sclpls

Yeah, Le Havre should be treated as an iPad only game. It is basically impossible to play on the iPhone screen.

I spotted Greg Rice last night when I was drinking with friends at Southern Pacific. You would think with a man of his stature I would instantly recognize him, but I was only certain when I saw the back of his hoodie emblazoned with an Amnesia Fortnight graphic.

Uwe Rosenberg's games have some pretty interesting economic systems at work in his games. Even something simple like Bohnanza is a pretty clever implementation of supply/demand problems.

No comment! P.S. Thanks for making a rad game dude

To anyone in Vancouver thinking of taking Nels up on his offer to teach Netrunner, be warned, he is the author of this incredibly disturbing website: http://becomingbreckon.wordpress.com/

Oh cool, thanks on both counts!

That fan art is appropriate for the daily challenge from this weekend where all the shopkeepers in the black market went ballistic (still not totally clear why). That was a good day of Spelunkying.

The convergence of play styles is definitely interesting, when I watched the most recent video that was up this morning Tom mentioned some sort of vine climb trick. Any idea what that is referring to?

Oh, this looks interesting. Thanks for sharing!

Watching those Tom Francis videos is becoming part of my morning routine. His streams are great because even when he doesn't verbally articulate it (his commentary is good though), you can usually grasp whatever issue it is he's deliberating on.

http://kotaku.com/the-truth-is-last-years-games-had-problems-this-year-1264532486 I don't play sports games at all, but this article makes me kind of wish I did. But what I actually love about the article is it really digs into what makes game design so fascinating, namely that constant process of iteration and trade-offs. It is so easy when we put on our hats as critics to talk about good or bad design decisions when of course the reality is a lot messier than that, and there aren't absolutes of a good or bad game design. This came up in the Dotato Day podcast that Brad Muir appeared on where he was talking about what was so interesting about DOTA 2 and M.O.B.A.s is that they are filled with seemingly "bad" game design choices, but in spite/because of these design choices they are endlessly fascinating in a way that games with more "correct" game design choices aren't.

That is totally true. The impact that the evolution of the offside rule has had on soccer is fascinating. Jonathan Wilson, author of the excellent book Inverting the Pyramid, has written some very sharp analysis of that rule and how it has improved the modern game. I like your point about "the spirit of the game", and how there's a tension there that creates a flux in the protocols of the game. This is especially interesting in soccer which is such an international sport, so different countries have different prevailing ethics and norms. There was a vivid example of this during the last World Cup during the match between Uruguay and Ghana when Luis Suarez prevented what would have been a deciding goal with a handball. As a result of the action he received a red card and removed from the game. Ghana received a penalty kick (which they missed), and Uruguay was able to move on to the next leg of the tournament as a result. In the Anglophone world this was treated as disgraceful, and some people accused Suarez of "cheating" even though what he did was, technically speaking, not cheating since he suffered the full repercussions for his action, he was simply in violation of the regulations. But of course for many people this contradicted their notion of what counts as "sportsmanlike" behavior. Many editorials were written about it. Interestingly, if you looked as the sports press in other countries you would sometimes see this event described without much comment, it simply wasn't considered a violation of norms in other parts of the world.

Great episode, but I take exception to Julian's characterization of Eclipse's AI as mediocre. I've seen it do some very clever stuff! (His point is otherwise well taken though)

Steam ID is sclpls

Oh hey, I'd be interested in this. I'm not free tonight, but otherwise my weekend is open. My steam name is the same as my username.

Repetition of stories isn't necessarily a bad thing either. Typically there will be variations in details that keep things interesting.

I will say I really enjoyed the conversation about the Last of Us just because everyone was coming from a pretty different place in terms of how they experienced it. Made me curious what the Bioshock Infinite discussion would have been like if there had been one person that was really into that game. Maybe in some parallel universe...

Also I agree with feelthedarkness that Witcher 2 doesn't seem like much of a "Thumbs Game", even if it is great. MirrorMoon EP, on the other hand, seems like a total Thumbs Game. It is by an Italian indie studio I've never heard of. It features outer space and trying to figure out how to play the game seems like an important component (i.e. I think it's cool, but I still haven't figured it out yet). It just came out on Steam.

I'm playing STALKER many years after the fact, and I'm definitely impressed with that aspect of it.

I thought that the way the Last of Us ended was the best way they could have ended that game, but it made me dislike the story they told when i reflected back on it.

Must... protect... the... core...

I know it's not what he said, but I also don't think whatever good aspects exist of PAX really needs defending. No one is criticizing those elements.

It isn't really an issue of whether there are worse offenders or not. I live in San Francisco which has much less gun violence than the neighborhoods in Chicago where I used to live. It doesn't follow that I should ignore gun violence where I live now just because Chicago is worse. Sexism is always part of the overall culture because it isn't just gaming, and it isn't just American society, sexism is the dominant paradigm of human societies. Does that mean we have to give a pass for each specific instance just because each individual instance is part of a broader problem? If a woman has an experience at PAX that makes her uncomfortable should she refrain from criticism just because you know some good people there? It's fine to enjoy the good aspects of PAX, but that shouldn't make it immune from criticism.

That's a good point. Looking at other mediums, criticism is never considered predictive. Good criticism makes a robust argument about what is meaningful in a particular work.

Oof... a couple of days ago I picked up a classic ironman game that I had left off after the 1st alien base mission. Things were going swimmingly until I finished research on hyperwave. Somehow that triggered an ancient curse because when I picked up the game today it was just a string of awful sequences. First up was a terror mission in Kolkata that is on that annoying map with all the tanks (what the hell are civilians doing on a military base anyway?) I ended up having to go up against nearly 20 chryssalids which always seemed to show up in pairs of threes dangerously close to my group. I nearly lost my only heavy that I had received in this campaign who had one point of health left by the end of it. Somehow I lucked out though and only lost a rookie. Unfortunately for me, it turned out that heavy would end up being the lucky one... The mission after that was brutal. It started out with just two mutons that I dispatched easily, but when I advanced up a bit after taking care of them I was suddenly swarmed by 6 mutons on all sides and a cyberdisk (with accompanying drones of course). Unfortunately my support and assault soldiers were a little too close together when I had them fall back and became victim to an alien grenade. My 2nd support was taken out by another muton that flanked him. Both my snipers were taken out by the cyberdisk before they were able to destroy that. At that point my remaining soldiers were in such disarray/state of panic that it didn't take much longer for them to get wiped up without any hope of me trying to save some of my guys by retreating to the evac point. The mission after that was a UFO mission where, again, I seemed to encounter an insane number of mutons and another pesky cyberdisk, and also two sectoid commanders (sure, why not?) but this time I was stuck with my B-team. This mission I managed to barely get through (more space to maneuver through certainly helped a lot), but not before losing half my squad. At this point my strategic game is looking pretty dire. With the exception of that heavy that got injured during the terror mission, I basically lost all my high level soldiers. Three countries are already out (Brazil, France, and Egypt) and both Africa and North America are looking dicey in terms of panic levels. I've researched some of the plasma weapons, but still have a few to go, and I could start building a psionic chamber, so I have a few advantages up my sleeve that should make the game a little less punishing, but at this point it is hard to see how to come back from this. I plan to stick it out just to see how far I can get along with it, but man, today was a nice reminder of how brutal this game can be sometimes! Yesterday this campaign was looking totally rosy.