Everyone Is a Sith: The [chat] in which David Letterman and Bill Murray Take Over the World

Saturday, October 18, 2008

The [chat] in which David Letterman and Bill Murray Take Over the World

Part two can be found here.

36 comments:

_J_ said...: 36 WoW accounts run on 11 computers controlled by one guy.

Motherfucker apparently REALLY likes shamans.; October 12, 2008 at 3:41 PM
Mike Lewis said...: you have to be really anti-social if you cant find anyone to raid with you. Or you are just a massive douche bag that no one can stand raiding with you.

Either Way, WoW is lame; October 12, 2008 at 5:28 PM
_J_ said...: The win percent for Obama on fivethirtyeight.com went up to 94.1% over the weekend.

It had been hanging around 91% for at least last week.; October 12, 2008 at 11:31 PM
_J_ said...: Dow up 936.

So, the economy is fixed and everyone can go back to voting for McCain, right?; October 13, 2008 at 4:46 PM
_J_ said...: I hate Buddhism.
I hate Buddhism.
I hate Buddhism.
I hate Buddhism.
I hate Buddhism.
I hate Buddhism.
I hate Buddhism.
I hate Buddhism.
I hate Buddhism.
I hate Buddhism.; October 13, 2008 at 9:03 PM
Andrew said...: and Buddhism hates you.; October 14, 2008 at 12:59 AM
Andrew said...: also, fivethirtyeight has IN leaning dem. even though the numbers suggest leaning rep. im not sure how they are using math, but its sats, so they probably aren't using math.; October 14, 2008 at 1:13 AM
_J_ said...: Yeah I don't know what's going on with fivethirtyeight's map. I think they just change Indiana every few days to make us freak out a bit.; October 14, 2008 at 1:28 AM
_J_ said...: Today some girl (who is not a philosophy major) in my woman's philosophers class asked me a question during break. She said:
"So, I keep hearing people say this name...kant? Who was that? Is he important?"

And I sort of stared at her for a while.

How is that possible? Immanuel Kant fixed Modern Philosophy. Immanuel Kant is how we stopped being either cogito trapped in solipsism or simply god damned empiricists!

I liked the world better prior to this afternoon when I learned that not everyone knows who Kant is.

And after I told her a bit about Kant? She asked me how to spell his name. I said "K A N T" and she said "oh, that's why I couldn't find anything on wikipedia."

I'm glad she was looking. But...wow.

Kant.

Yeah. Kind of important. He's how we got beyond Modern.

Though, there is an argument which says that is a bad thing. And I kind of agree with that argument...if only because after Kant people started talking about boring shit.; October 14, 2008 at 1:45 AM
Andrew said...: yay maps; October 14, 2008 at 1:47 AM
_J_ said...: maps are lies.; October 14, 2008 at 1:59 AM
Andrew said...: yep.
you should see the latest art ive been making. lol
kinda deals with that a bit; October 14, 2008 at 2:06 AM
MA17 said...: The new .hack games are a lot better than the old .hack games. Like, I might even finish this series.

But first, episodic games. It's possible to plan and create a series of movies or novels, and in fact people do that sometimes. Games, on the other hand, might generate sequels, but it seems that not very often can anyone plan on creating a series and then pull it off. Xenosaga, for example, was supposed to be like a jillion games and span every console until you die, and although ambitious, it didn't work and they only squeezed three games out. I think Advent Rising was supposed to be the beginning of a series of Orson Scott Card games (pun?) that ended in one singular failure. Looks like Too Human is probably going to go that route as well, despite their big stupid promise to make a trilogy of games that will change the way you pay sixty bucks for bullshit.

And you might say "what about final fantasy, there's so many of them and they're just wonderful" and I might say "they didn't plan on that, now did they" and that's the point. If sequels follow, that's great, but it's virtually impossible to stand up and promise to make a bunch of games that connect to each other, and I think I know why.

1) Every game in the series will be the first game some fucker plays, and you have to compromise the story arc to accommodate the new guy. This is the sort of thing you see in sitcoms or other programs where every episode begins and ends with zero net change for the characters and relationships. Homer's always doing dumb things and Marge is always still married to him and you can see as many or as few episodes as you wish and still be able to follow the newest one without any trouble. I don't mean that each game in such as .hack is as self-contained as an episode of the Simpsons. There is an overarching conclusion each game is working towards, but it does seem that some characters and events are either reverted to their beginning state or at least dragged back a few notches between the end of one game and the beginning of the next. This is irritating.

2) Price of entire story = [current game price * number of entries]. The first .hack series did not appear to give fifty dollars worth of game in any of the two entries I played, and after one hundred US dollars, I was willing to assume that last two wouldn't either. Half a game for twice the price? I say thee nay.

3) The most fun and least interesting part of the game is the first part. It's all leveling up quickly and getting skills and pretty much zero happening plot-wise. After that, why buy part 2 when it's going to be less fun and also uninteresting because the climax isn't until part 3? Then why buy part 3 when you don't know what the hell happened in 2? And then if you never played 1 how can you just jump in on 2 or 3? Fuck it, I don't have the time!

I'm making some pretty broad, inaccurate generalizations here, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. In fact, it just shows how right I am. Look it up.; October 14, 2008 at 2:15 AM
MA17 said...: Welcome to this SMC infomercial. I'm not Drew Carey, but you probably thought I was for a second. Jokes on you, asshole cause here's some crap for you to sell. This Noah's Ark model is a big seller among the super-elderly and if you don't believe me, here's Tom Bosley. Why would he lie to you? He has nothing to lose! Look at him!

Still not convinced? Lets hear from this woman who has replaced her skin with real mahogany and this guy with the fucking Billy Mays beard. "Thanks to the internet I make money from home without even having to set up card tables in the front lawn. I get a check in the mail every day, and only a few of them are from the government!"; October 14, 2008 at 2:32 AM
Unknown said...: I know it wasn't planned, but the Suikoden series does a good job of interconnecting each iteration of the game.; October 14, 2008 at 2:46 AM
MA17 said...: That is true. And they gave you a bonus in 3 if you had a save from 2, and that's always nice.; October 14, 2008 at 2:54 AM
_J_ said...: I think your assessment of episodic gaming needed to be its own post given how awesome it is.

Also?

"I'm making some pretty broad, inaccurate generalizations here, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. In fact, it just shows how right I am. Look it up."

I say that every day. In fact? Nigh-every morning I wake up saying "Today i will make some pretty broad, inaccurate generalizations, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. In fact, it just shows how right I am."

Then I write papers using that as my introduction and conclusion.

And I'm a fucking Master's Student.

Because I'm right.

And awesome.; October 14, 2008 at 10:34 AM
_J_ said...: Financial Crisis Suicide Numbers Mounting.

I'd like to meat the whore those numbers are mounting.

Rawr.; October 14, 2008 at 10:41 AM
Andrew said...: "meat the whore"
"meat"
i can't decide if thats a typo or not; October 14, 2008 at 11:01 AM
_J_ said...: It was a pun.; October 14, 2008 at 1:20 PM
Mike Lewis said...: the faq for fivethirtyeight.com explains what is going on. and how indiana looks blue even through the most resent polls show mccain with a slight edge.; October 14, 2008 at 2:11 PM
Mike Lewis said...: if you look at Pollster.com they have indiana as a toss up, lots of polls in the margin of error, and very little movement either way.

Pollster also does not weight polls based on history and trends.; October 14, 2008 at 2:17 PM
Mike Lewis said...: pollster also does not take int account demographic data for each state.; October 14, 2008 at 2:17 PM
_J_ said...: McCain: At Wednesday's Debate I Plan To Bring Up Ayers.

Of course, last week he said he was going to take the gloves off.

And the week before that he promised me ice cream.; October 14, 2008 at 2:29 PM
_J_ said...: None of you care about this, but the WoW 3.0 patch update just reinstalled the intro movies for both World of Warcraft and the Burning Crusade.

I guess that explains why the fucking thing was 1.2 gigs.; October 14, 2008 at 2:30 PM
_J_ said...: WoW Mouse

Amazing. Ignoring all of the "boo hoo crap pew WoW sucks" bullshit...15 fully programmable buttons? "The software for the device is styled after the WoW interface, allowing for up to 10 different profiles for your different characters, even importing your character information directly from the WoW Armory to make things all convenient-like"?

That's a lot of shit for a mouse to do.

Think if that could be applied to internet browsers, word documents, photoshop?

Think if your mouse could automatically know, when one opened photoshop, that button 14 created a new layer, then switching over to Word that button 14 opened the font menu.

That's awesome.

15 buttons makes browser gestures needless. Just press button 13 if you need a new tab, button 14 to open favorites, etc.

Awesome.; October 14, 2008 at 3:30 PM
Roscoe said...: Dude, Girl was just trying to break the ice, and get in to your jammies, J.; October 14, 2008 at 5:21 PM
Roscoe said...: Adam....

On the topic of Games unt. Series.

What would you say towards something like Ultima?

Games that are primarily designed as seperate games, but build off of the previous titles, in both story and design?; October 14, 2008 at 5:22 PM
Roscoe said...: Okay.. this weekend, I think I need to fucking fix Firefox so I can comment easily.

GAH.; October 14, 2008 at 5:24 PM
_J_ said...: Or Pokemon as a series.; October 14, 2008 at 5:52 PM
Mike Lewis said...: are you still have problems with firefox and flash?

i don't think its use, it is a problem that a bunch of people have reported with flash 9 and flash 10bata.; October 15, 2008 at 1:30 PM
_J_ said...: You know what works?

IE.

You know what your machine natively runs?

IE.

Now, I'm pretty fucking stupid. But even I can discover the remedy to this problem.

It's kind of like when NASA needed writing devices for space. They invested time and effort into developing a pen that would work in 0 gravity. You know what Russia did? They used a god damn pencil.

Firefox - Pen
IE - Pencil

You know what always works? IE.

You know what can go fuck itself in the ear? Firefox.; October 15, 2008 at 1:38 PM
Mike Lewis said...: the problem is not with firefox, it is with flash.; October 15, 2008 at 2:05 PM
_J_ said...: Dow down by more than 730.

Neat.; October 15, 2008 at 4:17 PM
MA17 said...: I guess it's possible to account for something like Ultima and something like .hack by referring to the former as a series, and the latter as a serial, and define a series as being comprised of a group of related or sequential complete entities that can support a cohesive whole, and a serial as being a complete entity divided into a group of sequential parts. In other words, a member of a series could be an entire story within an emerging continuity, while a serial member is a unit that only contains part of a story. Certainly a serial unit can have its own climax, but its magnitude will likely be minor due to the fact that it is not preceding the ultimate conclusion, but is probably only anticipating a cliff-hanger.

I suspect that serials work for film and print because of the relatively small investment of time/effort/money involved in staying current with the story or catching up. TPBs are everywhere, don't cost much, and don't take too long to read. TV shows can be viewed on line, on disc, or in reruns and take about 25 minutes each to watch. A game, though, requires multiples of tens of dollars and tens of hours to complete for each unit, and there are varying levels of completion, even among people who have played every single game. Did the player max his character in the previous entry? Did he get all the weapons? Has he seen every side-quest? Who fucking knows.

I'm surprised at the handful of episodic games that do relatively well. The PA game is in episodes, and so was/is Sam & Max, and although they're not exactly setting the world on fire with their popularity, they're also not making drastic design cuts and bailing out early (yet?). I'm guessing they're short, cheap, and in other ways imitate the serials of other media in order to succeed.

And Pokemon, I'm pretty sure those are remakes. Animal Crossing, too. And Harvest Moon, probably. Probably shouldn't define the category too broadly or else a lot of other games will fall in, but if a game has a nearly identical beginning and end, and the midpoints follow the same basic path, then shit, you've got a remake.; October 16, 2008 at 7:08 PM
_J_ said...: "A game, though, requires multiples of tens of dollars and tens of hours to complete for each unit, and there are varying levels of completion, even among people who have played every single game."

Agreed.

The problem I have with sequenced games (games in which the plot of game B depends upon the plot of game A) is that it makes game A less a subjective gaming experience and more of a toiling through the medium. Think of it this way:

I can passively watch Star Wars, estranged from any of the characters except through empathy, and allow the series to go in whatever direction the director wishes.

With a game? Part of the gaming experience, in my understanding, is the user's ability to manipulate the story and somehow influence (I think this is the best word) what happens.

Episodic gaming tries to combine that passive (director decides what happens) with the active (I, gamer, influence). And I'm confused as to why.

It's sort of like my confusion of why people PLAY a story driven RPG as opposed to simply watching the video clips on youtube. The question is whether someone is trying to experience the thing or simply get through it. Part of the experience, though, is the subjective meaning users place on the experience. How they gear their character. What they name their character. What characters are in their party. Etc.

Episodic gaming produces a confused amalgamation of these two distinct approaches to storytelling.; October 16, 2008 at 8:56 PM

Everyone Is a Sith

Saturday, October 18, 2008

The [chat] in which David Letterman and Bill Murray Take Over the World

36 comments:

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