A Lazy Sunday Post

By Shamus Posted Sunday Aug 12, 2018

Filed under: Notices 103 comments

Don’t be confused by the title. This is not a post for a “lazy Sunday”, implying this is something to be read sometime in the late afternoon, before you’ve changed out of your pajamasWho wears pajamas these days? When people who wear clothes to bed refer to “wearing pajamas”, they usually mean sweatpants and a t-shirt. As far as I can tell, the days of specialized bedclothes are just about over.. What I’m actually saying is that this is a low-effort post intended to go up on Sunday.

Here are a bunch of random announcements:

Thing one: Family gathering this weekend, which prevented me from recording a Diecast. So no podcast this week.

Thing two: The public-facing contact email on my about page vanished when I changed servers a few weeks ago, and I forgot to re-create it at the new place. The mailbox was still functioning at the old host, but since the shamusyoung.com domain was no longer pointed there, it wasn’t doing anyone any good. Instead, the emails were arriving at the new host and then vanishing into the void. (Or perhaps they bounced? I dunno.) This is the main way for strangers to get in touch with me. Hopefully I didn’t miss anything too important. If you did send something in the last few weeks: I’m not ignoring you, I just never got it. (It should be working now.)

Thing three: Ages ago, I began working on an update to the site theme. But then I got busy and never made the changes live. On one hand, changing the site theme always involves a day or two of shake-out, and I don’t have time for that right now. On the other hand, I put a lot of work into these changes, they’re designed to address some annoyances with the site, and I’m not keen to let it languish forever on my test server. So, consider this fair warning that at any point in the next few weeks I might make changes to the site. I don’t know why I’m bothering to tell you ahead of time. There’s no way to “get ready” for this sort of thing.


Link (YouTube)

One last thing: Quakecon was this weekend, and we got to see the first gameplay reveal of DOOM Eternal. During the introduction, the presenters began talking about how they want you to feel like even more of a badass, and so the new game will have bigger, tougher enemies than ever before. And so I began composing a post in my head:

My problem with this promise of “tougher” enemies that that tougher generally means “more hitpoints”. That certainly makes the game harder, but it doesn’t make the game more gratifying or empowering. In fact, giving us more durable enemies works against this by making your weapons feel ineffectual. If you blast a demon four times at point-blank range without killing them or even triggering a pain animation then you’re not going to feel “empowered”. You’re going to feel like you’re assaulting an oak tree with a Nerf gun. You don’t think, “this guy must be really tough” you think, “This guy is a real chore”. You shoot a demon ten times and nothing happens until the last bullet hits home, at which point it falls over dead.

We don’t need enemies to keel over right away. What we actually need to some sort of system of feedback to show you’re making progress. We’d need a way for the demons to show visible damage so it feels like your bullets are doing something. Maybe some dismemberment tech, or…

I kid you not: Right in the middle of this line of thinking the presenters showed off DOOM’s new demon damage system.

On one hand, it was great to have a company address my concerns while the thoughts were still forming in my head. That’s some really impressive turnaround time. On the other hand, that might have made for a good column.

Dear Ubisoft: If you’d like to head off my next inevitable 2,000 word bitch & moan column about how pointless and annoying Uplay is, then now would be a great time to drag the entire codebase into the recycle bin and patch it out of your existing games. I promise not to complain that you ruined an article.

 

Footnotes:

[1] Who wears pajamas these days? When people who wear clothes to bed refer to “wearing pajamas”, they usually mean sweatpants and a t-shirt. As far as I can tell, the days of specialized bedclothes are just about over.



From The Archives:
 

103 thoughts on “A Lazy Sunday Post

  1. Tomato says:

    So, consider this fair warning that at any point in the next few weeds I might make changes to the site.

    Freudian slip?

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Or a stoner slip

      1. Preciousgollum says:

        Or a stoner slip

        Freud was more about the Boners, not the Stoners.

        1. Phoenix says:

          Although he was one of the first to experiment with psychedelic drugs such as LSD.

    2. MadTinkerer says:

      Or a hint as to what the new theme looks like?

  2. Dragomok says:

    [1] Who wears pajamas these days? When people who wear clothes to bed refer to “wearing pajamas”, they usually mean sweatpants and a t-shirt. As far as I can tell, the days of specialized bedclothes are just about over.

    Um… Pajamas are still going strong in Poland (and presumably the rest of Europe?), as far as I can tell. Perhaps I could provide an accurate sample of pajama habits if I’d lead an active, promiscous love life (obvious reasons) or had any friends at all (for sleepovers), but I’m pretty sure pajamas are still being sold and worn..

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      I havent worn them ever since I got into an apartment with crazy central heating and constant indoor temperatures of ~20°C,day or night,winter or summer*.I did wear them back when I was in the house with my parents and nights used to be colder.

      *Actually,its cooler in the summer because I use AC then.

      1. Kylroy says:

        Brief moment of “what?!?” before I realized that was a tilde, not a hyphen.

    2. Nimrandir says:

      I live in the southeast U.S., and while I don’t have pajamas as I typically see on old BBC comedies, I do have specific clothes for bedtime. A subset of my t-shirts are for sleepwear, and in the summer, I wear one of a few pairs of athletic shorts.

      Come colder weather, I have several pairs of pants sold specifically as pajama bottoms.

    3. Nick Powell says:

      I’m wearing pyjamas right now!

    4. Liessa says:

      I still wear pajamas as well. Usually the only time I’ll sleep in clothes is if all my nightwear is in the wash.

    5. Tvtim says:

      I still like wearing my pajama pants when I go to sleep, no pajama top though, that’s just a random t-shirt.

    6. Decius says:

      Having soft comfy clothes to wear while cuddling is a good idea.

      1. Bubble181 says:

        Having no clothes to wear while cuddling is better. Wink wink etc.

    7. Vi says:

      In the northern United States, the weather can get rather dramatic, so big fluffy winter pajamas and small light summer pajamas can make it easier to adjust to the extremes. I’d assume this is the same as other high-latitude areas around the world?

      Also, I’ve tried sleeping in my crisp work clothes and there is no situation in which it’s comfortable; I HAVE to change clothes to sleep. I might as well choose actual designated pajamas!

      Also, my housemates own the thermostat, so I have to be ready for anything…

      1. Bubble181 says:

        Everybody who is advocating pro pyjama/clothes in bed mentions the weather.
        Now, I live a little further north than Quebec, so one can hardly say I’m in the tropics, and yet I still manage to have warm air inside my house. A really smart person invented this thing called “isolation”.

        Are all these people sleeping with the window wide open? Does shoddy American building extent to not putting in any isolation at all? Are they all so poor they can’t afford heating? Do they all not realize that sleeping naked is usually warmer than sleeping with clothes on (after the first 5 minutes)?

        1. TheCheerfulPessimist says:

          Short answer: yes, American homes tend to be famously shoddy with regard to proper insulation, even in northern climes. But a lot of people seem to like warm-bed-cold-room sleeping situations, so fuzzy pajamas work nicely for that.

          Personally, I hate wearing a shirt to bed but I will put on flannel pants in the winter. Summers are for sleeping in your underwear.

        2. Guest says:

          That really smart person also spelt it “insulation” I’m pretty sure, and in some places, power’s expensive enough that people would rather apply more insulation to themselves (Because *psssst* pajamas are insulation) because you still need to heat the place to benefit from insulation in the walls and roof.

        3. LadyTL says:

          You can have shoddy Canadian housing too. I live in BC and my apartment varies between too hot in the summer (No AC) to switching between too hot and too cold in the winter (inconstant heating element right under the window.) The building was built back in the 70s and not really updated and the window and apartment design don’t work for me getting an AC and I don’t pay for heat so I am not wasting my money on the heat being wonky.

  3. Ester says:

    Who wears pyjamas these days? Europeans, or at least Germans. Even the people who sleep in T-shirts seem to have a dedicared set of pyjama T-shirts, separate from the daytime T-shirts. If my friends and family are anythimg to go by.

    I’m surprised anybody would want to sleep in sweatpants. Yoga pants or underwear or something, that I can understand. But sweatpants plus duvet – how cold would your bedroom need to be? 40 F?

    1. Amstrad says:

      The heating system in various apartments I’ve lived in have been so terrible that I’ve literally slept in sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt, with multiple layers of sheets and comforter and blankets, and yes, it was probably 40F or lower in the room in those cases.

      1. Abnaxis says:

        I don’t live in a house with bad insulation, and we still let it get cold enough to merit think blankets and sweatpants because otherwise we’d pay out the ass for heating, which I have NEVER had included as part of rent. I think part of the issue as well is we get to see more extreme temperatures regularly in the states–lower lows and higher highs, at least where I live. I find it absolutely baffling that some of the EU streamers I watch don’t even own box fans and don’t have warm wear for sleep

        1. Echo Tango says:

          I live in the middle of Saskatchewan. The only places that are colder are generally Winterpeg, and the northern territories. How expensive is your heating, and/or what is your set temperature in the winter, if you don’t mind me asking? People in this city usually have their houses set somewhere between 18C (64F) and 25C (77F) in the winter, depending on how much natural gas they are comfortable burning. Plus, people often reno poorly insulated homes to save more (either to the current-decade / -generation-of-homes’s recommendation, or better).

          1. Abnaxis says:

            During the night, we usually have the thermostat set to 66-68 (18-19 C), depending on how we’re feeling.

            This generally translates into a gas bill in the $150 range. Also note that during the summer, it’s more like $200 for keeping the house at a comfortable-if-a-bit-hot range (there’s less wiggle room for cooling because stripping down and running fans only works so much).

            I realize I wasn’t very clear, but the issue here is that the band of temperatures we have to design buildings for is bigger, so you can’t just build warm and call it a day. A quick google tells me that for my are, HVAC is designed to work regularly in temperatures from 2-33 °C. I have no idea what the equivalent is for Saskatchewan, but I would guess insulation and a good furnace is mostly what you need…

            The upshot of all this is it also means you need a variety of sleepwear if you don’t want to pay more for comfort.

            1. Echo Tango says:

              We all need AC in the summer (except for the people who are tough as nails) and heating in the winter. A well-insulated home works better for AC, as well as for heating. It’s not just cold here; It’s hot in the summer. According to this website, the hottest hots get up to around 38C / 100F, and the coldest colds are around -35C / -31F. What kind of temperature swings do you have? Apparently North Dakota gets wilder temperature swings, and I’m just a massive coward… ^^;

              1. Abnaxis says:

                Erm, I just now realized that I wasn’t clear–the point I’m making is that the temperatures in NA vary a lot more than the temperatures in Europe, in response to the German fellow above who can’t imagine sleeping in sweatpants. It gets colder where you are, but last I checked you’re in NA too :p

                1. Echo Tango says:

                  Europe is easy-mode. That’s why we colonized there first. :P

                  1. Droid says:

                    That and our colonial range was zero so we could only colonize right next to our already established territory.

                    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                      Depends on how far into the past you want to go.Seeing how modern humans most likely came from africa,you could say that we actually did colonize europe.

      2. Echo Tango says:

        Note that 40F (4.4C) is starting to get dangerously close to pipes bursting – if one part of the room is colder than the others, you’d have problems.

        1. Abnaxis says:

          The last apartment I lived in had a radiator system that didn’t work worth shit–I legit had icicles growing on the inside of my windows any time I showered.

    2. Droid says:

      So I guess this difference in habit mainly comes down to an (on average) higher amount of insulation in apartments? Even really old ones around here have at least been lazily retrofitted with some padding to stop the heat from escaping. And most of those, while applied sloppily, are made of surprisingly good material.

    3. Abnaxis says:

      A dedicated T-shirt != pyjamas by the way I’m reading Shamus’s definition. He’s talking about clothes that you buy in the store that specifically say “pyjama”on the label, not clothes you repurposed for that use.

      1. Joshua says:

        I still wear pajama bottoms, although with a t-shirt. Now, who still wears bathrobes or nightgowns is a different question.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          I still wear a bathrobe for some 10-15 minutes after showering.

        2. Kathryn says:

          I have a whole drawerful of pajama sets, including a couple nightshirts, besides the nightgowns…and I must say, I’ve never had any complaints from my husband when I wear *those*.

          As for bathrobes, I wear one while getting ready for work because I don’t want to get moisturizer, hairspray, makeup, etc. on my clothes.

          I didn’t realize any of this was so surprising or apparently controversial. I’m curious, were you/other commenters making similar remarks intending to sound so contemptuous (“Who does X anyway?” very much sounds like a sneer, and the addition of the word “still” definitely doesn’t help as it implies the person doing X is either immature or behind the times), or is that just the limitations of text?

          1. Droid says:

            It doesn’t seem contemptuous to me, more likely it’s just stating in a humorous tone that these types of clothing have become foreign, even exotic, to the speaker.

          2. Shamus says:

            Heh. When I typed it I KNEW this silly one-off comment about bedclothes would dominate the conversation.

            I was basing all of this one the number of times I hear people say stuff like, “Look at me, I’m still in my pajamas at noon” while wearing a t-shirt and some sort of soft pants. (Yoga / sweatpants / etc) I can’t remember the last time I saw proper pajamas. I can’t even remember the last time I saw some in a store. (Although I’m sure they’re around if I went looking for them. They just don’t get the prime shelf space they did when I was a kid.) Of course, that’s just one person’s observation regarding one small group of people in small town in one small corner of one country, so I’m not actually surprised to find out my observation does’t fit with reality.

            My one real complaint about classic pajamas is that the top is button-up. PJ bottoms are okay for sleeping, but buttoning up my bedclothes? I’m too lazy for that business when I’m wide awake, much less when it’s bedtime.

            1. evilmrhenry says:

              The real problem with button-up pajama tops is when you roll over in the middle of the night and get jabbed with a button. (Personally, in colder weather I use long-sleeve teeshirts, which sounds like an oxymoron, but are nice for this.)

            2. Paul Spooner says:

              I generally sleep without a shirt, but I do have actual pajama pants. For those times I wear a shirt to bed, it’s a real pajama shirt. Not always matched to the pants.

              One of my favorite sets of pajamas is a black t-shirt and pants that I made myself when I was about 11 years old. It’s not really pants any more, since I grew a bit between now and then. I guess they are capris? Anyway, I just look like a really low rank NVA, straight out of the tunnels. I wear them inside-out, so the seams don’t touch my skin. Super comfy.

          3. Joshua says:

            Not sneering, just commenting on changing of trends of how something kind of disappeared from style (mostly) without any fuss. I remember both my father and I used a bathrobe when I was a teenager, and my mother wore nightgowns, but I haven’t seen anything like that in the people I know in years.

    4. Wiseman says:

      I haven’t used pyjamas since I was a child. Just t-shirt and a short.

  4. Preciousgollum says:

    Doom Eternal looks good. In fact, I wish it was shown at E3.

    However, don’t get a sealed copy of Doom Eternal while expecting to resell it described as ‘New’ on any market place, because Bethesda’s Pete Hines will rake you over the coals for it. It must be described as ‘pre-owned’! – because you don’t know if somebody might have secretly opened it or not.

    Also, shareware is now punishable by having “F**k N*zi pir*tes” repeatedly screamed to anybody within shareware distance.

    And game emulation is stealing money from your future past!

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      However, don’t get a sealed copy of Doom Eternal while expecting to resell it described as ‘New’ on any market place, because Bethesda’s Pete Hines will rake you over the coals for it. It must be described as ‘pre-owned’! – because you don’t know if somebody might have secretly opened it or not.

      Ive just read that article,and holy shit is that a moronic argument.Whats next?You dont know if the disc will actually be in the box….oh,wait…ubisoft* is actually selling physical copies of their games with no disc in the box,just a key you can use to download it.And those are new.I wonder what Pete has to say about that.

      *They arent the only ones,but their treatment of might and magic franchise is always on my mind,so thats the first one that comes to mind when I think of the practice of no disc in the box.

      1. Droid says:

        You don’t buy game keys anymore, you buy lootbox keys (one per physical box) which has a 10% chance of containing the game, and 90% chance of containing one of two dozen unlockable pictures of the company’s CEO laughing at you so that “you always get something, so it’s not gambling”.

        1. Echo Tango says:

          Please don’t give them ideas; I’m still waiting for music companies to start selling vynil again, and selling vynil-to-digital conversion services. ^^;

          1. Preciousgollum says:

            Please don’t give them ideas; I’m still waiting for music companies to start selling vynil again, and selling vynil-to-digital conversion services. ^^;

            They ARE selling Vinyl again, already. Imagine it will be a storage nightmare for the average household, so perhaps they will need a music codec called Empi3, and their music could be played on a TriPod that stores lots of music on this small device, marketed by Jeve Stobs.

            1. Matthew Downie says:

              Vinyl sales accounted for 14 percent of all physical album sales in 2017, the fourteenth consecutive yearly increase.

              I’m unsure if people are buying them to listen to or for decoration.

              1. Preciousgollum says:

                They’re buying Vinyl to remind them of their past, and because it is an addictive hobby where people can think they are listening to ‘real music’ but it is the equivalent of if your dad started thinking he was cool again because he listened to things like The Rolling Stones (or Pink Floyd when he really wants to show off) and believed that Mick Jagger was actually cool without a hint of irony.

                Also, it is because if they think they buy an expensive type of Record it gives them an excuse to play it loudly, instead of put in earphones or just play music on YouTube on their PC for free like most normal young people do.

                … it is also for people who believed that they stopped buying records because they were no longer available, and now they can continue their collection as if decades of technological progress and musical trends never happened.

                And then they also think it is valuable, but if you ask them whether they will ever sell it, they usually reply with “No”.

              2. Decius says:

                Ugh. That new vinyl stuff will never sound as good as the wax cylinders we had backinthe day.

                1. Preciousgollum says:

                  Ugh. That new vinyl stuff will never sound as good as the wax cylinders we had backinthe day.

                  You are forgetting the quality sound that can be achieved by cultivating a group of Renaissance Castrati.
                  Reproducing music does not compare.

                  1. TheCheerfulPessimist says:

                    So true, but also self-apparent, since the Castrati won’t be doing any reproducing, period.

              3. Kylroy says:

                Mostly decoration.

                Back in the 90s, when people were stil buying CDs for their music, I remember more than a few people looking at old vinyl albums full of poster-grade art (and itself half the size of a poster) and thinking “wouldn’t it be neat to get all this art and full-sized lyric sheets and other stuff with a CD?” Now that music essentially isn’t bought on physical media anymore, vinyl records have been reintroduced as the Funko Pops of music fandom.

      2. Preciousgollum says:

        I’ve just read that article,and holy shit is that a moronic argument.Whats next?You dont know if the disc will actually be in the box….oh,wait…ubisoft* is actually selling physical copies of their games with no disc in the box,just a key you can use to download it.

        It is as if publishers are coming up with Nolutions(TM) for problems that aren’t within their scope of operation. In this case, it feels as though, in this example, Pete Hines is trying to punch a catfish on the nose and swear that they were being attacked by a great white shark the whole time. I’m only using Pete Hines as an example, because saying ‘Microsoft’, ‘Sony’ or ‘Nintendo’ isn’t really going to advance anything, since they love their closed markets, and also have a lot of clout on the open market. In this case, it is one man, using ‘sensible speech’, while weighing in on the rules and etiquette of an entirely different market place, and the people using it.

        Who at Bethesda had the time to look through sales adverts on Amazon for used copies of The Evil Within 2 and determine that some were being advertised illegitimately, because they weren’t being described as ‘used’ enough?

        Reselling KEYS, on the other hand, can be an issue if they don’t work once purchased. The irony is that I’ve bought ‘Resold’ keys before, and so far I’ve never had one that didn’t work. Generally speaking, I think that sellers of keys that didn’t work (i.e scammers) would be too afraid of the consequences of their scam on a platform that has negative feedback systems – therefore the people with legitimately unused keys, sell them unused, to a buyer who chooses if they want to use them. It’s a risk that is taken, but there is an inherent risk with the CD KEY system in the first place.

        You don’t know if the copy you bought from Amazon or GMG or Fanatical, Gamersgate etc is going to work or not, but you take the risk because it probably will. The fact that games became so cheap for a time is what greased the system in the first place. The low cost greatly outweighed the potential cons of no longer being allowed to own software.

        Otherwise, we’re all living in a state of never wanting to open Schrodinger’s Game Box.

        I know that Bethesda are concerned about sales figures of their singleplayer games, since they came out and said it.

    2. Echo Tango says:

      Emulation can be used for lawful purposes; The NES classic apparently does this for the games it ships with. Although, I still take issue with the fact that it’s yet another dedicated lump of plastic to play specific (especially only thirty games…) games. The WiiU and/or Switch should be powerful enough to play this stuff, or most laptops for that matter. An official old-games app from Nintendo would be welcome, IMO.

      1. Preciousgollum says:

        Emulation can be used for lawful purposes; The NES classic apparently does this for the games it ships with. 

        No its simply that everytime you don’t buy a game upon release (clause 1), and as the price goes down, when you buy the game at a lower price, you are admitting to stealing lost revenue. If you wait too long and the game is no longer in print, then, by downloading an emulated version, you are admitting that you were patient enough to want to pirate a game that is now no longer relevant to public consciousness, but not patient enough to wait for a remaster, and then not impatient enough to have purchased remaster immediately (see clause 1) – this is the WORST example of parabolic patience-mongering.

        Your existence outside of purchasing game software is a form of lost revenue for the publisher.

        Also, dictionaries are used as tools for language pirates to translate conversations without express permission from the language holder.

        1. Droid says:

          Hey, be careful! You spilt sarcasm all over my shirt!

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Thats what she said

      2. King Marth says:

        They have one, it’s called Virtual Console. It runs on Wii, Wii U, and 3DS (with varying platforms supported per system, all via emulation). Licenses for games are sold individually, but at $3-7, basically high enough so you don’t mindlessly buy the entire catalogue but low enough you hardly notice for the ones you care about.

        Now, if you have a Switch, feel free to pay a subscription fee for access to a predefined list of NES games (the earliest and mostly least refined of the lot, even if there are gems like Super Mario Bros 3). When that comes out. Until then, what do you mean Nintendo made games before the Switch?

        Disappointing from the company whose proprietary Game Boy cartridges were supported all the way up to the original DS. Gamecube minidisks were also supported on the Wii/U, though I heard those weren’t supported by emulation so much as literally including a Gamecube chip in the system. The Switch has a sufficiently expansive e-shop that it runs into Steam problems of visibility, but I don’t think we should need to lose the ability to buy Nintendo games on Nintendo hardware.

      3. Decius says:

        NES hardware emulation is perfectly legal.

        It’s the NES rom rips that are questionable.

    3. Raygereio says:

      However, don’t get a sealed copy of Doom Eternal while expecting to resell it described as ‘New’ on any market place, because Bethesda’s Pete Hines will rake you over the coals for it. It must be described as ‘pre-owned’! – because you don’t know if somebody might have secretly opened it or not.

      Bethesda actually has a correct point here: That copy of Enemy Within 2 is not new. Doesn’t matter if the guy does a pinky swear he never opened it. He’s not an authorized retailer. If the guy had said “used” or “as new” he would have accurately described the item he’s selling and everything would be fine.
      An example in case anyone doesn’t know why this can be an issue: If you buy a product that’s described as new from an authorized retailer, you can claim warranty from the company that produced that product.

      This is in no way whatsoever an attack on the used games market by Bethesda. This is actually Bethesda doing consumer protection of sorts. Well, that and covering their own ass.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        An example in case anyone doesn’t know why this can be an issue: If you buy a product that’s described as new from an authorized retailer, you can claim warranty from the company that produced that product.

        If you have a receipt.Which you wont have if someone on the web just sells you one.I guess unless they are also throwing that in the deal as well.

        So yeah,the guy can market it in whatever way he wants,but unless he gives you proper documentation when you buy stuff from him,the only one you can go after is just him.Otherwise youd be able to download a pirated copy and sue the publisher for giving you a virus because “that guy totally said it was a legit copy”.

      2. Preciousgollum says:

        If a game has to be described as ‘pre-owned’ or ‘used’ if it has been ‘pre-owned’, then does that mean that all retailers now have to describe their products as ‘pre-owned’, since the retailer owns them before selling them on?

        …Or are publishers saying that retailers don’t own their own merchandise?

        Technically, a publisher would have owned the disc and the product, so they are selling ‘pre-owned’ copies of an item.

        Now, the reason that we call things ‘NEW’ is because people have aversions to the idea that something had previously been used. But it must have been used once when being tested. So, generally, a new tech product ‘looks new’ until there is box damage and then that means that the item is usually marked down because people like new looking boxes.

        For example, I worked out that a Chinese factory human worker must have touched or tested some of my I.T equipment at least once during its manufacturing… so it isn’t really new, is it?

        Maybe that Chinese labourer wore gloves, so does that make the item ‘NEW’?
        Or maybe we don’t think about it and believe our I.T products are untouched by human hands until we get a hold of it – because that superstition makes us feel better.

        If a publisher has to come between a marketplace, a seller and a potential customer, in order to protect the integrity of ‘warranties’ (which are easily solvable) and extra key items pre-order stuff that might not be there, then well it demonstrates that pre-orders bonuses were used as leverage in the first place. Why are they not simply in the game? Can’t they be tied to a single key? Perhaps people don’t want pre-order bonus. Manuals!? They died out mid way through the Xbox 360.

        If Pete Hines has a problem with the way that Amazon allows customers to describe and show their products, then maybe they should have taken it up with Amazon first. Amazon has become a bit of a mess since they included third party reseller slots. Tackling that would be a form of consumer protection.

        Demanding that one person drop their sale from this website because they cannot agree on the definition of ‘NEW’, and treating the idea that a resold game is an entirely different Ship (of Theseus) seems like it is making an example out of people.

        It has been done to ‘encourage’ the consumer change their habits without actually wanting to take it up in court. Solicitors are quite adept at realising the mere IDEA of applying legal (actually, social) pressure usually changes people’s habits without having to actually fight the claim, like a type of feint or bluff – and if you don’t agree, I’ll be compelled to take legal action.*

        *Disclaimer – I will not actually be compelled to take up legal action.

        1. Thomas says:

          All publishers have a list of “authorised sellers” for new games – which you would expect because they had to ship the games to them in the first place. Bethesda are saying a game is ‘new’ if it comes from one of them.

          Presumably Bethesda then are taking on some level of responsibility to vet those guys so they sell legitimate games, which Bethesda is also incentivised to do because each genuinely new game had to be bought from Bethesda.

          I’m also guessing that Bethesda probably have to field some level of support services for people who get scammed, which they may find annoying.

          The letter looked like it was a form letter, with a number set-up to call if the person receiving the letter had an issue. So Bethesda probably scrolled down the “new” list of the Amazon market place and sent letters to every third-party that wasn’t on their list of authorised sellers.

          I don’t know what Amazon thinks – I guess it’s there definition that really matters. Bethesda do have a legal excuse for this, but even in the off-chance it is legal, it sounds like BS.

          Overall, it sounds like much less of a big deal than people made of it – all the journalists wrote their think pieces before they found out Bethesda only hand an issue with the new/preowned distinction and then (some) hastily appended updates to the articles after they found out.

          From a buyer perspective though, I don’t care and wish Bethesda would stop. Amazon’s seller security is fine so the supposed consumer reason doesn’t really hold up.

          1. Preciousgollum says:

            All publishers have a list of “authorised sellers” for new games – which you would expect because they had to ship the games to them in the first place. Bethesda are saying a game is ‘new’ if it comes from one of them.

            Generally speaking, unless retailing has changed in the intervening years, then the way it works is that a distributor offers to buy a wholesale amount of product from a manufacturer. Any distributor could make an offer. Then, the distributor splits this wholesale product up and delivers it to retailers, who could be anybody that they want to sell to, with a markup in price. The retailers decide to buy whatever they think will sell well, with an additional markup in price to the customer who then theoretically uses the item in question. If these items don’t get into the hands of the consumer, because the retailer couldn’t move them, then the retailer is potentially at a greater loss, which is the risk associated with the potential rewards of stocking the products that will sell. These are all separate phenomenon that just sort of happen, and are in no way linked as some sort of Andrew Ryan-esque ‘Great chain of industry’. So, basically, retailers or individual resellers aren’t pulling hard against a chain to trip up publishers, but megalomaniacs would think that they are.

            So, basically, this ‘authorised reseller’ stuff is also mostly BS. The reason why people can use ‘authorised reseller’ as an excuse these days is because there are close links between big retailers, who are probably also are thenselves or at least have close links to distributors in some capacity. Successful groups like to associate with other successful groups. It is only cross-promotion at work, rather than ‘consumer protection’.

            … because, otherwise, how would an independent or ‘Mom & Pop’ video game store even exist? How would key reselling websites exist at all? In most instances, a person reselling as an individual should not be treated as if they are an ‘unauthorised retailer’ in wanting to resell the game, because it is going above and beyond whatever relationship exists between them and the publisher (In other words, a person on ebay for example selling copies of games they have available are not representing Bethesda or defrauding them). Basically, if a publisher doesn’t agree with a retailer, they could pressure a distributor to close the account with a retailer… and not do business in future – aka a boycott. But, in the case of individual sellers, no such account exists. It would be a very rare occurrence indeed for a publisher to forcibly stop a retailer from being able to sell a product that a retailer legally owns. In this case, the individual seller isn’t making any wild promises about representing Bethesda, so there is no reason for the publisher to threaten to sue them over sale of a product.

            Basically, person a would sue person b as compensation for what person b might have done. Suing as a way to ‘protect consumers’ doesn’t really do that, because the consumer hasn’t been harmed, and it is unlikely that a consumer would be harmed by buying a shrink-wrapped copy of the Evil Within 2 described as ‘NEW’. If they are, well, as you said, that is between the customer and the seller, with maybe Amazon getting involved as moderator, since it is their service. In Bethesda sending out these letters, they are soliciting for a super-injunction in all these issues. It would be like if I demanded that a local restaurant stop selling food… because… you never know… I might get food poisoning. They can’t guarantee that I won’t. Only authorised food people can guarantee it, and can deal with the repercussions. Home meals should be described as ‘Unauthorised Cookery’, and should not be allowed without license since they haven’t been verified and carry great risk to the consumer. People should only eat at authorised restaurants.

            These messes occur because of this archaic compromise between digital rights management and the presence of physical media which makes the consumer feel slightly better, but only because the alternative is an entirely closed platform run by the likes of Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              How would key reselling websites exist at all?

              Youve just reminded me:Does bethesda support g2a?You know,the site that has been shown to actually peddle stolen keys and that a bunch of developers decided to not support precisely because of that.

              Oh look,fallout 76 is available on g2a.And no one complains about that.Im shocked.SHOCKED!Well not that shocked.

              1. Preciousgollum says:

                Youve just reminded me:Does bethesda support g2a?You know,the site that has been shown to actually peddle stolen keys and that a bunch of developers decided to not support precisely because of that.

                Good point. Although not all key resales sites have the reputation of G2A.

                Gamersgate and Greenmangaming, Fanatical, and even Humble Bundle (now part of IGN) etc etc , are resale sites, but we presume somehow that their keys are more new for some reason, because the market is closed and obfuscated I.e you cannot open an account and resell your own unused keys on those sites – although Greenmangaming even tried to manage license resale back before everything became a one time use Steam key. What do you do with your Humble Bundle keys that you don’t need? Sell them on G2A etc? Oh now you’re considered to be a scumbag for trading in an item that you paid for.

                The current situation basically means that everybody loves cheap game sales, but as soon as they see a cheap key that isn’t part of Steam sales or Gamersgate promotional sales, they are immediately suspicious.

                It is as if people treat the gaming marketplace as dodgy if you sell at a low price – Unless you are a Supermarket, Walmart, Tesco, GAME, or Gamestop, in which case people think it’s just a part of how deal-based capitalism works or something. It is also because supermarkets sometimes sell games at low price in order to get you in the shop, because you will likely buy other stuff.

                Some people have things and need to sell them at a loss to offload something before it no longer has value – it’s a fact of life. This is why retilers were selling something like Marvel vs Capcom Infinite far cheaper than online sales – the retailed could SEE via review scores and press that the game was going to bomb immediately. Evil Within (and 2) was also cheap, and it was because people could see on day one release that it wasn’t going to do as well as previously anticipated.

                If you’ve bought copies as a retailer thinking that you were going to sell copies of a game on day one, but the game isn’t selling well – you need to offload that stuff fast before it has even less value – because you aren’t covered by any business model or insurance that allows any fluid dealings in key value between publisher and seller (if such a thing even exists – which it might not). As a retailer, once you buy a game for an agreed price, you must sell it at a higher price or incur losses. But IF it is going to be sold at a loss, sell it as soon as you know it is going to tank as a product.

  5. Christopher says:

    I appreciate enemies that deteriorate when you attack them, although they aren’t necessary. In Bayonetta, the angels have this yucky fleshy skin covered by marble armor. I liked that as you beat them up, the marble broke off and revealed the fleshy insides. It’s gross, but you didn’t need a health bar anymore.

    I havent worn pajamas since I was five. Who needs them?

    1. Echo Tango says:

      I usually sleep in underpants, or the same T-shirt / shorts that I loaf around the house in.

  6. Cubic says:

    Of course I wear my pyjamas, preferably while sipping tea and crossing my legs the proper way. I’m not an animal, am I? Then I put on my morning suit and commence my day.

  7. Rosseloh says:

    Regarding the last point:

    I’ve been replaying Shadow Warrior 2 and thinking about this very thing. See, in SW2, the enemies (usually demons, coincidentally) DO show damage as you go along. Limbs get chopped off, chunks of body disappear on larger enemies…and so on. However, I haven’t seen it directly affect their damage output or anything. Maybe if some big dude loses an arm that’s holding a weapon it slows down his DPS? Again, I haven’t actually seen the numbers change, but maybe I’m just not paying enough attention.

    Increasing the difficulty basically does exactly what you said – increases their hitpoints, increases the damage you take, etc. The only reason I’m playing this run on “hard” is because I’ve beaten it on normal already and you get slightly better rewards for it (similar to how Borderlands handles multiple players).

    Granted even if SW2 didn’t have physical feedback on damage, you’d still know because every enemy has a health bar….but anyway.

  8. Geebs says:

    It’s probably just me, but I’d LOVE to see a Doom:VFR2. The teleporting mechanic means that you have a whole extra movement option that you don’t get in regular Doom (2016), which makes the whole thing even faster and more intense when playing with gamepad movement.

  9. Redrock says:

    I have very mixed feelings about Doom Eternal. It promises to be the definition of a “by the numbers bigger and better” sequel, and in this case it’s absolutely the best possible scenario. I think it’s gonna be great. But it’s also kinda hard to get excited about for now. So the whole marketing effort behind it just feels so odd. They made such a fuss about a gameplay REVEAL and revealed what, exactly? More DOOM 2016 gameplay with a chain attachment for the shotgun? Which, again, absolutely great. I’ll buy it. But stop trying to make me excited about it.

    1. BlueHorus says:

      So what I want to know is: are they going to ditch the story?*
      ‘Cos while the gameplay was great, the plot was atrocious. It started with a few scenes/jokes that suggested ‘DOOM Guy don’t care about no story!’- but they then gave up the pretence and just railroaded you into a shit story.
      It’s not even the plot itself; it was they way it was presented, with NPCs monologing at Doomguy while he stood there and let blindingly obvious happen to him.
      At least 3 times I was saying ‘Do something, you turd! Don’t just stand there! Fucking move!” – but of course, Cutscene Incompetence kicked in and DOOM Guy just stood there like a lemon.

      I’m fine with being betrayed/arriving too late, DEUM, it happens all the time in games. Just get it over with quickly and don’t waste my time or take control away from me while you’re doing it!

      *And the answer: no, no they’re not. I’d love it if they did, but you know they won’t.

      1. Preciousgollum says:

        They said they’re building a DOOMiverse(TM) and one of the designers said that everything they do involves lore and backstory, and that even the enemy designs are part of the story, because the story is the interesting bit.

        So, yea, lots of Story there – Eternal.

        Did I mention the story? The limb damage on enemies is also a part of that grand operatic tradition of recommodifying early 2000s video game features.

        1. Redrock says:

          I’m mostly fine with the story, to be honest. The whole new lore about the Doom Marine seemed pretty neat to me, in an appropriately silly way. I think they can definitely improve the way the story is handheld and further reduce the number of situations where you have to stand still or, in my case, wildly run around a locked a room while an NPC is talking at you. There weren’t many of those in the 2016 one, so I don’t expect that to change in Eternal.

          1. Fizban says:

            Honestly, I really dig the story. I read a paperback Doom novel back when I was a kid, and it left an impression. It was a cheap generic video game tie in, but the way it progressed from long scenes trying to deal with weak enemies to just skipping past former boss tiers at the end because rocket launcher actually resonated in retrospect. And it had just enough story to make me go “oh, this is could be a pretty cool thing if the game was actually like that,” but from what I understand it rather wasn’t.

            Fast forward to the new Doom and it’s kinda everything I could have wanted. All the hype about Doomguy not giving a fuck sure, and he appropriately does not, but the world is quite serious about things and I’m a sucker for the kind of backstory they revealed in the game. Have a cake, eat it, etc.

            Of course now that I’ve stopped to think about it, Bethesda went and stuffed Prey full of the denuvo garbage, they’ll probably do it to this sequel. FFS.

      2. DGM says:

        >> “I’m fine with being betrayed/arriving too late, DEUM, it happens all the time in games.”

        What does DEUM stand for? Google’s coming up empty.

        1. BlueHorus says:

          When Yahtzee Croshaw reviewd the game, he called DOOM (2016) ‘DEUM’ as a way of complaining about studios remaking games under the same name. Damien Lucifer suggested it as a way to differentiate the two games, and it seemed like a good way to not have to differentiate the two every time.

          …which has now been undermined by having to writing this post.

          TL:DR DEUM = DOOM (2016)

    2. evilmrhenry says:

      They also revealed an Dark-Souls-like Invasion mechanic. Starting at around 15:00. (The cynic in me thinks they did that in order to force always-online DRM, but they probably did it because Dark Souls is popular.)

      1. Preciousgollum says:

        They also revealed an Dark-Souls-like Invasion mechanic. Starting at around 15:00. (The cynic in me thinks they did that in order to force always-online DRM, but they probably did it because Dark Souls is popular.)

        … Or maybe Bethesda think that Resident Evil 6 was the best game ever made because it had lots of content and actually sold really well.

        Remember, people; Games As Service – GAS.

  10. asdasd says:

    Is nobody else going to admit to being part of the Sleep Naked Master Race?

    1. gresman says:

      Is there another way to sleep?

      Not as far as i can remember. Sleeping naked since 1993 (or something like that) and proud of it. :)

    2. MelfinatheBlue says:

      Only in the summer (I generally wear a sweater/long sleeved something in winter cause my arms get cold) and I still have socks on (you can be naked with socks, right?).

      I own some pajamas but they’re from college at the latest, and the last time I slept in company I just wore shorts and t-shirts (it doesn’t happen much).

    3. Syal says:

      I don’t even wear that much when I sleep. Straight down to bones for me.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Bones?Bah!I just plop my brain in a jar for a good nights sleep.

    4. D-Frame says:

      Clothes are a necessary evil. The only reasons I wear anything at all are to avoid both freezing to death and being considered a sociopath. Since there is no danger of any of these things happening in my bed, it would never occur to me to wear anything there.

    5. Bubble181 says:

      I’ve been sleeping nude for at least 20 years. Even so, I usually put a leg out of the bed to cool off.
      People realize that, when there’s two naked people close together under a blanket, that’s a whole lot WARMER than those same people in the same bed but with extra layers between them, right? people are hot, is what I’m saying.

      Only times I sleep with boxers is when there’re people staying over, or I’m sleeping in a barracks room or group room in a hostel or on a camp or something.

      1. TheCheerfulPessimist says:

        True, but when one’s bedmate moves around A LOT during the night, the shifting covers send constant drafts of icy tundra air whispering across one’s genitals, encouraging a modicum of modesty for comfort’s sake.

  11. gresman says:

    Was the diecast email affected as well by the missing redirect?

    Mostly curious because you stated that the mailbag is empty now.

    1. Shamus says:

      I am a total idiot.

      Like, I wrote this ENTIRE post, AND I haven’t gotten any mailbag questions in weeks, and somehow I never connected the two???

      1. Shamus says:

        Okay. Diecast email is working again.

        1. gresman says:

          Awesome.
          Thank you very much

      2. gresman says:

        Don’t sweat it.
        Happens to everyone sometimes.
        I once hunted a website issue for a day. It did not occur to me that the DNS entry did not exist.
        In a worst case scenario just say you were tired because you are not sleeping well due to heat.
        Works perfectly in central Europe at the moment. :)

  12. Gautsu says:

    DEUM I’m assuming for Deus Ex Machina, literally god from the machine

    I used to sleep in the nude to cut down on the amount of body heat I put off while asleep. When my son was born I started wearing underwear again out if modesty. Sometime around him turning 2-3 years old he started getting bothered by seeing me shirtless and now brings me the same 2 or 3 dark colored shirts over and over if he sees me without one. I work nights and sleep days and we usually cuddle before I go to sleep on the weekends, so now I’m stuck sleeping in clothing again due to my ocd angel

  13. Jabberwok says:

    I love how the level in the trailer looks like some sort of weird theme park. Like MGM Studios in Hell.

    This does look cool, but I still foresee myself playing ten times more Brutal Doom. When it comes to limb damage and power fantasies, I’ve found that hard to beat.

  14. Philadelphus says:

    I kinda hate to be that guy, but just to point out: “bedclothes” actually means “coverings for a bed, as sheets and blankets; bedding,” not “clothes you wear to bed.”

    I know this vividly because my younger brother only found this out recently at the age of 18, and couldn’t believe he’d been using “bedclothes” wrong his entire life.

    Actually, Shamus using it the same way makes me wonder if the meaning isn’t starting to drift a bit as people forget the original definition and go off of the more literal-sounding meaning. Anyone else here aware of the original meaning of bedclothes before reading this comment?

    1. Fizban says:

      Excuse me while I go reread literally every book I’ve ever read to re contextualize all the bedroom scenes, holy crap.

      Except there’s a very high chance that the writers didn’t know that either. I’d like to think I’d have noticed if I’d seen “bedclothes” used in such a way that it couldn’t be referring to humanclothes.

      1. BlueHorus says:

        Overcome with passion, he decided he couldn’t hold back any more. With one motion, he tore off his bedclothes and threw her down onto the bed.

        “What the hell?” She cried. “I came here to have sex wth you, not watch you tear your sheets in two barehanded and then push me over onto a bare old mattress!”

        …Yeah, I think this is one of those words that has had its meaning change over time.

    2. Kathryn says:

      Yes, you are right, and I always refer to my sheets and blankets as bedclothes. I read a lot of old books, though, which definitely has an effect on my vocabulary. Words go in and out of fashion like anything else, so a word that’s common in the older books I read (like, say, asseverate) might not even be in my phone’s dictionary.

      (To asseverate is to assert. It’s used as a speech tag in at least one of the Anne of Green Gables books.)

      1. Philadelphus says:

        Yeah, I grew up on a steady diet of old books myself and always find it amusing when a word I can’t remember not knowing the definition and spelling of isn’t found in the spell checker of the program I’m using.

  15. TMC_Sherpa says:

    Nah, fair warning is good. It’ll give me time to take screenshots so I can nitpick all the new changes and moan about how everything was better in the old days.

  16. Wiseman says:

    Don’t tell me this change in background is all the changes!

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