dwgill

@algertman said:

@theManUnknown said:

@algertman said:

@theManUnknown said:

@Binarynova said:

@mtcantor said:

@Binarynova: Where does it say this? Can't find that language anywhere.

My apologies, it's not in the ToS. It's in their FAQs.

"We know there are a lot of great projects that fall outside of our scope, but Kickstarter is not a place for soliciting donations to causes, charity projects, or general business expenses. Learn more about our project guidelines."

I wouldn't call PA asking for general business expenses, considering they're trying to change their entire business model and fund numerous creative projects in the process.

That's a stretch.

How do you figure? They've already announce their ambitions for a new automania strip, the lookouts strip, and the revival of their podcast. And I doubt any of those mystery slots are more ad space being freed up.

They have the money and resources to pull that off now. This KS is just for business expenses which is clearly against the rules.

How did you conclude this? I would appreciate elaboration.

@Binarynova said:

@mtcantor said:

@Binarynova: Well hell, that's true then. This does seem to violate Kickstarter's rules. Interesting that Kickstarted doesn't seem to care. I mean, they can just change their own rules whenever though, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Anyhow, I think Penny Arcade has proven themselves time and time again over the years to not be totally evil assholes. I don't see why this justified criticism of this kinda sketchy product is all of a sudden evidence of their nefariousness.

For the most part they're not. I am a huge fan of Child's Play, which obviously wouldn't exist without them. For me though, this is just terrible timing. The same week that they appeared on Kickstarter asking for money, they're tearing down some other venture. Whether it's true or not, it certainly feels like, "No, don't spend money on them, spend it on us."

Timing is everything.

What on Earth does it mean for them to be "tearing down some other venture"? Don't oversimplify what's going on. Even disregarding the fact that I sincerely doubt Kuchera—who we should keep in mind is the actual author of this article—is in any way significantly involved with the PA kickstarter, in the end he is still making a wholly coherent, logical, valid argument, and it's an argument that's already been made by people on this very forum and multitudes of other sites besides.

@algertman said:

@theManUnknown said:

@Binarynova said:

@mtcantor said:

@Binarynova: Where does it say this? Can't find that language anywhere.

My apologies, it's not in the ToS. It's in their FAQs.

"We know there are a lot of great projects that fall outside of our scope, but Kickstarter is not a place for soliciting donations to causes, charity projects, or general business expenses. Learn more about our project guidelines."

I wouldn't call PA asking for general business expenses, considering they're trying to change their entire business model and fund numerous creative projects in the process.

That's a stretch.

How do you figure? They've already announce their ambitions for a new automania strip, the lookouts strip, and the revival of their podcast. And I doubt any of those mystery slots are more ad space being freed up.

@Binarynova said:

@mtcantor said:

@Binarynova: Where does it say this? Can't find that language anywhere.

My apologies, it's not in the ToS. It's in their FAQs.

"We know there are a lot of great projects that fall outside of our scope, but Kickstarter is not a place for soliciting donations to causes, charity projects, or general business expenses. Learn more about our project guidelines."

I wouldn't call PA asking for general business expenses, considering they're trying to change their entire business model and fund numerous creative projects in the process.

@algertman said:

@FLStyle said:

OUYA is the reason? You mean somebody using KS to fund an actual thing is your problem? What about PA just asking for money? That's all they are doing.

It's clear this an attack on OUYA based on all the money they raised compared to PA wanting a handout to finance their already successful business.

Being reductionistic in assessing a person's motives is never going to be productive. As they themselves have already articulated, Penny Arcade are running their kickstarter as a means of giving their fans the opportunity to support them directly rather than having to deal with the ads on their site. That's all it is: give the fans the opportunity to be the beginning and end of PA's concerns.

If a videogame developer had the option of getting signed on to a major publisher and opted instead to follow the kickstarter model because they didn't want to be beholden to the publisher's wishes but rather wished to only worry about what the fans of the game wanted, I would consider that matter no differently. If fans of PA want to liberate the company from having to worry over "the almighty pageview" (as I believe Tycho put it), they now have that option. If they don't, then it's no big deal, and life goes on.

Consider what might have happened if Gamespot hadn't had to worry about advertising revenue following Gertsmann's review of Kane & Lynch, and you might see how this might not be an entirely trivial or pointless exercise.

Calling the linked article "an attack" is also not constructive, as it similarly reduces what by all appearances seems to me a logically articulated argument. One can point to PA's own kickstarter as somehow giving a motive for Kuchera authoring the article in the first place, but that doesn't magically invalidate any of his points. Indeed, his entire argument could have been articulated by any tech journalist anywhere, and indeed (as others have already stated) many of his points were already discussed on this own forum following the OUYA's announcement.

The fact that completely neutral parties in the matter are still raising the same concerns is all the evidence I need to disregard this already silly notion.

The thing that really impresses me about Bastion is how much it accomplishes with so little. With little more than a narrator—comprising the game's only voice actor—and a handful of characters its able to give an impression of a immense, rich, and detailed world. The scope of the game's plot & story is astronomical when you consider the actual size of Supergiant games and the amount of resources they had to throw at it and, indeed, the number of elements they actually utilized.

I feel like you could have easily taken the same basic premise for the narrative and made a AAA action RPG on the scale of Mass Effect and The Elder Scrolls. The fact that they were able to execute that selfsame concept as an independent title is nothing short of amazing.

@kgb0515 said:

I know many of you PC loyalists prefer to play most games with a keyboard and a mouse, but I think I will be building a gaming PC over the next year as I switch over from primarily playing games on consoles. My biggest thing is that I'm simply not coordinated enough to splay my fingers across a keyboard without losing reaction time. The other day, I downloaded the ArmA 2 demo just to see if my laptop could run it, (it can...barely) and I downloaded drivers for my wired 360 controller so I could use it to play. What I ran into was a frustrating command configuration menu that made me not want to play at all. I know the 360 controller may not be ideal for most games since it has limited input, but it's what I'm used to. My question is, are most newer PC games more controller friendly, or can I expect to fiddle with input settings for a while before sitting down to actually play my games?

As others said, most newly released PC games this days ship with controller support, and even those that don't support it directly can often still be played with the right software. But there are still games you'll probably want to use a mouse & keyboard for. As said before, you'll probably find a controller will be something of a handicap in most competitive multiplayer games (FPS and RTS games spring to mind in particular) but it's perfectly workable in most any other context. Indeed, I bought mine specifically to play all of the platformers I recently rediscovered in my Steam library.

@MisterMollusk said:

Ah, it's a shame there aren't more of them. You'd think with all of the people out their with fond memories of Chrono Trigger and FFVI there'd be more of them being made.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of Japanese independents that are putting out games just like that. We just probably never hear about those titles in the West.

@Sackmanjones said:

I thought this was gonna be about game UI but I guess not. Is it any UI in general orrr what?

Considering he's listed a videogame website next to a mobile phone operating system, I think anything goes.

@mrfizzy said:

where is the quicklook of this? I heard them talk about it on the bombcast but can't find it?

Don't know where it is on the site, but it's up on youtube.