ScumCoder

@Justaskingaboutbaldies He finally caved in and promised to explain this in the next Follow-up episode, but it's probably still a ways off.

You dare to arrogantly poke at other people’s less-than-flourishing life? You think this proves anything or gives you any weight in the argument?.. You dare to deny hundreds of millions of miserable people their right to enjoy the only vent hole they can afford – escapism – in the form of games that do not have “making players feel off-put” as their goal? …and now you are twisting my words. I said “even rather hardcore Bethesda fans agree”, which not only doesn’t mean “everyone”, but means the opposite – people who played every single game, know every technical and lore detail, know all the behind-the-scenes struggles at Bethesda, up to and including rubbing shoulders with actual people working there. (See e.g. the excruciatingly detailed ramblings of Zaric Zhakaron). I can’t believe it. You actually went and did it, didn’t you? You claimed that your opinions on things like beauty and artistic expression are objective. This is basically an automatic defeat on your part, since there can be nothing objective about beauty. The only terms in which it can ever be discussed are, indeed, “me like – me don't like”. No technical facts can serve as an argument in discussing art, for they are but tools which can produce both beauty and ugliness alike. No knowledge on “baked-in lighting, vertex color, vertex shadow, normalmaps and so on” will ever help you to “prove” that something is beautiful. No “academia” can claim the monopoly on the artistic truth, for these very people proclaim a banana duct-taped to a wall to be an art piece. Again, I can hardly believe what I just read. It is you who are an absolutist here. It is so obvious it is glaring. Others, Ross included, are pronounced relativists, always emphasizing that “to each his own”; in fact, I personally am a relativistic extremist, to the point that it caused me some trouble in life. All you do to “defend” your views is make completely unfounded claims from the position of authority, as if you were a university professor holding at least a Dr.Sc. in fine arts, talking to a bunch of freshmen; except it’s even worse. See, for someone coming from scientific circles, where second-guessing oneself is an assumed virtue and the voice of said freshman is as loud as the voice of said professor, trying to appeal to one’s gravitas means – once again – an automatic defeat in an argument. See, the core difference between you and everyone you are arguing with here is that others are, so to say, pro-choice. Nobody demands anything they don’t like to be removed – merely plead to be given an option to do so. It is you who are the one insisting on shoving stuff down other people’s throats. I said it before and I’ll say it again – you are in absolutely no position to do that. Shut up.

Don’t you see that you are contradicting yourself?.. You mock people who demand realism, then immediately use realistic ugliness as a case for tint filters. The whole point of games is that they don’t need to look as ugly as real life. If I wanted to see “former forests around […] metallurgy plant” I wouldn’t need to play a game, just look out of the window. It’s literally the polar opposite. Everyone™ says that Skyrim is the best RPG ever made (usually because this is the only RPG that these people have ever played). I find it hilarious that you snobbishly distance yourself from “the average person who wants the dumbest, blandest, most empty and devoid of any kind of personality product”, while at the same time whacking off to one of the most egregious examples of a dumbest, blandest, most empty and devoid of any kind of personality product. That's a.. statement. Quite argumentive [sic]. (Note that I’m not denying your right to have an opinion, merely pointing out that it’s what it is – just an opinion, as subjective as mine). This is wrong on several different levels. First, pretty much all works conventionally considered “art” (say, Sistine Chapel) were made by people who for all intents and purposes were craftsmen for hire. They were hired by an employer; given a technical assignment; work progress was monitored; then came the remediation certificate, acceptance and transfer certificate, and final payment. In other words, what nowadays indisputably constitutes art, was produced by roughly the same process as modern commercial video games. You can argue that then the end goal of the employer was to make something that would please them, whereas now the end goal is to maximize profit; but the point is, there is such thing as good management. Not being 100% free to do whatever you want is not an unconditionally bad thing. This brings us to the second point, which is that being 100% free to do whatever you want is not an unconditionally good thing. There is a long, long list of examples of creative people who produced stellar works as long as they were constrained and challenged by people around them, and immediately started producing schlock as soon as the reins were slackened. George Lucas had the same horrid ideas that he eventually implemented in prequels and “enhanced” editions back when the original movie was being filmed, but back then people he worked with had the leverage to say “whoa, this is kind of a crappy idea”. Wachowski brot^W siblings had their creativity heavily constrained while working on The Matrix. Same with Shyamalan working on Sixth Sense. You know what happened when these people got 100% creative freedom. Last (but not least), this is not why games are not art, and this cannot be why games are not art, for the simple and obvious reason that you can make a game under your own steam and thus enjoy being “uncompromised, free to make strong statements and expressions of your ideas, to choose the audience with which it resonates or not”. Nobody stops you. A whole hell of a lot of people do this. Itch.io is bursting with indie games that do just that. We don’t live in Equilibrium society; nobody is going to ram into your apartment if you create and publish a game that looks exactly how you want it to. Go ahead, “choose your audience”. What’s that? Ohhh, you want to be able to artistically express yourself while also being paid for that? Go fuck yourself, entitled brat. You should be thankful that you are even able to put food on your table while doing a somewhat creative job in the first place. Per each “oppressed” artist like you, there is a dozen of people with infinitely more talent who are forced to waste it by flipping burgers or cleaning out grease traps. God I hate people who perceive games as monolithic entities that should either be experienced in their original form or not experienced at all. If I like 99% of the game and detest the remaining 1%, I have every right to tear that 1% out and throw it away; refer to Ross playing Dark Souls with one hit kill “cheat” and enjoying the hell out of it. (There is a reason why I put “cheat” in quotes and it’s that there is no such thing as “cheats” in a singleplayer game). There is no such thing as “right” or “wrong” way to play a game. Don’t you dare telling me how I should enjoy it. You are in no right to judge other people’s tastes.

First, I can't believe anyone can seriously praise FO3 and Skyrim's art direction. Even rather hardcore Bethesda fans agree that it's an ugly eyesore. It's been talked over ad nauseam. Bethesda sucks at proper lighting; Bethesda throws ambient light sources all over their maps; ambient light sources make everything look faded and withered; Bethesda amps up texture contrast to try to compensate that. It's not artistic intent, it's incompetence. Second, even if we're talking about artistic intent, tint filter is an incredibly cheap attempt at that. It doesn't require any particular artistic talent, it's basically a checkbox and a color picker. It's the equivalent of trying to make the ending of Mass Effect 3 look artsy and deep by throwing in a mysterious child and sad piano music in the last 10 minutes of the game instead of doing some actual good writing. Third, author's intent is utterly inconsequential in comparison with my personal enjoyment of the game. As a game developer, you can throw in any crap to "set the mood and the artistic atmosphere", as long as there is an option in the settings menu to turn that off. (Notice that Ross never complained about vignette filters, grain filters, tinting and other such stuff as long as it's possible to get rid of it). If you are feeling artsy and your goal is to express yourself - sure, why not; but in this case prepare for people not sharing your tastes to pass your game by and you becoming a starving artist. Otherwise understand that your main job is to please your audience, and shove your artistic vision™ where sun don't shine.

Oh HELL yes! I think the last (and only) birthday stream was Supreme Commander

When you've played DE through the night and get a corporate e-mail like this early in the morning, your brain would probably be somewhat confused. (Screenshot courtesy of KYM)

Considering that the next verse is also present later in the video (and the context in which it is present) I don't think there is any doubt here...

painter.mp4

Congratulations on finishing the episode early! Does that mean that you will be able to stream something tonight?

hw.mp4 Happy Halloween everyone

Would be great if Ross finished the Halloween RGD earlier as he was planning and did a gaming stream of something like this :)

Just watch this very website and you'll get a notification some week beforehand. You can also monitor Ross's twatter if you're into that sort of thing.

@Ross Scott It's a bummer that you didn't mention this ad for the game: (Captain Obvious reminds that this is a famous porn actor). Here's an IMDB entry in case anyone thinks this is photoshopped: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0797382/otherworks I think this definitely deserves a mention in the next followup episode.