joshwent

Glad he got what he was apparently owed, but from other accounts this really doesn't seem like the feel-good musically brilliant, integrity to the bitter end David vs. the greedy corporate Goliath story that it seems many folks want it to be. From the VentureBeat article:

Meanwhile, O’Donnell argued that the audio work could not be completed until the game was in a bug-free, playable state. He felt the treatment was unfair but said he would continue to work. Members of the team complained that O’Donnell wasn’t contributing as expected, and his presence was frustrating the completion of the audio work. Ryan proposed to the Bungie board that O’Donnell be terminated.

Now, I am no fan of modern Activision at all. And just after release it was clear that Destiny was less of a game, an individual statement from a developer, and more of a grand, sinister experiment in balancing proven psychologically addictive mechanics with as many paid "expansions" as the audience would (and sadly, still will) shell out cash for.

But O'Donnell might not be the hero that fought back against the beast and got his vacation pay too. I don't know all (or even most of) the details, obviously, but it seems relatively clear that he gradually became disenfranchised with his fading role as the singular musical voice of the new franchise, and became not just an obstacle to Activision's idiotic office politics, but an annoyance to the entire team of his co-workers. I've been associated with a few projects myself where one of the leads becomes discouraged with something, and, rather than withdrawing gracefully, drags the entire thing into the gutter with them.

Dude should absolutely get what his contract entitled him to, but we should consider that he might not be the kind of innocent freedom fighter sacrificed to appease the greedy gods that threads like this want to see him as.

Not an expert, so take this FWIW, but that seems a bit pricey for what it is. I'm assuming a lot of that cost is the GPU and the SSD, both of which you can find on pretty great sales on Newegg pretty often. Also, AFAIK, 8gb is still plenty of memory (if you're getting this mostly for games, not intensive video editing or 3D rendering), so 16gb is a bit of overkill that's also driving up the price.

As always, I guess, it's a case of, "You can get this all cheaper if you can wait for sales and build it yourself.". But if you're not into diy, and you've got the cash to spend... go for it?

Maybe this whole discussion would be a bit more productive... after there is actually something to discuss?

Maybe?

@colorwind: The length of your videos could be part of your problem. I clearly can't speak for everyone, but I'm much more drawn to Let's Plays with fewer separate videos that are individually much longer.

With longer videos, it feels like the person producing them is making fleshed out episodes that I can really get invested in. You can't do a lot in a game in 11 minutes, so some folks might see how short they are and pass them by, assuming that they're just short clips of gameplay with nothing much added to the experience by you. Doing a quick search for your "competition", I saw this duder's Legend of Kay run. His videos seem to all be around an hour each. Hell, in this site's own LPs, like the Persona 4 Endurance Run, the comments got downright nasty if an episode was anything less than like 40 minutes. And if you already have the whole thing recorded, you could just edit some of the smaller videos together.

You also have to consider who your potential audience is and why they would watch your stuff. A quick scan of YouTube gives me over 9 other people with Legend of Kay LPs. What makes yours different? Are you funny? Informative? Super thorough with a single console/series/genre/etc.? Have some kind of unique perspective? To garner an audience, folks need to know what they're going to get out of watching a Colorwind LP, aside from just seeing gameplay with someone maybe talking over it. Think about what your hook is, independent from whatever game you're playing.

And as far as messaging goes, figure out your hook, and make sure to show that in your video's main image and the title. If you look at PewDiePie, most of his videos are shown with images of him freaking out or weird/creepy photoshopped stuff, so people scanning YouTube can see just that one image and know what they're going to get from watching it.

Good Luck!

Where gamers go to know...

how to best see smallville of Clark kent and lana lang dating.

I have seen Jews and Palestinians march hand in hand to my City Hall, in hopes of urging the US to reanalyze it's destructive policies in the Middle East that do nothing to help end decades of indiscriminate slaughter.

I have seen LGBT folks and their allies do the same in an all but then utterly futile attempt to have their basic equal human rights recognized.

I have also seen my little, super rich, ridiculously spoiled niece running through the halls of my Grandfather's house at Christmas wearing a shit filled diaper, avoiding her parents, screaming, "I want diaper rash!", in response to their pleas to just change her.

A "protest" is by no means noble by definition alone.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm... nope.

Also, though, just two days ago I got an uncontrollable urge to listen to the museum scene music

Didn't realize until a few years ago when I got more into The Smiths that it's an instrumental cover of Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want.

Profoundly beautiful.

@extomar: To me, this is about two distinct things. Gawker posting a written description of the sex tape, and them posting the actual video. It might just be me, but I don't see anything wrong, or threatening to journalistic free speech, if an individual has the power to demand the video taken down. It's a clear breach of privacy. We must remember that there has to be a clear delineation between what rights journalists have, and what rights we have as individuals. And there's just no situation I can imagine where publishing an image or video is an absolutely vital part of news.

Not to mention that that kind of privacy invasion has been happening for years. There are a bunch of porn sites that create fake celebrity nudes by Photoshopping a famous person's head onto an anonymous person's naked body. And even in that weird case where it's not actually an image of a nude person, some folks whose heads were depicted successfully got some sites to take them down.

And consider the more recent cases of celebrity's phones being hacked and nude photos of them becoming public. Would you really argue that Jennifer Lawrence was setting a bad precedent by asking that her nude photos not be published? If some publication felt the newsworthy need to describe naked J-Law in prose, then they should be able to. But the photos themselves (as well as her body, obviously) are her property, and should be protected as such.

Now, AFAIK, Hogan's lawsuit goes further than that by demanding Gawker take down the description, and that seems to be too far. That would effectively be "silencing" them. And that's where I agree the dangerous precedent lies. Hogan should have no ability to dictate what a publication can or cannot report on. But that report should also not be able to publish actual video of him in the nude.

If it's too raw to play it on release, you can always just wait. The game will be there when you're ready.

Not to mention that, this being another Bethesda game, it's sure to have a thriving mod community making interesting and useful stuff. So if you do wait to play it, you'll have the benefit of enhancing the game with whatever cool shit people make to tweak it.

@viciousreiven: There was some duder who was doing just that, but my shitty memory is failing me as to the specifics. It was like a blog post breaking down what was talked about with links.

I think it may have been like 1.5 - 2 years ago? Anyone with a better brain than mine remember?