Problem Machine

I was actually talking about the horse above the wizard, with the bushy tail.

Once my stomach's settled, and if I can afford it... pho. pho pho pho pho pho. IT'S EVEN BETTER WHEN YOU'RE HUNG OVER. ... also good after workouts.

Wow! Look... at that... horse!

Oh my god, when they actually showed all of the pictures at once, I almost unconsciously applauded my monitor. I had to stop myself from clapping my hands. This is THAT glorious. Fantastic.

Gears of War meets Blazing Saddles! I don't even know how you could convert it into gameplay systems, but it's certainly a charming idea. Might also work as a comic or something.

So, so good. I particularly like Gone Home Ghost Game Gold Chris.

On the one hand, those are just two examples. I'm sure if you poked around you could find a female streamer with totally decent chat and a male streamer that was as gross (though you'd have to work pretty hard to find one as grossly objectifying of the streamer himself). On the other hand, they're probably fairly representative of the overall community, or set of communities, that frequent game streams. Possibly the worst part is that anyone who wants to avoid chat like that then has to avoid the chat of female streamers in general, which creates a vicious cycle of douchebag.

Ehhhhh I think it's maybe useful to draw a line here between "graphics" as in the graphics technology powering a game and "graphics" as in the overall visual experience. While I think the former is nice as a tool towards an end, the latter is extremely important, to a degree I don't think is being acknowledged here. Monkey Island is a beautiful game, even if its graphics technology is antiquated, and wouldn't even be half the experience it is now if it used blocky abstract graphics. "Graphics are king" is a silly way to put it, and obviously whether FC2 or Crysis's world "feels" more real is a matter of opinion. The visual aesthetics of a game matter a LOT though -- it's just that usually graphics technology is only a means towards that end, and frequently one poorly applied, a hammer used in lieu of a paintbrush.

Oh, that's fine, it wasn't my premise anyway. I was just pointing out that if that was the scenario, as Merus suggested, it wouldn't play out as well for creators as suggested.

Wait what?

I'm just saying that if the war is between the cheap edition and the nice edition, that means the winners are the ones who can make the cheapest edition and the ones who can make the nicest edition -- neither of which, necessarily, are the creators of the work. It's a dynamic we already have seen play out, really, where someone makes a solid fun game, and then a bigger company comes can makes the same game with nicer graphics, a more accessible presentation, and a bigger marketing budget. As far as the public is concerned, that game is the original because it's the one that they saw first.

The visual aesthetic of a game is one of the core components that makes up the experience of playing it, but whether that component is more important than its sound or its gameplay design is up to each individual player. That said, did you play enough FC2 to see the fire or rain effects? I'm playing it for the first time now, and my experience oscillates fairly rapidly between "eh this looks a little better than Half Life 2 maybe" and "HOLY CRAP THAT LOOKS AMAZING".

In that they can only do it to teams they've bought out. With no copyright, they could do it to any dev team anywhere.

Unfortunately, sans copyright, the fancy 'official' version would likely be made by EA with none of the proceeds going towards the actual developer.

Well, I didn't mean to imply that this was a new invention, but there is a cultural component as well. We're definitely wired to organize ourselves into societies this way, to discern between an 'us' and a 'them', but it gets worse the more we pander to it. Right now, that mentality is particularly popular, since it benefits those in power to encourage those with less power to focus on differences between themselves rather than focus on their common systemic oppression.

I feel like this discussion centers around whether someone is a good person or a bad person, and that's not actually a world view that makes sense or is productive. Woody Allen is a person. He did good art, for that he deserves praise. He did horrible things, for that he deserves prison. There's no reason for these two statements to be in conflict beyond our need to either be on Team Woody or Team Dylan. And, as Clyde points out, when we create that need, that means that people who love his art are by necessity on Team Woody, which means going to absurd lengths to discredit and ignore Dylan Farrow. (Tangentially, this type of need is also causing the rapid implosion of our political system) When someone does evil it doesn't do anything to erase the good they have done, any more than when someone does good it repairs the lives they've broken. We should all be for the cause of justice for Dylan Farrow and the other victims of Woody Allen. Whether some of us are also fans of his work is immaterial to that discussion.

To be fair, I could have provided some context, but I usually like to try to let things speak for themselves when possible. I guess that means once in a while being thought of as a guy who'd post reactionary pro-discriminatory-language screeds into a feminism thread, though

Ugh, I once watched a stream where the player was being guided by someone who told him about the entire Lautrec event. It made me want to throttle him.

A revealing perspective on the implications of language

I can't recall to what extent it's been mentioned already in this thread, but: You basically fucking rule.

The good thing about awful comments is that they're a visible manifestation of the problem. The more they happen, the more solidified this is as A Thing. They're like some kind of blood monster!

Man, I really wish I could contribute something to this either money-wise or art-wise, but money's pretty tight and I don't think I could spend the week or so it'd take me to make a picture for this

Ye- nnnnnnno.

Though I think spitting in the devil's hand or giving him a piece of paper might also have worked. Remember that in case you don't have any M&Ms handy when you (inevitably) meet him. Who carries unwrapped M&Ms in their pocket anyway?