Posts by Izuno

  • Are you man enough?

    Best of luck with this, and thank you for sharing. Whatever happens with the biopsy, just remember that your will has so much power to overcome anything, even if it is cancer. That's why the placebo effect is so real...if you believe you are getting better, very often that's exactly what happens.

  • Uncharted: Golden Abyss

    So Sony finally sent me the Vita they promised. Yay! Uncharted is my favorite of the games they included so far. Mazy is spot on with his assessment above. I will say that without autoaim, I'm to shitty a player to bother to get good with the thumbsticks. So I turned on autoaim and yeah, it's easier, but it's more fun. The controls aren't as good as a DualShock but shit....

    I PLAYED UNCHARTED WHILE I LAY IN BED.

    Repeat:

    I PLAYED UNCHARTED WHILE I LAY IN BED.

    And I played it while in the loo.

    Let's see my motherfucking iPhone play a game like Uncharted...and play it well. Touch controls can kiss my ass.

    Sorry...I just find it a bit of a breakthrough to have dual thumbsticks so portable. Makes me want more and better content for this thing, but alas pricing and content is going to be a big issue for Sony but that's a whole other discussion...

    Overall, i'm liking it but not sure I would have bought one had Sony not come through.

  • Steam Box

    http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/2/284093 ... ng-console

    Hrmm...today isn't April 1, is it? It's not...so....I got to sit in on some talks about this last E3 with some 3rd party pub execs but no one thought Valve was, you know, for serious.

    But here we are with it getting into the rumor press. Kind of an interesting idea even if it is just total bullshit. [Blocked Image: https://migrationtest.mapcore.org/public/style_emoticons/default/mapcore_smilies/emot_shakehead.gif]

    But what if it is not?

    or is...

  • Double Fine x 4

    Quote from dux

    I pledged $30. I feel better about myself now for never being able to play full throttle.

    I just full throttled in my pants hearing "Full Throttle" mentioned. That game was just so frickin awesome.

  • Avengers Assemble

    Quote from Mazy

    I like how Scarlett Johansson's super power is that she has a gun Looks like it could be some nice fun explosion porn~

    I hadn't read this far into the thread when I watched it. In that shot with of them near the end ...and with her puny gun...I almost fell out of my chair laughing.

    Otherwise, trailer has that nice CoDMW3/BF3/Inception/etc. type of BWWWHHHHHRAAHHH sound or whatever it was we discussed in that other thread.

    [Blocked Image: https://migrationtest.mapcore.org/public/style_emoticons/default/mapcore_smilies/emot_shakehead.gif]

  • Blizzard cuts

    Everything in this industry is cyclical on a macro level. Blizzard is no exception. WoW on the decline is obviously "bad" but it's not like Blizz is sitting around planning for their own funeral. The got more stuff in the pipeline so long run no reason to be alarmed since they tend to make games people like to pay for.

  • Blizzard cuts

    I suspect bulk of the layoffs could be in customer service. They've already said Blizzard Q4 2011 revenues are down 52% but obviously a big chunk of the decline was from raw sales of Cataclysm (retail or download) expansion packs that released Dec 7, 2010. So the comps for Q4 2011 are really tough.

    That said, I think the issue is WoW subscribers are down. At end of Q4 they said something like 10.3 million active WoW subscribers but ARPU was down from Q3 2011. Combine with about 11.1 million subscribers worldwide at end of Q3. This nets out to China/rest-of-world subscribers increased and US/EU subscribers decreased...and thus average revenue per user dropped because people in China, on average, pay less per month than people in US/EU. I know they pay by the hour (often at Chinese internet cafes) but the rate is pennies on the hour. Even if you played 50 hours per week, you'd still pay less than average person in US paying around $13 or $14 when taking multimonth (3 or 6 or whatever) renewal discounts. In other words, more China/ROW subscribers and less US/EU = less total revenues from subs.

    When that happens, you gotta cut costs. It's cold hearted to think this way but suppose you have 600 people with average annual pay+benefits at $100,000 each (i might be off but that's the order of magnitude). Cutting then could net $60 million/year.

    Anyway, in their eyes the only viable response to subs going way down was to cut a lot of customer service jobs since your rates of needing customer service index directly with the size of the player base. Still, I don't think the all in pay+benefits for average CS person was $100k, but even it was $50k that is a non-trivial total amount of savings.

    However people from Blizzard here please let us know if the above gorilla math is at all real, though I know you can't say anyway.

    Otherwise if anyone here was impacted my condolences.

  • Prometheus

    Quote from Mazy

    Last time I was this hyped for a movie was with Indy 4....and we know how that turned out.Don't turn me down Sir Ridley!

    What? Indy 4 was a 6/5 which we now know is better than an 11/10. Other things from bizzaro world include huge demand from film critics for a George Lucas written/directed/produced Indy 5 with double the amount of refrigerators, triple the amount of space aliens and in infinite amount of Ewoks.

    Anyway...yeah don't less us down Sir. Ridley.

  • Borderlands 2

    Hi Ferret!

    Meanwhile, I loved the music and sound design in the first Borderlands...Mad Moxxi Underdome Riot had awesome intro music and the Moxxi's voiceover was excellent.

    Guess I just liked the game so I'm seeing everything through anti-urine colored glasses.

  • Borderlands 2

    Bump:

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  • Double Fine x 4

    Quote from Mazy

    http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-…t-valuationHmmm

    Yeah that's really interesting. Notch is in a powerful, powerful position in so many ways. It really bothers me when some big pub execs (not all of them, mind you) react this way to the indie scene: "If we can't own the IP then f*ck'em. They should all die unless they give us the rights to their unborn children yada yada..." + [Blocked Image: https://migrationtest.mapcore.org/public/style_emoticons/default/mapcore_smilies/emot_shakehead.gif] +

    Anyway that's sort of off topic, but generally the funding issue for aspiring studio heads or indie dev folks etc. is kind of like getting a job in games: you likely won't get anywhere until you've proven yourself in some other way. Unless you have a track record of things you've accomplished you can point to, you generally have to have a working prototype or even a full game to show people before you even get people to look in your direction, let alone fund you. No mystery here...

  • What are you playing now?

    Quote from knj

    [Blocked Image: http://ja.gram.pl/upl/blogi/920746/img_wpisy/2011_46/BatmanArkhamCity.jpg]Finally got it yesterday, won't say much - this shit is HOT ! love every second of it

    Yes!!! I started playing in Dec...then got totally sidetracked by work and SWTOR (shuddup! it was for work...really).

    Now I'm squeezing in some B:AC again. I think I'm very close to the end. Let's hope Batman: Gotham City (orwhatever game is next in this series) is even better.