Gaizokubanou

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Posts posted by Gaizokubanou

  1. Posted

    All good guys <3

     

    Yeah about different topic, yesterday I heard something about persecution complex and wonder if some of these conspiracy theorists are going through something similar where evidence against their belief is just more proof that their opposition is acting against them.

     

    Best wishes to Silverstring Media.

  3. Posted

    No, that's not what we'd call interactive entertainment. ;)

     

    Right, the "play" has to be selected (interaction) for maximum feedback (movie plays) :P

     

    If this sounds tenuous at best, well yes that's sort of my point that this is how I view (but you may not and I get that) the interaction that exists in Dear Esther.  Or say Telltale games... to me they come off more as a visual novels with button prompts baked in rather than games with great stories.  I find the interaction provided in those are also too basic for me to gripe on them over their interaction because I get that that's not their focus as all, where as I think in games that should be the main focus.  And to re-clarify, none of this is a damning mark on any of those creative works for me.  Like not being a game for me is not a "this isn't good enough to be a game", rather "the work engages the audience by means other than interaction (even if minor ones exists because I think minor interactions constitute more of basic menu)".

     

    BTW the best walking simulation of all because you run :D

     

     

    Go to 6:50 for future of HL3, the SPRINTING simulator!

  4. Posted

    Hmm I don't know about that future outlook because enslaved human beings shared equal intelligence to the abusers and could fight back intelligently when given the chances and did ton of self advocacy (and that HUGE parts of the world did not participate in this specific race driven slavery, while meat eating is world wide), while the animals we kill.. let's take pigs as an example since I think they are the most intelligent animals we consume regularly... by human standard, they are pretty dumb.  And not just "hey Jimmy failed that math test cause he's dumb hurhur" dumb.  I mean what's their rough human equivalent of age level development?  I heard Dolphins are around 6 and that they are smarter than pigs so it has to be lower than that?

     

    Still, I think pigs are pretty smart for me to be taken back by mass slaughter of them... but say chickens.  It's just hard to bring up sympathy for those creatures cause their interaction with the world is so basic and will stay that basic.

     

    If anything, I think current form of meat eating industry will be weakened by environmental concern LONG before ethical concerns come to play, if they ever will.

  5. Posted

    Well, my definition of "game" begins on the lowest possible level, so quite indeed I find the discussion of what constitutes a game rather boring. Interactive entertainment software = games. As long as it's interactive, regardless of the level of interaction, and if it's consumed for entertainment, bam, it's a game. Of course The Sims is, of course Depression Quest is, of course Gone Home is, and every single interactive movie type game is right down to Dragon's Lair. That doesn't mean I have to like either one of those game mechanics just because "I like games".

     

    Evaluating the game mechanics and their subjective impression on the player, in what way he/she is motivated or emotionally moved, in what way repetition is sensible, what degree or what modes of interaction feel best to an individual player, those are all very worthy fields of investigation. In comparison, calling a game "not a game" leads nowhere.

     

    Right, but I presume you don't consider DVD menus to be a game with long movie as an ending (or maybe you do, then we just disagree on really basic level on this subject and you are right, not much to talk about other than examining just how much our vocabulary differs when it comes to this subject)?  Because going by that super broad definition, I could criticize all the movie DVD/Blurays for being weak games that implements lowest possible interaction on top of movies but that sounds very disingenuous category to criticize a medium based on scope outside of its intended role (just bare bone navigation to get basic setting achieved before movie starts, not intended to be engaging on their own at all).  And that is why I find definition of game being narrower useful so that I don't have to utilize same overtly (IMO) broad tools to look at say, Hearts of Iron 3 to bluray copy of Gurren Lagann.  Or that MP3 players are gaming consoles because they play interactive (you choose the audio tracks) entertainment softwares, and so not comparing them to Xbox One which I think is fruitless comparison.

     

    Or again, perhaps you do consider all of them games.

     

    I also presume non softwares can be games for you?

     

    And of course, things that are something else could be games and so being something else doesn't exclude it being game in my view (just pointing out that is not the reason why I think these are not games)... like rulebooks.  Clearly books, but also games IMO.  But say, Bible on the other hand... has rules in them, but I don't see one as a gaming rulebook.

  6. Posted

    They are all the same. The different DLCs are different skins based on which team you want to play as. There should be a demo for each. If you open up Pinball FX2 and select the football league table, there will be a "play demo" option.

     

    Thanks clyde, going to give this thing a try!

  7. Posted

    Your presence on the forums is much appreciated sir Goodfellow, much appreciated <3

     

    BTW, question to everyone who regularly plays/played EU4.

     

    Does anyone play any of the later starting dates?  I do this thing in all of Paradox games where I only play the earliest starting date possible.  Later dates just feel like I'm missing lot of the game out, even if it's arguably to my detriment.  Heart of Iron 3, for example, becomes much more interesting war-game IMO the later the starting date as you have more developed situations on your hand to deal with.  Yet I only play 1936 start (tried 1944 as Germany once and it was a blast til bug killed the game).

  8. Posted

    See, I feel like being fairly inclusive on what is game, because I think it's a weird enough medium that defining boundaries mostly serves to exclude work that has something to offer.

     

    That's the part I don't understand outside of the context of people yelling "stop making non-games" (and to be fair, those people do exist so I can sympathize why you are mentioning it but I'm not suggesting that at all).  Why does something have to be a game to offer us something?  We can take inspiration from lot more things that are not games.

     

    If you can make a compelling experience that feels like a game without interactivity, how crucial is it, really?

     

    I guess this is how we just view things quite differently because it doesn't feel like a game.  Compelling, perhaps, but nothing about it tells me that it's a game.

     

    I also think 'drinking games' are completely not games and are mis-labeled BTW if that helps explain my view on that category :P

     

    That argument reminds me of similar arguments I've heard about music genres.. I couldn't care less personally and don't see much point beyond search-ability in Google.

     

    You are totally right, it really doesn't matter... kind of like everything we do on this forum so long as we are civil to one another.  But it's interesting to see how people view things (like when Merus says Moutain feels like a game, that's interesting revelation to me cause that's opposite of my experience with it), and I think so long as conversations remain civil, it's a cool discussion to be had.

     

     

    Absolutely! There's a really interesting conversation to be had about whether The Sims is a game, or a system, or a toy, or indeed at what point something becomes a game or not a game. The problem is that if you can reliably expect people to follow "It's not a game" with "it's a visual novel for girls", or similar.

     

    A similar problem, of course, affects actually discussing the content of Tropes vs Women videos critically. If you say "I think this example is a little forced", and a herd of megatrogs immediately jump in to say "Yes, and she is a fraud, and a misandrist, and she bleached her skin and look at this four hour YouTube video"... well, it's not an incentive.

     

    My feelings on lot of these topics precisely.  So I'm ready to apologies a ton and explain myself thoroughly cause I know it is a topic ridden with these 'issues' with parties that have dubious motives.  But that alone shouldn't completely turn an interesting discussion into a taboo.

  10. Posted

    It's slightly weird reading this thread because while I do some of the things that you guys criticize (like I don't think Dear Esther is much of a game, Mountain even more so) but looks like for different reason than why you guys are disapproving of such behavior.  Because when some people bring that up "X is not a game", like you guys mentioned, what they are really getting at is "X is bad", while for me, eh like whatever doesn't really matter, good things exists in and out of games so more of personal categorization that I like to discuss, but has no bearing on the quality of the work in question.

  11. Posted

    I love it when strategic scope modes give high amounts of incentive for dexterous modes. I actually associate this with pinball. On tables like Black Hole, Centaur, and Super League Football, I spend a lot of time setting the table up for moments of heightened significance. It's rare for a pinball table to then allow the results of the dexterous moment to affect back to the strategic scope though. I'm having a hard time thinking of games that do this; they often reset the wins and losses after a dextourous mode so that you don't snowball or get snowballed. 

    Oh yeah, that game suffers from some of the worst snowballing I've seen because it lets you reap all the benefits gained from battles into strategy directly.  But that core value loop of "I want excel in strategic map cause it'll let me build super units which I can use in real time battle to further my strategic position to..." is so superb, I'm trying hard to capture that feel while mitigating snowballing as much as possible.  My plan is to have asymmetrical warfare where player is pitted against endless enemies so war of attrition is against the player (something that is very hard to program into game AI IMO so why not remove all elements of it from the AI), and the challenge is to achieve certain parameters while surviving against endless wave basically.

     

    Interesting comparison with pinball BTW, perhaps I should look into that as well.

  14. Posted

    I'll take this as pointed directly at me. If you perceive my moral questioning to be in bad faith, then I'll stop participating in the thread. Because honestly, I want to understand and it seemed to me that people wanted me to understand. But if "read the fucking manual" is really the advice that I deserve then I'll gladly take that and be done with this.

     

    Look at it this way... core of veganism is deeply rooted in practical concerns because it is about an act that we go through so regularly (what do you eat).  It is not those strange-real questions such as "is it ok to kill few to save many" that most of us don't have to decide on regular basis.

     

    Vegans face so many people who have zero intention of good-faith discussion and just want to point a hole at veganism so they can go and say "aha, so you are just full of shit and I'm not wrong for eating meat".  And the most common tactic is that they just bring up endless permutations of these strange, irregular hypotheticals for the purpose of challenging practical concerns.

     

    Say I'm building a house and I declare the house to be structurally sound.  Then someone points out "well if superman were to blow at it, it would surely crumble".  And they would be right.  But it's like, that has zero bearing on the structure of a house.  Now if I said that "This house is so good that it'll even withstand Superman's punch", then I would most likely be full of shit and fine for me being called out on that right?  But my full of shit statement doesn't really say anything about practical applications for the house and its purpose so if you found such hole in my argument about why my house is good, it still doesn't say much about the house.

     

    The house, in veganism term, for me, is the simple premise of "it is wrong to hurt animals for no other purpose than pleasure".  That's the same principle that's used against animal torture, something that most of us embraces without much second thought put into it because animal torture is such irregular activity in most of our (based on location thread, I'm assuming most users here from from city centers in NA and Europe) lives.  So say you find the premise "animal lives are equal to human lives" ridiculous as "this house can withstand superman's punch".  What me, CollegeBaby and few others were trying to say was, such extreme premise is not necessary!  But still people often get hung up on such far strung out example because this debate has implication (no matter how minor) on stuff we actually deal with regularly.  It is probably the reason why SuperBiasedMan brought it up in a passing because he/she knew if those more extreme stances were brought up, it would be the focal point of every non-vegans trying to poke a hole at even if it's really not central to the issue at hand.

     

    Earlier you asked this following question

    • What do you think of effects on animal ecosystems that come hand in hand with being a person living in a modern society? Is it immoral to participate in modern society knowing full well that certain animals will be killed as a result of such a society existing?

    And I answered because I believe that you are asking in ernest, even if the second half of that question is so broad and vague.  Most of us rely on modern society that comes with loads of morally questionable end results.  Yet how often do you end up asking that same question in regard to sexism, militarism, racism or any other nasty stuff?  I am not accusing you of making bad-faith questions, but rather trying to highlight how reluctant we are (I sure was stubborn fuck when I first heard about it) when it comes to not eating meat because how ordinary the question is and the implication it has on our moral failings.

  15. Posted

    I'm ultra lenient vegan-sympathizer (not even one myself but I see that as more of my own failing) so perhaps my views are not what you are interested in, but...

     

    1.  If it never had sentience, I don't see an issue.

     

    2.  My understanding of major ethical theories is that one ought to be held responsible for events they had substantial control over... so we live in complex world full of problems, but just being in one shouldn't condemn all of us.  That being said, there is this idea of systematic responsibility where our small inputs may contribute toward larger identifiable 'things' and this is where lot of complications occur cause just to what extent are we responsible?  That's why I'm not even calling for complete veganism transformation.  None of us are wholesomely independent moral entities that fit nicely into most ethical theories.  Like we are rarely given those choices like "press A to kill people, press B to save people".  We depend on our society for most of our lives, and those include plenty of less than ideal practices.  So why saddle in the endless (well, there is an end but impractical goal of most of us) mire of the question "does any of this matter?" and do simple, very easy to do stuff that, even if it's tiny, might make a difference towards good?

     

    I think I read this in Talmud, where it says person ought to carry two pieces of paper with one that says "I'm made of dirt" and other that says "This world is made for me".  Now that text has some obvious religious context but I really appreciate its dualistic message that we ought to be both humble yet avoid pessimism, prideful yet not arrogant.  I try to take same with my existence in this crazy large modern world; I'm a tiny speck, but I'll be the best speck that I can be.  And of course, I fail so much and have done lot of shitty things but until I reach critical failure damn if I'm going to stop that.

     

    3.  That would be excusable situation.  Like, it's not justified, but it's not condemn-able either.  But eating less meat is not really a pure modern consideration.  Outside of hunter-gatherers, my shallow understanding of human history is that huge proportion of our diet has always been grains, with meat added for extra and luxury.

  16. Posted

    It doesn't even have to go that far though... like let's start with much more relaxed premise.

     

    "Killing animals purely for pleasure is not good".

     

    I think that is pretty agreeable.  Then it follows that for most of us, eating meat in large quantity is done purely for pleasure, and hence morally objectionable.

     

    Like CollegeBaby said, it's not a binary thing.  I think the argument to lessen meat consumption is pretty basic, sound, and a good place to start..

  17. Posted

    Yeah I've seen violent drunk, mean drunk, etc. but never seen anything other than giggly and chilled stoned people.

     

    But I have seen more funnier drunk behaviors... one day friend calls my house at 2 AM

     

    "Yo where are you"

    Me: "You called my house, I'm at home"

    "Yooo come outside"

    Me: "What's up, why"

    "I'm right hereeee"

     

    I go outside and the dude is just laying on the sidewalk.  So I get him in the house then he proceeds to give my cousin (he was playing D2 if you are wondering why he was up so late) an hour lecture on various types of wallets.

     

    Then again, I did have a buddy who smoked something bad and kept checking to see if the floor was still there or not.

     

    More on topic though, can anyone think of any reason as to why it ought to be banned?  It just seems like such a non debate when arguable worse stuff like alcohol is allowed.

  18. Posted

    Edit: If rape was less prevalent, I doubt it'd be in video games at all, actually. I think the reason it turns up in video games is related to why it's so prevalent in society, but that's me.

     

    Edit2: here, here's just my blog post about it: http://www.applecidermage.com/2015/01/16/a-brutal-landscape-sexual-assault-in-gaming-narratives/

    It certainly wouldn't exist in the form it does now, which is a lazy shorthand for shock value/'grittiness' because idea would be that it would have lost those since it would be too distant from most people in the way that genocide is to most of us.

     

    Nicely put blog BTW, just finished reading it.

     

     

    Rape is often used because people regard it as shorthand for a dark, gritty, "realistic" tone. In a world where rape was insanely rare, that shorthand disappears as well.

     

    Right.

     

    My apologies Brodie, hope you feel better.

  20. Posted

    When translating these things into video games the greater war horror is largely abstracted in strategic moves played across countless nameless units. Sexual assault is more inherently personal, and people are far more likely to have encountered that than be cluster bombed on D-Day. I'm sure if you found somebody that had they probably wouldn't enjoy the game version. Also, however minor it might be those units have a fighting chance, some kind of autonomy. They're actors/heros of their own story. Sexual assault is inherently about disempowering. 

     

    Yes but not enjoying it is different from calling it out as work of no or negative value.  And as for autonomy and disempowerment, I presume then living post trauma is more disempowering than death (excluding corpse defiling ATM)?

     

    BTW minor point but Wargame: Red Dragon focuses on 1970 ~ 1990, not WW2 (did WW2 even feature cluster bomb?) :P

  22. Posted

    I have a question.  So I think everyone on this board agrees that depiction of rape is repulsive...  So why is it that it seems to stand out among other repulsive crimes?  I play ton of wargames, and any fellow wargamer do fair share of warmongering and if it's 4X/grand strategy, also dip into occasional genocide.  In the past week I've been playing the heck out of Wargame: Red Dragon and there I thoroughly enjoyed bombing tank formations using cluster bomb or napalming towns to kill dug in infantries because those are really effective tactics.  If landmines are available (they are not  but saying IF) and they are cost effective, I would surely spam those all around the map as well.  Is it the abstraction that let's those just less noticeable?  Then we have Mortal Kombat series one of the main draw of the series is that you execute your opponent after the fight in very gory details.  But I would argue that MK is probably one of the least worrying depiction of ultra violence as it's so fantastical.  So is it that rape and threat of it is very real (but then of course, military oppression or other violent deaths are also very real in some parts of the world so that alone would be bit inconsistent?  or is rape truly more universal than those?)?  Or is it what constitutes rape is constantly challenged by rather large proportion of the society (cause almost every repulsive crimes have some minor elements of the society that challenges it so size ought to be matter) that makes its depiction worse than other crimes where?  Or is it that rape is often presented as really poor means to an end (in most wargames, killing is easily understood and logical means to an end though explosions sure are enjoyable by themselves)  Or is it that they are in theory, all equally objectionable but we are just desensitized to other types?

     

    Because if someone were to tell me that I enjoy horrible things because of the way I play and enjoy Wargame: Red Dragon, that 'feels' like their criticisms are way off but I'm having trouble making a clear distinction (but as you can see, I can think of few but they seem very minute?) between that sort of casual mass killings done in wargames and sexual violence.

  23. Posted

    In the last game I played (Vaulters on one of the easier difficulties) I actually found it more important to keep my military upgraded with the latest and strongest equipment than to increase its size. But that might just be because the Vaulters have that whole teleport-between-cities thing. War was declared on me three or four times, but I only ever needed one army, decked out in the best gear and led by a hero, to win all of them.

     

    It's not unique to vaulters, this is just how the game works due to units gaining XP.  Swarm of weaker units will just end up 'feeding' smaller but more elite force.

     

    2nd army does help a lot in that it lets your units heal up by rotating, but you definitely don't benefit from building 5 stacks or something.

  25. Posted

    I guess? EU4 is also a game about war, but not war all the time because that's unhistorical, even though there's vanishingly little to do in the game besides fight wars and make money to spend on troops or to spend on buildings that make money to spend on troops. It just doesn't feel entirely honest with itself.

     

    I think EU4 is all about getting into wars in specific ways through diplomacy.  The actual war fighting is pretty poor, but how you get into one and what you do prior and after it to make your odds better is where the game primarily excels at.