Markson

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.

I've always assumed that he must speak to the simplest, most violent natures of people. He's a got a great (read: gross) way of stirring up assholes and idiots and giving them justification for feeling "righteous" indignation. I don't get it - this is the kind of shit he does to whip up mobs, and then when they get loose and hurt someone he always doubles back on himself and says "Well, I didn't mean for that to happen." Is he even talking about someone specific, or is this just general bullshit? I guess it doesn't matter.

Hello, hello! I'm Mark, and I live on the east coast of the US. I used to play a lot of actiony type games and shooters, but I've gradually turned into an old man who prefers slow paced games that I can play while listening to podcasts. Huge fan of the forums and glad to be here! Thanks for being such welcoming and cool community!

Easy is hard ;__; I only beat it maybe a week ago. Unlocked a bunch of pods, and the first one I tried was the med bay. It was a really different experience - actually a lot easier, I felt like. I love this game a lot for its mood and aesthetic, but I agree that despite how it might look at first glance it's a really time-consuming and high maintenance game. I like the pendulum effect that sclpls is talking about - I feel that too. I'm still trying to figure out how to best use all the different modules. Sometimes I find a combo that's really good in a certain circumstance, but change the configuration of lit/unlit rooms around and then that combo is suddenly awful. I like it because it keeps me on my toes. I try not to pause the action unless it's absolutely necessary - pausing seems a little overpowered sometimes!

I think it's a really fascinating question to ask "What defines video games as a medium," and I think that Idle Thumbs was perfectly equipped to have such a discussion! Listening to this cast earlier on Matter, and again today, I was reminded of Maxim Gorky's famous "On a Visit to the Kingdom of Shadows" article that he wrote around 1896. If you took a film class in college (or a Russian culture class, probably) they more than likely had you read it - but for those who haven't before, I found the text of it here: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/contest-winner-36-black-and-white-and-in-color The historical context of the article is that this is a famous Russian writer who went to see one of the earliest movies (soundless and colorless) and then wrote an article about his experience. The amazing part, for someone living in the Year of Our Lord PS3 2015 like me, is the terror and bewilderment with which Gorky describes the whole thing. It's amazing, and smart, and so genuine - it's not the kind of experience that I can imagine having today, unless I was a child seeing a film for the first time or something. Writer Lawrence Weschler wrote a short response to the piece (included in the link) about how he believes that the same things Gorky felt can still be felt today, but in a different context. As I understand it, this is what the conversation about film was like when the medium was first created. People were asking questions like, "What is this? How is it unique? What does it mean to be a film? How can film be used to produce experiences and expressions which are unique to other forms of art?" Early Russian filmmakers like Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein were obsessed with the nature of film, and of pushing the medium to become something totally and completely new. They wrote big articles - back and forth to one another, almost, like a conversation - and of course directed and wrote films that they felt were the first steps into a totally new space. Part of that was the whole Soviet attitude towards art, I guess, which was shitty in a lot of ways...but it was really neat in others. One of the early questions about film was, "How is this different from theater?" Lots of early films were pretty much just theater pieces that were captured on film and could be reproduced without the actors or props present. Gradually, to answer this question, Russian and American filmmakers became some of the earliest pioneers in the use of the film camera as an artistic tool. I think there's a similar conversation to be had about the nature of console games vs cabinets, or board games vs video games, etc. But my point is...video games! I have never read anything that is to video games what Gorky's article was to film. I don't doubt that the conversation isn't happening, I just don't know of a definitive article like Gorky's. Does anyone have any interesting articles they've read about what video games are? I think that the indie scene is especially important because a lot of indie developers are like the early pioneers of film - they're still asking "what is a video game?" I imagine that question was asked a lot in the early days of the medium, too. If anyone has watched GameCenterCX before, some of the early interviews with the big devs at Nintendo and Konami were really interesting because, in describing how those games were created, they were talking about how they personally grappled with the nature of video games and how to create new experiences. Anyway, I'm a long-time lurker and I'm sorry if I've droned on too long! I hope I can fit in around here - Happy New Year, all! EDIT: spelling