Comments 109

Re: A Video Game Actors Strike Could Happen Following Union Vote for Action

BrockSmith

@LiamCroft What? Why? Some of the demands of these recent strikes are dumb. Wanting to be paid per stream instead of for doing a job. Demanding a minimum amount of people in a writers room regardless of if they are good or not. Demanding no use of AI tools, perpetual licensing of work that has to be renewed every few years, etc.

Wouldn’t some of the proposals being demanded encourage even more IP erasure? For instance, work in the 60’s-80’s had perpetuity as standard. So if say, a movie featured Earth Wind & Fire song, they got a one time check for that. But now, with digital distribution, everyone wants a cut of every single time someone hits the play button.

Won’t the new demands just cause these companies to release a game and then scrub it as it’s not worth the overhead in licensing to maintain on their servers once the opening window of excitement drops off?

Listen, I think asking for more money is simply always a valid approach, irregardless of justification, qualification etc. Theres just nothing wrong with that and has always been the standard “can I have a raise” kinda thing. In the instance of asking for all the data sets from the companies the talent simply “works for” (essentially), that feels muddy. I’m trying to think of an analogy but, say a bar asks me to come play guitar for an evening as live music for their patrons and offers me $400. I can either say “sounds good” or “my minimum is $600 a night.” In these union’s case, they are saying “I want $400 plus $7 for every single person that walks through that door.” I think the studios would know handing over that data would just be leveraged for another strike a few years down the line. If I was a studio, I might consider that under the guise of removing minimums then, knowing we are both rolling the dice on success since the unions demanded transparency.

And as far as unions go, I appreciated what they did 150 years ago, and think they were needed when 13 year old were getting their fingers cut off in meat packing factories, but todays unions are a far cry from that.

Re: Poll: Are You Playing Mortal Kombat 1?

BrockSmith

It’s just gotten too over the top for me personally. I know I’m in the minority, but a handful of years ago the absurd gore was funny, but with graphics getting so insane, I find myself kind of wincing or turned off by watching it now. I dunno, I don’t wanna play a game for hours on end which my first reaction is to turn my head ever so slightly away

Re: Final Fantasy 7 Remake Crosses the 7 Million Copies Sold Mark

BrockSmith

@sd7232 Wait really? Well first, it's worth it on its own merit to go back and complete something you didn't all those years ago. But more importantly, I played it all those years ago as a 13-14 year old myself but a lot of psychosis story stuff just went over my head. I recently replayed it with my wife a year and a half ago or so and it's fantastic. (Bonus note: If you have a PC, mod it with 7th Heaven modding tool and it's like an 4k True Remake)

Re: Rumour: God of War Ragnarok DLC Expansion Deep in Development for PS5

BrockSmith

@Yinx I agree wholeheartedly. My assumption is it will be "look what this character was doing when you didn't see them on screen" type thing.

I would have MUCH rather them jump directly into pre-production of the next game, but I think they probably feel they needed more development time to really figure out where they want to go with it since Ragnarok was the end of the Norse mythology. So they are making DLC to bide time and generate income.