David Lynch's Twin Geeks - Let's Play Alan Wake!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > David Lynch's Twin Geeks - Let's Play Alan Wake!

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Combat Lobster: Feb 18, 2013

Sorry, I'm going into a dark tunnel. *hiss hiss* *schhhhhhhh*

# ? Jul 25, 2017 05:23

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 17:02

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlOZYJ3l9SA

My god. What have they done to you, Verizon Guy.

edit: Also this commercial confuses me. "Every network is great! They're basically the same! So I switched from Verizon to Sprint

# ? Jul 25, 2017 05:25

BioEnchanted: Aug 9, 2011; He plays for the dreamers that forgot how to dream, and the lovers that forgot how to love.

There is one difference - Sprint offered him more money.

# ? Jul 25, 2017 05:35

IBlameRoadSuess: Feb 20, 2012; Fucking technology...

At least I HAVE THIS!

BioEnchanted posted:

There is one difference - Sprint offered him more money.

Also they actually allowed him to be gay. His verizon contract actually had stipulations that he couldn't "embarrass the brand"

# ? Jul 27, 2017 00:23

White Coke: May 29, 2015

IBlameRoadSuess posted:

Also they actually allowed him to be gay. His verizon contract actually had stipulations that he couldn't "embarrass the brand"

Meanwhile Verizon guy's twin brother sued to combat reverse-racism in the New Haven Fire Department.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 01:46

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

Let's get back to it with the first DLC episode of Alan Wake, The Signal!

Literally! Look at those chompers, om nom nom. Alan keeps his teeth real shiny just in case he has to take a professional headshot (mugshot?) for a plastic book cover insert.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 14:25

Mr. Highway: Feb 25, 2007; I'm a very lonely man, doing what I can.

I hope you come across a floating "pizza" that manifests a pizza with pineapples. Alan then exhales sharply and chastises himself for being a liar.

Having never really seen the DLC (I played on the 360 and I rarely buy DLC) the reusing of assets seems fine. Resource-wise, I can forgive the developers reusing material for a ten dollar price tag. Gameplay-wise, it makes sense that Alan revisiting his memories would entail him revisiting familiar places.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 19:03

Philippe: Aug 9, 2013; (she/her)

Imaginary Barry is somehow even better than Normal Barry. I don't know how that's possible.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 19:54

Samovar: Jun 4, 2011; I'm 😤 not a 🦸🏻‍♂️hero...🧜🏻

Has there ever been a study on advertising being so blatant that it actually lowers the chances of a person buying the product? Because when I saw that goddamn phone I just got angry at Verizon.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 20:49

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

Samovar posted:

Has there ever been a study on advertising being so blatant that it actually lowers the chances of a person buying the product? Because when I saw that goddamn phone I just got angry at Verizon.

There really should be a study about that somewhere if there's not one! And you'd better get used to it because good ol Microsoft returns in Quantum Break in stunning HD!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl_Av5q9vfw

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:04

Scalding Coffee: Jun 26, 2006; You're already dead

Samovar posted:

Has there ever been a study on advertising being so blatant that it actually lowers the chances of a person buying the product? Because when I saw that goddamn phone I just got angry at Verizon.

Pretty sure there was, but the dollars seem to make up for it.

# ? Jul 28, 2017 00:36

White Coke: May 29, 2015

Tasteful Dickpic posted:

Imaginary Barry is somehow even better than Normal Barry. I don't know how that's possible.

Imaginary Barry is the only good thing Alan has ever created and Alan Wake 2 needs to happen so that the two Barrys can team up.

# ? Jul 28, 2017 07:20

Delacroix: Dec 7, 2010

Samovar posted:

Has there ever been a study on advertising being so blatant that it actually lowers the chances of a person buying the product? Because when I saw that goddamn phone I just got angry at Verizon.

The one case I can think of is if your product appeals to a specific demographic, there's a good chance it'll flop.

quote:

The more harbingers of failure like the product, the worse this effect is. If they buy a product repeatedly, it�s even more likely to fail. And the logical opposites also hold true: if harbingers of failure avoid a product, it does pretty well, and popularity with a different group of consumers�the "harbingers of success"�spells good news.

The interesting thing here is that the researchers tweaked their definitions to see if the effect was robust, or whether it fell apart when they changed something small. They reran the tests, changing what constituted a failed product or what length of time they considered the "introductory phase," yet they kept finding the same thing: a certain group of customers was associated with a lot of failed products.

# ? Jul 28, 2017 10:31

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn5jvrH22zk

I promised it and here it is. Hell god drat yeah.

# ? Jul 28, 2017 16:42

Philippe: Aug 9, 2013; (she/her)

HOLY poo poo

# ? Jul 28, 2017 16:45

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

How do you make those charts?

# ? Jul 28, 2017 16:53

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

A program called FeedBack, used to make song charts for Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and all the other indie plastic guitar games out there. It's a pretty long process that I can't really explain here, but I added this to the description and it's a good place to start:

quote:

To download this song and play it for yourself, first go to the following link:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/4c4a7a03pl6mi6p/The_Old_Gods_of_Asgard_-_Children_of_the_Elder_God.rar

I have converted it to a Phase Shift track, which means it will play in Rock Band 3 as well as Guitar Hero 3 as a custom song. You're going to have to look up how to put it in your game on your own because it's way too many words to type out here, but I recommend you play it in GH3 on PC. Look up "GH3+" and "Plumato's GH3 Stuff" to get you started.

It was fun to make for sure!

# ? Jul 28, 2017 16:58

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

I'm playing Remedy's next narrative shooty adventure game, Quantum Break, completely blind! Come watch me make jokes about Aiden Gillen throwing people off of aircrafts and taking off big guys' masks!

# ? Jul 28, 2017 20:53

IronSaber: Feb 24, 2009; oh yes oh god yes form the head FORM THE HEAD unghhhh...

CJacobs posted:

I'm playing Remedy's next narrative shooty adventure game, Quantum Break, completely blind! Come watch me make jokes about Aiden Gillen throwing people off of aircrafts and taking off big guys' masks!

Argh, I can't watch it because I bought it during the Steam sale and I wanna play it myself. :saddowns:

# ? Jul 28, 2017 23:19

Fish Noise: Jul 25, 2012; IT'S ME, BURROWS!

IT WAS ME ALL ALONG, BURROWS!

CJacobs posted:

I'm playing Remedy's next narrative shooty adventure game, Quantum Break, completely blind! Come watch me make jokes about Aiden Gillen throwing people off of aircrafts and taking off big guys' masks!

Okay, so

Quantum Break Lore: Time is an egg. Someone stuck their dick in the egg. The egg is now hosed.

CJacobs Lore: CJacobs is a good egg.

what does this imply for the entire stream just now?

# ? Jul 28, 2017 23:45

bman in 2288: Apr 21, 2010

Fish Noise posted:

Okay, so

Quantum Break Lore: Time is an egg. Someone stuck their dick in the egg. The egg is now hosed.

CJacobs Lore: CJacobs is a good egg.

what does this imply for the entire stream just now?

Erotic fanfiction?

Voyeurism?

Whatever it implied, it's also a fact that I probably missed a good stream.

# ? Jul 28, 2017 23:54

The Unlife Aquatic: Jun 17, 2009; Here in my car
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It's the only way to live
In cars

bman in 2288 posted:

Erotic fanfiction?

Voyeurism?

Whatever it implied, it's also a fact that I probably missed a good stream.

Turns out Quantum Break is an excellent game (and TV show, apparently) except for the fact everyone has a face made of wet clay.

# ? Jul 29, 2017 00:00

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

Holy poo poo it's good. A really great combination of genres for sure. Definitely looking forward to playing more of it!

# ? Jul 29, 2017 00:03

The Unlife Aquatic: Jun 17, 2009; Here in my car
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It's the only way to live
In cars

Oh and there's a TED Talk as a collectable. That made me groan.

# ? Jul 29, 2017 00:05

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nh7FF2CRjI

THANK YOU TO RADAZAZLE FOR LINKING THIS, HERE'S A MEDLEY OF THE GAME'S CAST READING OUT THE TIME KNIFE SCREENPLAY. GOD drat TODAY IS A GOOD DAY

# ? Jul 29, 2017 00:11

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK1J8EIgOok

Archive of the stream is up. You should watch it, it went great!

# ? Jul 29, 2017 03:01

Kibayasu: Mar 28, 2010

CJacobs posted:

Holy poo poo it's good. A really great combination of genres for sure. Definitely looking forward to playing more of it!

Quantum Break's problem isn't that it's bad, it's that there's this weird TV show included in it.

# ? Jul 29, 2017 03:12

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

I also enjoyed the TV show part a lot so I dunno what to tell you!

Also, it seems Remedy's interpretation of that discussion we had about who wrote who into existence is a wholehearted shrug. So great, I guess that solves that! :suicide:

# ? Jul 29, 2017 03:18

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

Surprise!

# ? Jul 30, 2017 15:43

Philippe: Aug 9, 2013; (she/her)

Praise the eyes! _o/

# ? Jul 30, 2017 15:45

Scalding Coffee: Jun 26, 2006; You're already dead

CJacobs posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK1J8EIgOok

Archive of the stream is up. You should watch it, it went great!

Soon as I saw the mention of "Juggernaut" in those emails, I knew we would be coming across another Longshoreman X.

# ? Jul 30, 2017 22:13

Sally: Jan 9, 2007; Don't post Small Dash!

CJacobs posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn5jvrH22zk

I promised it and here it is. Hell god drat yeah.

hot drat so good. finally got around to seeing it--worth the wait.

# ? Jul 31, 2017 17:10

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

The only criticism I would have is that the screeching, climbing notes on "Memory and thought" should be a single note leading into a higher sustained note, since the actual guitar sounds like he's sliding up a fret and bending the strings.

# ? Jul 31, 2017 17:41

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

chitoryu12 posted:

The only criticism I would have is that the screeching, climbing notes on "Memory and thought" should be a single note leading into a higher sustained note, since the actual guitar sounds like he's sliding up a fret and bending the strings.

Yeah, but the way I did it is still fun to play even if it doesn't make as much sense :downs:

# ? Jul 31, 2017 21:16

Johnny Joestar: Oct 21, 2010; Don't shoot him?

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it always kind of amuses me that i guess the ad licensing ran out for the alan wake dlc so you have NEW ads in the form of, say, a magical verizon phone but the batteries are no longer energizer brand and are now generic-looking bricks of d-cells

# ? Aug 1, 2017 01:57

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

Speaking of Verizon, I saw a wonderful post on Imgur the other day that demonstrates why they are awesome and fight for your rights and should be held on a pedestal as a shining example of a company that cares.

No wait, the opposite of that.

quote:

Verizon has been in the news a ton lately with regards to Net Neutrality. In case you have been completely in the dark, they are an absolutely miserable company and are working hard every day to make sure you do not have an open and free internet.

I worked at Verizon Wireless for a few years and got to truly see it's ugly side; it was not pretty.

Here are a few stories and truths about how Verizon Wireless does business in it's wireless locations to help rise the ire a bit.

Verizon Wireless, like many other carriers, uses a system to keep employees motivated to not get fired. At VZW, it was scorecard. This system is designed so that you are ranked based on a collection of attributes ranging from accessories sales, to Gross Gains ratios (more on that later), to NPS (more on that later), to how many tablets you forced customers to buy. It's miserable. If you do not meet the "passing" criteria, which can range from hard numbers to just being in the bottom 20%, you get written up. 3 write-ups within 12 months and BOOM. Fired.

The reason this is so incredibly horrible is that VZW essentially forces employees to "slam" customers (Trick a customer or force them to buy something they do not need or want through means of questionable legality) every month. Ever wondered why you got that "FREE" accessory? Curious why they gave you a "FREE" smart watch or a "FREE" tablet? They didn't. They slammed you with it and did not explain how you were actually paying for it. I will go over that later.

Have you ever taken one of those 'surveys' where you are asked to rate things from 1 - 10? This is an NPS survey (Net Promoter Score). The idea behind the survey is that they could ask you 30 questions and they really only care about 1 of the answers. If you were asked, "How would you rate the service you received from [Bob]?" and you thought he did great, you would give him a 10, right? Cool. Now If they then asked you the follow-up question, "How likely are you to recommend Verizon to someone else?" and you truly dislike the company, but still like Bob, you would give them a 0 (or 1, 2, whatever). Sounds like everything went well, right? NOPE.

As an employee, you are 'ranked' by your NPS surveys. If you are unlucky enough to get 10 people in one month to take a survey who truly despise VZW and they each rate 0-5, the employee gets penalized on their scorecard mentioned above. "But wait, I said Bob was great! I gave him a 10!". Nah, doesn't matter. That question is an illusion, it serves no purpose at all other than to create 'yes momentum' and convice them to continue rating higher.

You might ask, "Well, how do I then get my voice heard without hurting the employee?", short answer, you can't. Verizon has designed this in a way that hurts the employees if you give them low scores which is the very reason why you will hear employees sometimes saying, "You might get a survey, the score you give is with regards to my service!". This is the problem in that Verizon TELLS employees to say this because they know it will allow them to get those 10s on the NPS surveys, which in turn help their stock prices as it shows that they have great customer retention.

quote:

One of the largest rip-offs Verizon slings at you in stores is the accessories. About 8-9 years ago, phones stopped being profitable to sell as they just weren't getting a high enough markup to make money. The resulting change pushed them into pushing accessories to customers WAY harder than they should. As mentioned previously, the scorecard mechanic requires employees to sell accessories or they will be fired. What you don't know is that they are required to average a certain dollar amount PER PHONE sold. IE, if you buy an iPhone, the employees need to sell you x dollars (Let's say $75). That's the reason why they push you very hard to buy them because they have to.

Furthermore, the markup on accessories is gawdy. They take a $0.50 cable (micro USB for example) and resell it for $20. They take a $3 case and sell it for $30.

Speaking of accessories, you might be saying that you once got some "Free" accessories with your phone and were perfectly happy with them. Short answer here is, they were not free. You absolutely paid for them, though you may not know it. This can happen a number of ways: the most simple is with Trade-Ins. Say you trade-in a phone and the Rep tells you it's worth $100. You say great and do it. What they don't tell you is that due to a promotion, you are actually getting $200 and they use the $100 to pay off your phone, but then give you your choice of $100 of "Free" accessories. This is extremely common and Managers / upper management tells people to do this ALL the time. They had at least 20 different names for it when I worked there but if they are nowhere near hitting their accessories quota, the managers will tell people to do more and more shady stuff to sell more accessories. There is another way they accomplish this by altering your phone bill, which I will go over a bit further down.

People think when they throw the, "I've been a customer here for 45 Years! You owe me a free [Thingy]!" that they are accomplishing something; I guarantee you they are not. An existing customer who upgrades their phone is an "Upgrade" while customers who are either new to Verizon or just adding a line are "New lines of service". The latter is preferred 10x over by Verizon because it pads their numbers for Stockholders and so they pay reps more as well. There is also a section on scorecard where they expect X% of your total sales to be from these "Gross Gains". Short story here is, do not ever expect VZW cares about existing customs in the slightest; they only care about getting new ones to exploit. I remember a manager telling me to let them (existing customer) go and leave because when they come back, they will be worth a lot more to us.

New lines are ALWAYS preferred over an upgrade. They gain more from it in every way so it is in their best interest to convince you add a line instead of upgrading one. Now while you may think that this only means adding a new phone line(s) altogether (IE, bringing over your parents to your account), this could also be for adding 'Ghost lines', tablets, internet mifi / jetpacks, or anything else that has some type of internet service attached to it. You will frequently here Sales reps saying that you CAN upgrade right now even though you don't have an upgrade, you will just have to add a line! While you might initially tell them no, they tell you it won't increase your bill at all, and you agree. What they are actually doing at this point is either 1, looking for custom 'offers' to lower your bill for a year by $x in order to off-set the costs of this new line; 2, they are removing old, outdated features you didn't know you had in order to save the same amount mentioned; or 3, change your entire plan to a cheaper (newer) one with an overall cheaper cost so that you can offset these costs again. All of these things happen because Verizon pushes managers to push reps to add more lines under ANY circumstances as they need sales and only sales. I had managers tell me to use the $x a month off which would last for a year to sell it. When I asked about the second year of their 2 year contract, the manager told me that once the user hits a year, they can't return it, so forget about it.

quote:

If you happen to live in a state where this does not effect you, skip this one, else, you may have noticed that the taxes on your $100 phone can be upwards of $50-$60 bucks! You ask them "WTF?" and they point to a disclaimer on the wall and indicate that it is [State]'s fault as they charge it on the full retail cost. This is only a prtial lie. While the state may do that, every other company in the state understands this and pays for the taxes themselves or include it into their monthly costs. Another one of the examples where Verizon blames the other people so they can pass the buck to the customer and the state.

Verizon makes it so that each store has a "discount" limit. This limit (Let's say $1,000 / month) dictates what they can offer per month. If they go over that, they will need to explain it if they cannot, bad things will happen. Can they discount it? Sure. Will they do it if it does not benefit them enormously? Nope. They like to save those discounts for business deals with wealthy clients.

quote:

Micromanagement is abysmal at Verizon. They would stand behind us while we were talking to customers and take notes on the clipboard. They would interrupt us to try and 'upsell' the customer to more expensive things and then coach us, SOMETIMES IN FRONT OF THE CUSTOMER, on how we could rip them off more efficiently. I always loved when customers would just leave because they were tired of the hovering management and then we would get blamed for it.

Management would also meet with us daily, weekly, and monthly to go over numbers and how we need to do better. Don't get me wrong, I understand how this could be helpful if they were good at their job, that is. Instead of encouraging us to do better, they would tell us how we should lie to customers more to sell accessories; it was toxic.

Doesn't matter if you had an accident, got stuck outside talking to customs, or people inside the building didn't hear you banging on the door for 5 minutes to go in because they are jerking around in the back, if you clock in on the tablet >5 minutes late, hour of pay is gone.

Every single day the priorities change. If you have ever been to a store and been offered a deal and then gone back a few days later only to find the deal drastically different, that is because management changes their priorities nearly every day (sometimes mid-day). Some days it will be GGs (New lines/ Gross Gains), others it will be accessories, and others it will be insurance, features, A CERTAIN TYPE OF CASE, SPEAKER, OR TABLET; I'm not kidding. It's just sad and I pity the sales reps for it.

This really is the heart of it all; Verizon always puts its own self above people in all circumstances. Managers would tell us every day to take everything we could from customers in order to get more money.

Expressing your discomfort with the ethics usually got you shafted with either bad shifts (IE, close one night, open the next for weeks at a time), working in the stock room to do counts (taking time away from sales, which, you know, you need to hit quota), or many other things that inconvenience you the the best of their abilities.

Verizon is extremely anti-net-neutrality, by the way, to the point where they at one time sued the FCC over it and lost.

CJacobs fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Aug 1, 2017

# ? Aug 1, 2017 02:16

Johnny Joestar: Oct 21, 2010; Don't shoot him?

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also as an extra note, imaginary barry is one of the best things about the dlcs since that's the point where the game decides it's actually going to start calling out alan for being a giant dickhead. it's magical.

# ? Aug 1, 2017 02:52

Scalding Coffee: Jun 26, 2006; You're already dead

I wouldn't trust them to protect free speech either. They are buddies with dozens of Anti-FA groups and billionaires including George Soros.

# ? Aug 1, 2017 02:53

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

Johnny Joestar posted:

also as an extra note, imaginary barry is one of the best things about the dlcs since that's the point where the game decides it's actually going to start calling out alan for being a giant dickhead. it's magical.

He says what we're all thinking!

# ? Aug 1, 2017 03:20

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 17:02

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

Streaming more Quantum Break! Come laugh at the silly plot and watch me shoot many people who are stuck in time bubbles!

# ? Aug 1, 2017 03:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > David Lynch's Twin Geeks - Let's Play Alan Wake!

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