sclpls

Yeah, I upgraded my backing level earlier because I wanted to get in on the bloodline, so I believe I should be receiving a beta copy. I haven't followed the game closely, but I did catch a stream they did a week or two ago, and I'm pretty excited with how the game is shaping up. I'm not crazy about the look of the keeps or whatever in the strategic layer. I guess it is kind of underwhelming when you compare it to like the anthill view of your base in XCOM so I wish they were a little more ambitious with the presentation and what you do there, but it's probably too late for that to realistically change. Oh well. Still stoked for the game.

I can relate to some of Sean's frustrations with a lot of adventure game conventions like characters standing around like sign posts. What's frustrating is we have an example of a game that doesn't do that: the Last Express. That comes with its own set of design challenges, but I wish some developers somewhere would try to develop a game that adopted some of the design choices used in that game. Also I basically completely agree with the Crate & Crowbar complaint about Sherlock Holmes games. Drives me nuts when people don't think through the fact that Sherlock Holmes is a literary character, and that means he gets to pull things off thanks to literary conceits that you can't convincingly do in a game. Detective games in general frequently run up against this problem.

There was a really good, but increasingly off-topic discussion on the feminism thread about what it means to be an adult so I decided to start a new thread. Many of you correctly pointed out that adulthood is kind of a bogus construct. I would add it's a very awkward one insofar as it is largely defined by what it is not: you aren't a young person anymore, but you aren't elderly either. The article that sparked the discussion talked about what being an adult meant decades ago, and how that definition has eroded over time. Some of you rejected the ideals that structure our ideas about what an adult is. I don't believe I'm in your camp. I think despite whatever problems, contradictions, and hypocrisies might exist within the category of adulthood, I also think there are ideas perhaps worth salvaging. For example, adulthood implies the capacity for reinvention of the self. You were one thing before, and now you are something else. Everyone that goes away to college gets their first taste of this, for example. When no one knows who you are, and you don't have the historical baggage of who your family is. Similarly, it also implies the capacity for autonomy. One of the problematic things about sexism and racism is how it tries to deprive individuals of autonomy. So a racist calls a black man "boy", men refer to "girls" instead of women, etc. Who gets treated as an adult becomes a political issue. Obviously this is also why the idea of an adult becomes a problem. Thorny issues.

Damn, that last paragraph reads like a grammatically challenged Andrew Ryan.

Why would you be diplomatic with someone that sends a death threat?

Also, like, she has constantly acted and spoken out in a thoughtful manner.

What on earth?

Also, I question the assumption that people are just doing horrible things to get attention. It's become such a truism that people bring up all the time, but as far as I know there is no evidence for it.

Because the police have traditionally been a shining beacon of providing support to women.

As far as articles go, that Deadspin one is probably the most thorough I've seen so far. Oh, Smart Jason beat me to it.

I must have the same plugin for my brain that activates anytime I'm near a co-worker who consistently and hilariously flips out over the error.

I was about to say that I think Voyager had the best presentation of race and gender stuff out of all of them, but then I remembered Chakotay, and all the weird baggage with his Native American identity being hella Other'ed.

I was about to post the same link. We're getting some pretty thorough examinations of the gg movement this week. Unfortunately, we're also getting garbage like this happening: http://www.standard.net/Police/2014/10/14/Utah-State-University-student-threatens-act-of-terror-if-feminist.html

This was a big concern of mine when my only way to play PC games was a laptop that was decent, but not ideal because, you know, it was a laptop. Now that I have a nice desktop I'm less worried. But I get it, it's tricky because developers can only guess at what the system requirements are going to be. I guess I would say if you're not sure if you can run it probably err on the side of caution, and avoid kickstarter.

This is like only tangently related, but is too funny for me not to post. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) who unfortunately is in charge of running the House Oversight Committee is currently deeply concerned about the close relationship between the EPA and environmental groups. www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/10/darrell-issa-finally-going-his-nut Just in case you were wondering if this kind of insanity is limited to gamers, it isn't.

Yup, this is a pretty common tactic where these groups are aware that basic common moral sense shows that people that harass other people do not have the moral high ground. So anything they can do to minimize the perception of themselves as harassers will be used, even if the rhetoric tips their hand into revealing themselves as harassers (and not people concerned about journalistic ethics or whatever).

Well that was fast, game has reached its goal.

Yeah I was excited about this game, but a friend of mine that played it issued similar complaints to Gormongous, so for now I'm holding off until the next big Steam sale, or if I hear about some major reworks. Kinda sad that in spite of all that I'm still more excited about this than Beyond Earth.

Good breakdown of how gamergate is a hate group here: http://jezebel.com/gamergate-trolls-arent-ethics-crusaders-theyre-a-hate-1644984010

The Brief, Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao? is definitely on my list of things to read. Junot Diaz seems like a pretty rad dude in the interviews with him I've read.

Oh, also, Leigh Alexander wrote something good about Twin Peaks: http://boingboing.net/2014/10/07/twin-peaks-and-suspicion-in-sm.html

I never liked Kotaku because Gawker in general always seems pretty skeevy overall, and to add to that they mix in their posts about games with a bunch of posts about some crazy thing from Japan, which is tedious to scroll through, and makes me not really want to check out the site. I hope other places follow their lead though.

Okay, so I want to find out who here likes season 2 better than season 1. There aren't very many of us, so it would be nice to figure this out ASAP!

I played a little more late at night, and I'm liking the game even more now. I am starting to see the merits in a bunch of design decisions they made. I really do feel like they basically solved a ton of problems people have had with stealth games for forever. You can't choke out dudes and clear a room. The alien patrol routes are mostly, but not entirely, predictable so the game constantly involves improvisation instead of a set number of solutions, but also doesn't fall into the trap of feeling completely arbitrary whether you succeed or fail. I guess the one thing I'm not crazy about is the save point system, although I've never felt as strongly about this stuff as a lot of people seem to, especially in cases like this where save points appear frequently. I had two amazing experiences last night: 1. I was wandering around an area, and eventually realized (when I finally checked the map) that I actually was supposed to be in a completely different section, and needed to head back and call the transport. Shortly after calling the transport the alarm went off, and I was like, "oh shit, did I just trigger a trap?" I placed myself up against a wall where there were stairs to my left and right where people would presumably be coming from, and so I would have a reasonable means of escape so long as they didn't come down along both sets of stairs. The transport arrives, but I also see my motion detector going crazy because something is behind me. And sure enough, as I turn around I see the alien, and the transport entrance between us. I desperately run to it, and as I get inside I hear it shrieking, and hit the button to close the door and take off just in time. 2. In the next section of the game I hit a point where I saw the alien emerge from one of the vents in the ceiling, and I had this amazing frozen deer in the headlights moment where I was trying to comprehend what was happening and what to do. Luckily I barely managed to escape into a locker.

Oh man, the concluding bit of the review on RPS: