Fandumb

[Shane for Wax]

Is all of this intended as a serious discussion?

I'd say its a little from Column A, and a little from Column B.

Honestly, I try to avoid giving EA money if I can.  The way they handled Ascension, and to a lesser extent Pagan, was...beyond bloody reprehensible.  That said, there are still decent games that come out under the EA logo once in a while.  However, I buy them to support the developers, the people that actually put sweat, blood, and tears into making that game, not the publisher.  Marketing might be a bitch of a task, but it is NOTHING compared to writing what's likely millions of lines of code, designing maps, animating models, composing musical scores, the list goes on.

The developers come first, in my mind.  Always always always.

See, that's what I mean. Separate developer from publisher. Fucking thank you. I don't think it's too difficult at all.

[RavynousHunter]

I think it'd help if people saw that its like to -be- a developer.  I don't mean the "Hi, we're Team X, and we're doing awesome shit, yaaaaaaay! " videos, I mean the ones ya don't see.  Where the programmers are literally losing sleep because of some dumbass game-killing bug that Bob made, but forgot how since he was up coding at 4am while coming down from the 15 Monsters he drank just to stay awake that long.  The orchestra composer having to do three dozen takes of a single piece because the chick on the violin keeps hitting sour notes.  The texture artists going every tiny detail, so people won't rage over "ITS 1 PIXEL OFF, ITS NOT HIGH-DEF, LIARSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!"

Yeah, examples might be a bit extreme, but making games isn't a fuckin cakewalk.  Even if you use a pre-made engine from another game using the same ruleset, you've still got to deal with tweaks, memory leaks, bugs, texture updates, light mapping issues, scripting, storyboarding, and a ton of other shit.  I respect those motherfuckers, because I know that shit ain't easy, and it becomes even -more- difficult when the fanbase you're trying to please is full of foaming-at-the-mouth reprobates who will nitpick every single fucking detail because, without it, their pathetic, worthless lives would have no meaning.

Okay, that felt good to get down.

To put it another way, fandumb pisses me off and I want to find each and every offender, and bitchslap them until they have no teeth while screaming "RESPECT!" at the top of my freakin lungs.

[Cerim Treascair]

I think it'd help if people saw that its like to -be- a developer.  I don't mean the "Hi, we're Team X, and we're doing awesome shit, yaaaaaaay! " videos, I mean the ones ya don't see.  Where the programmers are literally losing sleep because of some dumbass game-killing bug that Bob made, but forgot how since he was up coding at 4am while coming down from the 15 Monsters he drank just to stay awake that long.  The orchestra composer having to do three dozen takes of a single piece because the chick on the violin keeps hitting sour notes.  The texture artists going every tiny detail, so people won't rage over "ITS 1 PIXEL OFF, ITS NOT HIGH-DEF, LIARSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!"

Yeah, examples might be a bit extreme, but making games isn't a fuckin cakewalk.  Even if you use a pre-made engine from another game using the same ruleset, you've still got to deal with tweaks, memory leaks, bugs, texture updates, light mapping issues, scripting, storyboarding, and a ton of other shit.  I respect those motherfuckers, because I know that shit ain't easy, and it becomes even -more- difficult when the fanbase you're trying to please is full of foaming-at-the-mouth reprobates who will nitpick every single fucking detail because, without it, their pathetic, worthless lives would have no meaning.

Okay, that felt good to get down.

To put it another way, fandumb pisses me off and I want to find each and every offender, and bitchslap them until they have no teeth while screaming "RESPECT!" at the top of my freakin lungs.

Truth be told, I keep thinking that James of the Extra Credits crew would GLEEFULLY cover this through Daniel Portnoy if he wasn't bound by NDA's and contracts.

[chitoryu12]

The texture artists going every tiny detail, so people won't rage over "ITS 1 PIXEL OFF, ITS NOT HIGH-DEF, LIARSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!"

The sad part is this isn't a very extreme example. When Alan Wake came out, people were downright going into conniptions over their claims that the game wasn't HD. They were literally counting pixels so that they could criticize the look of the game. Never mind that it looks identical or better than a lot of 720p games.

[RavynousHunter]

Would you be surprised if that little bit were actually a reference to that very incident?

[Stormwarden]

I see it all the time in politics, where people start treating their party like it's a sports team, right or wrong.

I feel bad for Wil Wheaton. I first saw him in "The Last Starfighter," and he was awesome as an unsub in "Criminal Minds." Whoever wrote Wesley Crusher gave him the short end of the stick.

I am a Nightwish fan, and I just want to take everyone going rabid over Tarja vs. Annette, and slam their heads together. Hell, while I'm at it,  what about all the lead singers Iced Earth has had (JSYK, only Joel Schaeffer has been with the band from the beginning. He IS Iced Earth for a reason)?

[Scotsgit]

Because comics, of course, are serious business™. Actually, let's expand that: "Entertainment is serious business™"

More on topic, the Tarja vs. Annette debate is kinda really stupid. Both sides of it would think I'm not a troo Nightwish fan™ because I actually like the different styles of both singers more or less equally. Same with Mike vs. Joel for Mystery Science Theatre 3000. It's fine to have your preference for who is better, but I'm surprised at how angry people can get when you say you prefer the one that they don't.

Never look at the comments on Nightwish clips on youtube:  You get unbelievable amounts of vitriol thrown at Anette (many of who blame her for Tarja leaving, even though no-one in Nightwish had even heard of Anette when Tarja got the boot) and some people hoping that her next child is stillborn (he wasn't, I'm happy to report).

And now, it seems they're starting it all over again with Floor.

[ironbite]

Nightwish is a cursed band for the female leads I tell ya.  Though Tarja's solo stuff is AMAZINGBALLS good.  Seriously.

Ironbite-the woman's pipes are amazing and kinda wasted on a metal band.

[chitoryu12]

Would you be surprised if that little bit were actually a reference to that very incident?

Not even a little.

Nightwish stuff

I listen to bands like Nightwish, Within Temptation, etc. That means I reserve the right to laugh at how so many of those bands have a woman dressed in these overwrought dresses and/or corsets and the rest of the band is a bunch of generic metalheads in all black.

Then you get to In This Moment and it becomes plain ridiculous.

[Sleepy]

I understand when people complain about serious bugs in a game. Stuff like permanently being stuck on a quest, which doesn't allow you to finish the game, or repeated crashes for no apparent reason. Those are serious issues that should have been addressed in the game's development. But some people go crazy over the dumbest things, and they don't have a clue how much work was put into the game to get it to that point. And back to my first point, sometimes the publishers are assholes and refuse to give developers a reasonable deadline, so the game comes out half-assed because they had no time to work on it. Don't blame the developers, blame the assholes above them. Not saying that's the case every time, but it sure as hell has happened.

[kefkaownsall]

Nigthwish is aweome

[chitoryu12]

I understand when people complain about serious bugs in a game. Stuff like permanently being stuck on a quest, which doesn't allow you to finish the game, or repeated crashes for no apparent reason. Those are serious issues that should have been addressed in the game's development.

I was actually just complaining yesterday about D.E.I.M.O.S., a custom questline for New Vegas. I was initially showing up just to talk about a particular bug that kept me from completing the story (namely, the robot you're escorting in a horribly slow escort quest seems to randomly shift between following waypoints and following the player, and then gets stuck and starts pacing back and forth in front of a particular shipping container endlessly). It turned into me listing every single problem I had found in the entire quest at that point, roughly midway through the whole thing at best. Just paragraphs of game-breaking bugs, or errors that I needed to use a console command to escape (like a particular corner where entering it gets you stuck and you need to noclip out, or a door refusing to unlock after a particular trigger).

Meanwhile, the comments are just hundreds and hundreds of "OMG THIS IS THE GREATEST MOD EVER"

[Shane for Wax]

I understand when people complain about serious bugs in a game. Stuff like permanently being stuck on a quest, which doesn't allow you to finish the game, or repeated crashes for no apparent reason. Those are serious issues that should have been addressed in the game's development. But some people go crazy over the dumbest things, and they don't have a clue how much work was put into the game to get it to that point. And back to my first point, sometimes the publishers are assholes and refuse to give developers a reasonable deadline, so the game comes out half-assed because they had no time to work on it. Don't blame the developers, blame the assholes above them. Not saying that's the case every time, but it sure as hell has happened.

Basically, yeah. Even games that are universally regarded as bad had work put in. A lot of the licensed movie games get a bad rep but really you should blame the publishers of those games. The people who just want the movie tie-in for more cash. Those are the money grubbers people call just about every publisher and developer in the world.

[chitoryu12]

Movie tie-ins generally face almost all of their problems from the mad rush for the publishers and studio to get it out in time for the holidays or the film's release. Nobody's learned from ET.

You'll notice that virtually all good licensed games are ones that came out after the film, sometimes several years after. Always give your developers time to make something good if you want to profit.

[ironbite]

I understand when people complain about serious bugs in a game. Stuff like permanently being stuck on a quest, which doesn't allow you to finish the game, or repeated crashes for no apparent reason. Those are serious issues that should have been addressed in the game's development.

I was actually just complaining yesterday about D.E.I.M.O.S., a custom questline for New Vegas. I was initially showing up just to talk about a particular bug that kept me from completing the story (namely, the robot you're escorting in a horribly slow escort quest seems to randomly shift between following waypoints and following the player, and then gets stuck and starts pacing back and forth in front of a particular shipping container endlessly). It turned into me listing every single problem I had found in the entire quest at that point, roughly midway through the whole thing at best. Just paragraphs of game-breaking bugs, or errors that I needed to use a console command to escape (like a particular corner where entering it gets you stuck and you need to noclip out, or a door refusing to unlock after a particular trigger).

Meanwhile, the comments are just hundreds and hundreds of "OMG THIS IS THE GREATEST MOD EVER"

I thin all cheast breech solved that with the groovatron