Lizardsquid, maker of noises @lizardsquid@computerfairi.es

One of the major disappointments of streaming services taking over is the huge reduction in quality of the Behind the Scenes stuff that's bundled with DVD/blu-ray releases nowadays.

It used to be that, if you bought a DVD of a tv series, you'd get:
• audio commentaries on every episode
• behind the scenes on set footage
• discussions with crew and cast
• vfx breakdowns
• creature/set/costume design bits

But now, you get almost none of that.

One of my main issues with this is: I sure hope the BBC has an archiving plan in place.

It's highly likely that Acast will go out of business before the BBC stops producing podcasts. What will happen to these downloads then? Will they still work, or will everything break?

So the BBC has partnered with a company called Acast, which claims:

"Acast’s sophisticated, contextual targeting uses dynamic insertion technology—which we invented—so brands can reach the right audience, in the right way, at the right moment, as many times as they require."

So the ads are inserted at the time of download, rather than at the time of production (the selling point of this being that a podcast's back catalogue can include modern ads).

I'm listening to a podcast from the BBC, which says "this podcast is supported by advertising outside of the UK" and then plays an ad.

Except the ads have all been specifically for Australia. I assume they're not just spamming all listeners with ads for Australian banks, but then my question is this:

How do they know to send Australian ads to my podcatcher?

How do they insert specialised advertising part-way into an mp3 file?

I don't want to sound too negative about it, because I'm really enjoying the game, but at the same time they messed this up really badly.

This game has so many problems with its story and characters that would so easily be fixed, and this is one of the most obvious ones!

Thinking about it even more: all they'd need to do is make either Birdman or Nomad a woman.

Birdperson is elderly and wise, and (after retiring from their running days) takes care of a collection of pidgeons.

Nomad is young and anti-authoritarian, and comes up with ideas on how to fuck up the police.

If even just one of these characters was a woman, the start of the game would feel so much less dominated by dudes.

After some more time playing, this is frustrating me even more.

3 of the 5 guys you're introduced to at the beginning of the game only have the *barest* of characterisation. They basically only exist to give you quests.

You could so easily exchange them for women (or enbies), and it makes it feel... bad. Like, they could have chosen anything for these characters, but they decided to just go with men. Why did they make that choice? And who made the choice?