Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone’s Bizarre, Home Improvement Series ‘The Curse’ Gets Fall Release Date
It really feels like the FTC woke up a little while ago and is finally trying to enforce anti-trust rules.
Though I do worry it's a case of too little, too late; I remember they had to break up Microsoft a couple of decades ago and it certainly helped for a while. Hopefully these actions can help too, even if things already seem pretty far gone
I'm pleased to see some Gerrymandering being undone, and I'm very surprised not to see the Supreme Court block this. Hopefully more Gerrymandering can be undone in other states as well.
That's a fair point. It really feels like nothing is protected in perpetuity. It seems like everything is only protected for the time being. It honestly makes everything feel a little less stable, and I wish some protections could be codified to make them a little more robust.
Fingers crossed that we get Net Neutrality back. If I'm being honest, I'm less than optimistic; but I would certainly be thrilled if this went through.
It seems like The Venery of Samantha Bird was an unfortunate casualty of the studios refusing to negotiate with unions in good faith, but it still shocks me that studios can just scrap a show that is so far into production.
At some point, it seems like the studios already payed most of the money, how much are they really saving by preventing anyone from seeing it? It's an alarming trend that I've recently noticed, and I'm hoping it does not continue on (though I'm not exactly optimistic on it).
I've heard that it's also very bad for the cast and crew when a show/ movie gets scrapped like that, because it functionally creates a huge hole on your resume where you can't show what you worked on.
Every time there's a cancellation like that, I hope that it gets leaked, just so the cast and crew's hard work doesn't go to waste.
This move seems absolutely wild, and I think Match knows it; which is why it's only available to such a small segment of users.
If too many users have this feature (and who knows how many that would be?) it''s going to scare away all the regular users. What's the point in swiping no if that user can just veto your decision anyways?
This move reminds me a lot of what I've heard about mobile gaming. The 500USD/month users are whales, but the whales need regular people to play with or they'll get bored and leave.
Right now, keeping the number of whales to a minimum is important to keep the regular users happy, but I wouldn't be surprised if in the future some cost/benefit analysis shows that they can take the hit on regular users to squeeze out a few more whales.
It also seems like a bonkers move to pay 500 dollars to talk to someone who doesn't want to talk to you, too. (But that's a different issue.)
I'm glad to see SAG is standing up to the video game industry, which is notorious for mistreating its workers.
Hopefully, after seeing the damage from the WGA/ SAG Hollywood strike, the video game studios will take this threat seriously and negotiate in good faith enough to not warrant another strike.
I also hope that SAG standing up for themselves may inspire other game development employees to unionize and stand up for themselves as well.
My favorite movie is probably Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. It certainly isn't the best movie ever made by any stretch of the imagination, but something about the way the jokes are written land perfectly for me every time.
It's not for everybody, but I definitely quote it more than a reasonable person should.
This is quite surprising to me as Kamiya co-founded Platinum Games, and I always considered it to be largely under his influence creatively.
I have no idea why he would leave the studio that was already largely under his control. Based on the quote at the end:
I have a sneaking suspicion he'll pop up soon somewhere else, perhaps funded by a Chinese company.
I have to wonder if he wanted to sell Platinum Games to Tencent some time back when they were having financial troubles but he wasn't allowed to, so he left on his own to have more financial stability for his games.
Platinum Games has a problem of putting out solid games but rarely owning the IP themselves, so by leaving Platinum, I guess Kamiya is really only leaving Wonderful 101 behind (IP wise), and I'm not sure how likely he was to revisit that anyways. (Though Platinum did jump through a few hoops to secure the rights to it, so who knows?)
This move is quite perplexing to me, honestly.
I think that would still be considered a reboot as well (see the iCarly reboot or the new Frasier reboot as examples of reboots that follow the cast some number of years down the line).
I would personally prefer a fresh cast over a continuation, though. With any continuation there are going to be missing cast members who's absence is felt, which would not be the case with a fresh cast. Additionally a fresh cast gives you room to have a new plot from scratch instead of being constrained to an old show where you have ~10 years of established lore that you need to be careful not to contradict or retread.
Hopefully the show holds up either way, though, as I know there are fans of the original who would be quite disappointed if the quality was poor.
It seems like Twitter is really trying to find a value-add for Twitter Blue, but I can't see this enticing anyone.
What is the overlap between people you met on Twitter that you want to have a video call with that you don't trust with your phone number/ other contact information?
This feels especially value-less when you remember you would only be able to call people who are also Twitter Blue subscribers (approximately 1 in 550).
I agree, but I suspect this is mostly being pushed through because Comcast needs more "Peacock exclusives" or something, not because they believe in it.
Having said that; that doesn't mean it won't turn out to be a good show against the odds. The fact that it sounds like a mostly new cast is certainly a good sign (to me).
The article mentioned it ended in 2013, so that's about 10 years ago; but I don't think studios reboot franchises because there's a new story to tell in the modern era, I think it's because studios sense there's money left to be milked from the series.
With Greg Daniels attached, I hope it's not just a blatant cash grab, but it's hard to far l say, this early on.
In a nutshell: No WGA member (which often included show runners) could be on site for filming or make script adjustments. This means that frequently actors need to do their own rewrites which are often of questionable quality, and they don't like to do (since it's essentially being a scab). I think producers can also do rewrites, but I'm not sure they'd be much better at it.
One of the primary reasons Quantum of Solace was such a rough movie is Daniel Craig was doing rewrites himself in the evenings since it was filmed during the strike.
The obvious solution would be to do everything in their power to follow the script to the letter but oftentimes it can't be avoided. Some lines might not land the way they read on paper, and some sets cannot accommodate action the way it was initially scripted. All of these would require script rework.
This is why even completed scripts can still be a concern for the WGA.
I'm glad the WGA got an agreement they're happy with. This beats the deadline mentioned a few months ago about having to scrap the 2023-24 season (October 1).
I'm also glad there seem to be protections about AI in the writers' rooms, since that was what I assumed the studios were fighting to hard to have their way on.
Over all, I'm hoping this momentum will carry forward into SAG getting a favorable agreement as well.
That reminds me of when the GTA remaster collection came out and Rockstar had to delist the original (and I think they might have started C&D'ing some of the mod developers too).
At the end of the day, a direct port (or a cheap AI upscale in GTA's case) does not have a lot of value add. This is especially the case when classic consoles (and the Nintendo Switch) can be emulated at an even higher resolution than native.
I understand why developers don't want to actually remaster the game (or remake it, if they want to get really intense). It's a lot more resource intensive, and it's not a good guarantee of return on investment. Plus, most people who would buy a remaster would probably buy a straight port, too; so there's really no financial incentive.
But having said all that, I simply don't have much interest in playing direct ports. As far as I can tell, they're really only useful if you don't feel like doing the requisite tinkering to get an emulator working; but as you said, you'd probably still have better results on the emulator if you're willing to put in the work.
I was able to track down the article (Garbage Day URL, Archive.today URL).
The portion I was referring to was:
Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago. This suggests the problem is way fewer users, not the same number of users browsing less. The huge and universal dropoff also suggests that people left, either because of the changes or the protests, and they aren’t coming back.
Personally I was not contributing much there; but I suspect the users they offended most were the power users, which is where most of the content comes from.
The Reddit blackout had more of an effect than it appears. I saw an article a couple of weeks ago that showed commenting and posting was down ~50% since the blackouts; and I can safely say I haven't gone back to Reddit since, and I'm sure others have made similar choices as well.
People can have trouble "voting with their wallets," but I genuinely believe it is possible and does have an effect. Hopefully people do not forget the choices Unity has made here; but even if they do, Godot has already gotten a significant boost from this catastrophe.
That's actually a very good point, especially with the number of EULAs that we encounter on such a regular basis. How hard would it be for Adobe to slip a clause in about royalties without us noticing?
Is there even a stated reason for this change beyond just simple greed? To my knowledge they aren't maintaining any servers or other cost centers for the games developed on Unity.
As you said, hopefully there's still enough of a negative reaction to this that it doesn't take hold elsewhere.
I'm certainly always excited for more Nathan Fielder, but I have to say I find his casting perplexing.
While Nathan Fielder is not considered an actor, I do wonder how much of his performances in Nathan for You and The Rehearsal are an act. Maybe he will have stronger acting chops than expected.