Ep 49 - EA is Just the Worst

[Paul]

Did you hear? Electronic Arts is basically the devil!

[VNilla]

Dunno if this has been ongoing, but your credits still say "(C)2011" at the bottom. Just FYI.

[Geoff_B]

Contractual obligations are awesome when they're for Penny Arcade

[taza]

Dunno if this has been ongoing, but your credits still say "(C)2011" at the bottom. Just FYI.

Oh, that's normal. These episodes were shot six months ago.

Nothing new much happens in gaming, so it's easy to predict what will happen and write accordingly.

[VNilla]

Oh, that's normal. These episodes were shot six months ago.

Nothing new much happens in gaming, so it's easy to predict what will happen and write accordingly.

Not sure if trolling, or sadly true.

[Graham]

The credits are actually just wrong. Got stuck without while at PAX and had to use an outdated file. Kate boomed this.

[aeric90]

The reaction to the caption "More episodes than Firefly" at PAX was just priceless.

[MrPayneTrayne]

The reaction to the caption "More episodes than Firefly" at PAX was just priceless.

ALLLLLLL the groans.

[Graham]

I know! I guess it was a low blow, but it's not like WE did that

[aeric90]

Not a low blow. It was bang on. Maybe if they had released a tie in game where you launch the Serenity at derelict space craft to collect salvage we'd still be watching it.

[Lyinginbedmon]

Well if you're going to intensely irritate arguably the largest influence on global public opinion, you should expect intense reactions. If EA hadn't treated a series of beloved franchises poorly, the Internet wouldn't have votebotted their butts.

[VNilla]

I got a laugh out of that "More episodes than Firefly" bit. Then I realized that (at time of writing,) the ENTIRE SERIES of Friendship is Magic is comprised of only 50 episodes...



However, let's see what Mr. Math Brain here can figure out regarding that Firefly comparison: (all numerical data taken from Wikipedia and IMDB)

<MATH>
14 episodes of Firefly at 42 minutes each = 588 minutes (= 9hrs, 48mins)
Serenity's runtime = 119 minutes (= 1hr, 59mins)
TOTAL FIREFLY CONTENT RUNTIME = 707 minutes (or 11 hours, 47 minutes)

52 episodes of AB cartoon at 2.5-3 minutes each = 130-156 minutes (= 2hrs, 10-36mins)
AB animated shorts = 8 minutes: "Ham'o'Ween" = 5 minutes, "Wreck the Halls" = 3 minutes.
TOTAL AB CONTENT RUNTIME = 138-164 minutes (or 2 hours, 18-44 minutes)
</MATH>

So, even though the Angry Birds cartoon would have 3.71 times as many episodes as Firefly, Firefly will have around 4 times the total runtime and content (and that's without counting Serenity). If Serenity and the Angry Birds short films are factored in, the Firefly franchise's total content runtime is 4.5-5 times longer than that of ALL of the Angry Birds' TV appearances! The proposed Angry Birds feature film (slated for 2015-ish) could change all of this, but it will probably be a long-ass time before Angry Birds even comes close to threatening Firefly on the airwaves.


TL;DR:
The AB cartoon's episode count = 371.4% of Firefly's episode count.
Firefly's total TV runtime = 376.9%-452.3% of the AB cartoon's runtime.
Firefly franchise's total content runtime = 453.2%-512.3% of the AB franchise's total TV content runtime.

[aeric90]

You assume that there will be only one season of that dreck (Is that not a word? I thought it was). And besides, it's the principle of the thing!

Also note that I have never watched Firefly or Serenity and have no idea what I'm defending.

[Lyinginbedmon]

Something worth watching.

[Vigafre]

Well if you're going to intensely irritate arguably the largest influence on global public opinion, you should expect intense reactions. If EA hadn't treated a series of beloved franchises poorly, the Internet wouldn't have votebotted their butts.

I wouldn't say EA didn't expect. I would say, however, that they're unaffected by it.

I mean, their response was basically "Ok, that's fine Internet, we're going to continue making products people like (subjective, yes, but they're still turning profit) and making progressive decisions like adding homosexual relationships to our games while you continue ignoring the people that downed the American (and in some case, the world) economy." That was a bit long-winded, but whatever.

[VNilla]

aeric90, you should totally go watch Firefly ASAP; if you have Netflix, the entire season is available for streaming (Serenity is too, but IMHO the TV show was better).


Unrelatedly, how exactly are the credits for Checkpoint (and all your other other videos, I assume) made*? Ideally, there would be a plugin for your video editing program that generates them on the fly from some text inputs. However, I imagine it's not quite that simple, but you have some sort of credits template, right? Also, do you have to make each video's credits in a separate movie clip, import them into the file with your recording (or vice versa), then blend them with some fancy transitions (as I was told to do many years ago)? I hope not...

*Full disclosure: I have no idea how modern video editing software works. The last time I tried to edit video was ten years ago: I opened Windows Movie Maker on my dad's old Pentium IV brick running Windows ME; the computer froze and chugged for a good five minutes, then blue-screened, melted its own motherboard, and blew a fuse (corrupting everything on the hard drive)... We switched over to using all Macs shortly afterwards.

[glasspelican]

0x10c is correctly pronounced hex10c

[tamaness]

I always pronounced those "oh-ex-ten-cee" or "oh-ex-one-oh-cee". It just makes sense in my head. I know it's a hex value, though.

[Dominic Appleguard]

Not only is it a hex value, it's an exponential function. A hexponential?

0x10^C = 16^12 base ten = 2.81474977 × 10^14. According to one source I read, this is the number of years in the future the game takes place.

It's...a big number. 281 trillion.

[Master Gunner]

That is correct.