clyde

Regardless of whether or not they read it, it might be a good idea for someone to start a virtual economy story-thread.

I don't know anything about Nelson Mandela, but I just read this: http://www.okwonga.com/?p=869 Did Nelson Mandela take up arms and kill people? Edit: I'm reading about the militant wing he co-founded. It has some answers and a little bit of context. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe Edit 2: Good stuff. I especially like the part where Nelson Mandela disguises himself as a milkman. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Charter

Is there a name for the thing in movies where the twist at the end starts a montague of previous scenes that are now informed by something revealed at the end; and it makes you go "He was talking to a ghost the WHOLE TIME!" There has got to be a name for that.

"The idea that you don't have a point if you can't type it in less than 140 is absurd IMO" ...is the just the type of thing people end up saying on Twitter before they are having three separate conversations about it while ignoring five others. The medium encourages curt opinions, not points. Points are the conclusions of arguments. Stating them without the actual argument leads to misunderstandings and sloganized concepts. I can understand how Twitter's format could break down barriers for people who are intimidated by walls of text. But I think it inherently does so by destroying any chance of communicating complexity before the discussion falls into pieces. I suppose this is only true for twitter-discussions of more that two participants though. I could see how short-form would encourage equality of contribution in dialogue between two people. Still, in my memories of debating with friends over coffee in diners, there comes a point in the banter where a soliloquy is necessary in order to illustrate one person's position before someone else diverts it with a trivial question. I was typically the joker with a bag of trivial questions.

I enjoyed reading your list Merus. Your critique of these games was informative and inspiring. I'm hoping that you will expand the thought that you wrote at the end. It seems like you have something to say, and I'm not clear on what it is just from reading this:

I hope he fares better in the dark level than I did last night.

I have him holding the pile of mail that I've been bringing in. It's barely subversive, but there is an opportunity for cognitive-dissonance there (I suppose the same could be said for the entire myth). Plausable deniability is the #1 priority for disingenious cowards like myself.

I'll dress him in a black trench-coat and sunglasses, sit him in a leather chair, put a red jellybean in one hand, a blue of in the other and a note that says "What if I told you, that Santa isn't real?" Just kidding, I'd get in more trouble for that than for telling them that Hell is a harmful fiction.

Get ready to find out how much of a stick-in-the-mud I am: My sister is on a trip with her kids and she wants me to move the elf. I'm going to do it without protest, but I feel like this is against my ethics. I want no part in the Santa-lie.

All this interview talk reminds me of this Steven Wright clip.

I'm sure that a lot of my frustrations with Twitter are the result of trying to interact with people whose work I'm familar with, but who are not familiar with me.

I played a handful of things that encouraged me to perceive my world more capably. The two stand-outs are Civilization 5 (with the Brave New World expansion) and Spelunky HD. This spring, I was very much concerned that the U.S. was going to enter a proxy-war with Iran through the humanitarian crisis in Syria. My desire to encourage anti-oppression (regardless of borders) conflicted with my perception of the inherent methods and motives of the military-industrial-complex within which I live. Civilization 5 gave me a toy with which to visualize and vernacularize a few of the many complexities involved in the world outside of Civ 5. Being able to play with fictional versions of state-motives and methods allowed me to think about the situation with a reduced sense of alienation. This is good. Otherwise I would have just cried angrily. I do not take for granted that the U.S. and Iran are not at war currently. Civ 5 helped me deal with all that. Spelunky realized some things I've wanted in games for a while. The coherence of everything in that game comes together in such a way that I suspect no one could do it on purpose. Spelunky is the Kind of Blue of video-games (not really, but they share the quality of containing synergy beyond the capabilities of those skilled artists who produced it). In puzzle-games, I can assume there is a solution; in Spelunky, I assumed there was a use. Discovering the way that objects interact in that game gave me highly euphoric moments, multiple times. I'm not an evangelist of pure-mechanical focus in games, but Spelunky is a demonstration of what that focus has to offer. I wasn't only motivated to play the game because of wanting to beat it, or because I wanted to see the next zone for the first time; I wanted to see what happened when you put a key on Kali's altar and investigate how much higher you bounce off of frogs. For every 10 hypothesis I proved wrong, I discovered another logical interaction that made me say "I never expected that, but it totally makes sense." and in that way, I was exposed to a unique sense of mechanical humor that I will be able to access and extrapolate from for some time. Spelunky demonstrates much of what its form has to offer. Becoming skilled enough to beat it was just a side-effect of the mastery aquired while doing little experiments in its world. I don't have to choose between them. They are both magnificent examples of why I play computer-games.

I enjoyed reading this response to Gone Home. Note to TychoCelchuuu: skip the first 3 paragraphs. http://metroidpolitan.com/blog/2013/8/19/growing-up-riot-grrl-the-nostalgia-lie-of-gone-home Here is an excerpt: I'm jealous that Gone Home's heroines did figure out their progressive politics at such an early age, and that they also seemed to live in a sort of magical zone where patriarchy was a problem, but, like, y'know, not a biiiigggg problem. For example, when Lonnie quits ROTC at the end of the game, we don't really hear about the consequences -- seems like a metaphor for how the game approaches authority structures in general. Basically, all you have to do to get rid of patriarchy in Gone Home-iverse is ... step outside of it. Leave. Get in a car. And drive. Away.

So is Bogost not making the connection that all of those are different (and personal) forms of isolation that synergize with each other to create a house in which everyone feels alone? Or is that rhetorical and not expressive.I guess I should ask Bogost. It's interesting to think that sharing a form of isolation is something that many of us take for granted.

What does this part of the Bogost essay mean? I'm not being sarastic, I really don't understand what how to tell the difference. "Just as Bioshock referred to Objectivism without really engaging it, Gone Home evokes marital strife, professional anxiety, and childhood trauma for rhetorical rather than expressive reasons."

I evangelize because I want to be able to discuss nuance with those around me.

Banksy is simultaneously punk and mainstream; no?

Does your area offer any interesting social events? When I was single and alone, I ended up taking pottery-classes. I ended up meeting my wife elsewhere, but now we are potters. It helped me to find a place with a regular crowd that had atleast one interest in common with myself. Luckily, I was in an area where such a thing was offered.

I'm making interesting decisions in this game that I've never made before. I've always felt compelled to put holes in enemy-fronts, but I've never had a satisfying mechanical motive to do so. Unity of Command gives me a reason that is much more satisfying to me than flanking bonuses. Clicking on potential units that will recieve the entirety of my military might, I sometimes have to decide between securing a railroad section that will break their supply; or spearheading through a weak unit. The fact that the AI is good enough that you can get it to reinforce an area that you intend to later starve, allows for so much fun. This is what good AI is for, to have an opponent with enough empathy to fall for subtle fake-outs. Who would have thought that the Angry Bird's three-star system would be good in a war-game? I play these scenarios over and over just because I know that the higher prestige award is possible. That's why I think of it as a puzzle game; the tiered rewards state that expertise is possible if I play my cards right.

Man, now I want to play Shadowrun, but there's no way I'll be able to find an online match. This would be a great candidate for the free-games-with-gold program. That would get the population up. And it's not like they will ever be able to sell more new copies.

This.If you are just trying to get laid then this advice doesn't work well, but if you are interested in finding a partner just have fun and don't appear disinterested.

It came out for Windows Vista PCs and the 360, but the competetive FPS, Shadowrun defined my Video game experience for 2007. It was before I followed any video-game news and we had just been gifted an xbox 360. With the exception of Planetside, I had little experience with online gaming at the time. When we got the 360 and I found out that you could download demos for free from the marketplace, I started playing every one of them. The Shadowrun demo came out that summer and I tried it out of curiosity, knowing very little about the source material. The demo was a one map, multiplayer, assymmetrical capture-the-flag game with half of the abilities and weapons available. I had never played anything like it. I played that demo for two days straight and the bought a copy new. It was an amazing game. It was at a time when voice-chat with randoms was common and we talked and played a lot. The potential builds of your characters made various play-styles possible. I loved being a troll with a shotgun, tree of life and teleport. It was especially good for me because my dexterity is low and the troll cannot move fast. Everything you do as the troll has to be deliberate and confident. A lot of people played as teleporting ninja elves who were fucking evil, regardless of whose side you were on. They would teleport through a wall after using enhanced vision to see that you were there, and then they would slash you in the back with a katana and teleport away to let you eventually bleed out under a tree. The resurection system and the trees of life ensured team-play. The best moments were the 5-5 win matches where one amazing player had rezzed their entire team and lost all their magical abilities because they were being used to keep them alive. Often, when someone was out of the game (you didn't respawn until the round was over or someone rezzed you) that's when tey would turn on the mic. So you'd have half the team rezzed by one person, and then the other half of the team spectating and giving advice. Someone would katana the top of the zombie chain and they'd start bleeding out, yelling "Throw a tree! Throw a fucking tree! I rezzed the entire team!" and then one of the zombie-players would try running the flag, knowing that if their rezzer died, then they would start bleeding out too. Man, there were some really intense moment. I've never seen as vocal and team-work orientated community in a FPS since then. There were horrible griefers, but it was worth it.

I'm starting to wonder which is the more unethical economy; steam-trading or graphing calculators.

HA! Let's make this happen! Just because it's so stupid. Actually, my copy of Pride and Prejudice does this, but it's just the emphasized word that is italicized. I wonder if the undulation of the entire sentence is a recent development.

HA! Let's make this happen! Just because it's so stupid.