“Oh please, like anyone believes that she and/or the NRA leadership actually cares about grieving black mothers.”

“We support the troops so much, we think anyone who does anything we interpret as disrespecting them in any way is a traitor who should die! Also, we need all these guns, because we’re always thinking about potentially killing the troops!”

“But the president does. Just removed a mental health restriction to gun purchase.”

Don’t release on Steam then? GoG and itch.io are perfectly reasonable alternatives.

“for a game as cheap and quick as BFII is to make”

“How does a used-game store hurt developers?”

“traditionally, developers and publishers have no issue with used games sales”

The attorneys of the the Midwest City church have requested that they question the rape victim about her “prior history of voluntary sexual activity” as part of the civil case. These attorneys claim that the victim talked to other campers “her sexual activities and history with her then-boyfriend, including her fear…

Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins - such a great cast, totally wasted on that movie. It got some good reviews, too, which the movie did not live up to. Hopefully at least Blanchett and Hawkins work together again in a decent movie.

It’s somewhat anachronistic to even talk about “Nintendo games” (unless we’re literally talking about Nintendo-developed games). Most games are cross-platform, because they can’t afford to exist on only one console. So we are directly talking, to some degree, about PC games and the dynamics of PC game sales.

“Indie developers are able to use small teams to make great games with fantastic art, characters, atmosphere, gameplay, etc and make extremely handsome profit”

Game companies produce what’s known to sell. It’s the market (i.e. gamers) that’s screwy, I’m afraid. Right now it’s indie developers more than anyone that are bearing the costs.

The current situation is basically the opposite of double-dipping for publishers, so selling a game once would look like that in comparison.

“None of that information holds water when you consider the cost of game development and distribution as a whole”

Loot boxes are totally borne of desperation. It’s not confined to public companies like EA whose primary function is to make money - similar strategies exist across the industry, including private game companies just trying to survive. They’re one of many attempts to make up for really bad cost/profit ratios in…

“there is a massive amount of overhead involved in the physical production and distribution of games”

The problem is that production (and distribution and advertising) costs of games have more than kept up with inflation. Given what’s being demanded of AAA games in terms of content, compared to back then, it requires orders of magnitude more labor to make. So even if the developers are making the same kind of wages…

Imagine trying to charge about $130 for a game today. Ha ha. Chrono Trigger was one of the most expensive games made of that era - but that only puts its dev costs, adjusted for inflation, on par with some (smaller) AAA games today.

“Fast and reliable internet is a rarity, not a given in the US, until you fix that problem streaming video games won’t work.”

I found that one to be “fine” as well; that’s probably his last not-terrible movie. (I was thinking of Blue Jasmine, that totally failed to live up to the reviews, which weren’t even raves.) I’m struggling to think of another movie of his that was any good made after the early ‘90s, though.