Some things that piss me the fuck off
Feb. 18th, 2010 05:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenTime for a good old-fashioned gripe. Here's what's annoying me this week!
1. People who pronounce things wrong.
I don't mean people who don't speak English well or have accents. They are lovely and allowed to speak with accents all their life for all I care, especially if they are British. (Or Australian. Or Kiwi. Or even South African, though I will probably confuse that with one of the others--or all of the others at some point.) I mean people who were born and raised in America and obviously speak fluent English who insist on pronouncing words that they clearly have only ever read on paper in a way that is stupid and obviously wrong, and worse, no one corrects them.
Currently, after leaving behind my book last week, I am listening to an audiobook of The Stand. I haven't even caught up to where I left off, I was just enjoying having it read to me while I worked, did chores, etc. But the guy they've got reading it is going to drive me out of my goddamned mind. I mean, this is something that was recorded and edited and produced and no one stopped to go, "Buddy, you do not say things that way. Look it up the dictionary if you can't read it."
Stasis. Say it to yourself. Stasis. The dictionary would like you to know that that is pronounced STAY-sis. Not STAH-sis. It's bad enough I have to listen to you say "modem" as mo-DEM, which is weird but not wrong (according to the dictionary). I've lost count of the others, but STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT. Every time, I'm yanked bodily out of the goddamned story. STOP IT.
2. People who are anorexic presuming to lecture other people about their eating habits. Yes, this article has to do with the Kevin Smith kerfuffle, which should be discussed in terms of customer service and has instead devolved into "Fatties deserve it." But it's a good read. Because even if you want to make this about someone being fat, end of story, you really, really shouldn't let anyone that obsessed with food tell you what's right and what's not when it comes to a) eating, b) obesity, c) anything else. Obsessed people make very poor philosophers.
3. The fact that I'm probably going to have to buy this expansion.
Kotaku had a good article about the two-pronged strategy to encourage gamers to buy games new, which would funnel money to developers and not to retailers like GameStop that turn around used games, on which developers see nary a penny. One strategy was to keep the game relevant--to keep updating and updating and updating it with downloads to make it worth holding onto. This would keep the game in the hands of the few who do buy it immediately and would keep them from pawning it off, thus cutting down on the supply of (if not the demand for) used games.
I find this all incredibly obnoxious. In Mass Effect 2, one of the main teammates of your player character was obviously an afterthought add-on of just this type of system, thus making him uninteresting and conversations with him less interesting that bothering anonymous NPCs in the game. You needed to have him to get achievements, but you couldn't relate to him worth a damn. But you did need him for those achievements.
And I like these games. I really liked Assassin's Creed II. I don't even object to their being a second game with the main character from it as opposed to creating a new adventure with a new assassin. But not like this. Especially not when, as is the case with a lot of "downloadable content" what you're really doing is downloading the right to access data on a disc you've purchased. Maybe this DLC is different, but it's still dragging out the franchise and stringing along the fans, dropping substandard fare on them and hoping it's just good enough that they don't protest. Balls to that.
And, yes, I'm mad that I still want it. I will wait to hear reviews. The first reviews of AC II DLC were...not kind. Perhaps this ranting will all come to nothing. But I'll still be annoyed in principle, just so we're clear.
1. People who pronounce things wrong.
I don't mean people who don't speak English well or have accents. They are lovely and allowed to speak with accents all their life for all I care, especially if they are British. (Or Australian. Or Kiwi. Or even South African, though I will probably confuse that with one of the others--or all of the others at some point.) I mean people who were born and raised in America and obviously speak fluent English who insist on pronouncing words that they clearly have only ever read on paper in a way that is stupid and obviously wrong, and worse, no one corrects them.
Currently, after leaving behind my book last week, I am listening to an audiobook of The Stand. I haven't even caught up to where I left off, I was just enjoying having it read to me while I worked, did chores, etc. But the guy they've got reading it is going to drive me out of my goddamned mind. I mean, this is something that was recorded and edited and produced and no one stopped to go, "Buddy, you do not say things that way. Look it up the dictionary if you can't read it."
Stasis. Say it to yourself. Stasis. The dictionary would like you to know that that is pronounced STAY-sis. Not STAH-sis. It's bad enough I have to listen to you say "modem" as mo-DEM, which is weird but not wrong (according to the dictionary). I've lost count of the others, but STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT. Every time, I'm yanked bodily out of the goddamned story. STOP IT.
2. People who are anorexic presuming to lecture other people about their eating habits. Yes, this article has to do with the Kevin Smith kerfuffle, which should be discussed in terms of customer service and has instead devolved into "Fatties deserve it." But it's a good read. Because even if you want to make this about someone being fat, end of story, you really, really shouldn't let anyone that obsessed with food tell you what's right and what's not when it comes to a) eating, b) obesity, c) anything else. Obsessed people make very poor philosophers.
3. The fact that I'm probably going to have to buy this expansion.
Kotaku had a good article about the two-pronged strategy to encourage gamers to buy games new, which would funnel money to developers and not to retailers like GameStop that turn around used games, on which developers see nary a penny. One strategy was to keep the game relevant--to keep updating and updating and updating it with downloads to make it worth holding onto. This would keep the game in the hands of the few who do buy it immediately and would keep them from pawning it off, thus cutting down on the supply of (if not the demand for) used games.
I find this all incredibly obnoxious. In Mass Effect 2, one of the main teammates of your player character was obviously an afterthought add-on of just this type of system, thus making him uninteresting and conversations with him less interesting that bothering anonymous NPCs in the game. You needed to have him to get achievements, but you couldn't relate to him worth a damn. But you did need him for those achievements.
And I like these games. I really liked Assassin's Creed II. I don't even object to their being a second game with the main character from it as opposed to creating a new adventure with a new assassin. But not like this. Especially not when, as is the case with a lot of "downloadable content" what you're really doing is downloading the right to access data on a disc you've purchased. Maybe this DLC is different, but it's still dragging out the franchise and stringing along the fans, dropping substandard fare on them and hoping it's just good enough that they don't protest. Balls to that.
And, yes, I'm mad that I still want it. I will wait to hear reviews. The first reviews of AC II DLC were...not kind. Perhaps this ranting will all come to nothing. But I'll still be annoyed in principle, just so we're clear.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-19 06:39 pm (UTC)The first game takes place in the Holy Land, which everyone with any knowledge of religion should have some interest in (there's a reason I put AC1 on my "Best real-life locations in video games" list for that year for its 10th century Jerusalem). Renaissance Italy wouldn't have been that expected before "The Da Vinci Code" came out, but there's a bit more interest in it now.
Japan is actually a bit overrepresented in video gaming due to all those Japanese publishers; I don't see Ubisoft's French offices trying to go out of their Eurozone to use it. China's underrepresented, but it's very tough to work with.
I actually like using the 20th century, because it's the area of technique Desmond wouldn't have yet from Altair and Ezio, and one he'd need to properly take on the future Templars. There's a lot of room for an assassination game with guns, as opposed to a shooter, and WWI is severely underdone (which is why I suggest 1900-1930--the introduction of electricity, diesel, air travel, cars...) I can think of one recent game with some WWI setting (Days of Darkness? The one with the time traveller.) It shouldn't be a run-and-gun franchise, but you can do assassination with guns, and you'll have to if Desmond's going to do a plausible game in the near future where everyone has guns. It's also an era with, well, lots of assassins.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-19 06:51 pm (UTC)Another problem with moving the series forward in time just occurred to me: move it too much closer, and you're going to run into people Desmond knows, or would have some record of himself, wouldn't you? I mean, it's all well and good to visit some relatives more than a half-a-millennium removed; they've got thousands of descendants, not just Desmond. But WWI would be Desmond's great-grandparents, at furthest remove. That's too close, I think, for him not to have some idea about them surely? Or am I missing something? It's been a while since Assassin's Creed...
no subject
Date: 2010-02-19 07:33 pm (UTC)Desmond is approximately our age, I think, and the game takes place in 2012. I have little to no idea about my relatives who were adults in 1900-1920--the most we know is about one line of the family we could trace to Belarus that came over in that era. Easy plotline possibility, probably more thorough justification than Ubisoft would actually use: Desmond's great-great-grandmother came to the United States in 1905 in that massive wave of immigration, and left his great-great-grandfather behind in the old country; he planned to follow, but family legend is that he died before he arrived. The truth turns out to be that he stayed behind for his work as an assassin, which is (insert plot here).
no subject
Date: 2010-02-19 08:20 pm (UTC)