clyde

What is the narrative style of this game? Are there authored side-quests? I get the impression that there is an authored main quest, but that you can accomplish it with a variety of styles (diplomatically or agressively). I guess what I'm wondering is this: is progression of an authored narrative what is motivating you to play or is it something else, like accumulation of power and wealth within a sandbox.

That akward moment when you realize that you suck at video games. Next, y'all are gonna tell me that Mario eventually finds the princess in a castle. After the sixth one I was like "ok, ok, I get it she doesn't want to see me more."

WHaT??!!

I give up, but I enjoyed playing it.

This is pretty great. Spoiler in between brackets [I really like how the context of the options changes in such a sardonic and morbid way.]

That's awesome. And yeah, I get that too. Here is a weird permutation to that. Super Monday Night Combat is free to play and you earn in-game money that allows you to get more content by winning games. You can also just spend real money for the same content. The weird part is that when I win a game, I feel like I am winning U.S. dollars. Dangerous, I know, but I live for danger.

Jason Rohrer had to change the theme of his game from a divorced couple to the diamond trade because of the publisher. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=118565 Besides, how is this taking advantage of a fanbase? No one is compelled to give them money.For me, there is a lot of value in knowing that you provided capital. I don't know which I'm more excited about, the game or the 2player production videos.

Yup. But I'm cool with collecting them. It's fun to have a library to look through. I had to put myself in check though. I now have a monthly video game budget with roll-over. It's actually really fun for me. Figuring out how much I have left in my gaming budget for the month, waiting til the beginning of the month to get something I've been looking forward to; I like to have some self-imposed limits. In some cases, I doodle about the games I'm looking forward to in my sketchbooks and speculate on how awesome it will be to play them. Before I had the gaming budget I would just buy them if they were already out. Now I got a hype train the size of one of those where the conductor straddles the engine. It's changed my gaming habits too. I play more iphone games and I believe that I savor my existing library a little more than I did.

Richard Scarry's Busytown appears complex compared to other childrens' books, but it still simplifies occupations into caricatures. There are way more ways to make money than being a Doctor, Lawyer, Taxi driver, or Pharmacist. Take out a pen and paper, write down a list of things you enjoy doing for extended periods of time. Once you have a list, look for similarities and write those down in a separate column. For each activity you listed, write a description of what you enjoy about each of them. This is important and let me tell you why: If I write down that I like vandalizing abandoned buildings, that isn't very helpful. But if I explain that vandalizing buildings is fun because I like getting my name out there, exploring new places, I enjoy a sense of danger; then I can begin to look for paying opportunities to do those things. If I like getting my name out there, I should consider content creation or sales. If I like exploring new places then I could be an appraiser, or surveyor. If I like a sense of danger, I could be a cop, a social worker, maybe go into the Peace Corp, be a merchant marine. The most valuable thing you have are your enthusiasms. The things that excite you are the things you can learn quickly and they are the places where you will be seen as valuable.

The debt part can be very relevant. You have to choose a job that pays you $30,000 a year even if there is something else you would rather do when you get out. Going to college to learn is like buying a boat to be a ship captain. It's possible to do it that way, but it's a very expensive and somewhat inefficient means. College has no monopoly on learning. It's a certification program. I'm sure you had some great experiences in college, but you might have had some interesting experiences by using that money to start your own business. Even if it failed, you would have highly valuable work experience. I went to college for two years, and I had some valuable experiences. And I like where I am now, but I could have gotten a comparable education by moving to an exciting place and reading postmodern novels while I worked odd jobs. I understand that some people go to college to learn things like medicine, law, and engineering; that is a completely different thing.

My friend, never give up on your dreams. There are plenty of jobs where you can browse Reddit and Idle Thumbs all day. You just need to know how to look for them. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/r4prr/people_with_office_jobs_that_surf_the_web_all_day/ The trick is being honest with yourself about what you REALLY want instead of how your desires are symbolized. Figure out what you want to be doing and there is usually a job where you can do that.

If you had enough money to get by, what would you do for 40 hours a week? Also, we should impose a new rule. If you recommend school then you should include how much debt you are in.

Weren't they talking about something similar to this on the podcast? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vDqQBvtu0NU

This is the type of humor I really dig. The type that creeps you out. I don't know how to embed videos. SOrry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5rO-I7butL4

I actually enjoyed it. It was like a 30 Rock episode of proper length. The jokes were pretty good and the timing was right. I don't think it had much of a message and jokes were mostly stereotype humor. . .it's no Kids In the Hall, but . . . I wonder if it is better to be more ambitious and fail to execute or to do what you can do well. Either way, I'm glad the artists made something and put it out there for some people to like and others to hate.

Now I'm playing SSX again; with headphones on. I forget how empowering this game feels, and so chill when I just cruise looking for jumps on Serenity.

Chime has pretty good dynamic music. As you get more and more coverage, the musical track fills out. This actually adds a lot to the sense of progression. When you start a new game or get 100% coverage, it feels weird starting with a sparse track. SSX also adds dub-steppy fade outs when you jump off something really high, and then when you hit the ground the music reaches full volume again. And you do rail grinds, it kinda wickity-waks the musical track.

I would like to see this done with AI that learns and is persistent. I've mentioned it is another thread, but from what I've read, I think Mew-Genics is going to make progress in this area. My hope is that the AI will react to my decisions in unexpected yet logical ways that I can understand in retrospect. Then as the behaviors change over time, as a player, I will have some ownership over the history and causes of their behaviors (knowing them on a personal basis). Of course this is nothing like looking in your dog's eyes and knowing that there is a person in there who has instinctual, species dependent ancestral tendencies, but it's is closer. I'm kinda wacky into Futurology and my thoughts about how we will eventual interact with personified AI can get kinda creepy. Once technology begins making artificial personalities that can wholly convince us that they are sentient persons, deserving of compassion; innovation will start going towards fetishizing the artificial personality by creating them with symbolic authenticity. An example would be this: An android is made and people are like "Wow, it's just like a real person, if you hadn't told me it was an android, I wouldn't have known." Once that happens, the innovation will be like "We have analyzed John's lifetime's worth of Facebook status updates, likes, and his credit card purchases and found some elegant algorithms. These algorithms have been put into the Johndroid." So then the Johndroid will be just like John from a social influence perspective. How much longer would it be that science determines the "spark" of life that allows us consciousness? It will then be put into the androids. Hypothetically. All of this because people like you want believable dogs in computer games. Great, thanks. No, I'm kinda excited about it too.

I hope that in the final version they have scenarios like the one I'm about to write: Dude comes up and has a big nose (from the given set of facial features. This is not a "special" big nose) and his passport is from Kurstan or whatever. After looking at his papers, there is some questionable infraction so you ask about it and he is like "oh, here it is." You let him pass through and the next person comes in. This guy says something like "I'm glad you are keeping an eye out for those big-nosed Kurstanians, they always think that someone owes them something." He hands you his papers and you see an obvious problem. When you point it out he's like "Oh come on, you aren't going to decline me for THAT, are you? I came through a week ago and I didn't need one of those. Look, check me for weapons or something, I got nothin to hide. I'm just trying to get to my job." You let him through or do not. Then the next person is a big-nosed Kurstanian. Stuff like this happens to me all the time. Native xenophobes claim that minorities or foreigners are taking advantage of the system while they themselves attempt to do so. Then when you enforce the rules on them they act like "C'mon, you can trust me!" and I always feel like they are implying that being the same race as me is evidence of their validity. I want more of that stuff in the game. I think that one very noticeable way that systemic racism occurs is with discretional enforcement of bullshit rules.

People play games for different reasons. If some people want to play games because they get a trading card, that's great. Sometimes people choose their clothes by how they think they look in them rather than how comfortable they are. Same thing. Not everyone has to enjoy this hobby for the same reasons.

Weird. I imagine some people will enjoy collecting them and trading them. Doesn't look like something that would interest me though.

This game is hard. I'm looking forward to getting over the hump of the learning curve. I waste so much money on weird door situations.

So I've played GTA IV and I've finished The Ballad of Gay Tony. Right now I'm about 50% through The Lost and Damned. I'm interested in how you all react to the integration of each episode's story with the others. Obviously, the nature of this forum post is pretty spoilery so stop reading if you don't want to know. Take the blue pill. I don't play these games for the story, but I wouldn't play them if they didn't have a story (unless they replaced it with something like Mount&Blade's systemic political vibe). But since they have a story which motivates me to play through them, I end up thinking about the narrative and its structure. When I finished GTA IV, I had very little idea of what had happened beyond Nico reluctantly getting caught up in the Liberty City crime-layer and experiencing a cascade of debt (not necessarily financial) which further invested him in the crime-layer. Bad things happened as a result. When I played The Ballad of Gay Tony, the appearance of characters from Nico's story seemed like an acknowledgement that I had played the original game. I thought that was cool. Additionally, it wasn't until I played through The Ballad of Gay Tony that I realized that the diamond deal was supposed to be a major point in the story. I really enjoyed getting another perspective of what had happened and the people involved. I couldn't quite wrap my head around what had actually happened because I didn't remember who did what in the original game because I wasn't really paying attention to the diamond stuff in the first place. I did really get a kick out of being the person who kidnapped Gracie though. Now I'm playing through The Lost and the Damned and the broader picture of the heroin deal has been presented, but again, I can't remember what happened in the other games clearly enough to really get the full picture. The same is going on with the diamonds. My memory is capable of going "Oh cool, it's the guy from the other game," and "Oh Yeah! I kinda remember this happening in the other game." I remember the first time I saw Pulp Fiction, I was blown away. It's been a while, but I remember that it presents alternative perspectives on the same events. Be forgiving of my additional examples, because I remember "ishness" more than actual details: Films like Magnolia and Slacker and Red Violin seem to imply a web of causation through alternate perspectives of similar events or through various contexts in which different characters use the same item. I don't know the name for this technique, but it's totally a thing. It really turns me off in films, but I like it in games. In films it seems gimmicky to me. In games, the technique seems. . . ambitious. I think that the difference for me is that I am playing as the character who has the alternate motivation and context. There is certainly some dissonance in my motives as a player and those of the character within the narrative (not to mention the dissonance between my intentions and my level of control), but the attempts to lead my player actions into a crux that can dove-tail into that of my precious or future player actions within a different story is intriguing. I feel bad that I can't actually realize how it all comes together. Like I typed before, I just get excited about seeing Elizabeta again; I don't remember what types of alliances she has with Ray or Marcus or whoever. The implied network of causation between these characters and their actions does suggest a paradigm of small-worlds and social spheres that I find interesting, but I don't have the memory capacity to actually figure out what RockStar is saying about them. For all I know, these three Episodes could be someone's treatise on how debt within a social sphere tends to create more debt; or how social spheres depend on competition within itself in order to survive within a larger world. I just can't track it. I'm interested in your thoughts on what this intermingling of characters, contexts and motivations within the GTA IV games is trying to communicate and what it actually does communicate.But I'm not intending to limit this discussion to the GTA world. If you know of other games that present alternative contexts to in game events in characters in order to display meaning, please contribute.

Imagine if they did this by actually recording the game states during your playthrough, and then played it back. For example, during a car chase, the game records the details like a Halo 3 match (where you can later fly around and see what happened) and then when you play through that scenario in another perspective it replayed that. Actually, that's not a perfect idea, because it massively limits interaction in the second playthrough. A car that crashes into a hotdog stand in the first playthrough can't be crushed by you first. If you did, then a paradox would occur and you would slowly turn invisible. Photographs of family members in the bedrooms where you save your game would fade away slowly, until you correct the contradiction.