TheRedStranger

I will be double posting this in the general thread, why? Because I have a statement to make about how we all can learn a valuable lesson from this. 
 

But when it comes to FNAF specifically discuss this in detail here. @Mike Arcadehas kept his eye on the issue.

On 9/30/2021 at 8:16 AM, Mike Arcade said:

That's why the series as a whole hasn't grown as much as it should.

Can't do anything too different I guess.

Makes you wonder what would have happened if it was never meddled therewith.

Ever remember this old in-game rumor @Mike Arcade?

On 4/19/2022 at 11:13 PM, Mike Arcade said:

It could be because that line was possibly put in haphazardly, as in they wanted to make up their mind on how to take it from there on. Best thing about it is that Two Worlds is retconned back to how it originally was. Other than some Sonic Forces plot holes here and there, it turned out well enough.

...although you do bring up a very good point. So the Humans get the continents and Mobians get to live on Islands and Archipelagoes? Granted, I don't mind that at all regarding the games, but if they actually do something with that (extremely unlikely), it would be really cool to see.

@TheRedStranger Any thoughts on this? 

  From a world-building stand point? 
 

 You probably won’t like my opinion in that regard…

15 hours ago, Wulfsbane said:

Considering how eccentric Jobs was, this doesnt surprise me. Though there was quite a bit of creativity in his era Apple products, but was that because they were more or less pushing the boundaries of technology?

Because it was subtractive creativity. When everyone was adding tons of crap and gimmicks to their PC’s, Apple was all about Zen. Make it a pure and simple workflow. To this day Apple products are always the first to get rid of needless dongles and bloat-ware, and the last to embrace more questionable gimmicky innovations like bendable phones and beveless screens. 
 

—-

As for Starwars, a lack of innovation has been additive. They keep adding random crap and dissonance. It does not organically fit with in the gestalt of Star Wars because all these ideas are fitting a corporate qouta and agenda rather than the narrative itself. 

On 3/26/2022 at 1:08 PM, MoKat said:

The Sanction-Fueled Destruction of the Russian Aviation Industry [Wendover Productions ~22 min.]

There's some good examples of how the aviation industry works in general in this video.

And here are some comments that made me laugh:

 

This will make Juno rich. And eventually those planes won’t be able to fly.  We have a frankly wasteful president who is totally beholden to his handlers. But he won’t be around forever. And eventually we will be the major world petrostate (and EV state) again. In general, like World War Two, we will have come out the economic victors in this, regardless of dumb politicians. Juno for example was the main hub during the isolationist time of the Soviet Union. All that traffic, and the economic activity that comes with it, is now ours for the taking. 
 

Needless to say, America has something to gain with Russia isolated. When we truly tap into our superior gas reserves, Russia will go from economically flaccid to economically nothing. Sanctions take time, a death by a thousand cuts. Even if they manage to keep Crimea and it’s oil, no one will buy it, and Ukraine just needs to damn their rivers, and hang them out to dry. That area is naturally arid…eventually shipping water to constantly sustain life there, rebuilding destroyed  infrastructure, dealing with a violently jaded population, damage controling the bad human rights PR, while no one buys their oil, will destroy them. The price of innocent civilian life always makes the checks you cash for a war cold ones.

When you zoom out and look at this in decades rather than daily sound bytes , America is just winning the third wave of cold war. Communism was just the peak flaccidity of Russia’s long time autocratic inclinations. NATO has swallowed up the majority of the land of the old Warsaw pack. Japan and South Korea and Alaska buffer them from the Arctic and pacific. And Putin has now galvanized the Nordic states to join it as well.  Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Armenia, etcetera, have fully embraced their own national and economic identity, and they want western investment, tourism, and diplomatic clout. At the end of the day, 0.001% of the population own more cash in Russia than bottom 80%. The politburo never gave up “seizure of the means of production” they are still commies, they just threw their “seized production” on a global stock market, serfdom 3.0 for Yeltzin’s post-Soviet pension plan.  Their people are poor and their human capital frankly underinvested, aging, and non-replacing. That makes most their money come with bloody  strings, while getting it from the west and their more robust middle-class and less nationalized upper class comes with less diplomatic baggage.  And no one, even the most cynical elitists, do not want to deal with the guy who poisons his enemies, and who is not brave enough to even stab them in the back. They do not want to be a back-stabbed rump state with a double-tongued power-monger.
 

Even Russia’s best ally, Belarus is not even keeping up with their version of Article 5 and the Chechen’s frankly warmonger on both sides. Lukanhesko even betrayed Putin’s war plans on live TV. He needs the UN’s support with radiation clean up post Chernobyl and a has spent years trying to nurse the Belarusian ethnic identity and language outside of Russia, and is dealing with a lot of hate in his nation. To keep power, he may go the way of Yugoslavia under Tito. He will middle man Putin, but China will take that same strategy to eleven.
 

China never has had a solid friendship with Russia since Stalin. They just want them to be the white-man’s hermit kingdom. They finally are the big player and out ran Stalin’s early Modern infrastructure advantages. They lust after Vladivostok and have even sabre rattled on Twitter for its return to these Chinese people. Their is frankly ethnic tension between them, and they want to drive a wedge between the west and them to get a cut, even if it’s lean. It will be more about denying Russia power than getting something out of them directly. Russia is the Sick-man of Eurasia and their army has literally been decimated according to NATO estimates by a bunch of Ukrainian sunflower farmers. It lets China know they can use that salami-slicing technique they use with India (another nuclear power) and slowly gain concessions. With Taiwan becoming less viable due to an American-backed Ukraine being successful in repelling invasion, it will be safer to just hate on Russia. If they back Russia in a direct way, and try to normalize their relations fully with the west, they stand to loose face and loose all the benefits of being a middle man. It’s looking more and more that Putin has been Mussolinied by Xi-tler. 
 

 Russia has frankly not been this vulnerable since World War 2. I highly recommend no one try and travel there or invest anything there in the slightest, not just out of logistical difficulty, but because it’s not an ethical thing to do, and it’s not a safe thing to do. Think instead about who is going to get all their tourism and general economic attention in a post-global world. 

On 3/28/2022 at 11:55 PM, Wulfsbane said:

Because Steve tried to please everyone? I was gonna say he didnt want to take risks but he did that quite often with Apple.

Because Steve did the opposite. He was quick and brutal to criticize, and though that works well in middle of engineering a Mac, it does not in creativity. Those parts of the brain literally turn off when you are in “fight or flight mode.” Brainstorming  happens best in a very loose environment where people are at rest. They literally threw out a thousands-of-dollars table, and then another, just to get the non-hierarchical dynamic right. They even invited the janitor to the meetings. Why? Because they needed people to feel like their job wasn’t on the line, that they could be free to speak freely.

I am just expecting people to start hedging their bets to please everyone and no one at the same time and using that time travel spiel in Rebels, undo some stuff and maybe multiverse away any problems here and there. So basically making all the mistakes the comic industry made post silver age. 

18 hours ago, MoKat said:

I like that comparison!

 

True.

I wouldn't want to touch that with 10-foot salad tongs anyway 😄

Me neither really, especially since inter-sectionalists largely use conversations about their social station to gain social capital at the expense of the persons even discussing its realities. Offense and slight-seeking becomes a virtue to confess their sense of social oppression, and that signaling drowns out healthy dialogue.  Semantic rescuing  devices like “X privilege” or “race traitor” are used to resimplify and merely reassert  their narrative against various people, at the expense of using a logical fallacy, an argumentum ad homenum, and actually pushing people away from understanding any social dimension to various ethical and historical issues. There is a bending of words, gossip, and accusational use of moral innuendo against people who question their own self-enriching narratives. And because of this, those corporations who seek to utilize  these people in the work place, as investors, and as consumers all alike, will be doomed to deal with their spiel and entertaining a parasitism of vital resources in the production of their product, to an audience merely only sharing one commonality, the need to feel and manifest their inadequacies and grievances.
 

Much like Mao, and his “cultural  revolution,” where thousands of years of human history were erased, this has lead to outright cultural destruction in cinema, literature, and even music. The “values” that fill the crap-painted blobs in the MoMMA have now leaked into to cinema.  Why make a Star Wars movie to this mob, when Star Wars itself is a social mechanism from which they manufacture their “hot takes” to further social capital? They at least need to eat it, digest it slow, but since their so much piranhas in the Twitter waters looking for a bite, it becomes an escalatory frenzy.  Star Wars will never be black enough, or gay enough, or black gay furry trans-disabled pro-pedastry enough, and when it is it certainly won’t appeal to global theaters like China that don’t share certain pieces of those values  (hence why Disney edited out two gay people kissing from the last movie). It can’t be enough, and story and characters, and plain entertainment value will be pushed aside for “the message,” a message that will always offend another head on the contradictory hydra of intersectionality and global markets. 

The worst part of it indeed is the appeal and acceptance to cultural relativism in general, you cannot really say anything meaningful with it. I mean by the standards (or lack thereof) of cultural relativism, the rebels are just as bad guys. From a Canadian, Russian or Chinese perspective, who are they to oppose their cultural values on the imperial government and neutral planets? To the imperials, perhaps their monolithic  strict order brings stability in a complex galaxy, much in their respective countries? The destruction of the Death Star was a mass slaughter of galactic patriots, and their fascistic ideas have brought “peace and order to the galaxy.” The meta-fictional culturally relative hot-takes that bury the story, ironically will make any new revisions of story cold and bland.  At the end, a story always takes a side, and makes a statement. I think that is one reason sue-mongering  was approached in characters like Rey. It’s just safest to make avatars of obsequiousness power-projection for these types of “fans,” story and years of cinematic and literary theory be damned. Without meaning you just have a arms race of CGI spectacle, the denunciation of meaning as meaninglessness (“reversal of expectations”), and the will-to-power of certain characters and their broader identities. So basically it turns your work in a form of forced and flashy nihilism. That basically describes the Last Jedi perfectly. 

On 2/22/2022 at 1:59 PM, MoKat said:

I'm inclined to agree; wokeness & creativity appear to be mutually exclusive.

Because creativity is naturally always offending to someone’s political equilibrium. Dungeons and Dragons scared the white rural Pentecostal folks, but it meant them no harm. It just agitated their insular and subjective view of magic and mythology. This moral panic is also going to be out of subjective ignorance, but it will be exponentially worse due to the multiplicative power of the infinite combinations of potential offended persons. It was easier to convince 80’s mom Iron Maiden and D&D was not satanic. Gygax and Niko for example were Christians. But with the woke-scolds, their unity is a lack of central-indentity. That leads them to be much harder to impress an idea on, but also makes them basically an infertile movement, they just don’t share the memetic base-pairs, so to speak, to perpetuate their movement. The LGBTQIAPT+ movement for example is less a melting pot and more a salad bowl of competing sexual philosophies. Some believe you are born gay, some believe you cannot be born a man or woman, and that it’s “forced” on you. Nature is utterly fixed to some, and utterly fluid to the other side. The T and the LG are at fundamental odds. And don’t me started on the ethnic dimensions of this. Historically Irish and Italians were basically in the same socioeconomic situation and kinda hated each other.  That was just a generation ago. To expect people to make a intersectionality creative and productive and a culture, let alone survivable, is silly. Due to the committee style and self-censoring nature and all the pitfalls of potential disunity and rejection, there is no appealing to this hydra of competing and overlapping interests. You will always anger someone, and always conflict what they subjectively feel and believe. Since that is immediately associated with oppression in the woke worldview, it’s doomed to kill its own sacrifice it’s own creative darlings, Bale style.

A good example of this it’s they story Ed Catmul shares in his book on Pixar Creativity Inc. he had to ban Steve Jobs from the brainstorming sessions. Can you guess why? @WarTraveller@Wulfsbane

Anyone here read anything good lately? @Mike Arcade?

2 hours ago, MoKat said:

*chuckles at the Skyrim comment*

 

I know! But it’s so true. XD

That actually made the subtext click for me. The destruction of the future.

A deeper subtextual dive on the “Backrooms/Mundane Horror” phenomena. 

 What is it to realize the world is more crazy than it seems? That you have a special place in it, and the line between fiction and reality is a much more fuzzy than you think? That is the feeling (good or bad) that bears down on you with an ARG, a form of game that insists on its reality and attempts to suspend your disbelief in a much more forceful way. There is no fourth wall to peer through here…

Anyone have a few favorites?

On 2/16/2022 at 3:44 PM, MoKat said:

This is an interesting critque of some rather obscure game systems...

RPG Stories: A few stories from non-D&D systems I've played [Puffin Forest]

 

 

Open Legend really was a flash pan one. I heard so much about it, and totally disappeared. I think the gimmicks are the bigger killers of these types of games. It’s me the trick is to be minimalistic and focus on the ergonomics of broad play in your design, rather than obsessing over edgy use cases. I have a tendency to think more Apple than Windows when it comes to table top game design. 

Though I love the RP element to this, and ardently believe this form of entertainment is a part of the future, this is just corporate cringe trash. 

Well, the book of Bobba Fett did not just bomb, they had to seemingly throw in new episodes of the Mandolorian to salvage it. And, it looks likes, with the final spoiler of the season, the crappy sequels will perhaps remain canon. What is disgusting is that Disney seems to have deliberately mislead fans into thinking otherwise to keep a hold of their cash during the cruise and park lean Covid times. Pathetic to manipulate people like that.

Broadened Topic 

Hey guys, is anyone actually getting civil or legal action yet for the Blizzard debacle? I mean, that’s the ultimate standard of Justice. If people have been hurt, especially in that, way, I care little about mergers and corporate chess games. I care about the individuals hurt. Bars or reciprocity for wrong doing matter more than anything in bettering the already crappy workplace culture of AAA gaming. 

Broadened topic.

@MoKat@Mike Arcade

How would you guys translate racing, platforming, and movement mechanics to a table top game? Keeping Sonic in mind. 

On 3/28/2021 at 8:27 PM, Mike Arcade said:

https://github.com/Rubberduckycooly/Sonic-1-2-2013-Decompilation

Wanted to share this with all of you, it's a fan project that allows you to play the Christian Whitehead Android Ports on PC and other consoles.

It allows you to doggle options such as having 7 Emeralds in Sonic 1, Insta-shield, Drop Dash (a new addition), and more much more easier to go with save files of your choice. Just some good quality quality of life changes, plus mods!

It's similar to what Sonic 3 A.I.R. did some time ago, and I'd highly recommend you to check out the best ports of Sonic 1 & 2. All you need is the Android ports themselves and you are good to go, which are very cheap and easy to find.

 

I would broaden this topic to include similar endeavors, Mike. Fan-made Ports. 

On 1/30/2022 at 5:37 PM, MoKat said:

Amtrak California Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco

 

 

I love the Zephyr. I am probably going to go on it this Summer with @Senior Bobbert to see an old friend from FUS.

On 1/3/2022 at 11:27 AM, Mike Arcade said:

So, while everyone is gearing up for the newest title in Sonic, along with an awaited Movie Sequel (feels surreal typing that), I wanted to give the latest upcoming Sonic Re-Release a highlight, alongside all those that came before it.

We don't know too much about Sonic Origins, other than being a Collection of Ports (Not Emulated, apparently) of Sonic 1, 2, CD, and 3&K.

With that in mind, what do you think this Collection will be like?

Also, what is your favorite Collection or Re-release of Sonic?

Let us know and get this discussion going.

 Common sense dictates it would be a consolidation and remade retelling of the first three Sonic games, in one grand composite story. But you know, Sega is not know to be commonly sensible, so for all we know it will be a corny reboot no one will like. I have more faith in the former though, despite Sega’s past goofs with the series. More likely they will play it too safe and just eek something barely above the originality of a new port. Keeping my expectations low, but I am often surprised because of that. So hey, best of luck to us all.