Wait, I’m confused... I thought Elder Scrolls Online was set in a totally different era? Like, way back in the past or something? Or am I missing something?

Because Seyda Neen is an Imperial outpost, essentially. That architecture is Imperial, and the Empire has only recently acquired that territory when Morrowind…

“Maybe casting directors could look a little harder.”

You’re assuming they have a choice. Would you really want to be the casting director who tells a cult that owns half of Hollywood to go fuck itself? Do you imagine that Scientologists like her just *happen* to find success?

“I doubt that’s a coincidence.”

It’s not, because you can’t just leave Scientology. If you do, it’s seen as something of a betrayal and they go out of their way to sink you.

“Tom Cruise is maybe the only person who could leave Scientology and still be an A-List Super Duper movie star - maybe.”

Can you imagine the…

That’s the thing though - it doesn’t matter if you don’t normalize it as a religion. It doesn’t matter if you try not to employ members of Scientology - if anyone in Hollywood *tried* to refrain from employing Scientologists, they’d be buried, very carefully, by a combination of lawyers and shady deals.

You see all the…

Incidentally, Warframe (a game that has a lot of features... shared *cough* by Destiny) takes this approach to PVP - you can use your fancy, weird PVE weapons in PVP. But in PVP, all their overpowered modifications are stripped - everyone uses adjusted, standardised equipment, with a list of unlockables unique to PVP.

T…

I think the fundamental flaw with the idea of individual characters in a game becoming sentient is... if the game software were sophisticated enough for a character to become sentient?

THE GAME IS SENTIENT. Hell, the computer itself is sentient.

Not the character. The character is just a lesser manifestation of the…

But will the new players have the chance? I mean each new generation that joins that particular culture will be hearing “battle.net” all the time. And battle.net trips off the tongue far more readily than the generic “blizzard launcher” or whatever. Not only does it have historical significance, but it’s fundamentally…

“Activision would be able to avoid giving Steam a cut of of the sales by distributing it through its own storefront...”

This is like the big publishers and their attitude towards piracy - their idea that one pirated copy magically equals one lost sale.

The fact is, by *not* releasing on Steam... they’re not making more…

Because a tiny percentage of PC players would tolerate that... not only because having to run the game at 30 FPS would be seen as an insult to their hardware... but more importantly, going from playing at 60 to 30 frequently would be a very jarring experience. Like, physically unpleasant and disorientating.

Essentially,…

“for Windows 10...”

Remember the days when making some game exclusive to the new and controversial version of windows really paid off and the game did really well because of its exclusivity?

...

*Cough*

Though one could argue that Peter Jackson’s “talent” is open to debate, given that his films featured over one hundred slow motion closeups of people crying, took everything in the books absolutely literally, featured a Balrog that was actually a DnD Balor, implemented bizarre adjustments to the plot that made no…

I wasn’t bothered so much by Alan being a shitty writer - I kinda had the sense that he’s supposed to be; he’s a bestseller, not a “great” writer. He’s a mainstream novelist with some pretentious leanings.

What bothered me more was that he could never close his mouth in cutscenes. Any emotion he showed, whether…

If by “fully own” you mean “bought the right to download and legally use the installer from their site, and can keep using that installer so long as you don’t actually lose it or deliberately delete it”, then yes.

But otherwise... no. You don’t “fully own” anything where games are concerned; you bought a license to…

“It’s hard to blame anyone for wanting to read a review of a game the day that it comes out.”

I dunno, I’d say it’s pretty easy to blame them. The need for instant gratification has led to a very unhealthy culture, both for gamers and journalists (and I speak as a former print gaming journalist). In the past, before…

Which might actually, in the long run, change games journalism for the better - if nobody got early copies, if reviews had to be based on post-release information, if all of us could calm the hell down and lose our obsession with buying the game the *moment* it’s released... maybe we’d see reviews that were properly…

There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what Doom and Quake actually were, on a fundamental level (which is possibly why everyone thought Doom 2016 was somehow returning to its roots, despite being absolutely nothing like Doom). This myth, revised history, of them being “brainless shooters”.

They were not actually…

I dunno... maybe the issue was Tarkus himself being too obscure. First time I played through the game, I never even summoned him.

Should have tried a Solaire profile. Could have invited the ladies to engage in some jolly cooperation.

But what the actual effects of losing it? I’d really like to know. Like, do they actually lose any money? Does it actually open them up to people basically outright copying their product? Or does it just mean... they don’t have absolute control over the word “Prey” in gaming?

Because unless they actually lose money or…

That stuff tends to slip out of games anyway. While working on a Left 4 Dead 2 campaign, when I was building the nav mesh for a level... I triggered an error that was telling me to “Call Brian”.

I later interviewed one of the Valve level designers for a magazine, and duly informed him that I was told to call Brian.

Oh, quite a few people have tried to challenge Steam. The problem is, the people trying to challenge Steam are often the old greedy publishers who Valve created Steam to escape, and they never quite understand *why* Steam took off, nor have they ever been able to wrap their head around the idea that digitally…