You claim a user's post to be invalid simply due to his ideology? Rupublican and Democrat are terms that describe political affiliation, not ideological beleif. Some on the far right may not see moderate Republicans as being paticularly conservative, just as some far left liberals may not see Blue-Dog Democrats as being paticularly liberal. Please, if you're going to debate, do it on the substance of a person's issue rather than attacking him on the basis of his perceived ideology.

Saying 'This person's post is innaccurate because I think he's a far-right liberatarian' belies an certain level of ignorance on your own part, regardless of your ideology.

If we angle this right, we might be able to troll 4chan into protesting outside Apple Stores all over the country.

My extended family immigrated to the US from Ireland after the Civil war ended. What specifically am I to be held accountable for?

This is all terribly ironic to me. Aren't these the same people who proudly proclaimed that 'PC gaming was dead!'? They were right, to a degree. The 'big name title bought off the store shelf' market is rapidly shrinking for the PC. However, PC gaming as a whole; either through Valve, other online distribution models, MMO's or what have you; is bigger than ever.

The direction that the 'conventional' gaming buisness models are keeling in the current times are reminiscent of the early 80's right before the great Atari crash. The bargain bin will again be the death of (the majority of) the 'big hit' gaming industry. Other media industries show us that companies are reluctant to change away from previous buisness models that were, at one time, hugely profitable.

The good news is that there will always be people there to fill the gap, and some of them will innovate new directions for our gaming media.

I'm skeptical about OnLive and the entire 'cloud gaming' concept, but I can't say yet that it's doomed to failure. It may work. Alternatively, if Valve released it's sales figures for steam, people might actually see how profitiable the online distribution of games through steam-like services can actually be. Valve may actually be wise by not releasing it's sales figures, for fear of 'bigger' companies trying to compete with steam on the market, rather than simply using steam like they are doing so now.

Steam is not perfect, and I can't say it will be the industry leader for online digital distribution in the coming age (like I hope it will be). However Valve has dedicated itself to improving it's products continually rather than resting on it's laurels. Besides, even if Valve fails, another company will take it's place.

There will always be greedy people who 'don't get it' there to feed us shovelware, and there will always be innovators who genuinely care about their audience.

I suspect that future consoles would benifit greatly from a 'Steam' styled buisness model, and that console manufacturers are only just starting to get on board with offerings such as XBL and PSN. They will either adapt, or they will be bypassed by somone else.

Indeed, reading this as a westerner, your post sheds a lot of contextual light on the issue. The internet has no lack of vulgar behavior dressed up in cryptic ways to avoid censorship, word filters and simply to be obnoxious. It's been like that ever since the general tech-savvy public got thier hands on it (and possibly before). Without context, this whole 'grass mud horse' thing sounds like any other stupid meme, and it isn't easy to see why it has become so popular.

The fact that the meme started on a government sponsored wiki explains the deep irony involved with this, and helps to understand why it spread so fast. Funny stuff, thanks for sharing your perspective.

DX3 has been a huge wildcard in my mind, simply because it offers so much promise, and as a result, even greater chance of dissapointment. DX2: Invisible War was a dissapointment because it felt like a 'dumbed down' distilled console version of the basic premese offered by Deus Ex, much as Bioshock offered a distilled version of the System Shock experience. This is not to say that Invisible War was a bad game, as I found it quite entertaining. It just didn't seem like a sequel, and it certainly didn't deliver on expectations. Deus Ex was not without it's faults, having very clunky combat mechanics, but that's not why I enjoyed playing it.

Deus Ex 3 will be hard to really get excited about until we find out how wide of a net the Dev team is casting for a playerbase. I get nervous hearing about 'shedding' more RPG elements from the DX formula, simply because it was the FPS/RPG hybrid elements that made Deus Ex (and System Shock 2) truly unique games to play.

I'm going to be taking Yatzee Crowshaw's tack on this and remain a cynic on this until I have further reason to hope. The risk of watching another beloved PC franchise ruined for the sake of the 'mainstream console gamer' is one that plays very near and dear to my heart. After having been twice dissapointed with Bioshock and Invisible War, I'm wary this time around. They're decent games, just not quite up to the bar set by the games that originally inspired them.