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Haha I woke up this morning curious about whether Graham would mention the website or not.

I don't have any interest in writing objective reviews, but I have a lot of interest in the objective game reviews podcast!

Yeah, I agree with that as well.

That Mattie Bryce piece is really good, and well worth reading in its entirety. The distinction she makes between critique coming from a place of "righteous anger", and one that contributes to "toxicity" is really important.

Nice work! I got a kick out of the 30 Flights of Loving review. The FAQ section is also gold.

I find the concept of games as escapism to be kind of dubious. It suggests a division between your everyday life, and your life while you are engaged in leisure activities like playing games, watching movies, reading books, etc. that heavily implicates leisure activity as an inauthentic expression of who you are. As Sean said on the podcast, playing games with his wife has improved the quality of his marriage; that has concrete social value, and that sort of self-improvement seems like the opposite of trying to escape from your life. It's of course possible that unhappy or depressed people can use things like games to avoid dealing with issues that are causing them pain, but it's the attitude that is escapist, not the medium.

I think you'll find a lot of people don't really care for the press F to interact style, and your critique about the division between combat and exploration is also something a lot of people would agree with! It's funny and slightly ironic that you mention System Shock, and then talk about dialogue trees though. Looking Glass studio began with the Ultima Underworld games, and then made System Shock precisely because they found that the dialogue tree system that existed in that style of RPG wasn't as satisfying or compelling as all the immersive simulation stuff of being a character in a 3D world with a physical environment you could interact with in a more or less free manner. So the concept for System Shock was birthed out of this desire to get rid of this awkward, unsatisfactory dialogue system, and it solved the problem by having the setting be a dead world... there were no humans to interact with! This design problem became a recurring issue for immersive sims type games. Ken Levine says he has the dubious honor of being the guy that invented the person talking to you from behind a glass window, which was featured in System Shock 2 and Bioshock. Clearly he had this ambition to get pass this problem in Bioshock Infinite, and I think it's fair to say that Irrational, despite having an immense amount of talent, didn't succeed at solving this problem. I'm sympathetic, because I think it's a difficult problem to solve (not everyone enjoys dialogue trees!). I think it's fair to say that everyone at Irrational is probably trying to rethink the problem too... Ken Levine has done interviews since Bioshock Infinite talking about the idea of "narrative legos" where a player should be able to have these small sorts of narrative impacts that lock together in various combinations so it seems like a problem they are still working on trying to solve, and I wish them the best of luck with whatever their next effort is.

I couldn't listen to all this talk about roguelikes and Lovecraftian themes without thinking about Vic Davis's Occult Chronicles! I haven't seen a lot of people talking about it, but I think it was a great game with terrific writing, and of Vic's games this is the most fun I've had since Armageddon Empires.

Not only is M. Night Shyamalan not working on movies any more, in the greatest twist of all he has moved into the role of education policy advocacy. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/12/m-night-shyamalan-steps-education-wars

I ended up having a lot of issues with Fallout 3, but I ended up picking up Fallout New Vegas because, you know, it cost less than what I usually spend on a cup of coffee, it felt crazy not to buy it. So far I'm more impressed with it even though it is largely the same thing, but there are a bunch of little things that are making me appreciate the game more. I'm only about an hour in, but looking forward to seeing how the game develops.

My favorite part of the interview with Ken is when he is talking about like his first day at Looking Glass, it really cracked me up.

Stoked to finally play this!

For anyone that is interested in Randy Smith's career trajectory, there is another podcast that was done with ex-Looking Glass studios people. I recommend the whole series if you played most of those games. Here's the one that was done with Randy: http://gambit.mit.edu/updates/2011/06/looking_glass_studios_intervie_3.php

This Jacobin article on geek culture (called, simply "On Geek Culture) seems relevant to what Chris was talking about, and how annoying it is that we live in an era where important creative works are owned by corporate entities. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/08/on-geek-culture Also note I am not endorsing all of the conclusions & assumptions reached in the article, but I do think there are a lot of really good observations contained in it.

I haven't checked it out yet, but I've heard good things about the alpha v.3 build. Maybe worth checking out (and report back here because I'm curious!)

I also grabbed this during the Steam sale. I really enjoy the game play, but I definitely feel like much of the portrayal of Mexican culture relies on lazy stereotypes, and that irritates me.

It's GMT so just look up the time in London.

I've almost finished the DLC for the Brigmore Witches I think. I like both pieces of DLC quite a bit, and I've really come around to Dishonored after initially having mixed feelings about the game.

Also worth bearing in mind even when you get good at the game you will be riding waves with peaks of excellent performance and dipping into sucking hard.

That's exactly right. It's a pure speculative commodity replacing the function gold has had (only gold at least has a few industrial uses, so it was only mostly a speculative commodity) whose value is tied to what you think other people (who are trying to guess what you think it is worth) think it is worth...

If you're unsure I'd skip Anno 2070. I didn't really like the sci-fi theme.

The size of boxes for card games being the same as a typical board game drives me nuts.

My girlfriend picked up the A Game of Thrones board game as a Christmas gift for me. I explained to her that it's a great game but plays a lot like Diplomacy which caused her to recoil in horror. She kept the receipt though so I'm going to pick up a different game, and I'm almost certain it is going to be Netrunner, but I want anyone that is up for it to sell me on the game to push me from a probably going to buy to an almost certainly going to buy. Maybe send a private message in the interest of not getting too off topic with this thread! Thanks!

My list so far: Deus Ex: HR Director's Cut for $5 Paper's Please for $5 Flotilla for $2.50

Thanks! The heads up is appreciated.