singlespace

Oh god it has infected here as well! I'm at about 20.72 billion CPS and almost done with this cursed game.

You remember 1991? Third grade, second period, just before recess when you thought no one was looking? Yeah, well thestalkinghead was looking and he remembers.

Rampancy managed to get a cut ready for PAX Prime this Sunday: http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=30649699#item_30649699 TL;DR: Enemy Starfighter will be at the Indie Megabooth. New trailer:

Yeah, it got pretty weird fast. I feel bad about it because I made a post stating it would nice if someone like Danielle became a regular because I felt that cast was getting a bit insular, which spawned a lot of negative discussion. The intent wasn't to suggest that the Thumbs change, or that they need to take more suggestions for games to play, but rather that it was nice having new perspectives on the cast and it would be great if it happened more often.

Jesus, that escalated quickly.

I really hope that Danielle, or someone like Danielle, becomes a regular. I feel like Idle Thumbs is becoming somewhat insular in its opinions and tastes. It's refreshing to have a dissenting opinion from someone who enjoys and plays far more mainstream games.

I kind of agree and disagree with the notion Last of Us diluted it's impact by stretching out game mechanics when a more dense experience could have been had. For those who have finished the game, When I was still playing through the Boston and Pittsburg, I felt the game was dragging on too much and the mechanics were too repetitious, but my opinion of the length and spread of the mechanics changed quite a great deal by the end. I don't think you can really make an educated judgement on the matter until you've finished the game in this case. That being said, there were definitely quite a few moments in the game that really felt like it was suddenly very much a video game, but I don't feel like it's necessarily a function of the length or repetitiousness of the verbs the game is built around, just how artfully they're employed.

PAR has an article on the insane working conditions in the game industry and the incredible turnover rates: http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/why-your-games-are-made-by-childless-31-year-old-white-men-and-how-one-stud Kotaku also ran an article by an anonymous developer on the state of publishers today: http://kotaku.com/we-need-better-video-game-publishers-472880781 It's amazing that this has been the status quo for well over a decade and it doesn't seem to be changing.

Enterprise software is a large field ranging from hardcore database development to mind numbing SAP, but I'd generally agree with your assesment. Luckily it's not representative of the tech sector in general.

Polygon has a nice short article up on Blood Dragon with some questions answered by the Creative Director Dean Evans: http://www.polygon.com/2013/4/11/4211756/far-cry-3-blood-dragon-developer-hopes-to-start-a-little-fire-with

Remember when Jeffrey Yohalem was ranting about Farcry 3 being a meaningful satire of entertainment and video games? When he was claiming that his narrative destabilized the player and was a giant riddle to be solved? And that Farcry 3 was subversive as a shooter and called into question what we're willing to do for entertainment? Remember when everyone call him on those claims because Farcry 3 is exactly what he meant to satire. Well to me this feels like a big "fuck you guys" kind of DLC. Something along the lines of the original game wasn't obvious enough, so this time I'll go way over the top because gamers aren't smart enough to realize my brilliance, rather than I wrote really bad satire that failed to convey any of the things I was hoping.

Yeah, hence my initial reaction that led to the realization that the world has changed and I'm now old.

Phrasing. Saying "a band called Garbage" instead of "Garbage" is superfluous; hence it carries the connotation that you believe not many people know who Garbage is, hence you don't know who Garbage is. It's the same kind of phrasing that a 65 year old white male American senator uses to describe things they have no idea about. For instance, saying "the technology called the Internet" makes you sound like you have no idea what you're talking about.

I really don't like that notion. When Hidetaka Miyazaki was a child he used to voraciously read western fantasy stories. However, due to his age and his level of english compression, he couldn't understand large portions of the novels which left him with these amazing bits and pieces of stories with these expansive confusing gaps to fill with imagination. That wild sense that there's so much more left unsaid is exactly the kind of experience he was trying to create with Demon's/Dark Souls and I feel like if they made the systems less anachronistic, if they made things more straight forward and comprehensible, they'll loose that weird sense that you're never quite seeing the whole picture. It's a feel that permeates the design all the way down to the stats. A lot of people comment on the difficulty of the Souls games and how the constant threat gives rise to real sense of skill and accomplishment, and while that's true I think it's important to remember how the immense amount of restraint the developers had in all things effect how we feel about the games.

Your applause is appreciated dear sir and congratulations on completing said game!

I just finished and here are my thoughts on your questions:

I must be getting old. My first reaction to your post was "What the hell? Does this dude really not know who Garbage is?" then it occurred to me that they were a staple band almost 20 years ago.

Seriously, I'm not even done Peace Walker and I had this little twinge when I saw my base burning.

The website is totally broken right now: http://www.brokenagegame.com/wizard 404? Really?

First look at combat, and what not, at PAX:

Japanese is written top to bottom in columns, or left to right in rows, not right to left. English is a left to right language and you would no more say that English is read top to bottom than you'd say that Japanese is read right to left. When you're talking about a single dimension, the most significant dimension is the one being referred to. Right to left scripts are a thing and include languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Thaana, etc. Depending on the context, Japanese is either written in tategaki, vertically, or yokogaki, horizontally. You'll find yokogaki is more frequently used in technical writing such as scientific papers and engineering textbooks, while tategaki is used for things such as letters, newspapers, and literature, though yokogaki is becoming increasingly prevalent. For reference, yokogaki has been around since the late 1800s with the introduction of left to right languages such as German and English in the Meji era. I guess I should also add that the introduction of left to right languages directly caused the initial shift because while Japanese kanji is morphosyllabic, English is not. Hence, the direction the characters run in English is critical, while in all Han character languages it doesn't make that much of a difference, which is why Japanese was adapted rather than English.

Ever since Nick's Tweet, I have been confused as to whether I should congratulate Nick, or lament the inevitable end of Idle Thumbs this landmark event must herald.

It's too soon to say what I think about her stance on the problems she presents, but I was somewhat disappointed with her first presentation. gregbrown noted earlier that she was keeping a very level tone to avoid the sexist stereotype of a "hysterical" woman in a similar fashion that Obama has to protect himself from the "Angry Black Man" stereotype. I think that comparison is quite apt. By simply being a woman discussing a feminist topic, Sarkeesian must be that much more perfect than any of her male peers to be effective. Obama is an excellent example of someone who's brilliantly managed immense volumes of prejudiced criticism while still being a very effective speaker. He's an eloquent, expressive speaker, who doesn't give his opponents material to support their rhetoric and prejudice. I feel like Sarkeesian has to meet a similar standard to have her voice heard and I don't think she's reaching such an incredible level of eloquence, so it makes me somewhat sad and disappointed that her points won't have as much impact as they should. It's entirely unfair, but this is the situation she finds herself in. I wish Sarkeesian was that much more perfect, because the problems she elucidates are real and every flaw she reveals, no matter how trivial, will be used as munition to distract and discredit her arguments. I don't really have a problem with the content of her video, but it's not really my cup of tea. My personal preference is for fast dense discussions driving at a singular point like the better of the TED talks. For the kind of material she was presenting in the video, I much prefer written articles since I can digest the material at my own pace rather than have the pacing moderated by the speaker.

I don't know what you're trying to say here. On average, software developers in the tech sector make a lot more than their compatriots in game industry and work far less hours. By a lot more, I mean you can expect a place like Apple or Google to pay you almost twice as much as a game developer in base salary.

I'm not talking about the industry in general, but rather the very limited subset of developers they'd be interested in. People who have practical experience in designing and building large scale distributed systems, or working with big iron, don't grow on trees just like people who have practical experience writing graphics card firmware are not the most common developers in the world. If you don't buy that experience, you need to develop the talent in house and that doesn't happen overnight. I don't doubt there's some really smart people working on games, and some that clearly have the requisite experience given companies like Blizzard and CCP today, but I have the distinct impression that many game companies are far lighter on experience than they really need to be. I have a lot of friends who started in the game industry, but I can't recall a single one who still works in the industry today. It seems like the game industry bleeds talent and has a hard time attracting experienced developers from other fields. That doesn't seem like a particularly good situation.