prettyunsmart

I tend to feel the same way in multiplayer games. It's particularly bad in games where I feel like I can very easily screw things up for my team members, so no Lords Management games for me. Also, any game with a small but super hardcore community scares me, which is why I bought Spy Party but have only played it twice (in spite of having a good time and playing with people who were quite pleasant). Some games that seem to cause me less stress: Team Fortress 2: Generally the community is pleasant and doesn't require too much voice chat. You get the occasional annoying person, but little in the way of rage/hate speech. Battlefield 4: Nobody seems to use voice chat in the game, which is great for me. I tend to play with a squad of people I know in real life, so we just run a Skype/mumble chat for us and ignore everyone else. The text chat is occasionally terrible (I've seen some racism, and quite a bit of "my team is the worst" stuff, but it's much easier to ignore, and the racists seem to get banned quickly). Guild Wars 2: I'll just say that, like everyone else has said, this game seems to be populated with generally pretty nice people. Final Fantasy XIV: I was initially pretty freaked out about grouping with strangers, but they all seemed pretty alright. It might have helped that I'm halfway decent at playing tanky roles. Quake Live: I'll preface this by saying that I'm terrible at the game, but even the hardest of hardcore players of this game seem to be really good-natured. You might lose terribly, but you will probably have a good time doing it. Another thing to keep in mind with games like DayZ and Rust is that it can help to play on servers populated with or run by people from communities you like. The Thumbs DayZ server was nice because the rule was "If you're going to be an asshole, at least be an interesting asshole." I got held up by a couple of guys playing there, but they were nice about it. I also played a fair amount of Rust on a server made up of people from Giant Bomb. Instead of being a kill-on-sight murder simulator, it ended up being a fun "let's build a town" game for a while. That was cool. Also, the Multiplayer Networking sub-forum is great for this kind of stuff. I still don't play a lot of games online because of social anxiety and lack of free time, but when I've played with fellow thumbs, it has always been a good time.

So, I just got a message saying I got into the Alpha. Did anyone else? Who wants to team up and hunt some monsters?

So I don't have anything particularly smart to say about this game, other than it is generally pretty great. My one regret is that my MP3 collection was lost a hard drive crash or two ago, so the custom soundtrack part doesn't work for me so well. That basically doesn't matter though, since the stock soundtrack is pretty cool on its own.

Hi Thumbs, This week, we're watching Luis Buñuel's Viridiana. I'll admit that I've never seen it before, but, if his other films are any indication, at least it won't be boring. Sorry for the delay in making the topic. I didn't have (consistent) internet access for a few days, so I'm just getting to watch the film now. I'll update with some initial thoughts and discussion questions later this afternoon. EDIT: By the way, after watching the film, I wanted to go back and add trigger warnings just in case. The film depicts some scenes of sexual violence, poverty, and cruelty to animals. It can be a bit hard to watch at times. I know I'll probably get made fun of for including this, but I thought that maybe I should.

It sounds good from a consumer side. You'd get access to a library of good indie games for a cheap monthly price. I don't know how good it would be for developers in the long run. From what I understand, inclusion in a humble bundle is good for a burst of cash from sales, and then a boost in name recognition to drive further sales. By tying a game to a humble subscription service, I bet devs would feel like they'd be devaluing their game, possibly prematurely.

This is a part of my ongoing "Shitty Hitman" series of screenshots. Valiant Hearts is pretty, even if I didn't like it that much. A hoedown, because, TF2. My Kerbal's goals may be modest, but at least he attained them.

I just finished Valiant Hearts: The Great War, and am sad to say that I went from really enjoying the game, to finding it well-made but occasionally tedious, to wishing it would end, to actively disliking the work as a whole over the course of the game's four acts. The art is beautiful, and strangely I didn't find it to be at odds with the serious subject matter at any particular point. Unfortunately, the game's four story lines were ultimately uneven (one being pretty forgettable, two being very well done, and one being pretty atrocious). Also, the gameplay, outside of the basic adventure game puzzles, amounted to a horrible version of "red light/green light" where standing in the wrong space or moving at the wrong time would result in instant death. I sort of want to make a topic and get my full thoughts on the game out, but really, what's the point. I'm just generally disappointed and a little bummed out.

Does anyone remember the episode where Jake and Sean were talking about the Walking Dead Season 2, and they were saying how they were disappointed that Telltale wanted them to make another season rather than doing a new thing entirely. I think the discussion ends with one of them saying, "But what if we didn't have to make another season?" or something like that. Maybe I'm just remembering the whole thing incorrectly.

Perfect! I wanted to search for it, but I wasn't sure what terms to use. Thanks!

Is there a thread for asking what episode a particular thing/discussion was from? There's a particular moment from the last year or so that I'd like to go and find, but that would require listening to 50 or so hours of podcasts.

Fun fact: The film was supposed to end with Viridiana sleeping with Jorge, but it was deemed to be too obscene. The cards scene was meant to get by censors while still implying a threesome among the players.

I agree that the film is a narrative of modernization to a large extent, with the decadent aristocracy of the past dying off to be replaced by the new bourgeois, which Jorge stands in for to some extent. I'm a little suspicious of the idea that Viridiana would be representative of capitalism (in part because I don't know how much Buñuel really operates on a direct symbolic level). Critiques of capitalism tend to view it as rapacious, rather than the object of rape. Viridiana is idealistic, pure, genteel. So how would that connect to capitalism? At the same time, I wonder how much sense it makes to connect the film to the rise of the middle class, since that is often (at least in American and European contexts) seen as a late 19th century phenomenon. I wonder if instead the pessimism toward social change and might relate to the failed outcome of the Spanish Civil War and the continued power of the fascist Franco regime.

Thanks for the reply. I figured that getting in touch with some studios directly might be necessary, but I was hoping I wouldn't have to be social or navigate phone tree. Just out of curiosity, what was your job?

So here's a question that relates to the business side of video games. Does anyone know where to find information on studio/team sizes either now or historically? It's sort of an accepted fact among people who talk about games on the internet that team sizes have been growing over the last 10 years or so, but I'm working on a thing where I'd need to be able to point to some actual data. It seems like somewhere like Gamasutra or the ESA might have charts of that kind of thing sitting around somewhere, but my Googling has left me with nothing so far.

I'm so bad at hearing lyrics. I've listened to Doolittle so many times, and never really made out the lyrics on "Debaser" since I find Frank Black's voice really hard to understand some times. The music part of my brain never meets the film part of my brain apparently, so I never knew that song was about Un Chien. Huh.

I think your point on the shifting tone of the film is spot on. I wonder if some extent these different moments of despair, humor, and hedonism in some way relate to the potential responses to the potential (or enacted) brutality of humanity. Buñuel seems to fall into the category of people who make bleak humor from the worst of humanity, but I find it hard to laugh along with him at times.

Sorry about that! As much as I wanted to go with something newer and possibly in English, I couldn't pass up the chance to make myself watch more semi-canonical films while tricking myself into thinking it has nothing to do with my academic life. Anyway, that wasn't quite what I was expecting, which might be the mildest thing anyone has ever said about a Buñuel film. Before watching Viridiana, I had seen Un Chien Andalou, the director's famous collaboration with Salvador Dali, and Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan, his pseudo documentary about the suffering of Spanish villagers during the Spanish Civil War (which may or may not have been a parody of more earnest efforts like Ernest Hemingway's The Spanish Earth). With both of these earlier films, it is clear that shock is a key element of Buñuel's style. Un Chien Andalou features one of the more brutal scenes in film history, in which a woman's eye appears to be sliced open with a razor blade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bysxnMXqX28 While not so explicit, Las Hurdes is similarly unsettling, featuring images and descriptions of poverty, starvation, and horrible atrocities associated with war. In spite of this, it is a film that doesn't take its subject matter entirely seriously. Buñuel's work is often satirical, and at times, Las Hurdes appears to mock the more serious documentaries which were released around the same time. One section attempts to show how treacherous the land by claiming that even the goats the live in the mountains frequently fall to their deaths because of the uneven terrain. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_EcRaBDxQc&t=12m3s However, it's pretty obvious that the goat in the clip above did not just happen to slip and fall. The smoke from a gunshot is clearly visible. Film critics have debated if this was a poorly concealed attempt to conceal a staged scene, or a deliberate attempt to undermine the realism of documentary film. I bring both of these films up to show how Buñuel is know for defying audience expectations. Viridiana, from its opening moments, continues this tradition. The credits roll with the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah playing over them, and the first scene takes place at a convent. For those unfamiliar with Buñuel, it may seem that the film will be a tribute to, or an earnest explanation of faith. Those who know him better know to expect something far more perverse. It is a film of lecherous men, sexual violence, and all kinds of desecration. This dark tone is especially well conveyed through imagery such as Last Supper tableau, the man dancing to "Hallelujah" while wearing Don Jaime's wife's veil, and the burning crown of thorns. In spite of having seen a few of his earlier films, I didn't expect the film to be quite so dark. In these earlier film, the violence and cynicism always carried with it a playful quality, mostly due to its connection to surrealist art. Stylistically, the film is far more grounded, though there are some beautifully framed shots and artful camera movements. The lighting in the scene in the bedroom after Viridiana has been drugged is particularly effective. The film only becomes stranger after Don Jaime commits suicide, leaving Viridiana and his son Jorge to share his land. Feeling that she cannot go back to the convent after nearly (it was nearly, right?) being raped by her uncle, Viridiana instead chooses to invite thirteen men and women living in poverty to stay at the house. She promises them food and employment. Predictably, they prove to be unworthy of her trust, and they destroy the house, assault Jorge, and attempt to rape Viridiana. I haven't fully processed my response to the film yet, primarily because I can't seem to divorce my feelings on the film's misanthropic worldview from my response to the film as an aesthetic object. On the one hand, it's a technically masterful film, but on the other parts of it made me nauseous. There's a long tradition of films being championed for their formal merits in spite of their horrifying content Birth of a Nation and The Triumph of the Will both come to mind. But in both of those cases, praise of the film is always qualified with statements such as "not to endorse the film's ideology." Maybe the most depressing image in the film is Jorge buying the exhausted dog tied below the carriage in order to save its life. Buñuel immediately follows this image with a shot of an identical carriage with another dog, probably destined to die of exhaustion. It's a stupid thing to fixate on in a film filled with attempted murder, attempted sexual assault, probable actual rape, etc. Still, it seems most indicative of the general sense of hopelessness that pervades the film. Anyway, that's my first set of thoughts on the film. I'll probably get my mind around it a bit better later in the week. Sorry for the rambling/unfocused nature of this all. The film just sort of left me feeling not entirely alright.

Sorry for the delay. I've been traveling with really limited access to the internet. Let's go with Viridiana.

I was going to go with Viridiana, but House almost looks too good to pass up. I don't know! I swear I'll make a decision by tonight.

I don't know if you're looking for Game Boy VC releases, but Link's Awakening will always be my favorite Zelda game, probably because it was my first. If you enjoy Link's Awakening and don't mind a smaller color palette, it's one of the more unique Zelda games since it doesn't follow the "find the Triforce pieces, kill Ganon" structure at all.

On the topic of inventory management: The most annoying part of this game for me so far is when I pick up a key with one of my characters and forget which one of them is holding it when I eventually find the door it opens (or when one of my characters is holding an item needed to complete a quest, but you can't turn it in because that character isn't the one talking to the quest giver).

I felt the same way until I read an RPS (I think?) article that compared the inconsistency in the game's writing to playing D&D with a group of friends whose sense of humor undermines the seriousness of the game. I do feel like some of the goofier moments make it harder to take the game seriously, but that sort of has made me enjoy it more (because really, who cares about the big ultimate evil threatening the land when you can talk to dogs and find out why those statues are convincing people that they can fly?).

Ok, so I guess it's my job to pick next week's movie. I did a stupid thing and went to criterion.com to pick out what movies I'd want to watch, not realizing that Hulu's selection is much more limited. So, after thinking I was going to pick Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera or something nice and strange like Tourneur's Cat People, now I have to pick something else. I don't know yet. I kind of want to watch Kurosawa's Ikiru, since I've never seen any of his non-samurai films, but that might be a bit too much mid-century Japanese despair after Tokyo Story. Maybe we need something campy like The Blob? Female directors in film history are hard to come by, so maybe Agnes Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7? Buñuel is rarely boring, so maybe we should watch Viridiana? I don't know. What are people in the mood for?

Olly tweeted about a board game night he's going to, maybe you can meet cute there?

The accent section was really interesting to me. I know it was meant entirely as a joke, but it got me thinking about how I present myself professionally and how central to that suppressing my northern Midwestern accent has been. If I'm teaching or discussing something academically, and I lapse into my 'normal' accent, I'd probably get laughed at because it is a marker of being from a lower class background. This is probably the wrong place to be writing about this, but there you go.