lazygecko

At the peak of the record industry throughout the 80's and 90's, it really shouldn't have been as practical for most signed musicians to make ends meet. Most just barely covered their losses, or even operated at a loss, while the labels counted on their handful of mega superstars to rake in the real money. This strategy was never going to be sustainable in the long term.

Reached 90 today on my ever present shaman from the vanilla days. These are some of my observations so far: The scenery is great. Pandaria looks better than both Northrend and the Cataclysm zones and I enjoy just wandering around it. Having just reached 90, the endgame content also looks to be much more promising than both of the previous expansions. My biggest issue with WotLK and Cata's philosophies was how they artificially funneled players into the latest raid tier with each patch, and in the process trivialize previous tier raids and dungeons so much that people simply ignore doing them. They seem to be handling things a lot better here, while keeping people out and active in the actual game world in the process. In spite of being more of a return to form though, a lot of people are complaining over the game just getting old and being the same old thing, and they're very much right. They've added scenarios as an alternative to play now, but these are all very short, trivial and not very engaging. Seems more like they're just testing the waters with this to build more on it in the future as they've said scenarios are meant to replace group quests. I think the most significant negative change to the game over the years is how Blizzard makes more and more design decisions with each xpack that end up diminishing player interactions in the game (you know, something very fundamental to a MMORPG experience). I don't really have anything against "easy mode" content in itself, but as it is now we've reached a point where Blizzard lets players "experience all the content" with no one in the group or raid ever having to utter a single word to eachother. The removal of group quests, and adding dungeon/raid finder systems in place of players manually forming groups with eachother chip away the situations that usually act as catalysts for socializing and nurturing relationships with the players in the world. This is a pretty fundamental part of what makes MMORPGs different, and without it you ultimately get a pretty hollow experience.

I think we should try organizing something for multiplayer. Perhaps make some dedicated OCR co-op characters in hardcore mode?

Probably contracted some cheap freelancer who wasn't feeling particularly inspired.

KKND 1 and 2.

I'd wager the scene for Genesis chiptunes is larger than that for the SNES equivalent. Only recently with Schnabubula and Snesology has the latter really taken off as a movement. You've probably just not looked in the right places.

I don't know what it is that makes NC Soft so quick to shut down games like Tabula Rasa when Sony Online Entertainment could keep the colossal failure Vanguard going for so long.

The top down levels in Contra 3. Unfortunately they are so frequent they killed the whole game for me, dragging it down to the lower tier of Contras. The controls were awkward, the whole screen rotating was just confusing, and needing to wander around the map and kill everything to move on set the pace apart too much from the rest of the game. Konami had a nasty habit of shoehorning technological gimmicks into the gameplay for their early SNES titles, but none suffered from it as much as Contra.

As long as they reach their intended vision, then so fucking what? If you're so concerned over the purity of instrumental talent, then you may as well dismiss pretty much all studio productions since the 1950's when it became feasible to edit recorded music.

Give that pitch some vibrato. Pitches love vibrato.

Squenix making their own QWOP clone?

http://vimeo.com/32447278 Doesn't matter if you're not familiar with the man or his work (though you most likely are). I just found this incredibly fascinating to watch.

Japanese tonality has been adapted to fit the western system. You'll find several Japanese pentatonic scales you can use.

Amnesia didn't really do anything for me. I think it plays too much on worn out tropes. I think there are many more aspects of horror out there that haven't been properly explored for games yet. Some of scariest moments I've experienced came from games that weren't even specifically regarded as horror games.

Pendulum are the most successful DnB act outside of Europe, because they market themselves more as a rock band. They're still not that big in the pop realm simply because the US mass market never swallowed electronic music. That was prior to Dubstep though.

Try typing Apogee in Jazz Jackrabbit and see what happens.

Nope. If that were true, whoever made the first supersaw sound would be filthy, filthy rich.

Star Gunner was one of their last 2D games and also one of their best.

I'd assume this stuff would be properly licensed.

Ewoks spoke a mix of Swedish and Filipino. is the true prophet of Dubstep.

Obviously if Lamb of God has been prog metal he would have been a gentleman and scholar about it.

Playing in a band is just a thing a lot of people do in their teens as a means to an end, the display of virtuosity and coolness factor probably has more to do with it than anything. It'll sow the right seeds in a few people and make them realize they're genuinely interested in this stuff.

C64 composers were such a big deal that they'd put their names on the box art to help sell the games.

Here's a more sensible rant: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/06/rant-all-djs-are-glorified-button-pushers/