Nachimir

I heard end of 2014, but that's basically just a rumour. I'm pretty certain they're not going to rush it though. There are two really good reasons for them to wait: 1080p displays getting cheaper, and more widespread developer uptake. Edit: Serenity looks pretty nice, and reminds me of Skipping Stones. Lovely!

I was really busy when Muppjockey first posted these, but thought exactly the same. Glorious

Players seem to be developing an okay understanding of alpha/beta, and setting their expectations accordingly. I think early access is a really good thing; it doesn't just smooth cashflow for developers but give them an indication of interest. I bet if enough developers share figures, that'll become relatively predictable over time too. Enough developers hate free to play models (or any merging of business model and game design) that I don't think we're being plunged into a murky future.

I've been playing Strike Suit Zero with it, and it works well. Much less sickening than FPS, but occasionally it gives you these amazing moments of vertigo as you look down at something huge passing beneath you.

That ban is still in effect in the UK, but is more specifically for any gay man that has been sexually active in the past year. It used to be a lifetime ban. Also, our blood service was recently sold off to a private company set up by Mitt Romney. From the fact that they can screen my blood for STIs but apparently not gay dudes blood, to the symbolism of an equity firm literally bleeding me (in a country where privatisation has traditionally borne terrible results), blood stuff is awful here right now.

I took a quick look at that before leaving Nottingham, and man: It is so much more populated that OKC. Nonetheless, the difference between OKC in a city as small as Nottingham and one as big as London is night and day. After an hour of looking and messaging people, it seems a lot easier here. Maybe PoF would have been similar there, and I'll try it when I return for a bit, but the heavy demographic skew toward students made it difficult for me, and above those ages I tended to find a lot of bored people in Nottingham who weren't sure what they wanted to do. That's a small sample size though. OKC is pretty poor up there; possibly more a reflection of it than the city.

Yes, there's going to be a PC version of Towerfall.

I think this combined with ricochets might be interesting. Or being able to blink between multiple, slow moving shots could make for some good timing puzzles. Or a non-aggressive enemy that blinks to your shot if they see it in the air, stopping you from using it.

You played Gentlemen!, right?

The perfect response to long and whiny posts:

It's a delightful change in style for Tequila Works. Also gives me really strong vibes of Journey and The Witness.

Volkan the Intruder: Man in Underpants Partied in Merkel's Jet

This would provoke a result, though it wouldn't be guaranteed positive: start treating him the way he treats her.

This is freaky and horrible behaviour, and the chances of it just becoming more unhealthy seem strong. If I were her, I'd be dumping him very quickly. Does he just ignore her when she defends herself from his molly-coddling?

I'd forgotten all about the .

That was great. I predict: In the olden times, here in the UK, we only had five TV stations and no internet. At that time, these kind of tracking devices were very useful to broadcasters, because from a large enough (but still quite small) sample, they could easily extrapolate viewing figures and trends, in much the same way polling can work on politics. I doubt it's translated well into an era with hundreds of channels and more distractions, though I'd expect digital TV reports everything automatically apart from whether or not someone is paying attention.

Image broken: (Edit) I guess you meant this:

Ian Bogost:

A friend just now: "It's a really boring subject, but everyone I've shown this to now has a favourite algorithm".

Doug Church.

I almost cried laughing at this.

A thing I see a lot in discussions of gender, race and privilege is people arguing from the concept of an equal world, i.e. "That's sexist against men" or "This is racist against white people". (Bear with me, the following is about a fucking excellent definition of equality that I think is highly applicable. Apologies for length). To give a non-gendered, non-racial and hopefully less controversial example, a very good piece I saw in the past week is about the concept of equality being applied to cyclists on roads in the UK. It's asserted that, due to the law, cyclists and drivers should treat each other as equals on the road, when the reality is that drivers are a heavily privileged class of road user. This includes biased legislation, and the hegemony of most road users being car drivers, but in the most direct way, their privilege when set against cyclists is that of having two tons of metal surrounding and protecting them during collisions. This is a great concept of equality, but it eludes a lot of people. To most of them, the concept of people treating each other as equals and just getting along seems fine, but to put it in a really unvarnished way, in practice it cements attitudes that let drivers get away with killing and maiming cyclists. Essentially, the tone argument is systemically levelled at people on two wheels, and the best response I've seen to it, in any context, is this: When it comes to equality, it's sadly often asserted in what's demanded or expected from people despite disparate circumstances, rather than what's accorded to them. The solution is to be conscious of and compensate for privilege, rather than deny it: A few months ago, after about an hour of conversation, a guy said to me and my friend Liz "Hey, you know what worries me at the moment? The amount of misandry around, in adverts and stuff". He repeatedly raised examples of things he saw as sexist against men, and I repeatedly responded: "In a perfect world, yes. That would be sexist. As it is, my life is pretty easy just because I'm a middle class white guy, and however badly produced it might be, I'm happy and comfortable enough in my life to have some humour punch up at me". The assumptions over gender and sexism that led that man to cry "misandry!" treat people as if they are absolute equals (Edit: At the root of it, his motives were basically laudable: He wants a world where everyone is respected. The assumptions he based those motives on don't take privilege into account though, and that inherently reinforces existing inequalities). I guess what I'm saying is that if life is a road, most men are given cars to drive on it, and women get one of these to scoot through the traffic on, and are told they're not trying hard enough when they can't keep up: Sexism is inherently ingrained into me by virtue of what I am and where I was raised. One of the things I want to always do is become less sexist. Going back to the original argument: Swapping damsels for chippendales would be equally sexist in an equal world, but that's not the world we live in. This… … does not demean me or my gender, it does not reinforce any negative or superficial stereotypes that limit me, it does not present an image or attitude that others expect me to conform to. While I'd prefer it if pugs were the only option in Spelunky, having one of the Damsel-McGuffins be a man is in no way damaging to me. The semiotics of a woman being rendered helpless, knocked out and used as an object are very, very different to that.

I've been working on something for a few months, and it was announced today: http://www.vmgs.com/ It's a temporary game space in Central London. We'll also have co-working desks and I'm building this hardware library for developers.

I'm pretty sure all of that was intentional, and I doubt he'd adapt the jingoistic Heinlein novel in an earnest yet inept manner. I think Verhoeven is a much more michievous man that people like to think. While it got terrible reviews at the time, Showgirls struck me as a very deliberate dig at Hollywood, show business, and the output and culture of both. I only watched it for the first time last year, but it seemed like just in case of any doubt, the sex scene was a very obvious and deliberate effort to hit that home (<-- carefully chosen words, as I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it). AFAIK Verhoeven remained coy about his intent with Showgirls, but he did show up in person to collect a Razzie.

Congrats Synth!