SuperBiasedMan

I look forward to this contemporary Paper Boy.

Thanks for the linkle! I keep meaning to try that out, maybe this is the right time to. Allow me to start with a question that may or may not be worth much because it might be more particular to me than I think. When writing do you have trouble making your writing feel like it's genuine? I often feel like my writing just slips into a style of clever fiction, the kind where there's surprising plot twists that might excite you but it never feels personal in a way you can connect with. Whether or not that is something you've felt, I'd be curious to know what you do to get in the right kind of mindset for writing personally engaging stuff.

You also seem to love Mario Galaxy. Welcome!

Americanised English is the easy mode of language.

Oh no please, call it Caramel. Carmel is my mother's name.

I worked straight through from 8am to 4pm today with no lunch break. I had arrived early just cause I was travelling from another town and got there at the exact midpoint where going home was pointless and nothing was open yet so I just went into work and did stuff. Then around 12pm an urgent thing cropped up, a job that I hadn't been told was needed yet needed to be done last Friday and something I had been working on was slightly broken in a way we hadn't noticed before. After trawling through all that and reaching 4pm my supervisor and I had the brief conversation: "Ok, so we're gonna work away with this thing now. So you could go back to working on [non urgent thing]" "Well I was thinking I'd go get lunch now." "...you haven't had lunch yet? ...go get lunch." What feels the weirdest is that this is exact bizarre situation I realised could happen when I took a job with genuine responsibility (because I'm the only person in the office with this particular set of skills) and it is not what I'm used to. So I bought donuts to make myself feel childish. (bonus fact, I got up at 5am this morning to catch the bus into town)

To be clear, I'm not trying to argue absolute truths but I am arguing that you are on what I consider to be the opposite default of where you should be. To me, your stance is the idea of "guilty unless proven innocent". Essentially "I'll take this unless someone compels me not to". Or at least, I read it more like that at first. The sexism point I was trying to make is that by and large men are taught that the world is there to take. Grab it by the horns and run with it. That is exactly what you're doing when you decide to take other people's stuff without deciding to concern yourself with their consent. I'm not saying that you can never take it because it's never acceptable, I'm saying that your default behaviour should be to actually request it. In the days of the internet, that's not hard. You see an image you want? Reverse image search to find who it's of or who made it. What's odd is, it sounded a bit like you said that you don't always use social justice to guide your decisions (which is perfectly fine) but then said that sometimes you just decide to be selfish and unethical because you want to? I'm not sure if I read that right, it's a little unclear what part of my posts you agree with but are morally willing to ignore and what parts you feel differently on (eg. I do get the impression that you generally disagree with people retaining ownership of items) I have to note that there's a significant difference between usage, reference and commentary. Usage is taking something someone made (a texture, a photograph) as part of your work, you may alter it a small amount but essentially their work is being used by you. This is where I consider permission most important, because you're taking something of value to that person and using it to add value to something of yours. Their value might be in the fact that it's a picture they drew or that it's a photograph of them that they inherently consider intimate. The source of the value is irrelevant, they value it and it's important to respect that. This is not necessarily capitalist value, just some value they have placed on it that means you should respect their ownership over your desire. Reference is mostly for academic/informative discussion, where you want to refer to something someone else has made because it has merit to the discussion and adds more for you to talk about (for example, the quote on Polygon... even though the link didn't work for me). I consider it more polite to get permission here, though not entirely necessary in the same way. Because so often this involves citing a source (even in casual conversation) and a clear boundary of what you have created and what is someone else's work. You're already showing respect to them by essentially drawing a circle around their contribution and distinguishing it. Commentary then is mostly for satire and parody. Where the idea is that you're intentionally drawing upon other work in order to make a point about it. It's almost a mix of the other two, both a discussion/argument and a work you're making. It usually has no room for either clearly delineating the author of the work you're commenting on but at the same time you generally can't ask for permission either since criticism is common in this form, plus an affectionate parody can be misread as biting. I do feel like, given the limited options available, it's ok to be a douche here on the basis that you're attempting to contribute something real that requires you disregard the value that the author originally holds. Another metric in this mix, is that personally I am less concerned with respecting the value of those who have more value in total. So I'm not worried about taking something from Disney (ethically, I might worry legally even if it's free). While a small time tumblr artist very much deserves my respect. Likewise, a random person who just posted a photo online of themself deserves a lot of respect for something they don't even consider a work so much as a personal item. I am still unclear on your exact stance on this since you've said you pushed a little either side of your true feelings, but honestly the devaluing of artist's work was not the crux of the matter for me. It was that you seemed to be saying that you don't respect the value other people place onto their own digital possessions. I think that's deeply unfair to them. I know you want to create things but I can't see it as anything but selfish to decide it's more important to make them to even attempt to get permission. With small games, it literally just takes a few emails. I don't know if you're impatient to work without waiting, you expect they'll just say no or just don't feel compelled to make the effort but it's just the opposite of my mentality. I don't see us as on opposite sides of a binary fence, I think we're on opposite ends of a scale by default though we're willing to move around the scale plenty. What I find odd (and reacted poorly too) was that you seemed to suggest that you do consider your end of the scale to be less ethical (though maybe not as much as I do) but you reside there out of personal convenience. Also I hope that was a type of 'do' and not 'don't'. Also also, I wrote that last post at 6am on my phone on a bus and haven't really gotten to proofreread it. If any of it was confusing or unclear please highlight it and I can try clear it up when I have time.

I'm hoping to write a longer more coherent response to this on my laptop later, but this will have to do for now. I'm surprised that you can ask this question as someone who cares about social justice and feminism. Particularly I'm addressing the idea of using a photo of a stranger/their face. It does also apply to people's work, though that's often less personal and less invasive. I'm not trying to be inflammatory but the mindset of taking something because the people you're taking it from have no logical reason to be upset is aggressively male and insensitive. It's not the job of other people to justify their discomfort with what you're doing. You can't just view other people through the lens of your own mind and feelings. But you also can't just presume to know that their feelings are mostly in a small range of unnecessary fear and discard them on that basis. To be fair, you obviously acknowledge that it's shitty and that's why you're asking the question but it's more shitty to take the tact that you'll do it unless it's proven wrong to you instead of the other way around. I know you're making generally small games that don't have a lot allotted for you to work on them but it's not hard to stick to stuff explicitly marked as free for non commercial use. There's a large contingent of it online. If you can't find the particular thing you want, you either accept it, make it yourself or pay for it yourself. You're not entitled to an asset you want, it's your job to obtain it ethically as a creator. Basically, you know it's immoral so stop looking for justification for ignoring that.

I'm thinking of possibly The Anonymouses as a game about a team of mice pulling heists or Unmasking the Brain Burglar as a goofy detective story. I'm still up for teams too, not super married to those ideas.

Yeah when I searched on my desktop I found it, the Google Play app search just didn't give the right result. Weird.

I know this keeps coming up but it really is incredible to cut from the face of a poorly handled character extruding from a piece of wood to the photo of Laura Palmer. Also none of Josie's story every really worked for me, especially not her relationship with Truman. So maybe this is be being an emotionally detached ass but I just laughed at his melodramatic shouting "Put it down!". I can't record video to make gifs, but marvel at some of the faces crammed into that line: Josie has always felt weird as a character. Like she was written to be this femme fatale manipulative woman even if she was slightly trapped by her circumstances. But then the actress plays her as someone who is trapped by circumstances and just trying to survive meekly. Which would be a much better character if the writers had any intention to support that instead of her being a 'master in the art of seduction'.

We are dropping like flies here. At this rate no-one will reign long enough to ditch electoral succession.

Hero Academy was one I enjoyed quite a bit for similar cross platform asyncronous fun. The strategy started to annoy me after a while because I'm just not that good at strategy but also the different teams you could play didn't seem terribly even. it didn't feel like a pay to win scenario but it did feel frustratingly like certain match ups were an uphill struggle. I also liked Frozen Synapse and wish I didn't suck at it.

Bah. I don't think it's out here.

Apple Cider, are you particularly emphasising the idea that men chastise women? I do worry about trying to put out my opinion in a way that's overly assertive, condescending or chastising. Often I just don't, and try to work through my own response and think about what it entails. But do you think a man highlighting a woman's sexism to her without the problematic tone would be an acceptable response? Or do you think it's too rare a real life occurrence to be part of the consideration?

Oh I misunderstood, I thought it was like choosing a side in a conflict and entirely playing from that perspective for your whole game.

They have previously sold Zelda Oracle of Ages/Seasons, Smash Bros 4 Wii U and DS, and Super Luigi U. I don't think it'd be unprecedented even if you're excluding Pokémon.

Well I guess I know what my next Halloween costume is.

Since you said apps, Pocket Casts is a good podcast app. For games, of course 80Days, Desert Golf and Hitman Go Bag It! is a spacial/physics puzzle game about bagging groceries neatly and without crushing things. They expand on this with so many levels and modes it's really impressive what they get out of it. The Room One and Two are solid puzzling games you could do co-operatively. Lyne is a simple but nicely engaging puzzle game about drawing lines. Alcazar is a simple but nicely engaging puzzle game about drawing lines... but through a maze this time! Calculords is a fun though hard strategy/deck building game. I was less into the deck building and suffered for it. Hoplite is a solid rogue like game where it's heavy on strategy and planning your moves. Also I'm not sure which size the Nexus 6 is but there's some solid NES, SNES and GBA emulators if you want to go that route and don't mind there being virtual on screen controls.

I think it's a tricky stance to make a definitive statement on even when you're talking generally. Just because society is structured with socialising as the default does not mean that everyone needs it, wants it or should want it. I understand that it can be an indicator of other issues. But as a trait a person can have it is totally healthy and shouldn't be assumed to always indicate an underlying problem.

I feel proud of what I've done here today. (that'll dissipate when you both rip the game apart critically)

It's been a while but I think it was about 8 hours. If you want to give it another go, as shitty as grinding is it will smoothen your progression through the game and mean you can pay less attention to the battle mechanics (I left it on auto battle after a while, except against bosses).

Yeah it showcases the poorest of RPG maker producing generic combat. Being turned off by the label RPG is a very fair response. Which is a shame because it's so narratively deep and fascinating, it's one of my favourite stories ever let alone stories in games.

I wish I wish I could recommend the (sort of) obscure French surrealist RPG OFF to so many people, but most people will either tune out with either RPG or surrealist French.