Salka

Ohhh ho ho ho. So d'ya think the 'misunderstanding' might have been because you used the words 'hate' and 'contempt' instead of 'don't feel accepted? Any other words you forgot to mention you didn't mean to use? Why don't you fuck off? Basically, NOW the reason I don't understand you is because I'm female? For some reason, that has never occurred to ANYBODY else here to say, ever. That is the lamest excuse. Because I'm female? Fuck you. Fucking fuck you. Before I just disagreed strongly with you, now I hate you. Do you understand that if you had said that to my face in a non-internet situation, I would have punched you in the stomach? If any of the guys here, even the guys I know, had said that to my face, even if somebody I respect said it to me, I'd stamp on their toes at the very least. I realize you said 'a lot of women can't believe the sick shit blah blah blah' at the end of that sentence. Whatever your justification is for saying or thinking it, fuck you, you arrogant little prick. Here are some other reasons I might not being understanding you, other than being female; a) Reading what you write is like trying to untangle a piece of thread. You accidentally used words that meant completely different things from the words you apparently meant to use. c) You keep skiving around the primary question I was asking.

John Carmack has never been my favourite designer, true. But first of all I said for you to give an example of a designer, and you said you were talking more about the programmers working on the games than the designers themselves. Now I asked for an example of any of of these guys, and you give me a single game designer. But is there anybody else? I can't just say that all Movie Directors are gay just because Bahz Luhrman is, and maybe some other guy. And Bill Gates isn't even IN the game industry. That's like me saying all movie directors are gay because Baz Luhrmann is, and so is George Michael. Or something.

I am plenty aware of crap and/or disappointing games. I would like an example of these incredibly sad males that are apparently entering the game industry in great abundance to make games because they hate people. I also went back through my posts in this thread and HIGHLIGHTED in bold EVERY SINGLE TIME I asked this question. If you think POP is an answer, it's not. You can't say that the people working on POP:WW were social rejects just because the game wasn't good, or as good as it could have been.

Man. a) where am I misunderstanding you in my original post? where are you drawing the conclusion from that most people working in game design are social rejects with a contempt for the general public blah blah blah? a) I haven't told you my opinion on the topic, I have merely disagreed with one point you made, or may not have made, but you don't even seem to know. Cute? Naive? Right. You're not answering the first question I asked, you're simply moving on to other, completely irrelevant topics of conversation. Do you even know what you're talking about?!? I don't see how any of what you posted since I asked that question is relevant at all.

Your point being that Game Designers/in the games industry are motivated by social rejection, and want to achieve greatness to overcome their lack of social skill, are spurred by dread and puberty, and they only create games that they want to play because they hate the general public, and since women don't factor in their lives they make games that don't appeal to women because to them, women are simply 'objects of unknown specification'? An overflow of FPS with no real storyline tells you that's a valid point? Why? I don't know where you're from, but in this country the young people going in to programming courses, and indeed people that have graduated from them in the past decade, are happy, smart and intuitive people, and certainly have no more or less skills in social interaction than people going in to any other course. They have no more or less social hatred or don't view women as unobtainable objects any more than any other people. It still sounds like you're talking rubbish. You also seem to have deviated from your original point, which is the one I disagree so strongly with. But I'm having a hard time trying to separate your paragraphs, so I can't really tell. I don't hate you, I just disagree with pretty much everything you say. Not because I want to, but because we obviously have very different opinions on things. Then I apologize for any remarks I may have made about how difficult it is to understand you, but I thought paragraphs were a universal thing.

You see, usually, when you post on a discussion thread, and somebody counters or questions your opinion, you defend it and back it up, not just throw around remarks like 'lame' or 'how did I see that one coming'. I think what you said was ridiculous, and I said so. Can you come up with examples of such game designers as the ones you described? This time, without the pre-teen 'come-back'? It's a proper discussion and I'm sure you're more than capable, if you put your mind to it. EDIT: Congratulations for editing your post and making it worthwhile. I would still like you to give some examples of where you drew this sad conclusion from, and where exactly I 'misunderstood' you. Why wouldn't I understand? And if you're going to bother attempting to post your opinions on an internet forum where people with bother to read it and discuss it, surely you SHOULD care enough to clarify yourself?

Whoa! Are you kidding?! Game Designers are motivated by social rejection, and want to achieve greatness to overcome their lack of social skill, are spurred by dread and puberty, and they only create games that they want to play because they hate the general public?!??? And since women don't factor in their lives they make games that don't appeal to women!?? Because to them, women are simply 'objects of unknown specification'?! That's the craziest thing I've ever heard. Can you name a couple of designers that you got this idea from? Or what tabloid newspaper/womens magazine?

No she doesn't. I was joking. And I love FF7 really. I find it to be dreamy. Not kidding. You should play it the whole way through right now and find out how wrong I am.

I know there are some people that love this game, but I found it really boring and unoriginal. The deep characters aren't so deep, they're just cliched Japanese anime characters. Aeris' death isn't so sad, it's actually kind of lame, if not totally unwarranted. I didn't even really know her. I just remember thinking, "thank god it wasn't Yuffie or one of Tifa's breasts." The whole game has a kind of depressing air about it. There were a few highlights; I really liked seeing because it opened up an area of character relationships that we rarely see in games. Usually it's all just sugar and candy and buttercups. But other than that, it was just a mediocre game. I especially hated because it was totally lame and frustrating and NOT fun. I liked because it was hilarious. That's pretty much it. As I said, I didn't find it too fascinating. But I know a lot of other people did and I respect that. Because if I don't say that they'll start getting bitchy on my ass and start hammering me with FF7 crap, telling me I'm wrong and that the characters are incredibly deep and blah blah blah and all this other shit you and I know probably isn't true, but there you have it.

Oh, I wish I'd added 'bud-dum-TSH!!!' to the end of the first paragraph, because then it would look like I'd totally meant to make that pun, and that it was clever writing, and then I'd look cleverer and that would pretty much rule.

My Mom and I are staying alone in a hotel tonight. It's closed for January and, since my Mom is the manager there, she gets to babysit the ghosts. Not joking. This place is supposedly haunted. It's a big old mansion that was turned into a hotel a couple of years ago, and one of the big selling points of the rooms is that they're haunted. A great selling point, until customers come screaming down the stairs, refusing to go back to their room until the ghostly man with the knife stops stabbing the shadow on the bed. I'm here right now. I'm typing this on a hotel computer. It's really hard for me to touchtype like I ordinarily do, because there's no little bump on the F and J keys like I'm used to. Anyway, I'm not superstitious, right? But this place DOES give me the creeps. Apparently, the owners of this mansion, back in the late 1800's, had a child and she was disabled -not mentally, but physically- so they locked her in the attic for her entire life, and that's why I'm listening to chains rattling in the attic right now, as I type this. She rattles those chains out of anger, and possibly hunger. You'd think somebody would have either a) let her out of the attic or taken away her chains by now. Only then she'd probably just bang the floor with her feet or something, I don't know. Anyway, that's not the only scary thing about this place. I am sitting in the lobby right now, opposite massive, heavy, resident evil-style double main doors that creak forebodingly when you open them. Only I can't open them, because my mother has the key. It's called the Lobby Key. She left it in the Ballroom, which is locked at the front, so I have to go down to the unlit kitchen, up the back corridors and a flight of dark, unlit stairs. With a torch that has a faltering beam. I'm not making this stuff up. And then when I get into the Ballroom, I can use the keys to unlock the door from the inside, which should bring me back out onto the main corridor. Here's the worst part; down the hallway, past the portrait of the previous owner of the mansion (his eyes FOLLOW YOU DOWN THE HALLWAY), there is a board room, The Bolton Suite. On the mantle piece, just under the SHOTGUN (which, supposedly, is only a display piece...) there is a gem. I'm not lying. The gem belongs to one of the grandfather clocks in the Mansion, or possibly the clock above the mantle piece in the lobby, nobody is sure. They kept meaning to find out, but then the place closed up for January, so it's just there... dormant... waiting to be fitted into the right place and open up some secret passage or something. Probably. In the lobby... I wish I had a camera to take a picture of this guy, but... there is a painting of a man, I think he had something to do with the previous owner. His eyes constantly watch you. No matter where in the Lobby you sit, he's watching, silently, with this kind of a smirk on his face. But sometimes, if you stand in the corner, it looks like a frown. And there are noises. Besides the rattling chains in the attic, there are other noises. The wind howling down the chimney sounds like ghosts, for instance. And this place has big massive windows and heavy double doors, massive heavy velvet curtains and thick carpets... perfect for a Resident Evil setting. Oh, except the back stairs and 'secret' staff corridors... they're all mouldy and crumbly-looking, with bloodstains from where the chefs have probably emptied buckets of blood or something, I don't know. I hope it was the chefs, anyway. Some of them look like drag marks. Speaking of blood, the 'ice cream refridgerator' is filled with dead bodies. Well, sort of. Lots of meat, and legs. Many legs. And some of the bags have split open, causing cold, watery blood to spill across the fridge. The bag above the ice cream buckets split too, and now the vanilla ice cream is covered in blood. Across the room from me right now, there is a vase. I really want to put it in my pocket, and perhaps use it with the broken fountain in the back garden. Or maybe I should check out that spooky, empty swimming pool. Hmm. Hmmmmm. HMMMMMMMMMM.

Man, you are all so friggin' ungrateful. You're making my head hurt.

I don't know. Think of something. Psychonauts Box Art or something.

Um, how about I'm not groping for another shout-out to past Schafer games, but suggesting that the article should have referred to them regarding dialogue trees, as well as using KOTOR as an example? Seeing as the article is about Schafer/Psychonauts and all. I'm not 'groping for another shout-out' or anything like that at all. I'm certainly not offended by it. I'm sure these guys don't sit at their PCs and think of ways to irritate people that used to play Adventure Games. Anyway, it's a ridiculously trivial matter, and definitely not worth arguing about.

I recently acquired a couple of ancient PCs from the good old days. My particular favourite is this one 386sx Pc, with a tiny little 15'' monitor, running Windows 3.1. It brings back memories of the times when I used to listen to the Eurythmics while trying to copy DOTT backgrounds in a copy of DPaint we got with PC World magazine, and then turning it up to drown out the sound of my parents screaming at each other and throwing things around because they couldn't agree on exactly what shade of blue the sky was. Anyway, while this 386 is nearly exactly the same as the computer I remember using as a child (ours was also sx, not dx), it doesn't appear to have a sound card. Apparently, not all PCs had sound cards back then. And I was thinking... wouldn't it be neat to be able to get my hands on an old soundblaster pro card? I could reinstall Dr Sbaitso and The Talking Parrot for the first time in... 13 years! (Actually, I still have Sbaitso on this PC). Is it true that not all PCs came with sound cards back then? It seems somewhat unbelievable, like a tale of distant times long ago passed. And can I buy a new sound card for it? Probably not, because of driver compatability issues and whatnot with Windows 3.1... also, that'd probably screw up playing old games on it, even if I could. Is there a chance I might find a really lousy soundcard somewhere in the deepest and darkest corners of PC world that might do the job? Does Intel make Intel EXTREME Sounds? Ha ha! Ha. Out in the shed, in the corner, there's my old 386. It died long ago. Perhaps I could take the sound card from that. That was a Soundblaster. Would I be able to find the drivers for it? Anyway, never mind that. Tell me about your day or, alternatively, the first time you ever owned a Sound Card. What was life like when your head was floating in a thick, treacle-like space of silence? What was your first reaction to SOUND? Were you like, "Man, I though all people could listen to this sweet, sweet music," or were you more like, "Man, holy crap!!!" or perhaps, "Blah blah blah where do you put the toast in this sound card blah blah I'm taking you back to the store, you're not even a KETTLE"? Do tell!

Yeah, but to start in to the origin of dialogue trees would have been going pretty much off topic to the article. However, mentioning Schafer's previous work with them would have been more relevant. Geez, he could have even said, "Though not as deeply involved as, say, KOTOR, or Schafer's previous work..." That way, nobody invented the friggin' dialogue trees, they mention star wars, they mention Schafer's use of dialogue trees before KOTOR was even born, and they got to say 'Schafer's previous work' which makes them sound more educated or something. It's a win-win situation. Except that last part, that's dumb because I just made it up.

"On second thoughts, maybe this is a bad time to mention that," Ninja said thoughtfully, as he edited his post and removed the bit about the wave.

I'm sure acknowledging the use of dialogue trees in Schafer's past games as well as in KOTOR wouldn't have been too hard. What, seven or eight extra words?

We had all sorts of early home computers, real 80's looking stuff, but our first PC was a 386sx with a 40 MB hard disk, which was neat. The second PC we got was a 486dx with a 60 MB hard disk, probably pretty much like yours, and it was amazing because 7th Guest looked so friggin' amazing in comparison to any graphic adventure we'd ever played. We were just awestruck. It was amazing. I mean, the game was crap, but it looked gorgeous! In those days, I mean.

Besides, it kind of sounded like bullshit to me.

Man, shut up! Shut UP!!! You're not even Irish!!! We don't sing songs any more when we're drinking. Not since camcorders were invented, anyway. It was alright before that, when nobody remembered how stupid we all looked. But now we even have camcorder PHONES, so the risks are too great.

Ha ha ha, I thought we could pick up that mailbox, ha ha ha, dumbass. Wait, wait wait wait, wait. Your calculator had Tetris!?? And what's 'riding shotgun'?

Man, arghhh, I hate people like your Dad. They're the sort of people that come in and say crap like, "So does this PC have a modem to put disks in to?" or they'll point at the monitor and say "Does this hard drive have a place to download games from my CDs on to?". If you're buying a PC and you know nothing about them, do what normal people do, and at least do a little bit of research on them. Once, I swear to god, somebody came in and asked where you put the bread. SHE THOUGHT THE PRINTERS WERE TOASTERS. She wasn't even OLD or blind or anything. And another time, somebody came back with a keyboard and said that he'd bought it yesterday, and he couldn't find out where to plug it in to the TV and turn it on, where to plug in the telephone line, and also did you have to buy a separate attachment to put floppy disks into? THIS WAS LAST WEEK. You motherfuckers, you make my weekends so much harder, and my work day so much longer.

Wow, I was previously unaware of this massive, silent, poverty-stricken portion of the computer owning population of old. I imagined ALL kids must have sound cards like I did. Little did I realize it was a privilage, man. Some kids had to play Pinball Dreams with no sound, or Secret of Monkey Island with PC Speakers. Sound Cards didn't just come as standard? Crazy.

Yeah, sorry Jake, I just properly read that page through and I'm eating my words. You can still get a not-shit Mac over here for $699. You know, including the monitor and keyboard and mouse and speakers. Geez.