plasticflesh

Ultimately this all seems to confirm Rimworld's world-view, of nihilistic survivalism. If that requires despotic tyranny, cannibalism, sexism, so be it. That's the poetic license he is entitled to as auteur. I'm not really into that part of the fiction so I stopped playing the game. But I do respect the game's ability to model the fragile bubble of survival. Sylvester defends the game by saying he is making it empirical, and stats based, rational. Inevitably it becomes subjective as he is compelled to make arbitrary decisions about ineffable qualities such as sexuality. He takes short cuts that reflect his personal world-view, and projects that onto the player, assuming they will agree that he made an objective decision. The real players have different world-views and respond with their reactions. He is actively making an outrageous piece of media, to simulate a portrait of humanity struggling to survive. He should be pleased when people are so outraged by his assertions. His game serves a function, to show how ugly despotic tyranny really is. The problem becomes partisan, should I regret that I have funded a celebration of this world-view? Is any simulation a celebration? As comparison I offer that I see the Dwarf Fortress world-view as a very pious one. The creator has professed his admiration of monks, and describes his male pattern baldness as a tonsure. Failure in Dwarf Fortress is not even about losing the game of survival, it is a noble sacrifice to Armok the Blood God. Also do dwarfs still reproduce via "spores?"

VR Game idea: Apollo EVA Littering Mission Re-enact famous Apollo Moon missions with the belligerence of a beer fueled car camping weekend. Visit the exotic surface of our planets natural satellite, and toss trash all over it. See how far you can toss that space trash. Make space-donuts with your space jalopy. See how far you can toss your space jalopy. Based off Apollo footage of the astronauts tossing garbage around. I know it's in there somewhere

This is exciting! I also really like your phone-booth teleportation method. It makes me think of that elevator in Fallout4 that exits the baseball field directly to the outside cell. Sitting forever in that elevator. Have you messed around with change the player-scale at all? becoming a mouse or a giant?

Having done no research, my speculation is that HoloLens still has tons of progress before hitting the market. So, MS releasing their own separate VR goggles to compete with the others does make some sense.

does http://www.netbabyworld.com/ count?

WHOA! This is very exciting to me. I was a big fan of the Fort Thunder scene. So I checked out his BarkleyDog youtube channel. Great raw animation, great swamp prog-abily music.

Looks nifty! Somehow the industrial design reminds me of the original DS. I bet they can turn it into a VR headset too, a la Samsung Gear VR.

I recall the Nintendo Virtual Boy automatically pausing itself every 15 minutes, and saying "Go look out side! Flex your eye and neck muscles!" Maybe not in all games, definitely Mario Tennis. I wonder if that will become a feature developers begin to integrate. As something that can be toggled, of course.

I wonder if VR entering the mainstream will create mainstream meditations on the illusory nature of reality. By game-players tacitly experiencing this confusing between reality and simulation, philosophical concepts of the illusory nature of reality more accessible. Like Hindu and Bhuddisms Maya, or Kant's noumenon versus phenomenon. Exciting stuff for a Marshal McLuhan fanatic like myself, what is the message inherent in this new medium. Yes, I am a crack-pot.

I'll probably dive into PSVR once theres some killer apps and a hair off the price. I'm so fascinated by these cognitive effects of VR. Since VR fools the mind into accepting a new reality; it feeds doubt into the rest of perception. And because VR interfaces are grossly physical, with large arm movements, the muscle-memory translates to real life as well, hense the guy rotating the stapler.

I'm fascinated by these anecdotes on /r/psvr , after 10 hour sessions: "I had a weird sensation in a meeting earlier where my eyes kept trying to "adjust" to the 3D of the people around me." "I had a weird moment when I picked up a stapler and started sort of rotating it and staring at it. Only lasted a second or two but it was a weird feeling, sort of disconnected from my hands."

I got Thumper for PS4 this weekend. Getting PSVR for it would be amazing. The game already implores that I wear headphones to merge my consciousness into its singularity. Adding goggles to that would be a complete and total detention from reality.

This year I've been reading a lot of psychology texts, to try and be a responsible arm-chair psychologist. What makes people feel "smart" when they call other people "stupid?" I've always wavered on the total rejection of superstitions like religion or astrology because they are forms of proto-psychology, they are, in some regards, honest attempts to understand the world, and might still offer insight for the ineffable boundaries of rationality. I admit, I am more inclined myself to want to see the world as a magical whole. And why are people drawn to magical interpretations of the world at all? My favorite texts on the subject so far are Julian Jaynes "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" and Ernest Becker's "Denial of Death." Julian Jaynes "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" is a 1970s book that posits that before we had modern consciousness of introspective thought rationalizing actions; ancient humans were more instinctual automatons, like animals, but in times of stress, would have schizophrenic Hierophanies, blinding visions of their deities giving them direct orders. "Denial of Death" posits that all of human's anxieties and strife come from the paradox that we are mortal animals aware of our imminent death. This knowledge of our mortal demise is a constant and real terror, and we bulwark against it by constructing complex symbolic world-views, that our self-esteems depend on. We invest into these world-views as our "causa sui," a term used for objects that can give themselves meaning, or put another way "immortality project". And so humanity subconsciously is always investing energy into maintaining their preferred causa sui / immortality project. Man is half animal, half symbol. "Shitting Gods". So this stuff given me great comfort, or at least stoic understanding, when I see such hostile political tribalism, or fundamental atheism, or astrology communities reacting so negatively to NASA's new constellation maps. Everyone has locked into their world-view, rationally since adolescents, subconsciously since birth. Their world-view effects their self-esteem and their attempts to transcend being an animal. Shifting to a new ideology, a new world-view with a new self-esteem, is nothing short of rebirth. Painful, screaming, bloody rebirth. What I also find interesting is that so much of Magical Realism is from Latin America writing. I wonder if it draws more from Catholic spirituality, that god is immutable and holistic, permeating through out our world. Versus Protestant spirituality, that the earthly realm is a purgatory lobby testing-ground before the afterlife.

My ever-game is Minecraft on a Creative mode server. It's a fun chat room to build stuff in. The MSpaint of MMOs. So fun to see the weird stuff and awesome superstructures people build. I've recently watched two great shows on Netflix Rob and Daniel might dig, and they are even a little Halloween themed. "Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell" is like if Harry Potter went on to have a career. What I love about wizard battles is that they are power fantasies for nerdy intellects. I've also started watching "Penny Dreadful." It is a more campy, gory, and sexy exploration of Victorian horror tropes. It goes for Quantity where "Strange" goes for Quality. As such, it gets into some great character drama exploration, shifting the main players around in fun ways. The main characters are all Victorian tropes, the brooding witch-like seance psychic, the Colonial explorer on a forbidden quest, the mysterious American cowboy, Dr Frankenstein himself. What I love is the show plays with the Mary Shelly's depiction of Frankenstein's creature as brooding existentialist; something rarely portrayed in favor of the zombie brute. You could say it even explores Dr Frankenstein as a manifestation of "womb-envy". The show also reminds me a little of another great Netflix show, "Sense 8," in that both explore queer identities, with Penny Dreadful having a focus on sexual abuses, and including tons of non-sexual nudity. I also can't deny the way these shows play with the Christian values. "Norrel" obscures it by focusing on Fairies. "Dreadful" interacts with it directly. "Norrell" focuses on the power that preists have, and the story mimics a sort of Protestant Reformation, but for magic. "Dreadful" jumps headfirst into Satanism. I grew up Episcopalian, had a great youth group featuring guided meditations, and was an altar boy (a "crucifer") for a while. I never fully believed, listened to Alan Watts in Highschool, and have considered myself an Atheist in college when Dawkins was popular. But since then I've read more Foucault and Max Weber (or at least gotten the crash course from School of Life youtube channel), and I admit the influence of my childhood obsession with the Protestant afterlife; and how this influences my proclivity for escapism, and workaholism. Even in my escapism I must be "productive," because if I'm not productive, I won't be redeemed for the afterlife. Intellectually I attempt to be the rational, but subconsciously I am deeply motivated by these ideas. I can't commit to truely "unproductive" Act of Nothingness that is meditation; I have to participate in a facsimile of productivity, and sell it off as meditation, when it is actually "somnolent obeisance". (A phrase used in "Penny Dreadful") This is why the Darksouls series and Bloodborne are so resonant with me. They all play with this milleu of Christianity, the angst of that worldview; but also sort of mixed with Eastern concepts of reincarnation.

Thanks for the recommendation! I checked it out, it is super cool! In pursuit of my "doll house" game, I played some more of the beginning of "Else heart.break()". It has the "real time" adventure-game aspects of Shenmue, and Elder Scrolls game like Skyrim, or The Last Express that is exciting. But the free-rotating 3d camera disorients me to the point of illness, and often scenery objects like whole buildings will occlude between the player avatar and the camera in some heinous ways. This makes it super uncomfortable to advance through the game.

Such endearing vindication! Lazy Game Review youtube recently made a compelling piece on Sim Earth There is also a indie windows game called "XenoBloom" where you manage a one screen alien garden. I've never jumped into it, though. I also enjoyed the "Darwin Pond" evolution simulator, way back when.

My apologies for taking the thread off rails. I don't think it's too off-center though... Although Doll House is very different than Ant Farm. Ant Farm always implies an RTS or Strategy type game. Doll House gets vague, it implies RPG, dating sim, adventure game. I have indeed tried "Stardew Valley", I was excited, since I never did "Harvest Moon". It is good, the relationship quests are interesting. The PvE mine area was disappointing in the violence department. But over all I didn't keep playing it because it of the grind it requires. I did enjoy the oldschool "True Love" visual novel for its relationship aspects. I've barely explored the huge world of visual novels, there must be some other good stuff in there. I would very much recommend "Rimworld" its good to play in its early access state. And to just play it at the easier difficulty. Raids will still occur, but be very small and manageable for the most part. All the interesting character development and management will still be there. It has enough of the complexity of "Dwarf Fortress", and all the accessibility of "Prison Architect". "Castles 2" I enjoyed as a kid, but it might be more in the 4x RTS zone than Ant-Farm zone. Looking at it now it resembles a lite version of CK2.

I've been poking around inside Dark Souls 3 again. I have an opinion that the thematic subtext of Dark Souls 3 is about how sequels are abominations and should not be pursued. Dark Souls 2 kind of explored this, but Dark Souls 3 really hammers it home. Dark Souls 1 ofcourse had this theme, of killing a dying world. But that the world continues to not die, due to the real life need for profit and entertainment, creates a more bleak and arbitrarily violent world within the Dark Souls sequels. It will be interesting to see what the story is with the DLC and if it refutes or rebukes my unrefined opinion.

I also visited Space Base DF-9 to see what it offered for my Tamagatchi Doll house desires. I was amused, until grief parties came to destroy my doll house. I could buy into Nintendo's hardware to try something like Animal Crossing. Or, what was that novelty story-character game that came out early on the 3DS? The new game "ECO" looks promising, in that it iterates on Minecraft by adding ecosystem simulations, economy and governance systems. But it's a survival base-building sim, not a doll-house RTS ant farm. I also considered watching Civ 5 play with AI only. A lot of solutions depend on modifying existing games to my desires. Which also is eased with a Windows machine, and I'm an obstinate Mac user. There is also the Paradox grand strategy games. Crusader Kings 2 being the obvious choice. But those games are not casual by any means, nor are they relaxing to play. My desire for this sort of game comes from the end cutscenes for "Zelda Link to the Past" and the last level of "Toejam and Earl," where you get to see those worlds during peace-time, when everyone is happy and chilling. Playing adventure games seems like an obvious solution; but their bespoke and linear nature causes them to feel like oddly paced movies to me. As well as the proc-gen rogue-like revolution inspiring unrealistic expectations for myself. Some day, some one will release the ideal sit-com or cozey-mystery simulator. I could codify my weird thoughts into design documents, perhaps. Apologies to Rilen if I'm muddying the waters.

I've been looking for more entries in this amorphous genre as well. I've been trying to find it via what I call "doll house simulators," or what could more generally be called "character based simulators." Something where you can influence the actors of the game, or just let them perform and see what happens. "Little Computer People". To scratch this itch I've delved into Kingdoms, Kingdom for Keflings, Software Inc, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, the 1998 Creatures games, Fable 2's real estate market, Stardew Valley, Terraria, Starbound, Minecraft. Most of these games focus on base building or survival, and intense management of economies and resources, which is not exactly the goal. I've not bought the Sims, I should just dive into that. It's that level of interaction I'm interested in. I'm just not enamored with the aesthetics of the Sims. "Ant Farm" is a great way of summing it up, because there is an implication of the actors of the simulation having agency to construct their own farms. It is a spectator sport.

Unfortunately I think it was a one-off pilot / short film.

Jay Tholen: I can not stop thinking about that game after seeing the trailer. Web 1.0! Sparkly Gifs! Cyber Sluething! The Information Super Highway! And thank you for Dropsy! So fabulous! Such an inspiration! Also the general game concept reminds me of the MTV Liquid Television short . In that both stories are about detectives in a new-age sci-fi landscape.

Other notable UofC alums: Thomas Sowell, libertarian thinker, notable for his out spoken op-ed pieces challenging liberal concepts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell But there is also this alum of UofC that amuses me. Loic Wacquant, who writes many books challenging the neoliberal economics that UofC. Wacquant primarily focuses on these systems "punish the poor." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lo%C3%AFc_Wacquant Also, my father. He is unfortunately on board with the dean's anti-safe space opinion; my father being an old "white" man. Sigh.

I agree. I'm sort of torn between the two. I love the wild quality of the early episodes. In the Tracy Ulman shorts the backgrounds for the house have some terrifying geometry. But I also apreciate the drawing construction and background layouts when things get more streamlined by season 4. You can see I stil lhave no good opinions about anything digital. This is a cool article about the digital workflow though. I haven't finished reading it but it's great to see the modern storyboard layouts. And that they still use exposure sheets is impressive. http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/25/9457247/the-simpsons-al-jean-interview