Nachimir

I tried polyamory once, and if people are open it doesn't vex me, but through it I realised that monogamy is fine for me. I wouldn't describe dating multiple people as poly if you're not fucking them or leading people on. Like, if it's just getting-to-know-you type stuff, then it tends not to be very complicated or dramatic.* *Except for that one first date where a woman said to me "My visa runs out in a month, so we're going to have to have a long distance relationship. Also, we're both approaching 30, so we should take this very seriously". This is the new Life thread, isn't it?

Programmer friends have assured me that learning PHP would ruin me for other languages. I sometimes have to fuck around with it for wordpress installations, but try to touch it as little as possible.

Yep.

AVOID! That description makes him sound like he shouldn't be practicing, and since your family have tried to nudge you toward anti-gay conditioning in the guise of therapy before, they are not to be trusted. Also, if the sessions are one on one, family members going "Hey let's go to the same shrink!" is seriously fucked up. I did this, in a similar situation. Before the jump I made sure I had two clients lined up, and even they were only enough to pay for me and my company to exist for about six months. A few weeks ago, I passed the two year mark. It's been difficult, and at times I either almost gave up or said to myself "If this is as difficult next year, I'm looking for a salaried job". It's got easier as time has gone on, for a few reasons. One is just building my rep and meeting more potential clients. Another is that I almost went bankrupt twice in my first year. The first time it happened, I was depressed and panic-stricken. The second, I was keeping the company running but hadn't been able to pay myself for two months, and oddly it made me feel invincible. I've spoken to others who been in similar situations, or lost companies, and developed the same feelings. One described it as a feeling of being undead. It's like "Ok I've lost that but I'm still alive. I'm going to be able to eat, and the bank are going to have to come and cut my fucking head off if they want to do anything worse to me". Freelancing opens up a whole world of new worries and concerns. I once took on a client that seemed like wankers because I needed the money. I regretted it later, and by the time I was done working with them realised I could have made more money doing other, less stressful stuff over the same time period. Another wanted a small job done, but split up over the course of three months, for £400. Again, I needed the money at the time and had my reservations. Once it was completed, they took about 90 days to pay on 30 day terms. Excuses ranged from "Sorry, the finance department have lost your invoice" to "We need you to split that into about a dozen budget lines". These people are not worth it; beyond the time you agree, clients will occupy your mind, and can destroy your productivity elsewhere. The biggest lesson I've learned is: get to know clients as well as possible, and trust your instincts on them. The clients I've had bad feelings about initially have ended up being the only ones who paid late or asked for freebies later. Chances are, anything that raises a red flag for you at the beginning will propagate through the entire working relationship (I should also specify: My website doesn't have all of the clients I've worked for on it). Other things I've learned: I'm very, very good at not indulging myself with games/TV/sunbathing/etc. As long as I manage to not fritter away time online, I have a solid work ethic, and wouldn't be suited to this otherwise. Also, *never* get the full amount due upfront. A couple of clients paid before the work was done, and I found not having a date in the future to send an invoice dented my motivation to do the work. My standard terms are half on commencement and the other half on completion. If you're willing to actually run a business, you could potentially do okay out of that in web development. My brother did similar after working for big web agencies and meeting a lot of developers who were just as pissed off as him. None of them could be bothered with the admin of actually running a business though, and their gripes at having bosses always overwhelmed their desire to break free. So he runs a small agency that employs those guys to do freelance work on the side: He gets to scale when he needs to, and they get a bit of extra work while being insulated from the client and business related bullshit that entails. Also, since agencies ar typically very good but, there are other types of client out there you won't have met through your existing job. Be careful not to set your prices too low. After speaking to other developers, a web developer I know that had been struggling doubled his, and carried on picking up new clients at the same rate. Caveats that might relate to your aspirations of mixing art and commerce: My brother had a head full of Smashing Magazine when he first set out, and found that actually, loads of people just want basic zencart shops, etc. In a similar way, photo graduates I've known have been told by their lecturers to not turn their noses up at wedding photography if they want to make a living from their camera, and some stable, freelance game developers I know do about 70% dull contract work to support the time they put into their own commercial projects.

Do all the eggs at te end of Super Mario World count?

People are such assholes about things other people don't eat and drink I think I must be quite lucky, because I have a fairly large group of friends who are variously vegan, vegetarian, pescertarian and fully carnivorous, and we can all have a meal without anyone hassling anyone else. There was one time someone argued vegetarian meat substitutes were fundamentally dishonest or something, but that quickly got shut down with "Because sausage and burger shapes are how the meat comes off the animal, right?"

Yeah, I didn't mean to be down on the site; it's fantastic. I think I need to move away from Nottingham. I've been told before that this town sucks for single people once they're far enough past student age, and it's starting to feel that way. It's a university town, and people seem to study here then move away, or settle pretty quickly.

That sounds a bit inconsistent with the way she behaved at your last meeting. I bet some of her feelings are genuine, but she's nowhere near actually having processed or reconciled any of it in her own mind. I wouldn't trust her to manage it any time soon, either. I've been feeling that for quite a few weeks too recently. I've tried OK Cupid and a bunch of people around here seem to be terminally dull (A *lot* of profiles: "I like going out with my friends but I sometimes like staying in as well. I like films and music". Might as well say "I like to say things and eat stuff"). Whenever I feel lonely or neglected, I chide myself that it's a state in which I have very little to offer anyone else. If it persists, I find the best way to shake it is to give to others in some way. I spent a big chunk of my weekend volunteering at Maker Faire UK, teaching kids to solder, and it worked. I feel awesome now.

XBox Infinity+1.

Aw, that sounds awful Tegan. I'm sorry to hear that. I think it was courageous of you to meet her at all, and while the outcome may hurt, at least you don't have the doubts you would have if you'd not done it.

Beautiful! Well played, sir.

It's terrifying. Apparently he's building an even taller one.

Is there anywhere in your town that refurbs bicycles and gives them away or sells them cheaply? (Something like Troy Bike Rescue). If you're having to travel and are okay with walking, I would seriously recommend a bike for getting around cheaply and quickly. (Of course, I'm making loads of assumptions about your health and the climate you live in).

I do the Leftfield bit for Rezzed and the Indie Games Arcade at the Eurogamer Expo, with input from Eurogamer and RPS. Submissions for Rezzed are open until May 17th, you can put stuff in here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?&formkey=dFcwNVBBTWNtcG85Q2Y1TFhTdFNCUEE6MQ This is also a mailing list used solely for notifications relating to submissions opening or closing for either of those shows. And probably more, if I end up curating any, but it's not used for anything else and emails aren't passed on to anyone.

Typically, leaders are used as antagonists or weak figureheads (the empress in Valkyria Chronicles springs to mind). Even the ones first presented as good tend to be inept and corrupt (The brick shithouse cliché marine in Vanquish). All of these things are nice easy tropes by which to flatter the player and increase their sense of agency. Edit: I think actual good examples of leadership are hard to do in games as we know them. They centre entirely on the player, who gets to make all important decisions even if they reduce what would obviously be complex systems to dumb binary choices.

It's really, really easy for press releases to just disappear into a black hole with the hundreds of others that get sent around every day. Also, exposing people to a thing once is usually nowhere near enough to lodge it in their brain. In terms of releases, it can be extremely hard to dredge up a story that will be of interest to press or fans (I suspect a lot of things that would get column inches are things the developers don't even think to talk about). A lot of "New features in game!" or "Game will be at event!" type releases are mind piss, of interest to very few people and do nothing to stick out of said hundreds. I am not a good person to ask for any advice on writing them beyond the above; I'm terrible at it. The thing I've seen work well is for developers to go to events, meet journalists at them, build relationships with those journalists, and show them their game in private sessions where they can have a good long chat. Personal connections go a long way. Shows and expos can be really worth submitting to. If you get in, you'll meet journalists, make fans, and also get to watch people play your game cold. Just be aware that even if you end up on a showfloor with 50,000 people on it, that won't push things over some kind of tipping point after which your game markets itself (A whole bunch of indies who approach me seem to believe it will). In five years of curating indie shows, Joe Danger is the only game I've ever seen do that, and it did so on a foundation of them showing it to journalists for months before any kind of public reveal.

Remember kids, games are just a product! Any talk of culture and art is just malarkey.

Well before you get all superior over that and write me off as an inferior species, *cough*. I have genuine bones with this game.

You're just jealous Ben

Yes, I got to the bit after that I've seen demoed. Aesthetically, I like it; mechanically I don't.

Ooooh! This is really interesting, thanks. Since I was very young, I've been able to induce a warm, extremely pleasant tingling in most of my skin just by breathing in a slow, deep, measured way. From there, it feels like it's rebounding through my body like waves. It's like the pleasurable sensation inside a sneeze, but sustained. It doesn't happen involuntarily, but anything emotionally charged (especially music) can act as a precursor and enhance it massively. I've never knowingly met anyone else who experiences this, let alone found a name for it. Researching it turns up people who get similar stuff but are inevitably spouting some mystical bollocks or pseudoscience guff alongside it. From now on I think I'm going to call it Narcissistic Sensory Median Response

Here's a mini review: I place terminal trope combined with "guess the secret word" on a lower rung than hidden object games. Edit: I'm past it now, but I didn't realise until this just how seriously I fucking hate fake hacking games. Edit 2: In principle I should like this. I've seen the developer talk about it and thought it looked really interesting. In practice, I'm just finding it really, really dull. I have the same awful feeling about Miegekure. It's an interesting prototype, but it feels like I'm interacting with a completely arbitrary system rather than something I can figure out and gain some sense of competence with. Like, it's a really clever and aesthetically interesting version of a magic eye picture or a floaty pen. Edit 3: I hope I'm being unfair. The terminal thing completely framed my experience of it with a mixture of frustration and boredom.

IGN apparently being classy with someone else's work: http://socoder.net/index.php?blogs=35160

Interesting to hear; I'd really like to play it. The Nidhogg comparison seems apt in that case too, as it has a lot of depth for such simple controls (no more than a NES pad, and includes disarms and sword throws as well as movement and stabbing).

The few developers I talked to about Divekick recently saw it as very much as a parody game (and were totally in favour of and supportive of that). I don't think it'll ever have a serious following at traditional or "serious" games events, but I know of at least one other public event that's thinking of featuring it.