Watch Dogs 2

Watch Dogs 2 doesn't look like they've learned a fucking thing.

"Stick a black guy in as protagonist," says a fool in a plaid shirt with a beard stolen from an early 20th century lumberjack, "and give him a backstory where he was falsely accused of a crime after evidence was planted. What additional hacking abilities should he have?" "I know," a moron drools, incapable of processing irony. "Let him plant evidence on innocent people! And drones were cool when we started this project, so they're bound to still be relevant when the game is released three years later."

It's ridiculous enough that Star Hacker Extraordinaire Marcus Whateverthefuck runs around with the name of his secret hacking collective on his own bright purple hat, but it's fucking Mr Emoji Eyes that really gets me. Sure, in some kind of William Gibson cyberpunk dystopia that shit would fly, but come the fuck on - that's gonna stick out in suburban San Francisco, especially when it's paired with the world's least subtle iconic studded jacket.

Maybe come the third game the licensing team'll get their shit in gear and we'll actually be hacking around late-21st-century BAMA with the Panther Moderns, rather than this sub-Doctorow power trip masquerading as political commentary.

No Man's Delay

In every interview about, or demo of, No Man's Sky that I've seen, lead developer Sean Murray looks terrified.

Nobody in the world is more worried that this astonishingly ambitious game might not live up to the hype. He is nervous and proud and desperate for people to love Hello Games' next release as much as he does.

I have no doubt that he wants (needs?) No Man's Sky to be as close to perfect as humanly possible, if for no other reason than to justify the hype that's been poured onto the team since E3 2013.

So if Sean Murray thinks it needs another six weeks to be as good as it can be, then I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

But some "fans" - how you can be a fan of an unreleased game is one thing, but the behaviour of these people is entirely another - have taken umbrage with the delay, and sent death threats to Murray.

Leaving aside the logical issue (how is killing the lead developer supposed to expedite the game's release?), the idea that anybody looking forward to No Man's Sky could bear any ill will towards this man blows my mind.

These are people who have attached some part of their personal identity (and self worth) to this game, as ill-advised as that is. Why wouldn't they want it to be the best it can be?

This lack of perspective stuns me every time it appears in gamers (really, I should expect it by now). I felt the pangs of disappointment when I read those first reports of the delay, and the regretful acceptance when it was confirmed.

But Jesus - we've been waiting years for the game to come out. What's six more weeks?

(I'm still of the opinion that Sony should never have announced a date for the game at all, and just sent out a press release saying, "by the way, No Man's Sky is out - happy exploring!".)

Third Law

This image was posted in our company-wide group Skype chat earlier today, and my immediate reaction was anger towards the person who posted it. It's ignorant, it's stupid, and it's offensive.

I don't know how to bring it up with him. I can't think of a way to phrase it that won't get me immediately dismissed, or actively ridiculed¹. I wonder how many women would have to work here before it no longer seemed like appropriate workplace banter?

I'm so aware that I'm in the minority on this. It's so easy to dismiss this shit as harmless - and yeah, nobody in the office is being directly hurt by it - but at some point we, as decent human beings, need to have the fucking empathy to realise that there's something deeply suspect about the "logic" in that image.

The guy who posted it has daughters; is he okay with perpetuating this idea, that tells them, "every emotion you feel is excessive, unnecessary and an inconvenience to the rest of us"?

I think the most disappointing thing, though, is that I wrote this instead of calling him out on it.

¹ There's a not-insignificant percentage of the workforce here that, while maybe not an entire generation above me, are certainly from a different era (or at least perspective). The idea of confronting some of them on this reminds me of probably the most heated conversation I ever had with my dad, about why he found Richard Branson's dressing up as an air stewardess funny.

Broken Age split

This has been doing the rounds on Twitter this morning, and I'm kind of disappointed by the response to the news that Double Fine aren't able to make a whole videogame for $3m.

The full statement, from Double Fine's CEO Tim Schafer, can be read all over the internet (I happen to have a tab open to Destructoid's story, so have that), but the TL;DR version is that they got too ambitious and rather than compromise, they're going to make some cuts to the first half of the game to get something ready for public consumption.

They'll then release that first part of the game, in January, on Steam's "Early Access" program - which lets them sell the (unfinished) game to the public. The remainder of the game will then be released at no additional cost to Early Access buyers (and Kickstarter backers).

There's almost a sense that some people feel Double Fine should have been able to make the whole game using only the money raised through Kickstarter. But then what? Are they not supposed to sell it? Was there some unspoken agreement that, with the whole thing paid for by Kickstarter, the game would then be released for nothing?

It's kind of fascinating to me to see the reaction, though. One of the great things about the Double Fine Adventure project is the transparency; for the first time, consumers are getting to see how the gaming sausage is being made. But rather than learning from seeing that process, they're getting angry that the reality doesn't match up to their utopian ideal.

Even though Double Fine are getting to make the game they want to, on their own terms, it was never going to be a smooth ride. Publishers might be difficult taskmasters to work with, but I'm surprised at how not surprised I am that working directly for your audience is even less stable.

Rant on Rails

This isn't going to be particularly interesting, or make a whole lot of sense, to a lot of people. Probably best to just ignore it.

Over the last couple of weeks, there have been two major vulnerabilities identified in the parameter-parsing in Ruby on Rails - first in the YAML, then in the JSON bit. I don't really understand the ins and outs of it myself, but essentially it allows a malicious user to run unapproved code by forcing the Rails app to read input as if it was an object created in the application. This has knock-on risks for the database, which obviously isn't ideal.

Upgrading recent Rails apps is pretty straightforward; you just update your Gemfile to point to the new Rails gem, then bundle install and deploy your app.

One of our sites, however, runs an ancient version of Rails on an ancient version of Ruby - so old that I can't actually get it working right on my own PC at work. And that's without even trying to update Rails.

Long story short, I spent pretty much all of today trying to get things working on my own machine, and didn't get anywhere. I attempted to use a simpler solution to the problem on the live server, but that went horribly wrong and I had to roll it back pretty quickly.

I'm still not sure how I'm going to get this problem sorted. I don't think my preferred solution is going to be acceptable given the number of our customers who would flip out if this particular offering was to disappear - but it's getting so very, very tempting.

Seriously

Does anybody really listen to what Michael Pachter has to say anymore?

Seems I can't turn around these days without more "predictions" from this mouthy bastard.

Enough acronyms, already

I spend quite a bit of time every day reading videogame forums, of varying intelligences.

I'm fed up of the number of acronyms that people use - not just regular 'net slang, either. Some of them, like "GoW" can refer to more than one game depending on the context and the console being discussed, in this case the 360's Gears of War or PS2's God of War.

One post I just read, the one that actually inspired this complaint, reads "SMG, MP3, SSBB and MK should all be covered too [at E3]".

I read games forums a lot. I read games news a lot. It took me a couple of minutes to work out what games he was talking about. It doesn't help with the sheer number of titles coming out these days, of course, but is your time that precious, that typing "Smash Bros." would waste too much of it that could be saved by "SSBB"?

The Simplified Spelling Society

These motherfuckers have got to be stopped.

And this article, and the associated glossary, should make it obvious why.

I refuse, point-blank, to accept that the way to improve standards is to lower expectations and cater to the lowest common denominator.

David Cameron can fuck off

This speech is nothing but lies, half-truths and PR spin.

If we increase the copyright term, so the incentive is there for you working in the industry to digitise both older and niche repertoire which more people can enjoy at no extra cost.

That's why, as we move on forward into the new digital age of the 21st century, I am pleased to announce today that it is Conservative Party policy to support the extension of the copyright term for sound recordings from 50 to 70 years.

How, exactly, would extending copyright to 70 years be better for the music industry?

For a start, we've got to look at why copyright exists in the first place.

The purpose of copyright is to encourage people to contribute artistic/literal/musical works by promising them a financial reward if their work is a success. However, the current copyright model means that, in addition to providing a reward for creation for the entire lifetime of the artist, the artist's family (or in practice, their publisher/record company) can also benefit from the work.

If a person has a successful enough work, they never have to contribute again, which it could be argued actually reduces the incentive to continue creating music or writing books or what have you.

It's utterly misleading of Cameron - or anyone else, for that matter - to suggest that increasing the duration of copyright would assist living musicians or writers more than it already does. And extension of copyright would do nothing but pay record label executives for the next 70 years.

I don't want to abolish copyright, but there's ways to make money by giving your stuff away for free, especially in this age of the internet. A musician can put an album online and distribute it worldwide for next to nothing (compared to CD shipping, at least). An author can publish online and have thousands of people read their work; if it's good enough, then enough people will pay for it to make you a profit.

Exposure is priceless, and copyright tries to limit the number of people who can read/listen to your stuff until they can pay for it. It should really be the other way around.

EDGE's top game of all time...

What a load of bollocks. I've never been able to understand what people see in Ocarina of Time that's good, never mind the fevered worship for Miyamoto's weak 3D adeventure game. I hate just about everything about it; the plot's atrocious, the level design is weak, the overworld is uninspired, characterization is abysmal, and the whole thing is just so boring. If it didn't have "Zelda" on the box, these same idiots would be up in arms complaining about how poor the whole thing was.

Didn't stop EDGE, the UK's bastion of self-important videogame wankery, from naming it their number one game of all time in a recent list (can we quit it with the lists, already?).

Other mentions go to Resident Evil 4 at #2, which is fair enough - although I think REmake on Gamecube was a more complete experience. Tetris only made it to 9 - immediately behind Halo, an abomination which shouldn't even be on the list. I'm surprised at Final Fantasy XII's inclusion as well; I'd have expected to see VII instead - not because it's better, but it's more like the faux-intellectuals at EDGE to bow to fanboy pressures like that.

There's a full 100 list due out in a future issue (apparently Crackdown's at 100), but Lord knows it's not worth buying EDGE for. I'll just read it via NeoGAF when one of them posts it.