more info than you could ever want about Pitchford’s porn habits

In short, there was a legal dispute between Pitchford and a former counsel for Gearbox. As part of a pattern of suit-countersuit, the former employee alleged that Pitchford had left a USB stick at a local restaurant which contained proprietary company info as well as underage pornography. Pitchford confirmed that all of the above, with the notable exception of the “underage” part. Given nothing came of it, and he was remarkably candid about what type of porn was actually on the USB, I’m inclined to believe him.

At least Kirkbride’s fever dreams were entertaining…

It’s always odd to me when words develop parallel but distinct meanings based on context. Like, I know “to cleave to” something is to attach to it, but it trips me up (esp. in a Warhammer context where Saltzpyre would be hanging out) since I default to “he was cleaved in twain”.

As with most other English oddities, I assume this is holdover from my ancestors treating other languages like swap meets.

Josh Ritter’s Kathleen performance from Live at the Iveagh Gardens has far and away subsumed the studio version for me. The original track is fine, I guess, but there’s some kind of alchemy in that live performance that takes it from a kinda sleepy singer/songwriter ballad to a roots rock revival jam. Or something like that. Idk, I’m certainly no music critic, but I know which version I prefer.

This sounds like something George Clooney’s character in O Brother Where Art Thou might say.

Personally, a proverbial pile of proctologists pass as performers called “The Soggy Bottom Boys” perfectly.

Boo to all you naysayers! The first was a gloriously funky (and, you know, more than a little moldy) hunk of aged cheese, and I’m excited for the sequel.

I like Vin best when he’s getting to let his nerd flag fly, and it doesn’t get much more “Vin Diesel: Turbo Nerd” than a movie based around his personal DnD campaigns.

I’m reminded of the narrator’s distillation of his career from Fight Club. Paraphrasing, but the gist is “I’m here to apply the formula. A is the number of cars on the road. B is probably rate of failure. C is the cost of an out of court settlement. A times B times C equals X. If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we issue one and no one gets hurt. If X is less, we don’t recall.”

In this case, whoever counts Paradox’s beans determined the cost of issuing refunds was going to be less than the cost of staying the course (from a PR perspective, if nothing else).

Per the article, Mid journey has signalled an intent to enter the traditional streaming and content production markets, placing it in direct competition with WB et al. I suspect that is the reason for it being specifically targeted.

I don’t really have a dog in the fight, but what about Shawn Levy, the auteur behind such visionary films like Free Guy, The Internship, and the Night at the Museum series, inspires such confidence in you? Or, rather, why is Tropper a red flag for you?

There’s the kernel of a pretty good 3 minute YouTube skit in here.

I mean, I guess I just don’t view entertainment options as a finite resource. Amusements abound. Games, movies, shows, books, lectures, theater, articles, podcasts, music, sports, etc. The means to dispense with my free time far far far exceed the amount of free time I have to fritter away. So, while you may view backlog management as unhealthy min/maxing, I would counter that your preoccupation with “running out” of entertainment is, at least, equally as unhealthy a min/max mindset.

Also, I can’t speak for others, but your clothing analogy made me think of this: when I talk about not wanting to purchase a game because of my backlog, usually I don’t mean “aw man, I’d really like to get Baldur’s Gate 3, but I haven’t finished my Madden dynasty yet”. Rather, it would be closer to, “I’d really like to get Baldur’s Gate 3, but I bought both of the Owlcat Pathfinder RPGs last sale and I haven’t even booted those up yet”. So, it’s less about deciding whether or not to buy a shirt based on how many pairs of jeans you own, and more about deciding whether you need the latest, most fashionable cut of Levis when you’ve got 3 pairs of Costco jeans at home still.

Ultimately, it’s neither right nor wrong of you to hoard digital games. It’s your money, you do with it what you will. It just seems like a wildly hot take to come into that conversation swinging around accusatory statements like “that’s an unhealthy min-max mindset”.

That’s not really what’s implied in that statement. A better comparison, using your streaming service analogy, would be that you subscribed to Apple TV because you heard Severance was really good. However, one thing led to another, and now it’s months later, and you still haven’t watched Severance. So, instead of starting a new series (say, Ted Lasso) you queue up Severance instead.

It’s still not a great analogy, because the streaming service implies a real, ongoing cost to maintaining access to the service, which is not the case with most people’s game libraries. That being said, with Gamepass and GeForce Now etc, it’s not necessarily out of the question.

The purpose isn’t to “deplete entertainment options”, it’s to utilize the options you already have financial investment in before sinking more money into more options simply for their novelty.

The “point of the product” isn’t to provide theoretical novel entertainment value by sitting, unplayed, on my digital shelves. Bold take here, but I’d suggest the point of a video game is to be played.

Agreed. If you’re gonna do the “put as much star power on the poster as you can, we shelled out for these likenesses, we’re damn well gonna market them” thing, you as well dress it up a little. Also, punk rock Dr who is rad.

That’s an incredibly evocative simile that ultimately still has me unsure of whether it’s good or bad.

3/10, do not recommend

Review complete, the next 19 minutes will be spent processing existential dread.

this ONE thing is for him

Idk, I suppose you can argue that the binary morality system of the first BioShock was integral to the franchise identity, considering the time it came out and all, but I don’t hate that Infinite has one definitive ending to the story it wanted to tell. In fact, given the game’s emphasis on tropes and meta commentary, I’d imagine that setting a story in a universe with infinite possibilities and then removing the “choice” from the player to influence the ending was done deliberately. However, it’s been a decade since I played it, so I could certainly be misremembering some details.

I’m a homm2 guy myself ( shout out fheroes2 engine ), but I can’t sympathize with you on that front. Much like some folks’ relationship with Civ, I’m constantly in a “one more turn” loop when I play, to the point that I won’t boot it up if it’s after a certain time haha

They have made one Warhammer game, Rogue Trader. It is a party based, turn based, RPG based upon a tabletop ruleset. It’s quite good, though I admit that I play it on story mode difficulty cause I can’t be bothered to learn another RPG system right now, and idgaf about build crafting. With that being said, it’s a positively ENORMOUS game, with extraordinary amounts of optional content to interact with. If you go on expecting Space Marine 2, or Dawn of War, you’re likely going to be very upset. However, if you are prepared for something which apes the old Infinity Engine games of the 90s, or games inspired by the same, such as Pillars of Eternity, you’ll likely enjoy yourself.

Whether or not I factor in tax is entirely dependent on the size of the purchase I’m making. For the vast majority of purchases I make on a daily basis, I don’t think about it at all. 7% of $2.99 is negligible to me. However, if I’m making a large purchase, or if it’s a purchase which I know is subject to additional taxes beyond the sales tax, then I might consider it. 7% of $2.99 may be negligible, but 7% of $29,999 is a significant amount all by its lonesome.

For most people, I’d imagine this is most common when it comes to purchasing vehicles, as those tend to carry large prices and special taxes which results in a significant increase in price. For example, I purchased a new vehicle a couple years ago for MSRP, but wound up paying several thousand dollars more than that due to various taxes and the registration fees. I didn’t know exactly how much those surcharges would be (though I easily could have calculated them by visiting my state’s Department of Motor Vehicles website and plugging a figure or two into their calculator) but I had a ball park idea which I could budget around. Also, I’m pretty sure the dealership I bought from provided an estimated total purchase price which included the fees for the locality it was located in. Unfortunately, most of that was irrelevant to me, as I had traveled from another state to purchase this vehicle, which illustrates the minor frustrations that an all-inclusive price tag would introduce in America.

Like, I don’t think you’re wrong for thinking it’s odd, and yes, there are ways to fix it, but it’s just such a non-issue (not to mention America’s “touchy” relationship with taxation meaning these attempts to “fix” things would rapidly become politicized) that no one cares to do anything about it. As someone else said, we intuitively learn what the rough tax rate will be for our common purchases and just factor that in.