Ross Scott

No replies, but don't worry, it's still going. I have plans for some more stuff I'll discuss in the next videochat also.

Guys, sending letters is still the priority. Sending emails or using other contact info is a secondary measure, especially for people who can't afford to send letters. I do think online petitions are a waste of time however, since I've never heard of those changing anything. The idea is to find some avenue of getting attention of either EA or some sort of press. Anything else is likely wasted effort. I'm not against the idea, but I basically have no intel as to who it would be effective to send it to, or if it would reach the intended recipient. Maybe see if there's an official customer service mailing address? While that's normally a bad place to send messages because they're designed to suppress them, it might work for physical objects. This looks very promising, however I'm not fully comfortable with using these emails until we can confirm these are actually managers or executives, and not just some employee with a similar name. For example "awilson" could be an Alan Wilson in accounting. Let me know if you can verify any of these.

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » Here's some news with what's going on. First, the next Ross Rants and Game Dungeon are running late, I hope to have a video out in a few days though. The Ross Rants episode almost got scrapped since the camera screwed up with the focus and left most of the footage blurry, but I think I can somewhat salvage it. It can be pretty demoralizing to have to throw out hours of footage. So the visual quality on the next one may not be the best, but it probably won't be noticeable at resolutions 480 and below. Second, lots of people have sent Darkspore letters, though I haven't received any contact info for other means, like business emails. This is something I'm going to keep going, I plan on making a video dedicated to killing games probably in a couple months, with a more planned out campaign behind it. In the meantime, any ideas for how to contact EA would be appreciated. Finally, as a reminder, the next videochat will be 4pm EST on Mar. 6th. Additionally, my girlfriend Magda has expressed interest in appearing for a short time on the next chat and can answer some questions if you're interested in asking her something. More videos coming and more news on the 6th! EDIT: Magda has postponed her appearance on the next videochat, but might still appear in a future one. Also, there will be more Planetside 2 news this month. COMMENTS

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).

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. 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 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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.

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » 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.

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.

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » 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:

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).

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.

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

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.

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.

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » 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

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » 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