Roderick

Oh, you meant the anime convention part. Well, I hate to break it to you, but they've been around for the last 15 years, attract upwards to 3000-4000 people per weekend, and cosplay has only increased in popularity in the last decade. It's interesting you say you don't associate it with our nation, since it is very much a 'hidden' subculture or hobby. It's very slowly gaining more acceptance in the mainstream, but in light of the massive popularity of these conventions, it's strange it's still relatively 'taboo'.

You make it sound like a bad thing...! About time we got some (really professional, by the way) coverage of e-sports.

This weekend the Dutch Starcraft League finals were held at the Animecon 2013 and I saw it live. It was amazing to see Starcraft on the big screen, a sight normally associated with a sea of South Koreans. Being in the audience, collective holding your breath or cheering when someone does an amazing play, is super.

Claude Debussy is a great, Romantic composer. I recently heard his Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune in the Amsterdam Hermitage and was immensely moved.

The animation looks delightful! The only concern I have is that they showed little to no gameplay. They talk about how the Kickstarter funds will go towards animating, but where does the game design factor into that? Even if it's 'done in Unity', I'd say you still have to spend a significant chunk of time programming. This just doesn't feel like a 900k game, more like 3-7m. I haven't backed this, and probably won't, because Kickstarter frustratingly still only accepts credit cards and other European-unfriendly nonsense.

Listening to the latest Pod Cast, I went to Candy Box (http://candies.aniwey.net) and was subsequently lost. Let's share tips! I'm in the mid-game somewhere (I think), currently trying to battle my way through the level. That is some hard stuff. Any ideas how to tackle it?

The Chalice of Malice! Double Fine made another fun Kickstarter video. Nuts.

Gosh, I'm no forum master. The place I'm coming from is that I feel that when you have to make that super sharp decision, you get to a focal point that you won't get if you can just list a bunch of runner ups. Sure, I'd have liked to name three more games, but having to pick one (and let's be honest, no one's keeping tabs on what you choose here) offers an opportunity to say a few interesting things about that game without the destraction of 'oh, and also this and this and that, without any further explanation'. That seems more about self-gratification than about saying something about a game and yourself. But if everyone disagrees, I'll just have to put my foot down and threaten to leave these forums. Think of the post count we'll lose! (It really is no problem, no one has to follow any arbitrary rules.)

The one that gives you the fuzziest feeling inside. The one that changed how you looked at things or felt things. The one.

Can this please go on Wikipedia in the article on self-fulfilling prophecies? Or, a flying drone with blades slicing you up? Perhaps the Big Dog topic. Glad to see you're still in one piece though!

Countdown to demolition!

Roger van Oech wrote in his book A Whack on the Side of the Head, some thirty years ago, some of the key principles behind creative thinking: don't be afraid to fail, don't think it's not 'your area', don't be afraid to act the fool. Good advice. No one is born creative. In a study between a large group of people, the key difference between the people who were creative and those who weren't, was that the ones that were thought they were creative, and the ones that weren't didn't. I love I just got to use weren't didn't in a row. It is good to foster ambitions, to try things out. It seems like you're already crippled by fear of making a mistake, so you're unwilling to commit to anything. That's a surefire way of ensuring you truly won't get anywhere, ever. Try stuff out, see where your passions lie, find out what you can do to make your community, or the world, a better and nicer place. I feel that what you perhaps need is a whack to the side of the head. If I were in an ungenerous mood, I'd look at this topic and read 'I have a problem in my life, please solve it for me'. You complain you have no ambition, no creativity and no talent, and yet you confess to being immature and loath to change that. How about you start working at a thing you love, building up skills and feeling good about yourself - not for what you have consumed and what you've arbitrarily become, but for what you have created and chosen to be? Taking the victim role and indulging in self-pity is a dead-end street.

WAIT WAIT WAIT. Before this derails, I think this thread will have the most value if everyone picks one, and only one game. Pulling off lists and second choices might be personally gratifying, but I think it's much more interesting if you HAVE to choose. So, Sno, you have to whittle it down, man. And Zeus, no cheatsies. My favorite game has to be Morrowind. It's not just about the hours I sunk in, but the experience the game offers. Arriving as a stranger on strange shores, having to delve into various alien cultures, and a story arc that has you slowly seeking political, rather than physical, power. The customizability and sheer creativity that you could put into your play are unrivalled in later Elder Scrolls games. I love how this game doesn't insult your intelligence, and has you seeking out obscure locations with only trifling instructions. Here's a game that tasks you to travel to a huge, dark ruin to find a tiny, tiny Dwemer box, while certainly not guiding the way with arrows, compasses or a quest marker on a minimap. Nope, you'll just have to find the damn thing yourself. Games have shied away from this challenge, which wasn't about difficulty so much as putting in effort. I had to work and sweat to get through Morrowind and its beautiful expansions, and because of that the experience was much more powerful. Most games offer cleaner and smoother rides, and don't have nearly the emotional impact because of it. 130 hours of Skyrim feel a lot less impressive, because in that game, though I created my own challenge, I rarely felt truly challenged - in an exploratory way, not a 'boss difficulty' way. On a personal note, this was the first game I played where at the end of most dungeons and cellars and so on, there usually was nothing. No chest, no prize, not a thing. At first, that annoyed me, but then gradually I started to really appreciate just the objective of exploring caverns without needing a carrot dangling before me on a stick. Jumping on top of a huge waterfall rock inside a murky cave is its own reward. Morrowind taught me that. I'm rambling. Morrowind is magical.

Fair point, Zeus. I had a lot of fun with Revelations, check out an earlier post I wrote about it, probably in the topic about AC.

Good luck with this new thing you're cooking! I liked the first episode, despite knowing zilch about LOMAs. I also need some getting used to licensed rock music book-ending the podcast. It's not bad, just never done before on Idle Thumbs. Keep it up.

I just returned from jaw surgery. My face is numbed from lip to earlobe. It was an interesting experience. I had to have a small leftover inflammation removed from the roots of a molar. I had local anaesthesia, so regrettably no fun laughing gas. As always, you expect it to be quite an ordeal, but once you're in the chair, it's just all so bizarre and interesting that you have zero time to freak out. Now I'm cooling my face with a bottle of coke. Really, I'm a lot more miffed that during the X-rays, they found yet another inflammation on the other side, that the dentist apparently missed. So I've got another root canal treatment to look forward to. It's about time this funny business stops.

The Nintendo podcast I recorded last Sunday (in Dutch) is online! It's split up in various parts, I can be heard discussing the future of Nintendo in the second round (under my real name, Roderick). http://www.ngamer.nl/ngamer-afscheidspodcast.html'>http://www.ngamer.nl/ngamer-afscheidspodcast.html So, this is for all the Dutchmen here!

Gotta say that my goodness that Rollercoaster of Death piece is brilliant.

Wow, didn't you have a hard time with the last levels of the first one? I remember that being a huge pain in the butt, but that might also have been due to playing on the console rather than PC.

That is a harsh prediction, but you back it up with solid reasoning. I don't see it so gloomy, however. My prediction is still that the Wii U will be another Gamecube: small user base, no outside appeal, but still loved well enough to support Nintendo. Looking around, I hear so many people saying they'll buy a Wii U in a year or so, when it's gone down in price and has a library, that it's easy to see it garner an unimpressive but life-sustaining audience after a desert year that's still to come. In terms of keeping up with the Joneses: who are the Joneses? Put in other words: what role have third party games ever played on Nintendo consoles? It doesn't matter that they won't appear on the Wii U, since the only thing that has ever historically mattered are the first party games, and perhaps a few exceptions from Capcom. If Nintendo keeps building the Marios, Zeldas, Pikmen, Metroids and whatnots, the system will not only garner attention, it will be a good system. Nintendo is the only company who can and will get away with that. They will. So, I don't think we'll see a new system two years from now. Nintendo is going to double down on the Wii U and suck it up until they can eke out a respectable existence, even if they have to put the onus on the increasingly popular 3DS (31 million units sold at last tally). (I fully agree with you that they could've made different decisions and completely blew the marketing and lost 70% of their audience on both accounts, but if anyone can make that work, it's them. They've been in tougher spots.)

That's a power that only Peter Molyneux, the god-maker, can bestow. [ADDED] It just occurred to me that the video message was basically zombo.com. You can do anything!

You're absolutely right! Funny enough, I read the novels the exact other way, and was still smitten by his careful mastery of prose.

J. Allard of Xbox fame, and J. Allard of Xbox fame.

The big Dutch gaming sites are gamer.nl, insidegamer.nl and maybe tweakers.net? Powerunlimited.nl? All of those are more along the lines of an IGN. Oh, I forgot that recently a Dutch version of IGN launched, but it's quite bad. Something like Polygon WOULD be amazing, but I doubt it'd be sustainable. Control could be an appropriate platform, but rarely does long-form or too in-depth.

True, but none of those are really Nintendo-centric. For the industry inside there's already Control magazine that caters to the professionals. Further than that, I doubt magazines have a big future. The decline has set in, that's undeniable. The internet is filling that gap, but there's a long way to go before that manages to offer a decent pay for quality writing (in most cases). It's strangely fitting that [N]Gamer should perish at the time when Nintendo itself is struggling to get attention for the Wii U. Though the 3DS has proven itself artistically and commercially.