NEWER POSTS

Grand Theft Auto: The… Birthday Cake?

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Aug 27, 2008

Filed under: Pictures 36 comments
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This image was gleefully swiped from Cake Wrecks – which is one of those sites that will steal a lunch hour from you if you give it half a chance.

Grand Theft Auto: The Cake

A San Andreas cake. For a four year old boy. This is like one of those, “How many things wrong can you find in this picture”, except that this one is too easy. The answer is: Everything. This is an image of perfect wrongness, from the expertly reproduced likeness of Cesar Vialpando holding a gun, to the wads of play money jammed into the icing. This cake is the work of a very skilled madman.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Grand Theft Auto: The… Birthday Cake?”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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36 comments

 

SecuROM causes Bad Breath and Leukemia

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Aug 27, 2008

Filed under: Rants 65 comments
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Just yesterday I said that while SecuROM is an insult to customers, it had never personally caused me any difficulty. This morning I got to enjoy its shortcomings first-hand. With CD in the drive, I click to launch my game and…

securom1.jpg

Hm. Laying aside the immorality of forbidding your customers from making Fair Use backups of stuff they own, I want to point out that the legit disk was, in fact, in the drive.

I clicked the link in the dialog for help, where I was told the following:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “SecuROM causes Bad Breath and Leukemia”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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65 comments

 

GTA:SA:PC: Strangeness

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Aug 26, 2008

Filed under: Projects 34 comments
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I’ve said before that if game developers would back off from the bleeding edge, they could do more with less, and GTA is the perfect example of this in action. If you’ve been reading this site for any length of time you’ve heard this rant before. My big plan over the weekend was to do a video review / commentary thing for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on the PC, to illustrate what I’m talking about.

It didn’t work out. I’m still not sure why.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “GTA:SA:PC: Strangeness”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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34 comments

 

Stolen Pixels #15:Azeroth Travelogue, Part 2

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Aug 26, 2008

Filed under: Column 1 comments
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The journey through Azeroth and self-indulgence continues. Please follow these steps for maximum enjoyment:

  1. Read the comic.
  2. Laugh uproariously.
  3. Leave a comment that describes, in detail, the level of mirth you experienced.
  4. Click on the ads and patronize the site sponsors.

Note that when I said “maximum enjoyment”, I was talking about my enjoyment, not yours.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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That Explains a Lot

By Shamus Posted Monday Aug 25, 2008

Filed under: Rants 57 comments
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In this CNet interview, EA president Frank Gibeau talks about the new direction he has planned for the company:

If you look at our customers’ behavior patterns, you’re seeing them engaging with fully connected experiences. And I think we have IPs and ideas and expertise that can really allow us to do that. I think Spore is a connected experience. I think Battlefield is, and Warhammer. These can be very lucrative for us, and they can be very exciting from a developer standpoint, because you’re moving from a fire-and-forget model to more of a service model, where you launch the game but you’re thinking 24-7 about when’s my first content pack, what’s happening with telemetry, how are people playing the game, and how do I make their experiences better?

I’ve noticed this already. A “service” model. They have been moving towards this for some time now. Why sell me a game, when you can lease it to me and hold the experience ransom for a monthly fee? What better way to get closer to your customers than to enter into this economic suicide pact with them? If we die, we’re taking your games with us.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “That Explains a Lot”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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57 comments

 

Console Gaming on the PC

By Shamus Posted Monday Aug 25, 2008

Filed under: Random 38 comments
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Some people were asking about my particular console / gaming setup. Ok, two people asked. But I want to put this up so I can link back to it later.

I haven’t had this setup running since the HD crash a few weeks ago, but when things are working right my gaming environment is thus:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Console Gaming on the PC”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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38 comments

 

Thirty-Seven

By Shamus Posted Sunday Aug 24, 2008

Filed under: Landmarks 100 comments
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…is a lot of years to be old, or not, depending on who you ask. In any case, it’s how old I turn today.

Thirty seven? How did I get to be thirty seven? I have this vivid memory of standing outside my first-grade classroom, looking at all the other doors I’d never gone through. To my right was a door with a brass “6” affixed to the front. Grade six! I couldn’t imagine. Would I ever get there? It was eons into the future.

The distance between those two points – between grade one and grade six – seems much larger than the distance between right now and the point where I graduated from high school in 1990. It’s not just that things are speeding up, but the rate at which things are accelerating is also increasing. At this rate I’ll be fifty by Wednesday.

Pay this no mind. I have these little Almost Mid Life freakouts every year around my birthday. I’ll straighten out in a few days.

…Assuming I’m spared. You can’t plan too far ahead at my age.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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100 comments

 
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