Darklord Rooke

If I recall correctly, there was that fox you could pay valuable money to have your party completely refreshed, and it made completing the dungeon in a single day a lot easier.

Yeah, the problem isn't with Steam, more that there's too much supply and not enough demand. Jeff Vogel spoke about this 5 years ago (the following is an abridged version): http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.ca/2014/05/the-indie-bubble-is-popping.html

The tears of others strengthens me and gives me warm fuzzies, but alas contempt doesn't effect me. As such your sarcasm is useless to me.

Most of the general questions are there for the surveyor to know more about you and how heavily you are involved in the VN scene. They are not there to give people, or you, yet another excuse to go on another boring rant about piracy and/or the state of the VN industry. They are wasteful questions which are off-topic. If you want to rant, get a blog.

"Currently I am working on my master thesis (CULTURAL TRANSFER through computer games using the example of visual novels)." Read the actual post. WHOA! We think alike

I have a criticism. Considering some people can spend like a couple hundred hours on Clannad alone, I don't know what the 'how many hours have you approximately played visual novels' is supposed to answer. Furthermore, it would obviously be more for people who are older. I'm 33, I've been playing VNs for more than a decade, my first VN was about 15 years ago. For me to spend 151+ hours playing VNs, I would merely need to play 10 hours of a VN a year. Also, if I click that option, I could be spending 10 hours a year playing VNs, or 200 hours a year playing VNs, you wouldn't know. For someone who's played VNs for only 1 year, they would need to spend over 151 hours in that year alone playing VNs. So I'm not sure what this question is supposed to be telling you...

Questions asked should directly address or be devised to glean information which directly addresses the purpose of the thesis. Taking survey now

To extend upon that, there was a period in British history where the common people overthrew the monarchy and a puritan named Cromwell was in charge. What happened during this period is touched upon in this funny, funny song: https://youtu.be/WS8TIrt1s2M Basically everybody was forced to be pious, and everything halfway fun was considered a sin. (HE BANNED SPORTS? HOW DARE HE!) During the Restoration period, after everybody wanted their monarch back, I think everybody started revelling in debauchery. En masse. Obviously this causes a lot of problems, and the Georgian Era’s politeness and correctness was a response to the previous over-indulgence in debauched behaviour. The Victorian Era carried that on (I think) and we’re not very far removed from the Victorian Era, and the first half of the 20th century had some fairly similar attitudes.

I really rather doubt this. Christianity in the West stretches back millennia, right back through the Dark Ages, for example. Do you really picture people during this time, as they're scraping the guts off their sword and scrubbing at the intestine juice on their tunic, to go "oh good heavens, please watch your tongue! There are GENTLEMEN and LADIES present!" I find the concept to be fairly ridiculous. Instead I would wager the Georgian and Victorian eras are probably to blame, these eras emphasised delicacy and manners and there was an expectation of politeness, so I can easily imagine uttering vulgarities to be a massive faux pas (especially for the upper class) during this period in history.

The Panthers will establish a lead in the first half, but will be run down in the second. It'll be similar to what's been happening in the regular season except this time Manning will finish over the top of them, claim the ring, then ride off into the sunset on the back of the Denver mascot, swinging his helmet above his head in an image which will remain with football fans until the ends of time.

On a related matter, if you would please take my hateful nature up with @Tay maybe he’ll see fit to finally change my username to "Darth Rooke", like I've always wanted. If you did this you'd have my gratitude. Not enough for me to actually be ‘fond’ of you, because like you said – I obviously hate you. But being ‘fond’ of people wouldn’t be appropriate for one of the Dark Side anyway.

In a fortnight's time, just remember to breathe and be calm while Manning leads Denver to a fairytale superbowl win, Bats. You gotta keep in mind ... it's only a game

People like to crucify Sekai Project for their unprofessional business manner, which eventually leads to claims of deceit and fakery. Yet people crucify AAA developers for being too professional, which also leads to claims of deceit and fakery. Either what the gaming community wants is for developers to be their 'buddies' and 'chums', or maybe we're just a community that is incredibly hard to please. In any case, I didn't see much wrong with what Sekai did, even if they probably did commit a faux pas. But alas that's what humans do.

He's trolling to get a rise, and people are obliging.

Nup. Once again - you're wrong. Generic statement which is irrelevant unless you show specifically how it relates to the case in question. No you didn't. Unsubstantiated claim... about me, which is something I should know about more than you. Furthermore, it's possible to get 10 million concurrent connections from a single server, so to say that '10 million people will crash a website for sure, without a doubt, you could have as many servers as you want it won't matter' is obviously dodgy. Pretty much. Although applying it to your title would make it ... Steam is special and not just another website. I suppose that's a bit boring and cliche though, eh, c'est la vie.

There's a dearth of facehugger emoticons on this site, so I suggest:

Unsubstantiated statement. Unsubstantiated AND false, so that's pretty nice. Unsubstantiated claim. False also. Linking Steam going down once with an inability to ever handle a specific load without any additional information is what the scientific community calls 'a guess.' Blizzard was sued in Korea, and they somehow managed to stay standing. I don't know how such a multi-billion dollar organisation will ever handle the devastation of being sued not once, but TWICE. And you haven't proved Steam is worse. You've ranted a lot, about stuff which matters little, but it's contained little actual substance.

Happy for you Bats. But you know what I don't like? I don't like that rule where you can stretch the ball out in mid air into the end zone, while your body is stopped at the 2 yard line, not ground the ball and still get rewarded for a touchdown. Doesn't seem right to me. Personally I rather Manning get his second super bowl, but I wouldn't mind Carolina winning either.

*Double post because the mods could always do with more work* Also, why is this in creative corner? I realise Firecat's posts could be described as an example of extreme creativity, but is this really the most appropriate place? I would have thought either GD or gaming personally...

That's nice, Firecat. When you have anything to back up your conspiracy theories, or actually have something substantial to say, we'll be listening. Otherwise I really recommend you get a diary.

You're pretty active for a dead man, Eclipsed. What sort of voodoo are you practicing and should humanity as a whole be concerned about your propensity to not stay dead? Should we be deploying the pitchforks? The fire? The unintelligible and loud chanting?

It’s debonair, and adds to my considerable charm. It also matches my shoes.

In my experience with fictional murderers, the killer is always the one of the first to try and blame others for the murders in a classic misdirectional manner. The only people in this thread who do this are Valmore and Kyrt. Kyrt went the extra mile to finger someone, PLUS his avatar wears a stupid looking hat. Fictional murderers are often stupid in some manner, a classic giveaway. Batman’s avatar is wearing a stupid hat also, but he never tried to guide people away from himself. Thus, the answer must be Kyrt. Hooray, and I didn’t even have to go on that scavenger hunt. I am a bonafide detective, I should seriously become a copper IRL. Do I get a prize, now?

The idea that 'people don't like to read' in the West is a simplistic and false argument put forward by those who don't want to address the actual issues. There are more readers in the West than there are in Japan (going by sheer weight of numbers if you don't want to talk percentages) and book sales are higher in the West than in Japan (the highest selling book in Japan in 2013 moved 900,000 copies, which is matched by UK charts alone without having to bring in America.) So there is obviously a larger market of 'readers' in the West than in Japan. At the end of the day, the argument that 'the West doesn't play VNs because it doesn't like to read' is false. Data shows plenty of people still like to read (and the majority of these are women, btw.) The idea that the West doesn't like complex storylines is also false, considering the sale figures of books with complex storylines are still high. 'Pandora's Star' is an example. The idea that modern Western storytelling is bad because some very popular Western movies have bad writing is another false argument, it's like me pointing at Naruto and making generalisations about Japanese writing. People in the West would rather not read on a computer screen is certainly a valid argument (so VNs are predominantly targeted at gamers and not readers.) People in the West don't want to read stories predominantly about romances set in a Japanese high school is another (especially considering the romance market in the West is predominantly targeted at women, and romance VNs predominantly at men.) They see the market flooded by sex scenes and are put off is yet another argument you could make. The idea that people don't like to read while playing games is debatable. And don't get me started on RPGs. RPGs aren't meant to feature heavy stories, RPGs were traditionally about 'user defined' stories. Technology being unable to mimic this trait has lead to different versions of what could be called an RPG. 'Avadon' still has plenty of text though (although crappy graphics.) And no, Shuffle is nowhere near the quality of B grade movies, let alone 'The Force Awakens.' At the end of the day, over 700,000 people own 'An Everlasting Summer' on Steam. Even though it's free, that's not bad for a no-name medium that's just started to ascend into the public's awareness.