Problem Machine

Yeah totally fair, I feel the same way about all the Dark Souls 3 streams going on now I just wrapped up DS though, so no longer a concern. Also it's nice to take a day off. And by 'off' I mean replacing streaming video games with performing manual labor at my mom's house

Thanks! Yeah, it's a little hard to remember to do but once you flip that switch and start vocalizing the things you're thinking anyway I think it comes pretty easy. The stuff like trying to enunciate clearly, avoid tics like "um", and trying to be entertaining when there's nothing really going on on-screen is the stuff I struggle with, but I figure I'm just getting started and can learn that stuff as I go.

Okay, wrapped up a week of streaming two hours a day. Went pretty well, but as I just mentioned I found it pretty exhausting. So! My new schedule's going to be Sunday 8am-10am, then Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday 8am-9am. I just wrapped up my Dark Souls replay and I haven't decided what to tackle next, yet. Maybe Mega Man X or something else retro, maybe more Nuclear Throne, maybe Spelunky? Dunno! If/when Dark Souls 3 starts working on my computer, I'll probably go back to a more intense streaming schedule for a while to do that. Hopefully... soon.

Sweet, added and followed. I'm going to change my schedule up a bit I think. I'm finding streaming way more exhausting than I expected to, so I'm going to set up a lighter schedule. Maybe MTWR 9-10? I'll decide probably later today. In the meanwhile, I've been streaming a quick-ish playthrough of Dark Souls 1, since DS3 is still a no-go for me and probably will be until they release a patch. I just wrapped up Anor Londo, so next stream we'll see how many lord souls I can get through in 2 hours.

Cool, added and followed. I completed my first streamed game playthrough yesterday. Since Dark Souls 3 is unplayably framey on my computer (hopefully just temporarily until a patch comes out) ( :cry: :cry: ), I ended up streaming Titan Souls instead, which is still a pretty neat game. A complete single playthrough ended up spanning both streams pretty tidily.

I think the very first 'puzzle' in the game being about not walking the middle road is a pretty strong indication

Nope. I think both runs are all about committing to an idea: In one case, not killing anyone for any reason, and in the other completely conquering the game in every possible way. Doing anything in between gets you a neutral ending.

You might need to make sure it's set to capture that audio device rather than a built-in mic or something.

Added, followed.

The thread game is so strong on these forums I feel like I really gotta bring my A game

Added and followed. Just tried my first 'real' stream, and felt pretty good. Ended up having to sub in Titan Souls for Dark Souls 3 due to framerate issues though VoD1 VoD2

Cool, added and followed.

Good points! Though I'd argue the first two are semantic quibbles and the third is a secondary function, it still gets to the important point that even for a more purely functional object than a game evaluation of quality can be complex. So let's redefine the functionality more judiciously. Let's start with something like: "a vehicle is an object which you can use to transport yourself at faster speeds than you can normally move". This is a pretty flexible definition, including everything from bicycles to tractor-trailers to space shuttles. We can then build on that by saying "a car is a vehicle that is relatively easy to use, can carry 2-8 people, and is designed to be at home on most common road layouts." This addresses a, but reveals an interesting truth about b, which it barely qualifies for: Formula 1 race cars really are barely cars as we understand them. One might argue a motorcycle is as close to our ideal of a car as an f1 car is. This then brings us to the point that, in addition to the functional conception, we have a whole lot of lesser expectations. We expect cars to look sleek and shiny. We expect them to get a certain amount of gas mileage. We expect them to provide a degree of safety to the driver and passengers if something goes wrong. And, yes, in some cases we expect the name or appearance of the car to have certain communicative power, an association with wealth or power -- or, perhaps more commonly if less ostentatiously, of responsibility and/or efficiency. All of these affect our evaluation of the overall quality of a car, maybe changing a 6 to an 8 or a 9 to a 7, but if it fails by the basic standards we've set for a car, if you can't drive it, then it's going to get a 0 on most evaluations because it doesn't serve the purpose it was created for. Wooben, I assume he meant the whole "with great power comes great responsibility" thing,

It was a genuine question. If it's so obvious, tell me the answer please. To expand, from my perspective it's an absurd question with no answer. Everyone plays games for different reasons -- hell, more than that, everyone plays each game that they play for different reasons. Even the reasons that they think they play a game may differ from the reasons why they actually play the game. There's no single purpose which a piece of art exists to solve: It exists to be itself, and people take from it what they can.

This is an interesting example, because it clearly shows how the review would is based both on the expectations of the reviewer and their experience of the piece. For instance, say they were served a chocolate-cayenne tart: They might say "wow, that wasn't what I expected!" which is an important thing to note in a review, but also say "the combination of spice and chocolate really worked for me". Or maybe it didn't, whatever. But you can see a clear split there, where there's a part that could be said to be objective (not what you expect from the name) but with a final experiential result that is entirely subjective. Of course, the surprise of an unexpectedly spicy tart factors into that final experiential result and informs it, but doesn't comprise it in its totality.

I don't know. Also while we're at it what is a movie or a novel supposed to do?

A car is supposed to drive you places. What is a game supposed to do?

It's literally all made up. There's no objective truth to be found here. Video games are made up! Genres are made up! Reviews are made up things that are about things that are also made up!

Staying friends with exes is nice, but if they're not going to do their part in the friendship by respecting your feelings then I don't see why you should have to be the bigger man. You're under no obligation to continue to talk to people who make you feel shitty -- and arguably obligated, to yourself and to your loved ones, not to do so.

I got a lot more in-depth this week with why I think people are so affected by Undertale's treatment of violence, how the game blurs boundaries, and how it harnesses abstract aesthetic and game systems to enhance the narrative. Along the way I draw comparisons to Hotline Miami and The Beginner's Guide. I think it's pretty good.

A pretty amazing (and very spoilerish) breakdown of all the music in Undertale, the significance of the leitmotifs, and how they're used in the story.

I think that for a while around the mid-late 2000's, the trend was to design games that looked like you were doing difficult and amazing things but which weren't actually very challenging, and this left a whole lot of people dissatisfied. These dissatisfied groups have now split into two camps: One said "well, if we're not going to be challenging the player anyway, why don't we try to do something really interesting with the story and the world?" and made the 'walking sim', and the other said "if we're going to present the player with huge monsters and harrowing situations, we're going to make gameplay that actually lives up to that presentational challenge" and created games like Dark Souls. That's a gross oversimplification, but I think there's some truth to it.

I think it's just that people who wanted challenge from their games were really starved for a while, and it's now become clear that there is an audience that wants the game they play to push back when they push. Realistically, you can't make a design that's going to appeal to everyone: Whether it's too easy to be interesting or too hard to be accessible, you're going to lose someone who would otherwise be interested in your game. Best to just make the game that you want to play and hope it resonates.

That's interesting because what HLD reminded me of up front was Dark Souls, so I approached the combat as similar to Dark Souls philosophically. That meant that while I didn't expect to take contact damage, I did expect to have invincibility during my dashes. Because rolling forwards under an attack and then countering is usually a very strong tactic vs Dark Souls bosses, I found myself very frequently blundering right into attacks with a dash timed perfectly to slam my face right into their attack. It's actually really interesting how the first impression someone has of a game like HLD, particularly in reference to other games, can influence their experience so thoroughly.

Could you push an effort to change the data system to better address those issues, or is that not within your domain? I discontinued my food stamps today: There's a new policy this year pushing anyone who gets food stamps and spends less than 20 hours a week working (ie getting paid by someone else, other kinds of work don't count) to register with an employment program that requires vocational training, applying for 3 jobs a week and submitting logs of job applications, etc. I decided that rather than spending all this effort getting a job I don't want, I'd be better off trying to make up the ~$200 in grocery money by putting in more work or trying to make my current work more financially rewarding. I'm wondering if I should start a patreon or something. I don't know if anyone actually cares about any of the work I do enough to pay for it. I can't tell if choosing to avoid this intrusive program was decisive and independent or self indulgent and short sighted. I don't know.