clyde

Ok, the Ke$ha one is pretty awesome. Now that I've read one I like, I have the will to continue my search. Keep the recommendations coming if you find any that are noteworthy.

I enjoyed the Mastaba Snoopy one, but the choices are incredibly infrequent. It was too similar to just reading a short story. I did enjoy the premise and how it reminded me of Zeno Clash.

I'm facing similar challenges.

Yeah, that was not helpful at all. Do you really equate the knowledge of the Idle Thumbs community with a google search? If so, you aren't doing it right.

Last night I dreamt that I was explaining to someone how excited I was about using the Korean word "esaram" because it is a genderless, single person pronoun with which I can replace "they". The person I was explaining this to didn't think that that was special and asked me to give a use-case scenario. So, in my dream mind you, I said to them, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" and they said "I don't know why?" and I was like "It's irrelevant, do you know if it was a single chicken or a bunch of chickens?" and they said "no" and I said "Well if I had said 'Why did esaram cross the road?', you would know that it is a single chicken." Blows my mind that I was able to come up with an actual example in my dream. The mind is a wonderous thing. "Sheep" would have been a better example though. Also of note, it was a pinball dream where I played a machine with a carpeted playfield, and I also played one that was actually two tables attached to each other on the side so that when you nudged, you nudged esaram's table next to you. Oh and I was at a multi-story house full of used books, nothing but used books and shelves, the name I saw of one of the authors was Lilith . . . .Lilith. . .SHIT! I can't remember the last name. It was so classy. It was such a cool name. Plus I wanted to look it up because every possible English name combination has a book on Amazon, I was going to see what her's was.

I guess I should have read the book. Just putting consideration into your writing (as you seem to be doing) pays off. I'm glad you are excited about experimentation and expression in the medium. I love creative writing.

I only open doors for people who walk backwards. Their arms are in the wrong place and they can't see it very well.

The woman who does research on "game transfer phenomena" would be interested in hearing your account.

I found out that Jane Austen was a genius today. I'm kinda embarassed that I didn't realize it before. I think I have an involuntary gender bias.

Korean dramas show spoiler previews too. I cup my hands to my eyes like horse blinders and watch my wife's face as it contorts in a quick succession of surprise, disappointment, and confusion. When we watch the episode that only she has seen the preview of, she often explains that they mix the context of the clips in such a way that it makes you expect things to happen that are diametrically opposed to how they actually occur. Still, I'm not sure what spoiler previews are for. Maybe they thought the cliff-hanger wasn't enough?

Have your people call mine.

Hey I wrote a joke for you, feel free to use it or not. Also feel free to give it the polish it needs. So I got into comedy about 8 years ago. Most people don't consider comedy to be a viable career path. They think it's hard to get anywhere in comedy. But you know, it's just like anything else, you just have to work hard and keep trying to achieve success. When I started I'd do any gig I could find. I only did kid's birthday parties, bar mitzvas, I did some physical comedy at happy-hours. [pause] But now I do weddings too. I call my comedy business [say slowly like it's being announced] "A Joke For All Occasions". [pause] I run it out of my mother's flower and greeting card shop. [pause] The hospital staff doesn't seem to mind. [pause, low voice] they don't know. [look audience in the eyes] shhh. Comedy is great. You meet a lot of nice people. You meet some jerks too. Once I was doing my routine, you know, I was getting pumped, things were going well and what happens? A heckler. A fucking heckler. ArrGG! I can't stand those fucking people. You know the type. They just need attention so badly that they will stand up and go "look at me!, look at me! This guy sucks! I don't like his [put the name of a joke here that didn't go well earlier] joke! psssh. So I'm doin my routine and I get a heckler and you just. . .you just gotta confront them, you know. You gotta address them directly and shame them. So I look at her and I. . .I had to explain it like I was explaining it to a child, because that's what she is, I say "Look bitch, people aren't here to see you, they are here to see me, so shut the fuck up, drink your wine, eat your fucking cake and watch the FUCKING SHOW! THIS IS YOUR SPECIAL DAY!" The bride didn't make eye contact with me for the rest of the reception. [pause] She knew she was wrong. // It might be too aggressive

That sounds like a non sequitur to use after a joke that only gets a few laughs.

I really liked how in Far Cry 3, I would hear gunfire or a car coming down the road and I would carefully crest a ridge or quickly find cover because I wasn't sure what the situation was going to be until I saw it. The noises were great way to say "Heads up!" while not telling me what to expect. There might be friendlies shooting a tiger in the distance or three jeeps of enemies on patrol.

A while back, I was listening to someone on a podcast talk about Heavy Rain (I think it was Michael Abbott). He said that his problem with the game was that he watched interesting choices be made while he just did the boring stuff like opening car doors and pouring orange juice. This has stuck with me. I think of this all the time when I play games and fantasize about making them. I ask myself "Is the player making the most interesting choices or is the narrative?" Any examples of games that do this poorly or well?

This is so reductive, but simultaneously enlightening.

Ok, I'll try again. How abOut: Frog Fractions is the Adaptation of video games.

I think FTL lets the player make the interesting choices. I'm not thinking about the story choices of whether or not you are going to take on space-spiders, after you know what stat determines success for those events, it's not much of a choice. But deciding between hiring another crew member or buying essential ship repairs is an interesting decision. I also think that Having the potential to run from nearly every battle (with the understanding that you will have lost armor and ammo and gained nothing but the ability to run away another day) is a really great story choice the player gets to make. It would feel so different if when you got lower than 25% armor, the ship FTL powered up to escape automatically. That's my call, I'm the captain of this ship! Oh man, the Mass Effect series would be so much better if you had to go through an FTL zone every time you traverse between Relays and target planets. I liked the series, but that would have been so cool. GTA IV and Sleeping Dogs are offenders of not letting you make the interesting decisions IMO. Not only am I told what to do the entire time, not only do the decisions my character is making seem akward, but I'm given very few choices in how I accomplish the task. I suppose most computer games fall into that category; Zeno Clash, Scurvy Scalywags, Call of Duty campaigns, Legend of Fae, the Halo series. I wonder if designing significant choice in the narrative is inherently more difficult than choice in minigame mechanics or if there has just been so much more effort put into the latter that there are less development resources for it. I wonder if this imbalance will be solved by adding cut-scenes that include the effects of your journey through a dense simulation; or if developers will find really great systems for networking procedurally branching narratives in a believable way.

You can also buy some DLC that will let you make ME1 choices. It's a very blunt and expositional choose-your-own adventure with a few comic panels.

When making the comparisons, I have a hard time figuring out What context i should be using; historical relevance to the medium, personal experience, or content. I have the same type of problem contributing to the "favorite game" thread. Now that I've admitted that, I feel a great relief and can offer up a sick belly-flop at the pool party. Braid is the Clerks of video games. Or is it the Breathless. Hard to say.

Yesterday I was thinking about how awesome it'll be when I can afford a driverless car. I was fantasizing about falling asleep at the wheel and finding out that a cop has been trying to pull me over for the last 30 miles. "Sorry officer, these driverless cars, they have a mind of their own." Also, I expect to pay less for insurance and I'll be able to drink alcohol at bars!

When I am consuming media and I say to myself "I'm not enjoying this, this is boring", I force myself to make something even if I'm not inspired or capable. Works for me. Of course it's best to tackle something disposable, I wouldn't work on that house of cards I've been building for months in that state. I have many unfinished projects and I'll probably start a few more today. I'll probably work on my pirate romance text adventure too though. After I doodle DRagOns!! Hope it helps. Drawing monsters pretty much always pays off.

R.I.P. Driveatar June 10th, 2013 - June 19th, 2013 We will never know if we would have missed you.

"consolation" not " concession".

Anyone watching any Korean dramas? I'm referring to the 16 episode miniseries format. I'm on episode 4 of The Musical and it's pretty great. I haven't finished the series, so i don't know how well the themes will resolve, but a few of the main characters are already showing some dynamism. At first, the side-stories seemed irrelevant and some of the characters seemed like archetypes, but by episode 4, everyone has a believable motivation, a special circumstance and a realistic desire. I'm really enjoying it. The characters are getting tangled in their expectations of each other and tension is building. I'm impressed with the mixture of dependency and competition that they've written into the main four character's web. I hope it continues to pay off. Ugh. I hope they teach the lead actress another song though, I've heard her sing it like ten times.