BobbyBesar

"Just because a game seemingly aims to be bad on purpose doesn't make it any less of a bad game."

Huh. Even though the numbers are meaningless, there is a system underneath that you can play via color matching. I can't tell if that's interesting or disappointing.

Ok. You'd be wrong though.

"Claw" style grip (left hand thumb on d-pad, right hand index / middle / ring finger on face buttons) isn't unheard of in the fighting game community, but it's not particularly common. Like the NES Advantage, by the time people get that deep, they usually just use a fight stick.

The literary version of this that springs to mind is the unreliable narrator. Almost anything can be hand-waved away with an unreliable narrator, to the extent that it's sort of a joke even when it was obviously not the intent of the author. However, even when it was the author's intent, I still have a problem with it. It's probably one of the hardest technique to actually use effectively, and while interesting in the hands of a master, it's an incredibly dangerous game to play for anybody else. If the author is presenting me with an unreliable narrator, they better have a pretty damn good reason, and I better be confident that the author is way smarter and / or more rigorous than I am. The ambiguity has to serve a purpose, otherwise it just ends up in the "who cares" category: so you write a made up story, and then you don't actually tell me the story you made up, but tell me unrelated things that may or may not have fictionally happened? Fuck you. There's only so many levels of indirection that I'm willing to stomach.

I may have been generally disenchanted with the game at that point, but it felt like an awards-bait moment to me. "We have to remind the peons that this is Not Just Another ShooterTM, and that we are an Important GameTM that is Saying SomethingTM. So let's add a scene where you're nice to an orphan and folk music plays. That shows that war is bad." I suppose that if there had been more opportunities like that it would have felt more organically part of the world. But by that point, the game had already revealed so much dissonance and internal inconsistency that it was hard to take it seriously.

Well, that was less racist than the answer I assumed. Get it?

I totally agree with the first part of this, but not the second part. It may be very hard to remember what it's like to not have it, but it's far from impossible. The real problem is that because it's very hard and require a lot of vicarious thinking, when you have a largely fan community writing the guides for free, that hard stuff doesn't get done. It's just like play-testing. Just sit down with a newbie to learn the game and write down literally every question they ask. Then use that as your framework for writing the guide. I have a google doc with my own question framework (although I know I'm missing things). I'd write the guide I need myself, but unfortunately I still don't have any of the answers yet . Ideally, my goal would be to build out an entire guide, then walk through the first 50 matches with one of my game-savvy but totally non-LoMa playing friends as an editing pass.

If you're looking at putting the Simpsons or X-men on there, it's silly not to have at least 2P built in. In addition to the Capcom brawlers, the Capcom D&D games (Shadow over Mystara, etc.) are great. Also, Armored Warriors, and Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. (The CPS 2 era was really pretty amazing). Personally, I would also add Warriors of Fate, or even Knights of Valor, but those are hardly household names in the US. I've never been a big fan of Metal Slug, personally, but I do love Shock Troopers to death (esp. 2nd Squad).

Huh, Vanaman didn't start this thread? Weird. I guess this is the unofficial official Dota Today 11 thread? Anyways, I thought it was interesting that Brad expressed misgivings about having difficulty understanding the overall structure of a DoTA match, because I think that's my primary barrier to learning to actually play the game (as opposed to just clicking around randomly). For all that the tutorials are adequate at teaching the basic game interactions, they don't really explain the sequence of how a match flows from minute 1 to minute 30. There's a huge gap in mid-tier guides that explain things like: How long is the laning phase? When does it end? When would you farm the jungle instead of lanes? When should you consider attacking Roshan? Obviously all of these vary significantly based on how the game is going and the team makeup, but just as the Limited Hero Pool is a simplified version of the game, there are also some basic guidelines for these questions that new players could be shown. Even basic guidelines split up by role (support, carry, etc) would be helpful. The major barrier to this is that in many cases, these phases are equipment based rather than time or level based, which means that an inability to last hit could throw any kind of timeline out the window. But it would still be useful to have a sense for what everybody else is likely to be doing.

A man with troubled personal relationships sequestered in a fire tower? Sounds like an Edward Abbey game. I recall vaguely that one or several of you has expressed a fondness for hiking and camping in the Sierras. I imagine that this game is going to be an expression of that in some ways. Interesting.

It was a concern (see Malthusian population models), but your time frame is about 20 years too late. Look up Borlaug and the Green Revolution. By the 90's, the issue was primarily one of distribution, not capacity. There are still general concerns about sustainability, in some circles.

Also, for the record: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeral_Fantasia

Probably worth mentioning: there's now an NYC version of real room escape: http://escapetheroomnyc.com/ No idea if it's affiliated, and I haven't had a chance to try it yet. Also, for Boston people that are interested, there's a place called 5 wits that's been doing similar stuff for a while. They used to have a Indiana Jones / Tomb-Raider type one, but now they appear to be spy and Captain Nemo themed: http://www.5-wits.com/index.aspx

Never thought I would write these words but: I really enjoyed the Miley Cyrus talk. To an extent, all game design is simply experience design and as such shares quite a bit with the design of theme parks, music concerts, or even golf courses. I know a couple people who have worked on designing museum exhibits and many of the same considerations exist. Instead of communicating gameplay details you're communicating other domain knowledge, but many of the concepts and the methods of viewer engagement are the same. Of course, a live event like that has a lot of logistics, too, which is really just another design constraint. That would be a good idea for an interview / podcast series: game design that isn't game design.

Atlus has never needed any help exploiting their own IPs, especially MegaTen and all its derivatives. And all of these Persona spin-off titles would have been well into planning before Sega got involved. Besides, it's hardly bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. The Etrian Odyssey style dungeon crawl is about as core to the SMT identity as you can get. Making a Persona 3 dancing game is brilliant because the music in Persona 3 was brilliant. It's catchy and poppy, but somehow doesn't wear out its welcome after 50+ hours. There are multiple variations on the same musical themes in different musical styles, which creates a soundscape that feels varied, but always familiar. Built on that foundation, music has become integral to the identify of the Persona franchise. "I never felt like...so mi-ser-a-ble"

Not really an idiom per se. It's just when they're so long, it easier to accidentally step on them.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. The Sun At Night is pretty explicit about Laika being not a Siberian Husky super-dog, but a fairly cute mutt looking thing. Yes, the game is about a pretend dog, a pretend dog with a ROBOT BODY and LASERS. You appear to be criticising them for failing to do a thing they had no intention of attempting to do.

So, sort of like AudioSurf, but FPS? It would be interesting if there was a similar interaction where you recommend a particular song's level to your friends. You could queue up album in lieu of map rotations. Would Brubeck's Time Out be hard mode?

I worked in the games industry for a while, and I can't really recommend it, for the obvious reasons (low pay, long hours, lack of job security). The best advice I've heard was regarding pursuing (fiction) writing as a career, but in my opinion applies to games as well: "Don't try to be a writer unless you can't imagine not being a writer." That being said, there are lots of things you can do with computer science that aren't the games industry, and, if you enjoy programming, I'd definitely recommend pursuing it.

"Mr. Kong is my father." Amazing.

At companies I've worked for: Alpha = Feature Lock. All of the primary systems have been decided upon, even if they aren't implemented. Some things may end up getting added (rarely) or removed (more commonly) later on, but this is the stage where you know what game you're trying to make. Basically, you have a complete v1 design doc. Pre-alpha is prototyping to "find the fun". Beta = Feature Complete. Everything (systems) that's going to be in the game is in the game, although it might be janky and broken. In theory, all that's left is fixing bugs although severity of the bugs may range from "typo on this menu page" to "game crashes immediately" or "level 2 doesn't exist" There's a "content complete"/"gamma" milestone that we've used internally at times meaning, basically, everything is in, but bugs remain (so no "level doesn't exist" bugs). But it's pretty gameplay-dependent whether that even makes sense. "First Playable" is a pretty common term as well, on the earlier side of the spectrum. In my experience, Beta is pretty universal, but alpha varies from team to team.

Now somebody needs to figure out a way to trick Allard and Kotick into seeing their portraits, but in a low-key, non-committal way, like it's totally normal to have a portrait of a complete stranger as a renaissance dandy in your office.

Asymmetric.