Chris

Horribly, the title is sort of a lie, because "Dishonored return" implies Nick has not actually returned. We are the worst.

That isn't my point at all. My point is that nothing needs to be "excused" in the first place. The game can succeed or fail, but it has no inherent responsibility to do any particular thing.

Well, no it doesn't. I've out of my way to say that that's a completely valid line of criticism as far as I'm concerned. For example: "If it fails in its accountability to its own goals, I think that's a more interesting line of criticism than it failing to be accountable to the real-world models you would have liked the designers to chase but which they didn't." I know I've said things to that effect more than once.

He got a job at Telltale as a game writer.

I don't know, but people who have made tons of money very frequently run into extreme financial problems because of their own mismanagement. The money from the sale had to go somewhere, and where else would it have gone besides to those who owned the company?

I think this is frequently the case. I've had that instinct myself sometimes and I have to consciously bat it away.

As far as I'm aware, Ron made a LOT of money in the sale of Humongous Entertainment. He's doing fine. I'm saying that not officially as a DF employee, because obviously we have no direct insight into his finances, just as someone who has been generally aware of his movements over the years.

If your implication is that there is somehow any connection between Nick's new job and Ron leaving DF, I can comment that there isn't!

It is my opinion that SimCity has a lot more to say about simulation game design than about actual real-world cities. Presumably quite early on in development, they made certain decisions about 1:1 simulation and reducing municipal service micromanagement by having those services become part of the actual skeleton of your city inherently--and that skeleton is based on roads, because for the most part in the relatively modern developed world, even in very progressive cities, cities are structured around roads, and have been before cars existed. That's not to say that's the only way ever corner of a city can be built, just that with the fairly ambitious simulational goal that Maxis set out to achieve, I can clearly see that they needed some kind of fairly comprehensible and consistent metaphor for city structure that needs to be universal. For example, you can't just zone a a bunch of residential without roads out in the middle of undeveloped land. Why not? For one thing, in this game, areas don't just become abstractly populated--sims have to actually move in in a very direct way, because of very fundamental goals this game has about the simulation. So how do they get there? They drive there. Could they just walk there? Sure, theoretically, but then you're suddenly dealing with a bunch of multiplicatively complex AI systems like pathfinding without a clear road system. So then maybe the game say you can build a road OR a walkway, and either one is equally find for extending the area of your city. And so and and so on--there are a million additional dependencies that you can continue to tack on. Now, there's nothing that says they had to choose this simulational model in the first place. But making the first new SimCity in a decade, it's entirely understandable to me that they would want to bite off a totally different model and follow it through to its logical conclusion. Maybe it's not for everyone. But the way the cities in this game work to me seem to be a very sensible result of the way they chose to build the simualation. I DO think it would be entirely possible, now that this game system is proven out and will have some amount of time in the wild (once it starts working properly anyway), for Maxis to start working on an expansion that drastically expands out from this system, using the current model as a base and saying, for example, "How can we logically extend this out to allow for zoning areas that are heavily based around public transit?" or whatever. But those are going to be massive design questions to answer and I think it's almost certainly for the best that Maxis took the approach they did with the initial release of this game, given the early design goals they apparently set for themselves. For whatever reason, I just don't think Maxis is as beholden to replicating reality as completely as possible as you do. I think Maxis chose some design goals first and foremost, and did their best to be true to those; and I find those design goals interesting enough that I find the resulting game interesting and compelling, at least in theory--there are still some complaints I have even within that context. But look at something like "Civilization." Actual civilization still exists now in reality, and in the game Civilization you can reach the year 2013, and yet that series rarely takes hits for not modeling civilization as accurately as might be theoretically possible. Ultimately, Civilization uses the passage of history as its starting point, but is largely accountable to a particular game design ethic more than anything else; I feel SimCity is the same way. Some entries in the SimCity series have different goals in that respect; this one has one, SimCity 4 has another. I still think being accountable to an interesting design conceit is more interesting and admirable than being accountable to essentially nothing other than bombast and spectacle, which is what many large-budget games are. If it fails in its accountability to its own goals, I think that's a more interesting line of criticism than it failing to be accountable to the real-world models you would have liked the designers to chase but which they didn't.

Clayton is a senior designer at Microsoft! I think he's got a pretty sweet setup where he has a really stable (probably much better paying than DF could ever be) day job, while getting to do his indie-scale stuff on his own time with Ron.

Great post, Brian. Even if I came away with a different overall impression, your points are well taken.

I'm going to third that. I've only read the first two, but there were a few days in between and I could tell even just based on that that it was the correct method.

He's not joking--his previous non-DF game was also a casual iOS game, The Big Big Castle. Ron does a lot of mobile gaming and enjoys very small-scale development where it's just him and his artist Clayton, with whom he has been collaborating ever since the Cavedog days.

I think that's a reasonable interpretation, but I don't entirely buy it because much more mundane recollections had exactly the same level of incredible recall of detail.

You make a lot of good points but since I'm at work I'm just going to be a jerk and cherry-pick one of them to respond to in the interest of time: the Receiver one. I don't think Receiver is a good comparison. Receiver is about one specific kind of interaction and absolutely nothing else--all of the other systems in the game are incredibly rote and undeveloped; they only exist to support this one specific conceit, which is that you use a gun realistically. I don't think there is an example of a recreational city simulator that could be compared to that--by the nature of what a city is, there are so many interdependent systems that in order to even come close to modeling enough of them to create a workable city simulator in a format that's fun for people to play, you have to abdicate a lot of fidelity and depth SOMEWHERE. (Maybe in the wrong places, though.) Also, for what it's worth, I don't think you're disagreeing with me when you say you think SimCity represents American cities (or potential American cities) poorly. I tried to indicate I think that's a completely valid line of criticism. Edit: One thing about Anno. Even within individual Anno games, they DO have aesthetically separate city sets (ie, Occidental vs. Oriental) but they are the simulational equivalent of palette swaps. They operate fundamentally identically and most buildings have no difference beyond artwork and name. Also, regardless of what year the Anno game is--1404 vs 2070, for example--the actual economic and municipal models work identically.

Well, the answer to "why" is subjective, because you could obviously make a good version of either game. But one answer is that this still allows a certain type of fidelity that you don't get with the more abstract method. Even if sims are going to a different job every day, you're still modeling the effect of X number of sims having to find a way to X number of jobs every day in a discrete fashion, through some combination of available foot traffic, car traffic, buses, streetcars, and intercity commuting. Same goes for X number of injured or sick sims having to fill X beds in a hospital, or X number of police patrol cars having to deal with X criminals, or firefighters with fires, or whatever. It might be your belief that that specific type of fidelity is less satisfying than the benefits you get with larger-scale abstraction, but I don't think it makes it a foregone conclusion that one is not worthwhile on its face. Also, to your earlier point about what a simulation means politically: I agree that the choices made in a simulation absolutely present a worldview. And on a purely personal level I would have liked to see this game include a lot more focus on a lot of the things you also seem to want it to have. But the part of your post I'm less clear about is your (apparent) contention (and I could be misinterpreting you) that it is inherently dishonest or undesirable for the game to advance any worldview at all. What is the alternative to that? Would it be a simulation that picks which systems are more effective at random? A game is just software--at some point, someone has to write algorithms that work a certain way. The kind of city that SimCity represents is not the kind of city that I prefer to live in. In every city I've made, I've filled it up with streetcars and buses because it's appealing to me, and I don't much care if it's optimal or not. But you keep bringing up European cities and I don't see why Maxis is under any particular moral responsibility to represent European cities rather than some other kind. I mean, as you point out, there are a few novelty European buildings--but EVERYTHING ELSE in the game is clearly modeled after American cities. I don't buy the argument that by calling it "SimCity" rather than "Sim American City," Maxis has exceeded some arbitrary authority. I mean, "Anno 1404" doesn't represent a single thing going on outside the specific European-style fiefdoms the game chooses to represent, even though in the year 1404 AD there was an entire planet of other stuff going on. Again, as a matter of taste, I'm bummed out that Maxis didn't choose to allow for broader and more modern approaches to municipal planning. And even divorced from taste, I think you could make a perfectly good case that in the kind of cities that SimCity chooses to represent, Maxis STILL failed to take into account plenty of legitimate planning, transit, and revenue models. That to me is totally legitimate, and I agree. But if they didn't even attempt to make a game about, say, modern socialist European city planning techniques, well, so be it. I think it's clear to everyone that this game broadly represents American cities, which are pretty much universally hooked into the national interstate system and are built around road networks built for cars. You may not like that that's how American cities have developed, but it's true. Now, if they've misrepresented (or underserved) what is possible with THOSE cities, then I think those weaknesses are fair game for criticism. But when it comes to wishful thinking that they didn't bite off the particular other culture you would have wanted them to focus on in their game, I guess that's just too bad. You might be better served simply looking into any of the other city simulators that aim to represent those cultures. I mean, that's part of what makes games creative works and not just emotionless systems. That's why it IS interesting to compare American city builders and European ones. I wouldn't criticize a European city simulator for not being an American one. But you might very well criticize either one for giving short shrift to the cities they aim to model.

I think that's a very poor basis of criticism. Raising a hundred grand doesn't make her a different person. Idle Thumbs isn't a different podcast because we raised $140k. That money allowed us the equipment and office to make it in a way that actually meshed with our lives in sane way, but it doesn't fundamentally alter the content we discuss or how we discuss it, and it wouldn't make sense to assume it would.

I entirely disagree. I watched the video, accepted her argument, and thought she presented it well with plenty of supporting evidence. I think it's quite naive to assume that the merit of an argument or claim is directly proportional to how many words of discussion it generates on its core topic. Humans are hugely imperfect and can get distracted by all kinds of other factors, whether they're conscious of it or not.

That's a huge part of it, but it's not the only reason. Most game jobs also generate a lot less money. Valve generates a huge amount of revenue; most independent developers do not. Mine sure doesn't. Game studios tend to be smaller and shut down much more frequently than tech firms, with the exception of tiny tech startups. But tech startups at least have the potential of being cushioned by big VC investment, which in games is really only possible for very specific kinds of studios (and less so than a few years ago). Games, in part because they are entertainment products, are hugely unpredictable financially. Of course nobody can ever predict the financial performance of any product, but entertainment is subject to subjective taste and cultural whims even moreso, I believe.

Yep. It's really unfortunate if someone who allegedly supports the general point she's trying to make is unwilling to get over an arguable minor linguistic faux pas. (I say arguable because I didn't see it as a problem, but I acknowledge that some people do. But even if so, is it really worth getting this stubbornly hung up over?) I don't think I would even try to make a podcast if I knew people were going to be parsing me that way.

This nails it as far as I'm concerned. She had a very modest and straightforward goal, and she is very obviously delivering on it. I think it's crazy how intensely people are talking about what THEY wish this should be or what they think it SHOULD be. She said she was going to make a bunch of videos about tropes in video games as they relate to depictions of women. She is obviously doing that. Fine, it's not your favorite video in the world. I have never seen so many pages of people on Thumbs complaining that a particular internet video is not exactly what they think it should be, or not as emotional as they think it should be, or not as unemotional as they think it should be, or not as objective, or not as subjective, or not as detailed, or not containing the right examples, or enough examples. Maybe there are places on the internet where this kind of bizarrely obsessive analysis of internet videos is common, but I've sure never seen it done this doggedly on this forum, and it bums me out that this is the video where it happens. It isn't very flattering to the discussion here, because it plays into the exact stereotype of how women are held to a different arbitrary standard than men whenever they open their mouths about video games. I almost NEVER say this because I don't generally think it's useful. But I'm going to now. To all the people endlessly picking Sarkeesian apart: if, as most of you seem to claim, you do actually sympathize with her cause, just not her execution, then I find it strange you're putting so much effort into these nitpicky concerns. Just make something better if it's TRULY that important to you. If her cause is NOT that important to you, then maybe give it a rest? I'm pretty sure you've made your point by now, and there really can't be all that much more say about it. Again, I don't usually bust out the "if you don't like it, make something better" line. I usually in fact dislike it. But there is a VERY disproportionate and atypical amount of effort being put into the criticism of this video--a video that is only one single first part of a series--and surely that effort could be spent elsewhere.

She spent what I think is an appropriate amount of time talking about some of the most successful and widely-known games of all time--games that even people who don't play video games know. Those are games that are absolutely medium-defining. It makes perfect sense to me that especially in the first video they would be the focus. But in terms of communicating breadth beyond that point, I think the montage she put together succeeded extremely well. The whole point of this thing is "tropes." She picked a trope to start with, and used a massive number of examples to demonstrate it. It's absurdly unfair to act as if she should have thought of every single possible example and angle conceivable in a single video. I really feel like people are holding this video to a ridiculously specific standard that is quite unusual and intimidating. Set aside the amount of money she earned, and ask yourself if you get this grumbly and obsessive about all the things that could have theoretically been said in the rest of the internet videos you watch? This is a series, and there's only been one episode released so far. I'm really glad Idle Thumbs episodes don't get put under this level of scrutiny, even though we similarly made much more money on Kickstarter than we expected to. I realize there's a difference in that we just pitch our podcast as informal conversation, but I still feel people are subjecting Sarkeesian's thing to a weirdly heightened level of judgment.

Oh yeah, no doubt. There are clearly a lot of people there who really love digging into the era and creating something really visually evocative of it. But on the narrative side, I don't see that being as much the case. It doesn't really come close to living up to visual side of things, either from a historical point of view or just in terms of general quality. In general it seems like people trying to make An Impressive Narrative Driven-Franchise are almost always unwilling to restrain themselves from putting in endless ridiculous lore and crazy twists. Agreed, really fun game.

Did Argobot actually say anything inaccurate? I don't think she did, but if you do, maybe you could respond directly to that instead of just "ugh, buzzwords, baggage."

I guess I mean the Assassin's Creed dev team specifically. I think the aesthetic sensibilities of a team that's making a game where you're a badass pseudo-secret assassin who performs sick kills with hidden arm blades are different than the aesthetic sensibilities of a team aiming to make a relatively slow-paced pulled-out simulation-driven city builder.