clyde

I think it's worth exploding the hashtag to let people who aren't incredibly knowledgable about computer games know that there are games that aren't on Steam. It has to be done by someone who has a mega-phone.

Gamejolt got overwhelmed by Five Nights At Freddy's clones. http://fireside.gamejolt.com/post/five-nights-at-freddy-s-garg8prr

For the week of March 16th, 2015 we will be playing: Lump Max by thecatamites You can play the game in your browser here. You can download the single game from here for free Or you can buy the entire collection of 50 games from here.

The things I enjoy about Town is the precision of the one-pixel wide drawings and the confident, dissonant rhythm and melody of the music. The subject represented doesn't have much much novelty for me, but it demonstrates the things I appreciate well. There is a bead-art or minimal cross-stitch aesthetic going on here. Turquoise droplets laid in lines on inky blackness to create simple line-drawings exemplify the beauty of the dot-matrix media. I've only seen this medium used in pinball-animations and traffic-alerts so it's nice to see something playfully made. I wonder if this was an inspiration for Pink Zone which adds much more complexity and content, but lacks the elegance.

So Ian Bogost wrote this: http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/video-games-are-better-without-characters/387556/ I think it's a good prompt for a great conversation. I share a lot of the appreciations that Bogost uses for their premises, but find the false dicotomy between representation of individuals and representation of systems (or organizations) to be both naive and disingenious. Some folks on Twitter seem pissed off, I'm not one of them. I'm glad Bogost wrote this because it's a really idiosyncratic angle to approach the the emergent/authored spectrum and the individual/organization spectrum and how they interact. I'm hoping we can discuss our responses to the article here. I'm just going to go ahead and brag about y'all now; when I read this article I thought "I'm so glad I don't write articles, I'd much rather write a question on the Idle Thumbs forums because I know that I'm probably missing a perspective that members of this community will highlight."

The reason I am considering that it naseau may be hardware-induced is because I read multiple accounts from GDC that point this benefit of the Vive out. One article quoted Gabe Newell of claiming a 0% naseau reaction to the device, another was a initial impressions video where one host claimed that they experience no naseau at all (and implying that they did frequently with other devices). Oh and by the way, you said "simulation-sickness" non-chalantly and unironically. This is the cyberpunk-future I've been promised.

I just don't understand how Bogost can understand the power of having a player make organizational scale decisions in an authored simulation that creates an emergent dilemma, but not understand how that can be powerful decision to make on an individual scale. The article isn't complete nonsense to me though, if it was, I'd ignore it. I am intoxicated by how strategy games can help me think from the perspective of the State; I am perplexed by how to design organizational scale and individual scale games that incentivize empathy, appreciation, and cooperation over single-actor optimization-paths; I'm intrigued by the perceived mutual exclusivity of player-input on the scale of bureacrat with a family and player-input in a city-builder.

All this naseua talk (I was remided of this by Lacabra's mom) has been edging us more towards the Vive. We don't have enough information to make a decision (and we don't really need to yet), but if one of the products can promise us that we won't get naseua, then that's the one we will have to get. I hope the Oculus can promise that because I'm incredibly excited about the Unity-support. I want to be able to play all these hobbyist walking simulators and potentially go into an environment that I myself craft. It's too early for me to concern myself with these things.

nailed it.

Zolani Stewart (@Fengxii) said something that resonates with me on Twitter:

Is there a good amount of discussion in the other thread? I looked briefly, but didn't find it. What thread is it?

We have a cat-door and came home from a weekend-trip to find a fourth cat laying on our bed. We've been trying to scare it off for months but it keeps coming back and actually spraying our house. We started keeping the cat-door closed, but one of ours has always hunter at night to subsidize the meager portions we provide; she basically makes noise until I get frustrated enough to open the cat-door and we end up waking up to the strong odor of territory-pee. Then we had a big snow the other night. While discussing how we won't be going to work, Orange Cat (the urinator) came down stairs all sleepy eyes like he fucking lives here. We couldn't put him out in the snow knowing that he would just push against the side of the house the entire day and be cold, so we locked him in the kinda furnished attic. This morning I picked him up from the vet after we dropped him off to get his balls cut off. He's going to have to stay in our attic for 10 days to avoid possible infections. I love how I kept telling the vet-techs that he is NOT OUR CAT and they just would aquiesce and then I would of course agree to something that makes him more of OUR CAT by agreeing to protect him and nuture him after surgery (and an eye infection and worms, and shots). They probably get people in denial like myself every day.

Our Short Free Games Talk podcast now has a feed that can be subscribed to. itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/short-free-games-talk-podcast/id975891335 other: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ShortFreeGamesTalkPodcast Our relevant tumblr with links and screenshots of games we are about to spoil: http://shortfreegamestalk.tumblr.com/

It'll be nice to play capture the flag on the new maps. I go through phases. I'm currently in a capture the flag phase. It's really fun, I've started to figure out that capture the flag is more about controlling bases and routes than being sneaky sneakster.

https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8878-philosophy-economics/

JonCole mentioned it in the deals thread, but the maps are free! http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/10/8188459/titanfall-free-dlc-xbox-one-360

Notice the way MC Hammer seems to be providing input. https://twitter.com/mchammer/status/575472933457395712 Of course, this is my speculation and not certain.

How mind-blowing would it be if it was disclosed that the C.I.A. funded that show. It's a good thought-experiment for thinking how arts-funding could be used to promote certain changes in public perception. I have no problem with propaganda that attempts to declaw the War On The Poor. Maybe if tax money could be used to seed art co-ops in impoverished areas, the U.S. population could hear the perspective of the poor along with that of the wealthy.

I really wanted to get in on that discussion about inherencies of profit-motives in art-creation discussion. I wanted to get into the state-funded arts one too. But y'all shook hands and agreed to disagree before I saw a spot where I had something to say. I guess I'll say something that might start it back up. I think that capitalism has a tendency to centralize wealth while it develops incredibly efficient allocation of labor. An actor with more money has more capability to make money. So I see one of the State's roles as redistributing that wealth to correct for that snowball-effect. I would think that using tax money to do things like build affordable housing, build public-transit, providing healthcare, and providing other means of production (such as education) would take precedence over arts-funding, but I think that art can increase production in culture. A good example would be (what I see as) a symbiosis between science-fiction and scientific progression in the 20th century. I think that stories of alien planets and androids had a significant effect on motivating certain areas of scientific research and possibly even suggesting some solutions. Likewise, I think there wouldn't have been as much interest in science-fiction without the advances in the U.S. space-program. I honestly believe that the arts had an impact on production. Now the question of which artists should be state-funded is one I have a hard time answering, but my current position is informed by the role of the State that I expect it to redistribute wealth. So I would suggest that arts-funding be allocated by providing the means of production to the least wealthy.

I just want to make a goofy game that anyone at any skill level can contribute whatever they want to. For those of you who don't know how to or what to contribute, just show up during the jam and post that you want something to do even if you have nothing specific in mind (or if you do).

March 30th through April 12th would be good for me too. I got a bit overwhelmed by creative commitments last week and some breathing room between it and another binge would be helpful.

This might not be helpful, but I figured I'd offer it. I could make a project file with very few things going on in it and then send it to you. Replacing the assets and making easy changes might be a good way to get introduced into the environment. Again, I have no idea if this would make it easier for you to learn a little bit about Unity, but if you get overwhelmed when trying to start you could look around the project file I make (or I suppose following a tutorial and altering it might be better).

For the week of March 9th, 2015 we will be playing: Town by thecatamites You can play the game in your browser here. You can download the single game from here for free Or you can buy the entire collection of 50 games from here.

MOON MUMMIES AKA NUCLEAR MATADOR SUMMONER

At this point, I will be disappointed if this jam doesn't happen. I'm interested in helping beginners in any way I can though I only have a limited knowledge of Unity. I would also be excited to help anyone out if they want to participate in the jam but don't want to learn a game engine. So for example, if someone has some songs and/or art and want to just put them in a simple gameplay environment without much more than player-movement involved, then I could do that for them.