If you've followed the blog for any amount of time you know I tend to ramble on, so I'll try to keep this short.
This video explains something I had heard about in 1 or 2 of the of the retsupurae podcasts. Something about Sega acting crazy and removing videos on YouTube that were even vaguely related to the Shining Force series. This video explains it in detail.
And since the video is rather long, here's a summary.
Sega Going Nuts
Months back, Sega began to systematically take down videos on YouTube that just mentioned Shining Force, even videos that didn't even feature ANY footage of the game. As long as Shining force was mentioned, it was taken down from YouTube.
Videos were flagged down so fast that it caused several channels to be taken down entirely. Sega isn't even responding about the situation at all.
I'm fairly sure false copyright claims is a crime and thus illegal, but I'm no lawyer and it may vary from country to country.
It's assumed it's someone that works at Sega, or at least someone in Japan. It's suspected that they're just removing all videos that mention Shining force just so they can manipulate the search results for those keywords.
Backstory (Optional read)
In my opinion, it's worth going to the beginning of the video and watch all of it. It talks about how Sega of Japan seems to hate it's non-Japanese fans.
There's a considerably big and devoted fanbase to Shining Force, these fans have sent emails, packages, and even petitions to the developers of the Shining games, to express either their love for the games, how they would love to have a translation to the 2 final episodes of Shining force 3, and asking them to make more games in the style of the older games.
Sega of Japan's response in particular was harshly cold, if a response was given at all. The current producer of the series actually went on twitter and posted a rude comment towards the person who organized the campaigns and sent the packages.
I'm really summarizing it though. If you're interested, watch the whole video.
My Opinion
As for the YouTube issue thing, it's been confirmed it's someone from Japan. I guess there's still the possibility it's not someone from Sega.
More than that though, it makes me think about how it's a miracle that YouTube even works. The "shoot first, ask questions later" policy is just terrible and unfair. Really makes me wonder how that site hasn't had more issues like this in the past or even functions at all. Also makes sense why most serious LPers use blip.tv or other hosting instead.
For me this is more about how badly YouTube's policy is than how crazy Sega might have become.
Sega really should issue some sort of statement about this mess though, but it may be too late as it is. This whole Shining story kinda makes them sound like massive dicks and everyone who has heard of it considers boycotting Sega to some degree.
I don't believe there was that much miscommunication between the new producer of the Shining series and the non-jap fans, I think at most he jumped to illogical conclusions or was butthurt that people liked the older games for whatever reasons. There's some fucked up ego thing going on there.
You know, any developer should be honored to have fans like that, and Sega of Japan basically spits in their face.
I'm starting to suspect Sega doesn't actually have a PR department at all.
Yesterday I was gifted DotA 2, which confuses me because steam always said I already owned the game.
I dunno who the guy who gifted it to me is, so i dunno if it's someone I used to talk to. If we used to chat and if you're reading this, dude, I'm sorry I don't remember who you are.
Anyway, this gift made me think about a few things, the main thing was how much i dislike DotA, but also about how I used to spent tons of time in Warcraft 3 playing all the different maps.
My problem with DotA back then was how elitist the players were, and often really racist (not towards me, but it's still awkward). I just didn't want to associate with people like that.
Ok here's the thing, you control 1 guy. It couldn't be simpler especially compared to other Warcraft 3 maps. Where the "depth" came from, was from ambushing, getting last hits on shit and shopping. I always thought the shopping part was really, really annoying to get into, as in I just refuse to bother learning the best order to buy items. and the strategy is a fucking joke.
Another thing that bothered me was that bored DotA players would drop by Footmen Frenzy games and try to play it using only their heroes. And because they're used to a poor ass simple game, they just always lose. I mean, any average WC3 players would do way better than they would.
Here's why, in Footman Frenzy under your control you get heroes, towers, an army, a base and special units. To beat a player you have to destroy his base, and even if you're losing overall, you can win if you're smart. As I'm told, most DotA matches are decided in the first few kills.
I'm not saying simple games are bad, I'm just saying in DotA, it's fucking boring..
However, after the initial reaction, I started thinking about it and imagined how it'd look in a full game with 32 people. While it's more and more true that TF2's "vibe" has long been destroyed, and the game feels like a circus, this really feels like it's taking it way further.
"Smissmas!" update
Oh those fucking crates and Xmas items...
Skipping all the stupid cosmetic shit, here's what's announced:
Had originally planned to post stuff I colored, but I got bummed out (December isn't a happy month for me) and sucked into Forsaken World again. I had 7 pics planned with Zach, but I've only finished 3, and been stuck on the 4th for a while.
Most would argue this is worth it for binding of Isaac alone, and they're probably right. I personally never had interest in playing that game because of how it looks, I just can't get past it.
Here's something I don't get though, I've heard the game is supposed to be hard. Yet, every time I see Zach playing it, he makes it all the way to the end. Actually, I've never even seen Zach die in binding of Isaac.
Might just be that Zach is just oddly good at the game though. I dunno...
This is something we've known about for months on FW, the next update is going to introduce a new playable race, the Lycan. aka the werewolves.
Didn't expect this update so soon though, goes live tomorrow (December 12).
Now, similar to how WoW handled the Draenei, the Lycan were "sexy'd up". However, most are expecting this update to kinda suck, here's why:
This new race can only use 2 classes, and each is gender specific. If you're a male werewolf, you HAVE to be an assassin, and if you're a female, you HAVE to be a priestess. The complete lack of a new class to play is a disappointment, seeing as a lot of people have already played those classes to death.
Still, the wolf gals can look very cute...
As a pervert, I feel obligated to start a wolf priestess tomorrow.
I played the first game, and I gotta say, it was fun and had good gameplay.
It's not out for PC, nor do I know if they have a PC port planned, So I can only hope. Come to think of it, not even sure it's out for anything at all.
I like some of the choices for characters in this, but the vehicle design looks drastically more boring. Still, it's a minor detail.
Speaking of detail, the TF2 character voices are so off...
As I've mentioned, Bitten's doin "military service" in Thailand. So I've been trying to think of something nice to do for him since he should be back within a week or so.
Me Zach and Bitten all use Dropbox (Dunno about Jimmy, never asked), and in fact, we have a shared folder between all 3 of us with stuff we wanna show each other or blog related junk.
It is possible for free users to expand their Dropbox, but the most common way to do it is to refer people to Dropbox. the problem is, everyone and their mom uses Dropbox already, and if you try to make another account on the same computer, it won't work.
Dropbox by default gives everyone 2 gigs to store stuff online. Seems like a lot, but it does fill up quick. In particular for Bitten.
He uses his Dropbox a lot for commissions. I think he's sharing a folder with some other group for a comic project, which is like over 500mbs or something, and between that and his public folder which he uses to host commissions and/or wips, and the shared folder he has with me and Zach, his box actually hit the limit a while back.
I've deleted everything I could from our shared folder, compressed some files, but yea. Bitten in particular needs more space.
I happen to look on the Dropbox site earlier, and saw this thing i never noticed before:
"Getting Started"? 250mb space for that? Well, every bit helps...
So there's this freebie you can do for extra space, but the catch is, you need multiple devices to pull if off. I was actually missing step 1 prior to writing this, which is just a fancy "read me".
I don't think this will help Bitten though, I don't think he has a mobile device for this.
So I look around more, and there ARE more offers you can do for space:
I think Bitten will be able to do at least a couple of these.
If you're a dropbox user, I hope you find this info useful.
If you're not a Dropbox user yet, and If you wanna help Bitten, reply to this post saying you wanna help him, and when Bitten's back, I'll get him to post his referal link so you can help him get 500mb storage space.
> This is why we should never be roommates.
> If I walked in a room and saw you do that to a keyboard, I guarantee you a more tragic ending than throwing your pants over the the cupboards.
