OK, so my best attempt at a 'quick' reply before heading off very lately to bed:
Sparrohawk, on 21 May 2012 - 05:14 AM, said:
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You're claiming that someone cannot take copious amounts of evidence and then make a claim based on it?
OK, so this is going to be my standard respond to all the 'evidence'-themed stuff here: Blizzard issued an open letter of apology stating that they messed up and underestimated demand thus many people were not able to play the game on release day when they wanted to. This should really be sufficient to validate the claim that there were issues in which the game did not work as intended on day one. Companies don't hand out letters of apology that easily, if I'm recalling the past decade correctly, and so putting aside for the moment going into any statistics on the issue - sufficient gamers were affected to warrant the company fronting up to their mistakes, and there has been considerable internet discussion of the day one mess up (if we want to go into providing evidence for THAT, well...go to Google or something, sheesh).
Is there some contention that the company's own open letter of apology is not sufficient evidence for the purposes of this debate that the launch did not go anywhere near 'perfect' and in fact did prevent a large number of people from playing (be it in confluence with their RL schedules or otherwise)?
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Skyrim on the PS3, didn't, no. On other platforms, however, it functioned perfectly fine, as far as I'm aware?
It was buggy as hell to me; a lot of what I saw online had similar things to say. So, I decided that the game didn't work. The implication (which, this being a text-based discussion and not a conversation, didn't work like I wanted it to) is that that call of 'working or not' is down to personal interpretation, partly.
Touche, and fair call. As I said, though - "as far as I[was] aware". Still, if there was a lot of online talk about it being buggy on platforms other than the PS3 (mayhap I missed it, being overshadowed by the failure that was the PS3 release), then I'll concede the original point - though if we're going to go that route it does kinda turn back around on your claim that "working or not" is personal interpretation based, because you've provided (taking you at your word here) supporting evidence ala my referencing of other gamer's experiences. So yes, partly - but mostly down to the number of people affected.
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My claim that your splitting of hairs is pointless is relative to the fact that we're talking about the developers being "perfection-obsessed" and so therefore the difference between "didn't work at all" and "didn't work as intended and prevent people from playing the game" is meaningless.
I was trying to make the point that your calling my hair-splitting meaningless is a personal decision on your part. I was conceding that you are allowed to do that. I then said that, in a similar sense, I am dismissing your statement that the game didn't work. They are relative only in the sense that I am making a personal judgement, as you are.
Granted, but as I tried to clarify, I was at least trying to base my claim around the argument at hand - that is to say, we were having a misunderstanding about the use of "didn't work", and I was saying that, given we're talking about "PERFECTION", the distinction is very much splitting hairs. Whereas to me you were just making an arbitrary knee-jerk 'I can ignore you too', and that to me is ignoring the (admittedly self-defined) parameters of the debate I was operating under.
I guess, in other words, I was trying to establish that we both think of "perfection" as meaning "no flaws" - and therefore the (hopefully already established to have happened) issues many players experienced defy the notion of "perfection" in the quote in the OP. Fair enough?
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Basically, arguments for portrayal of certain things in responsible and/or sensitive ways aside, there's a difference between video game principles and RL principles. I.e. I play games where I get to shoot people in the face.
Which is your personal moral boundary. Mine is different.
Granted, and I completely agree if what you're getting at is that morals are relative (or even subjective) and you're therefore talking about my "I.e."
But I think again we're at the hair-splitting, agree-to-disagree kind of place where it's argument for argument's sake - unless you're suggesting that there is a strong correlation between virtual principles and RL principles, which I believe you later admit to be unproven. I don't want to get too out of the way here, but I'd contend that seeing as your average western citizen isn't out trying to stab other people "for the experience points", there is a certain suggestion that most (gamers, at least) will do things in a game they wouldn't do in RL. But we'd be digressing again...
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Well, that's a horrible form of baiting that can only possibly lead to judging someone in an ad hominem attack in the middle of an argument, really.
Only if you think I'd immediately and actively judge someone badly over it. Usually I'm just curious as to how they think about it, if at all. Why do you believe it can only lead to me attacking someone about it?
But yes, it has gone a bit off topic.
Because there is little point in asking if you're not going to judge them over it, and the first possible answer of "haven't played" renders the question moot [no change in status quo], the second answer of "played it" - based on the rest of your post about how people often show different principles by playing these games while talking about some other topic being morally wrong or something - has apparently historically given you a bad impression of said players, based on my interpretation of your post. Now, there are several ways one could elaborate on "haven't played" or "played" which would modulate your judgement (or lack thereof) I presume, but I was really reading into what you had posted about the subject, which imo leads me to believe that in general you've ended up morally judging people negatively more often than otherwise. Thus, the only real outcome that I was looking at implied that it's baiting.
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That really has no bearing on my real-life moral compass, as the virtual is not 'real' - it has no tangible consequences.
I wasn't aware that there was any conclusive evidence on the subject at all, actually. I'll grant that it's your field, not mine, but all the studies I've ever heard about have been atrociously unscientific in methodology if not outright funded to provide a skewed outcome. Though those are probably just the ones I'm likely to hear about anyway, mind, as they tend to get the media attention. But now we're at the point where it definitely becomes an argument for a different thread as I struggle to resist arguing the rest of that quote, heh. I think we'll have to go with "the evidence is very much out" and therefore assume that, from where I'm sitting, either the virtual has no effect on my RL moral compass [said compass not necessarily being of any certain sort] or I'm blissfully unaware of the impact.
And then there was sleep. Zzzzzzzzzz.
Help
And I only did to it what you did earlier.
