SuperBiasedMan

Thanks to all the Thumbers for this episode and thread. I was aware of this whole mess but getting it delivered like this definitely makes a big difference. To anyone with qualms or reservations about whether or not they agree with these sentiments, just think about the volume of these things. Yes men and women both get flak online, but how much? What kind of response do they get? And what triggers it? Likewise men and women can be carelessly murdered in game, but how many women characters are there apart from that category? And how many men? And when they ARE made as real characters, what is their function in the game? Do they seem to fit a narrow definition of roles. I'm not trying to tell you what the answers are, I'm asking you to think about them and draw your own conclusions. Don't rely on your knee jerk assumptions, sit down and ponder what I and other people say in this whole discussion, because a lot of the trouble on all sides of these discussions comes from relying on pre existing ideas that they never challenge.

How is it that Nintendo can so consistently just shamelessly cash out on their franchises and still sell well while people laugh about how they're selling out? ...because I do also think this sounds really cool and I'm just impressed with their magical game design pixie dust.

Oh man, I'd forgotten about Hit Mango, waiting patiently in my wishlist next to Monument Valley. Thanks for the tip about the sale! I'm already a whole box through the puzzles. Pretty much exactly nails what it was I was hoping for. Fun engaging puzzles with a super clean polished experience. I look forward to getting to the really taxing parts.

Yeah, it's a fighting based system but the stealth is still a fun maneuvering puzzle. And in addition to needing to investigate the parry system, you have to buy the dodge move!

Also, the sneaking in it is still pretty fun and viable if you wanna try stealth more than slashy slashy (stealth still involves killing though).

I similarly had difficulty really finding thoughts to verbalise about Criticism Roundup 2013. I thought that I wasn't getting the full picture, but after a lot of thought I'm left concluding that I actually did get the whole picture, it's just more simple than others have been. I didn't read it as the same person being the cop and the person on stage, I actually thought that the first section was just a game, a shamelessly gamey AAA style game and the person on stage is an ex designer, ruminating on their work. Wait... ok maybe that is what you were saying now. I may have gotten mixed up. Anyway! I enjoyed the idea that the designer turned critic is revealing the deep down truth of the games industry cabal. And that the 'hell' they find themself in was inescapable as a designer and as a critic, so instead they take solace in the fact that everyone in that room is trapped there with them, perpetuating their own hell (GDC 20XX could mean this state of the industry goes on for a long time). I think it's an overly pessimistic view, specifically because it's meant to be the pessimistic view of the protagonist(?). I think I am bringing a lot of my personal feeling into this, so I may be reading too deeply but as I said, this was a difficult one to really parse so I decided to rely on my fairly early read of it.

So, to revive this thread I'm just going to blab out couple recommendations cause there's two games I've really been digging a lot on my phone and android games don't get enough love. Bag It! - A puzzle game where you're bagging groceries. Each food item has a different shape, weight and weight tolerance. You must arrange them so that they fit neatly in the bag without crushing anything in one of the modes. There's also a mode where you intentionally crush and destroy as many as you can in a time limit. Or another mode where it's a puzzle with a specific solution, that can have special requirements about not having two food items touching. Basically, they really ran with a simple premise, developed it up to make it for some deep systems, and made varied mechanics that change it up. I've been playing it for months and I will likely actually try to 100% it, which is rare for me and is also not simple in this game. Completing levels is easy enough but getting a 3 star rating and performing the other 2 optional challenges is another story. They really just stuffed this full of well designed things to do and I'm enjoying it long after I give up most games. Alcazar - This is a puzzle game where you have to draw a path through a maze. In a clever move they let you share levels with friends, so here's a link to one of the early ones you can play in browser: http://theico.co/try-alcazar#pcwry9usioltc8ltot1u3c (their web version looks a little rougher, it looks amazing in the app. I suspect they may have worked with a graphic designer) The rules are that you must go through every square and each square must be only passed through once. The conceit is simple, but you learn the language of how it works and start to easily notice the logical deductions of where the path can and can't go. The levels get increasingly complicated and bigger, I think the difficulty is a little bit uneven. I flew through the first few books but started to slow down a lot after that. It's very much worth it though because it's got a really nice clean design and the "Aha!" moments of success feel great even when you're repeatedly solving them quickly, it just feels great. Also it's divided into 'books' of 30 levels each, and the first book is free to try out, and the app comes with free daily puzzles. They both really hit on the game of android games I seem to enjoy, where it's a thoughtful puzzle experience with really nicely set out and designed controls and interface. Threes is a kind of runner up here, but aside from being well known I think Threes being so single minded in goal is less attractive to me than a series of discrete designed levels. So also if anyone has anything in this vein they think I'd like, recommend away.

For an added bonus

The hasty reaction clearly isn't all on you as its a recurring feeling people have voiced. Though for the record, it's not always about discrete separate things, someone could be getting money for every week they spend updating their webcomic or every video they do in a series they're making. And there's no real obligation, as far as I know you can pull out whenever you want.

Oh, I was assuming you meant that even though you understood the model of it, it felt like charity. I guess I'll explain it, just in case anyone doesn't fully understand. Basically, creators who make content that they release freely to the public (comics, articles, youtube videos) can set up a patreon account where their fans can optionally offer the creator an amount of money for each update. It can either be per release (ie every video/article/comic page) or per week/month, and you can also set a cap, to prevent you paying too much if there's suddenly a glut of updates you hadn't expected. There are rewards, like in a kickstarter, so that usually the creator can offer something in return, such as behind the scenes content, work in progress sketches or access to funder only streams. Obviously it varies by creator but the intent is that these are to be additional incentives, not locking off the content to the fans who don't pay any money. There are also cumulative goals, where the creator says that "if in total I'm earning X amount per update, I can do Y." Those are usually for things where they can add more to their work if they can afford it, by getting new equipment or being able to invest time into a side project. I personally like it a lot, because even though it does have the rewards, I feel like unlike crowdfunding stuff this is trying to put the emphasis back on the idea that you're not buying something with this transaction, the point is supposed to be offering support to creators and the rewards you get are not the main point.

Yeah, the model of Patreon is supposed to be supporting artists that distribute their work freely. It obviously has an image problem though because I've seen people comparing it to charity or 'handouts' a few times.

I am a disgrace to my people and just generally hate beer. I've periodically retried it at different times and with different drinks but I just cannot accept beer. Cider is my beverage of choice, but also basically anything else that's alcoholic I've tried (I haven't tried gin) has been better.

How I usually approach smartphone games is either a specific recommendation of a game that I try out and then delete if it doesn't grab me or else I get a humble bundle, download a bunch of the games from it and try them all out, again ditching the ones that aren't drawing me in. So that makes perfect sense to me, one game I've had on my phone for months now is this puzzle game about bagging groceries and it's still got levels for me to beat. Actually I have a few games I meant to recommend/gush about, do people just use the iOS thread for android games or is there some an android one that's gathering dust?

The Silent Hill series is one I've always wanted to re-try, especially since my only ever play experience involved getting lost in the fog, using up my ammo and not knowing where to go. I was too young to properly play. Unfortunately SH seems to be one of those games that hits the achilles heel of no PC digital downloads, which is essentially the only way I ever get any games any more. Maybe when the current gen next gen consoles are in full swing I could grab a cheap PS3 to mop up the lost games I never played.

Well... I'm a dummy. I guess this also shows the flaw in that plan then. Since no-one who posted the challenge on my facebook feed was pointing that out, I didn't get off my arse to look it up and also when I made this same observation to a friend he just agreed with me, equally ignorant that it actually was the point.

It always seems like a silly missed opportunity not to have the challenge strongly relate to an aspect or symptom of the issue they're raising money for. But it's usually just something that can be stuck in a vine or YouTube video easily.

I did look up guides when playing and probably slightly ruined it for myself, but at the same time those guides made me able to play for longer because a lot of puzzles were based on a specific system I would have found inscrutable and was not into the game enough to dedicate the energy to learn them. I personally recommend exploring and puzzling without a guide until you hit a brick wall (if you even do).

Just loaded this up... how long has the menu screen spear had a little alien hanging from it? You know it bro, I'm just doin the daily.

Damn, I need to get back to this. I got a bugged save file that halted my progress so I dropped it but I really wanted to keep going, especially cause a close friend highly recommended it. Also yeah I guess using the term branching narrative is narrower than the kind of thing you can do to achieve the same results. Maybe it's best to say 'responsive narrative' ie. It responds to the players' choices in a way that shapes their narrative.

Oh yeah, that did happen too. Our teacher was a big dog. (she travelled back in time)

Genuinely not trying to call you out specifically on this, cause I do it too sometimes but this is the issue with trying to do inscrutable branching options. You need to balance against expectations so that players don't leave feeling exactly this. Even people who aren't big completionists can feel a little bit cheated or irritated that they didn't get the experience they wanted. Games as a whole have a habit of serving the players wants, and the ones that don't tend to be very upfront and often put off a lot of players (unless it's mostly the difficulty that has that effect). So the problem is, how can you signpost this kind of subtle branching without spoiling it by calling attention to it? There are ways but it's a difficult problem.

Based on Chris's discussions from the early episodesof EA shareholder meetings... that's about what the real shareholders do. For those who don't remember/never listened, some choice things include asking why the shareholders meeting has no playable demos, asking if there'll be free food and complaining that the CEO of EA's predecessor made the meetings a lot more fun.

When I was in primary school there was a scandal among our class when a teacher got so frustrated with people getting distracted by the Pokémon collectible cards she grabbed one off a kid and ripped it in two. Everyone was shocked.