WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW?

Except now they throw it in the bush instead. I know a few people who got charged for that because they left envelopes with their addresses on it around, but a lot of people just take it and dump it in the bush because it's free. Or burn it in a bonfire. yay greenhouse gasses.

Probably doesn't help that the shire recently downsized everyone's bins to half their size. For every one. Not matter the size of the household. I'm telling ya, a house of 6 will obviously produce more rubbish than a household of 2, but they still get strapped with the same tiny-ass bins. :/


Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the good it's doing to the environment, but people won't pay to dump trash in an official place if they can get away with dumping it bush-side instead. They also don't appreciate being forced into something.

Funny thing about people - they really don't like being preached to and made to do stuff. It's something smarter people have noticed over the many centuries - that people respond better when you make them want to change instead of being forced into change. The government is forcing a change without bothering to give people a reason to want to change and of course they're going to rebel (and then the environment gets shit on even more because of it).

If they really wanted to do good for the environment, they'd give small bonuses to people who did right instead of hurting people for doing 'wrong' (the 'wrong' being enforced by giving larger house-holds tiny ass bins and thus forcing them to use the tip). I mean, we recycle but we have a 6 person household so there's going to be a lot of stuff that cannot be put in the recyclables and it won't all fit in the bin.

It's just a way for the government to make a quick buck - because they're not at all interested in seeking out other environmental issues to fix. Quite the opposite in fact. Yes, this is the same government who sold parts of the barrier reef. They're in it for the money, don't be mistaken about this. It just so happens to help the environment a little.

Oh I think the incentive scheme is a much better way to do it, but it's probably harder to monitor. The census is only once a decade so the number of people in a household can't be ascertained year to year, nor should it be. Though the size of the house is known because of rates so perhaps it should be linked to number of bedrooms. It wouldn't be perfect but would probably be a better system.

Personally I think things like switching to green energy sources should reduce your bill rather than add an additional cost, we should have SA's money back for returned glass, rainwater and solar energy installations should be heavily rebated and other such schemes. It needs to be a blend of both positive and negative reinforcement in order to get changes through and to be accepted. Though those people who dump in the bush need a whack up the side of the head.

author=Pizza
I am against charging people for nothing, basically.

They're not charging for nothing. They're charging for fun. The reason you play games is for the fun, right? That's the reason you were willing to pay cash dollars for Super Mario Sunshine and Skyrim: the expectation that they would provide you fun.

Video games have never been about paying for the cost of providing you the content, because the content is digital. They can make as many copies as they want, it costs them nothing to make one more. What you're paying for is the enjoyment you get out of it. You're not paying for something the developer loses but for something you gain. The developer's losses are already sunk, they paid up front without any guarantee that anyone would buy their stuff. And all the major creative industries are founded on this premise, regardless of pay model. So if it's about how much work they put into what you're paying for, you end up paying for "nothing" with both pay models.

author=Pizza
Imagine if you were playing Banjo-Kazooie and instead of finding Eggs and Feathers (ammo and flight power fyi) on the ground you had to buy refills for 1$ each time. It would ruin the game, straight up. That's what microtransactions do right from the get go.

Sort of like if I were playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and instead of finding extra lives on the ground I had to put $0.50 into the arcade machine each time I used one up? It's not hard to imagine since I played and enjoyed the hell out of lots of games exactly like that over a decade before the term "microtransactions" was coined. It created a secondary game out of trying to spend the least amount of money, which is something that F2P games also do, which I actually enjoy, though I don't think either Konami or Popcap has appreciated me trying to play that game.

See, that might be a better way - but here you have to show up at the gates with the money and a trailer, or have trash pile up. And that's not factoring the cost of hiring a trailer if you don't own one (we don't). It can be troublesome, especially when you're moving and have a lot of stuff you need to get rid of, or after Christmas (they make a killing then).

@LockeZ, I'm gonna post this on the off-chance that you're just not understanding what Pizza is saying.

When you go to Gamestop and buy a game for the PS4 or the XBox or whatever and shell out your 40 dollars, you are buying the right to play a game for however long the medium holding it will last through your use and abuse. When you buy this game, you get with it a limited use license, which allows you to possess a copy of the game.

This is not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at the mall. You didn't own that machine. You didn't have a limited use license for that game. They had the right to charge you 50 cents for another set of lives. If I pay 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 dollars for a game with a limited use license, there is no justification to continue charging me for basic features of that game, period. Since you're all in favor of this though, let me ask you this: when you go to the movies and you buy a ticket for 16 dollars, should the theater then be able, if they want, to charge you an additional dollar per 15 minutes of view time? There isn't a sane person on Earth that would do business with a theater that acted that way.

lol some (not all of it, sometimes you really have great insight) of the stuff you say lockez makes me really glad that nobody usually agrees with it

author=Feldschlacht IV
lol some (not all of it, sometimes you really have great insight) of the stuff you say lockez makes me really glad that nobody usually agrees with it

Try and remember that LockeZ is the guy that dumped a girlfriend for liking a game he made. Then there's his apparent inability to understand why companies shouldn't be able charge you over and over again for the same thing.

Honestly, I'm with Lockez on this one... HOWEVER! I fully expect games that do this to fail and don't believe it will become a way of life. And by fail I mean that companies will get too greedy and people will just not play those games. They won't make the cash they want so they'll have to find another way or just move on to something else. I see maybe a handful of these kinds of games actually working but it'll soon fade out.

See, I know a lot of people who played the Facebook games and ones like Candy Crush and the like, but how many games on this kind of platform can you name that made it big, in comparison to games outside of it that made it big? Not quite as many, I'm afraid, and while a small handful of games might make it the hundreds that don't will 'prove' it to be a bad business model for any who don't have a great, addictive game.

Frankly, it would work out pretty well with VR, if you think about it. People won't be able to afford the set-up required for VR so we might see a re-emergence of the ol' arcades where people come and play on the VR for a set price and others come to watch.

On another subject that is linked, I saw something recently where someone was questioning why anyone would watch LPs on youtube and the like when they can just play the game, and that it never happened when they were kids. I had a hearty laugh at that because, yes, it did happen. It was just a little different. People would go to arcades and watch others play. They might not have had money to play themselves or just not been good at the game (or be able to get to the 'front of the line' to play) so instead they would stand and watch in awe as others played, or remember how they couldn't beat x and reminisce about the last time they played. It's the same thing, but with the convenience of having it accessible at any time, in small chunks, without having to go to an arcade to experience it.

Liberty
On another subject that is linked, I saw something recently where someone was questioning why anyone would watch LPs on youtube and the like when they can just play the game, and that it never happened when they were kids. I had a hearty laugh at that because, yes, it did happen. It was just a little different. People would go to arcades and watch others play. They might not have had money to play themselves or just not been good at the game (or be able to get to the 'front of the line' to play) so instead they would stand and watch in awe as others played, or remember how they couldn't beat x and reminisce about the last time they played. It's the same thing, but with the convenience of having it accessible at any time, in small chunks, without having to go to an arcade to experience it.

Hell, this was one of the better parts of my childhood. I loved hanging out with my cousin, because we'd never really play 2-Player games. I'd usually watch him play Final Fantasy 7 or 10 or something and give witty commentary on it, or he'd watch me play whatever and snark about what I was doing or the things happening in the game.

Ah, the good old days. Luckily we still meet up at the family reunion during Christmas and take the piss out of television shows, for old times sake.

Liberty
Frankly, it would work out pretty well with VR, if you think about it. People won't be able to afford the set-up required for VR so we might see a re-emergence of the ol' arcades where people come and play on the VR for a set price and others come to watch.

I could see this happening. But it would be the same thing as old arcades- people didn't have access to that kind of game technology back then. Arcade ports were almost universally considered inferior to the cabinet originals, and for a good reason. You can't compare phone games to an arcade to try and justify them, because practically everyone has the technology to own games of that calibre now. It's not paying for an out of reach experience anymore.

Anyhow, I'm sick of debating this point. It should be rather clear where my beliefs lie at this stage, so I'm going to leave it alone.

Getting past all that...

Just watched Interstellar. Gonna need to tell the astronauts going to Mars to pick up my balls, because they were blown straight off. That movie is fucking incredible, easily one of the best Sci-Fi flicks of all time. I'd only put it second to Space Odyssey, and I never thought I'd be saying that about anything. I feel so invigorated now. I feel like I have new heights to strive for. I'm very happy.

To end this wall of text, I need to fill my role as the bringer of bad news to the topic:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/14/mayan-pyramid-bulldozed-road-construction

You can just fill in the rage for yourself. You've all heard me spout it a million times by now.

Ensuring that my game doesn't have copyrighted stuff in it is kind of a drag, but at least now my battles are consistent.


Backdrops made from chipsets


Zoomed in for your viewing convenience
Monsters made from charsets

Yeh

I'll make a blog for this on the gamepage when I've got significantly more content to show, like real battles in action and stuff to blab on about.