Malfsyde

Oh no you're totally right, I was just being facetious. Obviously the attitude of anyone can succeed at anything if they try their damnedest and believe in the American Way is bullshit just for the fact that in a lot of cases there are more people who want to achieve something than there are opportunities to achieve it (especially in any form of the games industry), that's before you even bring in socio-political biases. It's a fallacy of the winners - that because they achieved something it must mean other people didn't try hard enough or didn't want it enough, ignoring that in some cases they succeed expressly at the expense of others. It's the lie our society tells itself for two reasons 1) for the successful folks to satisfy their egos and 2) for the unsuccessful folks to keep trying. Anyway I feel bad for feeding into an impression of Dan for people who don't know him, so I will let him speak for himself.

That is almost exactly what I had in mind, like a top down Rainbow Six or SWAT 3 still in real time. Sweet game thanks.

I think that's kind of what really irritates me about him. Personally I didn't buy into the criticism around the time he was hired that it was only because he was a straight white dude. I think it was mostly because Jeff thought he would be entertaining and Giant Bomb is such a personality driven site. However - despite Giant Bomb being class clowns from the beginning - there is a gulf of difference between sometimes acting stupid and just straight up being stupid. "Yes! That's the whole point of life! The less shit you know, the happier you are. I'm smart enough to know how stupid I am. And I know I love it this way." - Actual thing said by Dan Ryckert. I can't blame Giant Bomb for wanting to be a personality driven site, but the games coverage industry as a whole is moving towards superficial video content and further from genuine editorial and feature content from actual writers. It's just kind of sad that Dan might be right in a sense, anyone can succeed as long as you have no knowledge of any real issues, no opinions that will get you hated and just talk about fucking wrestling all day.

Yeah I think that's what's useful about Curator lists. It is recommendations from an actual person for actual reasons that they can justifiy, rather than some algorithm designed to sell you more stuff that you will never play.

Meh, I think it's a fair that sometimes you may find something outside of your comfort zone that you like but couldn't extrapolate from your existing history of purchases/wishlists etc. Using Metacritic as a basis should definitely be scrapped though. Just... stop.... at least give the option to customise on what criteria it calculates recommendations, in case someone wants it weighted for Metacritic for some incomprehensible reason.

Going to see King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard this Sat.

What is Chris Remo's favourite Nebula? THE WIZAAAAARD NEBULAAAAAA

Agreed. I legitimately don't understand how anyone can watch something like that and decide that they want to play the game, unless they are already fanboys and this only exists as shameless fan-service. Aside from being completely tone deaf, it has literally nothing to do with the game. The characters could be cosmetically changed to look like Pacman and the Ghosts, and it will have exactly as much relevance to that game as this does to LoL. Wasn't there like an 8 minute trailer for Elder Scrolls: Online that was basically the exact same shit, probably also with the mandatory badass mouthwipe? I think I just find it gross that video games keep trying to advertise themselves as films, but they're all the same shallow fantasy films with zero story. Anyway to tie it back to Feminism - I don't know how anyone can look at this stuff and argue that video games aren't in serious need for some honest to God diversity, whether or not it directly relates to issues of sexism.

You'd think that, but a surprising number of games aren't "fun" until the game is almost out. Having seen a number of articles and videos on game post-mortems it's a fairly common thread that the finished product ended up far down the road from the original design document, and that crucial decisions made towards the success or failure of a game only came after long periods of testing and iteration.

I played about 10 hours of the beta and my overriding thoughts were "yeah Divnity: OS was a pretty good turn-based RPG. Why am I playing this again?." I might give it another shot after giving Divinity some space, but the combat just didn't seem to have much meat on it.

Finished Hotline Miami. Even though it is mechanically quite different to Doom, it reminded me a lot of the raw fast pace carnage I got up to in Doom. On the other hand it also made me want to see a more more strategic stealth/espionage or SWAT type game with this overhead mechanics style. I feel like it probably already exists, at least it should.

Farscape is rad. I am super picky with space opera, especially on TV. I couldn't watch Star Trek to save my life. Farscape and Firefly are far and away my favourites though. I guess I find it much easier to relate to the subversive misfits-on-the-run theme where the main characters are of sometimes dubious moral quality as opposed to the typical ultra-militarised Space Navy of Star Trek and its ilk, which are essentially what the antagonists are in Farscape and Firefly.

Drew Scanlon also has the best posture I've ever seen in an adult. He is not human.

Yeah they're pretty cool but far too expensive for normal people. I only have a few. Asmus Toys Gandalf with the Dark Souls 2 protagonist I got with the collector's edition. NECA Big Daddies pose for a family photo.

Dark Souls was really just an allegory for the exploitation of naive QA testers who repeatedly play the same sections of game for no net progress by the people in charge who are desperate just to stay in business for one more financial quarter. GAMES CRITIQUE

It's going to be awkward if I ever watch Firefly again now that I have learnt Adam Baldwin is kind of a douchetard. In what example would it be subjective? Like most fallacies there are cases where they are valid and cases where they aren't. I think the difficulty with false equivalences is more to do with whether or not the apparent differences are actually relevant to the argument or not. For example someone could argue that getting healthy and loosing weight are the same. For an obese person wanting to loose weight through exercise and nutritious diet it wouldn't be a fallacy, but for someone with Cancer that is loosing weight from their chemotherapy it is a false equivalence. Feminists and Nazis are ostensibly a false equivalence that Gaters like to use, but if their argument was simply that they are both forms of the human species then it wouldn't be.

Playing Far Cry 2 actually reminded me of No Country for Old Men more than anything. Mechanically you basically play the game as Anton Chigurh roaming the landscape searching for cases of money with your tracking device while systematically executing scores of people - silenced shotgun optional. Thematically they both portray a kind of violence that is not just horrific but is inherently nihilistic and impossible to reason with. Aesthetically they both portray a beautiful but oppressive desert landscape contrasted against pointless gang warfare, and if you turn the music off it resembles the minimalist sound design of No Country.

Considering the amount of people who have chosen to quit the industry over harassment, I wouldn't call it entirely unsuccessful on their behalf. You're right though, nothing is going to change in the way video game coverage is done. The irony seems to be totally lost on them that any attempt to discuss sexism on the internet is met with disproportionate amounts of sexism, and any fair-minded person coming to this thing new is going to see where the actual victims are.

I noticed that too, but I wouldn't take it much further than being an amusing easter egg or inside joke in both Firewatch and Gone Home, since being in the same universe doesn't have any larger implications on the story of either of them. Another of the books is authored by Jonas (J.) Allard for example. At most I think it symbolically shows they share the same universe in terms of their conceptual approach to game design, since you can follow the influences back to the immersive sims that System Shock was born from. Also I think Bioshock Infinite attempts to deconstruct the kind of ideas people have about what it means for things to be set in the same universe in a way that could even imply that Half-Life 2 or Dishonored is set in the same universe as Bioshock.

SUSD is so good, I'm not even that big on board games. I mostly got into it from being a fan of Quinns during his RPS days. Sold me on Netrunner.

I don't think the fact that the attitudes surrounding "adulthood" and "maturity" is relative to a time and place makes it any less valid as a construct. It's still inevitable that people go through social and psychological changes as a result of natural biological processes while growing up. The problem is when the beliefs are rooted in dogmas and political structures that serve the few people in power rather than the core idea of adulthood being what does it mean to be a good person in the world? For example I do think there are some fucked up attitudes towards adulthood that comes from being a part of a capitalist society that - for good or worse - basically runs on appealing to peoples greeds and vices. The problem is when this is turned into an cultural ideal where "real adults" must be solely independent and serve their so-called "rational self interest" whilst any form of co-operation in something greater than oneself that can't be achieved through self-serving means is seen as a weakness.

I agree. I mostly listened for Ryan and Vinny, while Brad and Drew I shared similar taste in games with. I found it rough to listen to after Ryan passed, I tried to give it a chance after Vinny left, but Dan was the straw that broke the camel's back. Fair enough if people find his brand of infantile man-childishness amusing, but I don't have enough time in my week anymore to listen to 3 hours of them talking about American fast food, shit-talking Aussies, and turds in a pool. To me Dan feels like the dumber version of what non-gamers think gamers are like. I'll still watch some of their video content.

For that you are awarded with David Caruso's Golden Sunglasses. (•_•) ( •_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■)

Fair point.

Hilariously these sorts of people always commit the argument from fallacy, the error of disregarding a conclusion as false simple because it contains a fallacy.