Patrick R

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Posts posted by Patrick R

  1. Posted

    Or some kind of online co-op game in which two characters end up spending significant amounts of time apart from one another, doing different tasks, so as to eventually have two completely different set of contexts when called upon to act cooperatively. That would simulate the way two people can have two different perspectives on the same event, neither being incorrect. The second time you play through it, as the opposite character, you'd come to realize why your partner acted the way they did.

     

    To make it more interesting, time spent apart should prime each party to tackle eventual problems they'd have to collaborate on in different ways, so when chatting about how to solve that puzzle (let's say), they'd be set up to disagree on things.

     

    Actually, I rather like this idea. Though I haven't seen the Before movies, so I can't really say how true it is to their spirit.

    And to do an easy one, Rock Band has proven itself to actually functionally be School of Rock, transitioning gamers into musicians.

  3. Posted

    But to also keep that restless wandering feeling of those films, you couldn't stick to one scenario too long. So maybe the assumptions that would be challenged could be gameplay assumptions, instead of narrative ones (because if there's one thing movies like Slacker, Waking Life, and Dazed & Confused aren't, it's plot-driven). Which I think maybe makes something like Braid the Waking Life of games you're talking about. That game constantly challenges your perception of how to navigate through it's worlds and what those rules are. Also, complaints that it is pretentious and too up it's own butt are common.

     

    Though I should say that I think I may have a slightly different take on Waking Life than you. For me the film is less about what is being said then how it's being said. What saves it from being pretentious to me is that I think Linklater is more focused on HOW people communicate. Making a film where people have scenes centered on more abstract conversations is a way to put the focus on that, since there's none of the typical sources of drama (interpersonal relationships, power dynamics, plot, etc). So for me the Waking Life of games would be more about exploring how game mechanics are communicated to the player, instead of simply subverting assumptions the player has about them.

     

    I do think there is a lot of potential in ensemble games in general. A similar thought experiment could be made about films like Magnolia, Nashville, and Short Cuts. Games about multiple people whose lives intersect in interesting ways. I think one of the strengths of games is that a well-written one can foster empathy in a player really effectively (because they literally walk around in someone else's shoes) so a game that would encourage a player to empathize with multiple perspectives in a single world could be really great. Thomas Was Alone is a pretty good example of how powerful that empathy could be (projecting strong personalities onto the most abstract of avatars), though I'd appreciate it more in a game with a more realistic setting, and without really tedious gameplay.

     

    On a completely different Linklater note, I would play any game that had the setting and tone of Bernie.

  5. Posted

    To really approximate that kind of ensemble film like Slacker or Dazed & Confused, you'd probably have to play as multiple characters. For Dazed and Confused you'd be Jason London, Rory Cochrane, Wiley Wiggins, and Christin Hinojosa. I never played Heavy Rain, but didn't that have you jumping around multiple characters? It could work like that.

     

    Waking Life feels like it'd have to be a Warioware thing. But I don't even know what the gaming equivalent of "idle chats about philosophy" would even be.

  6. Posted

    I am very confused about what happened here. I am not upset. Apparently Twig is? I apologize. There was no malice in any of my posts, just confusion. I thought you were saying you literally liked all music, which was weird to me. Then you replied using the same language as the first time, which gave me no indication that I had misinterpreted you, so I followed up by explaining why I was so confused. I don't think I really did anything to indicate RAGE or ANGER in either post. But apparently I did, so I am sorry.

  7. Posted

    Man I was just talking random bullshit and you got all upset at me. Also, Ben is correct. If I'd known I was going to be under the most extensive of scrutinies, I'd never had said anything. But this is the RANDOM THOUGHT thread.

     

    Chilllllll out. ):

    Who's upset?

  8. Posted

    Little Inferno

     

    Thought the gameplay was really powerful and evocative and amazing, but the story (especially the ending) just tried to hammer it home too hard and turn it into a character arc instead of a more abstract statement on capitalism. Also, this game has a serious case of Nintendo mouth where the all-text dialogue is really weird and stilted and has way too many text boxes that just consist of "hmmpphhh" "hrrmmm" "hmmmmm" noises and ellipses. That stuff always drives me nuts in games, and every time I got another letter it threatened to break the tone of the game completely.

     

    Still, pretty amazing. Burning stuff is incredibly addictive.

  10. Posted

    It's weird to you that other people have a cultivated sense of taste and discernment, developed over years of personal history and experience?

     

    I mean, I'd love to love everything I ever hear, but that's not the norm with any average person's approach to any artform. I am glad it works for you, though.

  12. Posted

    I don't understand people who don't listen to sad music when they are sad. How can you listen to any other kind of music? How does it even sound like music to you if it isn't confirming your suspicions that the world is a terrible place that hates you? I try to listen to happy music, it's like mosquitos walking on microphones.

  14. Posted

    So. After that awkward little tussle I just want to say that I love Radiohead and have never understood a word that comes out of Thom York's mouth. I looked up the lyrics to Pyramid Song (my favorite) and was blown away (IGN.com) by how poetic and beautiful it is. It made me love the song even more but also made me sad that I can't comprehend lyrics because sometimes they can add a lot to the enjoyment of a song for me.

    I think part of the game Yorke can play, though, is to use this to obfuscate some lyrics and emphasize others. I don't know if the chorus of There There would destroy me like it does if it didn't feel like it was emerging from the fog of the verses. There a lot of Radiohead songs like that, where one phrase encapsulates the emotions of the whole song, and that's the phrase that's most coherent.

  15. Posted

    The willingness of people to personally criticize someone over a free thing they put out there blows my mind. Someone sent a similar e-mail to me about my podcast once (It was literally titled "My criticism of you is") and when I told them they were being really rude they were baffled, because their e-mail opened with "I am a fan of the podcast". 

     

    I think a side-effect of listening to friends honestly converse for hundreds of hours about things that are important to them is that you can assume a weird level of intimacy that isn't actually there, because it's one-sided. Personally, I feel like I know the Thumbs better than many people I call my friends. Because podcasting is really weird and the appeal is often both about content and keeping the listener company while they work or commute or exercise or whatever. And maybe that "show with content/hanging out with your internet friends" confusion can lead to a weird interactions where people think it's cool for them to give input on how the show should change not realizing that they're really just telling people what they don't like about them personally.

     

    Or maybe this is the internet and people act like dicks for no reason. Thumbs down, Bonnie.

  16. Posted

    I have an abnormally poor sense of sight, hearing, smell and (by association to smell) taste.

    As a result, my sense of touch is way too sensitive and I cannot take hot showers lest I feel like I'm being boiled alive. All my senses of touch are just a little too sensitive and I have a crazy low pain tolerance.

     

    I am shitty Daredevil.

  17. Posted

    There is no such thing as reliable funding. Publisher funding hasn't been reliable either. It's difficult to get one party to give a whole lot of money. It's difficult to get a whole lot of people to come up with the same amount of money. I don't think crowdfunding will go away. The high rolers will eventually become smaller as there is little return on investment, that will be a problem for crowdfunding because you will need more people to fund your project. To keep these people around even higher tiers will be introduced that grant you piece of the financial pie. So you might get 10 investors who will fund big chunks with a return on revenue, and 5000-10000 small time players that get a pre-order and some swag. This model isn't really supported by kickstarter or other platforms.

    That's actually kind of what ended up happening with Zach Braff's film. His Kickstarter gave the project so much press that the traditional funding he claimed to despise came through. And now he has both fundings.

  20. Posted

    I'm not a fan, but the Prince of Darkness-esque opening credits are maybe my favorite thing in any Alien movie ever. That facehugger's legs unfolding against the fluorescent lights and then abruptly cutting to the black is so incredibly nightmarish. I couldn't name three characters in the movie, but that image is permanently burned into my brain. Everyone complains that they killed off Hicks and Newt, but they did it so amazingly that I can never be mad at them.

  21. Posted

    Taking advantage is maybe the wrong phrase (though I think it can be used without nefarious connotations), but it's definitely been a concern of mine. I think the discussion of what and who Kickstarter should and shouldn't be for is a valid one. Which is of course not to say that Double Fine should inherently fall on the "shouldn't" side of things because they're established (I stated above I think they are fine), but the transition for a well-known and respected (if not AAA) developer to operations based primarily on Kickstarter is an interesting one, and something I wanted to know more about.

  22. Posted

    I think I am mostly fine with this as well, for similar reasons. But I also wonder if I'm essentially turning Steam into a Netflix Instant type of service where part of the perceived value of gaming potential is actually tricking me into spending more on games a month than I'm actually getting out of them (though trying to determine the "worth" of gaming experiences is kind of a ridiculous thing), and that it's less about fostering an eclectic library of potential experiences and more about chasing the consumeristic dopamine rush of seeing a title get added to my list.

     

    It is no coincidence that I started to think about this while playing Little Inferno. Wildly thumbing through catalogues looking for quick hits of interaction and fun reminded me of my Steam library so much that I had to turn it off and think a while. That game is incredible and, like Candy Box, lays bare the baser pleasure chasing instincts in me.

  23. Posted

    Ah, I see. I didn't know that level of creative control could be exercised by the publisher. Other Double Fine games that have been produced traditionally feel so uncompromised to me (though now I'm wondering if the annoying and useless collectable stuff in Psychonauts is the kind of thing a publisher would insist on) that I never thought of it being a creative problem for them.

  24. Posted

    Resurrection is kind of an interesting and Whedon-y movie on it's own, if an unsuccessful one. 

     

    But Resurrection doesn't have a crotchety Dan O' Bannon wearing a bow-tie and complaining about what idiots everyone he worked with was. Advantage: Special features.

     

    EDIT: And it's good that you got to see the Assembly Cut on the blu-ray. For the blu-ray release of the Quadrilogy, they went to great pains to restore it to a much better state than it was on the DVDs. They even brought back some of the original actors to do ADR on some lines of dialogue that were inaudible on the DVD.

  25. Posted

    I think maybe I just don't understand enough about how games publishing works. And also I am maybe overly sensitive to the trend of established entities with access to traditional funding using crowdsourcing to take advantage of their fanbase*.

     

    With something like say, The Cave that's published by Sega or Brutal Legend which was published by EA, what kind of financial control do they not have? 

     

    *Though I do want to emphasize that I don't look at something like this the same way as fans of Veronica Mars giving 5 million dollars to Warner Brothers. Double Fine is not WB, the backer perks are better (a copy of the game at the 20 dollar level is super-reasonable, and essentially the same as pre-ordering it), and Double Fine's track record with doing great stuff with their Kickstarters is pretty well-established.