good article here, make sure to read it: http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2009/iranian_people_speak_14706

BTW, my 2cents? I'm all about fighting for freedom (even if unfounded) and all that it entails. I support their cause, but I think it's their battle to fight. As a rule, imposing a belief system/values on other cultures is destructive. We'll see what happens. I'm just glad Bush is gone for this whole thing. It'll be interesting to see how Obama's foreign policy handles it.

In Iran's case we need to be especially careful about not fucking with their internal politics.  We once ousted their popular, legally elected PM to help the UK get their cheap oil concessions back, and during that we increased the power of their monarchy (go democracy?).  That's what lead to the Ayatollahs taking charge to begin with.

But yeah, I hope the good guys win.  Fairly.

I have (that I like):
Belkin Nostromo N45
http://www.virtual-hideout.net/reviews/belkin_nostromo_n45_gamepad/03.jpg best for newer games that don't support my 360 pad
Buffalo Famicom clone pad
http://i3.ebayimg.com/04/i/001/1c/23/cd23_1.JPG - best for classic games
Microsoft Sidewinder USB gamepad
http://www.telecommander.com/pics/links/joysticks/mssidewinderpnpgamepadusb/untitled.jpg - decent, but not as good as the original
Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad
http://microsoft-windows-xp.selectmore.com/images/products/hires/300270.jpg - awesome but no place to plug it in
Buffalo folding USB gamepad
http://www.uncrate.com/assets_c/2009/04/buffalo-gamepad-thumb-170x170-2800.jpg - fits in my laptop bag

I also have some old Logitech gamepad at home that was a nice SNES layout of controls, but it's for a gamepad port like the sidewinder, and a generic SNES clone pad for USB that's ok but not of quality build.

I use all of these with windows, although I guess I could try them on a Mac.  Definitely need Xpadder to use the Famicom-looking pad with all the indie games I download.  Keyboard sucks for platformers.

EDIT: I have a wired Xbox 360 gamepad (well more than one) and it's really the best for games that are written to support it.

100k/year/person isn't too far off, you have to factor in the benefits for those employees such as health insurance, profit sharing, and all the nickel and dime stuff like free sodas.

I can tell you that free sodas are important.

Fair enough, you have the right to doubt those allegations. Those millions of Iranians could be misguided, after all. You can get back to whatever you were doing, sorry for distracting you from your routine.

I'll get back to following these truly historic events. It is not often that mere petty rabble can stand up to a powerful regime.

Nobody is saying that the election wasn't likely rigged or that we don't support the protests.  And we are all following this stuff.  Shit I even mentioned something that hasn't been brought up before, so you really have to have your head in the sand if you think I'm somehow not watching the news on this stuff.

You only hurt your argument by name-calling and stating things as facts that in reality are your interpretation.  Especially when the people you are getting hostile with are people backing the same cause as yourself.

I didn't have a problem with the statues unless I missed the first jump, but then they float you just too low to get off reasonably and you have to fall back down and pop up them.  That was kind of a pain in the ass.

http://kotaku.com/5293126/ubisoft-ceo-expects-60-million-game-budgets-next-gen

Ok some calculations:

150 Employees x 100k/year salary x 3 year dev time = 45 Million

Even with those ridiculously high numbers, we still don't hit 60m, nevermind the fact that 150 employees is a ton more than you need, 100k/year is an overestimate, and games rarely take 3 years to complete (except for nintendo, but they have lower costs anyway and smaller teams than most other "big" developers)


Where does all this money go to? Advertising?

People should try to figure out how to LOWER game development costs if anything. Higher profit margins that way. And as is proof with what Nintendo has done recently, more money =/= more sales. Didn't anyone take a hint from nintendo? Or are people still preoccupied with trying to topple Halo?

Also, the economy IS hitting the game industry.

Oh well, have fun going bankrupt, ubi.

You aren't counting any overhead at all.  Not saying it's a good number, but overhead is an amazing part of budgets.  Support contracts, facilities, consumables, insurance.  This stuff isn't free.

Also, yeah, a lot of it is probably marketing.

I'm just saying that rural support is a MYTH. It's been debunked many times now by Iranians themselves. The arab-speaking militia and 'supporters' are a proof as well.

Debunked where?  In one article and a few twitters?  Has someone de facto proved that a majority or rural Iranians support Mousavi?

Also, we're not talking about just one city, district or whatever, which is usual US occurrence. We're talking about demonstrations in ALL Iranian cities (quite a few have had it much more violent due to lack of media coverage).

Nobody has disputed this.  However, people demonstrating in every city simultaneously doesn't necessarily prove that a majority or the people, even in those cities, voted for the candidate the demonstrations support.

It is the real thing here that you are trying to downplay.

I'm not trying to downplay anything.  You keep stating things as fact that are not even close to verifiably factual.  I think and hope the things you are saying is true, but right now you don't have strong evidence of that.

I think the millions of Iranians on streets beg to differ.

Right, because they necessarily represent the majority.

Look, I'm firmly on the side of "please let the man not have won and let it all be resolved in a nice way that makes everyone happy," but claiming things as fact when you have no proof of that fact isn't going to endear you to anyone.  I think what you are saying is likely true, although I dispute the absolute degree you are implying, but making unsupported claims as absolutes helps nobody.

In good news, it seems like one of the to Ayatollahs has spoken up firmly against the election and in support of Mousavi.  And it looks like he has the power to make things happen.

I'm of the opinion the election was stolen, but one journalist and some twitter messages isn't really hard proof.

Also, support isn't 100% or 0%.  It's possible to have people in small towns twitting their discontent when 65% of people voted for him.

I made this for some thread about Super Joe's game, but I think it belongs here:



Yuk yuk yuk

Well, have those experts been in Iran yet?

Some of them.  He even mentions them in his article (where he assumes they have spent all their time in the city).

i think it's still real enough to get upset by it unless you've desensitize yourself. it's also often done quite pornographically -- the exploding heads in fallout 3 are an example. after you kill someone, it sometimes goes into slow motion with multiple camera angles, really focusing on the details of the head being exploded -- exactly the kind of camera-work porn uses

Pornography doesn't bother me, and also two different forms of entertainment using similar techniques (especially if both are visual) doesn't mean much.  I mean, we do multi-angle slo-mo shots of scoring plays in every sport.

I'm also not sure that desensitizing myself is necessary a problem.  Just because I would find real dismemberment or whatever horrifying doesn't mean I should necessarily flinch or cry because of the visuals.  What should upset me is the pain or death that someone's experiencing.  Certainly there are many terrible things that aren't visually stimulating to us, yet are no less terrible for it (waterboarding is a good example, it's pretty boring to see someone put through it).

And again, I found the violence in Fallout 3 pretty cartoonish.  I have trouble connecting that to actual gore at all.  Reminds me of the movie Three Kings where one guys imagination of a dude being shot in the head is "head comes off and there's a fountain of blood everywhere," whereas the real scene is "guy falls over and bleeds form the neck and gags and chokes and dies."  Thanks to news and media, I have a pretty solid idea what real violence looks like and I would be unlikely to confuse the two.

Indeed? Then read this article and be enlightened:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/the-urbanrural-canard.html
Or perhaps a more direct link to the article:
http://tehranbureau.com/2009/06/17/irans-rural-vote-and-election-fraud/

Don't speak like you know whom those people love and whom they don't love. The man, Eric Hooglund, studied the rural population for thirty years, he knows what he's talking about.

You are just a victim of propaganda, just like the rest of us.

Regardless of the guy's credentials, the other experts he so casually dismisses seem to disagree with him, and there are a ton of them.  How does he know how it is in every region?  Although I respect that the guy has really got a unique viewpoint on the subject, I'm always wary of single academics whose answers fly in the face of common wisdom because they and they alone have special insight.

I'm not saying his account shouldn't be taken under advisement, but given the limited knowledge I have of the situation, I'm going to go with "larger number of experts trumps single expert."  One man's statement is hardly ironclad fact.

well, more realistic. it's about as realistic as it is in horror movies, which themselves aren't very realistic, but it's closer to reality than sparkles and disappearing are

True, but it's still pretty stylized and often exaggerated.  I think if people were exposed to real gore in their games and movies they'd find it boring (for most stuff) or hard to stomach (for dismemberment/buckets of blood kind of stuff).  I loved Soldier of Fortune 2 because you could blow people's feet off and such, but I'm not so eager to see actual people's feet being torn off.

So yeah, maybe it's "real-er" but I think if it taps into anything, it's desire for fantasy rather than real obsession with gore.  On the other hand, I know people who watch a lot of videos of people actually being shot/blown up, and for some reason I don't find them creepy or bothersome, probably because it's not like all they talk about.

That gore isn't really very realistic, honestly.

Joe, your game better come with some awesome feelies to enhance the immersive experience.

some what now

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feelies

I demand pack-ins of fake nerd documents and a working bionic arm.

I tried just killing everybody in Crackdown but the lure of the orbs kept getting to me. Terrible addiction, that was.

Must...find...orb...

I've gotten all the damn orbs I can find.

Every text box (EDIT: Obviously not the ones that were one line).  Basically the last line was just about centered on the border.

I'll give another go at killing that guy tonight with my angry little dragon.

Hmmm...  Let's wait and see who else experiences this issue.  Right now I'm not sure what could be causing it as everything displays properly on my own machine and on the few other machines I've had the chance to test it on.

I'll post a few sample images of what you OUGHT to see in the text boxes.  Maybe your computer is missing the Ariel Narrow font I used?

Let me know if you experience any other issues.

When I can get back to this I will get a screenshot.

Joe, your game better come with some awesome feelies to enhance the immersive experience.

I used to play Stair Dismount and Truck Dismount and I would laugh and laugh.  Good times.

Sometimes I spend hours in Crackdown just killing everybody.

That is all.