Bjorn

Oh, a suggestion for one of my personal favorite fun Halloween/scary movies is The Frighteners.

I just pretend new Garfield stuff stopped being made sometime in the 90s (around the time of the cartoon), and remember everything else with great fondness. And the Halloween special is the best.

I think you mean two weeks early, because as far as I'm concerned, Halloween starts on Oct. 1st and runs all month.

Sure, WhatsApp's valuation looks kind of insane, but then I don't know dick about the international messaging business, particularly when you start talking about 10s of millions of users in India, Africa and Asia (assuming their numbers are even close to legit). I don't know what the value is for a Facebook in buying instant access to millions of (many of them young) users in markets where they have more competitors or a smaller footprint. And Minecraft's value is in part based on the absolute ubiquity of its presence on everything. Will MS maintain that, or go "exclusive" in some way? FWIW, I'm looking at this as a complete outsider. I've never even played Minecraft, so I don't have any particular attachment to it. I do think it will be fascinating to try and watch Microsoft interact with and continue to foster the community and creativity that we associate with Minecraft, and keep their legal departments at bay. We're only a year or so removed from the Microsoft that charged indies thousands of dollars to patch their games, the one who didn't even know what their PR message for the Xbox One was when it was introduced, who still doesn't know what the One is, and is abandoning features they previously insisted were the defining elements of it. They've never made a dent in the mobile/tablet market, and I don't see Minecraft being the killer app that changes that. I also just don't think they have a strong history of successful gaming acquisitions or nurturing and developing their in-house gaming resources. Internally, the last 6ish years have been this merry-go-round of studio closings, openings, acquisitions and restructuring with how many games to show for it? Maybe this signals a new path forward for them, but I just don't see where the last few years give any reason not to be a bit cynical about it.

It's amazing for Notch and everyone else at the company who benefits (which I'm hoping is everyone!), but I'm still flabbergasted at the valuation of Mojang as a company and highly doubtful that this ends up panning out for MS in the long run.

Sarkeesian spoke at the XOXO Festival about #gamerghazi and harassment.

You know how much the gamergate people hate doxxing, and doxxers. They hate it almost as much as they hate insults and abuse. Often, they consider it one of the great cardinal sins (unless, of course, anyone who they don't like claims to be doxxed, in which case they are just faking it, but that's another story). Well, that "conservative" article, the person who wrote it, that's someone who likes (it's a donotlink link, thanks to whoever started using that earlier!) to out people. He has a whole series of posts trying to figure out the identity of another blogger, encouraging the readers to help, publishing bread-crumb trails he's found, and while ultimately his "ethics" stopped him from personally outing her, thankfully he could link to someone else less ethical. I'm sure we will see the gamerghazi folks rally and denounce this unethical fiend any moment now.

Reuters is now reporting that Microsoft will announce the Mojang purchase tomorrow, and the deal will be worth $2.5 billion.

I've only been paying some loose attention to it, mostly because it's fascinating to watch from an outsider's perspective. But my impression is that if the vote passes, then both Scotland and the UK are facing years of figuring out what exactly it means for Scotland to leave, because disentangling the two is going to be crazy complicated, then there's Scotlands relationship to the mainland, the EU, and all that. Do they keep the pound, or adopt the Euro?

I am Social Justice Gnome, and no, I didn't delete anything. Which comment do people think was deleted? The two I screencapped are still there, and scrolling through it, I don't see any missing ones, but I might be forgetting one. Ultimately I responded to several people in that thread, and felt like it was just very much like watching the gamerghazi folks talk on twitter, some ignorance, some hostility, some insults, some insistence that this was all about "ethics". I doubt I got back and try to get anymore out of them.

This is the Citizen Kane moment of video games activism, and #gamergate is their rosebud.

Mind fucking blown (this is probably super old, but I had never seen it)

When I was first introduced to Dawkin's work, it was amazing and he rapidly shot up to be one of my personal heroes. The older he gets, and the more he talks, the less and less relevant he makes himself.

Hey, a question for the devs, if you happen to read this. Firewatch is still going to have some element of timed conversation, as seen in the PAX stuff you guys showed off. Is the timing of that going to be similar to the timing of something like TWD? I ask for a couple of reasons. I was at a party last night, and some Telltale games came up (first Wolf Among Us, and then TWD). A friend of mine commented how much she wanted to love those games, but is a slower reader and too often found that she struggled to get through all the options before the time ran out (this is also a problem my wife has with those games, particularly since she's dyslexic and often reads things a couple of times to make sure she got it right). As long as TWD has been out, I'm sure you guys have received similar feedback in the past, but I was curious if you think about players like that in how you try and design the time/pressure element of conversation.

Awesome, thanks!

So I went to a friend's housewarming party last night, and late in the evening I was chatting with a gentlemen I'd just met that night. Something came up that referenced his age, and I realized that we were the exact same age. Up until that moment, I had assumed he was 5-10 years older than I was. I was suddenly curious how people see me, if I'm perceived as being an "adult" in the same way that I was perceiving this guy to be an adult because I thought he was older than I am. Funnily enough, the A.O. Scott article also came up at this party (many of the people there are current or relatively recently finished grad students, so the concept of adulthood is kind of on their mind). I don't think I've ever really felt like my age, usually I feel much younger and less mature, less adult, than my age would indicate. Part of that is also that most of the people I hang out with a significantly younger than me, since a big part of our social circle either works or is in school at a university, there are always new young people coming into the larger group of friends.

I don't disagree with your breakdown there, but the author is a professional Film/TV critic, so attempting to use that as a lens makes sense (though I agree it is ultimately a flawed way to look at it and ignores a ton of factors).

"Ask any honest game developer who has been in this space as long as we have and they’ll quietly admit that yes, this is unlike anything they’ve ever seen before. And it’s ugly." Well, at least they got one thing right.

Looking at those posts, I see a combination of ignorance and poor critical thinking. Like, a woman director using zoom doesn't, or women enjoying particular types of TV/Film, doesn't somehow disprove the idea of the Male Gaze in film/television. And not caring about race, gender, class or other privileges is a great idea, but it ignores the reality where those subjects constantly affect people all over the world.

One of the reasons I have gone over to drinking scotches and whiskeys is because I drink them slower. A single shot of scotch on ice will usually last me an hour, whereas I'm likely to put down 2-3 hard ciders in the same amount of time. I have no new podcast recommendations.

My father-in-law is a Scotch drinker, and a couple of Christmases ago, my wife bought him a fairly nice bottle of scotch as a gift. We always invite our neighbors up for Christmas dinner, as their jobs keep them from being able to travel to see their own family. My neighbor had never had Scotch before, so when we opened the bottle after dinner, we gave him a small glass of it. He took one drink, grimaced and said, "I have never needed a drink so badly that I would want to drink this." He's a very blunt man.

Danielle, can you talk about Sunless Sea next time? You teased it a couple of times, but then it never came back up. I briefly got into Fallen London (before deciding that all it was going to accomplish was interrupting my work day), but I'm super curious to hear all the Thumbs talk about Sunless Sea.

The bilingual dad joke has to be its own sub-category that exists. It fits the pattern of Dad jokes perfectly. Funny Dad draws some connection between the two languages that's hilarious to him, but just mystifying or sigh-worthy to everyone else.

It's a double edged sword, as on one hand, it creates yet another entry point to the industry that only people from certain privileged backgrounds are likely to be able to take (which already has entire layers of privilege built up just to get to this point). On the other hand, it may also give people who would otherwise never have the resources opportunities to create their own business. It's certainly not a black-and-white kind of argument about the propriety of it.

Not anything particularly new, but a well written and thoughtful piece on the value and purpose of politeness: https://medium.com/message/how-to-be-polite-9bf1e69e888c Edited to add: Posting this here both because I find it interesting, and I've been thinking about the relative politeness (most of the time!) of these forums compared to other places on the Internet, and even how my own interactions change depending on the platform I'm on.