Video Game News and Miscellany

For a while I had confused Monster Hunter with Monster Rancher and was hella confused hearing people talk about the game.
But just as many monsters die.

(Seriously, you'd work your ass off getting a monster up to, like, maybe mid-rank, and then it drops dead of old age.)
 

figmentPez

Staff member
This Robot Butler In Las Vegas Is 'Silly, Scary and Useful All At Once'

The Vdara Hotel & Spa in Las Vegas now has a pair of these delivery bots that link directly to the hotel's market cafe. Named Fetch and Jett, they can easily navigate crowds and optimize ordering to ensure that you get the stuff you requested in under five minutes.
Is this hotel owned by someone named Robert House? Or it is just one of his ancestors? (Future history weirds verbage). Oh wait, they're dog themed robots. Maybe this is the work of Big MT?
 

figmentPez

Staff member
ArenaNet fires two employees for complaining about mansplaining on Twitter

TLDR; Jessica Price made a long series of tweets talking about what she does at her job. Some guy on twitter "corrected" her. She mocked him for mansplaining, and then got fired because there was an angry outcry on Reddit over her behavior. Peter Fries was also fired, for defending her on Twitter.

"The message is very clear, especially to women at the company," Jessica Price tells the Verge. "If Reddit wants you fired, we'll fire you. The quality of your work doesn't matter."

Holy shit, Reddit is such a shithole. But so is Twitter, and people who make 29 tweet essays are only contributing to it being a shithole.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
ArenaNet fires two employees for complaining about mansplaining on Twitter

TLDR; Jessica Price made a long series of tweets talking about what she does at her job. Some guy on twitter "corrected" her. She mocked him for mansplaining, and then got fired because there was an angry outcry on Reddit over her behavior. Peter Fries was also fired, for defending her on Twitter.

"The message is very clear, especially to women at the company," Jessica Price tells the Verge. "If Reddit wants you fired, we'll fire you. The quality of your work doesn't matter."

Holy shit, Reddit is such a shithole. But so is Twitter, and people who make 29 tweet essays are only contributing to it being a shithole.
The name Peter Fries sounds familiar to me... wonder why. Was he in the news sometime in the last couple years maybe (other than this)?
 
ArenaNet fires two employees for complaining about mansplaining on Twitter

TLDR; Jessica Price made a long series of tweets talking about what she does at her job. Some guy on twitter "corrected" her. She mocked him for mansplaining, and then got fired because there was an angry outcry on Reddit over her behavior. Peter Fries was also fired, for defending her on Twitter.

"The message is very clear, especially to women at the company," Jessica Price tells the Verge. "If Reddit wants you fired, we'll fire you. The quality of your work doesn't matter."

Holy shit, Reddit is such a shithole. But so is Twitter, and people who make 29 tweet essays are only contributing to it being a shithole.
Yet Kamiya is hailed as a God for telling everyone who interacts with him on Twitter to fuck off.

I like the fucked up mass letter that was sent that forgot to put the names of people that certain Reddit forum wanted fired that had %FEMALENAME in the place of a person being complained about. Way to go Arenanet, you've emboldened the worst assholes.
 
Much more info here:

https://kotaku.com/in-the-wake-of-arenanet-firings-game-studios-rethink-t-1827591298

For a brief period of time, the developer said, her CEO was ready to tell her boss to fire her. Then, another employee realized something was amiss with the letters. “Fifty or so of them glitched out with a lot of variables exposed, including %FEMALENAME,” said the developer. This made it clear that the letters were simply form letters with blank spaces for the name of any woman that the mob wanted to attack.
 
Reading a bit more, though, I do have to say...The criticisms/commentary she calls mansplaining doesn't sound like that to me - it sounds more like general fan/dev interaction, no matter what the gender of both. She's the one who went to mansplaining, hurt manfeels, and the general "well boohoo sucks to be you snowflake" style of responses.

I'm not at all saying mansplaining isn't an issue, nor that she doesn't get a lot of (extra) criticism and complaints because of her gender. Certainly not that she should've been fired, and I'm most certainly against some of the business practices shown here. In this particular case, though, I feel like she worked out some other frustrations (probably at being mansplained to/denigrated/not taken seriously/etc by people in positions of power over her at her work?) on a fan who was trying to engage in a fairly normal conversation.

I don't necessarily feel there's a very "right" side on this issue. Sexism is most certainly still a thing in (game) development and on social media such as Reddit; in this case I get the feeling she behaved like I've seen people do wrt racism as well - pulling it into a place where it didn't necessarily apply.
 
Reading a bit more, though, I do have to say...The criticisms/commentary she calls mansplaining doesn't sound like that to me - it sounds more like general fan/dev interaction, no matter what the gender of both. She's the one who went to mansplaining, hurt manfeels, and the general "well boohoo sucks to be you snowflake" style of responses.

I'm not at all saying mansplaining isn't an issue, nor that she doesn't get a lot of (extra) criticism and complaints because of her gender. Certainly not that she should've been fired, and I'm most certainly against some of the business practices shown here. In this particular case, though, I feel like she worked out some other frustrations (probably at being mansplained to/denigrated/not taken seriously/etc by people in positions of power over her at her work?) on a fan who was trying to engage in a fairly normal conversation.

I don't necessarily feel there's a very "right" side on this issue. Sexism is most certainly still a thing in (game) development and on social media such as Reddit; in this case I get the feeling she behaved like I've seen people do wrt racism as well - pulling it into a place where it didn't necessarily apply.
I had a much different reaction to that story than all of the news outlets. The story seemed to be Reddit attacks Dev for being a woman and gets her fired. But if you look at the actual Twitter discussion that started it, she posts her theory about storytelling in games and what is or isn't possible, and someone very politely disagrees and offers his own opinion, but follows it up with sincerity that he finds the insight interesting and thanking her for the discussion. He's also apparently a prominent streamer in that community, so he's invested in the discussion. That's when she goes on the the offensive, accusing him of mansplaining, and calling him names. He reacts with surprise and apologizes, bowing out, and then another dev (the other one that got fired) replies explaining that the streamer was in the wrong because "she didn't ask for his opinion"

From there is where it turns into a shit storm because that's just kicking a hornets nest.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
8Bitdo now makes conversion kits to make old retro controllers wireless. Basically you open up the controller shell and swap out the PCB. There are models for SNES, NES, and Mega Drive controllers. They also have models for the SNES and NES classic controllers, which take slightly different shaped boards.



While this is cool for NES and Mega Drive fans, I'm not really sure who the market for the SNES conversion is. 8Bitdo already makes some really good SNES style controllers.
 
No Man's Sky just received a huge-ass update that's apparently being quite well received.

Anyone play it yet? Any thoughts? I've been eying NMS as my next survival game after Subnautica.
 
No Man's Sky just received a huge-ass update that's apparently being quite well received.

Anyone play it yet? Any thoughts? I've been eying NMS as my next survival game after Subnautica.
I am. It doesn't feel like much has changed but I started brand new again so I might not have hit all the major changes.

Some elements that were superfluous are gone now and that's nice for early inventory management thats for sure. Lots of quality of life improvements actually. Being able to call your ship is a big one.

You can play with others now, definitely. I jumped in a random game and have two others that have sort of started a little colony with me.

Haven't got a land vehicle yet nor have I come close to owning a freighter or frigate.

Like Dave though I enjoyed it initially so your mileage may vary.
 
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No Man's Sky just received a huge-ass update that's apparently being quite well received.

Anyone play it yet? Any thoughts? I've been eying NMS as my next survival game after Subnautica.
I've played a bit of it. NMS at launch was shameful, but now two years after it seems like they finally have released what was advertised.
 
It's also on sale for half off through Friday.

--Patrick
Well, kinda.

The game was so poorly received at launch that it was soon dropped to a base price of $30

And then over time that base price was raised while keeping it on sale, so most didn't notice the price increase.

It's back now to being a $60 title, with the sale bringing it back to $30
 
No Man's Sky just received a huge-ass update that's apparently being quite well received.

Anyone play it yet? Any thoughts? I've been eying NMS as my next survival game after Subnautica.
It depends on when you played it last. If you stopped before the first update, a lot has changed. I played a little of the second update (I think) and I'd say a lot has still changed. I never played the third update, though. I did play it on multiplayer last night. It was fun! It feels like the same game but quite different too.
 
It depends on when you played it last. If you stopped before the first update, a lot has changed. I played a little of the second update (I think) and I'd say a lot has still changed. I never played the third update, though. I did play it on multiplayer last night. It was fun! It feels like the same game but quite different too.
Never played it before, actually.
 
I'd suggest if people here are going to be playing again or for the first time that we get a game going together.
 
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