Chris

I think it only came out for regular sale a couple weeks ago. I think it's totally fair that it's not on sale yet; it's already so cheap and as an indie dev you really want to make sure that you reach the people who are willing to pay "full price" before you start eating into the margin.

That's Kevin "Fragmaster" Bowen from Something Awful, acting out that forum post then adding more (adlibbed?) material, but he posted it as though it were sincere and he the original author.

Psychonauts also came out on PS2.

Until Game of Thrones, I think that was considered his breakout role (and is really good), and I haven't seen Game of Thrones. Although I just checked his filmography and I remember I also have seen him in Living in Oblivion.

This is so good.

I know that they use phrases like that, but those phrases effectively just mean "not exclusive." They're using modifiers that make the word in question mean almost the opposite of what it's supposed to mean. It's like saying someone is "not fully alone" because they're in a room with several other people instead of a hundred people.

There's a big difference though between playing an unfinished game that has yet to be released, and playing an "unfinished" game that has been released and that you pay money to play.

Hell yes.

Yep I agree with all this!

Hey new folks!

It's not that I don't think people should keep trying to make progress, it's that I feel when people DO talk about it from a player standpoint, they're almost always talking about nothing. It isn't that it CAN'T be an interesting and important topic of discussion, it's that it usually ISN'T. It tends to get brought up with a very hand-wavey "bad AI" dismissal that means fairly little. Maybe there are more interesting criticisms going on that I'm not aware of, but it's rarely a useful point in the discussions and reviews I've seen.

I feel this way about the phrase "zero-sum game."

Best

Yes definitely.ALSO I just realized I did the classic internet discussion thing of getting sidetracked on a sub point and then losing the actual thin I meant to say in the first place. Which is this: mental illness completely disregarded, the actual main thing I originally intended to communicate is that I think the MRA stuff this guy was into is a MANIFESTATION of the social forces you brought up in a previous post, rather than the CAUSE of this event. The stated motive of this event, as well as the MRA participation, are BOTH sad results of the more fundamental factors, rather than the event resulting from MRA websites or the codification of a specific MRA ideology. That's what I meant to try and say in my first post in general, not as a reply to any one person.

Yes, I do agree with this. And your point about generalizing "mental illness" is well taken. I obviously don't know the full extent of what actually afflicted this guy. I just don't think most of the rest of the people trying to formulate explanations do either.

Yeah, I mean I do agree with that. But I do also really think there must have been reasons in this particular case that those attitudes affected this person so incredibly deeply. He describes friendships with other men who had similar perceived problems with women he did, including the person who was his best friend for most of his life but became increasingly estranged from him due to the clearly terrifying intensity of his frustration and hatred. It's hard for me not to believe that in addition to his reaction to these social forces and worldview he constructed, he had additional mental imbalances that are probably not specific to those things, but served as a vector that allowed them to culminate in an act of extreme violence.

One thing I should clarify about my thinking on this is that I DO absolutely think there are really terrible cultural forces that perpetuate misogyny and result in many of this guy's views and assumptions. But he was clearly also delusional in significant additional ways.

I, for some goddamn reason, read this guy's "manifesto." I'm pretty convinced the MRA angle of this is a red herring, at least the way it is generally being discussed on blogs and Twitter. I think, more accurately, this guy's internal logic points to the reasons people seek out MRA "communities"—as opposed to the other way around, with MRA communities being the reason that an event like this happens. The internal logic that led to this tragedy had clearly been formulated and reinforcing itself for YEARS before this guy ever found any of those websites. It appears to me that the sites served as an outlet for conclusions he had already reached—which is presumably why those sites exist: because there is a not-insignificant number of people who have convinced themselves of this fucked-up worldview, and they seek out others like them. I don't doubt that there is power in the reinforcing and self-reflecting nature of such communities, but realistically I don't think they created this massacre unto themselves. What IS very clear reading this guy's writing is that he was, for whatever reason, able to marinate in his own toxic thinking for years and years, with his parents seemingly aware that something was wrong but not knowing exactly what to do about it or how. (His home life sounds less than great, and the reporting that he was a spoiled rich kid is overly simplified. He was, essentially, a spoiled baby, it seems, but by the time he was in middle school and high school he appears to have been socioeconomically below the norm for his unusually affluent surroundings. I haven't seen this brought up much, but I think class is a secondary but significant factor here in addition to sex.) I've seen a lot of people claiming that this is the result of an MRA worldview rather than mental illness, and we shouldn't try and sweep it away by claiming the latter, but I think it's hard to believe that some degree of mental imbalance wasn't a significant factor here if you actually parse through the events and circumstances of this guy's life, bearing in mind his own bias in the telling. As vile as their thinking is, most MRAs don't do things like this. (Also, when he alluded to his intentions on such sites, the overwhelming response was disapproval, mockery, and attempts at dissuasion.) I'm not saying any of this to minimize the toxicity and horror of the kind of deep misogyny clearly held by this guy and those who disgustingly approve of his actions. I just feel like the actual causes of this specific event MIGHT be sort of passively misdiagnosed by a lot of people because of larger narrative involved, and misdiagnosis doesn't necessarily lead to beneficial treatment.

I totally buy this, and I also think you guys, intentionally or otherwise, cultivate a general aesthetic that advances this. It's also really hard to separate the experience of playing the game from the knowledge of who makes it and how it is made, which adds further content, even if it's technically "outside" of the game itself. To me that's different to seeing a Hollywood film and having the tacit understanding that it is created and polished by way of a fairly standardized system, even if you are aware of the aesthetic sensibilities of the creators. (Not everyone has to feel this way obviously, it's just my own angle.)

I didn't bring up Brooks. Somebody else did, and I commented on it.

Different people like different things. I keep indicating I'm just talking about what appeals to me. I also find some of his films to be about stuff that resonates beyond its own set of references, but others (like Spaceballs) do not for me and are essentially unwatchable.

The easiest (although imperfect) line for me to draw is that referential humor falls flat for me when the punchline is entirely, or almost entirely, nothing more than a reference itself, and the only reason it's funny is because of the sensation of recognition. This feels incredibly common to me in modern comedy culture. And yes most of Mel Brooks' movies haven't aged well for me. I'm not saying there's anything "wrong," just that that style of humor has not held up for me.

I'm not hardline "against" it, it's just not a style of humor that generally appeals to me in a non-conversational setting.

Richmond and SOMA are basically polar opposite neighborhoods in most respects. SOMA is centrally located adjacent to downtown, the Richmond is farther out north of Golden Gate Park and goes all the way to the ocean. SOMA's residential stock is mainly new condos; the Richmond's is old Victorians and mid-20th century houses split up into apartments, with a couple two- and three-story apartment buildings. SOMA's culture is techie and modern and sort of sterile; the Richmond's is more neighborhoody, old-school, family-friendly. Bars and restaurants in SOMA are fairly thin, you mainly end up going to adjoining neighborhoods like downtown or the Mission; the Richmond has its own main drags (Clement and Geary) with tons of restaurants and bars. SOMA is very transit friendly because of its close proximity to BART, MUNI, and buses; the Richmond is mainly serviced by a few major bus arteries but is not in close proximity to subway or streetcar lines. As far as I'm aware, SOMA is much more expensive than the Richmond at this point, because of its central location and because so much of the tech world is centered there. Anyway they're very different! The Sunset is similar to the Richmond in a lot of ways; it's directly south of the park rather than north. It's also probably a bit trendier these days (especially around the 9th Ave. area), and it's close to a major MUNI line (the N Judah), so I imagine it's also a bit more expensive than the Richmond--at least the parts of the Sunset that are farther north and thus closer to the park and transit.