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It might also be a question of tastes but after all the enthusiasm Chris displayed towards torchlight I was pretty stuned to realize it wasn't first. But he's probably been playing DA:O a lot if it's his goty. Or maybe he'd be ashamed to but a non AAA as his goty on gamasutra ;P I was reminded though that there is a lot he hasn't been telling us about his tastes since the podcast went silent. Well, he might also have realized that Torchlight is a very compulsory experience rather than a genuine intriguing game to explore (a critique that was palpable in the way he said "I've played soooooooo much of that game it's ridiculous" a certain number of times).

But you were wrong, DA:O is Chirs's Goty http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26234/Gamasutras_Best_Of_2009_Top_5_PC_Games.php

Can you look in the thumbs up and down too ? We're kind of missing the signature thumbs of the forum.

And what happens when you try to rape someone through a full mailbox

Ha ha that was hilarious, I hate you. XD

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That is greatly appreciated, I will try not to deceive you. To differ from my predecessors, I will never abandon a podcast in distress ! Also, I might not start one.

Someone typed in "violent porn" in google with their safesearch filter on.

One of the last headlines I made on my site was "The 360 is a fucking shit and that is not a provocative title" I should stop making those though, I get a few angry emails of people not understanding what a joke is…

Some do. Article will soon be finished and translated in english.

Also, some material for another " top 10 worst video game movie adaptations ever" video. cijrdspfceU

At that point, I think Chris would be required to read all of our things and say where he stands on "talking" so that our comments on his piece might actually be more accurate Don't get me wrong, I do like passage too, it didn't tell me much but invited an interesting reflexion on the meaning of it inside my rather than yelling about death to my face like UP did (and I still loved that movie).

Well, then you'd have to choose what you call "to talk"… To me it means you have a message that you transmit. Not a feeling, not a mood, something you say and that is understood or not, but you had a direct intent and it is objectively directed. That is art, art is not made in words which tell you things directly, it evokes things to you. Example: I could tell you "think about what an artist makes, does everything he makes is art ? Why are people paying so much for the table Picasso made?" or, I can make an object that makes the same assertion (which is what games are capable of doing in my point of view) but without saying it. Without talking. In that case, a person called Piero Manzoni made that object, the object that called that question, that reflexion, it's called Mierda d'Artista and you have probably all heard about it. It's a can of Manzoni's shit and it sold for thousands of dollars. It's the difference between saying something as in what you are both exposing and implying something in your work. And that is implying something. Not talking. To me at least. So you can make movies that talk, books that talk that have a message hidden between the lines and you can also make books movies that imply things. You can make a song and talk about things, or make a music piece or concerto and imply things, make people think about messages, questions and so on. I am not talking. If I ask a question, I do not talk about a subject I invite you to a reflection on this subject.

Spoiler, at the end, there are credits. Here, I said it.

gg is what they say in the gaming world

Oh and Sleepdance came along and said what I've been saying all along too ^.^

Out of this You made my point, thank you. In games, you can make meaning, you cannot make stories. That is it to me, I stil have not met any, not one example that would put that to doubt. Gameplay can bear many things, emotions for instance, but not stories.

Ok, we, as a community, are the biggest dumbasses in the world… «Hey, what ? YOU FUCKING DESTROYED MY SUPER POWERFUL ITEM !!! Oh, by the way, here's your money, thanks for the service.» This game is goooooood. The minimap though is really ugly and doesn't help that much. «You have posted a message» I know I've sprung a trap my HPs are gone fucker.

So if this is the quote these games are exemplifying, I would have to object that Passage does not really propose any choice, it just builds a world in which you live an experience and then you build messages out of it. Roher (the game designer) gives you the opportunity to live an experience out of which you get meaning. So this is pretty much my point from the beginning : there is no story in there other than the one you make. The other one is an interactive story, I don't see the game design telling me much here. There are different ways to tell the story depending on which kid you click (I couldn't try the windows one) but I don't see how it's in any way a message from the game desinger.

The mod is considerably fun, and your idea is pretty sweet "Yeah…*Well done god of love, someone killed himself because you deprived him of the girl he loves…*Way to go."

I played the shit out of the first one, it was pretty horrifyingly hard too, sometimes I would just give up on it for a week out of frustration which is pretty much one of the only game that made me do that (the two Thrones battle with the twin boss made me puke my brains out too). In the long term, the sad thing was, wait… Yes, you barely have enough money to do anything in the first one so you have to let it play for a long time with sewers spawning in your city allowing your heroes to level up and your money coming up, it was a slow game but over that, letting it play by itself for half a day and coming back a billionaire with level 70 heroes has been the only way for me to really achieve anything in the hardest missions of the game. Don't know about that one though.

Well, did I ever say that they don't ? For I do know that they have a language, a grammar. But it's not their variety that prevents them from having a constructed language, it's their youth. The fact that games have been around for 20 years and that we have not stopped yet to have fun with the technology. So for now, people try new things with the graphics and the sound, for those are known elements. To define a language you have to push games forward, try crazy shit that doesn't work and are probably not so fun to play through as they are imperfect. But those imperfect things, those lessons learned are not public, they are made into secret places where a few developpers hide and tryout things. When you want to make a big game, you have to sell it first, to your banker or to your producer and those often do not care for gameplay because they don't know what it is. "What genre will it be, what other existing game will it look like ?". (and it's perfectly understandable) You can sell Barbie meets God of War in the toilets, you just have to speak to them of game they know. If you are trying to sell a revolution in gameplay, it's actually very difficult. 1) because they don't even know what gameplay is 2) because revolutions are risky 3) because there are things economically viable, why bother ? So yes, game do not have yet a defined grammar and I am definitely not the only one saying that (Clint Hocking for instance is trying real hard to define one). (I'd daresay also that it's a pretty acknowledged view amongst people that are game-litterated enough to talk as such a thing in my experience). If you don't recognize that there is a specific language to cinema, I would not try to say no but I sure hope you have very solid arguments because there is pretty much a world of people against you… The cinematographic language is one of lights and movement, it's pauses are, therefore, a way to express something in a universe that is supposed to be in movement. Whereas a photography is still and is supposed to be except if you live in Hoggwarts or whatever the name of that castle is. Movements, they way actors speak and what is shown of them as they do, how they are lit and so and so and so… I'm not really going to define it all. There is a language of cinematography There is a undefined language to games. Both of these are really hard to contradict to say the least. Yes, that is correct : in-game cutscenes as they are called are probably as close as it can get. Providing they don't stop you for no reason at all like oops suddenly he stoped talking and the door is not locked anymore !

The whole of them will probably be published in the form of an article in a magazine so if you were so kind as to point said contradictions to me I would be most grateful

I watched UP and did not know there was so many tears in my body.

********* is censored ? Why is that ?