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If you're interested in Pikety, maybe you should give Balzac's Pere Goriot a shot (it's often translated into English as Old Goriot). I think that was the book that inspired him to do the research into Capital in the 21st Century because Balzac is obsessed with money, and Pikety wanted to check if Balzac's figures were legit or if he was just pulling figures out of his ass (it turns out he wasn't). The villain of the novel gives this incredible speech to the naive protagonist about how the world really works that breaks down how working is a sucker's game and economic inequality perpetuates itself. The novel also has some aspects that will cause readers today to roll their eyes, but the foray into realism is still impressive, and if you make it to the end you are treated to one of the great last sentences.

Chris, is the youtuber you mentioned quill18? I haven't watched the videos for sure, but Rob Zacny mentioned this youtuber that got deep into highway planning & traffic management, and checking the twitter account I believe this person is Canadian, so just taking a stab here...

I've noticed when pro support players stream they tend to random a lot more than pros who play carries or core heroes. Not sure what accounts for that, or if it is just a coincidence of the streamers I watch.

Yes, that would be good as well. I enjoy the action camera, but I feel like a top down version should be an available option. Hopefully this is something that will be added as they continue to work on the game...

Doesn't seem like the local save feature really works either...

One thing this conversation makes clear is that Early Access (and I'll continue to capitalize it in this post to make clear I'm specifically referring to the Steam program) is more of a marketing term than any concrete idea about what state a particular game is in. When you had physical media a game was done when it shipped, but in the digital space a ship date is more of a metaphor, and Early Access plays with this slipperiness. It is not as if a game is even finished when it hits 1.0. On any given day I'll get back home from work, click on Steam and typically see 4 or 5 games being updated, and it is probably a 50/50 proposition whether any given update is an Early Access game or not. All Early Access means is a promise from the developer that the game is still being worked on, whereas a "finished" game contains no such promise. But games like Civ 5 and Crusader Kings 2 are very different from when people first started purchasing them compared to where they are now even though these aren't early access titles. So I think there's a powerful point in Soren's argument, that taking advantage of Early Access is basically a form of arbitrage for developers... basically free money on the table. The only risk is if it reduces later exposure.

Honestly the only game I don't enjoy playing while messed up on one substance or another is DOTA where I'm very aware of just how bad I'm playing. Everything else basically feels great though.

The new patch for the game fixed parking spaces still working for buildings that were burning down. Thank god, the game was basically unplayable.

Thanks for the responses Pepyri and Nappi! My wife has got super into this game. She's a graphic designer, and a city builder with this much flexibility is really putting her design brain into overdrive, it's impressive to watch. Meanwhile since she's been using my computer to play the game I've had like two days to mull over a gnarly traffic problem that's going on in my city.

Idle Thumbs doubling down on poop.

That's a good question, but I don't really have a good feel for it. It definitely looks like I see less opponents available though so I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. The last time I tried playing an online match of Frozen Synapse I felt like I had just dived into a shark tank.

How do you build highway ramps? I was trying to figure out how to do that last night, but didn't have much luck.

It will come as no surprise that the markets reacted extremely positive to this move, and their stock shot way up after this announcement. I sort of thought they had the right idea when they were resisting investors demands to move to mobile, but on the other hand mobile really is where the Japanese gaming market is so that position probably made less and less sense to them over time, especially if Western sales didn't really pick up any slack. I don't have anything else to say about it just because it is so unclear what they'll actually be doing on mobile. The most optimistic scenario I can imagine is one where the quality of the Nintendo releases improves the overall mobile game ecosystem. On the other hand, I could also see them releasing a lot of mediocre ports (they wouldn't be the first Japanese game company to do so).

I guess this must have been recorded at the GDC in 2014? I've played Road Not Taken, and it is really excellent and a unique design (and also far too difficult for me to actually complete!) I was wondering why I had heard of Tyrian when I knew that top down shooters are not a genre I've ever messed around with, and then I remembered that Tyrian 2000 is actually a free game you receive when you sign up for a GOG account. http://www.gog.com/game/tyrian_2000 I really connected with Daniel talking about the period of time when he was just designing games as a hobby rather than engaging in the marketplace. That's certainly the poisition I'm in at the moment. And then he mentioned about how he felt like he was leading an "intellectual dual life", and while I had never thought about that before, it has become pretty clear that it is a very accurate description of me. So now I have a lot to think about!

I'm currently stuck at the point I believe you're referring to. I had to stop playing for a bit because I could feel myself getting more annoyed hahaha. It is pretty great overall though.

I have a couple of friends that have picked the game up, but are too scared to jump into the multiplayer. I really hope I can get them to come around to it because I really prefer playing other people, and I am totally awful at the game. I haven't won a single match of the half dozen or so games I've completed, and I still feel like it is a wonderful game that more people should be playing.

I avoided responding to this because I'm unsure of whether or not Bogost is actually forming a hard dichotomy or not. Partly this is because he avoids going into specifics so we're sort of left to guess at what he means. I think the more charitable interpretation is that he is specifically saying he'd like to see more narrative development that are systems and simulation driven as opposed to character driven. If that is his intended meaning then presumably games like Cart Life, Papers Please, and Crusader Kings 2 fall into the category of games that are systems driven despite all of them having meaningful character interactions. However I can't prove this is what he means, and so I think you also may potentially have a very sound point, and for what it is worth, it looks like Clint Hocking totally agrees with you. http://www.clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2015/03/video-games-are-better.html

This Ian Bogost (in the shell) article about Sim City is rather timely. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/video-games-are-better-without-characters/387556/

Arguing counter-factuals is always kind of dicey territory, but I think just the whole idea of creating a game genre that revolves around building a modern city in an open, freely available space is a concept that is going to be informed by an American experience even had the developers been European. But I think it also could have been possible that in this universe where SimCity never existed you might have had European developers that ended up making a city management game instead of a city building game since that would have been a more natural translation of the European experience of modern urban planning. Or perhaps we might have the city rebuilder genre (for example, a city like London really is what it is because at pivotal points in history it is wrecked by fire).

I just wonder how big they are prepared to go with the overhaul. From my perspective this game looks like their Elemental.

I agree about the new intro having a bit of an early Bowie vibe. Way into it! I enjoyed the conversation about people's experiences growing up with the different sort of game systems that were available to them and what kind of trajectory they had with games as a result. I didn't really have consoles growing up, and basically just played PC games, but the funny thing is I have very strong memories about NES and SNES games that I don't have with subsequent console games (with the exception of multiplayer N64 games) just because I would play a ton of those early Nintendo games when I would go over to friends' houses, but by the time the next generation of consoles arrived I was just at an age and part of my life where that wasn't something that I would really do. The discussion about DOTA polish was really interesting too. Chris is right that starting out it feels like this really raw, incomprehensible thing. It's only after you've been playing for hundreds of hours when you internalize how all these different sounds, lighting effects and other visual language are used to convey information to the player that you see just how polished the game is. This is in contrast to like a Blizzard game where Blizzard is also good at creating super polished games, but part of Blizzard's polishing process is being really good at holding a new player's hand whereas the refinement Valve brings to their multiplayer games is dedicated almost completely to the existing player base.

I would like to pick it up at some point, but I don't feel like I have time to get into a city builder at the moment.

Yeah I was thinking of lottery winners when I made my earlier post. I think the problem a lot of lottery winners face is suddenly they have friends and family coming out of the woodwork to hit them up for money, and it's very difficult to say no in that situation.

Yeah it's so crazy! The message I got from that scene is that this woman has siren song powers or something? It's such a complete mess.

I had completely forgot about the scene where you have the whole sheriff's department fawning over the widow. Even for a show with the sort of tonal flexibility that Twin Peaks possesses, what a wtf moment.