

Marine Heavy Gunner dev notes - 'Nobody picked up that it was a parody' - dan_sim
http://hakstrap.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/marine-heavy-gunner-fna/

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bobbyi
_Your six person, six month, $200,000. budget game is reviewed THE SAME as a
three year, three hundred person studio game_

Why wouldn't it be? The point of a review is to tell me how good the game is,
not to reward you for effort.

~~~
xsmasher
They probably don't have the same retail price at launch. Do they also go to
shows at a local clubs and complain that their stage show isn't as good as the
Rolling Stones?

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stcredzero
_'Nobody picked up that it was a parody'_

Closely related quote: "No one ever went broke underestimating the
intelligence of the American public." --Henry Mencken

~~~
gruseom
My radar went off on this one, because I've heard it attributed to both
Mencken and P.T. Barnum. But it turns out Mencken _did_ say it - or rather, he
said something that resembled it:

 _No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records
for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by
underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor
has anyone ever lost public office thereby._ (Chicago Tribune, Sept. 19, 1926)

This is another case of a quote that mutated over the years into a pithier,
more rhythmic form. An interesting divergence is that Mencken never explicitly
said the _American_ public.

~~~
mahmud
Mencken being the elitist he was, probably never saw the "great masses" in
finer detail. American or otherwise, to him they were nothing but a bulk; a
gray, disgusting pile of intellectual and material poverty.

Him and Buckley have elevated crypto-fascist snobbery to a new level.

~~~
gruseom
I'm not sure you're right about Mencken. I have the impression that he was
more of a cynic than an elitist, not a groveler before wealth and power.
There's a series of interviews with him on YouTube, done by a protégé of his
as a kind of oral history. I dabbled with listening to them a few months ago
and remember one anecdote. Mencken described how he enjoyed walking through
neighborhoods of Baltimore at night, looking into well-lit living rooms to
learn what he could about how people lived. For the most part he thought
people's taste was appalling, but he mentioned that one poor black woman's
house had struck him as being arranged with some of the best taste he had ever
seen. I don't know that much about Mencken but my guess is that "good taste"
was high praise.

About Buckley, on the other hand, I agree with you. I've watched some of the
interviews he did in his prime and seen nothing but an oily, pretentious jerk,
sure that his establishment platitudes are convincing arguments. Those pieces
really have not aged well. I'm thinking of the ones where he "debates" Chomsky
("I'd smash you in the goddamn face") and, infamously, Gore Vidal ("Now listen
you queer, stop calling me a crypto Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face
and you’ll stay plastered.") Some intellectual hero.

~~~
ellyagg
So, what _should_ you do if someone keeps calling you a crypto-nazi in a
televised debate? I'm pretty sure that if Buckley and Vidal had been having a
debate about civil rights, and Buckley repeatedly called Vidal a "crypto-
faggot", under the pretense that doing so was vaguely related to civil rights,
and then if Vidal had made a rejoinder similar to the one quoted, you'd be
applauding it.

Remember, it was Vidal's essay about Buckley that twice inspired libel suits
and forced Esquire to print an apology.

(Note: Not a Republican and not a fan of Buckley, but a fan of the truth.)

~~~
rgrieselhuber
Surely you're not saying that being labeled a Nazi and being called gay should
evoke a similar, combative response?

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wendroid
Being called "faggot" is not the same as being accused of homosexuality.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
That's the (disparaging) meaning I grew up learning. What else does it mean?

~~~
JoachimSchipper
To the best of my understanding, the difference between "homosexual" and
"faggot" is about the difference between "African-American" and "nigger".

Objectively, the meaning is the same; but you wouldn't use the first to insult
someone, and you wouldn't use the second in a policy document.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
Which, unless I'm somehow confused here, brings me back to my original point.
If someone calls you a Nazi, they are calling you something horrible. But if
someone calls you a homosexual, even if they do it in an insulting manner,
they aren't saying anything horrible about you at all. They are just showing
their own ignorance and bigotry through their choice of words.

So that's why I objected to indirect comparison of calling someone a Nazi vs.
calling someone a homosexual.

~~~
wendroid
"crypto-faggot" is not "crypto-homosexual"

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ianbishop
"Another interesting note, we DID have ragdoll physics. But what happened was
when you killed a Vietcong their body would shrink down to the size of a child
and seizure on the ground flailing and screaming."

Hilarious. Despite the overwhelming complexity and pressure of the game
industry, I can imagine getting to create something like this with a small
team of friends would be absolute bliss.

~~~
krakensden
You missed the money quote:

"After a firefight it looked like you had wiped out an entire orphanage"

~~~
JoachimSchipper
You also missed the "one full year of crunch time" part. It wasn't all gun and
fames.

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reitzensteinm
It got 50% on metacritic, which isn't too bad. For 6 people for 6 months, it's
actually quite an achievement.

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yread
I laughed at the crappymode as well and a friend pointed me to this
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwxN8sCIOOE> Half-life with a voice plugin :)

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ilamont
The gaming format of a wisecracking band of heavily armed soldiers blasting
their way through a foreign country while spewing curses and black humor is a
trope that never gets old. Fast-forward to 2010, and Battlefield Bad Company
has a very respectable rank on Amazon.com:

[http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_3_14?url=search-
alias...](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_3_14?url=search-
alias%3Daps&field-
keywords=battlefield+bad+company&x=0&y=0&sprefix=battlefield+ba)

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catch23
I love the youtube links at the bottom... they point to... youtube.

~~~
xsmasher
Found one: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXLewW_aeuo>

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jws
Under CHEAT CODES:

 _> crappymode = all guns are now my voice (kudos to my compatriot in crime)_

bang! bang!

~~~
whatusername
Partly also explained here:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ash51/shhh_share_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ash51/shhh_share_the_secrets_of_your_trade_lifes_little/c0j5r0k)

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mahmud
Funny, light read :-)

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josefresco
anyone have a mirror of the download?

