The RPG Duelling League
Social Forums => General Chat => Topic started by: Hunter Sopko on January 02, 2012, 12:58:21 AM
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OK got away with this last year.
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Right here? Then WHERE ARE THEY????????
Let's kick them off with this (http://sascha.mehlhase.info/physics.php?open=atlaslego).
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http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english-pronunciation/
<3
Blame Excal.
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Britain is supposed to rhyme with written?
I'm not sure I agree with this poem at all.
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How do you pronounce them? They sound the same to me.
(Food and would, on the other hand...)
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Food/would, tear/prayer, and broad/reward (among others) may or may not rhyme depending on the dialect of English you speak. Britain/written should rhyme (first vowel is short i, second is schwa, I can't see any variation there), although... heh. I think I know why they may not to mc.
See, many North Americans (I don't, but my mother was British and I'm weird) turn "t" sounds found between two vowels into "d" sounds. This might sound weird, but try it, with words like "later", "eaten", "Saturday", etc., and pay close attention to what sound you actually pronounce. "written" is of course one such word. (the double t means nothing! Stupid English!) Now, notably, British English-speakers never do this, so all I can think is that when some people say the word "Britain", they take on a slight British accent just for that word, and keep the "t" sound as, well, a "t".
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Yes, I suspect the big thing to remember here is that it's an English domain name, which means that it'll be based off of one of their accents and rhyming schemes.
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Mmm...nope, Elfboy's incorrect about my objection.
Britain, to me is pronounced "brit an", and I can't think of any more-proper dialects when it might be pronounced "brit en". I can think of less-proper dialects that might be lazy with the vowel, but since this is a poem about proper pronunciation....
And written, to me, is pronnounced "writ en". Not sure if there's versions pronounced "writ an"; I guess that's possible.
So...near as I can tell the vowel doesn't match. (Same way 'tan" and "ten" sound different to me).
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I've been using "Brit en" for as long as I can remember.
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I love this. http://journalcomic.com/index.php?p=1
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Mmm...nope, Elfboy's incorrect about my objection.
Britain, to me is pronounced "brit an", and I can't think of any more-proper dialects when it might be pronounced "brit en". I can think of less-proper dialects that might be lazy with the vowel, but since this is a poem about proper pronunciation....
And written, to me, is pronnounced "writ en". Not sure if there's versions pronounced "writ an"; I guess that's possible.
So...near as I can tell the vowel doesn't match. (Same way 'tan" and "ten" sound different to me).
Britain doesn't rhyme with tan, to me, and I can't recall ever having heard it pronounced that way. Certainly both Oxford and Webster list it being pronounced with a schwa. The linguist in me says to never correct anyone on their pronunciation, but I am quite surprised at "Bri-tan".
I'm even more surprised that you would pronounce written to rhyme with "ten", although I can't tell for sure if that's what you meant. The last vowel of "written" is the same as the last vowels of "happen", "pencil", "Sarah", etc. It really isn't a good idea to use an e for it, although no written vowel really works, despite the fact it's the most common vowel sound in English, ə (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa).
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Mark me down as another who pronounces the last syllable of "Britain" closer to "tan" than "ten," although it's more a muddled mess in-between the two.
Also, I have no idea what you're talking about with the pronunciation of "written." The last syllable absolutely rhymes with "ten" to me, and I've never heard it pronounced another way. Nor have I heard Sarah (ser AH, or very rarely SAH rah), pencil (pen SILL) and happen (hah PEN) pronounced remotely similarly.
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On the subject then, how do you differentiate that pronunciation of Britain with "Briton"? More emphasis on the t?
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I can't say how you pronounce them without hearing you speak, but I guarantee you've heard them if you've watched TV/movies or listened to voice acted games, since a large majority of English speakers pronounce those words those ways. Look 'em up in Webster's, note that it doesn't even list a variant pronunciation that lacks the schwa.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/happen -> \ˈha-pən\
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pencil -> \ˈpen(t)-səl\
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sarah -> \ˈser-ə, ˈsā-rə\
ə is everywhere. It sees everything. It is inescapable.
Neph: I do not personally differentiate between those two. Some people may, however.
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Enough about pronunciation. Watch a cat playing Fruit Ninja instead.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/30/sanity-break-cat-plays-fruit-ninja-on-an-ipad/
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http://sfist.com/2011/12/30/chef_ron_eyester_of_rosebud.php
Chef, yelling about terrible customers, blah blah
I cannot stop laughing at this comment:
its hard to take serious a person who only started drinking pbr within the last 10 years
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http://mohandasgandhi.tumblr.com/post/15242464246/dear-customer-who-stuck-up-for-his-little-brother
D'Awwwwww
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http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/sexting-ice-breakers-for-english-grad-students
Not sure if old...
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http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/01/story-behind-new-york-times-my-little-pony-correction/47101/
I'm certain there will be at least one person on this here forum that will be amused by this.
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I'm struck by The Atlantic using the phrase "slow clap."
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George Rockwell, http://i.imgur.com/F1N1t.png
Father Gregory Wilkins, http://i.imgur.com/INYTn.png
Photographer Eve Arnold passed Wednesday @ 99 years old. Love her work, both of these are almost equally entertaining.
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http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2398391,00.asp
Sweden. Tonfa, care to explain this!?
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Don't bother Tonfa, he's busy copy-pasting.
Epic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6HAbYRPyb6c
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Hahahahahahahahahaha. This shouldn't go on for seven minutes!
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UMoACE5Qv0&feature=g-all-u&context=G20b621bFAAAAAAAABAA
Do you like Portal?
Are you familiar with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic?
Ok, watch this now.
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Why Women and Men Can't Be Friends
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_lh5fR4DMA
Haha.
Edit*
Why Men Don't Talk To Women
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d54TiN3t5_I&feature=related
Edit edit*
They call him Oblivion Knight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG_QWTA5Kes&feature=g-vrec&context=G230a2ddRVAAAAAAAAAA
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http://vimeo.com/34813864
(fake beauty ad) Photoshop, by Adobe
EDIT
http://www.design3.com/industry-insight/item/2344-game-development-in-one-word
(video) Summing up game development in one word.
More EDIT:
http://www.jimchines.com/2012/01/striking-a-pose/
Jim Hines demonstrates the ridiculousness of poses of females on fantasy novels...by doing the poses himself.
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More EDIT:
http://www.jimchines.com/2012/01/striking-a-pose/
Jim Hines demonstrates the ridiculousness of poses of females on fantasy novels...by doing the poses himself.
Interesting, but the first 3 don't strike me as particularly ridiculous. (4-6, on the other hand...)
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http://extra-credits.net
Extra Credits got its own website sometime. Extra Credits is awesome and should be devoured completely.
Great fun for armchair quarterbacks of the game industry.
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Dubstep finally proves its worth and evolves into Daymanstep (fighter of the Nightmanstep).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_JUlXh7sP8
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.htm?_r=1
Interesting article about how people do work better when they're solo.
Except on the internet, which is supposedly the only way people can efficiently collaborate.
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Why Women and Men Can't Be Friends
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_lh5fR4DMA
Haha.
I'm never sure why some people seem to think that "one person may harbour feelings for the other and/or be willing to have sex with the other if he/she asked" disqualifies friendship. The high sex-drive bisexual still has friends, and I don't think he or she misses out on anything meaningful from friendship.
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Knowing Djinn: fun and educational!
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Depends how you define friendship really. If it includes "someone you can vent your relationship frustrations to" then it really would be a disqualification, I'd think.
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It wouldn't if you wanted to fuck every woman you interact with like this is suggesting. You would just bitch about every other woman you want to fuck.
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I've banged friends before. It's a fun way to spend time. Just don't be weird about it.
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http://io9.com/5877008/behold-maybe-the-only-fdr-versus-werewolves-film-in-history
(video) Umm...see URL I guess >_>
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/television/tv-ones-find-our-missing-takes-on-the-mysteries-that-didnt-get-the-headlines/2012/01/17/gIQALSbM6P_story.html
Really happy about this. I can't stand the voyeuristic media attention to missing persons cases, but if we're going to indulge in that stuff as a society, for god's sake we need to expand the list of victims worthy of attention beyond cute blonde white girls.
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http://9gag.com/gag/1868920 (http://9gag.com/gag/1868920)
Figure this time I'll skip the middleman.
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http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/in-which-i-fix-my-girlfriends-grandparents-wifi-and-am-hailed-as-a-conquering-hero
Sounds about right.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SAfMBom2sN0
Herman Cain fully embraces his status as a Pokemon Master. And sings.
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So... when did Herman Cain become awesome?
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Slightly too late for his own presidential nod.
Fanmade Dark Souls trailer. Considerably more awesome than the actual game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-62fhmWDkx8
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As soon as we stopped having to worry about him being in complete control of America's nuclear arsenal.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCWfMqVNH7w
I'm sure Xer or Shale will appreciate the cheese, assuming they haven't run across it yet.
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http://magiccardswithgooglyeyes.tumblr.com/
Self-explanatory.
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http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/#
In 2 and a half hours from right now Hottest 100 will be playing on Triple J. It is Australias biggest countdown of top 100 songs from the last year and it trends away from Pop music, so there is a lot of interesting stuff you might not have run into every day for the last year. Can stream it all from their website.
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/26/ipad_fleshlight_design/
So, you know how we live in the future and it is awesome? Well here is an example of an industry moving with the times. I suppose it is awesome?
I am trying not to be a luddite here, but I am not ready to embrace technology that closely.
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Kim Swift (creator of Portal 1) talks over a gameplay demo of her new game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni6X80JvcIA
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Pshhhh way to harsh on my low brow junk links with classy intellectual things.
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I saw this once, thought it was decent, and then it keeped seeming better and better in my memory and I had trouble finding it:
http://z0r.de/L/z0r-de_3714.swf
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http://www.1milliongamerscore.com/
This is the guy with the highest gamerscore (achievements) out of all Xbox players. He writes a humorous little blog about his goal of reaching 1 million gamerscore. It's pretty interesting just to see the mini reviews of games from a guy who plays nearly every game that comes out, from shovelware to AAA titles. Right now he's challenging himself to earn a number of achievements per day in excess of the number of points Kobe Bryant scores in a Lakers game - and Kobe has been on a tear lately.
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http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
Programmer humor.
http://www.gshotts.com/humor/languages.htm
More programmer humor.
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Eh. Not THAT funny. Let's go with
https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat
instead. Moderately accessible to non-programmers as well, mostly due to funny pictures.
For other weird stuff:
http://blogs.forward.com/forward-thinking/150723/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/bishop-eddie-long-crowned-king_n_1248346.html
Wat.
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Thanks alot arsehole. I was going to post about how much I laughed at "1965 - Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964." and your video link and you had to fuck it up by making me want to murder people.
Douche.
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/599092525/the-order-of-the-stick-reprint-drive
If you read Order of the Stick (which you should, it's great), you should probably think about throwing some cash the author's way. He's running a Kickstarter to finance reprints of the compilation books, and the donation rewards have gotten progressively more ridiculous as they raise more and more money (going on half a million dollars now). Ten bucks gets you seven exclusive short comics (Probably 70-90 pages in total) and a refrigerator magnet. Another $15 and he adds in a set of stickers, an OOTS-themed notepad, a poster print and a (coloring) book.
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I deserve that stuff for when I put up with the goddamn split the party, update when I feel like it (once every three weeks) schedule. <_<
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From what little he's willing to say about his health, that was less "when I feel like it" and more "when I am physically able to sit upright."
DON'T YOU FEEL LIKE A JACKASS NOW
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How about I don't feel like giving him money because of the Azure City arc?
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That may excuse the schedule (although, really, if you're having problems you should just outright say it and take the time off), but it still does not make an already tedious arc any less tedious. >_>
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Speaking of ridiculous sums of money appearing from nowhere:
Notch would like to know how many dollars, in millions, it would cost him to get Tim Schafer working on Psychonauts 2. (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2012/02/minecraft-developer-makes-serious-offer-to-fund-psychonauts-sequel.ars)
Edit: He's posting on Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/pejnq/oh_notch/c3oqefb): “[If Tim is interested] then we'd probably move on to start sending each other a bunch of boring documents and projections, discuss recoup levels and dlc terms and distribution platforms, get our respective lawyers to look things over, then hopefully finally land on an agreement that both parties think will be beneficial.
Assuming THAT works out, I'd be all over it, and I wouldn't want (or require) any creative input at all. Tim and co has MORE then proven themselves excellent game designers, and it would be incredibly narrow minded of me to think I understand how to design games like that.”
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Guys, this means that the money I tossed toward minecraft will be ultimately producing Psychonauts 2. What have you done for gaming recently? That's what I thought. (Shh, MC. Shh. And Laggy working for a F2P MMO isn't doing anything.)
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I have bought Psychonauts on 2 different platforms and bought Minecraft, so you can blow me.
If I hadn't done that you could still blow me though. The offer is always on the table.
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Hard for that offer to be on the table when your dick is already in my mouth.
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I have bought Psychonauts on 2 different platforms and bought Minecraft, so you can blow me.
If I hadn't done that you could still blow me though. The offer is always on the table.
Damn, I've only bought Minecraft once and bought Psychonauts on one platform. I am outmatched, curse you Shale :(. I will have to settle for having had some email conversations with Anna Kipnis.
Although...now that I think about it, I'm not sure "Making Tim Schafer work on a sequel instead of Tim Schafer working on yet another totally original game" is doing a service to gaming.
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Schafer has said that he wants to do Psychonauts 2, and gone so far as to pitch it to quite a few different publishers but with no bites. If he thinks it's worth doing, that's good enough for me.
(Also I bought Psychonauts three times)
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http://shop.doublefine.com/psychonauts.aspx
If you want to be a better fan you can buy another copy that is signed.
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You son of a bitch.
I can have posters signed by both creators of Monkey Island? Goodbye, money.
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I will be disappointed if I don't show up to DLCon and you have a signed PAL X-Box version to give to Yakko. I would offer to bring my brother's old PAL X-Box, but I don't feel like paying the overweight baggage fee.
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Sadly I will not be at DLCon at all this year, so you may not want to hold your breath for that.
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I'm curious, what MMO is Laggy working on?
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Speaking of piles of money falling onto Tim Schafer... (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure)
Double fine is making a Kickstarter-funded point-and-click adventure, helmed by Schafer and with Ron Gilbert on the staff. This is happening. They raised $500,000 in the first 12 hours. For reference, that OOTS campaign I linked to before has raised $560,000 in two weeks, which makes it the sixth-highest-grossing campaign in the site's history.
I am trying very hard not to pledge for the $250 signed poster.
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Speaking of piles of money falling onto Tim Schafer... (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure)
Double fine is making a Kickstarter-funded point-and-click adventure, helmed by Schafer and with Ron Gilbert on the staff. This is happening. They raised $500,000 in the first 12 hours. For reference, that OOTS campaign I linked to before has raised $560,000 in two weeks, which makes it the sixth-highest-grossing campaign in the site's history.
I am trying very hard not to pledge for the $250 signed poster.
Never played one of their games, but I am trying very hard not to pledge $20,000 for the dinner and bowling with Tim and the staff.
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Speaking of piles of money falling onto Tim Schafer... (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure)
Double fine is making a Kickstarter-funded point-and-click adventure, helmed by Schafer and with Ron Gilbert on the staff. This is happening. They raised $500,000 in the first 12 hours. For reference, that OOTS campaign I linked to before has raised $560,000 in two weeks, which makes it the sixth-highest-grossing campaign in the site's history.
I am trying very hard not to pledge for the $250 signed poster.
Never played one of their games, but I am trying very hard not to pledge $20,000 for the dinner and bowling with Tim and the staff.
I'm more partial to the 30K rewards.
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Oh wow. I heard about the Need Fir Soeed guys doing something similar. Don't believe it is nearly as successful.
Also Sopko we are going to have to rectify that.
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Oh wow. I heard about the Need Fir Soeed guys doing something similar. Don't believe it is nearly as successful.
Also Sopko we are going to have to rectify that.
I say we rectify it by making a Kickstarter of our own so we can have them come to DL-Con bowling.
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Oh man, I love that typo. I might start calling the series Need Fir Seeds from now on.
How about we start a kickstarter to donate the 20k to their kickstarter to do it?
Edit that is what you already said. I AM GOOD AT JOKES
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I don't know if anyone else has been keeping up with the trailers for Lollipop Chainsaw, but it just keeps getting crazier and crazier. Game is by the guy who did Killer 7, No More Heroes, etc. It's basically Buffy the Vampire Slayer if Buffy were being played by Honey Hart from Band vs Band.
http://www.gametrailers.com/game/lollipop-chainsaw/15353
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http://www.sporcle.com/user/RadShadow/contributed
Here you guys go. I challenge you all to try out my games on sporcle!
/shameless plug for people to play my games.
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I don't care about this, but seeing it posted 8 minutes after CK goes to bed makes me want to pass it along on the outside chance he doesn't have it watched and memorised already.
<Chimp> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rAPBAm1GkHE
<Chimp> Ten minutes of the new kingdom hearts game
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Blah blah original characters blah blah hunchback blah TRON LEGACY THREE MUSKETEERS okay I'm in.
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http://m.kotaku.com/5884541/ace-attorney-is-the-best-video-game-movie-ever-take-that-hollywood
So...apparently the Ace Attourney movie is...really good.
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Blah blah original characters blah blah hunchback blah TRON LEGACY THREE MUSKETEERS okay I'm in.
You left out SORCERER'S APPRENTICE.
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I reached the "okay I'm in" point before the video ended, and regardless of how much I'm looking forward to the finished game I couldn't take Japanese Minnie any more.
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Blah blah original characters blah blah hunchback blah TRON LEGACY THREE MUSKETEERS okay I'm in.
You forgot POKEMON, HOVERBOARDS, and YOU ARE THE GUMMI SHIP.
Now I'm really wishing I'd bought a 3DS at Christmas when they were $99.
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It's not like a Kingdom Hearts game has to TRY to get my money.
I'm just hoping the inevitable second model 3DS (y'know, the one that makes you feel stupid for buying the original) comes out before the game.
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I think I'd be more excited for Dream Drop Distance if it promised to actually finish the stupid storyline so Sora could stop getting clones...
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Well that's just silly. Even if the series did continue after KHIII, there's a 100% chance the new character would be a clone of Sora.
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I interrupt your silly stringesque circle jerk to say this.
No matter how good the movie is, those Cravats are no where near as amazing as the source material. They have the right number of distinct layers but they are not uniformly pleated consecutively down all three layers.
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/grefter/prettyhands.gif)
I am unimpressed. 0/10 movie will not ever watch.
Edit - Oh yeah and this http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/r-rating-for-computer-games-planned/story-e6freuy9-1226271650856
Australia finally cutting out some bullshit.
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http://m.kotaku.com/5884541/ace-attorney-is-the-best-video-game-movie-ever-take-that-hollywood
So...apparently the Ace Attourney movie is...really good.
That the article hits on a lot of things that are true. Gumshoe certainly doesn't come off as incompetent as he is in the games, and honestly I don't know about Maya because blah blah blah weeaboo language. As for it being a legitimately good movie... Again, hard to say due to the language barrier. That said, I felt a lot of the scenes were too much "And suddenly they found this maguffin and then Phoenix wins," but on thinking of it that's actually pretty much the games summed up right there.
Two things the review doesn't hit on that are facts and also science: 1. Larry Butz is the best Larry to Butz the Larry Butz. 2. No Wendy goddamn Oldbag what the fuck.
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Maya is a pretty ineffective character in the games, so them screwing her up is no big loss anyway. Nailing Phoenix/Edgey/Manfred is a big deal, and bonus points for Larry Butz being awesome.
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http://www.2kgames.com/blog/civilization-v-expansion-pack-announced (http://www.2kgames.com/blog/civilization-v-expansion-pack-announced)
Civ 5 expansion, bitches. Includes religion and espionage, and combat rejiggering.
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http://www.2kgames.com/blog/civilization-v-expansion-pack-announced (http://www.2kgames.com/blog/civilization-v-expansion-pack-announced)
Civ 5 expansion, bitches. Includes religion and espionage, and combat rejiggering.
Wow, they've finally almost restored the functionality of base Civ4 and Warlords! :o
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http://www.onthemedia.org/2012/feb/10/virtual-pacifism/
Pacifist challenge playthroughs are getting media attention.
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http://www.2kgames.com/blog/civilization-v-expansion-pack-announced (http://www.2kgames.com/blog/civilization-v-expansion-pack-announced)
Civ 5 expansion, bitches. Includes religion and espionage, and combat rejiggering.
Wow, they've finally almost restored the functionality of base Civ4 and Warlords! :o
Religion looks more like a second Civic tree this time, and espionage was BtS, wasn't it?
Either way I'm happy. Have a hard time going back to 4 because I hate stacking so much.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Otaq2tmNMM
There is nothing to be said.
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I'm very impressed.
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It is like the 80's distilled.
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Are they claiming that all horses are good and all birds are evil? Because that's untrue. Many horses are extremely evil. Look at Bad Horse.
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"This is what happens when Heavy Metal, Silver Hawks and My Little Pony do jaeger bombs."
I could not put it any better myself. Wow.
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http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/02/17/soul-calibur-v-custom-characters/
Apparently SC5 went extra nuts with the character creation options.
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I hate everybody who has ever lived. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5BdyIGtYcg&feature=player_embedded)
Also, only four seconds in that video make any sense. I'll leave it to you to figure out.
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The only thing that stuns me in that video is that I didn't know Ciato had a pair of stilleto heeled boots.
Edit - And that link is interesting so far met. So far I have heard them misinterpret pacifist runs as being non-violent. You can still be violent without actually killing things. Nice to see it getting media attention anyway.
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I was going to make a comment about her looking like Ciato also, but Ciato is a much better dancer.
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Freezin' cold and doesn't have shoes on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E77HpMMbDYc&feature=related
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http://www.capturecreatures.com/
(http://www.capturecreatures.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/12-leaferrier.png)
The most adorable take on pokemon ever.
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I have no idea if this is any good but...
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/primerist/code-hero-a-game-that-teaches-you-to-make-games-he
Code hero; looks interesting.
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http://www.siliconera.com/2012/02/20/final-fantasy-xiii-2-x-mass-effect-collaboration-in-the-works/ (http://www.siliconera.com/2012/02/20/final-fantasy-xiii-2-x-mass-effect-collaboration-in-the-works/)
Square finally gives in and admits you'd rather be playing Mass Effect than whatever they make these days; will let you pretend to be playing it instead.
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Alternate interpretation: Square-Enix continues cluttering up their games with misplaced and shallow westernization rather than focusing on their own strengths as a developer.
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An interpretation that would be more valid if Square even seemed to know what their strengths were beyond making CGI videos.
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They know what their strengths are: pissing you, personally, off. It's working so well since you can't go 24 hours without whining about the game on the internet.
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More Mass Effect can only be a good thing.
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More Mass Effect can only be a good thing.
Yo dawg. I herd u lik Mass Effect. So I put some Mass Effect in your FFXIII-2 so your... wait, what the FUCK?
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An interpretation that would be more valid if Square even seemed to know what their strengths were beyond making CGI videos.
A valid criticism, but I don't think they're going to figure it out by continuing what they're doing either.
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An interpretation that would be more valid if Square even seemed to know what their strengths were beyond making CGI videos.
A valid criticism, but I don't think they're going to figure it out by continuing what they're doing either.
They've figured out they should try to pander to foreign audiences if they want to grow their market share, they just don't know the right way to do that. They're just reminding people of other games they'd rather play.
You know who did know how to do that? The guys who made Nier. How are they not talking to them? They have an established working relationship with the people involved, even if the team is disbanded.
I dunnow, maybe we'll see some slight changes since Square was super-impressed with Skyrim, which surprises me since Japanese people and NEB hate not having their hands held.
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They know what their strengths are: pissing you, personally, off. It's working so well since you can't go 24 hours without whining about the game on the internet.
"Thank you, everyone, for attending the Square-Enix shareholders meeting. Let's begin by identifying our goals for the upcoming quarter."
*handraise* "Pissing Rob off?"
"Oh, that's a good one!" *writes it on blackboard*
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Basically they've been cherry picking western styles and elements to include with no real idea of how to incorporate them into the stories, mechanics, and themes they're known for and want to continue, resulting in massive, violent clash that makes the games weaker and less enjoyable; completely missing the point of western styles, annoying those fans, while bogging down and neglecting eastern tradition, pissing off traditional fans.
Cavia knew their stuff there, which is hilarious since every design decision they made was made to better troll the stereotypical western mindset. This is probably why Nier reviewed badly, but has a growing cult fanbase because while they're a troll if you expect something stereotypical, Nier is anything but and they enhance, rather than thwart, the narrative and thematic coherence of the game.
eg Cavia HATES completionists, sidequests that do nothing but cost you money and waste your time, etc
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Out of curiosity, what elements have they been cherry picking?
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High levels of automation and simplified menus without actually reducing the complexity of the system, as well as an increasing love of nested sidequests and rare drop farming (which, while not strictly western, are a heavier focus in less linear games)
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Sooooo MMOs, Tales Sidequests and Korean MMOs?
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Rare drop farming surely predates the games they're aping. Pink tails in FF4, 1/128 items in EarthBound, Economizers in FF6... I have a hard time thinking of many Western single-player games that use it heavily. The ones that come to mind are WoW, Diablo and Borderlands, all of which are either exclusively multiplayer or heavily biased toward it.
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It's always existed, but I think it's increasingly a major part of the games. I mean, used to be you farmed for a particular badass weapon, there were perhaps one or two. By contrast, in FFXIII you need to farm items just to get cash, or upgrade half your weapons. It is more of an MMO thing, but thanks to the pervasiveness of WoW I associate MMO tropes as western, perhaps unfairly.
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I can't think of a major western MMO that emphasizes component farming. WoW only really does it for the inevitable legendary item chains, of which there are not many. SWG used to do that, but SWG was atypical in so many ways. Diablo, I guess, with gems and runes. For the most part, though, it's all farming for ready-to-use item drops from a set number of encounters per week.
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You need to stretch back to older MMOs, really. EQ was pretty fucking awful about it, if I recall right.
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EQ was all about grind yes, mostly due to some pretty terrible design (We charge subscription fee, if we make everything take forever they can justify it!).
The peak of grind definitely comes for the Asian market though. When they coopted the MMO genre they perfected it. Pay to win features with gambling with real money for the in game grind. Amazing.
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Ah, I see Grefter has played Perfect World. *thumbs up*
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Honestly, that is more or less EVERY Korean MMO. Check out the vast majority of Nexxon or Aeria's portfolio.
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Yeah, but Perfect World is Chinese, not Korean. It's Communism-approved Capitalism!
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http://www.gabbysplayhouse.com/?p=1444
Sexism on the internet....
EDIT: also, for the Grefters, here's a game made by gay people, and call me stereotypical but I'm noticing the characters have a lot of fashion sense:
http://thearkhproject.tumblr.com/
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Turns out internet comments are dumb.
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Yeah, but Perfect World is Chinese, not Korean. It's Communism-approved Capitalism!
Shockingly when they bought STO, the first new piece of content not already underway when they bought the company was boxes you can only open with keys that cost $3 each.
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EDIT: also, for the Grefters, here's a game made by gay people, and call me stereotypical but I'm noticing the characters have a lot of fashion sense:
http://thearkhproject.tumblr.com/
Gotta say. Nice designs. Like, seriously. Gorgeous art.
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I have not played Perfect World. What I do is pay attention to game content and trends. Lineage 2 is kind of the ur example I have built up.
Aaaaand Tumblr is down so all I can do is read depressing terrible comments on Feminism thread instead of writing about FF9 character design or eat dinner I have sitting in front of me.
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http://www.pokemontowerdefense.net/
Captain K should appreciate this.
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I'm not a fan of tower defense in general. I prefer strategically setting up positions in turn-based combat rather than real-time aps button clicking. However this wasn't too bad... up until the point that I clicked the stupid League of Legends ad and lost EVERYTHING.
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http://baldursgate.com/
Something is happening at Beamdog, home of the original BioWare people (and architects of MDK2 HD, BioWare's real claim to fame) with regard to the Baldur's Gate franchise. What? Nobody knows.
Also, viewing the page source reveals a comment about using Raise Dead on the Infinity Engine, which makes me sad because even 14 years later, humanity cannot recognize how fucking horrible that thing was.
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Why you have to hate Shale. Don't you want more games that are good in spite of everything used to make them?
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I liked the Infinity Engine, broken as it was. =(
Seriously though. Don't tease me like this, bro. I need this. They need to set up a pre-order on the page right now. I don't care what this could be (remake? BG3? teasing?). I'll pay for it.
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Why you have to hate Shale. Don't you want more games that are good in spite of everything used to make them?
I've tried three or four times to play BG and BG2 and can't bear the terribleness of the combat long enough to even meet Minsc. So yay for good games, but BG ain't one of them.
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That is pretty rough considering Minsc is in the first room in BG2.
Edit - Not that I can blame you still!
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Okay, then possibly my memory sucks too. This has been known to happen. I know I got BG2 from somebody at the first DLCon (possibly you), I know I installed it, I know it didn't go any better than the first one. My point is, the only way to make D&D: The RTS into a playable experience was to go the Planescape route and have fighting basically be "click on the guy, oh look he is dead."
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Oh for sure, totally acceptable. It is only really fun when you know it well enough to put up with its bullshit. There is fun in there, but it is more effort than it is worth.
The RTS isn't even the sole problem. As much fun as it was, 2nd Ed rules are fucking impenetrable unless you know them to well.
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This is an entirely fair point. A best-selling genre-making videogame used THAC0. THAC0. There's something fundamentally wrong with a universe that would allow such a thing to happen.
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Hey man. Subtraction based systems are TOTALLY intuitive. It is not BG's fault that you do not possess the BRAIN POWER to comprehend something as simple as THAC0. Go back to playing WoW.
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http://kabooooom.com/2012/03/sean-von-gorman-the-magic-of-promoting-comics/
Friend of mine I worked with at the theater is now a comic artist. He does not do things halfway and is awesome.
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Holy Crap, Pokemon Tower Defense!
While CK may not be a huge Tower Defense fan, I pretty much find them to be my favorite non-RPG genre of games ever since PvZ took over my life the first day I returned to the States.
Now... add RPG levelling, Monster-collecting, colorful sprite-art, Nintendo chip tunes, and a fairly fun humorous story to it and you've got a recipe for Djinn-bait.
My Pikachu is level 24. I chose a Charmander, but I totally need to trade in a Bulbasaur and Squirtle.
Yeah, I'm addicted, I can't wait until its available on iPhones~
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/04/killer_warp_drive/
Weaponising theoritcal physics well before it can ever be manufactured.
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http://io9.com/5890410/watch-the-simpsons-game-of-thrones-intro?tag=gameofthrones
I thought this was amusing enough, if you've seen the HBO series intro.
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(http://i.imgur.com/4y1Sx.jpg)
Hopefully that shows up.
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That is amazing.
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http://extra-credits.net/episodes/western-japanese-rpgs-part-1/
This week's extra credits is relevant to this forum. They're discussing the differences between WRPGs and JRPGs and trying to come up with a clear definition. It's only part one of three, but the comments section is already talking, and most of the responses contain interesting thoughts on the subject. (And a surprisingly low number of trolls for the internet!)
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Pretty interesting. I'm not sure if I agree with their thesis that genres are defined primarily by the emotions they seek to evoke from the player, though. Unlike movies, the mechanical way the player interacts with the game is crucially important as well.
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I don't think the argument is about evoking emotions, but more about fulfilling a need the player seeks - Challenge, Discovery, etc.
Though notably, I've found that most games I enjoy tend to offer a multitude of these things so I find it hard to define a genre through this method. But I'm willing to wait and see what their final conclusion is.
A few of the commenters have made your same point, too. Actually, I've noticed that this particular episode is bringing in a LOT of first-time posters to EC.net ...it's good to know that there's a lot of people who are interested in the subject (or at least like to argue about it?).
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Well it's an interesting subject!
Anyway, as far as challenge/discovery/narrative/etc. goes, it's worth noting that many RPGs do a good job of some but not others. Suikoden V and Mega Man X Command Mission succeed at very different things as far as those are concerned (and it's safe to say I played them, and particularly replayed them, for different reasons), yet I don't think many people would argue they're in different genres.
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As is the done thing, I was thinking of writing something on the topic of RPGs and people missing the point sometimes (the genre not necessarilly originating from actual Role Play since it roots from table top stuff which itself originated from war gaming and dungeon crawls. Serious RP in RPGs was something they grew into). Mostly inspired by the Extra Curricular podcast on the topic.
Then the main show started doing stuff and while not having that very point, vaguely touches on it noting that there is two roots to RPGs that we are drawing from and they are fairly diverse from each other. I can wait to see what they have to say over the next 2 or 3 weeks because EC is fucking awesome.
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Agreed. I found this subject pretty timely because of the ME3 bitching (its not an RPG anymore!), when RPG itself is... kind of an ill-defined genre that, in the modern age of gaming, is becoming a little outdated simply because of tech advancements allowing "RPG" elements to be included in more and more games.
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If you are using genres very broadly (which we do), then RPG still isn't bad. It captures a lot of the same overlaps as the source materials though. There is a lot of the elements of the systems cribbed and tied together even in something like Mass Effect. For a broad label they work. For a label for the ripping out of a level up/stats system and throwing it into another genre, for now at least, the RPG Elements are still clearly sourcing from within the genre. They don't define it, but they are kind of the credit given where it is due thing. This is where these systems grew and matured.
It is the other parts that make up an RPG that earns the game the title though. Fallout 3 is an RPG with FPS elements becaues it emphasises so many RPG concepts even as it distanced itself from the roots of its complex RPG systems.
The day we get a game you can clearly label an RPG that has none of the systems that are flagged as RPG Elements will be an exciting day indeed.
Part 2 is up for people who don't check it obsessively. http://extra-credits.net/episodes/western-japanese-rpgs-part-2/
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While I'm not convinced I agree with their basic premise (that using game mechanics as the primary genre definition is wholly outdated), I'm glad the second part brought up the idea that one of the appeals for RPGs is the raising or powering up of characters. I know one of the things that niggled in, say, KotOR was that while I did feel I was steadily getting better at dialogues, Force Persuasion, and the like, that I wasn't really getting appreciably better at combat. It seemed like aside from the key levels that allowed me to get new levels of Force Push, levelling up was more or less frivolous on the combat side.
I know some of this is particular to KotOR (limited meaningful skill selection), but I also know that's one of the things JRPGs do in a more effective way. I DO feel like my characters are getting stronger over the course of the game. Even games with fairly limited customization and same-y skillsets (Dragon Quest comes to mind) still give a great sense of getting stronger and overcoming more powerful enemies as you go.
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I don't feel like I'm making huge growths in power in KotOR or ME, but rather expanding my skill set (growing out more than up, if you will) but I would be much more confused if I did, considering that, for instance, ME1's character creation and intro boils down to you being a huge badass from "go."
I do feel FONV pulls this off pretty well though. Enemies like Veteran Rangers or Prime Legionaries are visually distinct and carry serious shit, and then there's the usual dudes in power armor/deathclaws. At the beginning you're spraying bullets from a 9mm hoping to hit, at the cap you take heads off at 50 paces with a Ranger Sequoia.
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It's an appealing thing in general, certainly. (Heck, one of the reasons Chocobo Hot and Cold is so fun is the way the chocobo gradually gets faster, in concert with the player legitimately getting more skilled at the mechanical part of the game.) But it's certainly not remotely unique to RPGs. Games such as Zelda, Metroid, Devil May Cry, etc., all very much feature an improving player character statistically, facing increasingly tougher enemies.
Still, as they bring up in the second episode, very few other genres actively encourage the player to grind to get more powerful. In Metroid, Zelda, Castlevania, Mega Man X, Devil May Cry, etc., the main way to get more powerful is just to find secrets. Some do have grinding to some extent (red orbs in DMC, item drops in Castlevania) but it's more limited than in most RPGs. So it's probably fair to say that statistically powering up as the game goes on is a bit of an RPG hallmark even if it's not one of the definining traits of the genre. One could even argue it's a necessary condition to be an RPG, just not a sufficient one. No other genre -requires- this (some platformers have it, but not all. A few racing games, but certainly not all. Some FPS, but not all. etc.), RPGs pretty much do. I've never played an RPG where the characters are statistically static throughout the game, although it seems at least possible that one might exist.
I think one of the reasons that JRPGs have declined in popularity somewhat is that some of the reasons people play them (that aforementioned progression, but also narrative storytelling, and to some degree open-world exploration) have been adopted by other genres. So you have people who really never liked RPGs mechanically (we have one or two here!) who have seen these other games and moved on.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc6jdnmBo-4
Mike Haggar gets all the ladies.
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Fun little article, and links to replies, about whether or not Batman is morally obligated to kill the Joker.
http://bigthink.com/ideas/42595?page=all (http://bigthink.com/ideas/42595?page=all)
As for the EC stuff, while they raise some interesting points, I can't see emotional investment really trumping the main method you interface with the game. Heck, in some ways, the traditional ways you interact with media don't matter so much as they do outside of games.
Phantasy Star 4 and Mass Effect both have sci-fi storylines where you go through death and loss while hopping from planet to planet in order to stop a threat to the whole galaxy that is coming from beyond the edges of reality. But I'd sure as hell call Phantasy Star 4 closer to FF6 in terms of feel than it ever is to Mass Effect.
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Well I don't think they are arguing that ME and PS4 should be lumped together like they are. Mass Effect has a huge Discovery component to it with the planetary exploration and embracing the space setting.
Phantasy Star handles planets and space like they are different continents and there is nothing new to be seen on any of them. They are just a tool to be leveraged in the narrative to tell a different compartmentalised story module. Probably centered around revenge or how much better the blonde haired blue eyed guy is than everyone else is and how awesome the blue haired anime chick is. Generally space and science are more like magic is in a sword and sorcery setting in PS than it is in ME. Two genres that are both escapist genres but speak to very different parts of the human psyche.
So yeah, fairly different games even with my ghetto application of their logic.
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Ugh... part 2 bugs me. They decided to go the direction of "Immersion=WRPG/Narrative=JRPG". And while I can see that in broad terms, their examples were things like "In a JRPG, your character has his/her own defined thoughts and personality, whereas YOU are the main character in a WRPG". This gives rise to the idea that RPGs from Japan with customizable/silent Protagonists are somehow WRPGs. Would Chrono Trigger be a WRPG, then? How about Persona 3? By this definition, POKEMON is a WRPG.
But then again, who knows? Maybe it is. Pokemon -does- have more emphasis on a free-roaming world, a non-definitive story that doesn't 'end' the game, and you get to choose your avatar's gender! Add in a Morality gauge and it has all of the things that BioWare's creator said that a "true RPG" needs to have. (Hmm... Thought exercise: How would a Morality gauge in Pokemon work? Can't use Dark, Ghost, or Poison Pokemon without going to the evil side?!)
And a link that's probably been seen here a few times already, but why not: http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/8006/bioware-you-can-put-a-j-in-front-of-it-but-final-fantasy-13-isnt-an-rpg
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That might be an argument if CT/P3/Pokeyman gave the player any bearing on the decisions of the character WRT the narrative. A lot of WRPGs give the main char a fuckton of dialogue, just no voice (Dragon Age, Fallouts, so on) which is exactly not what your examples do.
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And how the game might be affected without good game play to support it, much like Final Fantasy XIII was.
From hardcore BG fans. I am just going to roll my eyes and move on. Though that bit is taken out of context, since the interviewer talks about finding FF13's extreme linearity to be a grind which is reasonable enough.
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And how the game might be affected without good game play to support it, much like Final Fantasy XIII was.
From hardcore BG fans. I am just going to roll my eyes and move on. Though that bit is taken out of context, since the interviewer talks about finding FF13's extreme linearity to be a grind which is reasonable enough.
What I'd call the "FF13 experience" is actually not super-uncommon in actual RPGs. I'm told it's fairly prevalent in VtM circles especially. I even played a Shadowrun campaign that followed the mold. All you need is a GM who can't improvise and just tells you "no, you can't" whenever you want to do something that's not part of the plan. and then you watch GM-run dudes fight while occasionally getting to roll a dice.
So, much as it pains me, FF13 is actually a fairly faithful recreation of a style of tabletop RPG.
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That might be an argument if CT/P3/Pokeyman gave the player any bearing on the decisions of the character WRT the narrative. A lot of WRPGs give the main char a fuckton of dialogue, just no voice (Dragon Age, Fallouts, so on) which is exactly not what your examples do.
You get to make plenty of decisions that effect the narrative in CT/P3/Pokemon... Multiple ending paths in CT, which Social Links to focus on in P3, and... well, Pokemon doesn't have a story but you get to choose what kind of Pokemon Master you want to be, and which of the various optional sidequests involving Legendaries are worth taking on. The whole Pokemon experience reminds me a lot of WRPG MMO-style instances, honestly.
Though really, my point was more that these traits are -not- what divide JRPGs and WRPGs. I don't think of CT/P3/Pokemon as anymore of a WRPG than I think of Skyrim as a JRPG. But BioWare/Bethesda are the outliers to me. They're the most notable WRPGs, but they aren't the standard. There's quite a few very linear/narrative-focused "JRPG-style" RPGs made in the West, the Lord of the Rings games coming to mind immediately. I like them better, but I'm starting to suspect that the only real difference in WRPG and JRPG really *is* just Aesthetics.
It makes me want to play Septerra Core (an example from pt2 of the EC show that I'm assuming is a Western-made RPG with anime-style graphics) to see if that rings true. Notably, Breath of Death and Cthulhu Saves the World feel very much like JRPGs to me and have all the necessary aesthetics, but they were also -designed- to evoke that feeling, so it may be a bad example.
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From a narrative standpoint, there are less hard and fast rules and more just tendencies. It's less the narrative and more the gameplay differences that stand out for me. And not just the raw mechanics so much as the design philosophy behind each. A typical wRPG emphasizes learning and acquiring new tools in your travels, be it Sword of Maiming +2 or picking up 5 levels in your herbology score. A typical jRPG emphasizes training, a very shonen-esque style of characters who explicitly push themselves to gain literal physical and psychic/magical/mental strength, and on making their existing arsenal deadlier rather than replacing it outright. Exceptions exist, but all the ones I can think of are also games often cited as hybridizing the two genres.
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Most of your examples are distinct linear paths there Djinn rather than a set of individual diverse choices that make up the prototypical Western style rpg. Things like KotOR do have fairly clear paths (light/dark) but at all points you are free to diverge from the path whenever you feel you should/want to etc. Stopping a Social Link for example isn't really a valid story divergence. It is burning a bridge rather than a divergent plot. There is some minor decisions in major plot points but it is a binary choice rather than a myriad of choices (or illusions of choice) that you get in the more WRPG style.
Now commonly people will not actually not diverge from the path, but that itself is part of the differences they describe. The reinforced binary choice chosen over and over is part of the expression of self where as a single big choice allows for more fluid narrative overall.
Now lots of WRPGs give an illusion of two choices and may actually not even have one mechanically (branched dialogue that leads to a single narrative path). That ties into the argument that underneath similar mechanics the major difference is the feeling and style rather than a mechanic difference.
So you are back to their argument that you should t define genres by the mechanics but by the emotional response.
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DJ: The difference (and reasoning why I certainly wouldn't call Pokemon/P3/CT wRPGs) is that there is absolutely no sensation of actually controlling a "character." Much as I've been complaining and debating about the merits of auto-dialogue/dialogue-choice (re: ME3), mains like the Warden or the Bhaalspawn, while silent, can be distinctly realized as characters of sort via dialogue options, interactions, plot choices, etc.
Yeah, they're player avatars, but the game is structured around pretending they are characters and have a place in the world.
Chrono/Pokemon Trainer/Minato are not so much even fake characters as warm bodies that serve entirely to move the plot forward. You can't really, within the confines of the game, create a "character" for them in any meaningful regard. Oh sure, you can play make believe and write fan fiction or something, but that is taking place outside the context of the game.
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In addition, Chrono Trigger has no real "roleplay" (in the WRPG sense) aspect. At one point in the game, Crono dies (spoilers right guys?), and you go on playing as the rest of the party. The few decisions the player makes in the story (i.e., when to fight Lavos, which quests to do in the Fated Hour, etc.) are not decisions that the player is making within the game as Crono, but rather decisions the player is making as the puppetmaster described in the EC video. In that sense it is very much a JRPG.
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Games + $$$
http://www.xbox360achievements.org/news/news-11092-Mass-Effect-3-Ships-3-5-Million-Copies-Worldwide.html
http://www.xbox360achievements.org/news/news-11096-GDC-2012--Call-of-Duty--Black-Ops-Generated-$250-Million-in-Map-Packs-Alone--Says-Analyst.html
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That might be an argument if CT/P3/Pokeyman gave the player any bearing on the decisions of the character WRT the narrative. A lot of WRPGs give the main char a fuckton of dialogue, just no voice (Dragon Age, Fallouts, so on) which is exactly not what your examples do.
You get to make plenty of decisions that effect the narrative in CT/P3/Pokemon... Multiple ending paths in CT, which Social Links to focus on in P3, and... well, Pokemon doesn't have a story but you get to choose what kind of Pokemon Master you want to be, and which of the various optional sidequests involving Legendaries are worth taking on. The whole Pokemon experience reminds me a lot of WRPG MMO-style instances, honestly.
Though really, my point was more that these traits are -not- what divide JRPGs and WRPGs. I don't think of CT/P3/Pokemon as anymore of a WRPG than I think of Skyrim as a JRPG. But BioWare/Bethesda are the outliers to me. They're the most notable WRPGs, but they aren't the standard. There's quite a few very linear/narrative-focused "JRPG-style" RPGs made in the West, the Lord of the Rings games coming to mind immediately. I like them better, but I'm starting to suspect that the only real difference in WRPG and JRPG really *is* just Aesthetics.
It makes me want to play Septerra Core (an example from pt2 of the EC show that I'm assuming is a Western-made RPG with anime-style graphics) to see if that rings true. Notably, Breath of Death and Cthulhu Saves the World feel very much like JRPGs to me and have all the necessary aesthetics, but they were also -designed- to evoke that feeling, so it may be a bad example.
This is really only true if you are using the most literal interpretation of "JRPG" and "WRPG" possible and then select counter-examples to make your argument true. If you talk about genre and not simply classify them by country of origin (because they really are two entirely different genres. FF7 and Fallout came out around the same time, but have as much in common with each other as Command and Conquer does with Freespace) then your whole argument kind of stops making sense.
The thing about the Social Links, the CT endings, and retrieving Crono is that they aren't decisions as much as they are bonus content or, well, multiple endings. There is no reason NOT to do all the Social Links or get Crono back. Claiming that they are choices the player makes in the narrative would then define the player's ability to continue playing the game at all rather than not finishing it as a decision with narrative weight. Only true if you want to define "narrative choice" in the most broad way possible. Yes, "keep going forward" is a decision, that was the whole point of Lonesome Road, but it is not enough of a decision to start claiming it's a meaningful decision in a roleplaying sense unless you want to decide that literally everything is now an RPG.
Also, how is BW/Obsidian/BethSoft not "the standard" anymore than Square is "the standard" for JRPGs? They're the leading studios of the genre. They set the bar for everyone else. I mean, look at the link right above me: Mass Effect 3 has moved 3.5 million copies already. 3.5 million copies says your game is "the game."
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http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/165386/GDC_2012_Psychological_advice_for_making_players_care.php
I did not hear about this until Monday morning, but apparently this is newsworthy.
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Yay! I had been meaning to ask how it went.
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Serious grats! ^_^
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Nice!
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Yay, congrats!
And that was even an interesting read to me personally, I approve.
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In other GDC stuff, JE Sawyer put the presentation slides he did on his blog. Should be required reading for anyone who wants to make an RPG. http://diogenes-lamp.info/GDC12_Do_Say_The_Right_Thing.pdf (http://diogenes-lamp.info/GDC12_Do_Say_The_Right_Thing.pdf)
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Yay, congrats!
And that was even an interesting read to me personally, I approve.
Whenever they put the full slides online I'll link them, because that article does stuff like condense 16 slides into two sentences o_O. Anyway....
So like Grefter-bait kickstarters, and stuff:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2
Apparently college age males lose mental capacity when they think there might be a woman watching them.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-interacting-with-woman-leave-man-cognitively-impaired
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So I read this for class the other day, and I found it very enlightening regarding what science is good for and how we can justify creating environmental policy in the face of massive uncertainty.
The Art of the Unsolveable: Locating the Vital Center of Science for Environmental Law and Policy
www.law.arizona.edu/faculty/FacultyPubs/Documents/Adelman/ALS07-17.pdf
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So...I didn't realize just how deep the Gamasutra rabbit hole goes...
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/165453/From_the_Editor_5_key_takeaways_from_GDC_2012.php
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Nice. Glad to see other people finding out how much fun your brain is. I look forward to reading the whole thing sometime!
I will have to think about Wasteland 2. I am kind of iffy about giving my money to Brian Fargo these days. The gap between his recent record and Tim Schafer's is quite wide. He is always an interesting guy to read statements by and all that, just not totally on board with a game he is doing actually.
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Also, apparently Stackpole is doing the writing, which means nobody will have conversations, they'll just make speeches at each other. Anyone not in some kind of combat unit will be either complacent, incompetent or comically evil. And the main character won't have a personality, just lots of things that make him special.
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http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/western-japanese-rpgs-part-3
End of Extra Credit's jrpg/wrpg series. Therein they try to summarize why the jrpg has 'declined' and for the most part they're spot on.
Mind you, I not only enjoy but prefer menus, by and large. The issue is really that most games don't present a design that compliments them. I mean, there's an audience for 4x games and the like, because there's no shortage of people who enjoy being given goals and resources and devising ways to both increase those resources, expand their goals, and leverage what they have to help them achieve it. (Of course, probably hurts that I actively dislike shooters and an overwhelming majority of wRPGs have used that for combat in the past 5 or 6 years.)
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I quite liked the first two entries, but by comparison, didn't find too much in that segment I found to be good analysis.
Oh, I agree with the basic premise that other genres came in and stole JRPGs' near-monopoly on narrative and abnegation (in fact I made that very argument here just last week). I agree that this has to some degree stripped the JRPG fandom down to people who enjoy their combat. I have a large disagreement with them, like CK and several other people on their forums, on the suggestion that there's no market for menu- or turn-based combat, however.
The rest of this segment managed to say remarkably little, beyond truisms like "you should pay money for games you think are good", well... yeah? That's kinda how markets work. People already do that.
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CK, are there 4x games that use menu-based combat? All the ones I can think of either use RTS combat (SotS, Total War) or automate combat entirely (Civ, GalCiv 2). I feel like menu-driven, turn-based 4x gameplay existing doesn't say much one way or another about it, as they are almost opposites: the 4x games tend to use menus for everything BUT combat.
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Sorry, I meant, 4x as a genre is very menu based, or was last time I played with one. The combat is usually an exception! Although I dunno that it's the big draw? I've only played a couple but the ones I'm familiar with had "simulate battle" or the like. Granted, maybe that's just for late-game when battles will tend to be big curb stomps or something.
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I think the combat is the big draw in Total War. Not as much other franchises. But it's really a hybrid 4x/RTS and it's billed that way. 4x in general is... I dont know if I would call it "menu based" in the same way. It's how you build stuff but most modern 4x games have a really RTS-style point and click UI even when they don't use that combat style (like Civ 5 for example). So that's what I would draw parallels to more than anything else.
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Master of Magic had turn based battles IIRC, and that's 4x.
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HOMM does too, but not menu-driven, which was more my point.
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Civ doesn't have menu driven combat, but especially early Civ games have super menu based everything else. Towns are the big highlight, but research trees, diplomacy, Advisors (lol) and generally all navigation until you learn hotkeys are very menu driven.
I would also consider a large portion of HoMM to be menu based for similar things. Basic movement and direct combat blissfully are not though with a standard interactive point and click interface. (Do we even try to call it by the rebranded Might and Magic Heroes? It doesn't roll off the tongue as well and MMH looks like a lame version of MMA).
The thing 4x avoids with its menus that JRPGs fall trap to is nested menus. Pick what you want to do, pick what type of thing you want to do that you chose to do. Use an item, pick what item you want to use, pick who you want to use that item on. It kind of doesn't if you consider Towns as a specific menu, but I think that is overly abstracting the implementation.
I don't mind me some menu driven combat and clearly like JRPGs that are coming out even now still, but menu implementation hasn't been a particularly strong point for years and more complex Western stuff falls prey to it as well (sup Neverwinter Nights? I heard you like radial menus so I put radial menus in your radial menus so you can menu while you menu). By coopting other genres combat systems Western stuff hasn't really solved UI design issues so much as side stepped them as they got better at it (Sup Mass Effect 1? I heard you wanted gunz so I got you 10 levels of 20 different brands of gunz for 4 different types of gunz).
There is solutions to it that kind of work. As much as I kind of loathe it myself, the wheel that Persona 3/4 (and 2?) used kind of works to remove some of the drudgery. It is still a menu but icons instead of raw text go a ways and cuts down on screen real estate compared to Final Fantasy's big bars everywhere (with added kludge in the top right corner for FF13 or your map and compass for FF12 if I am remembering right). I prefer the BoF 3/4 or Wild Arms directional inputs. It is still super menu based, but it really cuts down on the button presses at the macro level of the menus so makes it that much less intrusive and adds more muscle memory being able to be used in your menus. Bonus points if your menu can be used one handed by having at least L1/2 be at the very least Accept. Not that I want specifically less interactive menus, but if your menu driven combat system requires two hands to use? Good gods that is over the top. That would be like having to use a keyboard in a point and click adventure game. You have a perfectly functional input system in one place. Sure let you use X to accept or whatever, but don't neglect the shoulder buttons as perfectly decent inputs.
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CK/NEB: I... am not quite sure his point and yours are necessarily exclusive? There is definitely a subset of people who don't mind/like menu based mechanics (ya'll, board gamers, etc), but I think it pushes more in-line with something NEB said earlier. The market for people who want menu based games is simply smaller and, now that the same narratives and such can come out of other genres, people who were originally held captive by menu based systems were freed to run into the fields and roll among the tulips.
He does push it a bit far (re: menus being unengaging, although that's a topic for another time), but I think the core of the argument is sound?
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Yeah, basically the style of menu most rpgs use is suited to NES-level input schemes. You only really have "okay" and "cancel" so you need menus within menus which is functional but puts a lot of work between the player and doing anything. In a PC game, with a mouse, you still have menus for things but you can skip two or three layers because if you need to interact with something you click on it and bring up it's menu, and that's assuming you don't have a hotkey option for that action. So yeah, in that sense there's some definite lack of changing with the times, there's occasional games like SMRPG that at least acknowledge hey, we have these other buttons, they can do things but it is really sort of the exception.
Andrew: Obviously. But even given that, there's a bigger audience for that sort of thing than people realize and it hasn't really been targeted.
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http://www.examiner.com/console-gaming-in-national/baldur-s-gate-enhanced-edition-coming-this-summer
I'd post www.baldursgate.com but it is borked right now.
What can I say? I'm excited.
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http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/andre-the-giant-proving-size-matters/
Greatest man of all time.
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That was really interesting!
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http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/andre-the-giant-proving-size-matters/
Greatest man of all time.
The original article:
http://www.drunkard.com/issues/10_06/10_06_andre_giant.html (http://www.drunkard.com/issues/10_06/10_06_andre_giant.html)
I used to have a subscription to this magazine, back when they offered them. Richard English is one of my favorite writers they have. He also did this one on Presidents.
http://www.drunkard.com/issues/56/56-founding-drunkards.html (http://www.drunkard.com/issues/56/56-founding-drunkards.html)
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http://www.doitmyself.org/2012/03/axe-cop-cake.html
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http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/andre-the-giant-proving-size-matters/
Greatest man of all time.
I've read that article before, and it is amazing.
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http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html
Can't unsee.
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Munch still looks good in Teal and Orange. The Scream is as always completely impeccable.
Not really a stunning thing and it isn't always a bad thing even in that colour range (It being done in a comic book movie doesn't bother me, they are supposed to be larger than life. Also, Tron? Really? The original movie was blues and oranges all over the fucking place).
Yeah totally overused most of the time though. It is like bullet time and a crane shots and a million and one other visual effects innovations before it. Overused by a lot of schlock. When people get sick of it or something new and shiny comes along the next thing will be overused. It is just the shiny jump to Digital instead of Film kicking in.
Which is why you should stop watching stuff not Tarantino if it really bothers you. Mmmmm dat film stock.
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http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html
Can't unsee.
I can unsee because I'm colorblind and never saw it in the first place. But I learned that when I'm pretending not to be colorblind, I should describe people's skin as being orange and they will find that believable. *nods*
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Well, since a few people expressed desire to read more feminist stuff, couple of links:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/helen-lewis-hasteley/2011/11/comments-rape-abuse-women
Female bloggers on the internet talk about the abuse they receive regularly.
And while we're on the subject, a random anecdote along the same lines:
http://storify.com/charlesarthur/oh-hai-sexism
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Just picking at a few things in the first link.
At least 95 per cent of actual rapists are still on the streets. That's the real problem. We need to address that.
This irrirates me. Made up statistic and a vague statement about trying to solve a gigantic social problem as a brief note at the end of Smurthwaite's piece. Bad form there.
Gendered abuse should be seen as a form of hate speech, because that's what it is. Website owners should remember that misogynistic comments do cause harm and should not be tolerated. If women writers complain to the police of threats, they should be taken seriously. At the moment, there is too much complacency around the issue and women are afraid to speak out. It's a situation that shames us all and it's time to say "enough is enough".
Yeah, hell if I know how to solve that problem (Or where to set the boundry.) One thing that was commented on and that I'm seeing is that attaching FB/Twitter accounts to formerly anon comments does help to deflect a lot of that shit.
The second link-
Kane comes off as completely unprofessional. She went about her disagreement with the video in exactly the wrong way (taking to twitter, being nasty in he responses to the company from the getgo).
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And while we're on the subject, a random anecdote along the same lines:
http://storify.com/charlesarthur/oh-hai-sexism
I only read the first half, maybe there's some shocking stuff in the second part or something, but...registering a complaint about the content of an ad is exactly, EXACTLY the kind of thing a professional should have the courtesy to bring up in private before blasting someone for it in public. Criticizing the woman for speaking out, addressing her tone rather than the content of her message, was completely appropriate. Particularly because they had a working relationship. IF she had complained in private, and they had brushed her off, and she had told them that she was going to make a public statement about it, THEN criticizing them publicly would have been totally warranted. But she didn't do that.
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As someone with a truely unprofessional and vulgar mouth that badly needs to curbed I am insulted at the idea that saying "fucking gross" once constitutes being constantly berated for it all night and and being told how the person on the receiving end has a familly. The ad is "fucking gross" -> personal insults to them directly and about their brand. What up logic? I made you an egg sandwich now lets go fly to the moon because we are Doritos.
She was commenting in public on a public piece unaffiliated from her company. I don't really care how "unprofessional" that was personally. That sounds like a consumer commenting on a product she is ostensibly part of the target audience for. Also I don't really consider her commenting outside work hours on something that is vaguely related to her employer or having talked to a guy once or twice outside work hours or being interviewed for contract work that was not followed up on a working relationship.
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Oh, she's not entirely without fault in all this. She's one of those young whippersnappers who doesn't know her manners.
But a response of "HOW DARE YOU USE POOR MANNERS WITH ME. LET ME TALK TO YOUR EMPLOYER, AND NOT EVEN ADDRESS YOUR COMPLAINT." is frighteningly douchey.
It's on the level of people on the internet who point out grammar mistakes in other people's posts, and assert that they're in college and you're probably just some 13-year-old so they're way smarter than you and don't need to even address your arguments because your arguments must obviously be faulty and inferior to theirs. Basically, someone whose logical fallacy level is unusually high even by GameFAQs standards. (Side note: I love it when someone tells me they're probably smarter than me because they're in college. Oh, you want to get into a credential war with ME, do you?)
Below the average standards of GameFAQs really isn't how the head of a company should address a complaint.
Speaking of people who should have taken things private, why didn't THEY go private with "hey, next time could you please avoid swearing--sometimes my kids see my Twitter". Why did this need to be in their public response? (And in fact the thing they publicly responded with instead of addressing the issue).
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Speaking of people who should have taken things private, why didn't THEY go private with "hey, next time could you please avoid swearing--sometimes my kids see my Twitter". Why did this need to be in their public response? (And in fact the thing they publicly responded with instead of addressing the issue).
Because they're also not very professional. Facebook and Twitter have a weird dynamic, where a conversation between 2 people is both 2-way communication and public statement. Interesting dynamic, that. Kinda reminds me of the old days where Men of Sophistication would publish their Letters.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDGORiD82rQ
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http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6747386/skyrim-hoarders
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http://vansunsportsblogs.com/2012/03/28/canucks-kick-off-this-is-our-home-campaign-remind-people-that-only-idiots-destroy-their-own-home/
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Spoiler: Sean Bean dies at the end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJODirze5EM
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Hey man. He lived through Silent Hill.
Poor bastard.
Edit: Reminding myself that he was in that movie led to the discovery that apparently the second Silent Hill movie (Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, please kill me now) is in post-production and Sean Bean will be reprising his role.
Maybe he'll luck out and die early.
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns?ref=category
I refuse to believe I'm the only person who cares about this.
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http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/fallout
I now have a free copy of Fallout and you have no excuse to not have one too.
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Man, I got myself a free copy of Fallout from DLC1.
Y'know, back in the olden days before console manufacturers started using the acronym "DLC" to mean downloadable content. Also, when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
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That's much appreciated, since my copy of Fallout (but not Fallout 2, despite them living in the same jewel case) seems to have vanished in my move to DC.
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http://well-of-souls.com/civ/civ5_expansion.html (http://well-of-souls.com/civ/civ5_expansion.html)
A pretty comprehensive breakdown of the new features in Civ 5's expansion. Possibly the most awesome is the new scenario being added: "Empires of the Smoky Skies," a Verne-esque sci-fi conversion. Haven't been this excited since they added a space 4X to BTS.
Also the 20th Century is being expanded out more; the WW1-era technologies are now their own era between Industrial and Modern.
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http://www.lettersofnote.com/
Interesting/amusing personal correspondence from eras past. Often from noted writers, sometimes not.
This one's pretty great: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/to-my-old-master.html
Also, Kurt Vonnegut writing to people who burn Kurt Vonnegut books: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html
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Incredible stuff. I found Safire's speech which Nixon would have read in the event of an Apollo 11 catastrophe (http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/11/in-event-of-moon-disaster.html)particularly moving.
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http://extra-credits.net/episodes/kinect-disconnect/
More Extra Credits being awesome.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-next-time-someone-says-the-internet-killed-reading-books-show-them-this-chart/255572/#.T4hL4aOvfhc.twitter
I enjoy the debunking of the myths that the world was so much better 'back in the old days'.
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http://www.iheartchaos.com/post/21204292055/ihc-after-dark-bird-likes-making-sex-noises
NSFW, but surprisingly cute.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/rise-in-scientific-journal-retractions-prompts-calls-for-reform.html?pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me
A close to home problem for me.
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http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/how-valve-devalued-video-games-and-why-thats-good-news-for-developers-and-p
Nothing really surprising except one thing: I knew steam sales were probably making some developers more money by virtue of people buying games then never playing them, but I didn't realize that in some cases it raised the developer's revenue by a factor of 40.
Holy shit.
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Achievements are crack.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0GEHJEeTsw
Linked earlier in chat, but worth sharing further.
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http://www.vulture.com/2012/04/fox-plans-to-animate-viral-comic-axe-cop.html?mid=twitter_vulture
Axe Cop is coming to TV.
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Sadly it is not live action. Tim Thomas could use an acting career.
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http://www.youtube.com/user/HowToBasic
A youtube channel on how to make basic meals.
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http://extra-credits.net/episodes/harassment/
Might not be relevant to people here, but deserves spread around regardless.
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Certainly a subject worth discussing, at the very least.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure about an actual solution. Valve has posited an interesting idea or two (DotA2 being F2P for people who aren't dicks, for example) but, to a degree, I think this is a problem of community and, to some degree, needs to be addressed at that level.
Following the Cross Assault debacle, it is somewhat distressing to see how many people not only condone this sort of behavior, but, in fact, encourage and embrace it. That's how the fighting game community is! We're proud of being "real!" Why should we coddle all of these "everyone's a special snowflake baby generation."
This particular EC circled around the LoL forums for quite a while, with a lot of people endorsing the ideas, but, at the same time, there was an equal amount whose opinion was more or less "toughen up, babies" and "it is just the internet!"
It is somewhat sad to see that, in this age, where the internet makes up a very real portion of many people's lives, where your cyber-life and real-life and can be quite interconnected, people are willing to so thoughtlessly ignore that your internet life and real life aren't really that separate anymore.
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http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html
mind-bogglingly effective optical illusions.
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seriously, you mind? will totally boggle.
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http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/ol/olp/35081-heidi-4-paws
This is like Fenrir and Eph made a movie if they were second generation Belgian migrants.
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That was... disturbed.
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http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/03/us/bin-laden-documents/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 Pretty cool read. US recovered a bunch of Bin Laden's papers after his death, and they are now being published.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSO0lCO3TIg
...whut.
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The Avengers have a new teammate!
http://i.imgur.com/lROSl.gif
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-epa-and-harsh-punishments/2012/05/07/gIQApMqo8T_story.html
Got a letter to the editor published.
:)
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Shill.
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http://m.ign.com/videos/games/mechwarrior-online-pc-18954 (http://m.ign.com/videos/games/mechwarrior-online-pc-18954)
MechWarrior online gameplay videos. One for each weight class plus one on the mech lab. Sweet mother of fuck.
Now if they'd just tell me if I can design my own paint scheme....
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All of the pokemon redone as variants on Ryhorn:
http://unequeteimpossible.tumblr.com/
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Congrats on the posted article, Jim.
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Wait a minute, James Darling? Wasn't that the name of the father in Lady and the Tramp?
Edit: nevermind, that was Jim Dear. Darling was another character in the movie.
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And let's not forget the clan of Darlings in Peter Pan, none of whom are named James. Also the Mets pitcher, to whom I am not related to the best of my knowledge.
In other news, Mother's Day approaches.
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-state-departments-official-travel-advisory-for-your-mothers-house
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Saw this, thought of Tide.
http://i.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/photoshop/9/1/4/128914_v1.jpg
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http://www.wimp.com/dogpitch/
Dog with perfect pitch
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I am reminded of that old Tom and Jerry skit about "The Cat that could play, and the Mouse that could waltz"
Only instead, we have a dog and bird. Weird.
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Live in or around Northern Ireland?
You should be an extra in Game of Thrones, season 3.
https://www.extrasni.com/news/Game%20of%20Thrones%20Season%20Three!%20
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Life imitates FF7
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/05/spacex-launch-aborted-international-space-station-nasa.php
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hunterd/zombie-based-learning-geography-taught-in-zombie-a
Shut up and take my money.
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http://www.erinhoffman.com/wp/?p=535
So...a week or two ago, there was a blog post attempting to explain male privilege to straight white males by calling being a straight white male life's "lowest difficulty setting." It was...ok, nothing really worth linking.
Then Erin Hoffman made this post and it is brilliant.
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I think Hoffman is too quick to call the article an abject failure. She says:
I pored through the comments . . . I was looking for a single instance of gamer (or non-gamer anti-privilege person) saying “hey I never understood privilege before but now I TOTALLY GET IT.”
Except there isn’t one. I couldn’t find a single one. And I don’t expect to.
Well of course not. How often on the internet do people write in to tell you they were wrong before but are right now? Ain't gonna happen, not often, anyway. But that doesn't mean it hasn't connected. I believe, for a lot of readers, the article showed them a way to articulate an issue that is not easy to talk about. Change is a process; the article is just a drop in the bucket. I'd be willing to wager most people don't come to most realizations via "aha!" moments so much as via thinking about things, letting ideas percolate, seeing issues from different perspectives. It seems to me that people on the fence about this issue are going to be the least likely to chime in on the comment thread, especially since it's a polarizing issue.
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Imagine if, according to random drawing, you had received a game that only included support for 77% of the achievements.
Wait, why would I care about this?
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Is it supposed to be some kind of revelation that an industry which is predominantly patronized by straight dudes and staffed heavily by the same releases products aimed at such? I always figured that was just a self-evident truth.
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Replace "achievements" with "game content" for more elf-friendly metaphorizing abstraction.
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I'm honestly quite flabbergasted that achievements would be considered the main reason to play a game (in the way money is seen as the main reason to work). Just shows how little I understand some gamers' mentalities.
(My flip comment is of course irrelevant to the article as a whole and the point it was getting at, which was a good read.)
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Gamer mentality is a little bit of its own mystery box anyhow. The metaphor -does- reach well into the stratum of gamers where the particular issues of privilege are at their most pressing, though, but come to think of it, it -is- imperfect in the sense that it's segregating.
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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120525/04185919074/tv-networks-file-legal-claims-saying-skipping-commercials-is-copyright-infringement.shtml?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
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Industry always hates it when the game changes. That the distribution of media is such a clusterfuck only adds to the fun -- hence the lawsuits.
I'm most interested in the copyright arguments two of the networks made -- they own a copyright on broadcasting the show with commercials? But when they sell the shows on DVD, there are no commercial breaks.
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I'm not intimately familiar with copyright law, but the article's take on this strikes me as wrong:
Fox first argues that merely recording the entire prime time lineup is making "bootleg" copies of the videos. That's a rather stunning claim, and a direct challenge to the Supreme Court's ruling in the Betamax case, which made it clear that time-shifting is legal. The networks are claiming that this is not the same thing, because the "copies" aren't being made by the user, but by DISH itself for use by the user. Beyond being a meaningless distinction, it's also not true. As the Cablevision case concerning a "remote DVR" offered by the service provider showed, if the actions are at the request of the consumer, then it's the consumer making the call.
There's plenty of room to argue that this is legally the same or different from what was upheld in Betamax (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax_case). Dish Network will argue that because the ultimate decision to skip or not to skip is left to the viewer, this is a difference only in degree. The networks will argue it's a difference in kind. I think the networks win that argument, and I think the big difference is that the feature to skip commercials, and the equipment viewers are gonna use to skip them, are both licensed to viewers but owned and controlled by Dish. If Dish changes its features to remove commercial skip, viewers can't do anything about it. Should be fun to see how it all plays out.
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http://audioboo.fm/boos/716528-the-petals-fall-twice-a-love-story
what the fuck did i just listen to
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Better love story:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/5c061dfb20/fifty-shades-of-blue-with-selena-gomez?playlist=featured_videos
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Best love story:
http://www.jest.com/video/174214/gilbert-gottfried-reads-fifty-shades-of-grey
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An unexpected person has become Asbel's loyal fanboy.
http://blog.esuteru.com/archives/6256189.html
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In case anyone missed the new Humble Indie Bundle, given that it's probably the best yet:
https://www.humblebundle.com/
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And now I own Psychonauts four times.
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I now own Psychonauts twice and have played it zeroce.
I now own Bastion twice.
But more importantly, I now own Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
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http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/02/24/expanding-the-house-naughty-dog-39-s-second-team.aspx
Hey, I got referenced in an interview (in the video). :)
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Not sure how many of you have read Ready Player One, but the basic story is that an eccentric multi-billionaire who created and ran the world's biggest internet game (which shortly substitutes for the internet) has died and left behind a three-part challenge, where the winner will get controlling shares in his company.
Anyway, the paperback version is out now, and the author Ernest Cline decided to give away a DeLorean to someone... who can complete three challenges. (http://www.ernestcline.com/rp1contest/)
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I've really been enjoying Kickstarter. It seems to be just the thing for authors or video game creators to get going.
Here's an author trying to make a video game:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang?ref=card
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One of the guys working on that is actually a personal freind of mine(Joe Brassey, if anyone's curious. Once he manages to get his own writing published intstead of just the Subutai main projects, I will smack people with the name more~), so I was just about to toss that link here myself.
Gonna be tossing some stuff at them myself, of course. And quite excited to see what the project manages to look like once they get it done.
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http://www.aroundtheworldin800days.com/
Couple of brits are going to drive around the world. They are about to start the process.
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http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/06/12/should-the-kkk-get-to-adopt-a-highway/ (http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/06/12/should-the-kkk-get-to-adopt-a-highway/)
Hahahah what
I love Missouri's answer to this.
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http://vimeo.com/42254051
Italian Spiderman; for reals this time, not just the trailer.
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:O
You. Hyping Italian Spiderman. Marry me.
Also you might want to check out Danger 5 if you enjoyed Italian Spiderman. Same dudes doing broadcast television and it is glorious.
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In this link, they stream puppies. (http://www.ustream.tv/sfshiba)
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I saw Haman, more than one of her.
http://i.minus.com/jZS3RxCkBqSWQ.jpg
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I absolutely
hate love England, and I fucking want to see/hear this shit ASAP while picnicking.
http://www.juxtapoz.com/Current/the-singing-ringing-tree
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http://ww1.cheapshark.com/
This website basically keeps track of what games are on sale on what website. It is awesome.
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http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5978428874?page=1
Because Diablo 3's real-money auction house wasn't dubious enough, now Blizzard is using it to basically steal money from customers via rules lawyering.
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Terms of use agreements like that are exactly the kind of contract most susceptible to having courts ignore their more egregious terms. Expect to see a class action a couple years down the line if they don't fix this problem. Blizzard is a remarkably good target for a class action lawsuit because it will be easy and inexpensive to get information on who the class members are, meaning lower costs for class lawyers, and greater likelihood that the class gets certified.
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Also, not to sidetrack things, but dubious as the RMAH is, it's better than letting trades run over eBay / PayPal, which is what happens if you allow trading but don't have a real-money in-game way to trade. There's even more shadiness there.
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Well yeah. Paypal IS a bank, except completely unregulated. RMAH is just like a bank but unregulated.
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I'm on board with that reasoning in principle, but the RMAH is better than a black market because you run the risk that a fly-by-night item site will pull something like stealing your balance and saying "fuck you, that's why" when you complain. So where does that leave us now?
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It leaves us swearing black and blue about the same thing people have been screaming about D3 who have actually been playing the game. Blizzards authentication process falling down in all parts of the game. Should authenticate receiving money to Blizz account, not upon spending the money.
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Personally I just switched back to SC2. Less frustrating BNET.
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And yet still always online and just as vulnerable to authentication server issues.
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PLAN YOUR BACKSTABS CAREFULLY RICHARD
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I deleted all the others, but this one makes me laugh.
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come at me bro
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http://www.progressiveboink.com/2012/6/14/3084348/the-second-40-worst-rob-liefeld-drawings (http://www.progressiveboink.com/2012/6/14/3084348/the-second-40-worst-rob-liefeld-drawings)
Pretty much exactly what it says in the link. Is it just me or does the person in the second-to-last panel in drawing #37 look like he has Down's syndrome? His eyes just seem really far apart, and he's got that facial expression.
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http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/internet/2012/07/what-online-harassment-looks
Online harassment story; kind of scary
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Still doesn't top the collected works of Sonichu fans (http://www.sonichu.com)
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http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/internet/2012/07/what-online-harassment-looks
Online harassment story; kind of scary
Drop the kind of part. 4chan does seem to attract the real winners of the internet.
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http://kotaku.com/5924518
Massive glitch in FF6 that lets you do all kinds of hilarious/weird things.
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A more thorough exploration of that particular glitch, among others.
http://lparchive.org/Breaking-Final-Fantasy-VI/
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A more thorough exploration of that particular glitch, among others.
http://lparchive.org/Breaking-Final-Fantasy-VI/
As a bonus, you aren't supporting Kotaku's "jouralism" by using your link. What was the thought process of that article, "I'm out of ideas and my deadline is tomorrow, let's write about this thing I saw last year on Something Awful"?
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Gaming journalism makes sports journalism look good. That is a truly impressive feat.
-
Any site with daily assigned content is going to have its ups and downs. So meh. It is the way gaming news falls down with the big news that is the reason it truly fails.
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Overdrift (http://youtu.be/N2IWxqvsSY8) is the story of two brothers, united by a love of drift racing but divided by fate. Everyone said Duke Kagemura couldn't do it, but then he decided he WOULD do it, only to be told he was drifting way too hard. When tragedy strikes, his brother, the world's leading expert on Dinopictography, tries to put his life back together when a terrifying discovery shakes up his life and casts doubt on everything he knows.
LET'S DRIFT.
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I'm bothered that the production values on that were so good.
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And yet the automatic transmission was okay?
DUKE OUT.
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Windows 8 stuff
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57389397-75/how-to-uh-turn-windows-8-off/
With the new OS, Microsoft has set up a new hybrid boot-up process that lets you boot up more quickly. But to achieve this faster speed, Windows 8 actually needs to go into hibernation mode rather than a full shut down.
By moving the Shut down option to a more remote spot, Microsoft may be assuming that people will let their PCs hibernate instead of shutting them down completely. But I think users will be thrown by the lack of an out-in-the-open Shut down button.
Turning Windows 8 off is possible, just not convenient and intuitive. Habits will naturally change. Soon: Millions of computers always being in hibernation mode to avoid the terrible 1 minute long boot up.
This definitely wins "Most meaningless waste of electricity during an environmental crisis" Anything to stay innovative and competitive.
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The terrible threat of standby power is in fact pretty much a load of bullshit. A PC with its monitors off waiting to boot up uses fuck all power. Literally not even a thing worth caring about when trying to cut down on your power bill etcetc. Getting people to turn off unused lights is a far more meaningful saving.
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I seem to generally recall that I've heard a computer uses more power booting up then it does while hibernating for periods.
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Yeah, to be sure, standby is an issue for some bits of electronics when everybody starts sticking it in (cable boxes, chargers for things that aren't being charged, etc.) but for computers it's fine. Sure, in aggregate the cost is notable, but if people would just run washing machines on cold (or even warm/cold) that saves waaaaaaaaaay more power. Or setting their thermostats one degree farther in nature's direction. Or not using electric hair dryers. Everything else is a rounding error compared to stuff like that.
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Sure, there are worse things out there that can be easily changed, but that's not really the point. The point is that it's a change of habits for the worse that's engineered here. As opposed to all those changes for the better that could be done by everyone. (But we can't expect that to happen fast because old habits die hard)
And obviously, Windows' sales are so high even the smallest changes matter.
Fair point Andrew. I don't have any numbers to back this up, at all, but I don't think this compares to leaving a computer on 24/24 though.
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It is Pretty much the same though. That is what Hibernate is there for >_>.
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Welp, according to Energy Star...
8. What’s the difference between "system standby," "hibernate," "monitor power management," and "turn off hard disks"?
There are 4 basic types of computer power management, or "sleep" features on Windows PCs:
"System standby"
Drops monitor and computer power use down to 1–3 watts each
Wakes up in seconds
Saves $25–75 per PC annually
"System hibernates"
Drops monitor and computer power use down to 1–3 watts each
Wakes up in 20+ seconds
Saves work in the event of power loss
Saves $25–75 per PC annually
"Turn off monitor"
Drops monitor power use down to 1–3 W
Wakes in seconds or less
Saves half as much as system standby or hibernate: about $10–40
"Turn off hard disks"
Saves very little energy
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Hmm. (I really have nothing to contribute. Thanks Andy)
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He had a really great story in the old cartoon, though. It turned out Batman was actually the bad guy in that story.
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Update regarding Baldur's Gate 1: Enchanced Edition! Huzzah!
3 new PCs (Half-Elf Wild Mage (Romancable), Half-Orc Blackguard (Kit for PCs), Human Monk (Cloud Peaks area)), The Black Pits (some sort of standalone arena adventure?), and general game improvements.
Unfortunately, there is also some sad news. They have specified exactly what they cannot touch in the Enhanced Edition:
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/1588/bgee-please-read-list-of-things-that-cant-be-done
tl;dr:
1. HD and new animations are off the table (all old art assets are gone).
2. Contractually unable to alter old companions dialogue, etc. Can add new stuff from what I've gathered, but not really sure how far that extends,
Edit: Apparently all three NPCs are romancable, though I'll be damned if the announcements say that.
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So what I'm seeing here is 'we're doing things modders already did for free but we're charging you for it. Oh, and modders could do more with the game than we can.' Am I missing anything here? Aside from ports to other platforms I guess.
-
Indeed, direct engine integration makes absolutely no difference and, of course, the quality of what mods provides is on par with professionals. *shrugs* Honestly, this general line of reasoning confuses me. What were people expecting here?
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I didn't expect anything because until you posted that link I'd never heard of this project. That said, there's already mods that fix bugs, there's already mods that integrate BG1 into BG2's engine, there's mods that add NPCs, there's mods that add player kits. The GoG version of the game makes it very easy to play on newer systems and is cheaper. Also, there are mods out there that are on par with and better than what 'professionals' do(and a lot that aren't, sure). Just because you pay for something doesn't make it automatically better.
I honestly don't understand what's confusing about this line of thinking. Please, feel free to enlighten me as to why I'm wrong. I like BG2, I just don't see any reason to pay for this version of it when I have a working version that does all of this and more already.
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Well, setting aside a bit of my sarcasm and snark, having stuff directly implemented is, in general, superior to mods when making considerations for potential for conflicts and ease of installs/movement between PCs (as well as making sure said elements are optimized).
The NPC/Kit mod question is another can of worms entirely, but it kind of breaks down to the "you can read fanfiction for free, so why buy books" or "you can play flash games free, why buy games" lines of reasoning. And, of course, it also falls under the umbrella of additional content integrated into the game. And yes, while stuff from professionals isn't always good and stuff from amateurs isn't always bad, I really can't count more than a handful of truly good mods to BG2 that aren't the general fixpacks.
*shrugs* It is a convenience upgrade (as well as some new features) + content upgrade. It is fine to think it isn't worth the pricetag or the pricetag over your own purchase, but it is somewhat annoying to see that particular brand of snark about it.
All in all, I'm probably more overreacting to a perceived tone than anything.
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Well, I'm not going to lie, I really did intend that to sound snarky. These people are trying to re-release a game that's over a decade old and they allowed themselves to get into a contract that doesn't let them make much in the way of meaningful changes to it. They can't even make a graphical update to appeal to new players that haven't played the original version. A game that looks like BG/BG2 isn't going to draw a lot of attention. I know that's not really fair but it's true. So, it boils down to if you like the original game enough to pay $20 for a couple new NPCs, bugfixes without needing to run a mod, and whatever else they can shoehorn in without making drastic changes, when you can buy the original for half that on GoG(if you don't have it already) and run a couple mods to get basically the same game.
Also, bringing up flash games as an analogy here is not helping your case. Flash games aren't even close to the same as modern games. If a flash game and, say, Skyrim were this similar, of course I'd play the flash game, but they're not even in the same ballpark. This is more similar to Cave Story+, which I also won't buy because I don't feel it has enough extra value compared to the original. Obviously, other people disagree with me but that's opinions for you.
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I would say Cave Story+ is more about taking the chance to throw some money the Devs way.
Market penetration is a big deal. We know and love(?) GOG. Swaths of modern consumers don't. Not everyone trusts online purchases on PC. The work you have to do to get mods working can be an impenetrable barrier to entry to some.
Being able to tell my sister who enjoyed BG back in the day but never beat it or played the sequel because she was playing it with a couple of no lifing teenage boys that she can pick it up for $20 with an iTunes card and play it on an iPad she has access to? Worth that price tag and development time in my opinion. Especially if they leave PC version open to mods and if there ends up being a converter for them then omgwtfbbq happens I guess.
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The work you have to do to get mods working can be an impenetrable barrier to entry to some.
Which is funny, because getting mods working is unquestionably easier than learning to play BG.
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If you don't want to play it well BG is amazingly easy. You click buttanz and then the wolf kills you.
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I would say Cave Story+ is more about taking the chance to throw some money the Devs way.
That's why I bought it. When the original game was given away for free that changes the calculus some.
Meanwhile you can throw money at the BG devs through GOG right now, and it comes with PS:T so you'd actually get something worth playing at the same time. Unless you're getting it for the new platform, it makes the EE an even bigger waste of cash. Especially when they're saying they're reluctant to change encounters because it might introduce bugs. If you don't have the time to QA that shit, don't bother with the project.
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Perspective there, they are talking about reluctance to change stuff due to lack of time to QA it properly now that they are down to under 2 months to release when it is coming to at least one platform that has to pass through an approval process prior to getting released on their market and that happens to be the big meaty market they are hoping to hit, so I don't think they are looking to be bug testing down to the last minute. Not necessarily something they called back when they started the project. Definitely seems like they went in with high hopes and might be having to shave it back to more shippable product rather than dream project, but that is what happens. We know that because we pay enough attention to the industry to know that is the story of like damn near everything.
The bleak reality of it is that they are making this on a short schedule probably on a low budget and are aiming to make a profit on a mobile market with a big install base (quick google gives bad figures from flaky sites, but I would peg just the iPad install base at close to PS3 or X-Box levels including corporate purchases). Any PC sales are more than likely just going to be gravy.
The douchey part of my of course is going to point out that it is still better than FF remakes. On any other platform these arguments wouldn't be happening, we would be happy to be seeing roughly a straight port 10 years later because the company that makes the latest version of the console yanked out backwards compatibility because it was expensive.
Also browsing the forums a bit, looks like there is at least some drive to get some kind of mod support in? So I guess there is that.
Also also, for a bit of lols. Mobile versions are going to be $10 and not come with the extra characters by default (They will be available for purchase in store). So it is price matched for the same content, just not on a platform that has access to it.
You could argue that 12 years later the Baldur's Gate name might not pull in the random new people to the mobile market, but hey, a new Ultima mobile game was just announced and that has even less modern relevance and still got a bit of buzz in the intertubes. People will buy fucking anything with a known brand on it seems to be the line of thinking.
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http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/07/26/the-dark-knight-xxx-porn-review/
Chris Sims review of porn parody of Dark Knight Rises. The opening sequence is a direct homage to Killing Joke. All the what the fucks go here.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0
My new favorite song.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0
My new favorite song.
Yeah, South Korea continues to make the best pop.
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Did I just watch a Kim Jong Il music video?
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Nah you just watched early 2000s house music penetrating into pop culture.
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https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150952332040841.406533.76090440840&type=3 (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150952332040841.406533.76090440840&type=3)
Basically KingdomHeartsFans.JPG times a million. This is what turns up when you take a game about beloved characters from classic children's movies and turn it into a story about anime bullshit and Original Characters (Do Not Steal).
(http://i.imgur.com/C52BC.jpg)
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gaymercon/gaymercon-everybody-games
Discuss.
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Random comment from GamerOuTLaWz, actually used as advertising:
(http://i.imgur.com/lS1Pr.jpg)
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Nah you just watched early 2000s house music penetrating into pop culture.
Yeah, South Korea seems to remember kinds of music that western pop is underusing.
Like, for instance, minor chords:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8I8QGFA1oM
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Also apparently pink electrified collapsible batons which is a whole ton of jokes that I can make and won't. I kind of wish there was a mix that kicked the BPM up like 25% on that, you would have a nice hard dance track out of that (not that its base is especially bad or anything).
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Also apparently pink electrified collapsible batons which is a whole ton of jokes that I can make and won't.
Oh, well, if you just want music videos with lots of stuff you can make fun of, Korea provides those too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_lSP8Vc3o
(Pity the song isn't better to go along with it)
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Gotham headlines post-DKR. Obviously massive TDKR spoilers.
http://beam2k.tumblr.com/post/28167374986
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gaymercon/gaymercon-everybody-games
Discuss.
Probably better for someone single, but could be fun depending on the activities they had planned.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95BKEEOf6OI
Just keep watching through to the end. I need a gif of that.
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For those who care, Newegg is having a 72-hour sale. White Knight Chronicles II is availible for 16, PS3 versions of El Shaddai and Nier for 10.
http://promotions.newegg.com/NEemail/Aug-0-2012/72hoursale10/index-landing.html?nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL081012&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL081012-_-EMC-081012-Index-_-E0-_-PromoWord
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iocainestudios/steam-bandits-outpost-0
I will continue to pimp the best-ever modern version of patronage, Kickstarter, because I love what it's doing for independent artists. This one has a particularly DL bent.
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https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8cPyvE2GTjOMzE4MTVlZTctMjE5Yi00YzAzLWJjZTAtZTllODY2OTc2MTMx/view?hl=en_US&sle=true&pli=1
Kingdom Hearts plot summary, for the lulz. I considered posting this in the games topic instead, but opted against it.
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Pretty sure I posted that before, at least in chat, but it's still awesome.
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This.
This link is funny, this link is amazing, and I absolutely love puppetry.
RE: Africa's Response to Crazy Australian Dances (AKA just nudging Grefter to specifically watch).
http://goo.gl/D3okA
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http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/08/15/alternative-medicine-as-religion/#.UCvM9dEI5d4.twitter
A fascinating blog about alternative medicine, anti-vaccine people, and other pseudo-science.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g
Interesting video about the empathy of the world. Possibly old, but definitely good to watch.
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http://m.joystiq.com/2012/08/21/nintendo-power-coming-to-an-end/ (http://m.joystiq.com/2012/08/21/nintendo-power-coming-to-an-end/)
They were corporate schills, but I will always remember how great the free game guides you got for subscribing were. The LttP one had art done by the team you couldn't get anywhere else, if I recall.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga4nNSqsYp0
Oh Japan, never change.
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http://twitter.com/fanfiction_txt (http://twitter.com/fanfiction_txt)
A selection of the finest quotes from Fanfiction across all genres. Will they ever surpass "It was not unusual to see Haggar on the streets fighting crime. He had not been seen, however, dressed as a bat" one day? I can only hope.
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File under: Quickstarter
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14293468/homestuck-adventure-game
MS Paint Adventure guy creates a kickstarter to make an adventure game based off of his most recent story. Starts it yesterday. Already has over 300,000 dollars raised. Jay-Z-us.
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A cool idea but holy fuck that thing would be long. Like longer than The Longest Journey which is pretty notable for living up to its name so far as point and click adventure goes.
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Reading the kickstarter, it's not going to encompass the entire Homestuck story for that exact reason. If anything, it will be a spin off story based because yeah holy fuck that would be one ridiculously long game.
EDIT: Holy fuck, less than a day and it's already over half the goal. This is why Kickstarter is awesome. Already have a dedicated fanbase? Crowdsource them as investors to put out something tits-assed awesome.
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http://www.alternet.org/story/156194/what_about_the_men_why_our_gender_system_sucks_for_men%2C_too?page=entire&paging=off
Articulates well ideas I've had kicking around in my head the past couple years.
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Pretty much. Standard stuff you will hopefully hear in any Feminism course at University, but not bad to put it out there.
Edit - I should read Alternet more often.
http://www.alternet.org/world/noam-chomsky-why-america-and-israel-are-greatest-threats-peace
It has been ages since I have heard/read any Chomsky articles. 10/10 still awesome.
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http://www.alternet.org/story/156194/what_about_the_men_why_our_gender_system_sucks_for_men%2C_too?page=entire&paging=off
Articulates well ideas I've had kicking around in my head the past couple years.
Yeah, that's basically "Contemporary Feminism and Gender Issues 101" and puts forth in a pretty articulate manner the current issues we face both as a movement and as a line of study. Great read regardless, will share this link around.
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There's not a big enough eyeroll in the world to describe Chomsky and his shit politics.
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http://www.alternet.org/story/156194/what_about_the_men_why_our_gender_system_sucks_for_men%2C_too?page=entire&paging=off
Articulates well ideas I've had kicking around in my head the past couple years.
Yeah, others have said it already, but solid article.
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Dunno if should move to politics thread or not, but which parts specifically Super? (srs not sarcastic). Edit - I fuck up my tone here it is more aggressive than I want. Tryin to be inquisitive to fish out opposing view to understand better. My voice is restricted to dismissive sarcasm when typing on m phone it seems and I apologize. Again srs.
I have trouble eye rolling at someone denouncing the Foreign Policy of the two countries that have instigated hot wars the most aggressively and most prolonged in the Middle East over the last decade/decade and a half.
I also don't see much wrong with similar finger pointing to old short term Realpolitik policies as the root cause of today's worries. Supporting nuclear proliferation of your allies cuts both ways. I know it is a very hindsighted thing to say but it is pretty revolting to have seen one of the superpowers engaged in a cold war centred around MAD supporting the generation of similar environments in smaller scale conflicts.
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Because Chomsky deserves zero credit on politics. He considers the US to be a terrorist state, and his entire ideology there can be boiled down to blame the US. There is plenty of reason to be critical of the US and Israel. Just not by someone who considers morally repulsive statements like little Eichemanns to be reasonable.
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The problem with Chomsky is that he has a reality distortion field around whatever it is he reads that removes anything bad about governments Chomsky likes and removes anything good about governments he doesn't. He's not a liar but he is a zealot.
To remove the debate from more recent events, the thing I'll usually hold against Chomsky - and my example for why it's best to read him only for amusement not facts - is his morally abominable stance on the Khemer Rouge. Now, the US participated in some pretty morally grey crap in Cambodia during the Vietnam War, as did the North Vietnamese - the war bled into Cambodia which included US bombing of it, although it must be noted that this is because the NVA was operating out of the border. And of course said bombing surely killed lots of innocents in the process. Anyway, the point is, if Chomsky wants to excoriate the United States, fine.
*However*, because Cambodia was dragged into the Vietnam War, that means in Chomsky's mind that the Khmer Rouge were stout anti-imperialist swell dudes. He defended the Khmer Rouge for an * embarrassingly* long length of time, talked about how all this genocide yabber was nonsense and US propaganda, and said that if anybody was dying in Cambodia it was probably the US's fault. That was bad enough to say that in the late 70s when it was somewhat unclear, but to still not really change your tune or apologize in the 80s? IIRC, I even recall Chomsky indirectly ragging on the US for screwing with the UN in the late 70s... except that some of this was, of course, in support of the Khmer Rouge (whom inexplicably had the US, USSR, and China all considering them buddies). Genocide denial is not something to do lightly.
A quick Google turned this up, which seems about right: http://jim.com/chomsdis.htm
Anyway, the point is, I am sometimes in the mood for having someone point out the US's flaws, for all that the US in Chomsky's mind is something of a cartoon villain -e.g. any claimed nice motives are false, but Chomsky's not going to offer compelling different motives, so I guess the US just like hurting people for no reason. I have no patience for dictatorial / genocidal apologists, however. If Chomsky was one of those types who pointed out everyone's flaws from a leftist perspective, *including* Venezuela/ Iran/Hamas/etc., he'd be tolerable. But no, if anybody stands up to the US they automatically can do no wrong in his book no matter how evil & corrupt they are.
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http://www.alternet.org/story/156194/what_about_the_men_why_our_gender_system_sucks_for_men%2C_too?page=entire&paging=off
Articulates well ideas I've had kicking around in my head the past couple years.
Yeah, that's basically "Contemporary Feminism and Gender Issues 101" and puts forth in a pretty articulate manner the current issues we face both as a movement and as a line of study. Great read regardless, will share this link around.
While I agree that it's a great article, it was really quite frustrating reading "Feminism always focuses on women! Feminists don't care about how enforced gender roles also harm men!" over and over and over. While it's true that some less aware feminists do hold views similar to that, for the most part it's complete bullshit. Moreover, that emphasis lets once good communities that focused on how gender roles negatively impact the lives of men turn into misogynistic women-bashing circlejerks (http://www.reddit.com/r/mensrights/). Still, good article aside otherwise.
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You felt that? I dunno, Zenny, I don't think that was what they meant about the quip regarding second-wave feminism - at least, not as radically, and the article notes (and I agree completely with it in that regard) that the inclusive nature of feminism regarding gender and privilege issues is relatively new and still reaching through the surface of the seams.
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You felt that? I dunno, Zenny, I don't think that was what they meant about the quip regarding second-wave feminism - at least, not as radically, and the article notes (and I agree completely with it in that regard) that the inclusive nature of feminism regarding gender and privilege issues is relatively new and still reaching through the surface of the seams.
Not even that. I was referring more to some sentences at the very start of the article. "It's as if only women have a gender." and "Rarely, however, and often only as an afterthought does anyone remark on how the current gender system harms men." My jerk knee reaction was "Well, yeah, because at least online that often leads to a bunch of unproductive circlejerking by dudes wanting to play the victim and downplay women's issues." Though, re-reading the article, this was a lot less pronounced than at first glance, and I'll admit I must have glossed over the paragraph that addresses the very point I brought up:
"In many feminist spaces, most particularly on the Internet, it is difficult to establish a decent dialogue about women’s issues without various men intruding, insisting that circumcision rates in the U.S. must be addressed instead of the issue of female genital mutilation in Africa, insisting that male rape victims must be discussed instead of female rape victims. These persistent conversation-derailers have succeeded in making a bad name for themselves, and given rise to the “what about teh menz?” trope as a boilerplate dismissal of these tired distractions from the addressing of women’s issues that is the raison d’être of most feminist communities."
In fact, the article even brings up the men's rights movements. So it's a little more self aware than it appeared at first and frankly I should have kept reading on before posting. >_>
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Oh while we're ragging on men's rights then. Some beautiful "nice guy" poetry for your consideration. (Reminder: all "nice guys" are actually pathetic shut-ins who whine that they aren't getting enough sex and therefore think rape should be legal or something.)
http://manboobz.com/2011/08/14/a-nice-guys-lament-first-they-came-for-the-rapists/#comments
While we're at it, I refuse to look at it to see if it's changed, but as of awhile back (and probably still true now)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_celibacy
is a pretty big trainwreck from the same sorts.
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Related back to the kickstarter link I posted: That 700k mark was reached in two days.
Jesus christ, talk about rabid fanboys. I haven't even donated. Yet.
-
Chris Kluwe lays down one of the greatest verbal smackdowns I've ever seen in my life. (http://deadspin.com/5941348/they-wont-magically-turn-you-into-a-lustful-cockmonster-chris-kluwe-explains-gay-marriage-to-the-politician-who-is-offended-by-an-nfl-player-supporting-it) Sorry, Super, but I think I may be rooting for the Vikings this year. At least when the punting unit is on the field.
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Well then you're going to be cheering them on a lot, because the Vikings punt unit is going to spend more time on the field than anyone but the Jags'.
P.S. Vikings suck.
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Bwaha, nice.
-
Judge demands brief be no longer than 5 pages. Lawyer responds with this. Still lost the ruling, though.
http://www.abajournal.com/files/AppleAmicusBrief.pdf
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I more or less rolled my eyes at Kluwe's speech. It needed to be said, but I have trouble taking that over the top barrage of profanity seriously.
-
Agreed, he was doing better when he was insulting like a sir and not just using profanity.
(http://i.imgur.com/vaZB6.jpg)
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Eh. The mixture is ideal. Honestly, I tend to find that "classy language" sounds more shallow and about as immature in most circumstances.
-
Focusing too much on the diction used to convey a message instead of the message itself makes you a cunt.
Nobody is surprised that Super is a cunt, though.
-
At minimum, a pedant. And nothing starting with ped is something you want to be.
-
Obsidian Entertainment would like you to give them money so they can make a new party-based Infinity Engine-ish RPG. (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity)
Please don't suck please don't suck please don't suck please don't suck please don't suck
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If they are self publishing it won't be pushed out early and half baked. If they are self publishing they won't be inheriting someone elses shitty broken arse 10/10 GOTY engine that has a wake of terrible bugs.
It also means that they have to write their own engine though...
Edit - I mean of course I threw money at it. More than I should have. It is Obsidian.
-
Love Obsidian. Was expecting a better setting from them than extremely generic fantasy. (anything else)
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q76r-3z4Ckk
I want one.
-
http://www.playconclave.com
Been playing a bit of Conclave. Fun little multiplayer SRPG type thing. If anyone else gets into it and wants to go hit quests together, let me know!
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http://www.penneydesign.com/folio_IM_lostgame.html (http://www.penneydesign.com/folio_IM_lostgame.html)
Like most things, Lost would be distinctly improved were it an adventure game produced by LucasArts in the 80's.
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Speaking of adventure games, this is the last day of the Kickstarter for Homestuck's (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14293468/homestuck-adventure-game).
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Don't they have like a zillion dollars already?
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Don't they have like a zillion dollars already?
Yeah, I linked more for people who wanted a shot at the reward tiers - the RPGDL is, I think, where I was introduced to MSPaint Adventures around the end of Problem Sleuth - than because they need the money.
I didn't have enough to get the (overpriced) physical copy of the game, so the last reward tier doesn't much matter to me, although I'd be happier to know there WAS a proper archival copy of the comic floating around out there.
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http://features.peta.org/pokemon-black-and-white-parody/
PETA makes a pokemon parrody. I almost feel like I should default to IOTD with anything made by PETA, except I actually enjoyed the gameplay and thought it was well-executed >_>
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Okay so authentic Pokemon gameplay in that if you pick it up at random there is a bunch of moves and no description of what the shit they do. So that is cool (!??) I guess?
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Haha, I got linked that yesterday, via an article that pointed out that it is apparently perfectly fine to electrocute people in PETA's eyes. Also, one of my friends on Facebook pointed out that the game seems more like a parody of PETA's dumb shit than anything else.
-
PETA long ago descended into self-parody. My theory is PETA is a front by the seal-bashing industry to discredit animal rights activists.
-
(http://i.imgur.com/evnNy.jpg)
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http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/beyond-fun
Some of you may recognize this as things I have tried (and probably failed) to say for years. Hurray people better spoken than me.
-
I've come to suspect I don't actually need to watch Extra Credits because it will just be people saying a bunch of stuff I will completely agree with.
*watches video*
Theory confirmed. Science!
-
Oh my goooooooood do I hate the word "engaging." D:
Also, while I feel like the EC video says something I can agree with, I don't think it goes so far as to make a point. It's just a rant.
-
Not that I have watched it yet (but given they have just recently talked about Spec Ops: The Line), not sure if there is a point to be made other than "Maybe you can enjoy things for more reasons than stimulating the brain in the same way candy and masturbation does".
If you want more, watch their 2 parter on Spec Op: The Line from last month. SPOILERS is that Spec Ops is the gaming equivalent of Apocalypse Now! style plot.
-
ZP also said roughly the same thing about Spec Ops: The Line. Good ep, that was.
-
It's really more of a first step, the wake-up call, than actually making a particular point.
-
The problem is I feel it really kind of failed at properly navigating what the difference between engaging and fun was, which means a lot of people are going to take the actual point the wrong way, one way or the other (either lulz games shouldn't be fun how stupid or lulz im gonna make Wuthering Heights the game).
-
http://unlifecomic.com/
To anyone going to NYCC, my friend Josh will be there pushing product. Table V10.
-
Devil's advocate!
This felt like a really demagogic rant. It could have been accurate decades ago?
Most games aren't only about fun. Even Call of Duty isn't only just about fun, as unelegant as it is about its deeper themes. (See the No Russian level)
I don't get how you can blame games today about this and then praise freaking Star Wars?
Matrix, Assassin's Creed, Lord of the Rings, Zelda, Star Wars all have about the same amount focus on "fun".
There are a hell of a lot more games that aren't primarly about brainless fun nowadays. So much more. They are mostly indie or XBLA/PSN only games with a lot less publicy. (Play Passage by John Rohrer. It's free and it takes 5 minutes) But honestly? Movies are the same here too! Movies that aren't fun (ok: or romantic like Titanic) never have a big budget (or they become a commercial failure) Inception sold itself on big fight scenes, Black Swan on LESBIANS.
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The issue is not that games are ONLY about fun, so much as fun is inserted into places where it does not belong, and where risks are taken and fun ignored, the game is judged for this lack of fun. Now there are still examples of accepted games that don't rely on fun in any way (hello Silent Hill 2), but it's too easy to write these off as flukes. It's comparatively much more common for another medium to find success without fun.
It's really just a thought exercise, no more.
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I dunno, this only seemed to be one part of the rant?
This doesn't really seem particularly relevent and specific to videogames though. Those fight scenes (in the snow) in Inception I mentioned earlier are honestly similar, for all that I loved the movie. Completely irrelevent action.
Franchises being raped by somebody other than the first author? No recent Silent Hill or Resident Evil game can possibly be as terrible as American Psycho 2.
Silent Hill 2 actually does rely on fun! It's pretty much in the same boat as Braid, Limbo, Journey, Papo&Yo... "Art" games have been well accepted lately because gamers really really want to justify their favourite medium. (I admit that I may be guilty about this too)
This is honestly a pretty unfair comparison to begin with, because you can't have a 20-30 hours long game that constantly needs your input to be, for example, a soul draining experience, like a 90 minutes movie can. (One of the reasons why all those games that are primarly not about fun are short indie games)
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http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/11/physicists-may-have-evide_n_1957777.html
Haven't read the details on this, but the general premise is a pretty well-known one. Having some kind of actual evidence for it, though? I just.. wow.
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Captain K / Adray, save us all
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The issue is not that games are ONLY about fun, so much as fun is inserted into places where it does not belong, and where risks are taken and fun ignored, the game is judged for this lack of fun. Now there are still examples of accepted games that don't rely on fun in any way (hello Silent Hill 2), but it's too easy to write these off as flukes. It's comparatively much more common for another medium to find success without fun.
It's really just a thought exercise, no more.
I feel like Telltale's Walking Dead, which generally gets pretty rave reviews and is extremely non-fun oriented, is what he is looking for.
In related news I finished Episode 4 last night. It was pretty rough to get through. Holy shit.
-
I saw you playing it and was going to comment about you not playing X-Com but then got all sad that X-Com wasn't out and I couldn't play it. That said I think I will be playing Dishonored tonight, so I won't be one to talk.
-
I would feel sad about things but I usually can't feel much of anything for a couple of days after a Walking Dead episode comes out.
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Makes Rob feel emotion, 10/10 game.
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Captain K / Adray, save us all
Pay no attention to that other universe behind the curtain! Er, um, watch me wrestle a shark! Sure is distracting, er, exciting, isn't it?
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http://andrewgelman.com/2009/06/gay_marriage_a/
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http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/
Crispin Fucking Freeman teaches you about the world of voice acting.
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http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/beyond-fun
Some of you may recognize this as things I have tried (and probably failed) to say for years. Hurray people better spoken than me.
So...for the record, I'd argue this is about 3-4 years out-of-date. I've worked on games where the directorial goal was something other than "fun". I've given a GDC talk about deliberately producing negative emotions in games for added dramatic effect.
Certainly the indie scene in the past three years has been very good about expanding what games can be, with games that are basically just art tableaus like Passage.
Also, in the past three years, Zynga happened. The way a lot of Zynga games are described is not fun at all, just compulsive, and using emotions like guilt to keep players playing, but no real "fun" emotion for much of its audience.
For all that sure, "Find the fun" is still a phrase that gets used in the industry, probably in inappropriate places, but I don't think it's singularly dominating.
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On the Zynga note:
http://www.google.com/finance?q=Zynga&ei=ON58UNjlGu-80QGjjgE
Check out that 1 Yr graph. 14 dollar high to 2.50 low, couldn't have happened to a nicer company.
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But if they go under, how am I gonna fill up all my bars?
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http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/beyond-fun
Some of you may recognize this as things I have tried (and probably failed) to say for years. Hurray people better spoken than me.
So...for the record, I'd argue this is about 3-4 years out-of-date. I've worked on games where the directorial goal was something other than "fun". I've given a GDC talk about deliberately producing negative emotions in games for added dramatic effect.
Certainly the indie scene in the past three years has been very good about expanding what games can be, with games that are basically just art tableaus like Passage.
Also, in the past three years, Zynga happened. The way a lot of Zynga games are described is not fun at all, just compulsive, and using emotions like guilt to keep players playing, but no real "fun" emotion for much of its audience.
For all that sure, "Find the fun" is still a phrase that gets used in the industry, probably in inappropriate places, but I don't think it's singularly dominating.
The video is really focusing solely on the mainstream, triple a market. Entire point of an indie scene is to break convention, so it's unsurprising one of the first things they do is ignore fun.
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it's unsurprising one of the first things they do is ignore fun.
I love how you say this and it's a good thing(./?)
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To be fair, mc hasn't really been working exclusively in indie studios having no cross over with big budget titles.
Extra Credits trends towards less professional audiences though, so it isn't shocking to see it is lagging a little behind professional theory. It is more for armchair developers, fans that have something invested in the industry or people trying to break into the industry (as they have had many shows in the past about).
For fans? I think it is good to bring their attention to the fact that there is more to look for in a game than just Fun. I am sure as consumers we know subconsciously that there is other things we enjoy in gaming, but giving someone the language to describe why they like Silent Hill 2 over Resident Evil 4 and highlighting to them why this might be the case is a good thing.
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To be fair, mc hasn't really been working exclusively in indie studios having no cross over with big budget titles.
Yeah, the closest I've been to working on an indie title was working at CCP, a company that had 600 employees.
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Yeah exactly, you have your finger on the pulse of what is happening in notindie space pretty decent these days I would think. Especially compared to your average DLer >_> Like I consider myself out of touch with mainstream game market and I buy games like Djinn hits on Japanese girls in a candy store.
Also RE: Zynga, I hear they are currently trading at below their asset value and that is just plain fucking crazy. That said pretty much everything about Zynga becoming a public traded company was plain fucking crazy.
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Not sure where to put this but:
http://www.upworthy.com/meet-the-17-year-old-who-blew-the-lid-off-racial-profiling-with-his-ipod
Pretty much one of many reasons I tend to not trust/respect police forces in general in the states.
-
Get into the Halloween spirit with this terrifying song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajUYsDbdlsM&feature=etp-pd-nxx-31
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That song was unexpectedly awesome.
Here's another horrifying Halloween classic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSaqSVi--Ms
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fertilizing-ocean-with-iron-to-save-salmon-and-earn-money
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering
A couple of interesting articles about the recent science controversy related to geo-engineering. This experiment is likely to do more harm than good in the long-term. Pretty crazy.
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More Science links: Italy is IotD material forever edition. I expect to have a lot to say about this case in the future, when I iron out exactly what the legal duties of the scientists were with respect to warning the general populace. Although it's not necessarily relevant to the case in the sense of whether the defendants were criminally negligent, it's worth noting that if building coders in Italy were better, or better enforced, then this tragedy would not have been anywhere near so severe.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/italys-troubling-earthquake-convictions/
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/10/mischaracterizations-of-laquila-lawsuit.html
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/10/22/the-laquila-verdict-a-judgment-not-against-science-but-against-a-failure-of-science-communication/ (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/10/22/the-laquila-verdict-a-judgment-not-against-science-but-against-a-failure-of-science-communication/)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V8BVNeK45c&feature=plcp
Did you know there was a Rocky Horror video game? And it has Christopher Lee telling you how to do the Time Warp?
Well, now you do.
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http://kotaku.com/5955223/what-went-wrong-with-silicon-knights-x+men-destiny
Neat read. Seems like a reversal of everything you normally see about the industry.
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What, "company makes a shitty cash-in game based on a popular license to milk a publisher for cash" is atypical now?
e: You are all very very welcome for this. (http://youtu.be/GBeoGFvwHEc)
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http://thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-news/press-releases/2012/10/disney-acquire-lucasfilm-ltd
So this is weird.
So fucking weird.
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Muppet Star Wars Featuring Wolverine is go.
-
They can't possibly do a worse job than George Lucas did.
-
http://newsthump.com/2012/10/25/donald-trump-offers-to-fund-cancer-cure-in-return-for-barack-obama-lap-dance/
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Trump hasn't figured it out. You cure cancer first, then everyone is so grateful that they vote for you. Despite your lack of social skills.
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So I did not realize that Pixar (a branch of Disney) announced in June that it will release an "untitled Dia de los Muertos project" in 2015. Four months later, Disney acquires the rights to Grim Fandango.
COINCIDENCE?
Probably.
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What, "company makes a shitty cash-in game based on a popular license to milk a publisher for cash" is atypical now?
e: You are all very very welcome for this.
(http://youtu.be/GBeoGFvwHEc)
To be fair, we've known for a long time that
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q1hl9JWss4
EDIT: Air New Zealand's safety video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cBlRbrB_Gnc
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e: nevermind, video is private now apparently.
So is this what it sounds like? Because it sounds like a direct sequel to Disgaea.
-
I seem to recall people on GameFAQs (A&M:OT) saying that a direct sequel to Disgaea was on the way, so I presume so.
-
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2012/11/george_lucas_is_giving_all_4_billion_of_his_disney.php
Seriously? Wow.
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Well shit now I don't care what Disney do with it. Worth every fucking second of it if it goes bad.
-
low hanging bridge
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20MCxSFgrnc&feature=youtu.be
Pumpkin tetris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8PCp5xk-9Qo
(NSFW) The kind of things girl gamers put up with on XBL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRvzuwsZyNY
Combination of big trouble in little china and gangnam style, with high production values and some of the original actors from the movie o_O
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xiAbDkXDgg&feature=share
The live action halo series is...actually pretty damn good when it's just a character study of the cadets. I get pretty bored when they start doing actual halo plot/characters, though...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BfJVgXBfSH8
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/02/math_can_cause_actual_pain/
We are one step to a glorious age when Math has been weaponised and mathematicians rule over us all.
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(NSFW) The kind of things girl gamers put up with on XBL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRvzuwsZyNY
Does ANYONE have a pleasant time on XBL, though? I got called a niggerfaggot a few minute ago for no reason.
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Thanks for the video, Gref, I just filled another sexism bingo card.
-
The Internet does seem to hate women, but they hate everyone else too. I spent a few minutes last night reading a sports comments section and it was full of bile and hate. The Internet has just pulled the filter off the anti-social jackass in general.
-
The internet hates everyone, but it distinctly does hate women, black people, and gay people more. (among others)
-
If I had to guess, I'd say the internet hates people in direct proportion to how little effort it takes to offend them. I don't say that to imply that the victim should be blamed here in any respect. I just think the primary motivation here is an opportunistic desire to offend rather than genuine dislike of certain groups, so these people are going for the familiar, the low-hanging fruit. Then again, maybe all genuine categorical hatred is opportunistic at its core...
-
Fuck all of you.
-
I played WoW for a really long time mang. I'm so far past caring about what random internet shitheads say or do.
The newest term was "Cocksucking chink monkey-rimmer" btw.
-
That is a total lack of effort in that person's profanity, Rob. You should be offended that the person couldn't offer up something more creative than that.
-
It's Xbox Live. That's like going to McDonalds and getting offended when they serve you a burger made of meat that is barely for for human consumption.
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I can't believe I'm saying this, but you are insulting the good name of McDonalds food by comparing it to Xbox Live profanity. I had pretty good McDonalds in Helsinki. I am 99.85% sure that Xbox live is bad the world over.
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Friend of mine is trying to offload his N64. Figured I would link on the off chance someone badly wants a PAL region one.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/130798416352?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1558.l2649#ht_1020wt_1397
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Since there's no NaNo topic:
http://nanowrimo.org/en/participants/yoshiken - My NaNo page~
http://www.stayclassy.org/fundraise?fcid=219209 - Fundraising page! Only started this today, so there is a fantastic $0 on there atm.
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http://store.steampowered.com/news/9289/
So Linux version of Steam is in beta. There is a list of games that work in Linux.
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?term=linux#os=linux&advanced=0&sort_order=ASC&page=1
Not a bad short list of neat little indie games and B-List games as well. Pretty cool.
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I guess it's not downloadable yet? Oh well. Glad to see this is happening though.
-
Closed beta. The client is available but you need your account authorised for it.
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http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/09/tech/gaming-gadgets/console-gaming-dead/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
CNN says console gaming is dying.
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Isn't that a conclusion you come to AFTER you have hard sales data for the next generation? You don't point to the last four years of a ten-year console lifespan in an industry generally built around a five to seven year window before it's totally outmoded when you want to make that conclusion.
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Right. Should have placed this in the idiots thread. My initial response was a firm facepalm. That said, I wonder what his incentive was for writing this.
-
pageclicks
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It's on par with a Kotaku article, so I assume the motivation is the same: Oh fuck I have a deadline coming up.
http://youtu.be/bFdzA2wI6c0 (http://youtu.be/bFdzA2wI6c0)
Whoops, looks like all other Minecraft texture packs are unnecessary. Any day now this will replace the default.
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http://www.talesofgames.com/2012/11/barkley-2-announcement-kickstarter-coming-soon/ (http://www.talesofgames.com/2012/11/barkley-2-announcement-kickstarter-coming-soon/)
Chapter 2 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa.
-
http://www.geeks3d.com/20121108/the-butterfly-effect-unity-4/
A rather...interesting tech demo
-
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/deport-everyone-signed-petition-withdraw-their-state-united-states-america/dmQl1bXL
Speaks for itself
-
http://www.riumplus.com/mystbook/
Replica of a linking book from Myst. It has a computer inside that allows you to play several Myst games with a touchscreen. Awesome.
-
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/16/melbourne_metro_psa_dumb_ways_to_die/
Mellbin government: the best?
-
Really not, especially the Metro rail system. Still neat little ad! Singer is very Sarah Blasko.
-
This was on Kotaku already, but this is strangely fitting for the FF13 cast.
http://textsfromffxiii.tumblr.com/
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Thanks for destroying an hour of my life, SnowFire.
Dahlia Lithwick - an excellent Supreme Court scholar - offers the best take on the state of affairs in Israel I have read.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2012/11/israel_gaza_fighting_what_s_it_s_like_to_be_in_jerusalem_as_the_conflict.html
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That article just cut my heartstrings loose, Jim.
-
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/25/technology_at_the_museum_of_old_and_new_art/
Register had a link to send in Idun's direction? Well that is different. Neat article on private Museum in Tasmania.
It also mentions a festival in January that I find out about too late to probably go to. Sigh.
-
http://dgaider.tumblr.com/post/36214913229/the-female-perspective-in-game-development
Dave Gaider on benefits of having plenty of women on the writing staff at Bioware.
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I could have told the Xenosaga 1 and Ar Tonelico teams that they are wrong and should feel bad, and I'm not even a woman!!!!!
-
http://www.buzzfeed.com/summeranne/50-amazing-photos-from-cat-heaven-island-in-japan
#16 is my favorite.
-
Barkley Shut up and jam 2 kickstarter.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/talesofgames/barkley-2-an-rpg-sequel-to-barkley-shut-up-and-jam
It's pretty much already a guaranteed success now fortunately. I hope they have good lawyers. I guess Charles Barkley and Square Enix Goya won't be mentioned again.
I read an interview where the main dev said he still hasn't played the original Barkley Shut up and Jam; he just thought it would be funny to add "Gaiden" at the end and make that game.
-
THQ has gone from "in bad shape" to "really desperate." They're the new Humble Bundle (http://www.humblebundle.com), which means they're giving away Saint's Row 3 and a bunch of games that don't have a shark shotgun, for the combined cost of a Subway lunch.
-
Note that if SR3 isn't your cup of tea Metro 2033 is definitely worth the dollar or so they're asking for it.
-
Speaking of games on the cheap, Endless Space (which I have extolled the virtues of at length) is the free-play game on Steam this weekend. It's 50% off if you want to just buy it outright, too.
-
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/25/technology_at_the_museum_of_old_and_new_art/
Register had a link to send in Idun's direction? Well that is different. Neat article on private Museum in Tasmania.
It also mentions a festival in January that I find out about too late to probably go to. Sigh.
MONA's website is so bizarre. I'm interested in the Mona Foma 2013! Man, quirky museums are so much fun because they are -entertaining-.
-
So Torment 2 is a thing that is happening (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-12-03-chris-avellone-blesses-inxiles-planescape-torment-successor)
-
So I think this decade is going to be the one that breaks my heart. There is no way all these games are going to be as good as I dread hope they will be. Torment without MCA will be different, but that doesn't mean it will be bad. Maybe not as good as something with him on board, but this is the reality we have, so I can live with it.
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Don't worry Gref. Barkley 2 is really going to be that good. It will have an Al Bhed translation.
Anyway, really great news. Probably the second kickstarter project I'll support.
I'm glad we found a way to get quality, medium budget games back, thanks to Kickstarter. It's just unfortunate that there can't be excellent, surprising games falling from the sky this way like they did before (Games like the original Planescape Torment)
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Well aside from getting a new X-COM game that was good, Kickstarter has a new point and click game from Double Fine, Wasteland 2, Project Eternity and now this. Not to mention so many other things (BG:EE hopefully tidying up in a few months with post deployment support so long as the community doesn't cannibalize it ALA ME3).
This is off the front foot of Obsidian getting to do an honest to gods proper Fallout sequel just recently.
All my idols are rising from their graves. All we need at this point is Toys for Bob to get to make a new Star Control after handing their overlords Skylanders payday on a platter and the circle will be complete.
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(http://nonadventures.com/comics/2012-12-01-328.png)
I suspect Grefter might appreciate this. Also, I refuse to revive the Picture Battle topic.
-
:(
-
Mission accomplished.
-
http://www.sophiehoulden.com/can-art-be-games/
A piss take that a friend at work shared with me.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Uzkd21ey4
Earthbound finished in 9 minutes 2 seconds.
The ending's really great. Everybody should watch this
(Skip to 8:40)
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/12/08/dark-souls-2-announced-at-vga-2012-coming-to-xbox-360-ps3-and-pc/
Goddammit From Software, give me my life back.
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You can just tell them no, not any more. Go to a shelter and take the kids with. You. You are young and beauthiful and are so much more worthy of a good healthy life than they provide you at the cost of your mind and body.
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http://shoryuken.com/2012/12/08/megaman-takes-on-the-street-fighter-cast-in-street-fighter-x-megaman-a-free-side-scroller-releasing-on-december-17th/
Mega Man theme vs Guile theme, who will win?
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I've started live streaming the Perfect World "Nation Wars", which is a new PVP thing they've added recently. It's a lot of fun, so check out the replays if you're interested.
http://www.twitch.tv/shibakevin/b/346810034
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What's it entail?
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You get randomly assigned to one of four nations, and then you play capture the flag (while killing each other of course) to gain territories. It's on Friday and Sunday night at 20:20 server time. Try it out, lower levels get some extra buffs so that they can still compete.
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So, you remember A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible? Webcomic that was around for a while in the dark ages of six years ago? There's a new one today. (http://www.alessonislearned.com/) It's pretty good.
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game studios lost in 2012
http://ca.ign.com/videos/2012/12/11/game-studios-we-lost-in-2012
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Okay so a bad year was even worse than I first realised.
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/14/falling_slinky_defies_gravity/
Gods I fucking love physics.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4LlLUFfa6Y
Dark Souls.
The best kind of invasion. What an asshole.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4LlLUFfa6Y
Dark Souls.
The best kind of invasion. What an asshole.
That is pretty amazing.
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That is some nice douchiness there. I still don't understand the appeal though. Ganking people through lag with slow projectiles? Isn't like the only reason it works because the controls are clunky anyway?
never understand
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Without having played Dark Souls, I assume the joke is that he's standing up on a ledge next to an NPC archer. I assume there's an expected rain of NPC projectiles that do like 2% damage if they hit and ideally the victim doesn't figure out why they're mysteriously taking so much damage until it's too late.
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I believe that is a ledge you commonly hear moaning about where there is like 6 decent enemy archers and no room to move. Mix in auto targeting and it is easy to walk off the instant death platform.
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This is one of the deadliest areas in the game for most players because of the two silver knight archers. Both have Dragonslayer bows, which don't necessarily deal high damage but can knock the player quite a bit. Which is pretty dangerous when fighting on a ledge/arc boutant.
Getting to close range to one of the archers isn't hard at all, but at that point he pulls a sword and shield and you have to fight him on the ledge (Difficult because you can't circle around him) while the other archer is still shooting your ass.
Here the invader just comes to become a third, more intelligent archer.
controls are awesome grefter go back to call of duty lol
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The key and mouse controls are shit. But no one plays Dark Souls without a controller anyway.
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These days you don't really have to use a keyboard and mouse if you don't want to. Fuckin USB ports on everything.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/23/worlds-largest-firearms-supplier-sells-3-half-years-worth-ar15-clips-3-days_n_2356286.html?1356294643
After the Sandy Hook shooting, with the possibility regulation looming overhead, gun nuts are buying up as much ammunition as they can.
Because this is precisely the trend we need to see after a school shooting.
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And yet seen so consistently without fail.
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Today, in "Jesus Christ India is a horrifying place":
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/UP-rape-victim-raped-by-cops-probing-case/articleshow/17748777.cms
Title says it all. Jeez, man, that sounds awful, but it can't get much worse than...
http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main54.asp?filename=Ne271012Rape.asp
On 8 December 2010, in the little known village of Pillu Kheda in Jind district, a 13-year-old girl was abducted by four boys, raped and left by the roadside. The girl somehow managed to crawl to a brick kiln for help, only to be raped again by two workers there. When she was finally let go in the evening, an autorickshaw driver offered to give her a lift, only to rape her again and dump her on the same road. Left for dead and crying for help, the young teen was picked up by a truck driver and his aide, who — not surprisingly by now — raped her repeatedly for nine days. The police eventually found the girl at a woman’s house in Panipat after her father had filed a missing complaint.
That... is some Congo shit right there.
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On a lighter note, here are spoiled kids whining about their Christmas gifts on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/fart
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Not sure if anybody else here reads Order of the Stick (http://www.giantitp.com), but in case you do and you've stopped checking the site during its long, injury-induced hiatus, there's finally a new comic.
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Which long, injury-induced hiatus do you refer to?
<_<
>_>
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Pft. Before it was a long, illness-induced hiatus. Totally different!