I_smell

Here's Peter Molyneux giving a talk about Curiosity (the game): It's kind of weird that he added levelling up, and felt the need to turn it into a game, and a fun app. Also his attitude to buying pickaxes is very strange. Someone like this being into the idea of micro-transactions is weird. One person gets what's in the centre of the cube, but no, everyone gets the next game... Unless the prize is that whoever's at the middle of the cube is the GOD in Game 2, HAhahahaha. Like we're all the sperm racing into this giant egg, and one guy wins. ...uh-oh, now I'm really starting to think about that.

I am so completely burnt out on sexism and Video games. It's a huge, glaring, pink-elephant problem, but jeez-- I'll try n frame it: When Obama was up for presidency, it was virtually impossible to talk about him being black. There's people saying WHERE'S HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE! and HE WON'T WIN BECAUSE AMERICA IS RACIST! or HE WILL WIN BECAUSE OF THE BLACK VOTE, or IF YOU DON'T VOTE OBAMA, THEN YOU ARE A RACIST NAZI. My point is that it's all just ffffucking garbage. Everyone wanted to be the one who's got it all figured out, so everyone's yelling, and as usual the loudest people drown out the wisest people. So no matter what you wanted to hear insight on, you have to wade through a sea of idiot soap-box crap to get to it. I clicked a Kotaku article a while ago that was titled something about strong female characters, and when I read it it was about the lack of STRONG AS IN MUSCULAR STRONG? FEMALE CHARACTERS? Aauurrrrrgh! Same thing happens if you make a blog post about art games- or practically everything Jonathon Blow ever says: You get a hundred comments saying "I agree. I knew games were art as soon as I played Bomberman! 100 thumbs up" That's not--... that's just rubbish! That's nonsense! Sometimes posts like that are like 5 paragraphs! So yeah- long story short: It's hard to have one more discussion about Lara Croft, and what she's wearing, and what her boxart is, and who's raping her. It's not that I don't think there's valid discussion to be had there; it's just that I kind of already know what Dark_Dude_94's opinion is gonna be. It's gonna be that rape is bad, and people shouldn't rape. I KNOW! I sound like a huge dick, and this isn't much of a spark for discussion, but I just wanna flush this thinking out of my head and into the aether, just once, y'know? EDIT-- Aw fffuck why do I always end up at the top o the page... This is not a page-topper, I'm sorry.

Listening to the latest thumbs and I'm SO GLAD to hear someone say "It's weird, it's not really like Team Fortress, Gears of War Horde Mode is awesome, hey what was up with that trailer?" Cos that's EXACTLY WHAT I SAID! Horde is the greatest, TF2 is the greatest, but this is kind of dull. And yeah, what IS up with that trailer? The part where they show the giant hulk-monster Soldier at the end-... it's not that in the game, it's just a taller man. And that tank thing sucks balls. How perfect would it have bin if you got to pick BLU team or RED team and you all played together like that? and high-fived? and did a shaking-hands taunt and so on? I won't go on and on, but yeah this mode is weak. I still like TF2 though.

I use my face as my avatar on every site COS I GUESS I'M CRAZY LIKE THAT LOL!!!! So here are basically the worst pictures of me I can find: Why do I have these? There was a forum I was on once where everyone changed their avatar to a picture of me, so that nobody could tell which one was actually me. It was a weird experience.

It's funny, cos whenever I explain Idle Thumbs to someone I say that they highlight how much of a giant dumb mess the games industry is- cos I'm thinking of stuff like The Nintendo Horse Bag or EA branded tomahawks and how the whole world's gone insane. But yeah it is also the smartest podcast about games.

ho jeez, alright yeah you're right. I remember it having the generic cartoon tuft of hair there, but yeah I guess that's a bit much. Also damn that's the well-written review I didn't wanna read, I was starting to think it might be a really great game.

Another all-Newgrounds voice cast! I am totally team-Newgrounds and they are RIPPING UP XBLA and PSN these days, for anyone who doesn't know. Yeah I also watched the Quick Look aswel. I am pretty turned on by the combat here, I didn't expect it to be this interesting. As a Devil May Cry nut, this is my bread n butter, so the stuff they had with shooting out seperate projectiles and whipping them up into an explosion omelette: all those fun ideas seemed really cool. Also this game deserves MAD FUCKING RESPECT for it's animation, distortion and overall how it looks: I am totally ready to tear games apart on their animation, and YES: THE TALKING SCENES LOOK WOBBLY AND DOPEY, but the in-game stuff is just magic. I admire it so much. The only thing that's pulling me away from it, apart from the anime deviantart dog-people thing, is that I get the impression it has a really garbage anime good-vs-darkness plot. It seems like all the characters are corny baby people. It's hard to sit through that stuff. And $15 uhhhhhhhhh maybe I'll get around to it. I'd never really looked up this game before, but watching the Quick Look it scarily reminded me of a game I tried to make which was the same kind of 2D Devil May Cty beat-em-up adventure. I tried to do everything myself and it took me A MASSIVE 2 YEARS and I WENT FUCKING CRAZY and hated it. I was totally not ready to make this whole game I had planned out and wanted everything to be perfect. This guy did the exact same thing but took 5 years, and was a lot more ready for it. So seeing this game really feels like someone out there caught the white whale. Those are it's hands, buddy. Sorry to dissapoint. Try watching in HD or something next time.

I just got into a game and and I don't really think it's as fun as regular Team Fortress 2. All the dynamic with each class being dangerous and interesting in their own ways, and people working together and being sneaky is all gone. It's just a bunch o health bars that you grind down. Some of em have way more health and that's annoying. Getting stuck in one of the rounds wasn't fun, cos when you respawn you don't think of a way to change tactics or outsmart the other team, like I like to do in TF2, I just ran ahead and desperately crashed into these guys with giant health bars. Killing each robot isn't fun like killing each person in TF2, cos I kill about 20 robots every round. They're just cannon fodder. When I die it's just like "oh I guess that was the rocket that ticked my health passed zero", which is nothing like how I usually play Team Fortress where dieing is always a little bit fun because players have so much personality in how they're playing. I LOVE Team Fortress 2 and I LOVE Gears of War horde mode, I've played like a hundred hours of both. But man this is so not doin it for me. Oh also my framerate crumbled to dust, but y'know, that's on me.

Yeah I picture that the GameTrailers guys made the ad, and then opened their e-mail for the final photo to go in the middle and said "ah crap."

Yeah k, that's what I thought.

Hey do you guys think my PC can play Iron Brigade? I don't play games on it, and I've tried demos of Portal, Trine and Magicka which ran at like 7fps BUT I can play TF2 and some indie games fine. I was just watching this livestream and they mentioned how all the art was built for the Xbox, which is a low-end machine now, so I was like... mmmaaaaaybe? I know nothing about these things, there's no demo. And y'know-- if I buy this now and can't play it I'll be super pissed, cos this is why I never bother.

There's not really a great place to post this, but I just saw the most hilarious ad on GameTrailers. Valve is kind of the monopoly of digital distribution on PC, and Gabe Newell has been a beneficial director of the computer gaming market, and internet customer service for decades. By now he's just about reaching his 50's, and has way more expansions to make on Valve, and with Steam as a service. So could this look ANY MORE like a magazine ad for the PlayStation 1?? Man I gotta tune in for those wicked strats! What a bunch o goofballs. What is he blowing up in this picture? Prices?? ...anyway yeah- the Half Life games are kind of boring now, but stand as significant milestones, and it's been way too long for anyway to still care about Half Life 3 unless they pull out something really surprising; which they probably will.

That is pretty much the best fucking Kickstarter pitch video. Game looks sweet. Spherical map? Collapsing planets? I barely even like RTSes, but fuck it man, I'm in. The Uber Entertainment guys have a great art and animation team, and I hope they make something I can pick up without dieing in 2 minutes. If anything I hope they go even nuttier with the planetary space stuff, and gravity, and atmospheres having goofy stat effects. Also yea, 900,000 is a lot. Hahaha, their "early bird discount" tiers are a pretty funny and smart idea.

Well there are some things that make paying for it less bad, like the fact that you keep the ticket if you don't win, and how many times are you gonna play this premium mode anyway, when there's a set number of items and the free mode's available? And y'know- it's a free game now, and they just put months of work into a new mode for it, so obviously there's a shop or whatever. I'm not interested in paying for anything in a free game anyway, (CALL ME OLD FASHIONED!!!) so I'll just be skipping the whole "win these metal gloves to wear" mode. EDIT- Y'know... I guess you could look at it and say they're exploiting the completionist nature in some people, and profitting off this sad instinctive weakness that a tiny percentage of their audience has, and that's the only reason for any of this cosmetic hat stuff n it's an ethically corrupt way to design a game-- BUT; they were already doing that. So if that's your reason to feel turned off by this then you're a... a dumb.. boy.

As soon as I opened the tab with that photo of Jonathon Blow, I closed it right away. I don't even wanna THINK about his terrifying game design philosiphies this late at night. I wouldn't sleep!

It's funny how everything the Sniper does now revolves around him pissing on people.

Yeah that's what I was feeling like 20 minutes ago. Team Fortress dot com has links to all information on how this mode will work, and what the gray robots do

Yeah I got more excited than I should've been that Zepheniah Mann had a secret third son who's been consistently implied for about 2 years. It's funny that Valve does all this for every little thing, and PlayStation All-Star Battle Royale just accidentally showed their entire hand about a year before the game's out. As for this robot stuff: Really exciting, but I dunno it all sounds really stat-focused. I'm not super into temporarily having my runspeed de-buffed or whatever, but I'll try it out anyway.

I can honestly admit that I am petrifyingly terrified of Monday Blow, each and every waking moment of every day. I added Jonathon Blow on Twitter around E3, because it was hilarious just how much he hated every Video game. Since then I've REALLY got into his school of thought and what he's all about; and he's totally right. Video games are stuck in their own dumb little bubble right now, and as much as everyone says we're branching out, it's happening so slowly. It's really easy to joke about "oh everything's just a brown, gray first-person-shooter", but when you zoom out and look at how many games are built around collecting things, or hitting the centre of the bullseye, or getting to the end of the maze, it starts feeling sad. The scary things that people don't want to think about, like being alone or growing old, or losing sight of what you're doing, or facing that you're in denial, or over-analyzing your mistakes or all this heavy stuff that you CAN guide someone through in a Video game: nobody's even interested in trying it. Jonathon Blow is about 40, he used to be a professional Counter-Strike player, but now he wants games to explore their potential for raising questions, and simulating thought-provoking experiences, and teaching people things they might not think about- so from that perspective I now GET why the industry is super frustrating to him. . . That's really long.

Oh- yeah if you wanna make a game, make like a one level scrolling shooter or a breakout clone or something. Accept going in that your first game is gonna suck, because everyone's does*, and just make it for the sake of learning how to do things. Then when you start Game #2 it'll be a way more painless experience setting things up and you can have fun adding things and free-styling stuff ontop of it. Trying to make something that even resembles your favourite SNES or arcade game out of your first, or second, or third try is a bad road. It won't get finished and you'll just get frustrated and won't have fun. ONCE YOU'VE MADE A COUPLE games, it's a good idea to always make something different aswel. I've never made a sequel to anything, and it's helped me so much to always make something I'm not 100% good at yet. I know one guy who made a bunch of adventure games, and then made like 7 sequels to one of em. They're popular, but that guy can't find any work now cos all he can do is this one game type. It so bugs me to see people starting out making sequels to their first game. *(unless you are that guy who made Dust: An Elysian Tale, or the guy who made Fez)

Well that is if one faraway nation leader uncovers the philosipher's monolith that accepts human life essence in exchange for the ultimate power. THEN we're in trouble.

Wow this footage makes everything look fun and crazy. Typing this post now, after watching that for a straight 6 minutes, my eyes are still swimming around. I am actually starting to feel kind of sick looking at the forum boxes.

I also came here right after hearing Sean talk about it on the cast.

This really helped me and is a great first lesson to Unity and C#.

Argh, I can't post as many Youtube videos as I want :/ Do I know all the words to ? Why that's neither here nor there!!!!Do I know all the words to Swing Time from ? Yes, absolutely. Nothing sums up Spider-Man better than the lyrics:"SWING TIME!! Flying for justice, SWING TIME!! Take no prisoners." Also the character select music from 1080 Snowboarding is horrifyingly memorable, .Bonus: Here's Kid Icarus on piano, which is . Apart from GUSTY GARDEN!!!!