prettyunsmart

I wonder how much of that is just the result of a low-level employee running the twitter account with orders to be pleasant to everyone and make frequent mentions of products the company wants to push. It reads like less of a pro-Gator stance than a bland positive response from someone paid to be nice to everyone (which doesn't minimize the problems with them pulling ads).

I'm pretty excited about Serial, the new podcast from the creators of This American Life. They're taking one true story and telling it over the course of a season, which sounds like an interesting twist on their regular format. I just finished listening to the preview, and it sounds like it will be a long-form version of This American Life, but focusing solely on the possible wrongful conviction of a high school student for murdering his girlfriend. The first two episodes come out tomorrow.

I found that the game felt sort of "off" the last time I went back to it, and I think it was a result of the difference between the N64's control stick, which I remember feeling sort of loose, and whatever other controller I've tried using (Wii Classic Controller, Xbox Controller, whatever) which feel weightier in comparison. Then again, I haven't touched a real N64 controller since I was a kid, so maybe my memory is off base.

I'm around three hours in and it appears to be wrapping up, so the 3-5 hour range seems about right.

I played another hour or so, and I'm really into the game overall. As everyone said, the visuals are just beautiful, and the music (and how it responds to your movement) is pretty good too. I'm a little disappointed with some of the writing and voice acting though, which is kind of disappointing for such a story-heavy game. I think the overarching plot is fine, but some of the moment-to-moment dialog is kind of spotty, and whenever Ethan talks, I cringe a bit.

Rather than coming into this thread and complain about gaming podcasts I formerly liked, I thought I'd provide an actual recommendation. I've been listening to a lot of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour lately, and it's been great. It's hosted by Linda Holmes and other contributors to NRP's pop culture blog. They generally talk about two topics (for example "Books for the Fall and Our Favorite Detectives" or "Last Week Tonight and Batman") and then end the show by naming something in pop culture that's making them happy that week. It's funny, smart, and a good chance of pace if you tend to listen to too many gaming podcasts instead. I've actually been making an effort to spend less time on gaming blogs and podcasts lately (mainly only listening to the thumbs and occasionally scanning Polygon headlines). It seemed like the amount of enjoyment I was getting from reading about games and hearing people talking about them was far outweighed by some of the things that were causing me a fair amount of frustration. So, I tried cutting out some of the other gaming podcasts I used to listen to and picking up a few new ones based on recommendations from this thread. So far I've really liked Slate's Political Gabfest, The Bugle, and The Dissolve Podcast, so thanks to whoever recommended them. I'm really enjoying my more balanced podcast diet.

Thanks video games! I went ahead and followed anyone who posted their username on here. Hope nobody minds. In case anyone is interested, I'm @prettyunsmart on ello also.

If anyone has an extra invite, I'd be curious to check it out. I now know people in real life trying this thing out, so I figure it's time to give it a look.

I'm about an hour in and I must have missed that mechanic too. I thought when you found a spot where a missing object is, it just would tell you the name of the missing object a bunch. By the way, does anyone else feel like we really need a genre name for these kinds of game that isn't "walking simulator." That name was first used to be dismissive, and it doesn't seem to fit here especially well. If anything I'd say that his is an adventure game with shiny graphics. Maybe we could just call them exploration games or something instead. I don't know. I worry about semantics too much.

Thanks for sharing your list! I'm currently going through the Blackwell games, so mystery-themed adventure games are kind of my thing at the moment. After looking at your list, I was wondering if The Vanishing of Ethan Carter was released early to Kickstarter backers. I've been interested in the game for a while, but I hadn't heard much. If you've played it, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it (beyond what's mentioned in the recommendation).

I have not tried this yet, but The Cat & The Coup looks really interesting. It looks like it's a puzzle-y thing where you control a cat, and it tells the story of the 1953 Iranian revolution. (Picture and recommendation shamelessly stolen from RPS).

I'm a firm believer in the idea that one of the most important functions of art is to generate empathy (I think one of the Thumbs has mentioned this on the cast before, so I don't want to act like I'm coming to this all on my own). As a result, I don't know if I really mind people reading works that aren't that difficult as much as I hope that they read things that offer some kind of perspective beyond their own experience. A term used earlier in this thread was "literary fiction," which these days often gets applied to books by people like Jonathan Franzen. As well-made as his book are, his focus on upper-middle class American white male ennui may not offer a fresh perspective to a white male upper-middle class reader in the way that a less "literary" work that centers on the experience of someone from a different background could. I agree that most people could use the exercise in reading comprehension in reading more difficult books, but I'm generally more interested in getting people to read something that helps them better understand other peoples' situations.

There's a slight Nels resemblance there too, at least from in that picture.

I think I managed to get some semblance of a happy ending for all of the characters, but it does end up being bittersweet for everyone involved.

It gives me more joy than it probably should to see that the 'social justice gnome' comment from the first goodgamers.us review that Bjorn linked a few pages back has been deleted by moderators. So I guess you can say almost anything in their comments section, except expressing your lack of surprise at how gross the site's content turned out to be.

Fair point. I ultimately feel more conflicted about it than anything else.

I think a lot of my discomfort with that article comes from the title more than the content itself. I understand how revenue sharing models can work for everyone involved, and how it can be a great thing for all members of the team if the game sells well. At the same time, if this is (or becomes) the norm in the indie space, there would have to be a lot of people who take the gamble and end up losing a lot of money. To some extent it seems like a version of the logic behind unpaid internships, but with better intentions behind it. The idea that people working for free with hopes of benefits coming later is becoming an increasingly common part of the economy just feels gross to me, but then again, I'm probably massively over-simplifying this. EDIT: Henroid, you beat me to the unpaid internship analogy, but good point. Also, I think part of my problem with this is that many people coming from low-income backgrounds wouldn't be in a position to take that kind of risk.

When I saw that quote, that there was, "no check involved, big or otherwise," my first thought was that he was simply paid via direct deposit. Still, whether it's tricky wording or if he really did work for free, it does feel wrong somehow. I think you're right that it furthers the message to creative people that just getting their work out their is payment in itself, which is just wrong. In other games-as-businesses news: was anyone else troubled by that Polygon editorial about hiring "the best" staff without paying them a salary? I understand the appeal of being a part of a start up, but articles like this only seem to similarly suggest that breaking into the industry requires tons and tons of unpaid labor.

This actually looks pretty awesome, and I'm always for buying copies of games that I can pay for by selling the trading cards in my inventory. How long do you expect to be playing? I'm on EST, so I won't be home from work at the start of this thing, but I'd be interested in playing for a while if you're planning on going for more than an hour or so.

I just had the most vivid image of my Diablo 3 Monk punching the Nature Box goblins, only to collect the ranch-flavored peas that came flying out as a result.

I'm playing this right now too, and I'm finding the character animations during dialog to be super distracting. It's amazing to me how quickly that part of the game has aged for me, as even the original Deus Ex didn't seem that egregiously badly animated during conversations. Everyone seems so twitchy. The gameplay is still fun, and I'm enjoying my time with it, but for a game that's only a couple of years old, it's showing its age way more than I expected it to.

I'd imagine most people here have a Google account, even if they don't use it regularly. Then again, I understand not wanting too, with privacy concerns and all.

I played through it with the New Vision Mod, which sorts out the resolution problem I was having and adds fancy looking HD textures. They're well done for the most part, but I suppose if you want to experience it as it originally was, you might want to pass on it. Like video games said above, there really isn't a wrong way to play it. I'd suggest using the first level to try out a few different play-styles to see what you want to put points into. You can quicksave if you want to avoid making any really bad decisions, and that way you'll know if you want to focus on rifles, pistols, hacking, sneaking, or whatever. Personally, on this last run, I felt like melee weapons are super powerful if you upgrade your skills and focus on stealth early on.

I finished Deus Ex for the first time since I was a teenager, which was pretty neat. In the early game, I thought I had every corner of the game memorized. I was able to skip some areas because I just remembered key codes that I wouldn't have found until later, but I'd occasionally come across a secret room or another way of completing an objective that I hadn't seen before. Up until Hong Kong, the game was pretty much exactly how I remembered, but I soon realized that I've been re-playing the first third of the game every year or so, and never actually finishing it. Later levels like Vandenberg and Paris were sort of blurry in my memory, and I completely forgot that the Ocean Base existed. Still, it remains a cool, cool, cool game, and I'm glad I played through it again.

I'm pretty sure that this has been linked before, but this article in Jacobin is a pretty interesting look at labor issues in the games industry. It points out how some of the biggest obstacles to improving labor conditions in the industry is the giant pool of young workers who want nothing more than to make a game, and subsequently are willing to accept low wages, long hours, and little to no job security. Also, Jackalope, there's no need to say that you don't want to get too political. This is a political issue, but pretty much everything worth talking about is. I believe talking about labor and class issues in games is important, but I'd be skeptical of saying that we need to talk about these in the place of women's/LGBT issues. It's been a common move in leftist political movements to tell women that their concerns would be dealt with after class issues had been sorted it. We don't want to make the same mistake here.