Problem Machine

If you're working as an actual peacekeeper then ideally you want to be in a position where you rarely have to tell anyone to do anything, where you primarily act as a mediator and voice of reason. There are situations where that's not feasible, but those situations are rare and mostly have to do with a person with a weapon who is actively escalating the situation. Anything short of that is something that you should be able to negotiate without violence. Of course, that's assuming police are supposed to be peacekeepers, which is an appealing fantasy. Mostly their job, in practice, is to patrol class boundaries and make sure no one steps out of place. If we want police who actually protect and serve, there's a long way to go to make that happen.

Looking to join a team. Stuff what I can do: musics writing (I haven't done much fiction but write a weekly blog and pretty sure I can do whatever) programming: I'm good at Haxe and AS3, I've done plenty of C++ in my spare time but am rather rusty, and I can probably pick up a new language since they're all pretty much the same 2d art and animation pm or email me if you think i could be helpful on something or have any questions

Another interesting read

Extremely surprised at the lack of XCOM 2 mention during the Dishonored Christmas segment! It's kind of hilarious that Dishonored 2 and XCOM 2 are coming out so close to each other again. Feels like some kind of time loop. Ever wish you could go back in time?

I'd be up to join a team as long as someone else is taking the reins. I think a bit more of a theme would be nice, since that's pretty vague as a jumping off point. Part of what made the last jam so fun was that the theme was so immediately evocative of ideas.

Jeez. That sucks.

interesting theory

I think the bigger issue though was that this is a cast about video games, and doing an ad read for a video game created confusion as to what was endorsement and what was not.

No, it was a suggestion. I mean it's just good hygiene.

I would steam clean the shit out of all your pants after all that stream shitting

Ah, no, my bad. Absent any cited context I thought it was referring to this thread.

An interesting article I was just linked to on the psychological toll of performative masculinity in nerd culture: Masculinity Is an Anxiety Disorder: Breaking Down the Nerd Box

Man. I need to read more. It's hard when I'm not taking public transit :|

Yeah his dismissals of games frequently just boiled down to him picking out one aspect he thought was silly and dismissing the entire thing as silly, so realistically with TBG he would have just looked at the melodrama and dismissed it as a halfassed radio play or whatever. That was actually part of why I thought it about Super Hexagon, because that game is so minimal that there's only the core experience to engage with, and the way it affects you. I was curious what explicit argument, if any, he would have against someone who showed that to him and said This Is Art. I actually think the whole are games art argument is pretty silly, but I think the justifications people come up with as to one or the other are interesting and edifying. Yeah, the House of Leaves comparison occurred to me, especially related to that music thought I was talking about earlier. I couldn't think of anything interesting to say about it, but it's a cool parallel. Noyb, that book sounds pretty interesting. Recommended?

Did he? I saw his article where he said that maybe games could be art but couldn't be 'high art', which was a bit of a no true scotsman clusterfuck, but it's cool he was able to gain enough perspective to note he had no perspective. And, well, I guess nothing is what he's saying anyway, so.

Pretty likely, but I often wonder just because he was such a grouchy jerk about the whole thing while being an otherwise very open and smart critic, haha. For the record, I wondered the same thing about Super Hexagon.

A few more thoughts I had which I thought were interesting -- in this case, not having to do with specific interpretations or anything, so I think I can safely leave them unspoilered. My second time through the game, I paid a lot of attention to the soundtrack and how it was used, and I thought it was really interesting that it was often unclear what 'layer' of the experience it belonged to: That is, any music in the game could be either something added by Coda to his game, something added by 'Davey' to his collection of Coda's games, or something added by game developer Davey Wreden to the game The Beginner's Guide. At times, music was either clearly part of Coda's game or clearly not (for instance, if the music kept playing in between individual mini-games). The difference between the other two layers is harder to distinguish, but mostly had to do with whether it seemed the music was scoring the level or was scoring 'Davey's' dialogue. At times, it felt the music slipped in between, from scoring one to another. Given how carefully these layers are separated in other aspects of the game, I think it's interesting how they're blended together at the musical layer, and am curious to what degree that's intentional. I also was thinking about what this game would look like if someone tried to realize its equivalent in another medium, and was having a difficult time: I'm sure a lot of people will deride this as 'not a real game', but it's a wonderful showcase for how even very similar games (same engine, same perspective, same controls, mostly same mechanics) can run a wide gamut from abstract to explicit, realistic to surreal, and how these differences can affect someone. For all the drama that goes into the game, I still feel like it's something I would show someone who wanted to know why I love the medium. It's kind of silly to say, but I'm curious what Roger Ebert would say about a game like this.