shindigs

I kind of feel this is the best way to play on your first play through to kind of get the stress of managing all the needs of your party. I felt kind of spoiled when one of my friends started feeding me some early strategies optimized to get a lot of gear to survive. I 'enjoyed' stumbling through the game and learning things the hard way. That being said, after about 3 sessions through I'll probably return to the game with the intent to try to maximize the survivability of my team with optimized strategies. There are a lot of early scripted events I've seen a lot of times just because I'm too bad to make it to late game often.

This War of Mine is a point and click adventure/action game where you play as a group of civilians trapped in a war-torn city who have to scavenge to survive. During the day, you manage your shelter by crafting tools and appliances to keep your place comfortable enough to live and attend to the needs of your crew almost in a sims-esque fashion. At night, you send one of your party members out to different locations in the city to scavenge for goods, which introduces a stealth aspect to the game as you try to sneak around militants/terrorists and engage with other survivors. The game places an emphasis on the emotional consequences of your actions. Murdering anyone and everyone left and right will weigh heavily on character conscious and make them depressed, and at worst commit suicide. Combat is not the main focus of the game, but rather sneaking around to get just enough supplies to survive the next few days. The game does a great job at making you feel like you're just scraping by as each character can only bring back a certain number of supplies each night. It's gained a lot of attention because of how interacting with other characters weigh on the mind of your party. For example, I looted a house of an elderly couple who caught me just while I was escaping. They were defenseless, and as I got home, my character got sad and depressed thinking about the incident over the next few days. I've heard other stories of people killing a community of people taking shelter at another location, and their character committed suicide shortly after. There are situations in which you can kill someone to save someone else in need, in which case killing someone barely weighs down your mind. It's worth watching some videos/streams of the gameplay - grossly put it's kind of like a DayZ point and click w/ no zombies and an emphasis on actual emotional consequences for ethnically questionable actions you perform to survive. Gameplay trailer: So anyone else try this game?

Denial, no definitive word on monetization.

Yes you can have multiple characters in a game, and you can change characters when you die (at spawn? unsure on the exact mechanic). We tried all tracer teams - really hard All Bastion teams (sentry robot) - pretty funny / mowed newbies Two Rheinhearts (shield + hammers) + Two Bastions + 1 Medic = Really good!

I didn't mean to imply that competitive TF2 or regular TF2 doesn't do anything to promote teamwork and strategy. Obviously even in pubs, having an organized plan is super helpful in fighting against chaos. Apologies for wording that very poorly. My TF2 experience is mainly pub based - which means jumping on any server in quick match or server browsers where there are a lot of modifications to player limits + respawn timers + other whacky stuff. I think Blizzard mentioned did touch on whether you can jump in and out of overwatch games (can't remember if it was confirmed or denied) but I really hope they retain a pre-made matchmaking option to emulate the matchmaking at Blizzcon.

I played this game about 5 times at Blizzcon. It's very very fun...I think the cap on 6 players per team is smart and differentiates the game from TF2 in a very good way. Not sure what different modes will be out at release but 6v6 + the map design kept the game feel over the top like TF2 but also made it feel like teamwork actually mattered in a competitive sense. There's no doubt that people will try to make this an esports game when the beta hits - long term viability is hard to predict. Another striking aspect about the game is that you choose characters to play, not classes. You could technically classify at least 3 characters as "engineer like" but they all have a different spin on their abilities that feels super unique. The synergy between all the characters is well thought out and it's easy to see how skillsets all fit together to achieve certain strategies. The game looks AMAZING when you are playing it, there are really small details in each map and in the character animations that really bring the world to life as you inhabit it. For those of you who don't know already - this game is pretty much a repurposed version of their MMO Titan, and it's clear that years of work has gone into developing the assets of the game. This game is a blast to play - it definitely has DNA from TF2 but the multiplayer design of the game shapes it into a competitive experience to really rewards teamwork and strategy, and it seems like the maps were balanced for 6v6 sessions so I hope it stays that way at least for the beta. I don't doubt it'll be a new staple multiplayer game for a lot of people. The archer is definitely the most boring character in both design and gameplay imo, all my friends left feedback asking he be changed.

http://kotaku.com/the-messy-story-behind-youtubers-taking-money-for-game-1644092214 Good read from Kotaku that explores a recent 'controversy' from Shadow of Mordor in which the marketing team would give YouTubers early access + money to cover it but on terms that they focus on the nemesis system and don't say anything overtly negative. With all the gaming journalism hoo-ha, I'm surprised (or really not surprised) that this didn't get more attention. It's honestly fascinating as the article does a great job of showing that these offers are really tempting for some YouTubers as a) money is really tight in that scene some view it's OK as long as they disclose it c) some don't consider themselves reviewers so yolo $$$ The politics and economics of independent video content is super interesting

The CS:GO discussion this week made me try to postulate a pattern that I've noticed when people discuss competitive games like CS. Full disclosure, I'm an esports fanatic so I'm definitely approaching it from "Sean's lens" of enthusiasm. I definitely sensed varying levels of enthusiasm for revisiting CS among the cast this week. I'm with Sean that the game is AMAZING for many nuanced reasons of keeping many things similar. In all my discussion about the design of competitive esports games, I've noticed a pattern of all types of designers giving a game like CS:GO different levels of treatment. Some points I noticed in this cast that come up often in similar discussions are: a) It's just the same game from 1999-2000 b )The aesthetics are old / unimpressive with respect to modern games c) This is for a breed of gamers that is not me d) The game is amazing for reasons that would take way too long for me to engage with. I feel these pattern of points indicate a level of engagement and critique with competitive games that frankly do little to uncover the true nuanced beauty of a competitive game like CS:GO. It seems like engaging with why a robust game like CS continues to keep the same design is quickly explained away as pandering to a really hardcore competitive crowd, when there can be some real merit as to way certain "glitchy" and "twitchy" elements are kept the way that they are. I think that it's a great opportunity to explore how gaming culture can define what they value in design and competitive play, and how that translates to what initially seems as intuitive design in games like CS and Dota 2. This is a difficult point to articulate so I may append this in the morning, but I just selfishly wish the exploration into CS had more substance into competitive play. However, I equally enjoy hearing the perspectives of people who aren't super into competitive games as well, and overall the cast was great. I don't intend to say that CS:GO wasn't given a fair shot, but rather the points I heard in the cast this week is consistent with similar issues that others have used to quickly explain away parts of the design. EDIT 1: I guess a big reason why I'm bringing up this issue is because as esports gets more attention from the mainstream community, it's worthwhile to understand why a game like CS or StarCraft can remain very similar to it's predecessor design and still fine success today. Super Smash Melee being another great example as well.

Hi! I've listened to about 10 casts through a friend's recommendation and I love the discussion about games on Idle Thumbs. Seems like it would be fun to discuss games in a similar way with like minded peeps. Cheers!