hermes

At English language class, so I lost most of the events. I saw them later on TV, countless times, though.

• Cowboy Beebop is a good anime for people that are not into anime. Cool soundtrack, lots of action, and its a short series.
• FLCL is too wacky. I know it was mentioned in the podcast and its extremely short (which makes it ideal), but its too random to appreciate unless you are of the right mindset...

I still believe Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is one of the best options out there. The only problem is that its relatively long (60+ episodes), but other than that, I think its a great anime for those that are new to anime...

It could mean that Activision has a contract with Bungie to release new destiny games for the next 10 years, that they have DLC and sequel plans to last for the next decade, or that they took the commitment of not shutting down the servers until September 2024...

I am guessing the answer will depend of who you ask it to, or when, or how well the game makes...

I would gladly pay for it...

Ehh... no.

As others have said, if you put a payment gate to how many lives people can play, you incentive developers to create experiences no one can possibly win without a huge investment. It is the same as many F2P games that incentive the gamers to pay because the free experience is not balanced to be completable for free. Sure, in theory you can complete any F2P game, but at some point you are just brute forcing the system... If the game was perfectly balanced to be completable for free, most people would not spend money on it.

And yes, this is similar to the way the arcades worked. And if you don't believe many arcades were broken because they were forcing people to put money into them, try playing some games in MAME with infinite coins, and you will notice two thing: 1) arcade games worth changes drastically if you have infinite money, and 2) most arcade games did not have much content to begin with...

The best concession to be made for those that are not willing to "risk 10$" are demos. Granted, some are not representative, and they can hurt the game sales, but that is why making a good demo is: you can't just slice a piece of the content and expect people to extrapolate from there... Another option are the 1 hour trials that PS did for some PSN games. Those are good, but I did not use them much because of the bandwidth requirement.

No. "Fun" is a limited word. It implies you are always having a good time. Some games can be pretty good without people having a good time, the most obvious example being horror games. Videogames (as well as other mediums) can inspire tension, dread, sadness, pride and a wide array of responses...

Videogames should be engaging, though, which is not the same as fun.

Ok, I am surprised by how some people never knew about it.

But yes, the black background version is just so much better, I would be perfectly ok with it being the ONLY version.

"once you go black you will never go back"

Yeah... I don't think this gets through.

As others have said, it is out of character for Notch to accept the deal, or even a bigger deal if offered.

Of course, it is easier to talk about other people's money than to be in that situation himself. I guess the next couple weeks will be a test of character for Marcus "they creep me out" Persson...

@rorie said:

Which is why I would much rather read about Patrick's take on it that just "there will be a new phone... here is the link:"...

This is not a "hate on Patrick" kind of thing (pretty much the contrary). I value more his take on the features than having to go to a page of ads on apple's "innovative technologies" to see what's up.

Patrick, would you be kind enough to include those features in the news section instead of a link to the apple product's page?

Some of us don't feel like giving bandwidth to apple, so as to not make the impression I give a damn about their "big new" products.