You gotta love how so many of the hardcore gaming demographic are almost Marxist in their their contempt for "money grabbing" "sell-out" companies. Of course you're entitled to your opinion, and by all means, if you feel this title doesn't offer sufficient added value to warrant paying premium, don't buy it. Simple as that.
So what if FIFA series are a surefire cash cow for EA? There's billions of football (that's right, |Americans, that's what it's called, not soccer) fans around the world, a sizable subset of which surely own gaming consoles. It would be commercially stupid of them not to get a slice of the pie.
And really, so what if the yearly titles are too similar to warrant buying every single one? No one's forcing you to buy them all, and what's more, they're rather good games in their own right. Unlike so many other sporting event tie-ins. They're a right laugh with a bunch of mates. Seriously, I can't begin to understand the rage. There's plenty of money grubbing companies to get angry at. A software company scoring an open goal, in an industry plagued by exploding development costs, would seem a trivial one.
@ChiefFreeman I like how they kept the 360 size power brick - if this type of transformer is need, powerwise, might as well keep it out the console itself. Plus, when the rapture comes, and all the signs indicate any day now, you'll have a powerful melee weapon handy to keep looters out your home :)
This might possibly be the gayest - in the old sense of the word - game I've ever seen, and I am digging it. Though I can't see myself paying premium for a game that you can complete in an hour, I appreciate what they're trying to do here. I'd really like to see games move away from the formulaic hi-stakes/lo-risk template, towards more experimental reconceptions of gaming. I understand war and crime simulators are going to be more interesting to gaming's core demographic, but that would seem all the more reason to explore new markets. I'd really be interested in a next-gen insect simulation game, where e.g. you're a bee, going about your beesiness. Video games are this age's LSD, and it would be a shame to limit the kinds of trips you can take to the standard Pentagon-sponsored combat simulators.
Welcome to the desert of real world internships. Lame, for sure. But as lame as borrowing 30 G to attend university, only to learn that after graduating, there's only low-paid service jobs? Or working at Foxconn's prison industrial complex all your life? The Western educational system is geared towards shielding its youth from the grim realities of work for as long as possible. Who's to say a shitty internship doesn't teach you something valuable about work in general? Perhaps you have a misguided conception of what 'work' entails. Do you really think future employers have your personal development in mind when they hire you?
'NSA box' pretty much sums up my feeling about the always-on mic and cam that is the Kinect. I'd figure a competitive industry like this would not allow for companies to be so wildly out of touch with public sentiment, but then again maybe M$ know exactly what they're doing. Perhaps they're not so much insensitive so much as DELIBERATELY targeting the silent majority with this one. You know the type: 'Nothing to hide, good sir, please, feel free to read my mail, tap my phone, heck, why don't you give my mom a full rectal examination while you're at it?' Aka sheeple. Satan knows there's a lot of people out there who can't even function without the idea that someone, somewhere is watching them.
This all sounds promising, but it had better not be a 'light' or completely locked down closed box version of PC gaming. Just because it's Linux-based, doesn't mean it's going to be 'open'. As we're seeing in the run-up to the PS4 and Xbone, publisher interests often run diametrically against user interests. I don't think users will care as much whether it's open source proper, as whether it's accommodating with DRM/authorization requirements. But foremost, it's actual PC gaming that we would want, not 'another propriety gaming platform from the same people who brought you Steam'.
Irate comments have been a staple of web 2.0 dynamics from the get go, and are just a feature that comes of being able to post anonymously - it's well established a perceived anonymity lowers the inhibition threshold, causing people, for better or worse, to speak their minds more freely than they might in a face to face situation.
But I'm not sure if gamespot users, much less gamers in general, are so 'angry' across the board. I suspect for a lot of them comments are a 'continuation of massive online multiplayer warfare by other means'. That is, they see it as a bit of a game in itself. Frankly, the 'angry', 'defensive', and more often than not, 'bovine' language is just an expression of where young male gamers' heads are at, up to and including the hysterical sexism. I'm not saying it's excusable, particularly the rape-talk that recently came up in mainstream media. But it's to be expected from a system of free, anonymous exchange.
So while it's great that Danny's made so many '3-D' friends through gaming and gamespot, they would seem to be an exception. I think the majority of gamers simply don't want to make any more real friends, and that gaming, like heavy metal, is more like a personal religion for young men, something to be morbidly serious about. Games provide a temporary release from social obligations, and the fun of online multiplayer isn't about 'connecting' with like-minded individuals and 'sharing a hobby'. It's that they make it possible to live out your anti-social urges all the more. You see, it's all 'fun and games' to punch unsuspecting NPC's in the grill in GTA V. But it gets old fast. Paradoxically, you need other people to be properly anti-social.
@musalala what I'm saying is that 'whining' is what little children do, as to be distinguished from voicing legitimate, articulated grievances, organizing and confronting the 'enemy' (in the case of feminism, not 'men' so much as male-dominated institutions). What I'm saying is feminism is more than the 'whining' it's made out to be: it's about asking fundamental questions (some) men would rather not see asked. As a sexually integrated hetero male, I stand by my earlier observation that the most irate anti-feminists tend to be pimply virgin males. I'm not against complaining, nor is it up to me to say who can and can't whine. People should do what comes natural to them. But... if you have to ASK whether it's okay to whine, on the argument that 'the feminists do it too', THEN you might well have problems of a more psychological nature.
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