scarycrayons

Maybe Dan is hoping that we'll still be waiting for this episode next week to see if we'll all die of old age.

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Metal Gear isn't just an anime game, it's now an H-game too. Oh my.

That Laurie Penny article that was linked in this Worth Reading is quite something.

There's nothing quite like grouping any criticism towards gaming websites or lack of research as being done solely by "shrieking men who are nothing more than animals" who indulge in recreational misogyny, hating queer people, and being racist.

Apparently I'm secretly a man, and I only dislike lack of research and generalising groups in a negative way because I know I'm a woman who isn't straight? This is news to me.

Somehow I get the impression that if somebody were to compare women as "little more than shrieking animals," there would be a lot more outrage than when Laurie said the same thing about men.

I'm really hoping it pops up in an hour... it not being on the 'Coming up on Giant Bomb' list makes me nervous!

I'm of the opinion that, while layoffs always suck, I can kind of understand it too.

I really do hope that GameSpot figures out how to do better at video and livestreaming content, because that's pretty much the only content I really enjoy on GameSpot now. I loved their 7th Guest stream that I caught a while back.

For me, Carolyn was always known as the writer who had some questionable views on games, as she tended to have a reputation for thinking that if a character in a game was negative, then the game itself was problematic and bad for the game industry. That always seemed like an odd leap of logic to me, and reminded me a lot of the "Doom encourages shooting people, and it's problematic and bad for the game industry" claims from a scattered few magazine/newspaper reviewers of the 1990s.

I'm sure she meant well, but her views did come across as a little dated, with a chip on her shoulder about certain issues.

I think the idea is that piracy will never really be stopped, and people will pirate things regardless. By doing something that doesn't restrict the game completely, it means that people can still play the game and realise it's worth buying, whilst simultaneously having a message saying "Hey, we know what you're doing, and we're going to make you look bad for not buying it. Have some decency."

If the game just locked up on a pirated version, the only two things that'd happen are:

1 - The kind of pirate who downloads all the latest releases regardless of their interest (which seem to be a lot of them) would say "Well fuck this" and delete it, not play it, and just move on to the next game, without even considering buying it.

2 - If a legitimate customer somehow trips the copy protection, they'd still be able to play the game, and be able to prove to the developers that they bought it, so the developers can find out why it triggered and patch it. The customer would then still be able to play it in the meantime while it gets fixed. It'd also save some hassle in the future when the copy protection becomes outdated, so they wouldn't have to manually remove it. (That's why everyone hates Games for Windows Live after all. No protection lasts forever, and it can screw over players of older games when the protection no longer works, or becomes inaccessible online.)

The problem with 'intentionally screwing over the player' types of copy protection (like Batman not being able to glide, and randomly inserting other weird game-breaking bugs) is that pirates get it, say "This port is buggy as hell!" and then never buy it, whilst telling everyone they know "Yeah, don't get that PC port, it's awful."

I think he just thought it was some weird rare easter egg.

Kinda like how people would see 'Call Apogee and say Aardwolf!' in a ridiculously secret area of Wolf3D and think "Huh, I wonder what this bizarre message is all about? I should contact the company and find out!"

Or maybe all those weird hidden images in the Trials games that would pop up if you did some obtuse trick in an area that nobody would try.

"What is the square root of a fish?" seems weird enough to be a 'Huh, I've found a weird secret thing!' moment, rather than an 'I should contact tech support!' moment.

I was in London on that day... but at the London Anime and Gaming Convention. I saw that one of the duders on the front desk at that con was a Whiskey/GB fan though! Props to whoever that duder was.

On a somewhat-related tangent, does anyone here happen to know if there's somewhere you can view archives of the E3 coverage from GameSpot from previous years?

I thought it would be kind of neat to watch the show floor booth streams from past E3s to see what people were excited about in years past, but I can't find a place on GameSpot to watch them.

I do appreciate what you're trying to say there expensiveham, but keep in mind that @flindip was giving a compliment and making a little fun of the 'no, it's all misogyny' mindframe! I appreciated the humour in it, at least. :D

You're both on the same page. <3