Bjorn
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Posts posted by Bjorn
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That is such an awful title. It looks like something that came out of a joke "game name generator."
The only way it could get worse is if the horizon was a color: Red Horizon: Zero Dawn.
Or make it sound more militaristic: Red Horizon: Zero Dawn Thirty.
Like, neither of those seems outside the possibility of what might have been considered.
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I replayed Parasite Eve when it was first released on the PSN. Still a really great game.
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Talking about late game I am curious how armor will be and if look cooler as the advent ones.
I've mostly gone on a moratorium of looking at new stuff for Xcom 2, as I want the pleasant surprise of discovering what all the techs like as you upgrade. But it is very tempting to look.
So I wasn't going to post this response I got but it's a good example of "Games should just be fun!" so I'll take out the name and post it here for a bit. If anyone finds this inappropriate for some reason let me know and I'll take it down.
<snip>
That's just a mess of a response. The beginning does seem genuine, and like the person responding to you is well aware both of TB, his reputation and his fans. But the rest of it is just junk, it's like 3 different emails crammed into the same paragraph.
Good on you for going ahead and contacting them though, sorry you didn't get a better response.
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There's a secondary vein that runs through Americans that amounts to, "I should be able to get rich with little to no work". In American mythology, you can see it present in things like the California Gold Rush and the Oklahoma Land Rush (both of which actually took a lot of work, but still include the idea of a rapid reversal of fortune). In a more modern setting, things like discovering oil on your property fits the same idea and how ridiculously successful get rich quick schemes are in this country (successful in terms of making their creators a lot of money).
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I agree in theory, but I also think it is very difficult for almost anyone to isolate their admiration for a person's achievements from admiration from the person themselves. It's a natural equivalency for anyone living in nearly any cultures, to me. I know that I do my best to have a mental auriga standing behind everyone whom I respect, reminding me that they are only human, but it's still quite easy to let that slip and to fall into the patterns of thought that make that great accomplishments (or talent or attractiveness or power or eloquence) a signifier of greatness (or, even worse, goodness) itself.
That was the point I was trying to get at, that it's not a bad theory but I doubt it works for most people in practice.
I used the word cynical intentionally because, I feel like the argument as it was presented created an expectation of unforgivable fallibility. Not only will your idols fail you, they will do so in a way that's irredeemable, or the likelihood is enough that it's just better not to have idols (that's my interpretation of that approach, may or may not be what Rob intended). I feel like you can have someone as a personal idol or hero, and still acknowledge and expect their flawed humanity. This may be a definitional issue, where the way we think of each of these words (respect, idol, hero, admiration) are varied just enough that we aren't as dissimilar in opinion as it seems.
Some of the people I'd probably slot into the hero/idol status are people who were actually pretty broken, or have gone through some very broken periods or done shitty things or been shitty people. Their very humanity is what makes them compelling to look up to.
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Personally, I like stories about the experience of faith in extremity (particularly a person feeling the presence or absence of God in events). A lot of my discomfort with That Dragon, Cancer has come from a Radiolab/Reply All interview where one of the creators said quite specifically that the ultimate purpose of their game is "witnessing" for the Christian faith and that that's the reason why they and their son had to suffered. I haven't had an opportunity to play the game yet and maybe I won't ever get it, but I'm deeply uncomfortable with the thought that a game about such a difficult subject being presented with an agenda that purports to have an answer for why it happened. I can only hope that the witnessing is the passive recounting of events rather than the active construction of a narrative, I don't know.
I went back this afternoon and listened to the slightly longer Reply All version of the story to see if my original impression stayed the same on a relisten. (side note to others: several of us discussed this subject a few nights ago in the slack chat, Gorm and I were both on the side of having some discomfort with the game). I do think the parents are incredibly genuine in their desire to use the game as a way to process grief, to memorialize their son, to share the experiences. But I also still have some really strong negative reactions to portions of their story. I'm not sure I'm comfortable discussing those further in public though. There's too many unknowns, where I think I'm filling in blank spots with my own issues with both religion and family that may or may not accurately map over to their story. And given that we're only getting parts of the story, both from the interviews and the game itself, it's probably more generous to give them the benefit of the doubt.
On another note, I suspect some of the negative reaction to the game in terms of both content (death of a child specifically) and exploitation comes from people who just don't have much experience with these kinds of stories. Parents processing grief through telling their story publicly has a pretty long history, and can be valuable, not just from other people being able to learn from them but even from an historical standpoint. The classic book Death Be Not Proud is the true story of a man's teen son dying from a brain tumor in the 1940s. One of the things I found most fascinating about the book was its recounting of the state of technology in regards to cancer in the 40s, which was much, much, much further along than I would have assumed (early forms of both chemotherapy and radiation are used on the son if I remember correctly).
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@Foggy Cornslakes: That sounds really interesting. Not sure how you would go about reflecting peoples' lived experiences more without going into direct allegory though, like "here is the occupation analog" etc. I guess you could take the whole being in a non-oppressed majority is 'easy-mode' analogy and literally translate that back to games, like you have the same mechanics and tools that can give you an advantage as a player (eg fluency in technology), but your starting point is more or less difficult depending on your chosen character's background, like maybe you CAN acquire those same tools but you have to work twice as hard to get them...
Regarding the discussion about problematic heroes in this episode, I really disagree with the premise that if a person you respect holds a view you disagree with, even strongly, it becomes impossible to respect or appreciate anything that person does or stands for. If we discarded everything by everyone who had ever said or done a shitty thing we would have to pretty much bin 90% of human achievement. It's possible to recognize something or someone has problems without dismissing it or them entirely.
[edit: I think maybe Rob was onto something with the idea that we shouldn't look for idols to worship unconditionally...]
Everyone has their own lines of course, but there would be a lot less conflict in the world if we could manage to say "hey I really don't agree with you on this one thing, but we agree on this other stuff, so let's focus on that" a little more often. The assumption that one's own world view is correct and someone who disagrees is a bad person until they apologize and adopt your view is kind of a dangerous road to go down anyway. Plus, when people do say ignorant insensitive things, it's often because they literally *don't know* and it would be more constructive to educate than to ostracize them.
What I heard from Danielle's side is more that it becomes harder or impossible to champion or support a professional who has said or done something to a certain degree. The line for me is whether or not the person's words or actions are affecting other people. My goto examples of this are Tom Cruise, Orson Scott Card and Mel Gibson. Cruise and Card don't just have views I disagree with, they actively promote views and put their personal power and wealth behind spreading views that are harmful to people I love. I can't support them, they don't just believe differently, they actively promote hateful and harmful ideas. Gibson, on the other hand, had a bigoted rant and is probably a bigot. As far as I know, there's no evidence he's ever actively worked to promote anti-semitism. I don't view Gibson the same way I view Cruise and Card, because there is a radical difference in what they've said and done. I'm not a Gibson fan in the first place, but I just don't really care what the guy does or doesn't do. Rousey, to a lesser degree, wasn't just espousing an opinion, she was making an argument that a particular kind of person doesn't belong in her profession. As a respected top level professional in her career, her words and actions (through what matches she accepts) aren't just opinion, they carry the weight of influence to help determine the policy of her profession.
I'll be honest though, and say I don't know enough about the science and medicine behind transitioning when it comes to hormone therapy to know what the right call in sports is. It's not something I have an opinion on, because I don't know enough. But if other people more knowledgeable than me find her words and actions harmful, then I don't see how in good conscience they could continue to support her professionally. I didn't hear Danielle arguing that Rousey doesn't get credit for what she's accomplished, but that she just can't support her going forward.
I don't really buy into Rob's argument about not having idols though. I've got a deeply cynical streak in me, but that's too cynical a stance for me even. I don't think most people's brains work that way. We connect emotionally with celebrities, often whether we want to or not. Someone like Warren Zevon isn't just a musician whose music I like, in many ways he's the soundtrack of my adult life. I don't know how someone whose work I've spent thousands of hours with can't end up in an elevated position in my brain. I do think we can too easily idolize celebrities, while knowing little to nothing about them. I suspect that what we do too often is build fake idols, imagining the person we want to exist, rather than the person who does exist.
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Haha, yeah, that couldn't have been worded more poorly.
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Two games that I've never played, but love the names of, are Skyward Collapse and Starseed Pilgrim. Both are very evocative names, without really telling you that much.
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I looked it up earlier to see how many changes have been made. Since it's inception in '92, the odds of winning the jackpot have gone from about 1 in 54 million to 1 in 292 million, while the price of a ticket has doubled. The odds are astronomical no matter what, but they do just keep getting more and more so.
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I've been curious about it since it came to Steam, more as an oddity than anything, so picking it up like this is perfect. Thanks for the head's up!
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No you didn't.
Yes I did!
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But I came here for an argument!
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Honestly, maybe a pattern could be identified, but that really sounds like the same kind of reasoning some hardcore gamblers I've known have come up with. There have only been something like 2500 total powerball drawings, with the rules changing over time. This was the 7th time they've changed the number of balls in play. I can't imagine with that sample size that there would even be enough data to start to show a pattern.
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I did buy $10 worth of tickets, fun enough to dream with the lady about what we'd do. However, after reading this article, I did regret it some. I pay no attention to the lottery, so I had no idea that last year they altered the structure of the game to specifically create larger jackpots, including massively increasing the likelihood of a billion dollar jackpot, all in the name of increasing sagging sales and whipping up a media frenzy about the biggest jackpot ever. It was some incredibly effective manipulation.
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Sorry, the reverse-word-order post is over there. This isn't that thread.
I think you're crossing over into being pedantic....this is the wrong thread for that.
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That's adorable!
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This isn't the right thread for spoiler pyramids.
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I think I pulled on the wrong thread.
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that's bjorn's pet name for me
Really, it's a long running joke that became the lady's and I's actual pet names for eachother. We use to mock other couple's pet names by saying them in the most drawn out, sickeningly sweet way possible (oooohhhhhh baaaaaabbbbbyyyyyy), and some how that "baby" eventually morphed into bubbers.
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Edited: Wrong picture, wrong thread.
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What business might you go into? Something less profitable?
Whatever the lady wanted to pursue, since most of the last decade has been focused on my current business.
Nuclear Throne: Oh! I accidentally ate my gun.
in Video Gaming
Posted
Picked this back up for the first time since months before it was finished...and I'm still super terrible at it. Yah!
Any tips for the boss of the ice world? That as far as I ever got in Early Access, and still stuck there. Been mostly running Robot or Fish, because they are my only two with Golden Guns right now (shotgun and crossbow, respectively). I usually get killed within 10-15 seconds of the boss spawning, aren't even having time to see a pattern to deal with.