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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.

These thoughts make me imagine the foreign language being used as a predictive tell in the game. For example, when a enemy is about to club you he says "I'm going to hit you with my club" or maybe friendly NPC's could do the job of describing what is about to happen in a repetitive fashion saying things like "He's going to hit you with the club!" or "She's got a knife!". If the player hears prediction of events in a foreign language repeatitively, it might teach not only the meaning of the nouns and verbs, but also subtilities like subject/object syntax.

Do you remember any break-throughs. I'm interested in finding mechanics that act as entry points for beginning to decipher an unknown language. Moments in a game that could give you the first piece of the puzzle that you can then attach more pieces to.

This has been the case for me, but I think it was necessary for me to already be obsessed with games in order for me to learn from the non-functional ones. We take so much for granted when we claim that a game isn't worth playing because it is a clone or doesn't introduce anything new. It's practically a miracle that it works at all. Playing something with unresponsive controls or that requires the player to use a walkthrough to progress can be enlightening. Along the same lines, Making a game can reveal a lot. I tried making a 2d shape jump and I spent hours trying to get it to act like Mario. Kodu is free on the PC and is built for making games through a menu system. There is a ios app called "Geovertex" that allows you to make 2d vector graphic games by making menu selections. You quickly get overwhelmed by how many logical triggers are necessary in order to have anything remotely intentional occur. It also shows me the extent to which most games are extremely similar.

Have you ever heard the quotation: "Technology is anything that wasn't around when you were born."? I like that. But to entertain your fantasy: Bride of Pinbot Tetris Super Mario World Portal Minecraft.

Yeah, we've been watching Korean dramas obsessively for about a year now. That has acclimated us to some common phrases and the general tone of speech. She has taken it further by watching youtube classes. But as I'm watching her learn I'm thinking to myself "Video games could do this so much better." Seems like designers could simulate immersion and even script events to add relevance and context to new vocabulary and syntactical protocol. Still, I was just thinking that I could find some educational kids game in Korean or something more demanding (but still approacable) than subtitles on Dramafever. Haven't had much luck though. There are flash card apps, but I need something more like a dating sim where you play as a English girl who suddenly finds herself in a Korean boy band and has to improvise.

That's interesting. I have never thought about demand for luxury goods raising the prices of mid-tier goods. It makes sense though, that a speculative market could attract labor away from a stable market.

Is it that you want the upgrades to have significant impact on gameplay? Instead of choosing between an ice-damage spell and a fire-damage spell, you want run really fast or see through walls?

I don't understand how the race for straw was messing up the rest of the economy. Was it the equivalent of the entire world population giving up farming food in order to collect Beanie Babies? Could an individual provide for themselves if they weren't camel-crazy? It sounds like it would have been fun to witness. Sounds tedious though.

Did it give you any insights into civilization that you would like to share?

As far as game mechanics go, I believe that: You solve puzzles. You beat opponents. You achieve highscores. Games with violent themes can be played in any of these ways. And there are tons of games with violent themes and tons without. By "tons" I mean "multitudes of games in the amounts of two-thousand pounds." But your question makes me think of games where it feels like I am solving an opponent like a puzzle. "Think Like A Shrink" is an interesting example of this, where the opponent is actually imprisoned by their own psychological defenses. Your job is to remove those defenses by identifying their type. It is still a domination-fantasy, but every puzzle game is. I think the vibe of separating the behaviors from the person is so interesting in a game. I also like the idea of getting non-player characters to open up to you. Bioware does this sloppily, but I appreciate that they are trying.

That is awesome. This did not happen to me, I'm not as observant as you, I just got a citation.

I don't know why I don't know why, but that makes it so much better for me.

Are they really procedural?

It was easy to be nice once my family was dead. Awesome game, I was surprised that is was so fun. I'm hoping the final version allows more clarity on the fingerprint system. I had a situation where the finger prints didn't match and i couldn't figure out how to highlight the discrepency. Also, I broke a rule and the next day's paper didn't reflect it well. That could have been an intentional demonstration of my futility, but I'm not sure. I think the fact that it is a beta leans me towards thinking it's an unfinished thread rather than an intentional statement. Man alive this game is a gem. I just want to play more. Such a great example of what games can do.

Is that what your friend was saying? For the record, you cracked me up.

I'd want to play an Oculus Rift game made for ASMR for the same reason ai enjoy the youtube videos. I'm fascinated by media created for people with different perceptions than mine. I guess I figure that I'm expanding my own perceptional abilities by exposing myself to media which is tailored for something I can't sense. I have no evidence for this. My incentive is dependent on my personal fantasy that it'll have an effect.

I'm not susceptible to ASMR. I just recently found out about it from episode #491 of This American Life. Last night I watched a bunch of ASMR videos out of curiousity. It probably helped that I have a thing for well done slow films like the work of Agnes Varda. Anyway, when the lady started brushing my non-existent hair (assumably a wig set atop a 3D microphone), it was akwardly intense. When someone tries to persuade me to relax, I become very anxious. I have an intense fear that someone is going to be hurt while I am not paying attention; while I am relaxing. I was able to slip through the hair brushing, but I thought to myself "I don't know if I could do this is if I was in an Oculus Rift."

Wouldn't it be interesting if the ASMR community got interested in the Oculus Rift?

Y'all could just collaborate online in the meantime. I'm sure you have a list of ideas, I would think that one idea from the list would match someone else's. You might not make money from it, but it'll give you the sense that you are doing more than working a job and feeding yourself.