Mawd

Wouldn't perhaps the reason (or just partly) why Martial arts 'dojos' invest so heavily into imparting the ideals of the culture surrounding their chosen athletic style is to stave off appropriation? Idk I just feel like part of the reason why teacher's feel it's important to teach the context of the martial art along with the form is to insure that the art is being treated respectfully in lieu of direct appropriation. Which could be a much better example of what appropriation would be without talking about wearing jeans and what colours they are. -- Even if it's not done with appropriation at the forefront of the Sifu's mind I feel like it still indirectly adds weight to the ideas of what appropriation is and isn't. Or let's go back to the topic of Maori which I brought up a few months ago. Say I wanted to get some swirling face tattoos in a design that echoed traditional Maori (done partly to represent status) it'd be disrespectful to simply take the designs removed from the context. Why I could end up with a design of tattoo that completely copies a legendary chieftain who got those tattoos to reflect his mana (respect/standing/status); many would view my action as being one that undervalued his mana as it would be highly unlikely that I had done deeds that reflected the awesomeness those designs signified. Or we could look at traditional Samoan customs. I have a friend who at some point in his life must have a tattoo on his abdomen because he descends from a chief of Samoa. It's part of his living culture which he respects and views as an action he takes not just for himself but those who came before and will come after. If I came along and got the same tattoo it'd be seen as an insult/joke seeing as I'm paying no mind to the context that the cultural artefact came from. Anyway I see a lot of this stuff as highly intuitive/subjective and both of which aren't everyone's bag. Idk, for all the rationalisations you can make if you show up to a Maori community with a Moku or a Samoan one with a chieftan's tattoo without any respect for what it means to the culture or why it's special, I guarantee you'll have a bad time in those communities. I think essentially appropriation comes down to ignoring the context that a certain cultural artefact exists in and simply adopting it to 'have it'.

I love Mac Demarco so much, so chill.

In Divinity Original Sin I think the barrells end up in more hazardous places than advantageous. Of course the player can just pick them up and move them around in that game.

Path of Exile I think has a very interesting economy with its multiple forms of currency ranging from identification scrolls to orbs that change the modifiers of an item and orbs that change the implicit values of those modifiers. Doubling the games crafting resource as it's main bartering currency forces players into a weird risk/reward situation. The chances of crafting an item worth selling for serious orbs is low enough that most times you need deep pockets to begin crafting seriously, and there are plenty of other ways to burn money so you end up asking yourself if you should be hoarding, trying to craft gear, trading for the things you want to use, or trying to craft better map modifiers for the chance of getting xp faster, more currency, or rarer gear. Crafting recipes aren't given by the developers up front and they're instead left to the discoverers to keep secret and exploit or share. Which has resulted in mass inflation of market economies multiple times as new end tier items flood the market. A few months ago the second most valuable orb in the game doubled price in a temporary league/economy in the space of a few weeks because some trading barons were using them en masse to produce 'perfect' items to sell. So yeah the EVE/Metro/PoE way of making sure you can actually sink your items to using them in ways other than just money transactions is interesting. I guess a more common way would be to stretch your economy over multiple resources and introduce sinks through activities players regularly engage in (like gear repair) as many MMo's do but I don't think it's as fun/engaging. I also think that in the right type of game the player could simply be robbed, extorted, or just paid lower than they're worth. Money could be too tight to actually float around in such quantities. Who in a mud and crud fantasy world actually knows the value of a million? Maybe the economy runs in barter and services with money only paying for few things? Or people of a region value morality or loyalty more than cash? --- Anyway I came to post about how I'd like to see more games that are actually about engaging friendships and choices. I know it's pretty broad but I was thinking about the movie The Three Burials of Melquaides Estrada and how good it would be to see that kind if powerful friendship narrative in a game. I might try to make my version of that game over the summer. I think I could make it work as a Metroidvania/Rpg using Stencyl..

Thinking about how weird it is to find out how important someone is to your family after they've died even though they feel almost like a complete stranger yet I know for a fact I'd met the guy a few times. Also frank discussions of funerals about/with parents who both have limited (a few years) expectancies.

Fark I wanted to see that I'd say keep the fx, you don't link two v8's in series and not hear their roar

Kia Ora! Have been in that boat where sometimes it's less intensive to simply say 'gay' and for a while my partner's #1 fear was him being left for something he didn't have. But hey I'm pretty sure both of those things are in the past now. Though I occasionally hear "you've been with this dude for five years, just say yer gay already".

I was just thinking about how I haven't had a thought random enough to justify posting here but well.. Seeing as the value of fiction for someone looking to understand queer experiences just came up if like to say "fuck yeah it's valuable!". There was a time where I desperately needed something of the sort in my life. I had never talked to an openly queer person in my life and coming out of a toxically masculine boarding school I certainly wasn't about to open up and talk to randoms at the new school. I eventually turned to the internet and met other young people who we're going through the same things I was but for the longest time I really craved narrative media that contained contexts similar to mine. It wasn't just to understand something, it's not like people play Gone Home to get a clear representation of asserting a queer identity to one's parents as a teen. We/they are as likely to simply want to feel close and broaden our perceptions of other people like us outside of limited irl or media portrayals. Even now I still like seeing depictions of queer people outside of the 'A List' or 'Queer As Folk' depictions since it can be kinda hard to meet other people. This isn't a knock on party animals or people who find it harder to not stick out. It's just that having had little opportunity for social interaction with people of a similar background media helps with connecting to that sense of shared culture. I was going I say that fictional media also helps make people more receptive to questions on the human condition and other meta-narratives. Not everyone sure but I think certain things get people into considering what makes them human, and all those other juicy topics in ways that might otherwise require dissociatives like extreme tiredness and/or psychedelics -that's a bit tongue in cheek but well, still..

Some competitive shooter mans players still use arrow keys. Those people are clearly dangerous individuals who should not mix with society.

Huh that's interesting. Maybe? It's one of NZ's most famous movies for a certain age group; it probably would have been seen by George Miller at some point because it's the type of do your own car stunt movie that he and his friends like. So there's some premise at least. But it could just be reaching Shaker Run isn't a fantastic movie by itself it's just one I know a little bit about because I have fam in the NZ film industry. I think I was just caught up when I mentioned it because I too made it as far as that chase clip from YouTube haha. In other news we've started on Humans and just like with Mr Robot my partner and I've had to negotiate when to watch it since I like doing 1-2 a day and he's super keen to see it all right away. But yeah it's a lot of fun. Thanks I'll add those to the list.I might just be overusing weird but I'm interested in car movies that are full of quirks and aren't just about dudebros with cars like the newer F&F franchise. Goodbye Pork Pie is worth a watch or just a trailer browse. It does have it's faults. But it's also a stunt car movie starring a 1970's Mini Cooper.

Woo Goodbye Tony! The Sauce had a wonderful list of terrible achievements from his Govt.

This might be a bad way of putting it but you could tier it by difficulty? Like the game tells you this is a Red level mission so you're allowed to use more varied equipment from 'Tier V and below' ? You could also (still unlock based) link it to team member's courses and certificate training? Kind of XCOMy you could send a guy to complete a defensive driving course and he gets access to better pursuit vehicles, or Tasers slowly become available so you send four guys on a training course. You'd have to balance around yer skill pools since training would take time away from duty. But it could be a neat in game method to justify why your team suddenly has the new door knockers or more advanced riot gear. As a side note you could also link their behaviour to contracts & agreements. Like if one guy goes weapons free too much he'll face internal disciplinary action for breaching contract guidelines. Or the public could get wind which could lead to a big reputation blow out and auditing of the department that could further constrain tactics and loadouts for the duration of the inspection. I guess I really just want a mash of Dwarf Fortress, Evil Genius, LA Cops, and Door Kickers set as a security organisation management sim/tactics game.

Welp. Hope she finds her feet fast. She seemed really cool the one time I encountered her/h*work on a Justice Points episode.

Going through the older Mad Max films has been rather nice. At the end of each one I kinda have to stop myself from watching Fury Road again (although at this point I could probably watch it once a week and be happy). Anyway watching the first one has gotten me in the mood to re-watch Goodbye Pork Pie and maybe even Shaker Run if I can dig up the copy of that we still have lying around. Anyone have any recommendations for weird car movies?

I love DS2 the most but that's because I fell in love with the mechanics first rather than the unified environmental design, etc. Lately I've been playing DS1 for what really feels like the first time (progression wise it certainly is). Anyway I've come back to DS2 and I've shelved my Super Op caster, and my dual Caestus build. Now I think I'm going to go into Dex with poison daggers. I'm just playing with the swordsman's starting weapons until I can find at least a Bandit Dagger. But it should all go well even though this build is mostly fumbling about in the dark heh.

I'd love to see some talented people come up with a game that riffs on Half Life 2 without being solely derivative. Or at least derivative in an interesting way. I'm thinking puzzles revolving around resizing things and a talkative main character who actually does a truckload of science over the course of the game. Plus level design that puts the same care and attention as the much loved HL2 levels. I know it's a tall order. If I had any of the technical skills that could at least contribute I'd be putting my amateur efforts to use. I just think something like this needs to exist, a send up and replacement for everything we liked about the series. Since all the "HL3 WHEN" memes are getting more than stale.

Well I might be totally wrong on this but streamers like Summit1g are people who got huge mostly through their own competitive gaming communities and went on to stream fulltime once they realised how viable that was for them. Looking at Summit's about page in particular the only reference to a coporate media house is to Carbon Network Gaming which solely links to a forum which is run by people who link their steam gamer pages as their main source of identification. Which feels pretty grass rootsy but hey maybe they do have poorly disclosed backing from a larger conglomerate. Anyway in terms of wealth, fame, and style Summit is the type of streamer who has a staple of games but tends to dip into everything, usually with a large following. He's the type of streamer which boosts a niche or old game up to 10k viewers purely off the back of his own channel. Other people like Fairlight Excalibur and GoldGlove are of the same vein although I dunno if they made their name through comp gaming. Now these people do usually end up with sponsorship from places like G2A.com, Corsair, and all the other usual companies that you used to just mainly see sponsoring proffessional gaming. However I'm fairly sure you're talking about organisations that actively go out and find, coach, and train talent with the staff they have that specialise in media management. Anyway yeah these people are mostly known for playing multiplayer or sandbox games but they're generally the first to be trying out the big new single player games, or even just the indies that have popularity right now. Maybe I've overly conflated twitch streamer with Let's Player? Maybe I'm thinking about 'wealth' in the wrong way; if a streamer goes fulltime they likely earn over a few grand a month from it which is considerable seeing as they're community funded. But that's not Total CookieDough money. I'm not sure. I don't actually put a lot of time into either mode although probably more than many.

From my understanding not even Twitch gets a cut of donations so personally I'd say no.

Yeah like one of my favourite gaming memories is convincing my partner to play Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. He was a fan of Dark Descent and I've always been too chicken to get into those games but I managed to convince myself to play the second one while I was out of my mind late one night. Anyway we'd both seen gameplay and were freaked out by it. But one night at his parent's house I managed to get his mum and sister to join me in peer pressuring him to play it. Then we all sat together as he played through the opening two areas and had a lot of fun. This is a pretty lame retelling but after joking with him for almost a year about getting him to play it and then finally being able to while also having a good time with his fam was really, really rewarding. Let's Plays obviously don't come quite as close as entertainingly scaring your loved ones but they still scratch versions of that itch.

For what it's worth I bought Ark Survival Evolved purely off the strength of Twitch streams and that game would never have raised my interested (Rust but with Dinosaurs?) or possibly been on my radar if it weren't for streamers and that platform. I go on gaming sites a lot less these days (I also try and fail to spend less time just reading the internet instead of doing active things) so randomly going on twitch, seeing a new game, or a point in an old game that I typically don't sink in the time to experience is a lot more valuable to me than reading a written review or impression piece from a traditionally trained games media person. In addition to that I get to see the more mundane parts of the game experience that typically isn't discussed as much as the highs and lows. As much as Sunless Sea had a lot of character to it; if I'd known that the majority of my experience would be pressing 'W' and 'S' to make sure my engine didn't blow I'd have given it a miss and played Fallen London instead (which I went on to do and was easily the most fun I had after learning that these games and this setting existed). Personally when it comes to the money I think the Devs should get some but no more than half. I think that typically with streams, even in linear story driven games, the main attraction of the stream is the caster and the community that they encourage. I even enjoy seeing a stream of a linear story game I've just played so I can enjoy other people's reactions to it. Last night I watched a bit of Teens React to The Walking Dead Episode 1 which I felt was pretty nice, but what I'd really like to see is how they feel once they get to the highs and lows of either season's main beats.

Woo I've finally got something aspirational, grown up, and actually Life feeling to post here. My partner and I have just applied for two positions within NZ's education payroll system. They're fixed term full time which feels great for me after only having some seasonal farm labour and film industry contracts under my belt (not that great for selling a consistent work history). The first position is being part of the first line service desk calling up schools and helping them send in their payroll details which is definitely better than most other call centre jobs because it'll be involved with people that actually want to be called and is following a script that both parties want the outcomes of. Sadly there are only 6 positions on hand with 30 applicants. The next position is actually being a payroll officer which isn't something I've dealt with before. But I have a few things going for me; first there are 15 positions available, second there hasn't been a great deal of demand for the job, third I'm hoping that a background in project management, science research, and data entry will cross skill me enough to handle that type of job, fourth Mum works at the company in payroll so I can ask her for advice (she was approached for people she knew to apply so there won't be issues). Anyway I'm super keen. It's high pressure office work but I'm hoping it'll be the kind of crucible to establish my work history beyond the patch-work quilt it currently is plus well, money. I haven't had a supporting income for an entire year and I've had to hide that from the relatives so actually having savings and some sanity restoring spending money would be really nice. On the plus side being completely broke has done wonders in teaching me to save what I have. I'm not sure if I'll get the position but it starts in October and from the sound of it these people don't bugger around so I'll probably hear in a few weeks Even if I don't get this it's been a real help since it's broken down some of the job hunting anxiety for me while also been wonders in making my CV actually competent so either way this emotional high is a win.

Jim Sterling had an interesting article on common uses of copyright claims (for him at least). Another Monday, another copyright claim Essentially the videos he sees the most DMCA action on are for his Jimquisition series which are part diatribe, part research driven analysis into industry/games community tropes and events. This is work that he injects with a large amount of his own time and effort into and generally the in game footage he uses tend to be taken from publicly shared trailers or fellow journalists he's friends with. Anyway he funds himself through Patreon so watching his channel involves no adds. Except when Nintendo, Konami, or some other studio has DMCA'd him which enables adds on the channel in order to accrue a share of add revenue that didn't exist. Or y'know something like Miracle of Sound receiving a DMCA claim over the original music he makes. I'm not a big watcher of streams beyond pro vods or the occasional curiosity. I don't sub to some twitch streamer or feel engaged when they try to include their viewers to build a community. But I do strongly feel that the people who's content I do engage with I do so because of their personality and what they add to the experience beyond just streaming gameplay. Like it takes effort to create an engaging stream. Plenty of people, even technically skilled people can make a video with them talking and playing but it's typically not enough to just watch someone else play the game there's usually some kind of hook needed which is provided by the presenter's input and if someone wants to monetise the effort they go to for community interaction, editing, blah then I don't see much of a problem with it. If the audience wants to turn off adblock so they can give the person revenue then at least some of that revenue should go to the person they intend to support right? I feel like Twig here I'm on the precipice of a discussion that's going to give me the glazed over look that'll make my partner wonder why I even bother typing haha. Anyway I'm primarily mentioning Jim Sterling because he is one of those people who went through traditional games media as a written word journalist before transitioning into almost full time video content with a widely offputting obnoxious style that I still like regardless. I'm not going to say he's super correct on everything or anything but as someone who has been on both sides of the fence I think it's worth noting that he values both fields of work/entertainment and doesn't just brush one side off for being unprofessional. I mean people give bug testers and game journalists the same spiel when they complain about work conditions or their work experience. "They play video games for a living! They should quit complaining about living their Hobby."

So my partner and I love Mr.Robot. At a time when we weren't watching much together because neither of us could motivate ourselves to watch the shows the other liked more (I was worse at this) Mr.Robot comes along and sweeps us off our feet with some super great TV. I don't think I've seen a show that felt this consistently great since In The Flesh.

Yeah them. I enjoyed the Laughing Octopus boss fight but holy crap did I hate the reward cutscene. I'm sure the others were just as bad but that's the one that always sticks out for me.

For sure. Whenever I think of replaying MGS IV the thought of how the camera ogled over the dying ptsd suffering child soldiers tends to give me serious pause. With the dumb justification context it's even more horrible and uncomfortable.