SuperBiasedMan

Ooh, not sure if I'll really want to wait for the mysterious PC release, this could just remind me to get round to playing it. I have repeatedly been told great things, but I kind of want to play it before the re-release gets hyped and sets my expectations even higher.

I've always found that procedural generation, when done right, can make for pretty rich personal narratives. Like the stories I created in my head about my playthroughs in Crusader Kings and XCOM.

I don't know if I agree with that either really, to me part of what makes stories great is their ability to show you someone else's viewpoint and world and then you can learn from that and how different it is to what you deal with in your world. Sure, I agree that if it makes up too much of what you read then your view is too narrow, but to me that means the answer is read more of all sorts of books, not just to avoid one area that's quite popular right now.

The other thing is, Battle Royale, if I remember right, had essentially the same premise? That the point of the Royale was to teach them pesky kids a lesson and try to keep the unruly ones in line. Not that it seemed to work at all, cause they acted relatively unruly before they found out their class had been chosen.

I think the complication is that a lot can happen in a year or more of development, the entire focus of the game could change and render some of Nicks thoughts redundant because the thing they're about doesn't even exist any more. I do think the idea of discussing the changes a game has gone through is an interesting prospect, however I think it could potentially come across as muddled or confused as Nick and Chris try to find common ground on two essentially different games which isn't normally what the Thumbs do. The deviation could unintentionally misrepresent the real game to listeners that don't entirely internalise the idea that Nick's experience is not what they'd have. Also Nick might've just wanted to play the actual release before making a judgement and discussing it.

As someone who enjoyed Super Metroid a lot but hasn't gotten round to emulating this, how is the transfer to 3D? I've heard no complaints about it ruining the game, but I'm curious about what kind of impact it had on general feel. It's obviously a different kind of game, but in what ways? What works better, what works worse and what's just flat out different?

Like some others have said here, I don't have any particular heroes. There are people I respect the work of and am interested to see what they do and will no doubt be shaped by what it teaches me about creating things, but that's about it. For the people who do have particular heroes, exactly how do they influence you? Do you specifically seek out their thoughts to learn from them, do you learn about their life to decide what's applicable to yours? Are there particular events or times you'd point to and say "my hero helped me out with this, I don't know what I'd have done without what I learned from them"?

Then they ruin it by giving you an achievement for sparing him.

Harry Potter is a pretty Mary Sue character anyway, at least early on when he's suddenly brought to a fantastic place where he's a massive celebrity, an apparently hyper magical person and secretly super wizard rich. It's not a serious of books about breaking the mold of YA fiction. I question targeting YA fiction though (based just on the paragraph that Flynn quoted) when that seems particularly true of many films and games too. Certainly not all, and you can imagine what kind of ones it does apply to, but it's not a YA specific problem and YA still has exceptions like the Hunger Games.

I guess my sarcasm wasn't clear enough. I meant they probably think they don't need new ideas because they're successful right now, and when the player count becomes a downturn they'll rethink the strategy. I think they'd be better getting in new people and ideas, definitely. Never hurts to add new ideas.

Frankly I'd like more AI to think "Well they just killed all my friends, I guess I'm outta here." Also I've always just thought of it as the idea that in games the artificial part of AI is more in the sense that it's a fake constructed appearance of AI, and better games AI is just about making it seem as if the enemies are thinking (even if it's purely visual/audio touches and creates no gameplay difference).

They wont need new ideas until LoL starts losing players, and you'll notice a sharp increase in their use of the word 'innovation' when you graph it out over time.

I've heard that Riot games will only hire people who have over a certain (relatively low) rank in League of Legends because they want to make sure that everyone's played a decent amount of the game and is familiar with it, which does make sense really. Also my girlfriend applied for a QA translation job recently where they asked for usernames on Steam, PSN and Xbox. We presumed they wanted to know that people had a certain level of familiarity with games rather than spamming out CVs everywhere.

You know how to talk to me.

My favourite thing about that story was how quickly Nick descended into his tribal state. "No I didn't want to kill that guy! ...well I guess I have to kill the other two and chop them up then."

As someone who's also never played FEAR and is thinking about it, would I have to go into the experience ready to forgive some clunky things that modern games have ironed out/abandoned from their designs?

I actually recently tried an occulus and found it pretty unfortunately underwhelming. It was blurry because I had to take off my glasses and it wasn't adjusted for my eyesight because it was just a quick test so there was no time for that, so maybe that would make all the difference. But I mostly just thought it was a neat effect but not something I'd want to actually spend the money on the hardware for. Not remotely because it wasn't good, the tech functions really well. I just wonder if maybe it's not something I'd be for, since I generally don't get all that immersed in games normally, I might be paying more attention to the aspects that break the experience (like the fact that I'm just sitting in a chair) rather than letting the additive nature of VR overwhelm me.

Well it doesn't need to be specific intent to be problematic, it can be about the idea that outing someone fits under an umbrella of blackmail and that can still be a harmful portrayal. But if I am reading your post right, the information that someone is transexual is just an element of flavour text and there is no mechanical use for it. (ie. You can't blackmail or somehow reveal it to people). Which means there must have been crossed wires somewhere, someone mistakenly connecting the information system to the bank account draining one I guess. In general it's best to clarify things and discuss them rather than taking an adversarial stance, both sides learn more from that kind of conversation and you actually get to exchange information.

Well the basic seed of the idea makes sense, that the context of experiencing something in game as it's intended changes how it comes across. On this basis, making judgements on external impressions can be inaccurate. But too often people default to "You don't get it if you haven't played the game." which seems particularly silly given that you can't know how someone played a game. You could go through the whole game and not happen to find an opportunity to out someone as transgender even if the game contains that somewhere in it. I also think that, given the money put into marketing Watch_Dogs before it even existed as a finished product, you're perfectly allowed to criticise based on the information you've heard. They worked a lot on sending out masses of information in the build up and the on release players were posting their thoughts all over the internet, so it's not like the Thumbs were responding to scant details and drawing too much out of it. There was a wealth of information to ruminate on and discuss.

This looks great, good style, interesting setting and possibly changing a form of gameplay to appeal to me more. But I've given myself a limitation on kickstarters, no backing them if they have already or will probably hit their target. Mostly because I shouldn't spend too much on them when the 4 games and 1 film I backed are still in production (not dead, they're updating us but still a while away from release). I like the look of this though, I look forward to seeing what comes of it.

Who needs donuts when it's apparently National Sweden Day, we should both get free Swedens!

For the sake of the low fidelity cartoony aspect, what do people think of the idea of transferring children to the more cartoony FPSes, like Team Fortress 2 or Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare. Would it help, do you think it would even work or would there be too much draw because "everyone plays Call of Duty", or would the stylised look actually put off the children, maybe they partly want to feel grown up with 'real' soldier fights. (full disclosure, I don't have kids. I'm just interested in throwing this into the discussion)

It actually wasn't hell, just a cavern place that you get to after It wasn't terribly hard, but I was pretty bad at it to be honest.

Luigi has gone rogue and kidnapped all the main cast. Mario, Peach, Bowser, Wario and Daisy are all trapped in his mansion's dungeon. Who can save them? He must step up and prove himself, the long time nemesis and forgotten cast member. Waluigi.

I can't help you tactically, but if you go into the diplomacy menu and click the "Offer to Join War" choice, then hover over the section where you can send the request it should show you a list of conditions necessary for you to be able to send the offer, if that works maybe you can figure out what's blocking you from doing it. On an annoyed tangent, why must everyone hate my son? As soon as their beloved Irish Empress of Britannia dies of old age, everyone just rails on her son and declares 5 different wars against him. The poor boy I'm so close to the end of the period as well, just more years and I can export the save to start in EU IV with a big Irish Empire and slowly start to take France.