SuperBiasedMan

Ugh ugh ugh. And throw a woof in there too. This episode's first 15 minutes really felt like "Kooky soap opera tv show." It didn't feel like Twin Peaks, just a TP flavoured show. The heart of the show is gone replaced with just the facile appearance of it instead. ...that is definitely too harsh though because there's some genuinely good bits in the episode later. I refuse to get out over the extent to which they're pushing away the Bob drama though. It's terribly disheartening. I know good stuff will come later but I'm pretty unenthused right now.

I had a talkboy. With eight batteries those things were too heavy for weak children like me but I always loved having it to... I'm not sure I probably recorded fake radio shows. EDIT: Also Labyrinth is only worth it to see the breakout role of David Bowies crotch but these days you can get that on tumblr anyway.

I completed the Yawhg over the weekend... About twenty times. Me and my girlfriend got very into it. The sense of tone in the world is bang on. A mesh of darkness and silly humour goes so well with Carroll's illustration and the way stories weave together is great, you can see your thread impact other players even though you never directly meet them. My main issues with the game are that it doesn't deal well with repeating content. If you see an event you've previously seen, then you know exactly how it goes. There's only ever two options that slightly branch based on which you choose and a simple skill check. Speaking of which, your character has a basic RPG set of stats to work from that make it feel oddly gamey and do end up encouraging min maxing behaviour since you want to see the resolution to stories that are gated by a skill check. Both of these things are probably not a big deal if you only play a bit at a party and we did play it a bunch in a short period. But it's a bit of a disappointment when you start speed clicking through text because you got these exact 4 endings already and not a word is different.

The saga continues: I immediately offer my services to the pope in his crusade, Jerusalem sorely needs our intervention to right God's presence. While waiting on his acceptance, I discover that my liege is fighting his own holy war for the duchy of Sicili! He has a vast army raised but my own effort would surely be missed if I didn't join in. And then soon after the pope has accepted my offer... Unfortunately it seems I must make a choice of who to support, my Holy Leader or my Earthly leader. Unless perhaps there is a way to appease both. But I grow tired, this illness saps my energy. Soon I will be rid of it once I prove my holy worthiness, but now I must go to bed and rest for tomorrow will be an important day.

I think at this point we're just disagreeing on philosophies. I could see why explicit particular promises would come off as more dishonest, but a year+ long media marketing hype blast to purport something as Game Of The Year before it's out bothers me way more... in part because other people aren't as bothered by it. At the very least, we can both agree that Molyneux is to blame for repeating this cycle again and again without addressing the issue as it comes up every time.

See personally I think you shouldn't villify someone for honest mistakes, criticise plenty but villification feels too harsh. That's just me though. I do agree that he was incompetent (though I would say carelessness was the main problem with marketing stuff, he was presumably incompetent with management since that's not his usual focus). I also can't help but think the gaming press and community at large could have reined in their expectations too? This is a recurring narrative, Watchdogs fell prey to the same thing in a totally different circumstance but had the same resulting game that didn't really perform what people ideally wanted. I think it's totally fair to say that gobbling up what the games industry feeds you without thinking about it is behaviour that people ought to try and break out of.

My initial response was less severe of that, I did think Walker's intention was to float a possibility. After reading the later questions I didn't feel like that was asked in good faith so much, because it seems like Walker has already concluded for the most part that Molyneux is the centre of blame (whether you agree or not it does seem like he's decided this before the interview). The interview in general read as an interrogation into why Molyneux has deceived people, and basically runs with the presumption that there was conscious motivation behind it rather than the possibility that sadly these things just happened and Molyneux passively tried to roll along with what happened without the usual structures and supports he's had on his previous games. He shouldn't and isn't, but it is unfair for the gaming community as a whole to put large expectations on him, create a large sense of entitlement and then wish for him to be villified for falling short of that. I argue in his defence because I don't see the central problem being anything malicious in Molyneux. I think he should consider the consequences of his actions more both in terms of the overpromising marketing and his poor management skills. I also think there are plenty of things that went wrong here, wouldn't be traced back to him and aren't exclusive issues to this Kickstarter but because of the confluence of them all, people are focusing on criticising Molyneux himself..

I think something that people don't really seem to think about is the fact that Molyneux has lost years of his life into this endeavour. Most backers paid at most maybe £100? The absolute highest they could pay in was £5,000 but that's not really comparable to the years of work being put in by the team. When you quote the cumulative amount it is a lot for them to have raised but that's not what any individual can lay claim to. Someone who backed at the £30 level has a tiny stake in the project that's wholly incomparable to what Molyneux himself has desperately poured into this. I'm not claiming that he should be absolved of mistakes because the failure has hit him hard, but calling him a pathological liar seems to imply that he doesn't care at all. Maybe some people really think he just loves the media hype and doesn't give a shit about the games but I'm not inclined to think that. Realistically, anyone who was excited about this game had only a fraction of Molyneux's excitement but not many people seem to see it that way.

Curiosity contained in app purchases, which is sorta different. It's like if everyone got free tickets to a raffle but you could opt to buy more tickets and increase your chance of winning.

I do try to do things that way, follow my own concept of politeness when criticising people (whether it's social justice or not). I think that's tricky though, it's debatable how much that's needed. Even if you're using a personal set of politeness rules, you learned those from the world around you. It's no secret that some groups are conditioned to view their input as less valid and so feel like it's more impolite to speak out even in the friendly manner you describe. At the same time someone in a privileged position might be conditioned to think they're only being impolite if they direct swears at the person, so saying "That was a shitty ass thing of you to do" is perfectly fine. Another complicated layer on top of that being the fact that people will receive things as more polite or less polite with the same conditioning. Often people of colour can be perceived as being aggressive for saying things that would seem perfectly normal from a white person. So do you fall in line with what people expect so that they will accept what you say as polite and acceptable even though doing so cements your position as oppressed by accepting the unfair structure of society? One thing I am clearer on though, is that saying someone is being impolite as a response to them calling you out is probably a distraction (whether disingenuous or not) rather than an honest response to their main indended message.

The definition of politeness has a significant impact. I believe in this thread or another people brought up the concept of 'vocal fry', a way of speaking common among younger people, and perceived to be more common among women. It's an element to your voice that could be noticed and was criticised, yet there was no actual reason given to why it would be a problem or a bad thing and yet some people accept it as something that shouldn't be done. Politeness can easily fall prey to the same problem, something is impolite because it Just Is. But if you really look at it deeper it's impolite because certain groups with privilege are uncomfortable with it. In general, confrontation is considered impolite but it is absolutely necessary to tell someone they've made a mistake. Otherwise they need to re-examine it by themself, but that's far less effective than the people they interact with helping them by pointing to things they notice. Exactly how you can confront someone without it creating problems is tricky as hell, but politeness alone is not a good metric to inform your actions.

Hi guys! What you doing? Wanna hang out or something, just the three of us bros!

No it's a marketing campaign for Horse Bag. Endorse Bag: Horse Bag

I suck at the pinpoint accuracy of movement but I love it. I just like games that depend so highly on your movements, which probably has something to do with my Spelunky addiction. Twig is right though, Shovel Knight is nowhere near as bad as Super Meat Boy or other crazy games. I wouldn't personally say Shovel Knight is even pixel perfect to be honest.

It's funny because I enjoyed it specifically due to lacking nostalgia. I'd never really played that style of game so it didn't feel too samey to me.

Oof. I really feel bad for Molyneux, he genuinely did think he would make a transformative game and I think his hyperbolic marketing was viewed as likeable enough that he never took a hint to curb it before, but now that fans feel personally invested in a game that he had no publisher oversight on, it falls apart. I mean, I'm not at all surprised that he doesn't know how much games will cost logistically. If your job in EA is game designer, why would you be checking on accounts? Sure he'll have more info than the general public, but the entire overhead of EA is there for more than just cash flow, they take care of a lot of stuff. Publishers are much maligned because of their perceived fixation on pure profit but they are providing services to game studios so that the studios can focus on the games themselves. But in the end, when Molyneux won't take responsibility for so many of his claims falling to pieces then you can't have faith in him any more. He really does just seem to speak unfiltered and ignore the consequences, and after a point you can't do that if you want any credibility.

I heartily endorse Bag It too. It's a mildly physics based puzzle game that applies the tetris model to putting shopping in a bag. They play with the concept in a lot of fun ways.

I'm not sure if Jake was referring to my theorising about Bob doing a solid for his partner Leland at the end, but if it was my post you were talking about I actually meant the exact opposite. I was reading it as Bob's final gift to Leland is to remove the mental block and let all the repressed guilt flood Leland's mind so Bob can have one last feast off Leland's dieing anguish. Thanks for that post, it was fascinating! At the same time, this doubles down on my disappointment with the supernatural stuff being treated as The Cause in this episode and working towards absolving Leland. I do wonder if Leland was conceived as the killer because of the realism of the family abuse angle or for another reason.

Spoilers!

You might mess up the taste of vegetables but you're not going to give yourself salmonella by cooking it wrong! Good luck Twig. I remember my first vegan meal, I totally botched it but still figured it wasn't that hard to make so I could do better next time.

It's crazy that every couple of years can be a reasonable time scale for 'every now and then' for a game project.

Do people actually think Valve is working on the next Half Life? Like, they might be but one person in that thread said it was obvious they were and I really wouldn't be surprised if Valve never said anything about it again.

M... G?

I'm not trying to just hammer on about this since you've already rethought the article, but you missed my point here. The legitimacy of the article is irrelevant to determining what this says about feminism. A social movement for change isn't responsible for every action of those who identify it. Just like terrorists don't represent Islam. Just like the Westbro Baptist Church do not represent Christianity. The fact that you posted the article in this thread means you unconsciously bought into the connection being drawn that claims feminism was involved. At best, feminism was involved because it gave this woman a freedom to choose to have that abortion, but I doubt you're arguing against abortion here.

If the events of the article are accurate, then sure she might need mental help especially post abortion. But this doesn't really relate to feminism as a whole any more than a single terrorist can be representative of Muslims as a group.