Nachimir

I only just noticed what toblix has done.

What stuff, earlier than Super Mario Bros., has this convention? Is it possible that it was an initial design convention for Nintendo then a lot of other studios mimicked it? Earlier stuff that didn't have scrolling tended to have player characters wind back and forth (Bruce Lee, Manic Miner, Chuckie Egg), though is an early example of a non-scrolling game that advances left to right. Perhaps tech that enabled scrolling, coupled with a major publisher known for a very centralised design approach, turned precedent into a convention? Edit: wikipedia to the rescue, kinda. Apparently Jump Bug was the first side scrolling platform game. Maybe it started with arcade developers reusing code, and became a convention from there?

Joyous subtitle fuck up:

It's because our written language reads from left to right. Probably.

Weird: Hell yes. "It's being used ironically!" is a pretty lame defence.

This kind of fascinates me. I'm not sure how I managed to avoid it, though it probably has to do with the way the religion I was raised in pathologised sex, at some point pathologised masculinity (or the performance of machismo at least) in my mind too. I was also home taught by parents too embarrassed to talk to me about sex, so had a mixture of books along with secretive looking at porn to learn from. With the former, I got pretty lucky in that I found quite an accessible gynaecology textbook that included stuff on the hidden bits of the clitoris, before that information was particularly widespread or talked about. By the time I got to watching porn videos, a lot of what was going on in them seemed ridiculous and I managed to build a fairly healthy form of masculinity without all the ersatz-alpha bullshit. As far as I've picked up from friends, sex education in formal contexts in the UK is universally terrible and deals with little beyond the mechanical and biological facts of it. Nothing social and nothing about pleasure. It depresses me a lot to read about teenage girls on British estates letting boyfriends be verbally, sexually and physically abusive to them because cultural context has led them to think that's just the way relationships work. The lad culture that correlates to that is repellent. As I grow older, I'm finding that if other guys start that kind of strut up around me, it can be fairly easy to puncture it and humiliate them, and it seems like a good thing to do.

Here's rape culture: http://www.salon.com/2013/03/08/can_men_be_taught_not_to_rape/

I enjoyed it, but Ben is right about it not having an ending. I like the two shorts it was based on better.

The bow really stuck out to me when I first looked at the screenshots; I find it quite interesting the way they've obviously emphasised it. A greebled compound bow seems like the optimum intersection of remaining somewhat consistent to the original games while also selling Thief to dudebros.

The bit I've cut out is so puffed up and so far off the mark I'm not even going to address it. Regarding that though, you're now on my ignore list. Trying to appeal to rational debate whilst also trying to push someone's buttons is not classy. It's really, super fucking evident you're making a lot of assumptions while trying to present yourself as impartial. Regarding the rest: Thanks for informing me why it's okay for you but not others to control the terminology of the debate, and also writing off my response as a visceral one rather than something I've, you know, thought about. That's not intensely patronising at all. I could go on at some length about the emotion/reason dichotomy being a false one that's lived with us since the Greek philosophers, and one that's often recurrent in male critiques of feminism. In this along with other threads though, I think you've shown that the only way you're willing to seriously engage with others is if they do so on your terms, and if they don't you'll browbeat them in increasingly minute circles until they give up. It reminds me of being 20 and on the internet. Fuck that in the mouth.

I like the thought of a Thief game with similar city rendering tech to Assassin's Creed. I cringe at the thought of it having AC's game design. <-- edit: oops, my bad. Yes, I have a lot of faith in them too since Deus Ex: HR

Trying to neatly excise patriarchy as a term because it's a "buzzword" with "baggage", then talk about "rhetorical disenfranchisement" is a complete rhetorical pile of shit, Luft. Regarding MRAs: Get to fuck, fellow guy. We are not systemically oppressed on the basis of our guy-ness. Edit: Chris is correct, the level of scrutiny Sarkeesian's work is being subjected to is outrageously out of proportion. People seem highly motivated to dismiss her entire project on the basis of little more than nitpicking. (TP: not a reference to you because I realise you're not trying to dismiss it)

Also, it's not even the only part she's producing on this particular trope, just part 1 on Damsels in Distress. Other news; the MRA shitheads who started the tropes versus men in videogames campaign appear to have done exactly what they accused Sarkeesian of: a runner with the money.

Fucking A, Miffy I just got over the hump with a difficult client, and have suddenly become a million times more productive and motivated. Even though it was a fairly small job, it was so many little bits of time spread over such a long period, I had no idea just how much it had been dragging me down. I don't think I'll take jobs like that at all in future.

Some good designers went to Zynga just after a period when Facebook games had a pretty bad rap and "Farmville" was shorthand for "exploitative, addictive, repetitive shit". I could totally understand why they'd see it as a challenge, and I bet Zynga were able to make some very good job offers at the time too.

Zynga also hoovered up Frank Lantz and Eric Zimmerman in an acquisition. I'd like to hear what they all think after they've left.

Awful indeed, SignorSuperdouche. Glad to hear you're away from them to something better if they just make nice for the cameras.

Yeah, even mixing characters, it's a such a limited set of interactions. Once you have the timing down, there's either nothing to it or you just have to grind in lower level areas for better equipment.

I'm a little sad to hear it; was hoping that they'd patched it in the past few months and made it worth playing more.

That was fucking brilliant. Thanks castorp.

Nice work. I can't imagine how satisfying it must be to have put something like that together.

There's also a theory that dogs pull that expression when stressed. *runs away*

I'm Nachimir on Steam too, Lacabra.

Edit: I'm surprised at how negative people have been about the touchpad. That+X pretty much solves how awful text input has been for consoles so far. I know that guy, and have worked with him before. That stage slot was *so* a PR-written script and not him, I honestly would bet money that he was dying inside. I don't want to say too much, but: 1. IRL, he's a lovely, funny man and doesn't jizz over cars at all. 2. He rides a pushbike to work.