TychoCelchuuu

A list of logical fallacies actually isn't super helpful if you want to make good arguments any more than a list of common math errors is helpful if you want to take a math test. What you need to worry about is your specific math problem or your specific argument and whether you're doing the problem right or making a good argument. Thinking in terms of fallacies is rarely a helpful way to set up an actual good argument.

The title of this thread always reminds me of this video:

I'm not watching this bullshit but from what I've gathered, Telltale is making a Borderlands adventure game with Gearbox.

Each year I think they try to top themselves and make it worse than last year.

The X means Christ, like in x-mas.

Tonight's Spelunky stream ended with a podcast-worthy discussion about game academia and what Chris and Nick think will be talked about in the future, so check that out when it goes up on the twitch archives if that sounds interesting. It featured an amazing soundtrack too.

I like twitter. It gives me a stream of interesting articles, funny jokes, news updates, and short observations/conversations about topics that can be discussed in the length limit.

Is that what a German accent sounds like in Scottish?

Despite the fact that I buy and play far more video games than I ought to buy and play, I have not played anywhere near enough games to make an informed decision about this. So, for instance, Fez, The Stanley Parable, The Swapper, Starseed Pilgrim, Kentucky Route Zero, Antichamber, the Dishonored DLC, Hate+, State of Decay, Proteus, Risk of Rain, Rogue Legacy, MirrorMoon EP, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, and Knock-Knock (and maybe more stuff) are all games that would potentially be in the running for being, like, good or whatever, but I haven't fucking PLAYED THEM. I don't even own most of them. Well, many of them. I own a surprising number of games I haven't gotten around to playing yet In any case, so far stuff I've liked includes: Spelunky, Gone Home, Far Cry 2, Papers, Please, Gunpoint, Mass Effect 3's Citadel DLC which is the only part of that game I really liked, Teleglitch... maybe that's it? I can't remember if I'm forgetting anything.

Beat Papers, Please recently. Now time to play again to see more endings. What an amazing game. One of the great things about it is how it's something only a game can be: that it was me stamping the "REJECT" on the passport and me making the call to question someone's sex and me having to balance my income and my family against not wanting to take bribes and so forth was really impactful.

I think the in-fiction explanation is that the buses are literal teleportation stations, as in Star Trek. I seem to recall that being in the manual somewhere. I know that in real life Africa, a lot of bus stations have been converted into teleportation stations because finding parts and fuel to keep the buses running can be a challenge. Teleportation, despite the issues with loading screens and the occasional crash, ends up being more convenient.

Yes.

Actually there are buses at the bus stops too but they don't do anything.

TV and movies have soundtracks, art styles, voice acting, and so on.

Sometimes I feel like that's how bus stops work in real life. That or the bus studiously ignores you.

video games and video games

Each drone will be accompanied by three decoy drones, like how a VIP convoy has decoy cars that don't have the important person in them. Anyone who downs and retrieves a decoy drone will find that the package contains a bomb that emits knockout gas and a GPS tracker that allows Amazon's other fleet of drones, the killdrones, to zero in on the thief's location. Killdrones have a 79% efficacy rate that increases to 88% in instances where the knockout gas dispersal is not dissipated by weather effects. Killdrones have a 91% success rate with respect to eliminating the correct target, and the success rate increases to 97% if instances where killdrones eliminate the intended target are counted as successes even when unintended fatalities are also generated.

The buses don't actually exist, the bus stops exist, and you can click on locations at each bus stop to teleport to the other bus stops.

Even as just a hypothetical question it still makes no sense. Like, even given that our eyes aren't real, mirrors would totally still exist. That dude's twitter is hilarious though. "We Need To Stop Teaching The Youth About The Past And Encourage Them To Change The Future." "There Is No Nutrients In Our Food Anymore Or In Our Soil OR IN OUR WATER." "I Should Just Stop Tweeting, The Human Consciousness Must Raise Before I Speak My Juvenile Philosophy. Shouts Out To @TIME" "Trees Are Never Sad Look At Them Every Once In Awhile They're Quite Beautiful." "If Newborn Babies Could Speak They Would Be The Most Intelligent Beings On Planet Earth." ""It's Your Birthday" Mateo Said. I Didn't Respond. "Are You Not Excited To Be 15" He Asked. Reading My Book I Uttered "I Turned 15 Long Ago""

I guess these blocks... don't matter.

I don't think it's a pointless comparison any more than comparing books and movies is a pointless comparison. For some people I suppose the way you play Gone Home makes it more moving for them - since all the "emotional" stuff for me occurred when Sam was narrating a diary entry or I was reading a note or something, the fact that I was playing the game and discovering the narrative didn't make much of a difference (whereas in a game like Cart Life or Papers, Please, playing it made all the difference in terms of the emotional experience). But even if playing Gone Home is part of what makes it so emotional for people in ways that it wouldn't have been if it were a book or a movie, this doesn't mean the two things can't be compared. Movies can do emotional things that books can't do (you can see someone's face in a way that's much more affecting than reading about it) and vice versa, but I feel confident comparing Judy Blume and Dostoevsky to John Hughes and Tarkovsky.

I'm not sure he's dictating, he's just reporting. Once you're not a teenager anymore, the number of times you cry for 20 minutes after watching a John Hughes movie tends to go down and the number of times you cry for 20 minutes after reading a Ralph Ellison novel goes up (typically). I don't think Bogost is the crying police who wants to keep you from feeling an emotional experience from any given work of art. He's just saying that our expectations for games are such that people are reacting to Gone Home in a way that would look pretty weird if it were a book or a film. This doesn't make the reactions illegitimate, it just suggests that our standards are very different in the different media, and that he felt a little let down by Gone Home because he was expecting it to be equivalent to the sorts of things that tend to make people weep when it comes to movies and books. Bogost is addressing his article to people who read the LA Review of Books and have a fairly good handle on what books make them cry and what books don't, and if someone comes up to them and says "I know you don't play games but THIS ONE IS TRULY ART IT WILL MAKE YOU CRY" I think it's reasonable to expect them to play it and say "well this is great but I just played a Judy Blume novel, that's not really what you set me up for." Aside from the difficulty people have with navigating 3d spaces, I think Gone Home is a pretty good first game for people, and I'd use it to introduce them to the medium, maybe, but I wouldn't sell it as if it'll make them cry or something. I think the "plenty of other blog posts and essays" is a bit of a biased sample - people who are moved to tears by the game are more likely to write about it than people who play it and say "well that was pretty good." Moreover, most of the people playing this are gamers. If I sat my family and friends down in front of this, I'm sure they'd all enjoy it, but they wouldn't cry and they wouldn't write rapturous essays telling everyone they have to play this game.

As the curator of the Gone Home thread on the Something Awful forums, I've been collecting quotes from people in the thread for the OP. Here is a selection: If you replace "game" with "book" or "movie," try to imagine the sort of book or movie you'd picture. "Just finished this [book] and been crying for about a half hour since I finished it. Fuck." "This is the first book I have ever read that I would feel comfortable defending as a legitimate artistic piece to other adults in real life." "Only found out about this movie tonight, then proceeded to watch it for like three hours, to its conclusion. It's one of the best films I've ever seen, and no other film has ever come close to provoking the emotional reaction in me that this one did." What book or movie would you picture? Would it look like Judy Blume? Or would it look like Invisible Man? Which is Gone Home more like? Again, this is not to say one is better than the other (I enjoy both! They're on separate scales! Basically incomparable to each other!). It's just to say that the sorts of praise people give this game would seem a little out of place if they were praising the closest thing to Gone Home in other forms of media.

Vending machines aren't really "extremely specialized," I think - Japan has got them selling panties and everything else, right? And it's not like Amazon's thing is completely generalized. It can only fit relatively small (and light?) things. Like a vending machine...