tberton

miffy's post has inspired me to derail this thread into talking about what we hope for 2015. Yes, it will be the Year of the PS3, but what events will sit under the PS3's shadow? For me, 2015 will see me completing the first year of my MA and likely deciding whether I want to continue on and get my PhD or go to teacher's college or do something else. I'm expecting it to be a good one though: I'm starting to feel comfortable in Ottawa (psychologically if not physically - it's fucking cold) and I love my program and the people in it.

Here's a good article about the reporting that went on in the aftermath of the massacre and how it downplayed the misogyny behind the attack.

Bunny Coleman tells it like it is.

Looks great, although I'm a bit disappointed that they're going sci-fi rather than sticking with the mundane, real-world setting of Gone Home.

I'd argue that Scott Pilgrim works best when viewed as a Hong Kong action film.

I think he's pretty perfect as the Terminator in The Terminator and not bad in T2.

Oooh, I might have to buy one then.

Wow, I never noticed the carpet thing either. Say what you will about that movie, but it nails its visual style so well.

I'm disappointed by all the people who weer disappointed by Transistor. Not that I don't understand the complaints, I just like it when people like the things I like and it bums me out when they don't.

I wish I had more opportunities to play Sportsfriends, because that would probably make my list as well. Did Nidhogg come out this year?

I think the only games I played much of this year that came out this year were Transistor, Broken Age Ep. 1, Shovel Knight and Mario Kart 8. I enjoyed all of them a lot, but Transistor tops the heap easily. In fact, it will probably take a place among my favourite games of all time.

On the topic of Jonathan Mann and GG, I'm a fan of this song too.

The Tetris effect stuff hit me the worst with Bejeweled 2, where I would play Bejeweled in my mind with the tiles on walls and floors. I've got it pretty bad with Threes right now too, just playing it in my head all the time. For the Katamari stuff, I once tried to eat my breakfast with turn-based mechanics after playing a bunch of Advance Wars 2. I also have weird Netrunner dreams all the time.

I love that Nick referred to Rain Wilson's character on Six Feet Under by the name of his character from The Office.

I agree with this. When I was saying "founding myths" I really meant more "founding myths that are still strongly believed today", so I should have been more specific.

Great video with lots of great points. That last one made me feel bad that this is the first Feminist Frequency video I've watched. I've gotta rectify that.

Maybe not distrust, but certainly a disregard for government interference is a founding myth of the US, what with issues about taxation, land acquisition and governance being big motivators for the American Revolution.

Question about the Coldblum: does it work for bottles? I imagine not.

A Grand Jury, in principle, is to figure out whether or not the prosecution has enough evidence to establish probable cause on the part of the accused. It's meant to prevent prosecutors from bringing cases to trial when they've got no evidence.

I've played Alhambra. It falls into a common category of games that are perfectly fine but that I would never choose to play over dozens of games that I like more.

I don't have much more than a popular culture knowledge of ancient mythology, but I'm curious as to what "the four different ancient civilizations" are. I've never heard that term - the specific number - used before.

Anybody interested in conspiracy theories should read Foucault's Pendulum, a novel about people getting sucked so deeply into a conspiracy theory of their own invention that it ends up being real.

Late to this, but I just wanted to say that while I enjoyed Interstellar (I pretty much agree with the interesting but flawed assessment), the part I liked the least was the music. It wasn't really the mix, but more that there's was music all the time and it's was always really overbearing. The only time I enjoyed the music was on the planet with Mann, when it was equal parts awed and eerie, but the rest of the time I just wished it would shut up and let some other parts of the movie do the talking. A lot of stuff felt like a trailer, not a movie.

Ah, okay. From a similarly quick scan, a majority of those names read as Quebecois to me. Actually, it's worth interrogating the "white" comment as well, since Montreal's got a sizeable immigrant population too. This is to say, that given that this game was made by what looks like at least 100 people, it's probably not that relevant to comment on the ethnicity, language or other background (for the purposes of this discussion, at least) and instead emphasize that Far Cry 4 is the product of a Western company, firmly rooted in those structures. I imagine that a similarly large game made from a similarly large studio withe a similar focus on making profits would have similar problems, even if it weren't staffed by white dudes. In fact, I think you can find similar depiction problems in Square Enix's games. To clarify: I'm not saying that the background of the people who made the game isn't important, just that the relative importance is difficult to assess with such a large team and so it's probably better to look at the company as a whole.

This is really relevant to the discussion, but is Ubi Montreal mostly Anglophone? Montreal is a pretty Anglophone city, sure, but I'd be interested to know what you're basing that assumption on, Gormongous. Like I said, not really relevant, so whatever. Somewhat relatedly, I'm from Toronto but I can pronounce oeuvre. I know Chris probably meant "people who don't speak French" rather than "people who aren't in France," but I thought that was funny. Lots of people who aren't from France speak French. Colonization, dontcha know. Also, Jake, the Wavebird actually has sixteen channels, not twelve, which never struck me as weird until you brought it up. Thinking about it, my guess is that it's because the Gamecube had LAN support, meaning they had to support that many Wavebirds in the same room, if not hooked up to the same console.