clyde

Porpentine just put out a graphical exploration game called "Pink Zone". https://gumroad.com/porpentine If you read her tweets regularly, I recommend playing this just so you can tour a bestiary of her anthropomorphic idioms (I don't have specific ones in mind). If you don't read her tweets regularly, then it'll probably look like a sci-fi cave-painting with minimal interaction and no apparent objective.

I read a book every once in a while in Elder Scrolls games. Sometimes it puts me further into the world, not necessarily because of the subject matter; reading in game makes me feel more patient. So then I put the book down and notice a new detail of the game because I'm no longer in a hurry to get anywhere or kill something. On a related note, one time I decided to call a number that was on a store sign while sitting at a stop-light in GTA 5. It had a similar effect.

I find the grinding mechanic really strange. I ended up just asking a rich widow if she would put me up over and over again until my persuasion was high enough to succeed. While that narrative is interesting in this specific instance (and possibly the one where I just continually write articles about mushrooms for cash), the mechanical necessity of clicking on a choice box with a known outcome repeatitively is boring. I do enjoy the writing though. I also think the choose-your-own-adventure format with chances of success showing on mouse-over is interesting. I'd prefer that the player internalize their skills with something like symbolic, visible pieces of a costume or party members providing their assurance or doubts; but still, it was interesting in that it both created motive to gain skills and a little bit of gambling to the choices. The writing is really fun isn't it? The tone kinda reminds me of the one episode of Welcome to Night Vale I listened to.

I misunderstood, I thought we would get the traits just by having a Facebook friend who plays. Sounds like it's far more nefarious.

Let's do this dibs, I'll pm you.

What do the IAPs get you?

Dead Man's Draw is a push-your-luck card game. You draw for high cards, then decide whether or not to increase your take at the risk of busting by drawing two of one suit. Simple enough. As you play through the first few matches, you'll quickly unlock the suit's abilities which allow you to do things like stealing an opponents card or seeing what the next card drawn will be. All of these abilities are passively activated simply by drawing them. The exception to this is that sometimes a chain of casuality will reactivate a card; for instance, if you steals a fortune-teller card from the opponent then its ability will become active, allowing you to see the next card drawn. If you look through the reviews, most of the complaints are about the game's reliance on luck. For me, the reliance on luck just makes the stability of card abilities more powerful; it also adds to the gentlelady, fantasy-pirate theme. The character-art is above par and I find myself enjoying the archtypes that they have distilled. I haven't encountered any story-elements, but the visuals and mechanics do a good enough job of giving it the feel on a port-town tavern with knives drawn at the card-table. I imagine that the math of the game will allow me to optimize quickly, but I've enjoyed playing it for the last hour and it's free. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dead-mans-draw/id584916423?mt=8

Even at its height, the Shadowrun FPS community was small; you would see the same people in matches frequently. There was an ideological schism (that was exascerbated once everyone realized that the game would receive no more support) between people who used glitches and people who did not. This happens in other multiplayer games, but I think that Shadowrun's hacker/magic theme, and the commonality of things like Havok's spasming rag-dolls clipping into walls, almost gave some argument that glitches were part of the game. I never even bothered to explore the glitches because I didn't want to be a cheater. Those who did explore them were known because the spectate mode that you enter in death would bring it to everyone's attention. One time I was playing and I died early on. I watched a match between two glitchers and it was fucking crazy. They were using gliders and teleports to go outside of the maps (I think they were hiding on the non-normal sides of meshes?) and then having this crazy sniper stand-off that would turn into running around the maps with katanas when one of them was discovered. In a way, I feel like I never played the actual game.

I'm kind of envious of this group of gamers that accept the energy-system and minimal gameplay. I want to know how it feels for them to play the Kim Kardashian app. In one if the reviews I read, person said that they've been waiting five years for a Kim Kardashian app and that interacting with her in a digital world is a dream come true. I wonder what it would take for me to have that experience. If Vieuphoria had been released as an app where I could throw a frisbee for James' dog, go with Jimmy to his dealer's house, have a tea-party with D'arcy's dolls, arrange Billy's pedals, and do the lights for a couple of shows; I would have been all over that in 1998.

From the looks of it, they might give it five stars if the energy system gets nerfed and they have more skin-tone options.

The Kim Kardashian app has a lot of reviews. It was fun to read them for a little while. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kim-kardashian-hollywood/id860822992?mt=8

Atleast it is reminding people that Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is absurd, damaging, and embarassing. Corporations are not people, they are monsters that eat people.

They really should have named this game "He's Right There!" What's the deal with lag in this game, it seems to be all over servers. I have no real foundational knowledge of lag, but it seems to pop up in strange ways here.

I played Marked For Death for the first time last night. Y'all were right, it's more fun than I expected it would be. Typically I don't enjoy VIP modes because of snipers between me and the target, and the possibility that I'll be stuck in a room for the entire match. Snipers in Titanfall are useless and I was more effective parkouring across the map through buildings as a target than staying in one place (or saving my titan-drops). Racing to the target once they've been designated is a great excuse to develop and improve paths. Capture the Flag did this, but the routes were static, having a moving target requires a different way of seeing potential paths. I almost didn't try it out, but it was super fun. I might be biased though, in one match I killed the target seven times because I'm boss.

Boy am I glad I asked. I'm listening to my first episode of Not A Game (#41) and it's already paying off. Fallen London sounds really interesting and I was not at all expecting Netrunner talk. This is great.

I can understand why. How can that detail not be an intentional poke at the holocaust? The zombie mode of COD games make me uncomfortable because I feel like they just reversed the skins. A bunch of unarmed crowds who are undead (dead who have not received justic so they haunt) surrounded by Nazi symbols makes me feel like someone wanted a nazi-fantasy and just reversed the description of who was being shot so it would be acceptable.

Racist assumptions encouraging bigotry in the player-base, yes. I'm still really upset about the invasion of Iraq so I find the reference material of Insurgency very distressing. The propagation of the racist, paranoid nationalism that allowed that war to occur in computer-game form bothers me on a rational level more than an emotional one. I'm not sure why that is the case. But as far as what I saw from PayDay2, here is the video I watched: The whole thing just creeps me out, even before they start shooting. The sound-scape and apartment set-up make me feel like I'm watching some movie where half of it is showing the rope-burned hostage crying and smacked while "Shut-UP!" is being yelled at them. The instructions by phone add to that feeling. ClownMasks+surgical gloves = creepy. Screaming women and robbery dominance voice just creep me out.

Agreed that neither of us know, but let's not let that stop us from speculating. I'll explain what my reasoning is. First I need to say that I'm not proposing that injecting a few women into the community as a whole would have much of an impact on my enjoyment of the Bombcast, but I am saying that injecting them into the cast-roster would. I don't have a large enough sample to give anything but anecdotal impressions, but the few times I've heard women talk at length about something they have been interested in on a gaming podcast have been so exciting for me. Hearing Lara's opinion about Dragon Age 2 on the Gamers With Jobs Podcast was incredibly enlightening to me. Her opinion was drastically different than any I had heard before. This is a game that is generally dismissed as a failure by the vast majority of male games and opinionators, while I know three women that enjoyed it immensely of three women who I know played it. Regardless of whether or not it's fair to do so, this makes me think that I'm missing out on something that gender may be a significant variable of. The Dragon Age 2 example is not the only one, but it was an extreme anecdote in my experience which seems like a fractal piece of a more general desire I have. Also, I'm a person who has surrounded myself with women all my life and feel more comfortable around them than I do men. For me, one of the things I don't like about the Bombcast is that the all-men-all-the-time is actually distracting for me; I get the feeling that the prescence of women is undesirable for them compared to the GWJ, Gameological Society, or Idle Thumbs podcasts. It just seems weird and cloistered. I'm not suggesting an injection of a racial diversity because I personally don't think that I would notice, but I would certainly notice an injection of women into the cast.

My opinions on this issue aren't so much a wish for meaningful social change as much as they are a desire for something I used to enjoy becoming interesting and relevant again. I was already frustrated with what I perceive as a stagnation that in all likelihood would have been alleviated with the addition of two female cast-members.

Thanks for the references; I didn't know either existed. I'll try them out.

Does anyone know of a gaming podcast (of decent audio-quality and that talks mostly about games) with more than one woman opinionator at the same time or even a woman who is considered more than a guest?

Assuming they would want to work there.

I just want to be clear that I am not making assumptions about anyone who enjoys PayDay 2. I know that we all react differently to different tones and content. That said, thanks for sharing how you view PayDay 2 so I can compare my own impressions.

Here's my perspective. Podcasts/gaming-websites are not businesses as much as they are communities. The hosts on the podcasts are the leaders of the community whether they want to be or not. Leaders don't need to change their opinions to reflect the perceived opinions of the community, but when adding members to the leadership they should prioritize diversity so that their community can grow wider, not just taller. I'm sure that when they made the choices they made, they considered who they would be most comfortable working with on a personally selfish level. I can recognize that priority and identify with it, but I have no repect for it. Giant Bomb has become more than what they think it is, I think this happens with creators and creations all the time. The creators think they are the brand long after the community has been using the brand as their flag to gather. And with that status, I believe they have additional responsibilities that individual members or the collected opinion of a small central group may not feel that they have.

This is the first I've heard of it and from Jon's description, I have a problem with it. I doubt Giant Bomb cares about what I think though. I don't know enough about the circumstances, were there women who wanted the position? If there were, or if Giant Bomb didn't bother to look, then their thinking as an organization is provencial and boring. That may be what they are going for.