Stolen Pixels #124: Heeeere's BREEN!

Wallace Breen comments on Langdell, StarCraft and Unit 4267-P debuts as the official After Curfew band.

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Quite funny, but it seems vert similar to the first After Curfew. Also, the combine band was great.

I've been tossing around the idea of a voice-recognition system on mobile phones to send text messages, then a synthesiser to read them out to you when you receive them. Then remove the actual call function of the phone. There'll be enough idiots to market this to and I can see the phone companies getting behind this 100%.

I like the ending of the comic this week. Otherwise it was so-so.

I still think the whole LAN thing is being blown way out of proportion, myself.

CantFaketheFunk:
I still think the whole LAN thing is being blown way out of proportion, myself.

Ten years, and it's all we ever played.

And we played a lot.

the combine band was great :D looking forward to more of Breen's talkshows

Great comic. Is it just me, or is the Evil League of Evil from Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog?

Shamus Young:

CantFaketheFunk:
I still think the whole LAN thing is being blown way out of proportion, myself.

Ten years, and it's all we ever played.

And we played a lot.

I don't doubt that it was instrumental to the success of the first StarCraft, and I remember bypassing the security in our computer lab on campus to install spawns and do 3v5 compstomp. I just question the need for it in this day and age. The last time I played a LAN game was... maybe a session of DotA a few years back, and for the most part we just went over B.net with that, anyway.

I understand the very real concerns over having EVERYTHING be over B.net, what with latency being a problem if you A.) are running a big tournament, B.) are playing competitively and every bit of lag counts, or C.) are behind some sort of restrictive firewall, like at college. These are very real complaints, but I think that the whole "ping to B.net to set things up, then run off of LAN" addresses it nicely. I mean hell, the last time I LANned, I still had an internet connection so that I could check MSN and email while we played.

It just seems so rare to me to be off the grid these days. Now, granted, that's from the perspective of a PC lifestyle gamer in a developed nation, but even knowing other PC lifestyle gamers, I was hard-pressed to find any in the area who have LANned at all recently.

Hahaha, the combine band really cracked me up.

The last time I played LAN was july. The next one, tomorrow.

15 friends, in a house in the coast with no internet connection, all weekend long.

LANs are not so rare. Neither are LANs without internet connection. Asking to maintain an internet connection is retarded when you're playing single or LAN, and will only make them lose sales. In fact, I can guarantee that they've lost 15 sales because of that.

Brace yourselves for Diablo III not supporting monster drops and Call of Duty 6 not supporting guns.

CantFaketheFunk:
I still think the whole LAN thing is being blown way out of proportion, myself.

Shamus Young:

Ten years, and it's all we ever played.

And we played a lot.

Hold on to your hats, there's in-fighting going on! Any bets on other staff members joining?

Nice comic, but we've had Breen up there quite frequently, so I'm looking forward to a transition.

Sewblon:
Brace yourselves for Diablo III not supporting monster drops.

This post nearly made me faint.
Sure, Diablo without item drops sounds like blasphemy, but then again so does Star Craft without LAN.

Aardvark:
I've been tossing around the idea of a voice-recognition system on mobile phones to send text messages, then a synthesiser to read them out to you when you receive them. Then remove the actual call function of the phone. There'll be enough idiots to market this to and I can see the phone companies getting behind this 100%.

Considering people are making cell phone apps that allow you to play sounds at high frequencies a lot of people can't hear, Tpain Autotune, seeing where everyone else with the app is at this very moment, tweet on Twitter, play mosquito sounds.... I think that this is a brilliant idea. Especially when put next to the stuff already released.

Great comic, Shamus. Great to see Langdell out of his position.

Loving the Curfew scenes. hope the darth vader scene is gonna be done

I don't follow much Blizzard news, so this comic was sort of so-so for me. The band at the end, however, got me chuckling. The drummer looks like he's really getting into it there, as much as a Combine can.

I have to admit as to being utterly mystified as to why the Evil League of Evil link points to that blog, though. Is it an in-joke, or something? Or just added randomness?

No, the Evil League of Evil was a botched copy & paste link. I'll send in a correction.

And next in the news: riots in South Korea kill ten Blizzard representatives in a heady clash.

South Korea declares war on America and allies with North Korea.

Two days later:

Russia has joined the war.

Another day passes:

America declares war on Russia.

Doomsday:

Russia fires nuclear weapons at America and all of its allies.

America and her allies reply.

World ends for Starcraft.

Note: this post is entirely satirical and not meant to offend any nation or person, and does not seriously imply that any of those mentioned would go ahead with the actions contained therein. This remains unlikely as a doomsday scenario, yet is more hilarious than some.

Hey Shamus!

First time reader, loved the whole wacky gamer humor thing.

I'm sure you get asked this question all the time, but:
Is there actually going to be any stolen pixels... in your stolen pixels comic... thing? I mean, since it's the name of the... you know? Some people might get a bit disappointed.

And wtf? Still no Starcraft2 LAN?

OK, I'm a little confused here, what are they supposed to be doing in these panels? Are they trying to be funny or is this just a light-hearted game news outlet? Help please.

Decent comic, but as a follower of both Stolen Pixels and Experienced Points, I can't help but feel like I've already read it before. :/

Combine band, now there's an idea for an easter egg in Episode 3...

Well, Blizzard's fanboys will buy Starcraft 2 whatever it will/won't have.

So you should be grateful LAN is all they're not putting in.
If I were them, I would just axe the Terrans and say 2 races make a much more balanced game.

Or better yet, why not axe the Terrans and introduce a new, original, non-Space-Marine rip-off, race althogether?

But there I am, dreaming again.....

More After Curfew please... :D

I'm waiting for Gordon to be a special guest, sans crowbar of course.

I like it. This was my first time reading one of these.

CantFaketheFunk:
I still think the whole LAN thing is being blown way out of proportion, myself.

Funny you should say that - I was going to send you an IM detailing a little problem I have. It seems those of us in the military that can only play games with each other via LAN are one of the groups most affected. I just returned from 3 months at sea, and let me tell you - PC games are great to pass the time with. We don't have enough space on the ship for everyone to have a 360/PS3 or even a TV hooked up, so a lot of people bring their laptop. There's no internet to be had for our personal computers though.

If it's not bad enough that developers might start eliminating LAN play, we also have to deal with the "internet activation" that so many games employ. If I don't install a game and patch it up before a long underway, I'm out of luck.

I wish I could get the word out to more people rather than just on a forum post. I don't think a lot of developers (or, even other people) consider our situation that significant.

Future Hero:
Well, Blizzard's fanboys will buy Starcraft 2 whatever it will/won't have.

So you should be grateful LAN is all they're not putting in.
If I were them, I would just axe the Terrans and say 2 races make a much more balanced game.

Or better yet, why not axe the Terrans and introduce a new, original, non-Space-Marine rip-off, race althogether?

But there I am, dreaming again.....

Err what? Am I just totally overlooking something here, or are you actually trying to say that the Terran race was a ripoff of the DoW Space Marine race?

Aardvark:
I've been tossing around the idea of a voice-recognition system on mobile phones to send text messages, then a synthesiser to read them out to you when you receive them. Then remove the actual call function of the phone. There'll be enough idiots to market this to and I can see the phone companies getting behind this 100%.

Hey, it means no more yelling "What?" five or six times into the thing when your reception goes all staticy.