I Saw Dasein

Some of his post-Carter II mixtapes are amazing too--Dedication 2 is one of my favorite mixtapes ever.

Terribly awesome.

Not a chess guy I take it? I often don't really care about theme (or actively dislike theme) but am still capable of appreciating good game design. Some of my favorite strategy games are euro-style boardgames (Agricola and Puerto Rico in particular), which are generally quite light on theme but heavy on mechanics and interesting decisions. I also like a lot of abstract strategy computer games, "Slay" being a good example. I don't think theme is necessarily a good metric for success in strategy games. The problem with 4X games isn't really a problem of theme integration, it's a problem relating to the basic game design. You're presented with so many tiny incremental decisions to make, most of which have only marginal importance. As was said in the podcast: there's a lot of accounting going on. In view, it's a lot more interesting (and more fun) to be presented with fewer but more meaningful decisions. In terms of terrain and space 4X games, I think one problem is that most of these games start with a more-or-less empty, randomized universe into which the players expand. A different way of approaching a space 4X would be to start with the galaxy already developed and populated, with the player sides being various factions. This is kind of what was done in the great space strategy game "Emperor of the Fading Suns"--I haven't finished the episode yet so I don't know whether or not it was mentioned. In that game, you play a faction competing over the carcass of a quasi-medieval space empire. Each side has different background and properties, and there is a strong sense both of theme and "terrain."

I just started this a few days ago, and I agree. It kind of feels like the book was originally written as first-person, then Mantel used find/replace to change every "I" into a "he". It mostly works, but when it doesn't it's really jarring.

I don't think it's a matter of being offended. I think it's a matter of basically being polite. You shouldn't call people--or groups of people--names that they don't appreciate being called. I mean, it takes literally no effort on my part to use the words "Chinese" instead of "Oriental," for example.

The word "Orient" is so broad as to be meaningless. It includes people from cultures in the Middle-East, to the South-Pacific, to Japan, etc. Those cultures and people have practically nothing in common; they don't share a similar language, religion, culture, or ethnicity. Orient is often understood as Eurocentric, if not racist, because it treats everyone who lives east of Europe as the same. Further, one of the most influential books in post-colonial studies is called "Orientalism," and so many people (in the Americas at least) will have studied the idea of "the Orient" as an example of colonialism. I don't think the word is racist or inappropriate necessarily, it's just not very meaningful and hearkens back to a more racist era.

So good.

Citadels is indeed awesome and a great gateway-type game. The only problem is that I can't resist spending the whole game assassinating and stealing from my significant other, which never ends all that well.

I found even the exploring to be kind of lackluster. The game doesn't really let you explore: every point of interest is labelled on the map and minimap, and is explicitly pointed out by the dumb Assassin's Creed swoop-cam. I guess you could just not climb the radiotowers, but then the map becomes pretty useless and just navigating around becomes a challenge. What's the point of searching for buried treasure or sunken ruins if a. they're pointed out to you and b. they don't contain anything interesting or useful? One really weird thing about FC3 as opposed to FC2 is the game's relationship to violence. in FC2, there's really no reason to go out of your way to kill anyone. Practically all of the checkpoints can be avoided or sneaked past, and for me a large part of the game was planning routes by which I wouldn't be detected (and therefore would avoid combat). By contract, in FC3 you are given explicit incentives to kill things: you gain experience from killing enemies and capturing checkpoints. In FC2, violence is therefore a means to an end, while in FC3 killing guys is the main attraction.

I finished this. I liked it. It was seriously melodramatic, and Dickens's views on what makes a good woman or a good man are pretty fucked up by conventional standards, but it was still entertaining and emotionally effective. I saw a lot of the twists coming (Dickens doesn't even really try and hide them), but I still teared up a little. The language is really beautiful: kind of ornate, but grammatically impeccable and in that sense quite modern. He also really savages philanthropists, phonies, and lawyers, which is very entertaining.

I think you'd have to include Pong as being so utterly stripped down in terms of game mechanics, yet still engaging and completely iconic. For similar reasons, I'd include Snake. Again, so simple with such immediately comprehensible goals. I'd also want to include an artillery game, probably Scorched Earth, as being a great introduction to strategy computer games: it's almost as simple as a board game, but really can't exist in anything but a digital format. And of course it's really the spiritual predecessor of one of the most popular games ever, Angry Birds.

Of course. There really aren't any objective answers when it comes to discussing a piece of art or culture.

I don't disagree with any of this. Authors can make their worlds brutal, and I have no problem with that per se. For me, the operative question is whether the brutality is put to an interesting purpose. I don't think brutality, including but not limited to sexual violence, is put to an interesting purpose in ASoIaF. In other words, the reason I think that parts of ASoIaF are sexist is not because it addresses difficult subjects, but because it addresses those subjects in a puerile and exploitative way (in my opinion, and again with the caveat that I've only read the first three books, and haven't seen the TV show). Another analogy might be useful. Django Unchained is a super-violent movie. I'm generally not that interested in super-violent movies.. But I did like Django Unchained, because although it was violent it was using that violence to say something interesting about slavery, oppression, and our relationship to it. So again, in my view the question should really be whether the themes of sexism and sexual violence in ASoIaF are being addressed in an interesting or intelligent way. If they are not, then we should question why they are being included in the first place.

I think both of these posts go more-or-less to the same argument: sexism is a historical reality; ASoIaF is historically inspired; and therefore ASoIaF can or must present sexist themes for the sake of authenticity. I don't agree with this argument for two reasons. First, ASoIaF is not history. Martin departs very radically from history when he feels like it (e.g., the existence of dragons, the existence of ice people, the fact that seasons last very long, and so on). Presumably he could have presented a world that is sexist, but sexist towards men. Or he could have presented a world where women are not treated badly. That is kind of the joy of fantasy and science-fiction: you are not bound to the historical record. Second, even books that are actually historically bound still have an authorial lens. What I mean is that authors still choose to portray certain things and not portray other things. So for example, we generally don't hear about characters going to the bathroom, because that is not important to the author. This means when an author chooses to portray some things and not portray other things, we can (and should) ask why he or she made that choice. This question can be asked of writers both of history and of fiction. Just as an aside, an interesting counterpoint to ASoIaF is Richard Morgan's "A Land fit for Heroes" series. That fantasy series also features a world that is pretty misogynistic and homophobic. However, the author tries to grapple directly with those issues: several of the main characters are gay, and in my view Morgan tries to use his fantasy setting in order to explore themes of homophobia. In other words, Morgan's grim fantasy world is put to an interesting use, in the same way that Humbert Humbert's pedophilia is put to an interesting use.

I think you are conflating the author and the text. I have no idea whether or not G.R.R. Martin is sexist, and I don't think that reading ASoIaF provides insight into whether or not he, as a person, has sexist views (nor do I think that is a very interesting question). By saying that I think ASoIaF is sexist, I don't mean that G.R.R. Martin is necessarily sexist or that anyone who likes his books is a sexist. I like some things that are indisputably sexist (e.g. gangster rap). I think you can criticize a text without attacking the author or people who enjoy the text.

I definitely agree that artists are free to explore dark themes. But that doesn't mean that any given depiction of a dark theme is actually any good. And of course others can criticize their exploration of that theme, as you acknowledge. So from my point of view, the question should not be "can G.R.R. Martin present a sexist world," it should be "is G.R.R. Martin's exploration of sexism actually any good?" And in my view, the answer to that question is no. He really doesn't seem to have anything interesting to say about sexism or sexual violence at all, which makes me wonder why he included those themes in the first place.

I don't see the connection here. Like every writer, he has the right to portray any world he wants to portray. But that doesn't mean that he is exempt from criticism for the way he portrays the world he created. He decided to portray a world where women are sexually exploited; I don't think he engages with the issue of sexual violence in a serious way (in fact, I think he does quite the opposite); and so I don't see why he can't be criticized for it. I feel like the kind of argument you are making is that G.R.R. Martin is just documenting this horrible world, and so he can't be held accountable for what he documents. But he chose to invent that world and chose to portray it in a certain way. If a SOIaF is sexist, it is not because it depicts a grim world, but because it depicts that world in a sexist way. Caveat: I haven't seen the show and have only read the first three books.

Viktor Pelevin is a contemporary Russian writer that I really like. I've read a few of his novels, and liked them all. "Omon Ra" is an allegorical account of a child brought up in the Soviet space program. If I remember right, it's novella length and I found it pretty affecting though difficult. "Life of Insects" is billed as a novel, but is really more of a collection of vignettes. The characters are either insects with human-like properties, or humans with insect-like properties; they shift from one to the next as the novel progresses. Most recently I read "The Sacred Book of the Werewolf", which is more of a conventional novel (though at times still very abstract). That book is about an immortal zen-Buddhist fox spirit living in Moscow. I think "Homo Zapiens" is his most well-known book in North America, though I haven't read it. Anyway if you like Bulgakov and are interested in contemporary Russian literature, I'd give Pelevin a try.

Re: Monaco. For me, at least have the fun in Monaco is getting caught. When that old-timey piano chase music starts going, and everyone is running around chaotically bumping into each other the game is really at its most hilarious and best. The game also inspired me to hook my PC up to my TV, which turns out to have been a great idea. Couch co-op is a natural Monaco fit, but I've also been inspired to break out some of my old gamecube games. It turns out that many of them completely hold up, especially when run through an emulator. Mariokart Doubledash looks really great in high-def on a huge screen, and is just as fun as it ever was.

i got crap on my shirt. life is the worst.

For some reason I really like empty space in open-world games. I find games that are too crammed-pack with stuff just everywhere kind of exhausting and artificial, like an overly busy theme oark. I have really great memories of cruising down country roads in San Andreas. I didn't actually like San Andreas as a game that much, but I loved the parts of the world that existed between cities. E: On reflection, I think this is true of me in real life as well. I don't particularly enjoy city driving, but I do really love a long, slow drive through the country.

As far as I'm concerned, if a game's design gives rise to consistently interesting player behaviour, it doesn't much matter whether the behaviour is "propelled by the game mechanics" or not. Another analogy: poker doesn't require bluffing as part of its design. Noting about poker's design innately requires players to become bluffers. But bluffing is an important facet of poker that players must learn to use in order to reliably succeed. As a player of poker who enjoys bluffing, why should I care whether the game Is "creating" the bluffing or whether players are just exploiting a game mechanic? It makes no functional difference to my enjoyment of poker or poker's success as a game.

Without getting too far up my own butt, the reason I don't think Iron Helmet's opinion of their game matters in terms of design is basically 'death of the author'. If all of the players that play Neptune's Pride think it is a game about diplomacy, then the fact that Iron Helmet thinks that it is a game about a space war is basically irrelevant. A game is 'about' whatever the players think the game is about. So my general point is that as long as everyone goes into the game thinking that it is a game about diplomacy, then the game is successful if it facilitates and allows that diplomacy. I think Neptune's Pride succeeds on that front. I do agree with you both that this kind of design won't appeal to everyone. But that's true of any kind of game. Criticizing Neptune's Pride for appealing to some players but not others would like criticizing Agricola for appealing to number-crunchers, or criticizing Counter Strike for only appealing to FPS-fans. The whole reason most people play Agricola is to crunch numbers, the whole reason people play Counter Strike is to enjoy an FPS, and the whole reason to play Neptune's Pride is to have a competitive social experience. Malkav's point, as I understand it, is that mechanically Neptune's Pride is not "inherently interesting". I disagree, because I think the mechanics produce particularly interesting results, even if the mechanics aren't themselves original or satisfying. It is true that the interesting results depends on having players that are invested in the gameplay, but in my view that is true of practically any social game. For example, 1000 Blank White Cards has no essentially rules and requires players to be creative and engaged, but I would argue that it both produces interesting results and is fun to play, and is therefore inherently interesting.

I would put it like this. Neptune's Pride strongly encourages and incentivizes short-term cooperation. It doesn't not mechanically enforce cooperation, but a player who does not participate in the diplomatic aspect of the game is at a significant disadvantage and will probably lose. The game mechanics promote this kind of play through hidden information, simultaneous turns, and non-enforceable agreements. So while in one sense the players bring the "diplomatic layer" in from outside of the game, the diplomatic layer is also essential to doing well in the game. There is a reason that people chose Neptune's Pride, and not Risk or Candyland, in order to facilitate that diplomatic experience.

I understand what you mean, but I don't think it really matters. As long as the players treat it as a game intended to produce Machiavellian behaviour--and everyone I know that has played the game plays it in that way--then it doesn't really matter what Iron Helmet thinks the game is about. I don't think that's true at all. Games different wildly in terms of how much diplomacy can take place within them. Lots of games have some space for diplomacy, but few games turn on them. It's nearly impossible to win a game of Diplomacy without making an alliance, while you could easily win a game of Agricola without striking a single deal with another player (in fact, that is the norm). Games like Diplomacy and Neptune's Bounty have very specific mechanics that encourage Machiavellian diplomacy: simultaneous turns, hidden information, and an absence of in-game remedy for betrayal (by this I mean there is no rule-based recourse for a broken deal). I've never played Dune, so I don't really know. My personal preference for games based on social-interaction is that the rules be minimal. When I play a social game, the interesting part (for me) is the social interaction, so I prefer that the rules step back and let the players focus on what is important. That's why I prefer Resistance as a social game to something more elaborate like Shadows of Camelot. I also think that's what makes Neptune's Pride and Diplomacy successful: they recognize that the interaction between players is what produces the narrative,and that more complex game mechanics would get in the way of that.