With $45 billion in taxpayer funds burning a hole in its pocket, Citigroup is purchasing a $50 million Dassault Falcon 7X, according to the New York Post. Apparently none of the existing jets that ferried execs to Washington to ask for bailout funds was ironic enough.
According to the Post, the jet seats up to 12 and has leather sofas and a customizable entertainment center. There are only nine of these planes in America.
It’s bad when you’re not really even surprised anymore, but I’d like to at least see our govt demand an explanation.
Democratic Sen. Carl Levin had pressed the Treasury Department to block Citigroup’s purchase of the new jet.
“To permit Citigroup to purchase a plush plane — foreign-built no less — while domestic auto companies are being required to sell off their jets is a ridiculous double standard,” said Levin, who represents Michigan, home to the Big Three automakers.
Because I am no longer an employee of Crystal Dynamics (yes, I was one of the 30) I am now free to post. as long as I don’t break any of the usual confidentiality agreements, which I won’t. I wasn’t going to post, but there is too much being said that I don’t feel is right to go unanswered. Although I haven’t read anything bad about me personally, some of the misinformation out there can lead to conclusions that I have lied about one thing or another, and I don’t want that impression to stand.
The other thread mentioned in a previous posting is still very active:
I read page after page one day this week until I realized it was entirely too close to my alarm going off for work. I then linked it here and basically forgot about it. I got what I was looking for, confirmation that loyal fans or even first time customers got the short end of the stick: no additional content for PC users. Only the XBox 360 users will get the content.
Eric makes additional comments on that page regarding whether the content was cut before or after Microsoft was contacted about the DLC.
I blame Eidos and Eric for the ‘exclusive’ terms of the deal, after all, we know how Microsoft is.
Andrew Doull makes some interesting points, but he lost me with this bit:
In addition, World of Goo was pirated approximately 90 percent of the time because it was unencumbered by DRM.
He goes on to say:
The reason it wasn’t 100 percent is that enough people cared about the game and the developers to want them to profit from their endeavors, even though those same consumers could have got the game for free.
The latter part I can agree with, although it’s debatable whether those who illegally downloaded WoG would have paid for it were it not available for free download (illegally).
What is mind boggling is how this guy is a game developer and doesn’t realize that DRM doesn’t work. How would have DRM stopped WoG from being illegally downloaded?
It wouldn’t have. Instead, it would have increased the number of times it was downloaded without payment to 2D Boy out of spite.
According to a user on tombraiderforums.com, 40% of the DLC was originally intended to be used in Tomb Raider:Underworld.
A few asked if the DLC was part of the game itself. Ask anyone who is part of it and if they are honest they will tell you around 40% of the DLC was meant to be in the game itself, originally. But it was decided later on to take out those parts because they were expecting most sales on the 360 and the DLC the way it looked at the time was looking to be a bit ‘thin’.
and …
However the poor sales for the 360 was a bit of a shock and the 360 exclusive now everyone knows was a huge mistake. Guess what, the guys who made that mistake are still working at Eidos. And Eidos will lose lots of money on it when they release it. Hence the stalling.
“We need to look at everything as we develop the next game,” said Eidos bigwig Robert Brent. “Look at how Batman changed succesfully, from the rather sad character of the Michael Keaton era to the noir style of The Dark Knight.” Making the next game “darker”
If the story evolves that way, then fine, but don’t force it in an unnatural way. This sounds like chasing a theme that was a natural fit for a comic book character whose past and purpose were synonymous with darkness. Lara Croft for me was about adventure and exploration, everything else was sort of what you “fell” into.
The word “bigwig” in the quote says it all for me. Had this come from Toby Gard or someone from the writers team, it would likely hold more sway. Instead, it comes from the CFO. I understand the guy is all about money, that’s his job after all, but I’m really hoping that he doesn’t get his way for the sequel.
One of the people laid off was the creative director. He’s the guy responsible for the cut material making it’s way into the DLC and also for the direction the game went.
I was as hooked on video games then as I remain today, only I had fewer titles to demo and more time to play the ones I had.
When Tomb Raider came along I was playing games like Duke Nukem 3d, Doom II, Warcraft II, etc. This was my first taste of a 3rd person action/adventure game and I loved it.
Looking back I can’t recall whether I had the demo or the full version, but it’s long lost by now.
If you’re having trouble remembering what it looked like, I found this on YouTube:
The music of course isn’t the original, but the opening menu and first level brought back instant memories.
When I heard they were putting out a new Tomb Raider game (Tomb Raider: Underworld, aka TR:U or tru) I wasn’t immediately interested as I was playing (and still am) The Witcher. After seeing this trailer, I became very interested:
Ah yes, the demo! I wanted to see for myself whether this game was truly as good as it it’s supposed to be. Right before the Christmas holidays kicked in I grabbed the TR:U demo and decided I’d go back and check out the last two games in the series while I was at it.
Thankfully I also got my hands on an XBox 360 controller which made playing the games so much better.
Before playing TR:U, the last TR game I played was the first one. Wow, what an experience. Yeah, there were definitely times I yelled “NO!” at the monitor when I made a jump I didn’t mean to do, but I usually chalk that up to me getting used to the game. I still chalk it up to that even after beating the demo a time or two.
I enjoyed TR:Legend and TR:Anniversary just as much, although I am thankful that the controls were changed from TR:Legend – I just find the camera up/down control very awkward.
Even so, I bought it and TR:U so I can get the full story. With TR:U in my collection and TR:Legend hopefully arriving this week, I was really bummed out to see this news come across my feed reader last week:
I think the game is awesome, and I’ve only played the demo! I like this quote from the comments page for the last link:
Disappointed? Have they not played even the demo of their own game?
To be fair, I’ve only played the demo. I’ll have to followup to this post with my endgame impressions. I’m really hoping the game wasn’t artificially ended so they could use the rest as DLC as many users have claimed (link is just one example).
Even more disappointing is that the DLC sounds like it will be for the XBox 360 only. Yay for your customers Microsoft.
Lastly I’ll say that Eidos brought back Toby Gard to work with Crystal Dynamics for TR: Legend and gave him the role of lead designer for TR:Anniversary. Toby Gard conceived the idea of Tomb Raider and designed the original incarnation of Lara Croft. According to Wikipedia, Toby “served as cinematics director for Tomb Raider: Underworld, and was credited alongside Eric Lindstrom for the story”.
I gathered up my Playstation 1 & 2, a handful of games (including one I accidentally ordered recently) and laid them in front of an old TV.
Summary: Man, I can definitely see why I prefer my PC.
I pulled out Final Fantasy VII and realized I was missing disc #1. I had two of #2, but no #1. Figures.
I popped in my memory card labeled with FFVII, inserted disc 2 and expected to see my old save games there. Nope. The PS1 claimed it and my backup card were empty. Ok, that figures too.
Perhaps loaning my PS1 out to family/friends wasn’t such a good idea.
I pop in Final Fantasy VIII and watch the credits and then after launching a new game (yep, no save game files for this game either) I watch the opening CG cinematic. Hmm, a decade later and it doesn’t look too shabby.
For comparison, here is a trailer for Final Fantasy XII, released seven years later:
and here is a trailer for the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII:
… and completely unrelated, here is another really cool trailer (used as an opening cinematic) from The Witcher:
I continued to swap out what few PS1 games I had left and eventually got around to connecting the PS2. I bought this used from a niece a year ago as I didn’t have one yet and she was looking for some extra money. My wife connected it a week or so later and played for a bit. It sat unused until today.
I was reminded quickly that I prefer PC games to console games, for just that reason. To be fair though, modern consoles do offer patches, so this wouldn’t be a problem if it were a PS3 or XBox 360.
That said, I likely won’t invest anything else into a console as I like being able to port my game collection to new systems.
All in all, it was an interesting bit of nostalgia and I’ve added the Legacy of Kain series to my wishlist (PC versions).
Federal Trade Commission
Title: Notice and Request for Public Comments
Subject Category: FTC Town Hall to Address Digital Rights Management Technologies – Event Takes Place Wednesday, March 25, 2009, in Seattle
Published: To Be Added
Comments Due: January 30, 2009
It’s been a whirlwind. I imagine that this is the story for most holidays for a lot of people. This post is a reminder that I have a lot of writing to catch up on.
