Bjorn

I've won most of mine overnight, placing bids about 10 percent lower than the current price and counting on the price to drop overnight. Which worked in all but 3 cases. I'm going to do the same thing as Jon to get these last 2.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! Modders are well on their way to making it full co-op, with two Isaacs instead of a baby. We played a fair amount in co-op, but ultimately the baby just ends up really underpowered in later floors compared to Isaac, and it becomes an increasingly frustrating experience. And once you hit the territory where enemies do full heart damage, it means the Baby dies and despawns from single hit, increasing frustration. Even if it breaks the game and makes it quite a bit easier, I don't care. This just looks like to much fun not to play around with. Though the modder said that in testing, difficulty didn't feel significantly different, as the total number of items stays the same, you're just splitting them between two characters. So you'll have half the number of items you normally would be late levels.

True, but if they put it back up, it chills out the controversy now, and they can just ignore it for awhile and see if it goes away. Wouldn't be the first company to try something like that.

I've got two games left that I want to win, and I keep getting barely overbid. Put in good bids overnight, and have raised them three times this morning, and still keep getting sniped. Bids are getting denser at the upper end. Early on in the auction, there were only 3-5 bids that were legitimate, and the rest seemed to be low end or placeholders. Now there are a dozen or more legitimate bids at the high end. Prices on gems are also falling, which should translate to higher bids throughout the day.

Valve put it back on Greenlight, but doing well on Greenlight doesn't mandate that they list it, right? Greenlight is about giving them a filter and guidance on what to approve, not a mandate.

Yawgh definitely. Risk of Rain is great, but takes a pretty high skill level to get anything done. BattleBlock Theater is lots of fun, and it has both co-op and competitive modes depending on what you're in the mood for. Monaco I've found to be hit or miss with people, they either love it or it makes their eyes bleed and gives them a headache. All of those support up to 4 players. Oh yeah, and for versus stuff, ScreenCheat is out, one of the few PC shooters that has four player split screen. Serious Sam 3 is about the only other shooter on Steam I can think of that supports four people on split screen (though I've only done that in co-op, haven't seen if it supports that in vs).

Congrats to the both of you! That's awesome!

You could always send a message to AbleGamers or any other group that does good work and ask if they take donations of items on Steam, to either use for themselves (they deserve some perk for the good work they do) or maybe use to fund gifts for people in need.

I was going to write some commentary about each of the three batches of tweets to explain and critique them, but then just dumped them. So yeah, I can see how they would be confusing.

The Streisand one is about Hatred getting pulled. Which is just a dumb thing to say. Hatred is built around being controversial. The devs get exposure no matter what. It gets Greenlit, controversy. It gets pulled, controversy. This isn't the Streisand effect, it's just baiting. A bunch of the rest of the tweets are about whether individuals or sites should have comments sections, and him criticizing people who opt not to have comments sections. He doesn't name her, but the single most prominent person in gaming who refuses to have public comments is Sarkeesian. So when you're talking about that subject, you're in part talking about her decisions. The big problem I have there is that his opinion is rooted in ideology and not fact (which, hey, not surprising). We've got data that points towards reading hateful/negative things has bad consequences. That ranges from the (maybe) minor mood swings, to actually shaping how people view a site and its content. And now I'm going off on the rant I was going to write earlier. Back to work instead.

It wouldn't surprise me, but I doubt it. It's a pretty dick move to do. Seems like prices are slightly increasing throughout the day today. The hit a low point last night. I'm hoping that tonight will be the lowest stuff goes. At least that's when I'm counting on dumping the rest of my gems.

And I think I'm super done paying attention to anything Ken Levine has to say. I think that actually happened awhile ago, but recent stuff has really catalyzed that. Like, it's good to know that adults are immune from the pain caused by words. I was going to write some other stuff up about why I think he's ridiculously wrong, but fuck it, I got things to do.

Define 'game' WE CAN FINALLY KNOW! What is game?

We're the cool kids. Y'all are squares.

Something to smile about. If you ever wondered why the call Kansas City "Cow Town", now you know.

I got the bad ending then! I remember thinking that it felt kind of dissonant with some of the other characteristics of Artyom, but just chalked it up to being the dev's choice to end it that way.

Huh, if you adjust for inflation, prices haven't actually changed significantly since round 2. The first two rounds of bidding was driven, largely, by people's "free" stockpiles and the early rush on gems that was worth 30 cents per thousand. Gems have now risen to 4 times that early price ($1.20), and prices have mostly fallen to about one fourth of the early prices. Except for the most popular and newest games on my list, if I look at any other game, it's price is now very, very closet to 25 percent of its round 2 price. Perfectly matching the inflation in gem value that has occurred in the last 72 hours. This is why I love these Steam experiments. The market has behaved rationally, at least as far as we tend to understand how markets self regulate and value things.

I didn't even know there was a good/bad ending to 2033.

Dammit, for some bizarre reason my entire bid list reorganized itself over night, it's *mostly* alphabetical now, except about a dozen games aren't. Fucking weird. But I won Space Ace overnight! I'm actually pretty psyched about that. I played the hell out of Dragon's Lair as a kid, but I only very rarely got to play Space Ace, and was never able to make it very far when I did.

That's awesome. Is that a picture of someone hanging it, or taking it down?

Got this back in the Halloween Bundle, and just got around to trying it out. It's really fun! It's basically Rogue Legacy-lite. You pick from a random hero (random stats, traits, special attacks and weapon), and then try to get through 10 levels of a dungeon. You unlock or improve all of the previously mentioned things through challenges and buying upgrades. It's not a terribly demanding game in terms of skill. The real selling point is co-op though. The game is simple enough that I would guess it's easily able to be picked by by people of any skill level or age, so a great game to have when you want to play a game with someone who may not be very good at games. This is one of those times when a bundle game you had never heard of really surprises you by how good it is.

Mine is taken care of, though it will almost certainly be late due to international shipping. Plan A fell through because I couldn't find what I wanted. Plan B was untenable, as it made shipping way out of the budget I had planned. Finally fell back on Plan C, which I hope my giftee is happy with (I would be happy with it, but it's not as cool as plans A or B.

You also got a badge for making gems and placing your first bid, if you hadn't noticed. They're 3 tiers of the same badge, so each one replaces the previous one.

I played through Costume Quest 2 over the weekend. It's a game, and a pretty decent one at that. It felt a bit more soulless than the original though, perhaps because it's just more of the same with some minor mechanical changes.

Sacks of Gems are now up to $1.10 each in the Market. If they keep going up tonight, I may just end up selling all my gems and saving the money for the sale.