clyde

I never figured out what .calm did. I just looked it up. That's a game-changer.

Employee Report reminded me of something I wrote before I had ever had a job I liked and was doubtful that they existed. I'm going to transcribe it here: I think that the metaphor of weighted bouyancy is pretty great for the wakeful sleep that irregularly scheduled part-timers (or anyone on call) can exist within for years at a time. It's such a waste of mental focus. Bouyancy also describes my undulating wavelengths of enthusiasm between the ages of 19 and 25. I would find a shitty restaurant job, work overtime for a few months, turn in my two weeks notice when I had three months for bills, starches, eggs, icecream, coffee and wine, and live a reasonable life for a while. Those off-seasons were very important to me; without them, I was unable to focus on a project (often just philosophical hypothesis) for more than two days in a row which was very selective of which projects took hold. While employed, my interests were culled by the short waits; it's hard to come up with activities that can provide the smallest moment of satisfaction when you are constantly feeling like you will be leaving to catch the bus in 15 minutes or when you need to go to sleep so tommorow won't be as shitty. I read that line as if it's an understanding of what allowances currently exist within the narrator's sustained situation. Time would expand when I was off for months at a time and contract when I went back into employment. I didn't understand how someone could have the same job for many years at a time because my time employed was often just a blur accompanied by memories of a small space. Still, I was always aware that I would have to give up another few months of my life at some point in the future while walking around, inconsiderate of how long everything was taking. It was a very persephonistic existence. Here is the drawing I did on the next page in Inserts.

The Gleaners and I by Agnes Varda and Daguerreotypes by ...Agnes Varda Both are documentaries which probably has a huge influence on the suspension of disbelief aspect.

Figuring out whether or not you can jump off the world is enjoyable for me. Trekking out there, jumping off, spinning around, taking a screenshot, and then submitting it to http://bottomlesspitsingames.tumblr.com/ fulfills my National Geographic photographer fantasy.

I was just thinking about how cool it would be to watch stage plays (you know, like in a theatre) in virtual reality and then I realized that there is no way to use search-terms to find it. "Play" is used in reference with games, and "theatre" is an overused metaphor for media in general. This linguistic confusion could kill the chances of it happening!

I love this line. This is something that has been irritating me about the marriage stuff. I don't think the government should be giving advantages to married couples at all. "Equal rights for single folk!" I say.

Death of Augnob -Jake Clover

It's like at the end of Harry and the Hendersons where someone in the relationship scares the other one off for their own good, still crushed themselves by the separation.

I just read the last four or so pages, my summary: "Best forum EVAR!" That was such a good read. I have some things to add that have already kinda been stated, but for some reason I want to say them more generally. I think that there is this idea amongst priviledged progressives like myself (let's refer to them as Pee-Pees) that they can eventually become so enlightened about systemic oppression and all the troubles of the less fortunate that they can then never have to worry about hurting anyone's feelings ever again! Then someone points out that yet another one of their word choices is rooted in white-supremacy and instead of submitting that additional bit of respect to the complaint, the pp says to themself "Haven't I given up enough?!" Something that I am starting to acknowledge is that I will never be completely safe from hurting others. I don't know how much the need to accept this idea is for others, but for me it is pretty fucking important. I am obsessed with safety, my most selfish and personal power-fantasy is for a situation in which I don't have to consider my own potential to harm myself or others. This is a true story that might water down my point, but I keep wanting to include it. When I was 25 or so, my wife and I were walking in a shopping-mall and we saw an empty inflatable bouncy castle stationed by a bored highschooler. I asked how much it would be to go in since there were no kids in there and I had a hard time imagining one coming by and wanting admittance at the time. We go in, I climb to the top of this slide structure thing and my first thought is "I'm going to jump from as high as I can and land on my head because I never have the chance to do that safely!" First of all, don't do that. Secondly, this illustrates my saftey power-fantasy, but make sure to realize that the safety of others is the next most important thing to me after my own and when you apply some sort of multiplier involving convenience. Anyway, we will never be safe from harming others, we just have to continue to try and minimize that harm and actively provide care when possible. Think of Twitter as a bunch of houses with huge potential for connectivity that isn't always used. So anyone can be next-door neighboors with anyone else, but not with everybody. A neighborhood of marginalized folk end up creating some philosophies, culture, and art through their frequent interactions over a period of time. In some cases, they gain a larger prescence because of the distinct results of their insular nature. Then hipster pp's like myself go "Oh cool, that's neat and different! I want to be part of that!" And so we start populating the neighborhood. I inevitably will end up saying something offensive and get called out on it. I have a few options but we will keep it simple: -I can submit to the small-scope, local institutional power of this tiny community and possibly even learn to adapt and appreciate the idiosyncratic views and priorities of this distinct culture. -I can make a claim from the Rights of Good Intentions and cite the Law Against Double-Standard in an attempt to correct the well established members of the community. -I can leave. In the vast majority of cases, I want to avoid homogenization and assimilation of the distinct culture that attracted me in the first place. So I choose the first or the last option (which also happen to be the easiest and least stressful!) I view a lot of call-out culture not as an attempt to get others to memorize a static list of no-no words, but as goal-post moving practice that maintains a tradition of local power in opposition to the attempts of outside-powers trying to extract and assimilate.

I've been having fun with it. I'm sure that for some people this is the right mix to finally let them enjoy a multiplayer shooter with some Lords Management elements. It's the only third-person shooter I know of that has a lane and creep farming. I haven't played Smite though. I think I heard that you can't jump.

I just played Human Needs after my wife discovered Noyb's write-up on Zero Feedback and it reminded me that I wanted to play it. Even though the game's description on its itch.io page categorizes it as a love-story, I didn't really see it as such until a good ways into the game. What I like about this romance is how it manages to express itself successfully while remaining largely unstated. I reached a fail-state because I was unwilling to beat anyone or live with a fascist in order to satisfy my need for violence, but in the time up until my character's death I felt that my character developed a genuine romance with the Christopher Knight leather-chair. The narrator has a distinct voice that seems built of a soft, impressionable credulity to maintain the ability to evoke empathy within the world's anthropomorphism that the reader is also encouraged to laugh at the absurdity of. And this is the voice which must convince us that a romance is occurring; it's possibly a well-suited voice for this task now that I think about it. Since the Christopher Knight leather-chair is a passive object, the romance is constantly in danger of feeling one-sided, but through believable narrative devices of selective and/or symbolic happenstance, we get the sense that the chair may be passive, but is willing and even excited about the partnership. THis is difficult for me to recognize as a type of romance because it is so different than my own tendencies in romantic attraction. I don't have the confidence for a passive partner. I would imagine that this is the default relationship in computer-games, but whether or not it is novel, Human Needs pulls it off. The technique used is a depiction of escapism, moments of exposure over a period of time to something attractive and fulfilling in some mundane sublimity. The Christopher Knight leather-chair becomes an alternative tied to unfulfilled lust, it's a magical pixie dream chair. As such, the narrator's accepting voice has only the player character's actions and feelings to provide us with a glimpse into the romance. Typically I would see this as a shallow depiction of a relationship. but here it is kinda cute. It's like when I heard that story about the couple that has lived in mountainous wilderness and it focuses on the individual who builds miles of stairway over the course of decades for the other. Even though it is (in some ways) the story of one side's sacrifices, there appears no lack of love. Human Needs provides me of an example of this.

Chrissy and I recorded another episode of our podcast about free short games and started a tumblr with links to the games for easy access. http://shortfreegamestalk.tumblr.com/post/109258167783/episode-2-short-free-games-talk-podcast Here is the podcast file standalone. https://t.co/FeMdIPyYqQ Sound quality has improved drastically since the first episode.

Terribly Fast World by nuuup

Thanks for the recommendations. I will slowly work my way through them. I just played Exquisite Corpses after reading Chris Priestman's Killscreen article. I was startled by how similar it was to Wrath of the Serpent. Comparing the two is like watching two different couples fight. Both of these games give me a sense of revulsion and regret as they remind my of failings in moments of high emotion, but they offer different stylistic miscommunication which I find fascinating. In Wrath of the Serpent, the couple is expressing their frustration with each other with no concern for their demeanor and no perceived need for introspection; it initially feels raw and immature. Exquisite Corpse gives us chopped up dialogue that at first appears to be more mature and considerate, but it's totally not. There's lots of it's-not-you-it's-me, but there is no attempt at approaching specifics. The couple in Exquisite Corpse wants to think of themselves as adults who deal with their problems without ever attempting to actually do so. They use the vernacular of mutual understanding, but lack the drive to actually push their partner to dish. They don't really care if it works out, they just want to be able to say to themselves that they did. They've already decided that it's not going to work out because they can't see how that is possible from their individual perspective and they aren't really interested in being vulnerable enough to give their partner's perspective any real faith or think of it as applicable. The slow music really cements this for me; it's as if these two want to believe that they live in a melodrama. I think it would have been a great creative choice to have a rain-storm come in the latter half and then go to the trouble to animate one of them getting out and walking. I can see the couple in Wrath of the Serpent managing to stay together after emotions subside, but the couple in Exquisite Corpse is composed of arrogant types who are unlikely to ever admit that they may need to accept the other person's reality and respect it. They use their sadness to affirm the depth they want to perceive in their own personalities; as they walk away from each other thaey think to themselves, "This will be a great life-experience to draw from for the novel I'll eventually write". So what I take away from these two games is that if I include relationships that don't work out, it should be expressed with a whimper rather than a bang. If I want them to have a fight that they eventually recover from, it will be more like Wrath of the Serpent.

For the week of January 26th, 2015 we will be playing: Employee Report 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 treatment of the Final Fantasy games as a series rather than as individual RPGs is interesting to me because I do this and I thought it was because I haven't played any of them. In my experience, Final Fantasy has been a thread of games fandom that I've seen on both personal levels and on media scales. A kid my age who lived on my street showed me what I think was Final Fantasy 2 one time when I went over to his house. It looked like Dragon Warrior which I had given up on because I hated having to level my character. I think I compared them and I was informed that Final Fantasy was different and better, but I was unable to see any significant differences in the small amount of time in which I watched him play. This was a series that I have kinda always assumed I would stop hearing about. The next time I heard about it was when my girlfriend's brother was obsessed with the series. Whenever we weren't playing Mario Kart together, he was playing JRPGs. He spent far more time playing video games than anyone I had ever met. The next time I noticed the series was when my roommate in college bought Final Fantasy 7 and played all of it. It was interesting to see that the series had progressed parallel to my own tastes; though it seemed greatly improved, the aspects that made it unappealing to me had continued to grow and now it had super long, repeatitous battle-sequences. So as I play FF35, my frame of reference is Final Fantasy as a series that I've never understood the appeal of being enjoyed by those around me throughout my youth. In the epilogue of FF35, I'm struck by how Stephen wants to work on the series in general and in any capacity rather than wanting to make a single game or do something specific with the series. He seems to be asking for the opportunity to contribute to the continuation of a tradition. It's interesting to think of computer-games having reputable traditions that will continue to propagate like a cultural activity or religious rite, especially when it is created by a capitalist media-company. Since I am unfamiliar with the content of the series and have never grown attached, I think I'm missing a lot of the nostalgic aspects of FF35. I like seeing the author's perspective of Final Fantasy being essentialized and quickly consumed, but I lack the personal experience to feel the hits and withdrawls that I imagine these images and phrases could provide. But I do understand how creating fan-fiction can allow you to engage with a fictional world that you miss being immersed in and I view FF35 as that type of excercise.

I just played Finding A Prom Date. It took me a little less than an hour. I appreciated it being short and considering its length, it does accomplish a good amount. There are three potential dates that your character is remembering encounters with that occured during the last school year(s?). Tatsuya is a good friend who begins to like someone else romantically. Keiji is a bratty underclassman that Arisa can push around. Yuuto is a handsome player. Supposedly you can get one of them to go with you to the prom, but I was not successful at getting any of them to go to the prom with me. The relationships are developed about as well as I can imagine them being developed over the course of their alloted 15 minutes. They also feel distinct from each other in character just as much as they do in context. While I'm not particularly excited about this work, it is managing to do these two things that I want to be able to do in my games. Truthfully, I'd say that the most romantic parts of my play-through were my acceptance of Tatsuya's hooking up with a friend of mine instead of me, and bossing Keiji around and getting the sense that he liked it. I would have liked to see more of Tatsuya's relationship with Natsumi develop peripherally. That could have been the focus of the game in itself. You do get a good taste of this when they are first introduced, but then the lack of interaction between Arisa and Tatsuya (or Natsumi for that matter) is the main method of expressing seperation. I can respect that, but it would have been nice if I could have made some sort of gameplay investment to find out what's been going on between them. This love-triangle was the most interesting part of the narrative for me, but I didn't have much perspective on it. Still, the perspectives offered were appreciated. I was able to introduce them and had the option to react jealously. I was able to complain about the eventuality of the situation to a third party (Keiji). This aspect was actually the most brilliant thing that the game does. Having dialogues that reference Arisa's frustrations about Tatsuya and Natsumi with Keiji being contrasted with her actual responses to them when they were present, was where Arisa's character is expressed best. If Keiji had anything more to offer or if there had been later interaction with Tatsuya or Natsumi, a lot more could have been done in advancing a romance. The closing screen that implies I could have hooked up with any of the three evoked my imagination to fill in the blanks of how that could have happened and what I did wrong. This was a nice representation of the shy regret of a defeated crush.

We are attempting to start a game-critique club on makega.me http://forum.makega.me/t/game-critique-club-first-round/1407

We are attempting to start a game-critique club on makega.me http://forum.makega.me/t/game-critique-club-first-round/1407

Yumpo World by Porpentine.

Turns out that PewdiePie's hyperbolic narrative efforts do a pretty good job of expressing some of the subtle immerisve qualities that I expect to experience with the Oculus Rift. http://www.pewdiepie.com/player/vJbLOb0C7THU

We are talking about technology that could possibly make it so that you don't have to put your toys away. That would be awesome. I want an empty room with a bunch of simulated tools and toys. I have all this junk. I want to replace it all with emulators.

I just can't tell how much of it is concept video and how much of it is already demonstratable.

Björk's album is out on itunes. She addresses some interesting feminist issues in an interview. http://m.pitchfork.com/features/interviews/9582-the-invisible-woman-a-conversation-with-bjork/ This is a great read from my perspective since I view her as the most significant musician of my generation and some of it is about how she doesn't get all due credit because of her gender.

They are all the same. The different DLCs are different skins based on which team you want to play as. There should be a demo for each. If you open up Pinball FX2 and select the football league table, there will be a "play demo" option.