RocketDude

Half a dozen other people to talk to? Man, how did these interviews come about? I can understand gaming-related chats or discussions about the legality of killing games, but how'd this all kick off? Was it all because of that one Q&A chat with the fans and it snowballed from there?

I could not finish this. I got an hour in and felt like things were going in circles a little. As for my own 2 cents: I think our understanding of consciousness and qualia and the like suggests that we shouldn't expect the AI to do anything without it being told do (i.e. motivation), though much like any motor, I think all you do need is the right nudge. I'm not a full-on doomer like Yud is, but I can definitely imagine some of the worst-case scenarios that have been posited, and it's possible that, even if powerful AGI lacks true qualia and consciousness and motivation, it'll still be a Big Red Button that could end the world. I mean, hell, Microsoft already kind of put it out into the wild with Bing Chat. We should at least promote not connecting these things to the Internet once they get scary-good enough.

YO WHAT

I could have believed he was genuinely running out of ammo. Anyways, good episode. I agree that this is really much like the old episodes of FM; the mental image of Grigori turning Ravenholm into a pseudo-Running Man set was amusing.

Yeah, I forgot to mention this...so when Ross joked about the Indigo Child being "pure of thought," he may have been more on the mark than he realized. As I understand it, certain tracks from Omikron are...infamous.

I'm surprised you're not that knowledgable about David Cage, Ross, since, uh...he's kinda infamous these days. I won't explain, however, since Fahrenheit has given you a half-correct impression of him. Probably better for you to remain blissfully unaware of the full picture.

Maybe it's because of age restrictions on YouTube? Have you tried youtube-dl?

Good episode, Ross. I have Trickstyle on an old physical copy in addition to digital (I think), so the EXE replacement might be great (I'll have to figure out WINE and possibly DGVoodoo, though). I'm legit surprised there seem to be few hoverboarding games, I thought it'd be a more common sub-genre since it seems like such a slam dunk. Could just be that people need to warm up to skateboarding games again (which a game like this kind of is, from a fundamental perspective), plus also the slow-burning desire to return to the Y2K aesthetic. It could also be that people would rather play a Wipeout-type game than this, but it's hard to say.

Eh, doubt they'd get claimed, I don't think stock music was as much of a thing back then--at most, you had stock samples, and even for something like Lemmings that had royalty-free music, the composer still had to actually arrange the in-game "instrumentation."

God, I was hyped when I saw this on the blog page. This game fascinated me since I first heard about it one time. It's fascinating how they managed to achieve such an open world at the time. This game could really use a remaster with the better-quality FMVs from the 3DO version (I don't know why they apparently compressed them further for PC). I would recommend checking out PO'ed, which was another 3DO FPS I actually had a little experience with, but there is no PC version (a DOS version was canned), leaving only the original 3DO version and the PS1 port. If you do ever decide to look at it, I will tell you that it is wacky.

I think Stadia might have a chilling effect on game-streaming services, because all the news media focused on Stadia, from its launch all the way to its failure. It's been a high-profile thing, and while that might have still been the case even without the media getting involved, now it's likely that few will try and jump into the space, not when their potential customers' first thought is "isn't this like that Stadia thing that Google killed?" When even Google decides it can't stay in a field, that might discourage other companies from trying.

I think all preservation will ultimately be quasi-illegal if not straight-up illegal if copyright and such aren't reformed.

I looked up this game, and I was shocked to see it came out in 1997. Every problem Ross had with this game, Command & Conquer had already "solved" back in '95. Heck, Dune II already solved a lot of the UI issues. This game seems like the only good thing it has going for it is the art and graphics, which are legit neat. The XCOM-style strategic aspect sounded interesting at first, but the UI weirdness seemed to sabotage it (plus, is it really necessary to research a thing in every city? Or to have to research basic things like infantry or power plants in the first place?). Speaking of C&C, the CGI cutscenes reminded me a tiny bit of Eric Gooch's CGI work for the Westwood-era games, but upon reflection, they are more like the typical 3D you'd see in 90's FMVs.

The problem is that all AAA companies have moved towards the GaaS model as an outgrowth of the "always-online" DRM model. When every game is designed in a manner not too dissimilar to how MMOs were, there is nothing stopping the publisher from holding all the cards when it comes to you accessing the game. I know Ross made some good criticisms of the "boomer mindset," but I think the issue is that people aren't being boomer-y enough. We're heading for a digital dark age, popular culture is just kinda getting worse all around, and while enterprising pirates will likely keep us from completely losing a not-insignificant portion of our cultural history, it really does feel like there is little worth paying attention to past some point in the past 30-ish years. It's not enough to try and buy physical or pirate, one should just reject virtually everything that's new from the big corporations. Reward creators who aren't just completely recycling something old or who see you as more than just a wallet. Champion new ideas and original works. The problem there is that, for one, that kind of attitude is off-putting, and two, "new ideas and original works" for the past decade have been...mixed, IMO.

I thought that title screen was familiar. I suppose we have a new category of bad RPG now: Peashooter Minigun Games. On the topic of sexy armor, I personally don't mind, but then, I'd be the person to handwave it with "she can dodge lots of things" or "she has super regeneration" or "she has a personal force-field."