Privateer 2 - part of the WC universe??

[LeHah]

This thread really never should have happened, but some people enjoy being stupid.

Some people? I think its most or many people.

 

[Dahan]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Halman
This thread really never should have happened, but some people enjoy being stupid.


Some people? I think its most or many people.

We are stupid people at time and sometimes I think I overdo it when I keep asking questions about things I am not sure about, but then some people do it to make their feel important, others would so they think they know all the answers and others well I let others make their own judgement, we are free to make opinions.
If I get the general impression lets leave it that Priv 2 is set "many years" after prophecy and let people choose what they want to do with that ie game-mods, fan-fic etc etc

 

[LeHah]

we are free to make opinions.

Opinions do not refute facts under any circumstance. Because someone says "Privateer 2 is not part of Wing Commander continuity" does not make it so. This is because Origin/EA stated it is; they're the only offical source of all WC information (as well as third-party sources that are given offical permission by EA to make WC tie-ins - Baen novels, etc) and anything else is without grounds. No exceptions.

If I get the general impression lets leave it that Priv 2 is set "many years" after prophecy and let people choose what they want to do with that ie game-mods, fan-fic etc etc

Game mods and fanfiction are not canon material.

 

[Dahan]

Opinions do not refute facts under any circumstance. Because someone says "Privateer 2 is not part of Wing Commander continuity" does not make it so. This is because Origin/EA stated it is; they're the only offical source of all WC information (as well as third-party sources that are given offical permission by EA to make WC tie-ins - Baen novels, etc) and anything else is without grounds. No exceptions.

I dont disagree with that, but I think that people here always state their opinion/views of how they see Priv2. Sure Origion/EA is the official source of all WC related information and those 3rd party groups who recieved permission from EA, BUT it does not stop people from say what they think.
Take a look at Star Wars, people and or fans critise George Lucas movies of Ep 1-3 and say they could have done better than he would.
Are we been too demanding and expect so much from others???
I tend to leave it that people are free to make their views about issues as long there is a general agreement.

Game mods and fanfiction are not canon material.

I am quite aware of that mods and others are not canon material but it is material like these that keep Wing Commander alive, reliving characters, past present and future. For example looking at the HTL series using characters such as Blair, Wilford, Catscratch, Paladin in their stories are good, because it keeps the story alive knowing that people will use them and not changing anything that would damage the WC history.

 

[LeHah]

I dont disagree with that, but I think that people here always state their opinion/views of how they see Priv2. Sure Origion/EA is the official source of all WC related information and those 3rd party groups who recieved permission from EA, BUT it does not stop people from say what they think.

What people think doesn't really apply to anything though. It's best to totally leave it out of this discussion simply because you can talk till you're blue in the face, telling us every logical or illogical explaination of why P2 isn't Wing Commander related and you'd still be wrong.

Take a look at Star Wars, people and or fans critise George Lucas movies of Ep 1-3 and say they could have done better than he would.

Well, the first fault is listening to the fanbase.

If anything, Lucas should be thanked for not listening to fan complaints as to the stories in the prequels. If fans had their way - hell, if I had my way - the movies certainly wouldn't be nearly as entertaining, dramatic or new as they were. Yeah, theres a lot of stuff I disagree with (Yoda with a lightsaber? Get bent) but that comes with the territory with any sci-fi series.

Are we been too demanding and expect so much from others??? I tend to leave it that people are free to make their views about issues as long there is a general agreement.

While I'm adament against censorship, I do think that people "making their views" will slow or stop any progress toward a "general agreement" in this case. A lot of people are too set in their views and I'm not just talking about Sci-Fi Continuity either. It's just people being people is all; while they can't be at fault for just being human, it doesn't supersede the fact that we're trying to be a fact-based fanbase instead of, say, the hub of Star Wars/Trek/B5/Wing Commander fanfiction.

I am quite aware of that mods and others are not canon material but it is material like these that keep Wing Commander alive, reliving characters, past present and future.

I'm all for a good fanmade WC mod. Hell, one of the greatest games I ever played was a fan-made mod. The problem is it has to be QUALITY. For every mod like Standoff and UE, theres a dozen crappy Jedi Knight levels with ugly textures, clipping and crash issues.

For example looking at the HTL series using characters such as Blair, Wilford, Catscratch, Paladin in their stories are good, because it keeps the story alive knowing that people will use them and not changing anything that would damage the WC history.

I cannot atest for the "Holding The Line" series because I gave up on fanfiction many years ago (and being guilty of writing some godawful stuff myself). If you enjoy it, thats great - keep with it. I'll never complain if fanfiction refreshes or revitalizes someone's affection for a series. Its just the jerks who try to make those things canon and argue to the point of their own banning that I cannot tolerate.

 

[Quarto]

I dont disagree with that, but I think that people here always state their opinion/views of how they see Priv2. Sure Origion/EA is the official source of all WC related information and those 3rd party groups who recieved permission from EA, BUT it does not stop people from say what they think.

On top of what LeHah said, let me just add this. People are free to state their opinion on whether or not the sky is blue. Sure, it's an empirically proven fact that it is blue, but that does not stop people from saying what they think.

...It does, however, stop the rest of us from taking those people seriously.

You are, of course, free to argue why EA shouldn't have made Priv 2 a part of the WC universe. Heck, depending on what you would base this argument on, I might even agree with you. Whether they should or should not have done it is a matter of opinion. But, that they did do it - is a fact. With a fact, you can either agree with it, or try to prove it false. What you are doing, meanwhile, is choosing the ridiculously silly third option - you acknowledge that this fact is true, but insist that it is your right to consider it false.

 

[Haesslich]

I dont disagree with that, but I think that people here always state their opinion/views of how they see Priv2. Sure Origion/EA is the official source of all WC related information and those 3rd party groups who recieved permission from EA, BUT it does not stop people from say what they think.
Take a look at Star Wars, people and or fans critise George Lucas movies of Ep 1-3 and say they could have done better than he would.
Are we been too demanding and expect so much from others???
I tend to leave it that people are free to make their views about issues as long there is a general agreement.

You may state your opinion, but that opinion doesn't equal fact or truth - it's like having a person who says that they don't believe that they'll die if they get shot with a tank shell and then thrown off a cliff and down five hundred yards onto a basalt spike because they're immortal or a deity will save them; that may be their opinion, but that opinion won't change the facts.. as more likely than not, they WILL end up as a red smear on a rock somewhere.

All the opinions in the world don't usually change objective facts - the world was round before anyone believed it, after all.

I am quite aware of that mods and others are not canon material but it is material like these that keep Wing Commander alive, reliving characters, past present and future. For example looking at the HTL series using characters such as Blair, Wilford, Catscratch, Paladin in their stories are good, because it keeps the story alive knowing that people will use them and not changing anything that would damage the WC history.

Opinion =/= fanfiction. Fanfiction is an interpretation of material and background source in order to tell a story or tale in that setting - opinion is an interpretation of the material in order to justify a position or point of view. Again, you're grasping at straws here.

 

[LeHah]

Stop trying to steal my thunder, Haesslich

 

[Death]

Brief comment on the HTL thing.

Except for a one-shot with Catscratch being captured and tortured by the bugs (working with the assumption he didn't return to Confed service afterwards, contrary to several other canon characters who did return to Confed service after WC4, like Wilford, Hawk, and Blair), and a brief mention of Senator Diego (IIRC on the spelling), none of the canon characters are being used in HTL.

Also, while the HTL crew is trying to stay true to the source (if more in spirit than fact), we have never claimed that HTL is canon for anything outside of WC Aces Club history, which parts company with official history in more than a few places (in some cases rather embarassingly so, but that's neither here nor there for this post).

(For the record, the above is my personal opinion, and I'm speaking for neither any of the HTL crew nor any WC Aces members, save myself.)

 

[Edfilho]

Holly crap, the guy recreated the overlook hotel on the BUILD ENGINE??? He must be some kind of genius.

 

[LeHah]

You dont know the half of it. Try playing it - its goddamned scary as hell to have Jack Torrance chasing you around the place.

 

[Nemesis]

So... you're not trying to be argumentative for the sole sake of argumentation, you're just trying to see how a particular argument can go?

No, I’ve been more than clear about the aim. (It’s really not like you to quibble for the sake of quibbling.)

I would certainly like to see you reply to the rest of my points; I find that "I'll get to this later, but here's a summary..." is a pretty common tactic for avoiding various issues brought up in these lengthy debates.

Oh, I’m sure you know, everyone knows, that’s not my style. (And my goal here is in fact to facilitate taking up those other points.)

(Especially since you didn't just reply with your conlaw issues - you also hit the far less significant alphanumeric dates point.)

Well, for me, clearly a trivial, if suggestive, point; you’re the one who’s been treating it as a do-or-die question.

Yes, this is an unreasonable expectation for at least two reasons. One, you simply haven't provided any evidence whatsoever. Start out by finding some examples of this practice.

Curious. If our positions were reversed and I had made an absolute assertion that “X” wasn’t true and you stated an example “Y” where it was, I’d have been looking into “Y”.

Get thee to Google! Put in a call to Yahoo! Whatever. I’m willing to bet you can think of a search phrase catchier than “serial number” that will give you a more exclusive (if still partial) list of the examples you demand. And in less than a second! (This could even turn out to be your lucky day if you’re in the market for a guitar or bike or boat or classic car or more. And hey, stock options too! (For the latter, search “stock option symbol”; the so-called expiration month is always indicated by a letter.))

In addition, if you don’t mind grit or oil, get a flashlight, go to your car, and pop the hood. Check out the various components. Some of the corresponding serial numbers you find will be the very examples you seek, but a near certainty in the case of the battery – Delcos and DieHards and a number of other brands use letters for months. (In fact, if you’re ever bought a battery and didn’t verify, via its serial number, the date of manufacture and first charging, you weren’t a very smart consumer. No, no, never trust any “stick ‘em” labels!)

Good luck with all that.

Two, though, your claim is that this is a common practice which is recognizable. My claim is that I've never seen it used. Prove to me that I'm a special case - that the average person thinks that using letters instead of numbers for months is a perfectly ordinary practice . . .

You’re just ignorant in this case. End of story.

Each of us is ignorant of something, and indeed many, many things. But ignorance can’t serve as a valid objection to knowledge. I’m ignorant of how the knots in the threads of Incan quipus represent numbers (and apparently, the equivalent of zip codes), but my mere ignorance doesn’t stand as any sort of argument that knots in string can’t possibly mean that.

I'm really tired of working towards this, though, so lets jump straight to the trick - if you prove that this system is 'human', then you are also disproving your initial claim. You first said that the 'weird' dates were proof towards Privateer 2's dating system being unconnected to our own... and now in order to prove that it is a dating system, you say that it *is* a system used today. If you can manage to prove this you will only disprove your original claim that they are inherently alien. (And if you can't, we can't establish that they're dates!)

I suppose if developers and writers of sci-fi universes commonly adhered to such a “theory of art” – that where “something” is supposed to be a futuristic convention or an alien artifact it must always be literally rendered as such and consequently strange and unfamiliar to our present-day minds – then you might have the makings of an argument. But of course that isn’t the way the vast, vast majority of sci-fi universes, including WC, are created and presented for our consumption.

I have to prove nothing of the sort of what you argue. All I have to do is see, based on my own personal experiences and knowledge, whether the notations in P2 make any sense as dates within the context of the game as presented. And they do. No different (what a shock) from the way the game requires us to take all the rest of the text to mean what we judge it can or does mean in the English language and the idioms we’re either familiar with or can sensibly imagine.

You have a problem with Origin possibly choosing to use letters (one type of common ordering symbol) instead of numbers (another type of common ordering symbol) for months (an orderly time frame)? That to your way of thinking such a compromise between presenting something as familiar and yet also as futuristic or even alien was unartful? Fine and dandy. But your complaint is with game theory, game developers in general, and/or Origin in particular, not me.

I do not recognize that it is in any way a *given*... furthermore, I claim that the idea that they must be dates falls apart under analysis. I like the idea that they're dates - it's sexy, it's fun to have some solid dates... but I can't honestly sit down and force A to mean January.

Talk about avoiding the question. Yeah, I – well, I’m sure we all – get that you don’t want to see the letters as months. And we get that you feel strongly about that. But frankly, it’s now beginning to look more like wilful ignorance, and that’s not right.

Still, I don’t understand why you didn’t answer the question. There was no “given” here as you seem to mean it, only a proposed interpretation, and the inquiry how you would care to characterize it.

I sincerely see no merit whatsoever in your attempts to imply the interpretation is somehow impossible or unreasonable. On the contrary, it is clearly a possible and in no way an unreasonable textual interpretation. (And I would maintain that regardless of whether letters have ever heretofore served to represent months. That they have is only a “bonus fact” as far as I’m concerned )

No, what your real argument appears to be is that it’s nonetheless an invalid interpretation, because it violates your “first principle” about dates. (If we interpret the notations as dates, we seem to undermine the calendar being a Confed calendar, which is forbidden by your one principle, and so the interpretation is invalid.)

That said, I don't think there is a huge difference in our philosophies. In our 'game' the textual analysis is the best one whenever possible. The simple problem is how we put that theory into practice. I look at Privateer 2 and I say that "year" means the dictionary definition, plain and simple. You say it means something vauge - in my mind, that's going away from the textual into something else.

Well, given that I don’t have the problem you do in seeing the notations as possibly dates, it is indeed no stretch from months that aren’t “our” months to years that may not be “our” years.

But that is not the main thrust of my analysis. My approach, as I’ve noted, is to treat all the text as equally as possible, which is to say I seek possible, different interpretations from the get-go. I consider words, their apparent context in the facts and storyline they help relate, the apparent context of the game (quite possibly a human, but apparently in general a humanoid, civilization), and how that setting is or might conceivably be related to the other parts and histories of the WC universe. My goal is to see if there is one or more than one reasonable, canon-sensitive interpretation. And finally, I consider all that from the vantage point not only of a player, but of a developer too, since that’s undeniably part of the dynamic of a game-based sci-fi franchise.

The bottom line, for me, is P2's canon allows for more than one – or, if you prefer, is insufficient to “frame” one and only one – plausible history and storyline.

The hope - in constitutional analysis and in Wing Commander continuity - should be to avoid activism, not to create it wherever possible. It is necessary in the job of pursuing our goal of a consistent whole... but we don't arbitrarily decide to reinterprite things without cause.

Great. You sound very much like a “traditionalist”. I, on the other hand, am drawn to be more of a pragmatist, feeling less beholden to the notion of producing only one consistent whole. I have no problem with activism per se, provided the result in each case is a consistent whole, and I would say there is always “just cause” by virtue of our having imagination.

It's only in the course of our argument that the other sorts of analysis are taken into account. Original intent - did the Privateer 2 team intend for it to be a human years? Historical - how does it fit with the precedences established by the other games? And so forth.

My assessing canon from the perspective of a future developer only naturally makes me less enamored of original intent. (Perhaps I embrace the idea of “a living game”?)

As for the precedents “set” by prior games, I would think that regard you have for past games is the main source of your one “principle”, which allows you to trump the possible interpretation of P2's notations as dates. But I don’t believe I do or would afford the past games the same degree of deference, though in this case it may be I simply judge the meaning of those precedents differently.

Well, that's where I stand - I don't see the need to reanalyze Privateer 2 in the first place and ultimately having taken a second look at the game I don't see evidence that supports a more reasonable analysis than the one we've adhered to for eight years.

And, in turn, I hope you now have a better sense of where I’m coming from. That was my overall aim at this juncture, believing it might help clarify our respective points in the remaining exchanges.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Just so you know, the part where you went on about how ignorant I am instead of actually providing any proof for your claim is what got you banned.

 

[Halman]

Hehehe, you really should have stopped those times I told you to stop.

 

[Mace]

persona-wise...

this guy should not have been banned for some time, but to his credit: he treied ti be a pain in the ass and had success in iirritating you all

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Eh, I think he was having a legitimate argument-for-the-sake-of-arguing until he finally just snapped. It's all fun until someone goes crazy.

 

[Dix]

wow - I think i created a monster.. my little baby thread, all grown up. I'm so proud!

(Ps: at the risk of flogging a dead horse (and being petty ), several people have mentioned that Origin stated that P2 occurs some time after prophecy. can anyone point me to said info? all i can find is the verification of P2 being in the WC universe. thanks.)

Dahan:
same here I think this topic as got a tad bit out of hand
are we all generally agreement of Priv 2 is set "many years" after prophecy??
Halman:
Yes, we are.
And you know why? Because Origin said so. This thread really never should have happened, but some people enjoy being stupid.

 

[Edfilho]

Nemesis is kinda nuts about debating, he loves doing it just for the sake of debating. kinda boring.
any debate that goes meta should end right there, like in goodwin's law.

 

[Paddybhoy]

Too...many....words....head...hurts!!!