Reyturner

This is a good point. GB's product has always been their personalities interacting with games, not strictly games themselves. Between Chicago and NY, they have a chance to create whole new dynamics. If anything, differentiating the outlets with more diverse POVs will help prevent their content from running together. There you go (hypothetical person who thinks a business should only be held to account for making decisions based business reasons), immediate, clear cut, short term business reasons for increasing diversity.

Is that new Mushishi? I swear I saw a 26 ep series on Netflix a couple years ago.

Critical Distance's weekly roundup was all about this. GB is funny. I almost see them more like a band than a media outlet, with everyone needing to be such a polymath; they're the Valve of games media. GB isn't your first job, you need to be well established to fit into their dynamic. Even as young as Klepick was when he started, he had almost a decade of experience. GB isn't IGN.com but they are super establishment. They could force it for the sake of progress but I doubt that ever would have happened. You can certainly be disappointed, but I don't think you can be surprised. Edit: removed a stupid thing I said about there not being enough well established women for GB to hire.

Duck Tales x Mega Man is a good comparison. The difficulty skews more towards the Mega Man side of things, but it's not I Want to Be the Guy. There are a bunch of ways for you to scale the difficulty for yourself though. You can smash checkpoints for bonus money. There are consumables you can opt into that give you healing. There are chievos that reward you for beating levels without getting hurt. And there is NG+ of course. The level design and controls allow for a very high level of play, but it doesn't demand that you display it for the privilege of seeing the credits.

I just listen to Video Games Hotdog.

Great episode! I've only dabbled in Hearthstone and decided to bow out until the Android version drops. Glad to see my initial impressions were validated; that Arena is the best way to play and that the constructed scene falls prey to the same issues all competitive constructive play suffers. Still, I look forward to playing it on my couch.

You can use Scavenge to move it though. In fact, any program with an "on install" ability can take advantage of this (femme, overmind, etc).

One thing I found fascinating was how far ahead of the release cycle the designers are working. You get used to the reactionary balance patch when you play competitive video games. Of course you can't do that with an analog game like Netrunner and luckily they haven't broken anything so far (tho Geh! may disagree). It'll be interesting to see how FFG approach this as the card pool grows, or if a horrendous combo sneaks through play testing.

That might very well be the video I'm thinking of (or one that I saw in conjunction with others). I don't remember it being as clowny, but it has been a while and my old (32yo) brain may have mixed it up with more srs stuff.

There was a YouTube video I saw of a session of ArmA 2 and I wish I could find it again. It was one of those super serious invite only servers where everyone is ex-military and strict role-playing is enforced. This is to the best of my recollection. There was a team of 4 or 5 soldiers and everyone else were locals, around 30 players. Most of the locals were civilians, with a list of tasks to accomplish at locations around the map. However, a few were insurgents with the goal to kill or disable the soldiers in any way possible. The soldiers' job was to patrol a route, talk to and search the locals and kill or capture insurgents, following realistic ROE. The trick was, the civilians had instructions to become insurgents if they saw soldiers kill or arrest innocent civilians (i.e. someone who did not appear to be armed and where not, to their knowledge, insurgents) or if the soldiers made it impossible for them to accomplish their tasks. If you've listened to the podcast you know how invasive you can get with another player's avatar in the ArmA engine, searching them, tying them up etc. Since the soldiers had no idea who the insurgents were, every encounter with civilians was like the hyper paranoid encounters you hear about in DayZ and were really intense to watch. Tons of interesting (and scary) encounters came out of it. Since the civilian players were eager to do something more "interesting", encounters with the soldiers would frequently attract onlookers demanding the soldiers' justification for how they were treating the locals (hoping for an excuse to go rogue). The insurgents would constantly bait the soldiers to kill civilians. The soldiers pretty much immediately became the hyper aggressive dicks you'd expect the situation would turn them into. One highlight(?) was a sequence following a group of civilians who had to deliver a crappy, unloaded rifle to the far side of the map in a car (as a wedding gift, they decided). They were pulled over by the soldiers and immediately separated and interrogated. When the soldiers found the rifle, they decided the group were insurgents and tied them up (they weren't convinced by the wedding story). They then realized that they didn't have room in the truck for so many prisoners and considered killing them on the spot. Before they could decide, actual insurgents attacked, killing one soldier and wounding another. The soldiers were cut off from their truck and retreated into a nearby village, but not before spraying the wedding party with automatic fire, killing all but one. The insurgents untied the remaining civi and gave him a LAW rocket off the dead soldier. The newly converted fighter then stalked the soldiers with the other insurgents until he cornered one and ran at him suicidally, blowing both of them up with the rocket. Video games.

Gentlemen don't shoot women, they protect them. Or, failing that, they are motivated to action by their failure to protect them and subsequently rewarded with a new, better one.Edit: /s for clarity

Maximum bummer.

If you treat it like a normal $15 per month MMO, how far would that budget get you?

Who is game?Also, Liz Ryerson is cool and makes cool things.

I'd ask them. If they are weird about it, give them a fake one. Is your project bound for Steam? Could they be looking to set up a dev key for you? Also, LinkedIn is a professional social network so your boss(?) looking you up isn't necessarily that strange.

Skeleton!

9 invites sent based on the list I posted before but only 6/10 slots filled so far. I'm hoping to have 10/10 by Friday night. If there are still open slots after that, I'll open them up to others who are interested. edit: League is full. Entriech - confirmed Twig - confirmed taterdactyl - confirmed undermind9 - confirmed casktapper - confirmed Cleinhun - confirmed BusbyBerkeley Forbin - confirmed pkirkner - confirmed Me - Commissioner waiting list: Jutranjo friccish jeremywc Forbin's +1 I'm hoping the run the live draft on Saturday morning before noon PST. Does this horribly conflict with anyone?

I'm guessing the Dream League... league was better. Having every game count instead of just games in TI was a concession to keep it interesting longer.

Looking at my Gabe deck, I hate how obligated I feel to take placrete carapace. I'd love a way to use it in service of something other than Scorched Earths that might never come.

The Events tab in Watch gives you something to go on. Beyond that, grinding your face through Liquipedia on a daily basis.

Yup Tranquil Boots aren't broken by HP removal, which Soul Ring uses.

Be mindful of the exact wording of cards. For example, clicking Sneakdoor Beta: 1. is a run, so no other run card can be used at the same time 2. on Archives, so you can't use something like the virus counters on Pheromones counters 3. that counts as a successful run on HQ, so you do get virus counters for Pheromones.