Gormongous

Molyneux states that making games is "almost impossible" to do, only able to happen if one has "a passion and a love" for it (and even then, who knows). He repeatedly implies that his continual misrepresentations of his own games are an inevitable side effect of that love, because love makes you do crazy things, and that it isn't reasonable to expect him to be otherwise, because it'd be "very difficult in [his] personality" to do so. In general, I don't know what to make of Molyneux after that interview. Throughout the course of it, he has the distinct feeling of being upset that his behavior has consequences redounding on him personally. He works hard and believes every word he says, at least at the time, so it has to be the industry's fault, the publisher's fault, the consumer's fault, John Walker's fault that anyone could be mad at him. What am I supposed to do with that, as a onetime fan of him?

It's full of disgusting lines, from both Molyneux and Walker. It's actually quite interesting to read in that respect, because your brain's unable to settle on which one is the protagonist. Walker is mostly being uncomfortably confrontational, with a lot of questions that no sane person would answer in the affirmative, but Molyneux is... well... That really creeps me out, too.

I think Huckabee's book is referring to "God, Guns, Guts, and Glory," the traditional schoolboy mnemonic for how the conquest of the New World happened. I can't say for sure, but Diamond seems to have been playing on the same.

Yeah, that's why I'm defending the use of the word "pathological." It might not be something you'd want to say to someone's face, but it's hard to deny that spending several decades making the same "honest mistake" and relying on the same apologies to make things right, to the point that it's a joke he shares with interviewers now, doesn't have some kind of dysfunctional dimension to it. I don't know, it feels really weird for people in this thread to be like, "Well, of course it's obvious to everyone that Molyneux can't help getting overenthusiastic to the point of making promises he can't keep, but don't suggest that he's a pathological liar, that's unfair." The conversations over whether Molyneux can keep from misrepresenting himself to the public and whether that misrepresentation makes him a "bad person" or whatever should not be conflated. EDIT: Well fuck, that's a nicer bow to put on it, SBM.

Black & White was my one game purchase that year, or rather my parents' one game purchase, and I distinctly remember it as an animal abuse simulator with a fragile-as-glass campaign built around it as justification. It was the sort of game that scanned your computer for your name and the weather, rendered ants in the grass, and simulated your creature's digestive system, but was missing basic checks to see whether the state of your domain on completion of one mission would trigger automatic failure upon beginning the next. I lost three campaigns that way before giving up and selling it to Gamestop. I mean, it was fun as a curio, but a total mess nonetheless. I don't know, I just don't see a reason to defend Peter Molyneux beyond common decency. He's humorous and a bit avuncular, which gets him incredibly far, but he's consistently unable to say what he will or will not do in a given project after almost thirty years of experience. How is that not the definition of pathological? Even if it isn't, it's still not good for his employees, his customers, and the industry.

Oh, come on, Twig. It's not a crucifixion to call a man on taking people's money and not delivering on it since I was in diapers. We can all disagree on whether it's right to call someone a pathological liar to their face, but Molyneux has been "imperfectly" describing his games for almost three decades and I have trouble not calling that pathological in some way. People have a right to be angry because of the choices Molyneux has made with their money as a public figure. I got off the bandwagon with Black & White way back in 1997, because that was such a disappointing clusterfuck, but I have nothing but sympathy for anyone discovering the same emotions now.

Hey everyone, happy Valentine's Da--

I mean, isn't shaming hateful or offensive views into silence part of the advancement of society by itself? You're better able to express your views here because no one feels like they're able to tell you to shut up and get back in the kitchen (not that anyone here would, but for the purpose of my example, that attitude definitely still exists on the internet). Shaming discriminatory viewpoints into silence allows for more people to participate in the discourse, which is a net good for society. You might never change your racist uncle's mind, but getting him to shut up lets you bring your black friend to dinner, which is fine for a consolation prize.

I don't really want to engage with the rest of the conversation, because I don't have anything useful to say to it, but is it really true that you can't shame people into being more considerate? I don't think that the deconstruction of Jim Crow and the marginalization of open racism in the American South was a hearts-and-minds sort of thing. I think there began to be real social and legal consequences to what was hitherto acceptable behavior, and people stopped doing it because of those consequences. Same for the mainstreaming of lesbian and gay culture in America. I know plenty of people who are still just as homophobic as they were in 1994, only now their homophobia isn't remotely as acceptable, so they keep it to themselves, and I think that's a good thing? Reasoned discourse on its own isn't a terribly effective tool against ignorance or hate, in my experience.

That's my bad. A hole in his chest, lasting brain damage, one million in medical fees, no indictments, but the baby's apparently alive: http://abcnews.go.com/US/family-toddler-injured-swat-grenade-faces-1m-medical/story?id=27671521

Yeah, and some of the stuff should be huge press, but somehow the idea of SWAT-related deaths being an honest mistake that doesn't happen that often allows local and state governments to paper over it all repeatedly. How about the baby that was killed by a flashbang tossed in its crib a few months ago? That was outrageous, especially because there was virtually no inquest by the police, and yet it got maybe a week of circulation.

Right? I have all of these games except the sci-fi economy visual novel by the Spice & Wolf guy, but I find myself tempted by a body pillow for the first time!

I'm curious to hear this argument in full, because if it flattens the many differences, both subtle and obvious, between calling out offensive behavior with the intent of limiting it further and harassing ideological enemies with the intent of ruining their lives, I'm interested in seeing how it actually holds water. If you're just saying that the superficial expression is the same with both, then that's fine, but if you're not, you ought to look at any "victim" of callout culture versus any victim of #GamerGate. If the intent is different and the outcome is different, then the only similarity is that they're both saying what certain people shouldn't do on the internet, which isn't that profound of a connection.

Going back to Rogue Warrior in 2009 at least, when they first began their push to be a top-tier third-party publisher, there's a long list of games they've published that have suffered from poor QA and unworkable production schedules. Just glancing over the list on Wikipedia, Wet, Fallout: New Vegas, Brink, Hunted: The Demon's Forge, Rage, Doom 3: BFG Edition, The Evil Within, and Prey 2 are all titles that had the aforementioned issues. In the case of New Vegas, at least, the lack of testing caused the developers to lose a bonus promised by Bethesda, which is worrisome. I remember an interview with someone from Splash Damage who specifically said that Bethesda had assumed the responsibility for QA with Brink and then had failed to do virtually any before releasing the game. I guess it's fine for Bethesda to under-test their own games, since they have such an enthusiastic modding community to fix whatever they overlook, but right now they have a pretty terrible record for third-party titles. In the past five years, they've published fifteen games not by Bethesda Game Studios and only Dishonoured and Wolfenstein: The New Order have been free from major issues.

Wow, yeah. It draws some strong connections near the end:

Well, those are both nasal consonants, it's just a matter of stress and duration. Even "ng" is a velar nasal, rather than anything glottal, unless someone's doing some kind of overcorrection to pronounce the "g."

I mean, I think it goes another layer down. It's an issue of process, because executive power was used to circumvent legislative process, but go down another level and it's because creating a "protected class" for people who don't need or deserve to be protected in his eyes is a waste of taxpayer money and a threat to free-market capitalism, and then one more level down is the fact that he's a racist and sexist homophobe.

It would be a pain in the ass, but I wish there were a slightly more pronunciation-based romanization for Japanese, just so I never have to hear "Ah-SOO-kah" again in my life. Regardless, I fucked up. Sorry, Twig-sempai!

I think he means more that Bethesda in particular has a fairly terrible track record for quality control on third-party games they publish.

It took me way too long to read and to respond to this, but it's really great, SBM! I like your focus on internal politics, rather than expansion.

No problem, I have a passion for good word choice. Someday I'll even be good enough to get Ben X-sempai to notice me...

Yeah, I understand the basic impulse for there to be a "wrong" decision in order for there to be some tension and for there to be something to experience the next time around, but more often than not it feels misguided because i) a decent run is going to be hours in length, so I have no faith that I'll be able to remember whether it's the right hand or the left hand that cuts the quest off short, and ii) a lot of the breaking points come incredibly early, look perfectly reasonable, and cut off hours-long quests, like if you ever make the mistake of asking the Haunted Doctor about his past. Fallen London didn't have half so many blind alleys as Sunless Sea, but hopefully they'll be fleshing out the latter to be more like the former. Still, as it is, it makes me want to find a wiki for every major decision, since the choice is secretly so often between something and nothing. And eh, I get the impulse to discourage cargo hauling, but it feels unthematic for a sailing game if you don't have to think at all about which port to take salvaged or stolen goods to, not to mention that good design of a cargo economy could be just as much of an incentive to explore as the quests themselves. If their goal is to discourage people from hellish grinding, they've failed, because there's already at least five guides up on the Steam Community page about how to put yourself through five or six hours of hell hauling sphinxstone back and forth and then using the five figures you make there to fill mirrorcatches which'll break six figures. If there is any way for an obsessive and joyless individual to make money in a game, it'll be abused, so I'm a bit nonplussed why cargo prices aren't more varied just to help the average player make a bit of money on the side. Just to reiterate, I like this game a lot. I'm mostly just frustrated when the instincts I garnered from hundreds of hours of Sid Meier's Pirates! actively hurt me in Sunless Sea.

I've put maybe fifteen hours into it since the release build. I like it a lot, especially just the meditative act of sailing, but I'm having a lot of problems with quests either breaking or having non-apparent "incorrect" answers that lock you off entirely from further content. It bums me out a little that I've got a great run going, but I'll never make any progress in Khan's Shadow or with the Haunted Doctor because something happened, I'm not sure if it was a bug or just the wrong choice, to make both those objects non-interactable. If I make a certain choice, something ought to come of it, good or bad. Putting up a big wall of "nope" for me to remember to avoid in my next life is not good. I'm also a bit miffed at the decision to make only a handful of cargo runs profitable in any appreciable way, although I'd be much more willing to accept the reasoning of a design decision here. I can sail all the way down to Port Carnelian and buy thirty sapphires to bring back to Fallen London, but that'll only make me forty echoes, which is barely the cost of fuel. On the other hand, I can run Sphinxstone or Clay Men for huge profit, even though they're about equidistant from Fallen London. The loading screens warn me that running cargo is intentionally made to be unprofitable, but apparently only most of the time, with certain items.

Anyone seen the first few episodes of Wolf Hall yet? I'm enchanted so far. Even if the themes are slightly different, it preserves the guarded and meditative feel of the books, which is great.

I feel like this is a chronic problem with the Dragon Age series as a whole. People raved about Dragon Age: Origins' combat, which wasn't very good but was different enough to be refreshing in an age when stop-and-go realtime battles weren't that common. The subsequent two games in the series has been doubling down on that design in odd ways, even though an explosion of tactical games in the intervening years has revealed Origins' combat to be drawn out and fiddly. It's just another example of how Bioware can understand perfectly why some people play their games but not why other people do.