baekgom84

Holy hell, the last group stages more than just lived up to expectations! That was some of the fiercest, most intense competitive League I've ever seen! I'm really stoked to see C9 go through, as I've been a fan of their playstyle since they came into the NA LCS and I'm just really happy that they get rewarded for prioritising intelligent, adaptive play over simply trying to paper over their strategic cracks with mechanics or aggression. I don't think they'll beat Samsung Blue, but I do think they can at least give them a scare and expose a couple of their weaknesses. Now that we're actually into the quarterfinals, I kind of feel like the excitement will drop off a bit. Both Samsung teams should advance fairly comfortably, and then we'll have the excitement of an all-Samsung semi-final, but whoever advances from that will be pretty strongly favoured to take the Championship. The Chinese/Najin side of the bracket has some potential for some exciting games, but it could just as easily descend into safe, turgid siege-fests, or sloppy scraps where neither team can get the ascendancy because they are constantly doing stupid shit and screwing up their own plans. Hopefully, though, all of the teams will step it up and cap off what has the potential to be the greatest League of Legends tournament yet.

This is looking more and more like a Steam sale pickup for me. I don't necessarily intend that as a negative, just that I don't know if I can justify paying fifty-ish dollars for a game that is probably going to feel and play like an extravagant mod/expansion of the Civ V base game.

Yeah, the ending of that game was just madness. To be honest, I kind of thought something like that would happen; it just seemed natural that TSM would score an impressive victory against a good Chinese team like Royal Club, but then throw it away against SK who they had already beaten convincingly and by that stage had nothing left to play for but pride. I don't really like TSM as a team that much but I do hope they put up a fight against White, just to keep the competition interesting. But White are in monstrous form right now and look to me the team most likely to win the entire competition.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this one. I kind of got the sense that Colonial Marines would be shit based on little tells in the pre-release trailers and such, but this game is ticking all the right boxes. I'm actually really worried that the game will be fantastic but I'll be too goddamn scared to play it, I can't even play Amnesia or Outlast. On the subject of existing Alien/s/vs Predator games, while I absolutely loved Rebellion's first Alien vs Predator game back in 1999, I've never been able to stop thinking about a Commodore 64 (and maybe other platforms) game just called Alien. It's based on the first movie, and is a kind of a turn-based strategy game with real-time 'ticks', where you control the surviving members of the Nostromo as they try to either kill the Alien (difficult) or at least escape the ship via shuttle once the number of survivors has been whittled down enough to fit everyone on board. I think finding and capturing Jones (the ship's cat, if you don't remember) was a requirement to board the shuttle. The initial crew member to die and the android were randomly generated, and even if you escaped you could still lose if you had inadvertently taken the android with you. It had a pretty intense atmosphere, since the only sounds were the simulated heartbeat of the selected character (which would go up if they were particularly stressed or isolated) and sounds that indicated character movement, which also included Jones and the alien. This whole description is probably just a hot mess unless you've actually seen or played the game, so video probably outlines things a bit better. There were some pretty major problems with the game; the interface was so unwieldy and atrocious that even trying to manage three characters was like playing a ranked game of Starcraft, and as far as I know there was absolutely no way to tell who the android was, so it was just a bullshit guessing game that could screw up your progress. But despite its age I think it's still a pretty unique game and one with a lot of ideas worth exploring with modern game design sensibilities. If I had the time, the resources, the talent and the motivation, I'd try to make a riff on this game myself.

Yeah, I actually copped a bit of flak online when I dared to suggest that as a spectator sport, LoL was actually easier to follow than Dota for casual players. But I still think it's true; as you say, the interface presents almost all of the key information at a single glance, and things like kills are much easier to track. I only wish that LoL had anywhere near the in-game spectating options that Dota has. I'm really pumped for groups C and D on Thursday. Hopefully some of the Western teams can put up a fight against the Koreans and keep things interesting (but I still want Shield to win!)

I think your second point is interesting and I more or less agree with it, but I have some issues with your first point. I think that if you assume the misogynistic backlash in the wake of the Gamergate thing can in any way be attributed to the sexist content in video games, you then have to accept the possibility that, for example, perhaps some of the mass shootings that have occurred in the U.S. and elsewhere may also be attributed to the violent content in video games. I also think that the abuse and death threats suffered by Anita and others could probably be just as easily attributed to a culture of violence as they can to a culture of sexism.

I dunno, I feel like there's a bit more nuance to the discussion than simply claiming it's a fallacy to compare the violence vs sexism debate in games. It seems like the argument is (and I may have misunderstood this part) that violence is depicted through actions, which are easy to consciously separate from reality, as opposed to sexism which is depicted through attitudes, and which is more likely to seep into our subconscious and covertly shape our own attitudes. But I'm not sure if I agree that, if we accept that video games and other forms of media do have the power to shape and normalise certain attitudes, that violence should somehow get a pass where sexism does not. Does violence really not carry with it an implicit set of subtle attitudes? What if it affects us in ways that are difficult to measure? I don't have any answers or anything, I just feel like it's an oversimplification to say that, 'Sexism is bad because X, but violence is okay because Y'. I don't necessarily think that's what Anita (or anyone else) was actually saying, but I dunno, I still feel like there's something not quite right when people will passionately argue that video games don't influence violent attitudes or behaviours, but then also claim that video games can influence sexist attitudes or behaviours.

What's the point of this? Is it just to get people talking (like we are now)? Is there an idea that subtle differences like this can somehow influence the success of a film? Or is it honestly just a cute little Easter egg for the audience to discover?

Well if you include China, SE Asia and maybe even Japan (where there is talk of starting up new servers) into the viewership, I imagine you would fairly easily match the potential viewership of NA/EU/Brazil, with possibly the added benefit that most of the largest population centres are concentrated within similar time zones. The schedule is relatively EU-friendly as well, especially if you don't have school or work commitments. I feel like Riot's business decisions are generally on the savvy side, so given the information they have access to, which would include much more accurate viewership statistics, potential for growth etc, then I can only assume this decision was a heavily calculated one.

On the Marvel thing, there's a scene in the newest Captain America movie where he keeps a notebook filled with a list of 'Things I need to catch up on' or something to that effect, but the contents of the notebook are tailored to the audience of the country that the film is screening in. I saw the movie in Korea, and I did a double take when Captain America apparently felt the need to catch up on Park Ji-sung (a famous soccer player here) and Oldboy. Here is a list of the different variations. Also, The Avengers 2 will feature an extended sequence in Seoul, and the filming will be heavily subsidised by the Korean government; I'm pretty sure I remember reading that the government blew their entire film budget (i.e. the money they set aside for this sort of thing) on this film alone. I'm REALLY excited to see landmarks that I've actually seen in real life get blown the fuck up, and hopefully also some really bad, forced dialogue which references some aspect of Korean culture, probably included at the insistence of the Korean Ministry of Tourism.

Yeah, I'm WAY more excited to see the teams in Groups C and D. NA teams in particular seem to have really lifted their game in the past year and have finally started adopting some of the professionalism and infrastructure of the top Korean teams. I hope an NA or EU team makes it to the semi-finals at least. Is it really that much higher in NA and EU compared to Asia? I don't actually know myself, but I figured that it was pretty hard to get a handle on Chinese viewership in particular because they don't use traditional streaming platforms like Twitch or Youtube. Personally I thought the decision to hold the finals in Korea and SE Asia was to promote the image of the game as a global e-sport, with a focus on Korea in particular because perhaps they feel that Korea's wholehearted adoption of the game, coupled with their status as a sort of 'mecca of e-sports' lends them a legitimacy that other games don't necessarily have.

I finished Bioshock 2 recently and I'm glad that I did, but I hated fighting Big Daddys in both Bioshock games, and Big Sisters even more so. It seems like an absurd design choice to me that such an atmospheric and cerebral shooter would essentially - and CONSTANTLY! - revert to 'circle-strafe and unload all of your ammo into a big thing' type of gameplay in order for you to progress. The whole protect-the-little-sister-while-she-collects-ADAM thing was almost as tedious.

Just finished it, and...

I really liked the Frank Grimes episode. I agree with other posters that it explores the idea of 'privilege', in so far as it demonstrates just how successful Homer has become, relative to the amount of effort or skill he required to achieve that success. It points out just how hard it can be to achieve social mobility, even in a country whose identity is largely based on the ideal that social mobility is for everyone, and it's fairly scathing in its approach. Grimey's diligence and resilience are what eventually gets him into the middle-class, but these are the same qualities that alienate him from the other loafers who were simply born into that class, and this eventually drives him insane and ultimately to his death. I also liked the Armin Tamzarian episode. I can totally understand why people pinpoint this episode as the nadir of The Simpsons, but I think it was still funny and warm. It is a kind of a red flag episode though, in that you can see the writers are struggling for fresh ideas. For me, the episode where I first realised that The Simpsons was getting kind of shit, was the episode 'Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder' in the eleventh season. You might remember it best as the episode where Homer becomes famous after bowling a perfect game. I think this is the episode where you really start to see the writers sacrifice narrative structure and characterisation in favour of cheap gags. I don't mind episodes that tinker with narrative or character in order to explore new and/or interesting ideas, but this episode just came across as lazy writing, which of course is the greatest sin of all.

I'm in Korea, but sadly I rarely have the time to sit down and commit myself to a multiplayer game, plus I tend to find most competitive multiplayer games kind of stressful. Like colinp said though, it's cool to see other people in Asia.

I don't want to get into the debate over whether or not it's ethical for a charity to accept donations from 4chan users, and I think 4chan as an entity isn't as collectively hateful as they are often portrayed, but it's fairly well documented that the Vivian character was originally created for the purpose of trolling/frustrating the social justice movement.

I hope so, but with thirteen different resource types and multiple interactive systems, and given that Soren claims that games can be played in less than an hour, it sounds like it might be a bit overwhelming for me. But I love the idea of a cutthroat tycoon-style game, so I'll keep tabs on it for sure.

I can agree with your first point; lazy writing is shitty, and using heinous violence as a sort of prop is kind of tired and gross. I'm not sure that I agree that that's what Martin is doing in his books, but I can see the argument at least. Second point: I'm not sure what you mean here. A lot of women are victims; a few of them get a chance to fight back, many of them do not. This is also true to a lesser extent of the men in the story. Isn't that the reality of a patriarchal society? That women generally have fewer avenues for dealing with abuse or mistreatment? I may have misunderstood what you were trying to say. Third point: This is where I disagree. We can debate the extent to which women in history were made to suffer, but it seems like you're saying, 'If you don't have anything important to say about it, just don't depict it at all,' and I don't think that's a reasonable stance. I don't agree that Martin or any other creator of fiction has an obligation to make some sort of social commentary on the terrible things they depict - I think in many cases it's enough that they depict them and let the audience reflect on it in their own way. As I said earlier, I think that violence against women is inevitable regardless of the kind of society we live in. Is that considered a misogynist view? I mean, I obviously don't want that to be the case, I just see it as a sad reality. Given that, I don't think Martin is under any obligation to portray a world in which violence against women is not inevitable, because personally I don't think it will change anything either way. Also I think the fourth book is vastly underrated.

I guess the issue I have with your first point is that it's not always easy to determine what an author's intention is, or what an audience's interpretation is going to be. What if an author sets out to make some kind of point about the suffering of women, but because he/she lacks subtlety it comes across as exploitation? Should it still be treated as exploitation or 'set dressing' if it is seen as such, with no regard for the original intent? How exactly do we determine, for example, what is 'satire of sexism' as opposed to 'sexist satire'? In more extreme cases this may be more obvious, but at some point I imagine it gets much more difficult to tell. As for your second point, I'm pretty much in the same boat as you, as I'm not enough of a student of history to comment on anything definitively. But I definitely agree that we should be careful about what we think we know about history. I actually didn't know there were female knights, that's really interesting. And the point about the most famous assassin in the French Revolution being a woman is well taken. But I don't think anyone would disagree that knights were almost always men, and so I don't think it's completely unreasonable for a developer, making a game in which the main character is a knight, to overlook including a playable female character. I know there was a lot of controversy about Assassin's Creed as well, but I didn't follow that much so I won't go into that. For the record, I would love to see them include playable female characters. As for realistic portrayals of rape, I can understand that people are perhaps sick of seeing the same 'TV-friendly' rape instead of a more realistic and sinister depiction of it (at least, that's how I interpreted your statement - correct me if I'm wrong). But again, I have problems with criticising media for what it doesn't include. Is Game of Thrones obligated to portray rape realistically? And is it really fair to call it's portrayals of rape 'unrealistic'? The kind of 'Snidely Whiplash back-alley' rape you describe might be statistically unlikely, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen at all, and it seems unfair to me to simply dismiss it. As for your last sentence... well, yes, I think a world with dragons and zombies is at least as realistic as a world without rape. I don't believe that humans will ever live in a world free of violence or brutality. Do you really think we can eliminate violent crimes from human society? I ask that sincerely.

I don't have much to add about what was said on the podcast (although I think for the most part it was a superb summary and commentary), but I did want to talk a bit about what was said earlier in this thread about how Game of Thrones can't use history as an excuse for its depictions of rape and other manifestations of sexual violence/misogyny, because it also has dragons and zombies and giant walls of ice. A Song of Ice and Fire may be a fictional universe, but (dragons and zombies aside) it is very obviously inspired by real history, and if it's reasonable for George R.R. Martin to liberally borrow ideas from historical places and cultures, why is it unreasonable for him to depict the kind of atrocities against women that were probably not uncommon at the time? Wouldn't it have been a cop-out if he had faithfully recreated a medieval culture, but simply glossed over the gross abuses and inequalities that women had to suffer through during that period? When it was announced earlier in the year that Deep Down wasn't including a playable female character, there was a lot of outrage. I remember some people tried to offer a defense of the decision by suggesting that, historically, it would have been extremely unlikely (if not flat-out impossible) for a female character to assume such a role. The counter-argument to this was, 'That's a load of bullshit because the game has dragons, why can't it have a woman wearing armour and wielding a sword?' And while I can understand that argument, I still don't agree with it. I don't think it's right to be critical of narrative choices based on historical or cultural precedents, just because it chooses to flaunt other historical precedents (e.g. the non-existence of dragons). Surely it's not reasonable to expect all fictional worlds to reflect the kind of social equality that we would like to see in today's world? Also I hope I don't seem like I'm shitting on the positive messages that have appeared throughout this thread.

I'm actually kind of glad to hear that most people struggled with Phlebas. Based on people's recommendations it sounds like Use of Weapons is a good place to go next, so when I get in the mood again I'll pick it up.

I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one who was a bit deflated after hearing the developers talk about their somewhat-generic influences. In my opinion, the only real reason why SMAC is still so highly regarded is the painstaking research that went into the writing and worldbuilding. I think any prospective futuristic 4x needs to get this aspect just right, or it will be doomed to live in the shadow of SMAC.

I just skimmed over the rules and am now officially intrigued, but I've always been completely rubbish at balancing combat, base building and resource management in other RTS games. If this game requires some sort of minimum APM threshold to be competitive, that's definitely going to be an issue for me.

I'm a bit late to the party but I just finished Bioshock 2. It's a very solid and competent sequel to the original game, but it definitely doesn't tinker with the original game's formula very much. Great writing and level design though. Am I the only one that absolutely hates fighting the Big Daddies/Big Sisters? The game just doesn't seem to be very well designed to accommodate the kind of prolonged gun battles required to take down these guys. I started off playing on a controller, mostly so I could play on my TV, but I got so frustrated at some of the difficulty spikes that I ended up switching back to mouse and keyboard. Going to try to finish a couple of other games in my back catalogue now and then return to play through the Minerva's Den DLC, which I've heard is actually better than the main game.

I tried to read Gardens of the Moon a couple of years back and I think I got about halfway before giving up. The lack of exposition was probably a factor - although I did know about that going in and usually that sort of thing doesn't bother me too much - but I was also put off by the writing, which as I recall had too many cliches for my liking, especially in the dialogue. I have heard that his writing improves as the series goes on, so I might return to it one day and slog through it in order to get to the good stuff later on.