more info than you could ever want about Pitchford’s porn habits

In short, there was a legal dispute between Pitchford and a former counsel for Gearbox. As part of a pattern of suit-countersuit, the former employee alleged that Pitchford had left a USB stick at a local restaurant which contained proprietary company info as well as underage pornography. Pitchford confirmed that all of the above, with the notable exception of the “underage” part. Given nothing came of it, and he was remarkably candid about what type of porn was actually on the USB, I’m inclined to believe him.

I’m reminded of the narrator’s distillation of his career from Fight Club. Paraphrasing, but the gist is “I’m here to apply the formula. A is the number of cars on the road. B is probably rate of failure. C is the cost of an out of court settlement. A times B times C equals X. If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we issue one and no one gets hurt. If X is less, we don’t recall.”

In this case, whoever counts Paradox’s beans determined the cost of issuing refunds was going to be less than the cost of staying the course (from a PR perspective, if nothing else).

There’s the kernel of a pretty good 3 minute YouTube skit in here.

I mean, I guess I just don’t view entertainment options as a finite resource. Amusements abound. Games, movies, shows, books, lectures, theater, articles, podcasts, music, sports, etc. The means to dispense with my free time far far far exceed the amount of free time I have to fritter away. So, while you may view backlog management as unhealthy min/maxing, I would counter that your preoccupation with “running out” of entertainment is, at least, equally as unhealthy a min/max mindset.

Also, I can’t speak for others, but your clothing analogy made me think of this: when I talk about not wanting to purchase a game because of my backlog, usually I don’t mean “aw man, I’d really like to get Baldur’s Gate 3, but I haven’t finished my Madden dynasty yet”. Rather, it would be closer to, “I’d really like to get Baldur’s Gate 3, but I bought both of the Owlcat Pathfinder RPGs last sale and I haven’t even booted those up yet”. So, it’s less about deciding whether or not to buy a shirt based on how many pairs of jeans you own, and more about deciding whether you need the latest, most fashionable cut of Levis when you’ve got 3 pairs of Costco jeans at home still.

Ultimately, it’s neither right nor wrong of you to hoard digital games. It’s your money, you do with it what you will. It just seems like a wildly hot take to come into that conversation swinging around accusatory statements like “that’s an unhealthy min-max mindset”.

That’s not really what’s implied in that statement. A better comparison, using your streaming service analogy, would be that you subscribed to Apple TV because you heard Severance was really good. However, one thing led to another, and now it’s months later, and you still haven’t watched Severance. So, instead of starting a new series (say, Ted Lasso) you queue up Severance instead.

It’s still not a great analogy, because the streaming service implies a real, ongoing cost to maintaining access to the service, which is not the case with most people’s game libraries. That being said, with Gamepass and GeForce Now etc, it’s not necessarily out of the question.

The purpose isn’t to “deplete entertainment options”, it’s to utilize the options you already have financial investment in before sinking more money into more options simply for their novelty.

The “point of the product” isn’t to provide theoretical novel entertainment value by sitting, unplayed, on my digital shelves. Bold take here, but I’d suggest the point of a video game is to be played.

Well, now I can only think of being Sherlock Holmes battling bioweapons, and I fear you’ve set me up for disappointment!

Dis u?

I’m not comfortable with companies using any kind of marketing tactics.

Now, I felt like I was fairly gentle in pointing out the absurd nature of that statement. I even readily acknowledged what I assumed to be your intent, i.e. there are absolutely marketing tactics which go beyond the pale. But, as I, and others, have pointed out, you’re the one operating on your own personal definition of marketing here, which is in contradiction to what that concept actually is. Any intro to business class will tell you that marketing is, essentially, ANYTHING an entity does to inform people of its services. It’s an enormous umbrella, which includes tactics both odious and innocuous. It is as readily applicable to the gal who posts on Facebook that she’ll do your hair for $20 as it is Facebook selling that information to a third party so she can be served targeted salon equipment advertisements.

All I’m saying is, if you say “all marketing is bad”, you need to be prepared for people to call you out on the hyperbole of that statement. Therefore, you might consider arguing the point you actually intend to make (which is good and I agree with you about!), instead of leading with a statement which you don’t actually believe.

Calling you Chicken Little was facetious, but meant to be a gentle dig at the hyperbole. Still, I shouldn’t have said it, and I apologize.

Take it easy there, Chicken Little. “I’m uncomfortable with any kind of marketing” is so hyperbolic, it’s almost parody. Putting the name of your business above the door? Thats marketing. Creating a website where customers can find and engage your services? That’s marketing. A minority-owned business proudly owning that status? That’s marketing. A friend telling you about the great meal they had the other day from a local restaurant? Believe it or not, that’s marketing.

Marketing is not evil in and of itself. Unless humanity returns to a tribal social structure where you can count the number of non-related acquaintances you know on your fingers, it is a necessary component of operating a business. Of course, you’re 100% right that there have been dubious applications of the principle, but again, you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water, and it hampers the salient point that you’re trying to make.

I didn’t even realize that there was another strike ongoing until yesterday, when I watched this Maggie Robertson (Vampire Dommy Mommy from RE8) interview. She even mentions that word wasn’t really out there about it at the time of the interview. Glad to hear it resolved enough that the union was willing to end the strike.

Link to the interview, if you’re curious. She’s very funny.

And it’s pretty good! I had fun with the time I put into it, though it did feel a little bloated in the same way their Pathfinder RPG did. I think it’s a consequence of their Kickstarter success for these games, which just kept talking on more stretch goals.

The good news is there is a LOT of game present for those that enjoy it.

Idk about that, I heard a fair number of folks who were less enthused with Eternal vs 2016. The general sentiment among those folks was that Eternal skewed too far into “combat puzzle” territory, where encounters felt like they had prescribed “solutions” that you needed to perform to succeed reliably. This iteration being less about resource management and high speed encounter flow seems to be a reaction to those critiques.

Exploiting Morrowind’s systems is a hobby unto itself. For years, the only copy I had access to was the Xbox release (not even the GOTY edition). Without the dev console, I had to discover other ways to bend the game to my will.

To this day, I have to resist the urge to steal the Limeware Platter from the customs office, not to mention sequence breaking by phasing through the barrel with Fargoth’s ring in that building’s courtyard. Since you hadn’t technically completed the tutorial and been released from custody yet, you could zip around the whole island, stealing with impunity and assembling quite the nest egg for your playthrough.

I’d say the latter rationalization is more plausible than the former. From memory, the swampy bits are pretty well concentrated along the western edge of the island, before giving way to the relatively temperate zones around Caldera and Pelagiad. By contrast, the volcanic portions of the island cover at least half the landmass, and there’s implemented ash storms with some frequency in those zones.

As far as headcanon goes though, I’m partial to thinking the fog represents aerosolized Cliff Racer droppings.

Does anyone recall what wound up becoming of the RTX tech demo which applied Ray traced lighting to Morrowind? The old axiom holds true, any mention of Morrowind results in at least one person reinstalling it, and it appears im the guy this time.

Okay? Again, who are you serving by choosing this specific forum to shout that messaging? I know you aren’t OP, so consider that the royal “you”.

It’s just tiresome is all, and I’m on the “boo, capitalism” side of things. It’s like the folks who turn every thread tangentially related to Microsoft into a Linux advertisement. Or the involuntary ejaculation of a vegetarian when the subject of diet comes up. Like, yes, these folks are probably correct about the things they are saying; you’re never going to be wrong to consider the angle being worked by a corp. However, it’s infantilizing to suggest that people are unaware that a corporation wants their money. That’s a given, and without additional commentary, it’s a positively useless statement that only serves to make people tune out the messaging, even in contexts where it IS desirable to bring it up (such as when a company is doing shady shit in pursuit of your money). Releasing a mediocre graphical remaster of a title that people have nostalgia for hardly qualifies as “shady shit” in my book. Lazy, sure, but not shady.

Interesting! Based on the headline I thought this was maybe like a 2d version of The Guild games, but this appears to learn closer to something like Recettear, maybe?

Higher fidelity for sure, as one would expect when comparing games released 10 years apart, but idk if it’s “better” per se. Of course this is totally subjective, but I feel like there’s no style to inZoi, unless we define “generic AI output” as a style.

Buy the Divinity games instead. Rewards Larian, doesn’t give WOTC/Hasbro shit, and enables the studio to continue to work of stuff they find exciting, rather than becoming chief foremen of the IP mines, along with all of Activision’s support studios who do naught but crank out CoD skins nowadays (RIP Raven).

If I remember right, Larian has pretty definitively said they want nothing to do with DnD or BG3 moving forward, to the point that they cancelled DLC plans.

Meh. According to the source you posted, that exchange was simply “my wife found two reports that Apollo Legend committed suicide. If it’s true, I will not shed a tear. I will try to suppress a smile or a giggle.” Yes, considering Apollo’s eventual death, it’s shitty, no doubt.

However, according to your source, that was in a private text to an unidentified party, who I presume is affiliated with Mitchell either socially or professionally. It wasn’t a public post, and it wasnt directed to Apollo. It doesn’t even state that Mitchell hopes that it is true. Just that he’s not going to be broken up about it. I’ve said far more inflammatory shit with regards to the barons of the American insurance industry. Does that mean that I should be found culpable for the death of Brian Thompson? I sure hope not.

Caveat: I only read the source you posted, so perhaps there’s wider context I’m missing.

I mean, my money’s on you misremembering, or having that thought implanted by repeated coverage of Jobst claiming that to be the case. After all, any such statement would be Exhibit A in Jobst’s defense. Considering the results of the suit…I’m gonna guess such a statement doesn’t exist.