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Will Leitch has written the best and most accurate thing I’ve read about Cardinals’ manager Mike Matheny so far, and why Cards fans get pretty worked up over how he manages in the postseason:

Matheny formulated a plan —Gonzales throws two innings — and maneuvered everything to rigidly follow that plan. When the plan fell into trouble, he had no backup plan, and he was doomed. The regular season requires only one plan; the postseason requires many. Matheny is a one-plan man.

For a good long while, you saw the same pattern every game: Martinez pitches the 7th, Neshek pitches the 8th, Rosenthal pitches the 9th. Cards fans’ heart rates jump every time Rosenthal pitches on not much rest.

It’s such a rigid plan—like taking the closer role that’s so popular now and extending it through more than one inning. What if you have lefties coming up to bat in the 9th? Why wouldn’t you stick with a lefty? Or if a reliever is in and is really clicking, why not stick with him?

Matheny doesn’t do this, and it’s why the Cardinals lose postseason games.

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Look, I’m not going to link to much that’s Penny-Arcade very often. I might never again. And I might eat my hat later for doing this when something untoward happens at Pax at some point. But it can only be a good sign to read this:

You can’t threaten people with death, and I resent very strongly being made to type that out.  Not only can you not do that because you can’t fucking do it, it has the power to obliterate everything else you say.  In fact, it obliterates everything the people around you are trying to say.  That’s what has happened now.

Then again, even a stopped clock and such.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Penny-Arcade without getting at least one thing wrong about it, and here it is:

I know that this situation is more complex than anyone is willing to enunciate.

No. No, it’s not. There’s nothing “complex” about this situation. It has nothing to do with anything other than people being detestably mean to other people for no other reason than they dared state their opinion.

And there’s also this:

When your media doesn’t represent you, or actively attacks you as it has here, it’s not your media.

Hate to break it to you, but “attacking” from the media isn’t what’s happening here, either. What they are doing (though not the games media, really) is shining some light on the real problem.

I can’t disagree with this, though:

You’ll have to make your own, and it’s not impossible.  It’s more possible now than it has ever been in human history, and you’re reading an example of it at this moment.  Go your own way.

The problem with arguing this to the GamerGate crowd is that they are fighting against people who are doing exactly this.

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I was going to link to this article from Business Insider about the whole GamerGate nonsense (and I have a link dump post on it coming soon), but this comment on that article pretty much sums up the attitude of a lot of the pro-GG community:

Screen Shot 2014-10-14 at 8.00.43 AMLET’S DISCUSS:

  1. “Smack talk” isn’t the right descriptor for what people say in these online games, let’s say—I don’t know—”harassment,” and it’s the primary reason I—A MALE—have my chat muted except for people I know at pretty much all times, and I can’t even imagine what it’s like for women, and
  2. Doing these things is NEVER OK. It’s not a joke. It’s not acceptable. It’s not in good fun. It’s just horrible, detestable behavior and we need to find a way to root it out.
  3. Don’t read the comments. Unless it’s my blog, where you can read the comments and even leave one yourself if you want with the understanding that I’m going to moderate it BECAUSE I CAN.
  4. Just. NO.

 

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Jason Schreier reports for Kotaku on an oddity with how Ubisoft’s Montreal office is run:

Guillaume—who asked that I not use his real name for this story—soon found himself on the third floor of one of Ubisoft’s buildings in downtown Montreal. Today he describes athe building—called “160,” after its address—as a dark, grey office, with dim lighting and a low ceiling. As Guillaume started settling in, he found other Ubisoft employees playing Facebook games and watching movies, essentially doing nothing as they waited for the company to give them new assignments. For the days, weeks, or maybe even months to come, they were in “limbo,” as Guillaume put it.

This is “interproject,” a little-known department at Ubisoft Montreal that houses developers who are between games.

On the surface, it sounds like an interesting idea: instead of laying off developers between games—which is disturbingly common—keep paying your devs between projects and give them a break.

Give it a read. It’s really rather fascinating. But there’s this:

One particularly strange wrinkle is the way in which interproject employees get new jobs. In order to get on another project, according to the people who worked there, interproject staff have to apply for new openings within the company. They already work for Ubisoft Montreal, but in order to find actual work, they often need to go through applications and interviews as if they’re coming in from elsewhere.

Every so often, according to the people I talked to, Ubisoft will clear out interproject and let go of employees who have not found a new position in the studio.

And:

However, one thing has remained unclear for many staff: how or why people are sent to interproject in the first place. “I know a girl who’s never been at 160 in her eight years here,” said one employee. “And I know other people who have been there multiple times.”

Sounds to me like they put employees who aren’t good fits with their teams or don’t produce the way they want there and give them a chance to find another team. If they can’t within a certain amount of time, they’re done.

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Polygon:

Android TV, Google’s platform designed to deliver entertainment and games on televisions, may ship with an Xbox One-like controller, according to a photo of the alleged peripheral taken by Google I/O 2014 attendee Artem Russakovskii.

According to Russakovskii, the Android TV box will ship with the controller, which sports two thumbsticks, four face buttons, D-pad, home button, two navigation buttons, a line of four LEDs and shoulder buttons.

Android TV (and Razer’s new thing as well) now have the best chances to threaten the traditional console living room space, because the controller is in the box. (Though that hasn’t really helped the Ouya, for whatever reason.)

The Fire TV and Apple TV are never going to challenge the game space because Amazon hasn’t and I believe Apple won’t put a controller in the box with the unit. Ask anyone who has been around the console block for a while: if it’s not in the box, people don’t buy it and they don’t use it.

(Kinect is dead, by the way.)

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No, not mine. Don’t worry.

Salon:

After our house burned down in Wisconsin a few months ago, my husband and I packed our four young kids and all our belongings into a gold minivan and drove to my sister-in-law’s place, just outside of Atlanta. On the back windshield, we pasted six stick figures: a dad, a mom, three young girls, and one baby boy.

That minivan was sitting in the front driveway of my sister-in-law’s place the night a SWAT team broke in, looking for a small amount of drugs they thought my husband’s nephew had. Some of my kids’ toys were in the front yard, but the officers claimed they had no way of knowing children might be present. Our whole family was sleeping in the same room, one bed for us, one for the girls, and a crib.

After the SWAT team broke down the door, they threw a flashbang grenade inside. It landed in my son’s crib.

Legalize and regulate all the drugs. All of them. The alternative we are doing in this country now is just not worth it. And it’s not right.

Police don’t need flashbang grenades and assault rifles.

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My colleague Sara just posted the “official” recap post for this year’s VIP Workshop, which I attended and at which I learned quite a bit and had a great time. A quote from the writeup that stood out to me:

We again had some great flash talks from VIP clients and partners, and this year’s presentations included talks from CBS Local, Re/code, USA Today, Digital First Media, BlueHost, The New York Times, Tribune Broadcasting, and Interactive One.

These are all top-notch clients doing amazing things with WordPress and the WordPress.com VIP service, and I get to work with them every day. I love that.

If you want to see my thoughts on the workshop, you can find them here.

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Joystiq:

Buried within an announcement of another Pokemon movie, The Pokemon Company revealed today that Pokemon X and Y for 3DS have reached sales of 12 million units. According to the company, the latest installments in the gotta catch ’em all RPG series have helped the franchise reach sales of 245 million games sold to date.

PokĂ©mon is still amazingly relevant. And the games are still really good. If you haven’t bought X or Y yet, go for it.

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You might have noticed the large-size artwork I added to the top of my music post this week. If you are ever looking for proper-sized or high-resolution artwork for your music collection, Ben Dodson has written a really cool little web app using the iTunes Search API to find the album artwork you need.

I use this tool to find artwork for albums that iTunes tends to miss in the automatic process, as well as for TV shows I have on DVD that I’ve ripped to my iTunes library (so the artwork looks correct on an Apple TV).

Check it out and search for something. The only downside is that stuff that’s not on the iTunes Store won’t return anything, but that’s rarely a problem in my experience.

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Speaking of streaming, from a post on the PlayStation Blog:

In addition, this update will add an HDCP off option for capturing gameplay via HDMI, a feature we’ve previously said would come after launch. We recognize that some gamers want to record and share longer clips of their gameplay sessions, and we’re excited to deliver this option with PS4.

HDCP-protected game content was something they never “fixed” with the PS3, though I would like to see them handle that with an update at some point there as well. It makes it quite a bit harder for people to stream games from PlayStation platforms.

When they announced that this was going to happen in a “future update,” I assumed this would be vapor, so I’m happy they are actually going to ship it. But why will it apparently default to on? Having HDCP on for game output has never made any sense.

As part of a separate system software update in the future, we have been working with our partners at Twitch and Ustream, and will also be adding the ability for Twitch broadcasts to be archived – another highly requested feature among PS4 fans who are taking advantage of the SHARE button features. These broadcasts will be also provided with a higher resolution of 720p, so PS4 fans can enjoy live broadcasts with clearer images.

This fixes the other big thing that annoys about the PS4 streaming: the inability to archive the broadcasts on Twitch. And to be honest, I didn’t even know the streams weren’t 720p, I just knew that the Xbox One streaming looked a lot better (which it does).

Either way this shakes out, this is good proof that the console situation this time around is much more competitive. I love seeing these two companies trying to outdo each other with updates and content.