older Magic Words Of Power, like 'communist', or 'homosexual' or even 'atheist' but those words don't work as well as they used to. Not to worry, your parents are sure to invent new ones for you to teach to your kids some day!
Remember now, the bigger and more stupid the mob, the better the magic!
Using 'entertainment time' as a measure of a game's worth isn't valid. Portal was only about 3 - 4 hours long but it was almost-perfect as a game. Counter-Strike was free and how many hours did that one eat up? It too, was almost-perfect as a game. Also, Portal has almost no relayability, but it rewards on pretty much every level. You could play Counter-Strike for a month and still be in love with it but then... you kind of need a decent internet connection and some good players.
I'd say that making good games has little to do with how much money the developers and publishers get. It arguably gets worse after they start rolling in the cash. Look at Sony and EA.
If game developers want to remain profitable then they should please please stop churning out 'product' and go back to making good, bug-free games with decent packaging and no DRM.
I'd have paid 60 for Portal and COunter-Strike, no problem. I want my money back on Bioshock and Spore.
Bioshock never worked properly. Crash bug after crash bug after crash bug and despite the purty grafiks it's just a derivative rip-off of System Shock (1 and 2) with puzzles that wouldn't tax a 10 year old.
When you seem so eager to run out and buy more from the same company, why complain when the games suck?
Firstly, just like Morrowind (and worse because I expected more from Oblivion), I wander around the towns wishing I could enter all those locked up buildings with their indestructible doors and windows. I don't feel like I'm in a medievalist fantasy world, I feel like I'm in a backlot set made from boxes dressed up to look like buildings.
Secondly, why does everyone have the same voice? OK, because to be fair you'd need about a hundred more voice actors. So why does everyone look the same then? Where are the really fat people, the short people, the children, the handicapped and the elderly infirm? Sure, I know there was a mod to add children but Bethesda should have done that. Also, for a medievalist fantasy world made in 2007, there aren't a lot of animals. I think there were as many animal species in Unreal (circa 1998).
Thirdly, one answer to the niggles above is that Bethesda would prefer to focus on the magic, combat and questing parts of the game. They're probably thinking that the players prefer fighting demons to hanging out in the village square listening to people gossip. Well if that's so, why did they nerf the combat and questing so much?
It's like this: There are no thrown weapons (daggers, darts, spears, javelins, etc.) because allegedly, Bethesda wanted to showcase the archery mechanics. Archery mechanics in which a bow fires an arrow about 20 metres. A lot of medieval tech weapons are missing. There are no long spears, pikes, halberds, caltrops or crossbows.
The questing is broken because its difficulty is linked directly to the mechanic by which the player's power and ability is assessed. Through a numbered levelling system. Yeah, that corny old rubbish. You can never be unique, you can only be less-than-or-equal-to the highest number value available in whatever limited range of class types are made available.
So far so creatively conservative, only now you find that - for no reason other than Bethesda are dumbasses - the dangerous fauna of Oblivion are spawned IN DIRECT PROPORTION to your class level. Its been pointed out that if you started the game and played it for ten minutes or so, then used a cheat to make yourself max level instantly, suddenly, Weynon Priory would be surrounded by hordes of Liches and Xivilai.
And it's that last point that kills Oblivion for me. Not the glass armour (wtf??) or the boringly similar countryside, but that In-Your-Face levelling mechanic. How can I feel like I'm in a fantasy world when I can almost hear the game engine shifting gear everytime I level up?
One last gripe. Only the most infantile fantasy RPGs have Luck as an attribute. Think about that. You can be lucky or unlucky, but how can anyone actually evaluate luck?
...I'd like to see more time spent on making the game world more realistic to be in, not look at.
We already have (for example), games with beautiful reflective water, swaying foliage with real-time shadowing, stunning skies and scenery. With character modelling the way it's going, we're well on our way out of the uncanny valley too.
The problem is that none of this stuff matters if you - the player - is basically a camera pole mounted on tracks with a couple of utility arms tacked on. You can swivel your vision around, you've got a gun for shooting stuff, you've got some kind of 'use' tool (most of the time) and you can alternate speeds and posture. I.e: Walk, run, crouch and jump a bit (usually without ever getting tired).
But you can't climb over that metre high wall, lie on your back and watch the sun rise and set in real-time and you can't dance.* You can't really interact with the game world at all except to "activate" stuff with your 'use' button. It's like being a brain in a robot body.
I'd like to see some basic physical interaction with the environment along the lines of things getting wet from water, fires started in grass and bush actually spreading by the wind, and then the scenery staying burned afterwards.
I'm not interested in how my gun fires individually modelled bullets or the floppiness of my enemies' corpses.
*Jumping up and down on the spot and shuffling/running around is not dancing. Unless you're a punk or high.
Well any magnetically based storage medium that uses moving parts and electricity and gets hot enough to need a cooling fan has a pretty good chance of failing. And by 'pretty good', I mean usually before the lifetime of the rest of the computer has passed. How we use our drives differs from person to person and the drives themselves vary from model and manufacturer. The one constant I look for is the warranties the companies offer. They're usually only good for 12 to 24 months. If my drive was the only storage for my family photos and music collection, yeah I'd replace it every 5 years or so at least.
You're an idiot.
Sorry if that sounds like a personal attack but perhaps I'm just wrong about you. Perhaps you have actual consumer choice and the democratic power to change those consumer options. Perhaps you like being a slave dork. Perhaps you're not just a shill for some telcom.
Like MOST PEOPLE I live in a country that's whored itself off to some greedy international name-brand run by a bunch of secretive shareholders, someplace.
You want to see how 'the market' is magic? Try http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/29/0044216&art_pos=1The Greenlight example.
You'd be amazed how many people in my social circle think that SMS Telcom-related communication costs are 'reasonable' and 'within technology expectations'.
Actually... you probably wouldn't be amazed.
I had tried SUSE Linux 7.1 for the first time and I was so enthusiastic about it I bought a copy, rushed home to install it on my PC and went about setting up the partitions manually.
I'd already put three Windows partitions on that machine, so of course I was an expert in partitioning. What could possibly go wrong?
What went wrong was that I entered the same value for the end of one partition and the start of the next (like: 5000, 5000 when it should have been 5000, 5001) and I lost access to all three Windows partitions.
Shortly afterwards, I remembered I had a college project on one of those partitions. :(
Don't forget the ISP effect.
If you have a crappy home internet connection (and thanks to the greed and bullshit of the world's telcoms, how many don't?) how can you seriously be expected to share obscure and possibly eclectic media for long enough for that media to become reasonably well distributed?
Try finding 'Up In Town' starring Joanna Lumley or a pre-2001 documentary from the BBC or Channel 4 on The Pirate Bay.
Vested interest groups still control the culture.
Nick Yee
http://www.nickyee.com/ I came across this guy's work about six years ago when I took part in a survey on.... MMO addiction. I'm surprised no-one seems to have mentioned him so far.
I just have to say this: You ARE good business sense.
When I was 17 I worked in a supermarket that made a big deal about the quality of its beef. One day, a pissed-off butcher for whatever reason accidentally-on-purpose left a mamagement memo on the sweet tray at the checkout. The memo advised butchers on how best to remove aluminium streaks caused by the shipping containers from the meat and how to disguise 'greeness' (from mould) with gravy.
When I was 21 I worked in an American owned animation studio that enforced a quota system which rewarded quota achievers with extra money and people who worked for quality, with the sack. One day someone (accidentally-on-purpose?) left a memo from company HQ in a photocopier tipping management off to a plan to tell staff they would have their jobs for at least a year more, while actually our budget was being diverted to Los Angeles.
That was 1991.