Ross Scott

So, is there one specific mailing address we should send our letters to? Wouldn't it be more effective if one guy got a hundred letters on his desk than if a hundred guys each got one?

I listed the addresses in the order I thought they would be most effective. But that's the thing, no one really knows. The same person getting letter after letter may just have it filtered through their secretary (though the secretary may pass along the message that they're still getting the letters). Alternately, if we can get more addresses, the more managers at EA that actually talk about this, the better. I don't really have a good answer for you aside from "more of everything." Personally, I plan to send a letter to each of those main addresses, then probably again later when I make a new video specifically on the topic. If I get better addresses from some sort of EA insider, I'll send ones to them too.

So far sizer doesn't help me much. It completely glitched out on a DX9 game I tried (in windowed mode), and for VMware, it forces the host system to change its resolution (rather than zooming in the image).

Ross at the risk of sounding naive and candid, what do you think about the feasibility and impact of a boycott of EA ?

 

The major problem I think is not getting supporters here, but rather spreading awareness of the online game extinction. I don't mean to brag but you have a very sizable fanbase and I would be willing to bet a good deal if not most of us would be willing to follow through on a boycott. It could just be a seasonal boycott during summer or Christmas or even a yearlong blackout. Even with a fraction of us boycotting, it may be enough to get their attention especially when paired with the petition.

 

But maybe I'm being overly optimistic . I just admire your commitment. Don't be afraid to speak out in what you believe.

I just don't see it as realistic. Hell, Battleforge was a free to play game, how do you effectively boycott that? Hell, even if a boycott were to work, it can easily misfire. Say a ton of people boycotted a game for being online-only, but then the message the gaming press writes is because the handling on the cars was too poor. Guess what will happen? We'll have an online-only sequel with better car handling. Communication with EA is what's absolutely essential.

 

Ross, I am 1,000,000% on board with this. I also suggest people adopt my "Fuck EA" policy of just pirating any EA game that they want, because fuck EA, and fuck giving EA our money. It's not a real boycott, but it'll hit them just as hard, and we don't even have to give up playing their games.

While I think there are sometimes a few legitimate uses of piracy, piracy as a form of PROTEST is not one of them. It sends the wrong message entirely. The message they get is "we like your game, but don't want to pay for it, therefore you should add even more restrictive DRM." That message is what got us here in the first place. I think the concept is stupid honestly. I'm not saying you're stupid, I think you're just impassioned, but to the best of my knowledge, piracy has never positively influenced anything as a PROTEST. The only time I 100% endorse piracy is for abandonware (piracy in regions the company refuses to sell in I think is more a grey area, depending on the timespan). I think piracy has proven itself to be absolutely necessary for preservation, but brand new and popular games are where it's least needed. Again, communication with EA on how you don't like their practices I think is the only potential solution. Letters to executives send a louder message than a pirated game (and one not open to misinterpretation).

 

I have a question, should I send all of my letters to one important person like or should I split the letters up? Which method would be more effective for the operation? For example Peter Moore would be overwhelmed if he got 300 letters in one day but on the other hand would giving 4 people 75 might give the operation more coverage.

I would send them to as many different people as you feel like. If you're sending multiple letters to the same person, I would split them up over time.

 

RandomGuy, your support for DRM is incompatible with Ross's opposition to killing games. Tactics that majorly inconvenience legitimate customers in exchange for minimally inconveniencing pirates are not a legitimate response to piracy; they're a power grab.

No, it's not, actually. For the record, I am not actively AGAINST online-only DRM to protect against piracy. It can be smart. I of course don't LIKE it, but I can appreciate their reasons for doing so. What I'm adamantly against is SHUTTING DOWN THE GAME. Unfortunately, that goes hand-in-hand with online-only DRM about 99% of the time, but it doesn't technically NEED to if the company has an end of life plan. I don't want EA to think I'm being unreasonable, I just want a solution, no matter how it comes about.

One thing I wondered is why Ross didn't make a supplementary video that just focused on the issue. Not that the Game Dungeon was hurt by including the EA material, it's just less....digestible. Or is that already in the pipes, and this got pushed out first due to the severe time sensitivity?

Because I'm sloppy at doing things. I plan on making a concise video that can be shared with anyone later on, but it's probably a couple months away with everything else I'm doing. Meanwhile, Darkspore dies in a couple weeks, so I had to move.

 

City of Heroes is one of the few MMOs that I wish I could go back in time and play again. it was unique in it's own right and definitely wasn't a WoW clone which were popular to make at that time to make.

I admit I'm on the extreme end of the scale and don't like seeing ANY game die artificially, even if I'm not interested in it personally. I focus on EA because they're the leader. If it's even possible to get them to change their policies, it could serve as a precedent for other parts of the industry. MMOs definitely see this kind of artificial death more than any other genre.

 

Can someone explain to me WHY this game is online? If it's literally just a single-player game what's the point? Why would EA pay for that bandwidth?

It was single AND multiplayer, I guess I should have mentioned that in the review. As for why, all I can think of it is piracy prevention, which I WOULD be cool with if it wasn't for the fact that online-only is treated like an automatic death sentence.

How about Gamer's Wake?

 

I've contacted archive.org and Jason Scott to see if they could help since things shutting down and being unreachable is kindof a big giant pissoff button for them.

That would be great. I don't pretend to know the best method of contacting EA to get their attention, this is just my best guess. If Archive.org has better suggestions for who to contact, I'll use them.

 

 

This is very important; letting Gamergate get its hands into this movement would be a complete disaster. It could very easily cause our attempts at opening a dialogue with EA to be strangled in its crib.

I'm okay with anyone getting involved with this who wants to. However, in my eyes, there's two things to keep in mind:

 

1. I don't support personal attacks against anyone for this. Aside from the legality of that, I don't see that as fixing anything.

 

2. My ONLY agenda for this is for them to stop killing games (and not just EA, but especially them). I think keeping the message simple is important.

I think I found the address of Ken Barker, the Senior Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer at EA.

 

 

[CENSORED BY ROSS]

 

The distance between the headquaters and this address is 28,9 miles, and as far as know, there is an M. Barker living there, also, their home phone number is [CENSORED BY ROSS]

(This is his home addres because wtf what is a business address)

 

 

Still, I'm not 100% sure, but as far as I can tell, everything checks out, so if someone get the same result, then I think we got him.

If people really want to contact the Accounting Officer, they can go ahead, but do it at EA's office (the address is up in the Youtube description). The personal addresses won't help the situation. I don't see the need to unleash the internet on his family over this.

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More Game Dungeon! First off, I want to apologize for the delay on this one. I was hoping to get this one out a week sooner than I did. While that's normally no big deal, this is one episode where there are potential consequences for viewers having it out later, but not so late it's a disaster. Without giving away too much, I'll say this is one episode I hope for some of the most audience participation on.

 

I may have to revise my plans of having two more videos out this month. I'll certainly try, but it's possible I could be late seeing as how long this one took to make. I'm not certain, but this one might be a record for the number of image inserts in a Game Dungeon. Lots of info in this one!

 

COMMENTS

Ah okay, so this is the automap data (I think I couldn't even get that working in the episode). Not as good as the full thing, but definitely cool. I actually plan on discussing the maps when I get to the followup episode.

Game discovery is indeed becoming a real problem.

 

As a PC gamer, I primarily use Steam, and there is a convenient bot that posts every new release on Twitter (in comparison with the official Steam account which skips like 90% of new games). The cool thing about that bot is that it builds monthly and yearly charts of best games sorted by their Wilson score. That way you can browse just the most acclaimed games and find something that suits your taste.

 

But the next big thing for game discovery and exactly the thing Ross was talking about is the upcoming project called Glitchwave - an open database and community focused on discovering video games. It will have platform pages, franchise pages, genre pages, customizible upcoming section, custom charts, user lists, automatic recommendations, personal collection management, followers and other stuff. It has been in development for quite a while now, and will finally launch in April this year. You can get into the beta which starts later this month by supporting the project on Indiegogo ($10 pledge or more).

Yeah it seems like something waiting to happen. To clarify, this is the sort of thing I'm talking about:

 

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/01/best-pc-games-of-2015/

https://adrianwerner.wordpress.com/2013-and-beyond/

 

Have the games arranged by genre per year, have a decent screenshot, and a quick blurb about the game. I find this to be the best method for browsing for new games, but I've only seen this for upcoming games, as opposed to ones that are already out.

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This ended up being a LONG chat, there were more people than last time, and I ended up having a lot of good questions. Unfortunately the video quality suffered somewhat, as using the same bitrate settings as last time caused Twitch to choke. On top of that, the sound became out of sync in the recording again, which I had to fix manually. If anyone has advice regarding the best method to record the stream and avoid sound sync problems, let me know. I was using the recommended twitch settings (CBR, 1000kbps) with the program OBS. Anyway, lots of topics covered, nothing too critical, I tried to keep the most important stuff towards the beginning. The next video will be another Game Dungeon, which I'll be trying to get out soon. You can leave questions for the next chat in the thread below, or email [email protected].

 

COMMENTS

Well you can tell me, but the pinky area looks like it could be laid out a bit flat. How natural does it feel in the hand? Also the slope on the side looks a little "hump-ish" also. If it helps, here's a diagram I made a while back showing what I like / dislike about the slope:

 

 

 

I like the "Piracy is ok after a few years" approach, particularly since publishers look upon old games as an annoyance they'd prefer to abandon and never support. There's enough good content out there now that no one anywhere should be desperate for a game in its first year anyway. If you're doing release month piracy I think it's more likely than not you're just plain stealing. Regional locks excepted.

How about release day? XCOM 2 was torrentable in a fully functioning form less than an hour after it was released. (i am getting it now, simply because I want to play now, and will definitely buy it ASAP, so no lost sale)

When I said I hate piracy on the front end, this is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. I think once you get to a longer period of a game's existence, piracy totally stops being a black and white manner (like someone said, not being able to obtain a game in your country, though I feel like there should at least be a grace period).

Except Machinima, and EA... Not in a bad way either.

I was referring to people not corporations. Ross has never been hostile to an actual person.

 

I'm not mentioning this in an attempt to be critical, but there was both that politician from the Arcade America dungeon and the guy who flubbed The Doom That Came To Atlantic City in his newer fundraiser. I like Ross and I think neither of those examples crossed any lines. It's also true that both figures received tons of money from the public and then failed that trust spectacularly, so again they're fair topics for discussion and made the videos more interesting. But it wouldn't be accurate to say he's never told the story of someone's train wreck for the entertainment value.

I am totally not above pointing out train wrecks of people who abuse public trust. I don't like making fun of people who just make a mistake. I like stories about people who screw up on such a deliberate and/or grandoise scale, that it becomes a sort of carnival event in itself. I like carnivals.

Years ago when you just quit machinima I hoped you would join polaris so you could appear on this podcast.

 

And you did

 

So thrilled. Haven't watch it yet but will soon

I think I'm glad I didn't join another MCN.

Reitz is probably one of the most consistently bullied people on the internet. It's been going on for more than a decade, and that's just what I've seen. She's gotten the works with ddos attacks, death threats, hacked accounts, and the endless trolling. There's some trash out there who literally has a script he's been running for years to downvote every single post she makes on a particular forum. It's this perfect storm of being a semi-famous figure, an author, having extremely unconventional views, and publicly talking about her depression and bitterness over how people treat her. Which is doubly sad even beyond the human aspect of it since she's got some really interesting stories to tell about the gaming industry, having been involved with it since the beginnings.

 

Ross, thank you for not being a dick.

I didn't know that much about the creator really, I didn't even find out about the gender until I went to the site to get the full version a few years back. I was mostly just interested in the game.

Nice episode.

 

I can’t help but notice some of the symbolism in this. From the video, I noticed at first the sign with what appear to be the runes ᚦᛉᚻᚾ which spell “TH Z H N”, which doesn’t seem to mean anything, but taken the individual meaning of each rune, could mean something relating to “thorns”, “hail” (as in precipitation) and “need”.

 

We later see the rune ᚠ (F) meaning wealth or cattle.

 

But what intrigued me more is the apple with the “KALLISTI” writing below and the “K” on it. This originates from the greek mythology of Eris and the golden apple of discord, but I suspect could also link to Discordianism, an occult movement related to Chaos Magick, of which the golden apple with the word “KALLISTI” is one of the main symbols.

 

There are also some other symbols in the video which I can’t really relate to anything. I’m going to look for a complete walkthrough to see if I see anything else of symbolic interest, and maybe see if I can dig up something in the game files itself.

The game is a seemingly endless well of possible messages and imagery. I mean I guess not endless, but by and large, they don't phone in the 160 levels, despite showing some of the cheap shots in the video.

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Lots going on today! Here's the delayed Game Dungeon episode I meant to have a week ago:

 

 

 

This game has been partially done for some time now, however I knew it would be murder to edit it, and it kind of was. I think this episode came out pretty well though. This is another one of those episodes I think fits in particularly well with Game Dungeon. Right now my plan is to make multiple videos this month, including a Ross Rants and more Game Dungeons. I don't plan on having a particular schedule to it, just as it gets finished.

 

I'll have some more news in a couple days for the videochat, as a reminder, it's on twitch.tv/rossbroadcast/ on Feb. 7 at 4pm EST, but will appear on Youtube later. You can also check out the Co-optional Podcast appearance if you're interested. Normally I would have let that be the top entry for a couple days, but I ended up needing to get this one out ASAP. Bop bop bop.

 

COMMENTS

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Hey everyone, below is a link to the Co-Optional podcast that I appeared on a couple days ago. We discussed a lot of The Fine Bros, various games, EA, and PAX South from what I remember.

 

 

 

On the podcast, I have two corrections to make:

 

1. For some reason, I though the podcast came out on on Youtube on Sunday, so I told people the next Game Dungeon would be out by then. Since I realized my error, I've been scrambling. I was hoping to have it out now, but it's still a little bit away. It's completely done visually, but I have to do volume balancing, which typically takes hours. Expect it up sometime today.

 

2. At one point, I believe I said twitch.tv when I was thinking of blip.tv, but couldn't remember the name.

 

Back to work on the episode!

 

COMMENTS

Yeah, after seeing that, it is the EXACT STUPIDITY I WAS TALKING ABOUT. Random things being taken down by copyright strikes that they have no proof are at all related. Just like they were a week ago, a month ago, a year ago and a decade ago. I fucking give up.

This is the best reference I've seen on what thefinebros are doing. This was written up by a copyright law attorney:

 

 

The short line is they're lying in their videos. Their actions indicate that they are doing takedowns of people and it's confirmed they're trying to trademark the word "react", I think you might have been misinformed as to what the reality is. You can't always believe what people are saying, that goes triple for large organizations. Hell, this is why I encourage people to fact-check me for anything I say in Game Dungeon or other videos, in case I make a mistake.

 

I find this whole situation kind of amazing. It would be like if I tried to trademark "Mind" and did copyright takedowns of Barney's Mind, Shephard's Mind, etc., despite Freeman's Mind being derivative of stuff like MST3K.

 

EDIT:

Nevermind, rarity posted the exact same link and I didn't notice. That's the best starting point to look at if you think they're doing nothing wrong.

This is an official record of all donations since a tracking system was implemented on it:

 

2022:

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February: $2,874.88 from 447 donors

 

2021:

December: $4,170.22 from 466 donors

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A huge thanks to anyone who has contributed. These donations have changed my life and removed an incredible amount of stress for me.

Awesome to hear. So will the Co-Optional podcast be live, or can we only see it once it's uploaded to his channel later?

It will be live, but I don't know how it works, it might be only his subscribers can watch it live. Somebody familiar with the podcast might know the answer.

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This is just a small update. I was hoping to have the next Game Dungeon out by now, but I can see this one is going to be a longer one since it involves more editing than usual. I'll get it done as soon as I can, but I think it will still be a few more days. After that, I plan to continue working on more Game Dungeons, some other videos, plus I have ideas how to get more videos out later that I'll be looking into once I catch up on more email. Besides working on the movie, most of this month has been trying to catch up on everything else and prepare for a lot of videos I hope to have this year. So things may seem slow right now, but I promise a lot more is coming.

 

In other news, I've been invited to appear on the Co-Optional podcast on February 2nd at 3pm EST. It will go up on TotalBiscuit's Youtube channel later on, I'll make another post when it does.

 

Finally, just as a reminder, the next videochat will be on February 7th, 4pm EST at www.twitch.tv/rossbroadcast/. I'll have more news then.

 

COMMENTS

I don't think I've seen even one first person 3d gameworld that is beautiful enough that I'd pay extra for deeper immersion.

 

Me, I'd love it even with Quake-level graphics, it's just a totally different experience, but that could be a personality thing.

 

You're absolutely right about Carter, I'd forgotten there was a niche market of "walkabout" games. Them I'd like to get into more deeply. I almost said that my only interest in VR would be for when I'm on the treadmill, but I figured that'd come across as trolling.

 

Shooters in VR sound like a shaky idea to me. I get you're coming from, game looks good, scenery looks good, wouldn't it be nice to look around naturally? Then I think how fundamentally ugly the gameplay tends to be. I'm not talking about violence, I'm talking about the pacing of games published by douchebags for twelve year olds. Something with the pacing of Unreal might be alright.

I could be mistaken, but my hope is a lot of games will still be viable in VR on easiest difficulties, or with cheats. Afterall, Crysis is a game you can take at your own pace most of the time.

 

I don't know how the release version of the Oculus or the Vive are going to handle it, but something else that sprung to mind, seeing Ross's screenshots here (especially those trees on Endor), is another issue I have with the DK2:

 

Lack of antialiasing.

 

This is one thing that can also break immersion. On the DK2, the jaggy lines frequently break immersion for me. I know AA is more computationally expensive, and to do that with two huge-res screens is even moreso, but I hope that they're going to address AA in VR.

This is a genuine problem for newer games. This is one of the reasons I'm excited to get old games working in VR when it's out, my system should be able to handle them. With more modern ones, it's entirely possible the only solution will be to have downsampling (so even if you're looking at a 1200 screen, it's rendering at 4k+, etc.) which only the most monstrous of systems can handle currently. Even then, I've read Crossfire and SLI don't work well with VR (though I think that's being addressed), so it might be literally impossible to have quality AA in VR on some games at the moment, may just have to wait for hardware to get more powerful.

I don't think I've seen even one first person 3d gameworld that is beautiful enough that I'd pay extra for deeper immersion.

 

 

 

 

Me, I'd love it even with Quake-level graphics, it's just a totally different experience, but that could be a personality thing.

Getting a high refresh rate/high resolution monitor will set you back around that amount too.

Yet I can get 3 1080p monitors with 144Hz refresh for less than $600...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100160979%20600338123%20600417886%20600255030%204814%204017&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=90

 

Or a 2k (QHD, 1440p, 2560x1440, or whatever moniker best suits your fancy) monitor with 144Hz refresh with FreeSync for under $500...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009769

 

The price of a phone with similar resolutions isn't even that bad, you'd actually have to buy 2 cell phones with 2k displays to get to that price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100161551%204814%20600536970

 

The price of the Oculus is designed to rip you off.

None of those are IPS panels except for the phones, and I don't know what the refresh rates and response times are on those. Maybe getting a custom one in mobile space to operate at 90hz drives up the cost more. I can see there being some additional overhead. Also I could be mistaken, but I think the Rift is using OLED panels which might cost more. I can see it actually taking $600, I just question the argument that they're not making money off of it, what exactly is the business model then? Console manufacturers can sell below cost (though they haven't in a long time) because they make up the revenue off of licensing fees on games. OR doesn't seem to be doing that either.

 

In any event, I agree it's expensive, but for me this is the closest we're going to have to a holodeck for a long time and I've been missing this level of immersion ever since the early 2000s. Besides, between StarVR, Vive, Asus, and Gigabyte, we'll have at least 4 other options this year.