Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

People humor these end of the world things because secretly, everybody wants the world to end.

Anyway, yes the Mayans are only here vestigially, their culture basically went extinct a really long time ago. It just kinda stopped being a thing at some point, I'm not sure if the Spanish conquerors even had a big role in that.

@ThanosReXXX Well, like a "true Scotsman" how do we define "original tribes?" Mayan tribes still exist, still live in their own culture. They don't own their political boundaries, and instead are part of the political/national boundaries set up by the Spanish, but they still have their own Mayan tribal culture as well. Is it the same culture as 800 years ago? No....but...then we're talking about expected "reboots", and sacrificial blood fountains were probably going to go out of style at some point anyway

It's always a catch 22 with ancient tribes when watching modernity. You can look at the remnants of the original tribes and and say "see they're all gone, they're not even living the same society", but that assumes they'd still be living a medieval life if not forced to do otherwise. In reality even were there no conquerors and humanity was all rainbows and unicorn poop, disease would have found them through trade, cultural changes would have changed them through technology, expansion, war, etc. The Mayans had half exterminated themselves in civil war by the time the Spanish got there anyway (the Spanish wouldn't have even made it near the shores otherwise...) and their culture was absolutely going to change, which was the point of their calendar anyway. Even if Mayan civilization would have been forever an empire within it's 8th century borders, it's not like they'd still be building pyramids. They'd be building air conditioned datacenters and game development studios like everyone else......arguably more "Western" than the current remaining Mayan tribes that live traditionally are actually doing.

Speaking about Mayan tribe....
When i was teen, i was a fan of Gali & its varieties from Monster Rancher 2 PS1.
Gali, a ghost monster with Sun mask and Mayan tribe design on his cloak has 12 different designs depend on the Monster's Sub.

Gali

Fanged Mask (Gali + Tiger)

@ThanosReXXX Never trust a Harvard boy who still plucks and colors his brows.....

Seriously though there's a half truth to what he says. I can understand a business decision that says, "Most of the market where Nintendo's customers overlap our market owns a second device that we already support, so we don't see a business opportunity to extend our market that will see a ROI for porting to another system, and converting sales from existing platforms to sales of an additional platform aren't financially beneficial." Normal, sane human businessmen could say something like that, and it would be true, and people would understand the data, and keep going.

But no, not EA's execs. They need to find some other odd spin to give it to make it sound like something more prophetic than a simple cost-benefit decision, and they want to somehow justify their badly made attempts at testing the market as something other than really botched attempts at testing the market. And they need to somehow explain themselves out of the fact that every one of their competitors doesn't seem to struggle with this the same way they do, despite them having more money and market power....

@NEStalgia
What do you think about EA's treatment toward Nintendo during Wii / NDS era ?
There were a lot of games from EA exclusively for Wii & NDS such as MySims series, Charm Girl Club, EA Playground, Sim Animals, etc.
But now there is almost no EA games exclusively for Nintendo.
EA looked Nintendo as their bad luck after Wii U failure.
Parasite symbiosism ???

@Anti-Matter Parasite. EA is always a parasite. They saw Wii & DS take off, they saw the huge casual market to tap on Wii and they took advantage of it. Which is fair, that's what business does.

That's what's so odd about their current position. They're refusing to even be parasites and try to milk Switch's success. For them they have a complex problem where their current business strategy is to consolodate EVERYTHING. They don't want to make new smaller products. They want to streamline their business into 5 or so business units that crank out reliable repeats designed as monetization machines and spend minimum on development with a minimal staff. Adding a "different" platform like Switch doesn't help them do that. They have PC, XB, PS4, 3 almost identical boxes to just copy and paste their product onto for minimal expense. And for that "different" audience they've put their minimal effort into mobile where that Wii/DS market has gone, and is willing to spend, spend, spend in mtx.

On top of that they decided to make all their games in their garbage Frostbite engine to avoid royalties and licensing costs, which means porting it to anything but a PC or PC-like device is nearly impossible.

They don't want to play inside anyone else's business model and learn out to make it benefit them. They want to use their power to shape the whole industry into THEIR business model, so you play by their rules or do without them. In their minds that gives them control over what platforms survive and how the gaming industry is configured. I think it infuriates them that Nintendo manages to thrive without their "approval", making it more difficult by creating an industry/consumer alternative to their model.

@NEStalgia
What do you think about The Sims franchises and Maxis Studio nowadays ?
Can Maxis Studios taken over by healthier publisher and we will see The Sims by different publisher ?

@Anti-Matter There is no Maxis. When EA buys a company they absorb it into EA. They keep the name on the division, but it's not really a company, just a team within the general EA. It can't be sold or spun off, unfortunately. They keep the name, but as soon as they disband a team, they either drop the name and merge personnel into other teams, or shut down the unit entirely. That's what happened to Bioware. They were split up then absorbed into a bigger unit. I think actually one of the people from Maxis was the executive on that unit, but then they consolidated further and put one of the main execs in charge of the whole thing.

Once something gets pulled into EA, it's gone forever.

Ea is toxic always been and whould always stay that way.
They are there for the casual market milking it ALL out

@Morpheel I'm pretty sure the Spanish actually did. Had they never been hunting for gold, in the process of which, pretty much the entire Mayan and Inca kingdoms were infused with European germs to which they had no natural defenses, so at the very least, you could say they expedited the vanishing of these cultures. And from what we've learned in our time, it is still possible for tribes to remain undetected for a REALLY long time. There's a small, isolated tribe living in the jungles of Brazil, that was only first discovered 4 or 5 years ago, regardless of all the modern technology we have, such as satellites and all that. They even killed the camera man who discovered them, and who tried to make contact with them.

Probably because they were afraid of his camera, and/or his vastly different appearance, all of which may very well have seemed like some white-skinned demon with a weapon, to them.

@NEStalgia We officially define original, or rather: pure tribes and their lineage, as not being polluted by other genes. If the indigenous tribes of Brazil and Africa, who live completely solitary, would enter our modern world, and intermingle with us, and besides coupling with people from other origins will also be subject to all the bad things of that modern society, such as (for them) completely unknown bacteria, materials and so on, then that's an absolute factor in being able to conclude that they aren't pure anymore, so there really is no discussion there.

The Mayans have adopted various aspects of the Peruvian and/or Latin American culture, have also incorporated food and clothing items, as well as the language, so no, they are NOT pure Mayans anymore. These original lineages have all but died out, only existing in diluted, genetic form, so only a part of the original markers in their DNA strands still exist.

As for the video: I don't think anyone in his or her right mind can disagree with it, because the points made in it, are all valid and true. Even from my point of view (the sales & marketing one), EA is making stupid, non-valid decisions, based on highly skewed figures and comparisons. First off, they only publish a handful of games on the Switch, and second, even when they DO publish a game on a Nintendo platform, then it's either heavily crippled or altered, such as the various Fifa's both on Wii U and the Switch, or simply too late or too expensive, compared to their efforts on Xbox and PlayStation.

No one in their right mind, and you don't even have to be a sales and marketing guy to understand this, was going to expect a single Mass Effect game, released on a console that was doing less than spectacular, to be selling great, especially at the price point it was sold at, when at the same damn time, the other two consoles were getting the Mass Effect trilogy for the same price or less.

I think that Need for Speed Most Wanted on Wii U and Unravel on Switch are two of the biggest exceptions (effort-wise), but both were released too late, and the former, as mentioned, on a console that wasn't doing so great, so all these factors combined already made for a self-fulfilling prophecy of all of it not being successful. So, hardly an example of business smarts on their part...

And the reasons that d-bag Wilson gave the other day, the ones also quoted in the video, are also largely based on that skewed, almost otherworldly view, almost like they have no clue what's actually happening outside of the EA bubble.

The thing is, like the guy in the video says, smart, business savvy companies go where the money is. EA also did that with the Wii, because there was money to be made, so regardless of the MASSIVE power difference between the three consoles back then, they STILL released their games on it, and even made some exclusive ones. And games that were actually good and fun to play as well.

But now, with a console much closer in power than the Wii was compared to its generational peers, and a console that is literally printing more money each month, they suddenly come out with their same old tired drivel, about people on a Nintendo platform not playing their games, and data showing them "the truth" about on which platforms people prefer to play their games...

Current EA reminds me of the kid that always wanted to play basketball with his worn, semi-deflated ball. If anyone ever wanted to use a different one, they got mad and went home.

@ThanosReXXX I still say (official aside) that's a silly measure of a civilization. Are the French no longer "Pure French" because they've intermingled with other Europeans? That would make little sense. The nature of their era, geography, time, technology, economy, etc created a natural path of adapting to conditions. Expecting them to remain in a medieval culture forever as they were without influence of the cultures around them over centuries and millennia changing their genes and culture with it would be unrealistic even for the most "pure" society. Yet we tend to do that when it comes to "tribes" as though no matter what their culture would never intersect with other cultures and adapt to the world trends in neighboring areas.....MORESO the more powerful and wealthy their own tribe is, as it involves more contact and mixed life with others. I can see judging it by ETHNIC purity largely...but it tends to be gauged on effectively "never modernizing or having contact of any kind outside their own civilization." Which is absurd, at the height of their Empire, the Mayans had trade ships from the Roman empire and China coming and going non-stop, much like today. They were "contaminated" by normal functioning of their own empire long before the Conquistadors decided to bother....long before the Conquistadors even existed... The Mayan empire resembled modern South America more than the medieval Spanish era in terms of global trade and such.

I’ve had the level theme for Glitter Gultch Mine stuck in my head for two days. All the sub-level variations of it, too.

@DenDen what sort of game is lufia 2

@Anti-Matter my god...WHAT????

@Ninfan lufia 2 is a classic rpg with a great story.
And for that time an uniqe bland of characters

Whoa, I was totally sucked into a birthday vortex and barely made it out. After 48 hours of partying, everyone left town for the rest of the weekend, and left me behind to finish up some projects. Just me and the dog. Sweet silence.

Looks like I missed out on some good doomsday talk, that’s right up my alley, but it seems like we’ve covered it all. In lieu of that topic, I’ll say that I finally caved on a couple game vouchers just before the deal ended in NA. I guess I have Link’s Awakening and Luigi’s Mansion 3 in the bank then.

Hope everyone is having a nice weekend.

@HobbitGamer I really like your EA analogy. Two thumbs up.

@NEStalgia No, it's not stupid, you're just not getting it, or looking at it the wrong way. Your comparison of the Mayans and the French is severely flawed. French people are not a tribe, the Mayans were. If you want to make a correct comparison, then compare the Mayans to the Gauls in France, another tribe that has vanished. Mind you: like the Mayans, vanished as in pure, untainted Gauls. Obviously, there will be some DNA markers in French people pointing to a lineage descending from/being mixed with Gaul origins.

Some other examples of pure lines that have either completely vanished or have been absorbed into other, still existing cultures/civilizations are the Picts, the Celts, the Germanics, Visigoths, Batavians, Nubians, Mesopotamians, Spartans, Minoans, Ligurians, Aquitani, Phoenicians, Etruscans, Thracians, Illyrians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Dacians, Huns, Lemnians, Bulgars (not to be confused with Bulgarians) and Mycenaeans.

As for their trade routes and such, with other ancient civilizations: true, but they never contaminated their DNA by either interbreeding and/or exchanging people to procreate with those other civilizations. Well, at least not according to their own recorded history. All Mayan people were of godly descent, and as such, they could only ever be "given away" or promised to other Mayans. And the more poor part of their civilization were kept as workers, slaves or sacrificial lambs, much like members of competing tribes...

In my previous comment, I was thinking of adding this paint analogy: consider a bucket of white paint. Now put in some glitter, a dash of yellow and red, and a cup of green. My point would have been that this would not be white paint anymore, and as such, not pure, but I found it to be flawed and/or not relevant to this discussion, because with that paint analogy, you're actually able to add components, making the whole bigger than the original, whereas with DNA, there's only a finite number of markers on a strand of a specific species, so if you mix that with another one, then stuff doesn't get added, but replaced, forever changing that DNA to something that will at the most only partially resemble the original strain, and that was my point.

So, yes, the consideration is if a tribe/civilization is still purely what they are, from a genetic standpoint. But in this specific case of the Mayans, it's definitely also cultural and linguistic contamination, much like with the other ancient tribes/civilizations I mentioned above. Some were either forced to adapt the cultures of their oppressors/conquerors, or as we all know, were converted to Christianity, necessitating a complete denial/leaving behind of their own, unique ways and thinking.

As for me, or anyone else, expecting them to stay in their Medieval state: that's not nearly as ridiculous as you make it sound, and I already pre-empted that, by mentioning that indigenous Brazilian tribe, who up to that unfortunate encounter with the Western documenter/camera man, had never seen or heard anything of modern society, and as such was still pure.

It isn't so much about stopping them from modernizing, it's about how all these factors/components are/have been affecting the core of their being and culture.

@Anti-Matter when do you think it will happen

The world will end tomorrow at 8:73 pm