sclpls

Yeah, I think this is something DOTA 2 has needed for awhile. Game modes that are just stupid fun and not meant to be taken too seriously. The closest thing at the moment has just been all random/random draft.

Here's hoping the next Banner Saga game absorbs this finding, and we see women characters besides archers!

Ghosts? Or fire witches?

Personally I'm excited about the new gameplay modes they are rolling out. They sound like fun to me! But yes, I hope there is some rebalancing happening with this that just hasn't been announced yet. There are a couple of other tweaks they did that I think are nice touches. Probably the addition of techies is the least exciting aspect of this.

Yeah, I realized after I wrote that that I should have hedged my claims more carefully. I've read quite a bit of his work, and there are so many different characters that making a blanket characterization like that when he does infuse a tremendous amount of humanity and empathy into a very diverse range of people. Still, it's something you see crop up even in a work as late as the Savage Detectives, so it's worth addressing. But it's absolutely true: style, perception and appearance, identities of characters, these are rarely straightforward things in his writing.

If there's one offshoot of recent roguelike-influenced design I'm particularly impressed with, it is the roguelike games that strip away nearly all of the RPG mechanics of the genre, and replace it with... nothing at all. It turns out when you get rid of all those complex systems, the basic mechanics still manage to generate fiendishly difficult and surprising encounters. At such an elemental level the games take on an almost puzzle-like quality without of course any authored puzzle being designed in the first place. Michael Brogue's output here is relevant, in particular 868-HACK and Zaga33. Also Hoplite. Last night I picked up the Nightmare Cooperative for iOS (it is also available on PC), and it might be the best example of this type of game yet. You control multiple heroes, but whenever you move in a direction, all the heroes move in that direction, you don't get to move them one at a time. Naturally the levels have randomly generated walls, acid and lava pools, etc. Also when you open up treasure chests you also spawn enemies. So that turns the whole thing into this intricate dance around a field of landmines. Also, the name for this game is perfect. I think people should check it out! Some references: http://www.smestorp.com/ http://www.magmafortress.com/p/hoplite.html http://luckyframe.co.uk/nightmare/

Buy all the games, end up playing DOTA 2 all the time.

Last night before going to bed I reread "The Paranoid Style in American Politics". For people not familiar with the essay it was written back when Goldwater won the Republican primary nomination, and was about when minor political factions are seized with these apocalyptic beliefs about a changing pluralistic society. I found it couldn't be more on the nose to the current situation, and is well worth your time to read. http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/

We'll I did say part of its power. But I think we're in agreement. If someone wants to depict that sort of violence they ought to be thorough in the treatment rather than using it as window dressing for some hero's journey BS.

I agree 2666 is a powerful novel, but part of its power comes from the fact that it's based on real events. That's in contrast to most games that lack that sort of specificity to real events. It's ironic to mention Bolano too. His writing is full of machismo and a lot of his women characters are kind of one dimensional. But compared to most games? No contest he is way better.

I'm not sure how useful listing specific movies will be necessarily because there will often be these gray areas between something that is exploitative and something that is handled in a mature and thoughtful manner. Lars von Trier springs to mind as someone whose work is controversial because audiences will arrive at different conclusions about where he is on that spectrum. The important thing though is that reasonable minds can differ on that question, that it becomes a question at all. This is in contrast to this depiction of violence in video games where it is a throwaway side quest. That's what is specifically objectionable. Anita specifically mentions Papa & Yo as praiseworthy because the subject is about a child dealing with abuse, and that is entirely what the game is about.

Well, I got to the end of the episode, and that ending made my day.

Oh look, another claim about cherry picking evidence followed up with a complaint about an echo chamber. Don't let the irony get lost in the reverberations.

With all due respect, I think you've got this backwards. When you say to someone else they are cherry-picking data, that accusation is most relevant if there are hard facts available. What you're saying is that someone is lying through their use of statistics. For example, if you include one more year of data in a chart suddenly the conclusion you reached looks very different. That's not really how thematic analysis works though. As I said, it is a meaningless charge in the context of cultural criticism. When she says that damsels in distress is a trope that exists in video games, it doesn't matter whether she has 100 examples of this trope vs. 500 examples of this trope. Insofar as she is able to find a pattern at all it's valid for her to claim that this is a thematic element that exists in video games. At that point people arguing with her are arguing about how many grains of sand you need for a pile. Now it is true that there is room to quibble with some of the conclusions reached on occasion. But I think not liking a particular reading or argument she provides about whatever segment of a game doesn't really invalidate the clarity she brings in showing how these sexist thematic elements in games exists.

I still mostly play with bots at the moment. I think there is no shame in that while you are still new to the game, and still learning new heroes. On any particular day when I load up DOTA I always do one match with all medium bots, and I random a hero just so I can learn different heroes. Afterwards I make a note of how well I did as the hero, and maybe watch a video of someone playing the hero that knows what they're doing so I get a better understanding of builds. I still try to play against actual people, but only if I have two friends I am playing with. My rule is at least two friends because at my level without two friends the game is just not fun at all. It only takes one person on your team for a game to get totally wrecked, but the odds are reasonable enough I feel like with 2 friends for the game to mostly be fun.

Props to Joss Whedon for repping the latest Feminist Frequencies video. I think it's great for this sort of stuff to be reaching a wider consciousness outside of the usual channels of people talking about games on twitter. I can't help but notice that a lot of people are, 8 videos later, still complaining about her evidence being "cherry picked" despite the breadth of games covered at this point. That's weird. You can complain about cherry picked evidence in, say, political or economic disputes. However when someone is analyzing thematic elements of a work or multiple works, complaining about the evidence being cherry picked makes no sense. If you're able to find enough examples you have successfully identified a thematic element.

Also I'd be happy to see interviews with some of the other Campo Santo folks, not just the Idle Thumbs dudes!

I am really into this whole exclusive interview for the forums angle...

Hey, I was where you were not too long ago (not that I'm much further ahead or anything). I think you have the right attitude about the game. As long as you're having fun learning new things it's all good. I feel like I learn something new about the game every day. The team fight thing is tricky. Your teammates probably expected you to show up for team fights because you're playing support, and supports are going to need the gold from winning team fights, as well as having some items and abilities that will help the team survive and win the fight. That being said, I think instincts for team fights is just something you develop naturally over time, and so if your teammates are trying to engage they really need to communicate that to you. It's not really fair to expect you to be able to read their minds!

Thanks for the discussion. I think I might wait for another few builds before jumping back into this one!

I submit the following question to the panel: It is often said that the military technology of World War II makes it an especially good conflict to model in strategy games. Yet much of that technology was also present in the Spanish Civil War, but that's a conflict that is rarely represented in games - in both the digital and tabletop space. Why do you think there is less interest in the Spanish Civil War?

How intuitive is it to play at this point? I picked it up back when the game was called Incognita, and while it seemed promising, it was also fairly difficult to understand the consequences of certain actions, and how a lot of the systems worked.

I started playing Spelunky again after a couple months of hiatus. Still so good. I hit a new milestone by finally getting the plasma rifle in the alien ship. I love that weapon!

Thanks for linking that Jenn Frank piece. Very thoughtful, honest, and well written.

Oh man, haven't thought of Darkplace in awhile. So amazing.