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SirPhoebos posted:So I got a question: why don't these copyright rules seem to apply to films? John Hughes pretty much filmed all of Cook and Manhattan County during his career and I never heard about him running into trouble with copyrights Mokinokaro posted:Iirc it has something to do with actually recreating the building in question. Movies are exempt in a sense as the buildings just happen to be part of the scenery and not the focus in most shots. That and movies, aside of typically having larger budgets than games (Watch_Dogs is in the top 30, and still 'only' cost some 70 million to develop) tend to do better to actively promote the actual building or landmark by making it seem relevant and important to the plot if it doesn't fit the 'background' clause, often being able to pay whoever owns the place to begin with to do some location shooting. A sandbox game like Watch_Dogs makes that more incidental, and in its first level at that (assuming you swapped out one of its stadiums for the real deal) would have associated it with criminal activity.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 20:53 |
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# ? May 4, 2024 02:10 |
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On the other hand I like the history blurbs you can find in hotspots. I'm not sure how many of them are Real Chicago and Made-Up Watch_Dogs Chicago, though.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 21:34 |
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Building copyright differs from say, art copyright. You are free to photograph a building in a public place. You are free to sell those pictures without infringing the copyright owner's rights. Video games aren't photography or a form of art, so I guess the problem is that in a video game you're creating a building virtually. Maybe the lawmakers haven't taken this into account back when the law was written and thus there is no mention of it in the legislation, and maybe there is no precedent from the courts. Why risk your money just to know the legality of virtual buildings when you can just not add landmarks, or alter them like Vinewood in GTA. In any case without a US intellectual property lawyer we really can't know what the US legislation says about virtually building a copyrighted building or if I'm talking out of my rear end. Regarding shooting movies in a public place, here's a PDF made for student filmmakers, and it says quote:LOCATIONS We can assume that John Hughes had a filming permit from the local body of government. edit; Mokinokaro posted:Fun fact many of the trademarks cover even photography. You cannot, by copyright law, publish a photo of the Eiffel Tower (but only pictures taken at night apply) ... This actually is not about building copyright afaik, but rather that the night lights on the tower are considered a work of art, and thus a photographer needs a permission from the IP owner. Trogdos! fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Jan 13, 2015 |
# ? Jan 12, 2015 23:35 |
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This game. Ugh. I'm playing ahead a bit because I'm dumb and... argh. More specifically for this episode, the game confuses me by calling these gunmen Fixers. In Cyberpunk2020 and kind of in Shadowrun (which makes up more of it's own lingo) Fixers are the guys who know guys. The guy you meet in a bar to get you in touch with gunmen, stolen cars, or primo tickets for the next big game.
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# ? Jan 13, 2015 17:52 |
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Speedball posted:Rocket launchers that shoot sleeping gas and attach a balloon to them! MGSV: TPP 2015.
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# ? Jan 13, 2015 18:57 |
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Tylana posted:This game. Ugh. I'm playing ahead a bit because I'm dumb and... argh. Yeah. Jordi being a "fixer" makes sense. He's the go to guy to get poo poo done and far more than just a gunman. The other fixers are basically assassins who know how to hack.
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# ? Jan 13, 2015 19:13 |
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To be fair I think it's mostly just the game wanting to have it's own lingo, so instead of using "Assassins" or "Hitmen", they just use "Fixers". As I just typed that out, I also realised it may have been because they didn't want to encourage the already strong rumours that the game was basically going to be AC but in the present, and the two words they otherwise would have used to describe "Fixers" are also used to describe similar organisations/groups of people in other games.
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# ? Jan 16, 2015 06:32 |
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http://youtu.be/K4KJhgHSFio I have a feeling everyone except Ubisoft had a way better idea of what would make Watch_Dogs cool.
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# ? Feb 1, 2015 23:48 |
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Speedball posted:http://youtu.be/K4KJhgHSFio That is genuinely awesome.
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# ? Feb 2, 2015 16:35 |
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It's a lot more impressive as a narrative than the game, and well made! I saw the microsoft hololens announcement recently - a reminder that AR could end up being cool maybe, if we don't put dumb bland spins on it. Episode 17 (Polsy): Bed_Bugs -- Instead of escort quests we have voyeur quests -- The unauthorised streets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIVa0yXQV3Q&hd=1 This one's not too bad. We're doing some stupid bullshit that achieves nothing other than hurting others, but it's a nice gameplay switchup.
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# ? Feb 4, 2015 16:36 |
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Bed-underscore-bug. Haha.
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# ? Feb 4, 2015 17:57 |
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One thing I never understood, talking about Aiden's reactions to things, is why when he found Damien in Nicole's house, he didn't just torture/kill Damien and track Nicole afterwards. The way hacking seems to work it'd just be a matter of taking Damien's phone from his pocket and holding triangle.
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# ? Feb 5, 2015 00:35 |
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Exactly. Torture isn't a very effective means of interrogation but there was no reason for someone as revenge-addled as Aiden to not just shoot Damien in his good foot and go all Jack Bauer on him. "Oh, you like to hack, huh? Let's see how good you are at typing when I start removing fingers!"
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# ? Feb 5, 2015 02:29 |
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Speedball posted:Exactly. Torture isn't a very effective means of interrogation but there was no reason for someone as revenge-addled as Aiden to not just shoot Damien in his good foot and go all Jack Bauer on him. "Oh, you like to hack, huh? Let's see how good you are at typing when I start removing fingers!" As grisly as that is it would actually bypass a lot of bullshit in the future.
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# ? Feb 5, 2015 02:42 |
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SSNeoman posted:As grisly as that is it would actually bypass a lot of bullshit in the future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis There's even a term for it!
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# ? Feb 5, 2015 02:53 |
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rubber hose torture posted:In practice, psychological coercion can prove as effective as physical torture. Not physically violent but highly intimidating methods include such tactics as the threat of harsh legal penalties.
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# ? Feb 5, 2015 03:42 |
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Scalding Coffee posted:Threatening to sic a lawyer on people is as effective as physical torture? The idea of having legal obligations that will almost certainly ruin you and send you back and forth from prison to another trial to another stint in prison because you will never be able to fulfill the conditions imposed on you can make people a little bit more than stressed. Basically, having a new life plan given to you that is "four concrete walls and sometimes a public humiliation (and worse than that in, say, an American prison)" isn't very nice. E: For example you have a journalist that recently got, well, not life but something like 5 years for not telling who his source was and for linking a document that was already public. EE: Also regular torture isn't very effective because of a mix of spite and pain and stress not being good for you memory or your thinking processes. SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Feb 5, 2015 |
# ? Feb 5, 2015 04:34 |
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Yeah, THREAT of torture is actually usually better for interrogation than actual torture. Any form of intimidation, mixed with hope. Carrot-and-stick. "Help me and good things will happen, don't help me and bad things will happen. Possibly not from me." For example Bedbug would be a lot more cooperative if he was a bit more aware that Aiden saved him from an army of assassins.
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# ? Feb 5, 2015 05:45 |
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So... why didn't they kill Bedbug and why was he able to contact Aiden like two seconds later? They were literally about to throw him out the window, and I don't think a wire would make Iraq and more sympathetic, considering he's the guy that beat a man to death with a suitcase for telling him what a weasel was. This better be a trap.
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# ? Feb 5, 2015 08:10 |
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Momomo posted:So... why didn't they kill Bedbug and why was he able to contact Aiden like two seconds later? They were literally about to throw him out the window, and I don't think a wire would make Iraq and more sympathetic, considering he's the guy that beat a man to death with a suitcase for telling him what a weasel was. This better be a trap. That's major reason number 1 why Iraq's briefcase scene makes no sense, yeah.
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# ? Feb 5, 2015 08:22 |
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I say Bedbug living was an editorial re-write. They can have him do the audio as a phone call afterwards for cheap without having to render any new cutscenes. This makes us feel less bad for using him and putting his life in danger. Y'know, consequences for this life of vigilante revenge. I sense that something similar happened right after we met Clara. Aiden's all up in her grill in the cutscene where they first meet. Then in the phone call afterwards Clara says Aiden was just using intimidation tactics to suss her out. I call retcon. When you edit stories for a while you start to notice seams like this.
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# ? Feb 5, 2015 08:29 |
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There's a TON of that. You can tell the cutscenes had things being far darker and more extreme than what the game ended up as. I'm assuming the cutscenes were made somewhat early in development.
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# ? Feb 5, 2015 23:46 |
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Mokinokaro posted:There's a TON of that. You can tell the cutscenes had things being far darker and more extreme than what the game ended up as. I'm assuming the cutscenes were made somewhat early in development. Yeah, the Aiden on the phone (or otherwise out of cutscenes) is usually less of a jerk than the one in cutscenes. I'm also thinking that Damien was added to the plot late too since 90% of him exists only over the phone.
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# ? Feb 6, 2015 05:38 |
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Momomo posted:So... why didn't they kill Bedbug and why was he able to contact Aiden like two seconds later? They were literally about to throw him out the window, and I don't think a wire would make Iraq and more sympathetic, considering he's the guy that beat a man to death with a suitcase for telling him what a weasel was. This better be a trap. I'm with Speedball, it was clearly part of the rewrites. The game's more disjointed than SR3 (which was good enough that it didn't matter)
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# ? Feb 6, 2015 19:42 |
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Episode 18 (Polsy): Stack depth increase -- "Fixers" -- The persistence of memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAZuqTA7sr0&hd=1 SWEET JUMP alert at 07:40
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# ? Feb 6, 2015 19:47 |
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Here's another idea for how the Batcave could have had a gameplay effect: make it so that as you upgrade it with money, you unlock more things for you to control around the city by connecting its wiring to the city's wiring. Stuff like new hidden cameras you ordinarily couldn't see through popping up throughout the city for you to control, stuff like that.
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# ? Feb 6, 2015 20:40 |
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As if we needed more support for the idea that the phone calls were written to walk back how utterly monstrous Aiden is, watch the body language of the hacker lady in the cutscene. She is very, very much uncomfortable with Aiden's presence, but is withstanding it because it means she has continued access to the massive databank laboratory. This seems quite like a deal with the Devil situation for her. This game, man. All I can think while watching you play is that this could have been a great pre-Awakening Shadowrun game, where Aiden is playing both the Decker and the Street Sam.
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# ? Feb 6, 2015 20:59 |
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Speedball posted:Here's another idea for how the Batcave could have had a gameplay effect: make it so that as you upgrade it with money, you unlock more things for you to control around the city by connecting its wiring to the city's wiring. And make money actually worth something? You never played an ubisoft game before I feel!
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 16:00 |
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Scalding Coffee posted:Threatening to sic a lawyer on people is as effective as physical torture? It's super effective! So instead of having to actually go to court, you show the guy you think is guilty how many years he's going to get, give him the option to plea for a shorter sentence (but still one that would be longer than in times past and in far worse conditions), and then you take some of the burden off the massively overburdened and underfunded courts and put them in the overstuffed prisons, which are all commercial and run by the friends of governors and whatnot. Isn't that great? And we never have to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt, hooray!!! Just look at all this money: Ka-Ching! Anyway, Watch Dogs: I quite like Bed Bug's interactions with Aiden in that sequence. He's not regressing, he's being an actual human being who empathizes with other people's plights, which he can never, ever do in his real life. It's pretty rare for games or really any media to admit that much gangster attitude, in whatever context that is, is a front to protect themselves and their domain by appearing crazy and willing to fight for little cause. I was chatting with a crack dealer last year (really super nice guy) and he told me about the big crack man in that area and all the stupid poo poo he had to do to look tough. Apparently he ran out a competitor by invading her apartment and spraying her with a fire extinguisher until she left. They don't sell what was going on with Bed Bug well at all, but what they were going for was solid. And thank you for reminding me of Republique. I was pretty interested in it, though there were pretty obvious warning signs in a lot of ways, and then I completely forgot about it. A PC version's coming out on 2015-02-26 on Steam. If anyone's interested, this is the Quick Look that I saw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRD-G4Im0jM Edit: Oh man I didn't realise David Hayter was in Republique. Well now I'm obligated to get it. I would call Aiden's ability to murder a superpower. He hits people with an antenna and they die (well not quite, but the distinction is meaningless). Protagonists usually have this superpower, but with Aiden it's hilariously overblown because he's just a guy with no background or training in any of this. Think of how much they stressed Jodie's training in Beyond: Two Souls, in an effort to make the subsequent fight on the train seem plausible. Think about that. David Cage spent far more effort in attempting to make his story plausible than these chucklefucks did. But man, the dynamic music in this game is just fantastic. The way it develops over the course of a mission is so well-executed. Open-world games lean far too hard on licensed soundtracks. It can make for iconic moments, but it really can't beat music that is designed to fit the action. The Wizard of Oz fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Feb 9, 2015 |
# ? Feb 9, 2015 19:08 |
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nendymion posted:I don't know if it's been mentioned already but there has been an actual consequence of the non-death variety due to Aidens prison escape. Of course the consequence doesn't happen to him. If you remember Aiden hacked the police computers and changed his name to Joe Smith and then proceeded to escape from jail after threatening a witness with a life sentence. Well in Episode 8 while in the pawn shop a news report comes up talking about the prison escape. It mentions how one guy escaped but was later apprehended. That guy.... Joe Smith.
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 08:34 |
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Well, that's a sobering graph. The Rossi-Fremont stuff is definitely better plotted than the rest, and feels like the 'core' they hung the rewritten game on - although we keep digressing from it into various involuted nonsenses. At least the upcoming series of stuff is silly rather than horrible.
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# ? Feb 11, 2015 14:26 |
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To be absolutely fair, I think one of Aiden's audio logs mentions that he went out and got a bunch of self-defense training when he was younger, because his temper kept getting him in fights he wasn't equipped to win.
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# ? Feb 11, 2015 15:46 |
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Episode 19 (Polsy): Pawnee, Indiana? -- Cops vs Troops -- Swimming lessons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA15s3T31PQ&hd=1 This part of the map raises confusing geographical questions. Surely Ubisoft can't be lying to me?!
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# ? Feb 11, 2015 16:00 |
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Clearly this version of Chicago is like the map in the Crew, where it's a bizarre mish-mash of American geography.
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# ? Feb 11, 2015 17:51 |
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There is a Pawnee in Illinois, but it's a three hour drive away from Chicago.
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# ? Feb 11, 2015 17:59 |
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Excluding every sandbox ever made which tends to allow killing both cops and soldiers, I rarely see games where I can only kill cops. I do play lots of war sims where I can play against the Americans. There are the Payday games and the few zombie games that are not sandboxes. I think cop killer sims are less plentiful than killing soldiers, because of the genres favoring one group over the other.
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# ? Feb 11, 2015 21:28 |
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Actually I think games where American soldiers are clearly your enemy are likely to only get more common. Games like Spec Ops: The Line and Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes are some standouts I recall.
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# ? Feb 11, 2015 22:33 |
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Americans are a popular enemy in Japanese games, especially in Metal Gear.
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# ? Feb 12, 2015 00:04 |
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# ? May 4, 2024 02:10 |
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You make an interesting point about the soliders, I can't really think of any game like this where they're your primary enemy that was made in the US. All I can really think about is how Aiden is the most cookie cutter protagonist I've seen in a while. Middle aged white guy bent on revenge by doing any means necessary but don't worry, he's an uncle that cares for his niece and nephew (so he can have kids without committing to a primary female character).
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# ? Feb 17, 2015 05:10 |