Recent content by J.d. Scott

Could you imagine if Michael Haneke (Funny Games) had done The Purge?

I don't know if I see the problem in that. If you're stealing from ArsTechnica or GameInformer, that's fine. The Escapist isn't a news organization per se. The thing is, you can still present it for what it is - a news story, and then snark about it later. Jim Sterling is the grandmaster at that...

Not to disparage your opinion, but why are you giving an opinion at all? Who encouraged you to editorialize? I've read two stories from you and neither would be what any reasonable person would call journalism. You aren't Yahtzee and this is not your column. Can you not present what should have...

To be fair, Mass Effect: Conviction was pretty interesting, and I have some deep suspicion that Bioware doesn't so much want to do a fourth game with Shepard as a new series within the same universe, so Vega might be that guy. However, put me down in the "animation looks terrible" camp. James...

I still think we're putting too much onus on the high school student to conform. And the fact is, they only have to conform if they stick out in certain ways. If he was a black militant, it most likely wouldn't have been a problem, or if he had gone exceptionally urban, or skater or gothic or...

This is such BS. Why should he have to conform? We constantly talk about schools as having safe environments - well is it or isn't it? If it's only safe if you make every effort to not stand out from the crowd, if you hide your identity and act submissively, then that isn't safe. Allowing...

What self defense training taken reasonably would have provided him the skills to handle six attackers in the amount of time needed to be relevant? He's not an especially large young man either, not that it's especially relevant. Also, since he didn't utilize it on any of the students, never...

Yeah, but what's the end result of the bullies being ignored? My guess is that it would lead to escalation. You're also dismissing his claim that he felt he was about to be jumped without any sort of reason to do so. There's no mention of act of violence, since none occured, but there's no...

Here's what Mirriam and Webster say: Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that ?there is no such...

Logistically, there's not a lot of options. The kid is being bullied now - everyone who suggested he learn martial arts, like a week or two of white belt sessions of Shorin-ryu or BJJ or TKD is suddenly going to turn a scrawny gay kid into a purveyor of a**-whoopins. I ended up cracking my...

This is sort of depressing. The story was reprehensibly stupid, but the ludicrously over the top heroine, and delightfully quick hack and slash action (at higher difficulties, it's almost insanely fast) made the game a lot of fun (it didn't hurt that Sega/Platinum put enough fanservice in to...

Here's the thing - there's only a limited amount of growth one can get. Eventually, the growth curve and the price curve stop meeting up properly. At $60, 5M copies generates $300M in gross revenue. To get the same at $10, they'd have to sell 30M (and there's a physical cost with each disc, so...

I think they're two different things. Extra Credits is a teacher at DigiPen offering stripped down, user-friendly versions of some topical lectures that entry level game programming students would receive for free. Of course it's sort of patronizing - it's a teacher lecturing students. It also...

Here's the thing - there's a point where the consumer's demand and the profits hit the rubber. They have determined based on sales, that $60 is the price point the US market will bear. And realize, while super games make a lot of money, a great deal of other games, while critically acclaimed and...

A few points, but generally, we're not too far out of line. 1.) Steam is really pretty DRM. There's plenty of games that can't be played without being perma-connected to Steam, or at least connected on launch. If your gripe against the Ubisoft copy protection is that "why do I need to be...