Sometimes it's just the verisimilitude. Briefly, there's a difference between reality and fantasy, and real women can be more exciting simply because they are real. Porn, and bikini-wearing women in adverts etc, are not just not present, but are contextualised differently. Context is hugely important.

I'm guessing "incest" refers to the mother watching the daughter having sex. Not technically incest, but a creepy mother-daughter voyeurism vibe.

I am mildly pleased that the UK beats Canada, and every other country except the US. I think that shows we're still relevant as a world power.

I could never play Doom. It just wasn't immersive for me. I'd loved Battle Zone with 3D vector tanks, but 2.5D didn't work for me. So Quake was my first playable FPS.

If you mean people should be considerate, then yes. If you mean people who don't care about spoilers themselves should feel free to spoil others, then no. I have no problem with people who seek out spoilers; I just don't think they, or anyone, has the right to choose for someone else whether they can watch it…

Well, "I think the journey is more important than the conclusion" is not actually what you wrote. You wrote, "if the only way...". No-one is saying it is the only way.

That's a straw doll argument. No-one is saying surprises are the be-all and end-all of watching a show. However, a good surprise is a rare and precious thing, and spoilers do spoil them. A good piece of fiction can be enjoyed many times, and only the first time can be without spoilers.

Sure, that part was good (although I don't recall it being better than Quake).

HL2 is beaten by HL1, never mind other games. In HL1 I cared about the characters. I tried to keep scientists alive. In HL2 you get given buddies that respawn. I ended up using them to trigger tripwires because it was cheaper to kill a human than waste a bullet.

Half Life shooting mechanics and controls were spot on? I thought they were dreadful. To change weapons, you put the game into a special mode, then cursor down to the weapon, then select it. It's a lot of keystrokes. Worse, the number of keystrokes to select a given weapon varies through the game as you pick up more…

"Residual self-image."

Leaving aside your abuse, I think our disagreement comes down to what we see as "the field". He would certainly be able to get a job as a programmer, and almost certainly as a video games programmer doing core engine work. Those are where his skills lie and a contract disallowing that would be (a) unethical; (b)…

They mean you are probably wrong, and he doesn't have a contract that would prevent him from working in the field if he leaves.

In the UK such an employment contract would be illegal. There are limits on what constraints you can put on ex-employees, and "not able to participate in the field" goes beyond them.

Well, partly because. There were other factors, but that was one of them.

3D TV has pretty much died because people didn't want to wear uncool spectacles in their lounge. Google Glass hasn't died, exactly, but it has a similar problem. I can see the argument that VR is different, and I don't much care about style myself, but enough people apparently do care for it to be a significant…

"I'm not big into books." - Denton.

It's South Park: Bigger Longer Uncut, if you're interested. In context I remember finding it a very funny joke, partly because of pacing. The film has a lot of outrageous comments, and this is one of them, and it came in a lull where there had been not much shocking for some minutes before. The character saying it, Mr…

Dishonored as a stealth game is frustrating because of the amount of UI that is dedicated to violence. For example, my right hand [i]has[/i] to carry a sword, even though for stealth a sword is useless. As I recall, on PS3 I couldn't reassign the trigger button that wielded it to do something I might actually want to…

Hang-gliding is different. It uses a rigid frame. In some ways it's safer because the frame stops the wing from getting wrapped around itself and plummeting. The drawback is that it's heavy and bulky and you pretty much need a car with a roof-rack to take it anyway. A para-glider you can stuff into a ruck-sack and…