Templar Knight

I witnessed the first events from basically third-party distance and while I thought some of the stuff going on was bullshit, I mostly kept away because I was afraid of how toxic the whole thing looked and that I'd rather not get involved. About 8-9 months after GG's official "founding", I hadn't heard much, so I became morbidly curious as to what had happened with it, and what was going on. I did digging, found out that they weren't entirely dead at all, and delved into looking through all I could find on what had happened and who had talked about it in order to get a clearer understanding now that things had calmed down. What I found kicked me off my fence. I reached the conclusion that even if EVERYTHING that the Antis said about GG was 100% true (its not), it still wouldn't render them as the morally superior ones when they pull almost all of the exact same shit, if not even worse. So, I came to support the ones whose core ideals I more agreed with, and at least were honest with themselves in that they had no power over the behaviour of those who used their hashtag or identified as GG. Has it accomplished too much? Debatable, though perhaps the biggest achievement is that gaming hasn't gone the way of comics yet. I also find the idea now that they were a prelude to the current political situation an exaggeration by hacks trying to be relevant and hip with what they think are the latest trends for click-bait. If anything, the culture war in gaming is merely symptomatic, but never a precursor of the wider socio-political situation. It would never have occurred without these wider forces already existing and turning their eyes on gaming as they have done with so many other hobbies and entertainment mediums.

I watched most of them back in the day, loved their works. Shame that Felix and Chell never really finished but I loved both for what they were.

I read 2033 fairly recently and before that had finished the original 2033 game and made it 90% of the way through Last Light. Got the redux versions pretty recently. Gotta say, I cannot wait for Exodus. I didn't even know they were making a 3rd Metro game and it was the biggest surprise at this year's E3 for me. I also think its the natural progression for the series, we've been up and down the length of the Metro, and they cannot really go much further with it without treading over old ground. So, might as well open up post-Nuclear war Russia following a train journey. I think it looks great. Story-wise, I wonder what they'll use as canon. Either way, the ending of Last Light is kinda the same regardless.

Hey Ross, for some reason my mind completely blanked on this subject when you sent out your Birthday request a few years back, but better late than never, I have an MMO story for you. This one comes from Lord of the Rings Online, and is essentially a story of shady activity within a Clan and possibly even between Clans. To set the stage, this all happened I'd say about 8-9 years ago when the game was relatively new in terms of MMORPGs. I was a fairly low level Dwarf Guardian who just got into his first Clan via a fairly odd set of circumstances of my own doing (but that's another story and doesn't really fit what you're asking for). We're an up and coming Clan without that many members at the time but we're growing daily. I made such good friends with the leader that I became an Officer within a few days of joining, and basically helped him out and followed him around on stuff as we played. Well, at one point he tells me we gotta make a detour into Bree to meet somebody from his old clan who PM'd him, turns out our leader had split off from another clan to form his own, and the former clan wasn't too keen on the idea. From my understanding they were very secretive for whatever reason, if I remember correctly they weren't even an official clan you could find registered, more like a secret society of various players, something I'd never heard of taking place within an MMO. So we go into town, we head down into one of the back alleys where you can enter a house, and my leader tells me to wait outside while he and another guy who's waiting for him go in for privacy. I'm waiting out there for a while before I step in out of curiosity, and the other guy is basically making mafia-style threats to my leader. I have no idea what the hell I walked into or how the heck they'd even plan to enforce such in-game mafia-style extortion threats, but man did it feel strange at the time. The other guy leaves, and my leader fills me on who he was, what "clan" he used to run with, and what the situation was. The end result being that we just keep working on building the clan and try to avoid them. Nothing that I know of came of any of it, but a while later after they implemented Clan Halls or Houses to the game and our Clan had expanded quite a bit, one day our leader literally just up and vanished from the game. Literally. He also took most of the clan's coffers, a lot of our materials or loot from various activities, and sold off the house and took the money, and we never even saw him online again. Hundreds of gold worth of cash, stuff, and in-game property gone. IDK what to make it of all after all this time. Our next leader (who had been an Officer along with me for a while) theorized that our last one was screwing with us from the beginning, and that if the hidden player group existed, he likely never actually left and was basically just building up our trust and such to rip the rug out from under us later, or that he left and took all the shit and transferred it over to another character. But IDK, it all felt really shady to me at the time, either we'd all be played by an in-game Fraudster with a very good facade, or something more sinister had happened that I cannot even begin to try and guess at with an in-game player-mafia pulling the strings on its former members for profits. All I know is that we never saw him, or heard a damn thing about whatever hidden society of players, if such a group actually existed, again. And then life went on like any other Clan. To me, that has to be the most interesting story I have from an MMO. And none of it involves most of the mechanics of the game, it was almost purely player-driven machinations, and I never thought I'd have seen in it in a game like LOTRO.

Just finished my first playthrough of Persona 5. My first entry into the Persona series, and boy did it make a great impression. One of the best RPGs I've played this year that hooked me in. Solid writing with pretty well-written dialogue, great art and aesthetics, a well-developed cast of characters, solid mechanics, and overall just a fun game that you can sink over 100 hours into.

Kingsmen: The Golden Circle I give it a 2/10, 3/10 if I'm being generous. While entertaining enough while watching, with a good cast and visually nice, it has a couple good moments. The moment you stop to think about anything that happens in this film, the whole plot and why anything in particular happens, collapses. 95% of the plot and writing explanations can be summed up as: "Just go with it." or "Because the plot says so." or "We're just doing it for a goof.". IDK, maybe I'm not the target fanbase, I thought the film sucked.

I played through basically all of Dark Alliance 2, but could never beat the final boss, fuck his health regeneration. It was a pretty cool game, though I also felt that it could have been so much more at some points with a little fine tuning.

Exactly what I try to tell a lot of people that worry about stuff like this. Death comes for us all; we'll never be able to put it off indefinitely. Try to live your life to its fullest, don't empty your life with worries about things you have no chance of changing. Unfortunately, I know of no currently existing government that is truly interested in doing this, at least not beyond a "that might be interesting to do sometime down the road, after it's become someone else's problem" way. My bets are on private corporations leading the charge into space exploration and colonization long before any government does. You can already see the processes of that happening in some places. The markets will force corporations to expand outwards in order to avoid hitting a ceiling for Capitalist expansion and in order to avoid eventual material shortages for many necessary minerals and compounds and thus the death of their businesses, and the only logical next big leap outwards to do that is into space. Hell, I think there's a reason why Mars features prominently in a fair amount of sci-fi literature as a huge industrial center, that planet alone is perfectly situated for massive mineral processing on system-wide scales, and I theorize that heavy carbon gas emissions would be necessary to help terraform Mars anyway (if that ever happens) to raise its temperature up. Once it becomes cheaper, you bet your ass prospective business-minded people will jump at the chance to just score a meteorite with more Gold alone in it than the world's stores combined. That's an inflation catastrophe waiting to happen. But for far-flung colonization, I cannot even guess how long that would take naturally. Maybe under duress it could be done quickly, but it certainly wouldn't be perfect.

I mean, most astronomical phenomena like this are so far beyond our control that there's no point in worrying about it. We're fucked if our sun enters its late age cycle into a red giant (even though ours isn't big enough to go supernova afterwards, it would still fry all life on Earth in the process of burning out), but that's even a remote issue given how far off it is. We're fucked if an asteroid or comet hits (though most are being watched extensively and I wager counter-measures would be made by all global space agencies and governments if one were a serious threat. Hell, the least complicated measure would be to just fire a ton of nukes at it.). Hell, we're potentially fucked as a solar system when Andromeda and the Milky Way collide and form a single mega galaxy if we get shot out into space. All-in-all, I'm not worried about celestial events of this type, fascinating though they may be to briefly think about. Let come what comes, there's virtually nothing most people can do about them anyway. Most are far beyond our time to worry about anyway. All we can do is observe, and develop technology to take our species beyond our system so that such phenomena cannot just wipe us all out within a blink of an eye.

Persona 5 First ever Persona and first ever Atlus game I've ever played, though I've heard of the series before. Just in the intro days but so I find it interesting.

Knocked out two games in as many days. Berserk and The Band of the Hawk -If you're a Berserk fan, I'd argue this is the best complete adaptation off of the whole series that isn't an anime . . . despite its faults. It covers everything from The Golden Age all the way down to Hawk of the Millennium, though they pass over a few important moments in the story most of the major beats are there barring anything that happens after fighting Vritannis (and even that's not done very well in terms of canon relation). They use many of the anime film scenes pretty well for the Golden Age arc, but the rest is fairly dated animation for cutscenes. Gameplay-wise, it plays like Dynasty Warriors, which both works very well and doesn't. For the large scale battles its amazing so for all of the Golden Age arc its great. The problems come afterwards as you start fighting more and more Apostles and monsters, with the boss fights degenerating into stun-lock and knock-back fests from enormous enemies that love to fuck with your camera. I can't say its not realistic to what fighting the Apostles would probably be like for a regular guy, but it sucks for gameplay, especially particular Apostles like Zodd, Wyald, and Ganishka. I'd get it if you're a Berserk fan, otherwise don't bother with it, get a better Dynasty Warriors game. Uncharted 4 -Better than #3, but then the bar was set so low for me with that game that I couldn't even conceive of the next game being worse. Arguably its the most realistic of the Uncharted games so far, but even that's used very loosely when they have all kinds of plot contrivances that make no sense at all, Drake just plain being an idiot at times, and overall plot holes in the writing. Aside from that, its the best looking game of the whole series, the game has some very cool gimmick portions, and for the first time ever you can actually viably use stealth for most of the game. Overall, not a bad title, could have used some improvements especially in some aspects of the writing IMO.

I figure it takes a particular kind of person to be a complete loner perpetually, for one thing you'd have to be mostly self-sufficient so that you could afford to not engage with anyone if you chose not to. That either requires a fair amount of money, or a fairly diverse set of skills, probably even a bit of both for most people. Their mental state has to be one that's well-suited for isolationism as well. Drifters IMO have the best chance, since they'd carry basically no attachments to family they won't fear losing them since they're already gone for whatever reason, plus they'd have to be conditioned to be at least semi-self-reliant to even live if nobody's out to look after them but themselves. People with Sociopathic traits IMO would also have better chances since Sociopaths don't really care about what other think or feel about them anyway, meaning the "need" for social interaction is greatly diminished in them compared to others. I also think the person has to be able to keep themselves occupied with stuff, anything. The idle mind tends to wander, and you can see this in all kinds of situations. Monastic Orders on the fringes of civilization all had strict regimented schedules, and even though they weren't alone they were most definitely extremely isolated from almost everyone. Survivalists suggest in situations where you're on your own lost for an extended period of time, you constantly keep your mind focused on specific tasks and follow them through as much as you can just to keep your mind off of the fact that you're lost and alone in the middle of fucking nowhere. Communes encourage similar situations of isolationism and focusing on whatever gimmick the commune has to offer in terms of alternative means of existence, even though most communes have some people around, the whole idea is escape from the trappings of most of established society in some shape or form. Obviously, being primarily social creatures, not everyone can be completely for any extended period of time. But I also don't think its impossible. I've yet to encounter a truly toxic relationship yet thankfully. But then I've also yet to have any significant romantic relationship with anyone, so I've lost out on half of my potential for getting into those situations.

I haven't looked too much into it, but I most certainly heard about it since the circles I deal in for information makes it their business to cover stuff like this. Personally, I think the Yooka-Laylee devs shouldn't have gotten themselves involved. It would have saved some headaches for them. How did they do so? Specifically by removing him based off of what he said elsewhere, they specifically removed him because of what he said, so they have essentially drawn themselves into the controversy by reacting how they did. They didn't need to do that, and most people probably wouldn't have given a shit, even those who did probably weren't going to buy the fucking game anyway, at least in my experience. Especially in cases like this where the game content and subject of the controversy are almost completely unrelated. I mean, what JonTron said had nothing to do with the game, or his work in it, and he's apparently already said most of it was in a debate atmosphere and not things he seriously believes. IMO I believe its as blown and twisted out of proportion as Pewdiepie's video. That one was even more ridiculous in terms of how people overreacted to a total fucking joke by completely misinterpreting what Pewdie was laughing about. But, such is the world we live in, where apparently unreasonable hypersensitivity is encouraged, and everyone is basically allowed to take everything about something out of context as much as they want about anything in order to smear someone and potentially ruin them. What a wonderous time to be alive as a public figure of any kind, eh? I don't even think they should have "known better", I think people in general need to become more tolerant and open-minded where they don't see literally everything as a fucking physical assault against their very existence when its not.

I will say this is not only a good April Fool's Joke but a good way of indirectly testing the waters to see how exactly many people actually are interested in seeing Freeman's Mind go on to Half-Life 2.

The article he wrote on his website regarding the whole business with JonTron and Pewdiepie (the remarks regarding Pewdie was what particularly pissed me off) is complete trash though. Which explains why he didn't bother sharing his thoughts on the matter on his main channel in a Jimquisition, he knows he'd catch flak for it if he put his thoughts on that matter in his most popularly viewed content. Reading it you'd think he'd never been the victim of people trying to smear him with bullshit to ruin his career over stuff he's said on Youtube that people have tried to twist out of context to look malicious. Meanwhile he just got done with all the bullshit with Digital Homicide, where they just tried to do the exact same thing to him (in their case, they tried to argue he was personally inciting trolls and haters in a conspiracy to bring the company down or some other such nonsense). The only reasons they didn't succeed was because they weren't the fucking New York Times, and everyone knew their reputation as being complete and unashamed scumbags in terms of being indie developers. They had no credibility to stand on, so everyone laughed at them. I was really disappointed when I saw that article. I thought Jim was smarter than that. He should be sympathizing with them (with Pewdie at least), not fucking chiding them as "lucky" they didn't face worse backlash, or saying that they should know better just because they're bigger (like that's any excuse for people fucking with you and taking what you say and do out of context. Its okay to screw with the big guys because they're big and they can take being knocked down a few pegs, but if its the little guys, oh no!). HE'S lucky nobody believed Digital Homicide, or that everybody knows much of the stuff that could be used to smear his character is meant to be interpreted as parody, or otherwise isn't meant to be taken as actually any serious suggestion. Here it is if people want to take a look. I was stunned by the lack of self-awareness of his own previous experiences that it took to write this chastisement of those two. http://www.thejimquisition.com/youtubers-say-the-darndest-things/

I heard about that. Irony now being that Californians are toying with the notion now that the situation is reversed, though i haven't heard anything serious come of that, nor is the whole state of one opinion on the whole thing.

I'm not one to delve into hysterics, as I personally think this is a hysterical idea, but then I also am not living in the US, I'm merely an observer north of the border, looking through the muddled lenses of both of our various news apparatuses and online social media forums, and I'm merely curious to see if anyone else has any input or insight to provide on this idea. Do you see a Second Civil War happening within the US anytime soon? I first heard this idea come up in my Canadian Media (I know, very reliable source on this, eh?) back during the election when they were asking various people what they "thought" would come if Trump were to become elected. A few dared pose the idea that a new civil war could be a possibility due to how divisive the whole thing had been. With Anti-fa radicals making their bids at trying to gain larger swathes of supporters, media outlets in some cases discussing the ethics of committing violence against others merely for their political beliefs, in all likelihood hundreds if not thousands of vehemently opposed folks on both sides to the other that love to voice their discontent and not necessarily think about what they're saying or doing beforehand, and an administration that is far more uncompromising in some respects compared to the last, I can see why people would get the impression. Personally, though I see it as a possibility, I don't see it as a likely one for several reasons. 1: Unless large parts of the US army outright choose to defy the will of the administration in power in support of others within the administration (or without, though I cannot imagine why), I don't see any rebellion as having much of any serious basis to stand on. Almost every civil war in any nation has required a reasonable backing by the standing military to make it even possible. I've seen no immediate indicators of that happening myself, even if there are debates among the Generals and other staff within the administration on policies and the best courses of action. 2: If there is no substantial regional cohesion and organization as there was with the South I don't see such a thing as having much of any coordination beyond limited resistance that would be quashed within a few months perhaps. The populations of the individual states aren't even THAT cohesive politically. 3: The Anti-fa and Black Bloc do not inspire much fear in me with their abilities, or lack thereof to even deal with riot cops, let alone lead a revolution even if their willingness to destroy public and private property serves to make them feel bigger than they actually are. 4: Most of the other more populous opposition likewise has no wish to fight any war themselves and are mostly passive. Persistent in their voices perhaps, but not having any desire to actually attempt such a radical step out of fear for personal safety. The only ways I could see it becoming more likely is if the politics become so polarizing that literally no national can look upon one or the other as even being remotely American anymore because of the beliefs they hold, perhaps not even as human beings (which elements of that could be seen in the last election, but the question is how prevalent that actually is, IDK and I don't trust the media to give us a straight answer on that). That would be a major step. Dehumanizing those you see as your enemy legitimizes any form of violence or harmful action taken against them, and both sides can be argued to be doing this right now. But ATM? I don't see it happening. But maybe I'm wrong, anyone have any thoughts of this they'd like to bounce off? Could be entirely unrelated to the current political status, do you personally have any fears of a second civil war in the US any time soon?

This is old figure from a few years back, but I heard that less than 25% of all Greenlight games were at a state of completion after 2-3 years of them being launched. That's hundreds of titles, and barely a quarter of them were finished after a decent time of operation. The problems with Greenlight, in its current form, as I see it, is that its really easy for anyone to make whatever game they want and try and push it through, but they have very little incentive to keep going with it for whatever reason beyond their own individual drive. If a dev gets bored, or feels that they've already made a shitload of money just off of a concept or an early alpha, why would they necessarily feel any desire to finish the product? One would hope they would, but as is evident, that is not the case as lots of so called Indie devs seem to just be content to pitch a concept, make some fast money, and then move on to something else. The exceptions to the rule stick in peoples' minds as those who are actually serious about the whole deal, they have integrity and listen to the community. But the stats seem to show that they are the exceptions, not the rule. That's not even taking into account the number of copycats who literally will just buy a dev kit of some kind with assets they haven't made, or hell, haven't done much with it at all, they literally just took the dev kit and basically just sold one of its basic states as a whole game on Greenlight (Jim covered this himself with some people who literally 8 different people tried to sell the exact same game through Greenlight, 8 different names, all exactly the same). Are those people still "Indie Devs"? Then there is the problem of over-saturation of the Indie Market. Totalbiscuit talked about this a while ago, how even if an Indie game is good, the majority of people will never see it or be unwilling to buy it simply because of how much competition there is for storefront space on Steam. Indies compete with AAAs and Indies amongst themselves. Because of this, lots of Indie Devs crash and burn for no other reason than there's simply too many of them competing for the same dollars and there isn't enough money to go around, even if their ideas are good. Combine that with the fact that more than a few people have been screwed on purchases made out of greenlight, it leads to distrust and more cautious buyers that only makes the situation worse. I do think Steam needs some kind of regulation over the Indie Community just so that the whole thing doesn't stagnate, and to separate out who is serious versus who is not. I don't believe outright content regulation is the best since Steam has already shown that they suck at that and don't want to do that, but this application fee idea sounds like it could be the thing that could work towards the goal. You're separating out those who are serious about the whole thing versus those who aren't with a fee like this. Lots of other industries with Indie Markets you need that kind of money just to get into to begin with. Film is like that (though its not a fee, you often need thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars now just to make decent quality films to get the equipment alone, even short Indie Ones). Indies Games development has been fairly spoiled in that up until now you haven't really needed all that much money to try and make a career out of it by getting your own dev kits, which cost nowhere near as much as stuff for other Indie entertainment industries. IDK, sure you're going to get the serious scammers as well, but IMO the principle of the idea is not bad to help make the early access system better. If done correctly, of course.

Lel. Can you provide a link? I'd like to read it. Here is the archive post with our FOI Request that was fulfilled. Fair warning, its a lot of pages. https://archive.org/details/13397040FILE1

IMO people like to have a purpose because it is infinitely more horrifying to most people to basically realize that everything they're doing, and everything they are is totally meaningless. That life is essentially nothing other than a big tread wheel that we eventually exhaust ourselves on until we collapse, turn to dust, and eventually leave no discernible trace of our existence. Its a prospect that can drive people insane if they think too long and too deeply on it, so we willfully ignore it, or invent reasons to live regardless of whether or not we can base them upon anything we experience or know. That is, if people care about their own existence that much, there's a lot of people don't think that deeply on it at all. I'm a Polytheist, and personally believe I've seen enough evidence to prove that there are deities out there, just whether or not they specifically care about any individual human's or group of peoples' existence outside of moments they personally care for, for whatever reason, is debatable. I personally don't think any deity constantly watches over EVERYONE all the time, they're like the absentee gardeners or Olympians, they don't care about mortal affairs unless it piques their interest. But Faith is entirely an individual experience. I cannot convince anyone that many Gods exist other than to show other people what I have seen and see if they reach the same conclusion. But even though I believe that, I don't dictate my life around it. Its just something I find interesting to thing about, and its something which makes sense in some regards based on things I've seen. More to the point and what I originally put, my belief doesn't contend with the idea that there is no inherent meaning to life and that we have to strive to give it meaning ourselves. There are many interpretations across many cultures where Gods made humanity for literally no reason at all other than just cause they wanted to. On a humorous note, I also find the late George Carlin's thoughts on the matter. He proposed that we were made to create plastic. The Earth couldn't make it itself, so it needed us to make it so that it could have plastic for itself and then proceed to phase us out and become "The Earth + Plastic".

Too few good games at release for me to be willing to buy. Nearly half of the release titles you can get somewhere else for another system for a better price (and in the cases with a PC, much better quality than anything the Switch will be able to do if you have a decent rig), or have been able to do so for years, and that basically only leaves a handful of titles that test of the gimmicks of the Switch, a couple old IPs they're trying to revitalize, and Breath of the Wild (which isn't even a Switch exclusive). Its only made me think I'll do the exact same thing I did with the PS4: Wait nearly a year for a price drop and a substantial library of games to choose from and to browse over all the content around them, and then consider buying it. The added bonus being that by then, likely any hardware or software problems will be fixed if they do come up. Besides, I already have a backlog of games to go through, I don't need more on top of that right now.

Got Let It Die for PS4 and Days of War Beta for PC.

Philosophical Topic #3: Existentialism - Why are we here, and whose works, if any give you inspiration on this subject? This was one of my favourite topics in Philosophy to study, and it is also one which I've pondered quite a bit personally on, only to come to agreement on the two core principles of Existentialist Philosophy which both the Theist and Atheist Schools agree on, and to those who are unfamiliar with the two parts they are both the most depressing and most inspiring things one can hear on the subject. To me, as to them, there is no inherent meaning to life, there is no answer out there waiting for us to find and explain why each and every one of us exists here and now. But because there is none, we must strive to give it meaning ourselves through meaningful action. The Theists like Kierkegaard would say the second part comes from divine inspiration, the Atheists like Nietzsche credit the second part to human agency. Personally, even though I know he is considered a Nihilist, I found the works of Fredrich Nietzsche to incredibly inspiring in terms of what he asks of us in order to make us seek out new answers to explain the world in ways which allow us to live harmonious and happy lives without being chained to lies and dogma or without rendering the whole world dull and meaningless. To this day, he's also one of my favourite critics of religion and science as sources of knowledge on all things and what their purpose is in existence. I still have to read some of his texts in full rather than just essays and abstracts.

If I lived in the 40K universe, I'd like to be an Inquisitor of the Imperium. I love the Eisenhorn and Ravenor omnibuses, they're some of the best pieces of fiction in the whole Black Library. Plus I find the work would be more rewarding, less bleak, and varied than the work of the Imperial Guard or Astartes. As for The Witcher, if I had a choice, I'd like to be Nilfgaardian Mage (sure, you're bound to the Emperor, but I actually like Emhyr, and Ciri if she ever became Empress), otherwise I'd love to be a Witcher, even though the process of becoming one sucks ass in terms of odds. Prolonged life, amazing abilities, and because I like the idea of hunting monsters.

I like Jim on certain subjects, I think he has a very good capability to provide an extremely nuanced and penetrating critique of issues and games that can really cut to the heart of the matter in a compelling way. My only problem with him is that its very obvious to see when he doesn't apply that same level to very particular subjects. To me, it sticks out like a sore thumb when watching him. There will be certain topics he will be wishy-washy on despite compelling data and evidence existing to back a certain answer over another, and when otherwise he has very stringent opinions on similar subjects, or he'll make light of concerns that are legitimate concerns to people within gaming communities just because he thinks they're bullshit, except he doesn't really disprove why they're wrong to believe its not possible in the same way he goes about other subjects. You know what I mean? Its like he has different levels of subjects where he'll devote more energy and detail to covering them in more nuanced forms compared to others where he'll basically just make a satire out of the issue and end it there. Its fine to have biases, everyone does, but to me it turns me off from him on those cases because I know he is capable of being better.