General Discussion

Promoting to main. This trailer is awesome!

One sad moment in my history is when I got rid of a Godzilla VHS movie pack. I didn't quite know I'd collect VHS later in life but mark that as a sore memory. That pack had some good entries including Son of Godzilla.

I've heard the last Godzilla film, King of Monsters wasn't great BUT if you want an incredible monster movie you need to check out Kong Skull Island. It came out in 2017 and it's campy in all the right places and great in all the right places. HOPEFULLY Godzilla VS. Kong is a lot more like Skull Island!

Needs more man in rubber suit

Awesome, that’s pretty close now! I’ll have to watch skull island again.

Whoa, awesome!

Yeah, seems like everything is getting pushed back. Hopefully with a large vaccine rollout we can go back to theaters soon.

You went to the theater to see this? Awesome. I’m scheduled for my vaccine next week so when all of that resolves I might head back!

I respect George a lot and hope he's more involved with Star Wars moving forward. With that, I find his ideas of the force and the jedi are hard to relate to. To focus on the dark side and light side as selfless VS selfish to be good but somewhat hard to approximate because I really don't think wanting things is ultimately bad. I find the black and white thinking of the Jedi in the prequels to be very off putting, dangerous and one of the hardest parts of organized religion. You take good things, like being selfless and putting others ahead of yourself and translate that to certain actions and dogma which are entirely wrong.

It's not bad to be afraid your Mom is a slave on Tatooine. It's not inherently evil to be scared. It doesn't make you space Hitler to have a dream where your wife dies and that shakes you. It just makes you human. Fear doesn't mean you have an evil heart. The Mandalorian as seen with a certain character seems to espouse this too, in that baby Yoda is afraid therefore scary because he might be evil. I don't really think fear means much more than we contain human emotions and those emotions come up. I don't think the most evolved form of humanity is the abandonment of emotion I think it's accepting what we are and making good choices anyway. When the Jedi distance themselves from hard emotions they give more power to them because accepting our humanity is the best path to disarming out unfortunate tendencies. The worst strategy is to hype up "bad thought" and try to pray it away or whatever the heck the Jedi do.

I appreciate Star Wars a lot but when you boil down religion and attempt to organize it and make a creed of it I think things tend to get hard which is why I frankly have a hard time with the Jedi. If they existed in our world, I'd try and get as close to their power and abandon the core mindset and if that made me a Sith then so be it.... Jedi.

One nice part of only allowing consoles to be purchased from a store is that anyone could get in line. But I wonder if scalpers would just hire folks to stand in line like they did with iPhones?

Promoting to main as this is a pretty cool question and relevant to a lot of gamers.

My preference is for an ergonomic keyboard with a fair amount of travel. I don’t care too much about click noises, just that my wrists are sitting in a good spot for blood flow to avoid issues. Historically the ergonomic keyboard I’ve used the most is the usb Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard. The original run was built well and I had for about 8 years until I spilled coffee on it. I tried buying the same USB model but newer and it literally never worked and I had to return many. I ended up moving to the new Microsoft Sculp Keyboard and Mouse combo which is a nice wireless redesign of the classic model.

Since I love the original Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard so much I’ve found two at various used shops in town so I’ll always have a couple on file if I want to go back.

Mechanical, 100%.

I don't care about whether it's clicky, in fact I get the quieter Cherry MX Brown switches. But there's just no replacing the efficiency and response of a mech keyboard.

I have a WASD brand mech keyboard for my main driver PC which has been in heavy use for about 5 years and still feels like the day I unboxed it. So when I went to work writing code, I bought another mech keyboard for my office. I honestly can't remember the brand and I've only been into the office about 4 times since March-- yay Covid!

And I have a Razer Blackwidow Elite mech keyboard for my gaming rig that I bought about three months ago to replace an old Logitech membrane gaming keyboard. To its credit, it still worked fine for the most part, but the volume knob on the keyboard started wigging out and changing volume whenever it felt like it. Like you mentioned Greg, I decided to go with Razer mostly because of the Terraria Chroma support ;)

I decided a few years ago that if it ever went out I'd definitely replace it with a mech, and I only wish I'd done so sooner. It feels so much snappier.

I have no experience with the hybrid and I'm honestly not sure how that could work-- how it could be both mechanical and membrane. But I haven't dug into it much.

(to be more clear about a point in that last comment-- the older Logitech keyboard was the one that had a failing volume knob)

Also Greg you may remember me using an absolutely ancient and loud-as-hell IBM keyboard when we lived together. Forget N-key rollover, that thing would freak out if you pressed more than 3 at a time. I was into mechanical keyboards before it was cool :D

I will go mechanical over membrane purely for the click. Otherwise, I can do either.

Nothing special for me, I just like the sound of it.

> Jon, so what kind of keys do you prefer, mechanical or membrane?

I'm not sure I care much more than if it has a good feel and isn't too loud. I think the only times I had a mechanical keyboard were back in the day when all computers had them. I think now days membrane is the norm unless you get something clicky on purpose.

> Like Jon, one of the things I like about the Ornata is the wrist support, though I can live w/out it. My wrists are usually kind of hanging off the edge of the keyboard and desk anyway.

Makes sense. I've had blood circulation issues and when I get a raised keyboard that's ergonomic I haven't.

I had serious wrist pain until I took the wrist support off my keyboards altogether and trained myself to NOT let my wrists rest on anything, like this: http://ergonomictrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/closed-elbows-poor-typing-posture.jpg

If you rest your wrists you're making a serious bend there.

👻🎃

Tim, don’t you know that squirrels and birds are sworn enemies?

https://i.imgur.com/3IaBXRa.gif

Thoughts:

* Everyone with Game Pass should be elated by this news. So much more value here.

* Microsoft still could release games in a standard way on Playstation and if they kept Beth games to Game Pass streaming/sub exclusively that might be worth this deal entirely. This seems like a Game Pass play to me but I could be wrong.

* If Bethesda _NEEDED_ to be purchased, and I'm not sure it did, I'd prefer Microsoft due to it's focus on PC games and Steam lately. At some point new Beth games might be exclusives but at least they will come out on PC? I'm not sure how exclusive they will be given what Microsoft has done with Mojang as an example.

* Microsoft bought Beth for 7.5 billion in cash. Just you know, had it in the couch cushions. Dear Euclid that's some couch!

Questions:

* Does this mean John Carmack might be allowed to engage with iD Software again? I certainly hope so, he needs to be around in some form to talk about the classics.

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1308069857913720832

* Will Microsoft focus on existing games IP or have Beth push for some new stuff? I love Beth but one note is they haven't dropped a ton of new IP lately and I think that might be good while they keep the hit train rolling.

* What's going to happen to the Beth.net launcher in the mid/long term? Will all our purchases transfer to the Microsoft store or something? I think Mojang still has it's launcher but didn't we all get Minecraft on the Microsoft store?

Prediction: Microsoft will purchase Epic Games in one year or less.

"Does this mean John Carmack might be allowed to engage with iD Software again?"

Isn't Carmack owned by Facebook?

(In)sane wish: Microsoft focuses iD Software and releases a Doom II.5 that is a follow up to Doom II in the old engine with some new modifications releasing an entirely new 3 chapter game Mega WAD.

> Isn't Carmack owned by Facebook?

Employed, yes. With that, he had a beef(suit) with Beth/Zenmax over VR. It's caused a rift and hasn't allowed him to be involved with classic iD games such as the recent Quake soundtrack re-release.

https://kotaku.com/quake-soundtrack-features-shenanigans-between-bethesda-1845084718

Another question for folks WITH Game Pass. Will you buy Beth games moving forward now that they are coming date and day to Game Pass?

"Future Bethesda games will be on Xbox, PC, and "other consoles on a case by case basis.""

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1308062702905044993

https://twitter.com/Obsidian/status/1308044609604341763

I'll get Game Pass when my physical backlog is 0

> I'll get Game Pass when my physical backlog is 0

Hahahaha, so as soon as I get Game Pass then. 🤣

> I have Game Pass and I love Game Pass, and I am not elated. It's going to lead to less choice for the player which I'm never happy about.

That's a great point Travis, I suppose I was thinking about a particular user. So there is that $25 a month Series S that comes with Game Pass for two years and this news seems like great news for them.

My hope is that physical games go strong well into the era of services like Game Pass and game streaming. I mean, I own Doom 64 digitally on Switch and I'm still gonna get it from Limited Run this Thursday! ❤

Some have also said this is bad news for Sony and I suppose in the long term it could however I think this is abysmal news for Stadia. Why would Microsoft license anything to Stadia at all moving forward? The more companies like Sony and Microsoft buy up studios is horrible news for upstart game streamers. Odd to say Stadia is an upstart, but it is as it is relatively new and doesn't own any game IP I'm aware of.

In an unrelated yet related thought. I’ve been hearing rumbles of a 4K Switch, which is welcomed news. That said I hope Nintendo always has a physical card option in each of its consoles. Physical Switch ownership on that platform is incredible and could be one way to differentiate as Sony & Microsoft move to a digital only world.