Cult of Jared

I'm not super familiar with the games, but I think a motorcycle riding avatar is possible. Didn't the early games feature laserguns and spaceships? Don't look at me like that! I'm sure there was a spaceship! Not crazy!

This was a disappointing year. The games I was anticipating failed spectacularly in some essential way. Civ 5 : AI that burbled and ran into walls. New Vegas : IT DOESN'T WORK I HATE YOU Puzzle Agent : Piss poor puzzles. Though the first two have fixes out and nigh. Maybe they will be GOTY.cx for 2011. Maybe I need to manage my expectations. In a similar vein GOTY.cx for this year is Minecraft, because my expectations were 'minewhat?'. I have plans to buy a white smoking jacket, and give tours of my glorious underground menagerie. edit: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Diablo 3, Portal fucking 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, XCOM. Holy hell 2011.

His short stories are way better than TBWLoOW. But you are still wrong. Try the one I linked above. Eight minutes, you won't regret it. Joseph Heller isn't technically alive. But Catch 22 is the best book, so add him anyway.

Holy hell son, that's over 1000 words! For context, I often don't finish reading tweets. Just finished 'Puzzle Dimension', and it is really good! Levels are secretly three puzzles, including bonus 'touch every square' and 'time attack' objectives. I had some minor complaints, but if you bought that steam pack, you should play it.

Margaret Atwood, all the way. deserves to be on that list.Amy Tan has only one book, but it is a good one. I'd also like to put Dave Barry and Steven King down, but they aren't who you are looking for. I am missing a bunch of course. Too many people write too many things.

Less enthusiastic about this. Not that it isn't a sweet idea. 1. Minecraft without editing permissions is not Minecraft at all. 2. Having your server polluted with infinite cock-and-balls is worse. Which is a huge problem with this networking thing. Not an unsolvable problem though.

This might be my hippy gland acting up, but I have a vague problem with the treasure hunt. Remember when achievements were a sacred trust? When marketers didn't invent them on the spot to sell games? Me either, but that would be rad. On a unrelated note I only have only one. Completely unrelated.

Soren "Last Best Hope for Social Games" Johnson has been making the podcast rounds. Three Moves Ahead: Theme, Mechanics and Meaning 'The Thumbs' gave his GDC talk a brief plug, but this is a proper vetting on the subject. They later drift into talk about social games, which Soren sounds vaguely frustrated by. Highly recommended. Soren: "In Civ 3 we experimented with historical accuracy, geography playing a larger role. Lets give one continent horses, and the other continent no horses, and see what happens. But what happens is angry players." This Digital Life Interview with Soren and Brenda Brathwaite about their work in social games. This is the 'extended love ballad remix' of the social games section from three moves ahead. A good podcast, but if you aren't looking for a good podcast it isn't worth blocking two hours. Start at 16 min for the interview. Brenda: "Everything you need to know about social game design you can learn from World of Warcraft. It might be the best game ever designed. A masterpiece." Soren: "We are definitely hoping to pick up a lot of WoW players with Legends." Also I post too much.

Schrodinger is played out. I named my cat Heinous Bitch, which you are free to steal if you don't expect much company.

It looks like a sixth grade Leonardo Da Vinci engineering the first Woopie Cushion. All it needs is "beans are the key!" to be written and underlined in the margin.

You can't complete Minecraft. Saying I'll play more Recettear after I complete Minecraft is my way of letting Recettear down gently. Procedurally generated explorable spaces and the ability to place signs means I will never play "other games" again.

This game amuses me, because it is an obfuscated 'guess the number' game. Guessing correctly gives experience points, which is the truly exciting part. Next up is a game that offers bonus points for committing minor acts of terrorism. Snark aside, this game is rad. Looking forward to spending more time with it after I complete minecraft. I'll bite. What do you hate?

Huh. Is it any good? I wonder how effective these microsoft sales are.

Exploring minecraft for the first time. Killed myself with lava. So I wrote a sign that says "Lava is never the answer" and put it near the danger. This game is the best, and I don't know why. Also I wrecked a square of somebody's sweet lava river. I'll fix it as soon as I can find some diamond.

The latest 'Games with Garfield' is super rad. They interview Jason Kapalka the popcap dude. Apparently popcap's marketers had a hard time coming up with family friendly slogans for Zuma. It is nice to know I'm not the only person who finds the presentation unsettling. Their discussion isn't limited to shattering balls and the mouths of frogs. Highly recommended.

This sort of thing inevitably ends with "Meowth! That's right!" I'll try to think up some lyrics.

It was pretty hard to keep turning pages in some of the later ones. I attribute their success to escapism. Leave my muggle life behind, and enter a fantastic castle filled with the 'magic of love'? Yes please. I loved the first half of the series, they were so charming. This isn't just a broom, it is a 'Nimbus 2000'. The later books felt more like a terrible JRPG: -Searching for the twelve macguffins of the apocalypse. -Meaningless random encounters in a nondescript wooded area. -Endless whining from heroic children. -Bleh.

I quit WoW during the burning crusade. They made the game much better, but at the expense of the world. Emblematic of this change were the new dungeons, less 'places' and more 'linear paths through monsters'. Are the dungeons still like this? Is the world still like this?

http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/ms-dos-promo-music-video/174627 No comment I write could compete with this.

The PC Gamer UK podcast is really good, but I've been negligent and not plugged it. The latest episode is 'The Wizard-Wizard-Wizard Formation', so that is probably a sign. Note that you specifically want the UK version. I've listened to 15 minutes of the US version, and it sounded like they had cloned the Simpsons Teen a few times, then told them to make a podcast.

RULv6HbgEjY KWbLOFGSEDo Games spoiling the illusion of participation. Not great, but expected. Some of the most successful games in recent memory have separated skill and progress. Social games and World of Warcraft leveling come to mind. Dependence on skill might be leaving the vogue. As a corollary, dependence on player is sometimes thrown out as well. Apparently I'm all for this, which is embarrassing. World of Warcraft leveling was my favorite part. I like social games. I enjoyed progress quest, though I shouldn't admit that publicly. At the same time I am making an effort to stop playing games that frustrate me. What nightmare-skilless-future are other people imagining? Are you looking forward to it?

The mobile phone stuff was interesting. His sentiments regarding Android and Iphone are the inverse of all conventional wisdom I've heard. But I suppose if you are motherfucking John Carmack, you don't have to worry about the Apple approval process.

I've been messing around with Echo Bazaar. Exceptionally well written, but frustrating because of the schedule it enforces. Not really recommended. All social games enforce some sort of play schedule. They vary from onerous to impossible, but without restriction the game and profit model would break. Are there games that avoid this? Are there examples of daily limitations that aren't a pain-in-the-ass? Is it practically or theoretically possible for a game to be social, but not limit play? Edit: Made less terrible.

Those other reasons are more likely primary reasons. The game would immediately break without the daily limit. Though the current limitations imply play should be occurring on the hour every hour, which is mad. These games suffer a creeping sense of obligation, which I can't tolerate. Somebody is going to figure this stuff out, and make it look obvious. Maybe the Facebook game Sid Meier is working on.

Many: Neptune's pride, Die2Nite, EchoBazaar, Kingdom of Loathing, even World of Warcraft if you are feeling glib. My problem with social games is they oblige you to play for exactly 15 minutes every day. 15 minutes is a terrible amount of time. If 15 minutes were a porridge, it would always be too hot or too cold. It is theoretically possible for a social game to not have this restriction, but it would need randomly generated content and a clever reward system. I was asking if anyone had seen something like that. Maybe no one else here plays these things. If that is true you should find some and play them briefly, if only to check what the future will look like. Apparently Emily short just wrote her first piece for it. Who is Emily Short?