Bjorn

Cool story today. One of KU's student managers is a kid whose own college playing career at a small, NAIA school was cut short his freshman year due to having a lung collapse, multiple times. He's been helping with the practice squad this year, simulating upcoming opponents. Bill Self suited him up as a player today, officially added him to the roster, headshot in the media book and he was sent into the game for the final minute against TCU. Kid's never going to be able to play serious ball again, but for once in his life he got to walk onto the floor of Allen Fieldhouse as Kansas Jayhawk. Fucking cool. Also, this happened (eh, time stamps don't work when embedded, play I'm talking about starts about the 21 second mark). Best thing about that is the big ass smile on Ellis' face afterwards. He's always so serious, I don't think I'd seen him smile at all for the first two years he was here. Good to see him having some fun out there now.

Got some co-op in this evening. It's definitely an early access game! Maybe it was mentioned, but there's some real weirdness using a controller. Once you turn on a controller, you can't access the settings, because you can't move the cursor there and the mouse becomes disabled. So to add a second play, you have to close the game, disconnect the controller, start the game, make setting changes, exit the game, plug the controllers in, then you can play. To go back to single player, same process. I should probably just play with kb/m, but I kind of hate that in games like this, controller just feels right. Co-op is fun, but it's definitely one of those games where it feels harder with two people instead of one. Friendly fire killed us as much as enemies (the Disc Gun can just fuck right off, killed us both with a single shot). It's been awhile since I've gotten that kind of sweaty palm nervous playing a game because I had just gotten as far as I've ever been in a game before. Good feeling.

This game is hard, yo. I've tried the first five characters, dying quickly with most of them. Made it to the fourth level with the dual wielding guy!

Sweet, thanks! I've got an hour to kill before KU plays this afternoon, I'll have to see if I can eat my gun (this thread title might be my favorite on the forums).

Friended, I'll take it if no one else has already. I'm super curious about the local co-op in it (and the game in general).

I'm fairly convinced that she has to be parodying creationists, looking at the other videos and their website. Poe's law and all that.

I noticed recently someone calling them gagas, which is the sound that babies make. Kinda appropriate.

\o/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4ZyIG_jZzBs

Ha! I remember those from when I was a kid. But I haven't seen anyone hold one in years. Of course, I don't go home that often anymore, they might still do it.

I feel awkward as hell talking about it here, because of Designer Notes and Soren generally seems really cool to me (my main knowledge of him is from his 'cast). But on the other hand, we've had this discussion about other games, and the ethical choices consumers make about the kinds of products and businesses they want to support. It would seem weird not to have it as well.

Eh, how long ago was Mohawk founded? Just answered my own question, it was announced as a company in November of 2013. Did I think Wardell was an asshat by then. Yes. Would I begrudge someone going into business with him if that is what they needed to get a project off the ground? No. I've run my own business for 10 years, I'm in the process of creating a new business right now. There are people I won't work with, for ethical reasons. But there's a grey area too, of people I'm not thrilled about working with, but I don't feel much flexibility in not working with them. Choices are limited sometimes. If it was my call, Wardell didn't really cross that line until gamergate got rolling. I'm not going to try and make any guesses about how Soren feels about it. But if you've already got a product in development, have already had a business relationship for about a year...that's hard to undue. Are people willing to make an example out of the rest of Mohawk to send a message to other devs? It's a far less ambiguous choice for me now. If someone made a new dev with Wardell as co-founder tomorrow, I'd definitely not buy their product. But I'm willing to grandfather Mohawk in.

I agree with this. I think voting with your wallet is a perfectly fine thing to do as a customer. But in this case, if someone wants to play OTC, wants to support Soren, thinks Soren is cool and deserves some more success, there's ethical room in here to go ahead and buy it. If someone concludes they don't want to buy it, that's fine as well. But I don't think Wardell's involvement has to be a death knell if someone has decided not to buy more Stardock stuff.

So, this thing exploded apparently. The two women who run TLDR elected not to interview Wadhwa in their piece originally, as it was focusing around whether or not he got too much attention in the discussion around women in tech, so it was a conversation between women about the self-appointed champion of women. Personally, that's a coinflip of a call. Interviewing him originally certainly would have added something, but if the piece is viewed as commentary and analysis, then it isn't strictly necessary. OTM itself has certainly run many pieces about people who did not appear, but they may still always reach out and then still run the piece if there is no response. Anyways, the result is that Wadhwa complained on Twitter, accused TLDR of airing libel and lies about him, the episode was removed from the site, and now a new one is up which is mostly Wadhwa illuminating the female host about what sexual harassment is, what journalism is, what an ally is, and more. It is stunning, in how incredibly oblivious the man is. There's a bunch of links on the episode page to various responses to the show over the last week or two. They're pretty much all worth taking a look at, at the least. The show is getting what seems to be pretty equal amounts of support and condemnation in the comments and on Facebook. I really hope this doesn't do long term damage to the show. I really like the direction that Haggerty and her producer have taken the show and would hate to see it killed or changed.

Call him out for overpromising? Yes. But I've been paying attention to his schtick for years, and had never noticed that specific part of the pattern.

Huh, I actually learned something from that Sterling video. I hadn't realized that part of Moly's pattern was to shit on his previous game. Like, not just look at its flaws, but straight up shit on it. It's not just that he overpromised early, it's that he sold the game like the holy grail in the days and weeks leading up to release, and then condemns the game as shit months or a year or two after its out and the hype train is building towards the next one. I really can't think of another developer who I've ever seen do that, at least not multiple times in a row.

Old PC game manuals were the best. My favorite of all time is from a game that almost no one I know ever played, Maelstrom. This was published by Don Bluth Multimedia, which was apparently a short lived attempt for Bluth to develop a publishing company across multiple mediums (I think, I'm not entirely sure what the deal was). You play the overlord of this planet, and the entire manual is written as though it were a customized executive summary to introduce you to your new job as overlord, and all the basic keyboard stuff is introduced as being part of your Executron Holodesk. The only thing not in universe is one of the most ambitious descriptions of a game I've ever read. The final 10 pages or so are a space pirate's tips on how to best survive your likely to be short lived presidency. I've spoiled some example pages from it. Still makes me smile rereading these 20 some years later.

Robot News! In case you guys never saw this in the robot thread, the child indoctrination has begun: R is for Robots coloring book!

Wow, at least he's fast and efficient at proving his douchelordness. I mean, nothing you could say could demonstrate his behavior better than that.

I'd disagree that it inherently makes Molyneux look sympathetic. Some people might have felt that way, but it's clear that a bunch of other people didn't. I disagree with Walker's approach, and I think it was counterproductive for the long run. But I have no more sympathy for the man now than I did before that interview. I'm also not sure that there is a situation in which one gets clear answers from Molyneux about what has happened, no matter the interview style. He's either an eccentric visionary or an extraordinarily gifted snake oil salesman (or a combination), but from everything I've ever heard people describe talking to him as being mesmerizing or hypnotic. I've run that interview back through my head a few times look for ways to guide Molyneux into a more enlightening answer, and I'm not sure it would have happened. I'd love to hear the audio of the interview, if it were recorded. I wonder if it sounds more or less harsh in context, instead of just having a transcript.

I've vacillated on just how bad I think that interview is, but I definitely do I agree with Argobot's take. And I think there is a much more interesting story yet to be told about 22 Cans, and the likelihood of that story ever happening now is almost zero.

That'd make it a cheese vaporizer. You could smoke cheese. Vapin' with cheese.

If I could photoshop worth a shit, Urkel would burn forever.

lightwhips4ever lightwhipjediraveparty \o/

If a one or more harassers are also targeting multiple people (particularly if those people are spread across the country), the only way to know that is for people to talk about it. The culture of silence is one of the things that helps keeps victims isolated from one another and unable to collectively work together. Levine dealt with harassment as one of hundreds of people, who worked together in the same building, with the support of a large corporation behind them. That's a fuckton different than the situation many of the gg targets have been in, and it's one of the things that irritates me about his trying to talk about this. From what he's said, he doesn't seem to be able to imagine himself in someone else's shoes very well. When Levine counsels to stay silent, he is simultaneously counseling people to stay isolated and alone. And I don't think he realizes that.