Key Sharkz

I am just scratching my head at the logic... Is there really a demand by mobile gamers for games like this? That's the problem I am having, is trying to figure out where the demand is. Most mobile gamers I know are not interested in such intensive titles. IDK, it's a very risky move to invest this much into a platform that is targeted towards casual players with such a serious game.

Maybe PS3 quality, but it's certainly not next gen console quality in my opinion.

There is already a little icon at the bottom of my screen on 8.1 to upgrade. Kind of funny that they are advertising it by putting a button on the previous operating system.

3-4 currently, but after I get into the air force I will be moving every few years. Hoping for Germany and Japan at some point.

If that's the case then it just confirms a smartphone with Nintendo capabilities. If I need a new phone at that point, sure, but if not it's a platform I'll pass on. The smartphone game market just... It's not "the future" like everyone thinks it is. It's just a market that is currently being exploited because casual gamers have a lot of access to it. It's never going to replace consoles or other dedicated gaming platforms.

Oh. I understand now. I would say that so long as the people engaging in the risk are aware of it, accepting of it, and willing to take responsibility should something come up, it's fair game. I am totally against people just doing whatever and then going "naaaah" when it comes time to own up to responsibility, but so long as they are being responsible, it's completely fair. As long as people are: 1. Understanding the risks and willing to own up to the responsibilities. 2. Not looking down on people who only want one partner. 3. Using protection. 4. Keeping their sex lives private when it's not appropriate. 5. Not TRICKING anyone into having sex with them (i.e. making sure it's mutually understood that it is in fact casual sex) Then I say let people do as they please. It's none of our business. Looking down on it doesn't stop it, nor does it help anyone. We should just ignore others sex lives and focus on our own.

I'm not sure I follow... Could you perhaps elaborate?

I advocate protection and birth control. Other than that, go to town.

I had a discussion about this earlier and I feel the need to share:How is preaching the whole "OMG PEOPLE SHOULD JUST WAIT FOR A RELATIONSHIP. SAVE YOURSELF FOR THE SPECIAL SOMEONE!" still permitted? It is un-American and goes against what our country was founded on: freedom. You have no right to police other people's sex lives, and what they do in their bedroom is no one's business. How is it fair that people who engage in casual sex treat people who want to wait for relationships with complete respect most of the time, get to be ridiculed by those same people. Why is this respect not a two way street? This attitude is where slut shaming appeared from and honestly a lot of it just comes from jealousy. Let's not even kid ourselves, a good handful of people who wish to "wait" are not doing so by choice. Most of the people who shame others for engaging in casual sex are going off of outdated or completely WRONG information. I know many people who still think there is like a 25% chance you'll catch AIDS from unprotected sex. You have a greater chance of catching AIDS from a blood transfusion. Only 1% of the US population lives with AIDS, and the chances of contracting it during sex are actually very low. The stigma about herpes? GUESS WHAT: There is a good chance that a majority of the people in this thread have the virus for oral herpes because it's the same virus as cold sores. If you have ever had a cold sore, you have oral herpes. What is irritating is that the media has made it out to be like you can catch herpes so easily and it'll ruin your life. First of all, it's VERY rare to catch genital herpes not during a breakout. The chances are extremely low. Second, they make it out to be like genital herpes is this insanely painful thing that ruins your whole life when the truth is, many people live with genital herpes that only have a break out every few YEARS, and it more or less just causes the same discomfort as a cold sore does. Rarely is it so extreme that it causes the kind of pain and anguish that the media makes it out to be. That and we are getting very close to a cure for herpes considering we already have drugs that can greatly reduce the time of break outs.A majority of other STDs are completely treatable. I hate how our society is basically just trying to convince everyone that sex is bad so that it's an excuse to control everyone's bodies, and shame those who do not buy into propaganda.

Okay, I just want to preface this by saying that I love the living crap out of Borderlands. However I am about to throw it under the bus in this thread as an example to illustrate what I am talking about. So bear in mind that I do not hate the game, but damn does it do something that annoys the crap out of me that game makers are doing lately. So some of us have probably gone achievement hunting, or gotten a new DLC and wanted to complete it right? Well, what the most annoying thing for me is what achievements or DLCs are made is a gimmicky fashion for the sole purpose of artificially inflating the length of a game. What am I talking about? Well let's take Borderlands' Mad Moxxi DLC: It's crap. Sorry, but I can't even lie, it's crap. To get the last 3 trophies in it, you need to survive 3 100 round tournaments with no checkpoints, and you can't even die once. You die? You start from the beginning. It can take around 9 hours to beat all 3, and the reward? 1 skill point (I.e. the equivalent of going up one level). All of that for 3 silver trophies and 1 gold. It's frustrating that a lot of games are making achievements or DLC like this though. A "challenge" that is more or less a test of patience rather than skill. The underdome challenge is HARDLY difficult, it's just boring. It's really annoying when game devs are just making expansions like this, and then turn around saying it adds "several hours of new gameplay!" when in reality it's just adding 10 hours of grinding which isn't fun or valuable gameplay (considering the game is already an RPG). I get that gamers are demanding longer and longer games, but their demands are for legitimately longer games, not games that take 100+ hours because of all the grinding you will need to do to complete side quests. What are some games that have achievements or trophies that did this kind of crap to you that you loathe?

You know Sports is a sad subject for me. I actually was decent at them in high school to where if I had harnessed enough skill I might have actually been competent at them. Unfortunately though, because I wasn't always the best student and GPAs being a certain amount was necessary to join any team (and that I wasn't big or tall) prevented me from being able to do any back then. As a result I grew worse at them, and eventually I just got to where I resent them.

It's been a week, I am still interested in this change.

MattTech - https://www.youtube.com/user/matttechnology I do technology reviews and other tech related stories. I'd love to do some collabs with people if possible.

That's what I am suggesting, laws regulating businesses raising prices right after wage raises. Laws making it so businesses can only legally make a maximum percentage of profit off of a sale. For example, when they sell you say a soda, if they are making a 500% profit on it, then that is unfair to the consumer. We should cap profits that can legally be made off of certain products. Technology is where it gets exceptionally bad though. Apple can make an iPhone for $200 and then turn around and charge $650+. As far as families though, that is why we should switch to COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) where people are paid based upon their needs. However if we ARE to implement that though, we need to be able to revoke COLA if we find out people are NOT spending their money on their families. If I am a business owner and I need to pay you $16 an hour because you have 2 kids, and I find out you are not paying child support, then I am not going to want to give you the extra money just to throw it in your pocket. The other issue is we need a max cap. People on their taxes these days are claiming WAAAAAY more dependents than they should be to get more money. I'm sorry, but if you have 10 dependents someone needs to step in and say you're on your own because you keep taking people in or having children. As much as we need to regulate businesses, we need to regulate average Joe too. Let's be honest: average Joe is far from innocent in gaming in the system. On top of this, more extreme regulations on government services need to happen. In my home state they FINALLY passed a law that you need to pass a drug test to apply for welfare and if you fail it, then you go to jail for trying to fraud the government. I think that isn't extreme enough though. We need to determine first if a person needs to be permanently supported by the government (such as permanent disability) or they just need assistance. Then if they have been deemed temporary we need to take some measures to ensure it's temporary: 1. They must be required to apply for jobs that they are ACTUALLY qualified for. This is a big one, many people end up staying on unemployment and welfare by purposely applying to jobs they know they will not get. Right now so long as you turn in one application within a certain time frame, you can keep collecting. We need to get to a point where it's like "Okay, after you've spent X amount of time looking for a job with no luck, we have a person that will find jobs and send them to you for you to fill out applications." A person who researches the person's background, skills, etc. to ensure they are applying for jobs only that they have a chance of getting. 2. Random drug tests. It's not enough to give them a drug test before applying. Many people know that if you stop doing drugs around a week or two before a urine test, you will pass it. Not to mention many of them can fool urine tests. It's not really that hard to sneak in a bag of urine. I remember being drug tested for jobs, and they don't exactly pat you down, they just tell you to empty your pockets. It's not exactly hard to say hide it in your underwear, or even for some people (who I still will not understand) stick it up their anus. A random drug test makes it harder and harder to fool. Not everyone is going to have fresh urine ready to utilize for fooling a test. They show up at your house and they follow you in, and you don't have time to go to the bedroom to find your stash. I know it sounds extreme, but we have a LOT of drug addicts who have no interest in finding a job living off of our tax money. 3. Stricter punishments for frauding the system. Jail time. Serious jail time. 4. Never ever ever let them use cash or obtain cash. All the money for any government service should be on a card, and furthermore that card should require a valid ID with it, and all stores by law should not be allowed to accept it without said ID. I can't tell you how many times people use food stamp cards at a store I worked at who not only didn't have an ID or match the person on the card, but that I KNEW were frauding the system, but we weren't allowed to say anything about it. I am proposing something even MORE extreme though: a database for said cards where any expense on them can be looked up, and more extreme still, by the public. I know some may think that is insane, but my logic is that these people are using the tax payers money. The tax payers should not only see where their money is going, but you will save a LOT of money in hiring people to check for fraud if you let the people who are actually paying check for you. Some may see it as an invasion of privacy, but really you're not spending your own money. You're spending someone else's money. You have no privacy with that money. Not having said privacy will discourage people from wanting to live off of benefits. We need to make it harder to fraud the system, much much harder. People are getting more and more clever on how to cheat the system, and we need to be ready to take the extremes necessary to combat that. While I can not comment on the lazy factor, I can say that companies that are being "hurt" by the internet and new technology are trying to find ways to nickel and dime the consumer instead of adapting. That's the big issue, so many companies are refusing to adapt to the new world and because of it, they are trying to bleed everyone dry.

Which is poor marketing considering iOS controls the smaller market share, and has higher licensing fees. Which goes to show that these mobile devs are not doing their homework. Plus the iOS versions of apps are different in that they have a very quick cut off point. Any device that is 2 generations old is at risk of losing support, while android is still supporting devices from 4.0 quite heavily. Sticking you business plan to giving Apple the priority is like fixing a broken doorbell instead of the big hole in your roof.

This is an issue I see all the time; people complaining that you can't live off of minimum wage and we should raise it to where people can realistically live off of. As I write this, the minimum wage in my home state is being raised to $9.00 an hour and the cost of living estimate is around $13 an hour or so. Now many people say this is a problem we should focus on and get minimum wage higher so people can actually live, well the problem though is it's not that simple. Now keep in mind, I went to school with a lot of business classes and I was forced to learn how economics and business work. The big issue is actually not minimum wage not being high enough, it's that companies are very lightly regulated. Raising minimum wage just makes companies see that people have more money and thus charge more, which then brings the value of a dollar down. Raising minimum wage actually just gives people the illusion they are making more money to keep them quiet. And in turn, the more it happens, the lower the value of a dollar becomes, and thus actually brings America closer and closer to becoming a third world country. Within time, the US dollar will be one of the most worthless pieces of currency on the planet, considering it has already lost so much value as it is, this really shouldn't be an issue to anyone. What needs to happen is something we all don't want to think about: the end of the free market as we know it. Now that is not to say we need to establish socialism or even completely abolish the free market, but we do need to put more regulations on it. We need to make it so that businesses can not just all agree to charge X amount to force the value of products up so consumers have no choice but to pay that much. We need to end illegal business arrangements like this, because they are actually legal forms of trusts, loopholes in the system if you will. Most of us probably see this kind of thing with our internet service provider. I am sure many of you have had this happen: You call up to get an ISP. You search the area, but you can only find one that services your area, despite seeing another is relatively close by. You ask yourself, why won't Verizon service my side of the street, but they will service the other? Why must I get Comcast instead? The answer is simple: the two business have an agreement to not step on each other's toes, and thus they can both get away with charging whatever they live because there really is no actual competition. The issue is further hurt by people who work minimum wage jobs demanding more pay. While in its base idea it makes sense, the problem is their demands become too high. They make people lose interest in even taking the issue seriously because they are making outrageous demands (such as fast food workers demanding $18 an hour back in my home state). The truth is we need to give these people enough to live on, yes but we can't be charging more than skilled labor. People who go to college need to get paid enough to actually make going to college worth the investment. We have a lot of people who will not try to get into skilled labor positions because the cost of getting into them is far too high with low chance of payout. The issue stems from the fact that many of us are blind to what the real problem is, which is not that minimum wage is too low, but that companies are charging more and more for products that do not cost them that much to produce.

I'm pretty sure people have on a regular basis. The point is that once mobile games are abandoned, they become unsupported and in enough time they are lost in time. That's the issue, android and iOS updates break these games compatibility regularly, and when a company stops supporting them, it becomes difficult to enjoy them because you then need to invest in older smartphones to just play them. Also I doubt Square Enix doesn't look at reviews of their own games, that's free market research. You'd be an idiot businessman if you ignore that. Essentially the short version is that Square doesn't care if people lose support of these games because they are mobile games. They are meant to cash in during a time window. After that window passes they could care less about supporting it when a majority of the sales have passed. A lot of games are literally only designed to keep people's sales coming in while the game is in the top apps list, and the moment it is no longer in that list, they stop supporting it and focus on making a sequel. Mobile games are meant to be very temporary. Temporary is where the money is. Business wise, it's a smart move for cash right now, but it's only really a get some quick cash right now because smart phones are always changing and thus we don't even know if the Android and iOS store will remain as big. Tomorrow the next big platform could come out and get everyone to switch to that.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.square_enix.chaosrings.googleplay&hl=en Last update: Jan. 2014. People complaining about it not working after android update that was months ago.

Well cell phone games are usually games that are mediocre, but sell well. Smartphone games that rely on microtransactions rely on being frustrating and not fun to make money. Konami could you know... Just make better games, but that might involve GASP market research, risk, investment and effort! No, the horrors of having to actually behave like a business, say it isn't so! Doom and gloom! In all seriousness, if Konami wishes to take the easy way, out good for them they'll be crying up a storm though when some major AAA title breaks world records of sales and makes insane profits and then they'll be inside going "we could have had that money... Awww man..." Mobile games are only the temporary future. The platform does not service games for very long. Look at Square Enix's Chaos rings, years without an update, people complaining it doesn't even work on fairly recent phones and no real plans to update it to make it do so. The moment app support is lost, the games are thrown into the trash heap to never be heard from again. As much as I am a PC gamer guy, this is part of why I still own consoles: you will always own the game when you have a piece of hardware to play it. Smartphones do not last long, and it's impractical to save like 4 smartphones with different Android/iOS versions so you can keep your older mobile games.

I suppose that's all fine and dandy for them, but when America makes up a majority of the world's consumers and are the biggest consumers of video games, just don't expect to make as much off of them if your plan is to focus on Japan. Essentially all this really means is Konami has stopped giving a crap about America.

Right on man. I guess the heart of the problem is that game companies are afraid of taking risks. They have devolved the basic instinct necessary for survival. Business is all about survivability, and to do that, risks must be taken. Companies are now trying to circumvent the risks and still get the payouts, which for business makes sense, but it puts them in a position ironically that will make them INSANELY vulnerable in the future. The moment someone comes out with something that pays off big that requires risk taking, these companies will be so set in their ways of non-risk taking they will be out of their comfort zone.

I also see the issue with mobile games in that they are INCREDIBLY temporary. In 5 years from now if the game is no longer on the app store it becomes harder and harder to get a hold of it, on top of the fact that they do not work properly on newer versions of mobile OSes. Basically in 5 years, if the game is not updated it's gone forever. It's not like with console games where I can get the hardware off of ebay, or I can just save my hardware from when I bought it and keep the game on my shelf. For a mobile game, unless I plan on keeping an ancient phone and keep it operational, I may lose access to that game. Not to mention that mobile devices have a rather short life span and fairly poor durability.

Killing off their reputation as a AAA developer, obviously.