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We should pile together a goty.cx in the style of the Penny-Arcade "we're right" awards. I don't think they've done one of those in a few years.

If retailers were smart, they'd start re-branding guides as manuals. Also, they may not ever feel the digital distribution squeeze in places like middle America where the internet is composed of strings and tin-cans, but they may have to start making the effort to bundle it themselves to justify your purchase in person.

Buckets o' fun

I just checked twitter.com/boostremo hoping for it to exist, totally forgetting that I knew /idlethumbs did exist. This also lead me to find that twitter.com/hotscoops is not taken. Since I'm running out of other sources of Starcraft I've been watching more of Day[9]. I'm building up a tolerance to his mannerisms, but he's got so much of the grad school/TA vibe it's hard to get past. It's a great voice to use while giving a lecture, and that's largely what he's doing in his videos as he focuses on analysis over entertainment, but it triggers a "you think you're better than me?" reaction. I've heard a lot of people that spend extended times in the academic world have a hard time shaking off this kind of communication style. But what's even more interesting is of course he's better than me. I suck at StarCraft, I really have been terrible at every RTS I've ever played. He's a nice guy, has a lot of smart things to say, I just need to get over his mannerisms. Which would be a lot easier if he didn't have to fill dead air talking about his coffee.

Critical as you may be of EAs past mismanagement of acquired studios, you have to agree they make games. People love to hate the publisher, but in all honesty, you have to give some credit to the money man. If it weren't for their funding a lot of those games they "don't make" wouldn't have existed.

Great illustration of a game of Dwarf Fortress: http://www.nzfortress.co.nz/forum/showthread.php?t=20768

A combination of game design being more streamlined and the internet providing all answers has pretty-much eliminated this need. Also if the developers really have their crap together, they just package instructions into the game.

Oh NO: http://gizmodo.com/5520396/robotic-mouth-pronounces-vowels-in-most-horrifying-manner-imaginable

Manuals (like box art) used to be more important to establish a game's character. When art assets were only a few blocky pixels, they needed to give people a greater perspective to guide their imaginations. I'm happy to buy everything through Steam, and if something deserves the extra kit I'll grab the special edition. I have no desire to support Ubisoft anyways though, 'cause they're trying to kill PC gaming.

We're talking about the guy that did a bit on ABC News about how the Citizen Kane of video games was Metroid Prime. He just can't resist.

I think we need a new branch of Godwin's Law for this debate. As an online discussion of video games as an artform grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Citizen Kane approaches 1.

The Telltale site lists the Mac version of Tales. The question is: 1) Are the files distributed with the Steam version capable of running on a Mac? Depending on the build process it could be a single distributable, or they could be completely separate. I'm not optimistic about this, but it'd be nice. 2) If different distributables are required to run the game on Mac, will Telltale patch the Steam build so it can work on either platform?

I have the strong desire for a website that will let you place bets with anonymous people for bullshit internet predictions. It could be highly illegal, but you could make a killing as a bookie between video game nerds.

Yeah apparently that's him. But his review (of an early 90s CD-ROM era multimedia "game") doesn't really do much to rid him of the label of newb. He has been known to play a game in the 90s. But he's out of touch, and blatantly ignoring anything that goes against his opinion. As has been said a bunch of times before, how he could honestly claim a feature film is a solitary effort is insane. If anything games have originated from a place of more singular authorial vision and trended towards film studio culture. How could someone consider a pixar film art, but say there's too many cooks involved in a video game.

yeah yeah, but the lambda and 3 are fairly pronounced. There's no question they're intentional, but it could be them just screwing with people.

Ah screw it, it's not like I won't buy it anyways. But if this doesn't live up to the unfounded expectations that it will be cross platform and also run on my laptop I will be very sad.

I understand if you don't find it annoying, but honestly it's just a bit wahjah for me.

http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/mailstorm_large http://i.imgur.com/ABQTO.jpg Whatever it is, it may not be this year, but I think either HL3 or episode 3 will be announced at E3.

I've decided the best approach for people this this would be to have them play Close Range: http://www.theonion.com/video/hot-new-video-game-consists-solely-of-shooting-peo,14325/ At first, they will have their opinions validated as they are eager to accept anything that reinforces their stereotype. Then they'll be forced to argue that the game didn't have anything to say, and has no artistic merits.

Should definitely do a goty.cx for 2010, it's going to have a ridiculous amount of content. Unless we get another Q4 shuffle... Mass Effect 2, StarCraft 2, Portal 2(and possibly episode 3), Cataclysm alone will all be fighting for my favour. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I'm not a fan of Day[9] so far, he just rubs me the wrong way. Has a perma-smile on his face, fills dead air with crap like "mmm this coffee is so good". And to advanced players, his long analysis of the games might be interesting, but it's just more of what I don't like about him. Also, I'm not a fan of ustream. TBH, there's no point using it unless you're a heavily chat focused show or covering up to the minute events. If you're just talking over a replay, you should just load it up on youtube and get a higher quality video.

I'm getting really interested in this now. I'm terrible at RTS games, SC in particular, but for some reason I've spent the last 2 days watching SC2 beta videos. Something about the safety net of the matchmaking tied to your battle.net account has fooled me into thinking I'll enjoy the multiplayer this time. Anyways, after watching hours of videos with commentary, I've come to the conclusion that Idle Thumbs must provide commentary for an SC2 replay. Chris could provide the play-by-play with his technical know-how and a reluctant Jake could bring the colour commentary. You could even bring in Nick on skype/vent. The guys doing the commentary on the current videos either suffer from inexperience with broadcasting, terrible English or a general social awkwardness.

I like Gilbert's response, because it's so straightforward. He's not looking for an ideal to display, the proverbial Citizen Kane. He's just putting it out there that pretty much any game could stand out as an artwork. He throws out Monkey Island, something that no pretentious art school kid would champion, but is personal to him and fits the bill just as well as anything else. I'm not sure that people like Ebert realize just how much psychological research and manipulation is part of every game made these days. He may see nothing beyond the extremes of narrative and game mechanics, but will never understand that the designers are pulling strings indirectly encouraging players to experience their vision. Laying out red herrings, creating the illusion of extra space while encouraging a player to move forward, stringing resupplies around to control the pacing of the experience. The authorial vision that he fails to see is part of practically every game released these days. So rather than putting up champions to try to appease this troll, let any game stand up to his ridiculous statements.

yes that's it

I'm trying to remember an old point and click adventure game I played at a friends house. It was sort of a Who framed Roger Rabbit ripoff, with some dude pulled into a cartoon world. I think it might have had a part in a circus, but I may be wrong.