tberton

Well, it was made entirely by one person, so it makes sense that it wouldn't have the polish that comes from one of the biggest companies in the industry.

I've always referred to those as canker sores.

As a Canadian, I am cursed with mixing the two systems. Sometimes we use feet, sometimes it's metres.* Sometimes its pounds, sometimes its kilograms. Kilometres get used a lot more than miles though and Celsius is always used over Farenheit because Farenheit is stupid. *Americans should not be allowed to have their own spelling for "metre" if they don't even use the goddamn unit.

I haven't played BK in a long time, but I think my brother went back to it recently and still enjoyed it. Anyway, I think there's a lot of design space left in Mario 64-style platformers that hasn't been explored in at least a decade. Presumably these folks will have at least some sense of what worked and what didn't with those games. Also, throw me into the "I like how the characters look" bucket.

Yeah, I suppose with medieval stuff there's more possibility for that stuff. Most of the reading I've done has been about the the 17th through 20th centuries and I've never done any primary research that goes back earlier that the the late-19th. There is so much existing material for those periods, and so many different ways of interpreting the existing material, that I can't ever imagine thinking "there's nothing left to be said on this." nattelite, I'll say that in terms my studies, most of the stuff I've read has been from re-interpretive sectors and that's where most of the interesting theoretical work is coming from too. Histories of gender, immigration, Aboriginal peoples, workers - those are what's being looked at, right now, or when other topics are being studied, those are the lenses being used. There's also a lot of talk about moving away from national histories, using transnational or regional frameworks instead.

Banjo-Kazooie was the first game my brother and I got with our N64, so I have very fond memories of it, although his are fonder. He's back the Kickstarter, I believe, so I'll be interested in following this.

Just finished all the bonus levels of Boxboy. I'll probably go back and do the challenge levels at some point, but I'm good for now. That game is seriously great, about as good as minimalist puzzle platforming gets. Plus, you can dress your box up in costumes and one of them is wizard hair, thus making this the perfect Idle Thumbs game.

Oh I know that (Cantor's Diagonal Method is near the top of my list of mind-blowing revelations). What I'm talking about is when somebody describes a number as infinite when it's just really big or arbitrarily big.

I have a similar complaint about "infinite". Also, if you're outlawing "very unique" I don't think "very singular" makes much more sense.

No, I get that. I've played Diplomacy. I just can't imagine how I would both i) be close enough with somebody that I'd be really hurt if they betrayed me in a game and ii) be distant enough emotionally from them that I'd be willing to sacrifice our relationship because they betrayed me in a game. This advice is pretty good when approaching any work of history. I can't think of anything that I would say is the "last word" on some historical period, group or person.

The money thing is also especially complicated with something like a TV show, where it can be pretty unclear how watching something directly impacts the finances of the people putting it out. If I watch Game of Thrones online but talk to a lot of people about how much I love it, is that supporting HBO? What about if I watch it and never talk about it? Does that then make it alright to like the parts that are potentially harmful?

I'd play.

I agree with that to a point, but I think it's important to remain aware of the money making systems involved in these media products and how an attitude of "let's consume all we want as long as we're critical of it" attitude can potentially play into that.

I should read that again sometime. That was the first book I read in school where we really delved into symbolism, metaphor and all that stuff. It was the first time I thought "hey, it's pretty interesting to think about books in a critical way."

I agree with all of this, especially about the ease of attacking certain cultural products and staying away from others, but I think the confusion and complication arises because it's difficult to distinguish between: "I didn't apply critical analysis because I like this thing" from "I applied critical analysis and recognize this things problems but think it's worth liking anyway because of its good parts" from "I applied critical analysis and came out with a differing opinion about what is good and bad about this thing" So, on syntheticgerbil's point about Arthur Gies, I'm not sure which we're dealing with. I think the first is pretty inexcusable, but the second two are completely valid positions to hold, depending on context. Has Arthur ever written anything on GoT, or expressed his opinion on it thoughtfully? Because it seems to me that we're comparing lengthy reviews that are about digging deep into a piece of culture with a few tweets about being excited to watch a TV show with friends. For all we know, he spent that whole time discussing the problematic aspects of how GoT depicts women's bodies but still enjoyed Tyrion Lannister's fun quips. TL;DR There are several different ways to "like" or "not like" something and it's tough to compare between them.

Well, he was asking for a game similar to Neptune's Pride, which exhibits similar characteristics to what everybody was mentioning here. Also, not to cast aspersions on all these people you're talking about, but I think it's nuts when I hear stories like this. What could you possibly do in Diplomacy (or how weak was your relationship already) that it would keep you from talking to somebody you care about? Likewise, if you thought your actions in the game might have that strong of an effect on your friends, why the hell would you go through with it anyway? People are more important than games, folks.

The post-apocalyotic section of Cloud Atlas is my favourite part of the book, so there's that.

The game you want is Diplomacy.

People don't consider Diablo and WoW "real video games"? That's nuts. I can kind of see it with WoW's mainstream success, but Diablo's the most videogamy video game to ever video game.

Wow, I didn't even notice the misspelling. Maybe I need to read some teaching aids!

One thing that nobody's mentioned about Twilight Struggle is how brilliant it's scoring mechanic is, both in terms of gameplay and how it evokes the Cold War. You mentioned the Tug-of-War scoreboard, but not how points are actually scored. Essentially, the board is split into 6 regions (Europe, Asia, Middle East, Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia) and each region has a card associated with it that, when played, will score points based on how many territories a player controls in that region. Only the Europe, Asia and Middle East cards are in the deck at the beginning of the game - the other three get added later. This means that you have a rough idea of when certain regions will get scored but can't be exactly certain. This creates an effect where you are trying to guess what scoring cards your opponent has based off of how they play. If the USSR is targeting Europe really heavily, and I don't have the Europe scoring card, then I can be pretty sure that they've got it and I'd better do something about Europe before they score a boatload of points. So I, as the US, start to care about Europe. This means that regions on the board are only important insofar as your opponent seems to care about them. That maps really nicely onto all the political power plays of the Cold War, where one power would try to gain control of a country only because the other wanted it.

I don't get it.

As though America was the first nation/state/empire founded on "principles."

That is amazing.

I think the upshot of this is that Common People is a great song and we should all take a moment to listen to it.