I Saw Dasein

Why does that matter, though? If the game is designed to produce Machiavellian diplomacy, and does produce Machiavellian diplomacy, why does it matter whether or not the game mechanics force you to behave in a Machiavellian way? I'd actually argue that it's a lot more interesting to see Machiavellian behavior emerge from a game design that does not expressly require it. The classic game of zero-sum, Diplomacy, is exactly the same. Nothing in the rules of Diplomacy requires you to backstab, nor is the game explicitly about backstabbing, but that is, in fact, what the game is about. I guess what I'm saying if the game designers have the goal of producing a kind of experience, and the game actually does produce that experience, then it's really irrelevant whether the rules of the game insist that you have that experience. This is especially true in social games, which are really about the dynamics between players and not necessarily about game mechanics. A lot of the best social games have very few rules, but those rules successfully produce interesting and fun social experiences (e.g. Eat poop you cat, Resistance, 1000 blank white cards, Diplomacy).

I don't understand that rockpapershotgun article at all. How could you feel bad about betraying someone in a game about Machiavellian diplomacy? It would be like forfeiting a game of chess because you don't want to hurt the little horsies.

The pickpocket is the best because monkey.

One thing that actually is really weird about Metacritic is that it normalizes scores for music and movies, but not for games. Normalization is basically "grading on a curve", and could be used so that game scores from different publications are distributed across the whole scale. It prevents scores from clustering around one area of a distribution. It's very weird to me that they would normalize some media-types, but not others, and I really wonder why.

Aw man it's still morning here. Darn Europe. The "getting chased" music in this game absolutely kills me every time. Playing with randos is total chaos and fairly hilarious. I think I'm going to hook my PC up to my TV tonight and try couch co-op.

I"m going to play for a bit tonight, my Steam screen name is I Saw Dasein. No voice chat.

Nazi Literature in the Americas is awesome, but stylistically very different from Savage Detectives and 2666. It is a collection of fictional biographies of right-wing extremists in Latin America and the United States. The autobiographies interlink, and are sometimes funny, sometimes quite unsettling. I would recommend kind of the opposite of Bolano. Charles Portis is most famous for "True Grit", but he actually wrote a handful of very short, very funny novels set in modern day America. "Dog of the South" is my favourite. It is about Ray Midge, a total crank and neurotic, as he attempts to track down his wife who has left him for another man and fled to Mexico. Ray is kind of despicable but also intensely amusing, a lot like Ignatius in "A Confederacy of Dunces" or Misha in "Absurdistan". It's a great, partly-forgotten comic novel, and I think it would be a good palate cleanser after some of the heavier stuff the book club has been reading. It's also an easy read so if you all hated at least you won't have wasted a lot of time.

The Android app is awful, far worse than the IOS app. Thankfully you can get books of NYTimes crosswords for like 5 bucks, and I have a book I've been chipping away at in my office.

It's basically Hotline Miami starring Peter Sellers. It's a must buy.

This is a cool book, and many of Thomas Kings other stories and novels are modern takes on First Nations myths. It is not a traditional collection of First Nations myths though.

I think this is out today. It's getting great reviews. I really want to try it multiplayer.

I think most peoples' preference goes like this: getting beaten by a buddy > getting beaten by AI > getting beaten by someone I don't know I love playing multiplayer, but it's always a lot more pleasant playing with friends. I don't have that many friends who play RTS games sadly, and so I often play against the AI.

Barf.

I don't think the connections between Against the Day and Bioshock: Infinite are particularly convoluted, though. There is an extended sequence in Against the Day involving the Chicago World Fair and the "Chums of Chance", who are the youthful commanders of an airship. That sequence is written in a "boy's own" style that is not really all that far from some of the pulp references of Bioshock: Infinite. Against the Day also involves multiple universes, people encountering their "doubles", early American capitalism, 1900s-era pseudo-science, and a lot of other themes and plot points that Bioshock: Infinite hits. So if Bioshock: Infinite was influenced by Against the Day, it was in a very literal way. Of course, it could just be a coincidence. But I'd prefer to believe there is a connection. How very Pynchonian.

I can see the attraction of a metacritic metric, for developers at least. That way if they produce a game that reviews well but sells poorly, they still get a bonus. That makes some sense because a developer in many ways has more control over reviews than they do sales: sales depend at least partly on the publisher's marketing. If the developer makes a good game but the publisher drops the ball as far as marketing is concerned, a metacritic indicator "saves" the developer's bonus. I don't really think the "Tom Chick" effect acts as a poison pill, again, because of aggregation. So take Bioshock Infinite. Imagine 30 reviewers have reviewed it, and scored it on average 95%. Then Tom Chick comes up and awards it 3 stars, which Metacritic converts into 60%. Unless my math is terrible (always a possibility), Tom's review drops the aggregate score about one percent, which is hardly a poison pill. Also, this assumes that Tom's score is weighted equally to other reviewers, which is not necessarily the case. The Obsidian thing was really just the result of a bad business decision. Obsidian agreed to a contract where if they scored 85+ they'd get all the money, and if they got under 85 they'd get none of the money. That kind of outcome is totally avoidable by having the bonus scale to score. And that kind of outcome will also occur whenever you have a firm line. Say you tie the bonus to the game selling three million copies. The game sells 299,999 copies instead. One missed sale has huge consequences in that case.

Well, from the perspective of a publisher, I'm not sure how a game that doesn't review well (or doesn't sell many copies) could be "good". The publisher doesn't care whether or not the developer makes an objectively good game. The publisher wants the game to make money. Games are a commercial endeavour, after all. But at least with metacritic there is some recognition of critical worth: sales figures don't capture that at all. I don't really understand what you mean by the "poisoning the pot" comment. As an aggregator, I would think that Metacritic would tend to "smooth out" outliers that are particularly high or particularly low. Even a review that is way out of line with the other reviews should only move a score a percentage or two. In some respects, that's the virtue of an aggregator. So I guess my question is what performance indicator a bonus should be tied to. The only other option I can think of is raw sales, but that seems like it might be even worse.

I don't see what the problem is. It's not that uncommon to have a bonus tied to a performance indicator, even one that is ultimately based on subjective opinions. For example, a chef might be entitled to a bonus for obtaining a Michelin star. Or a director might get a bonus based on ticket sales, which are no more an objective measure of quality than is a metacritic score. As long as both parties agree that bonuses will be tied to a performance indicator, I don't see any reason to object. At worse, you'd think tying bonuses to metacritic scores would tend to incentivize developers to produce games that appeal to critics. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

I don't need an ending to spoon-feed me an answer, but I don't like it when an ending throws the rest of the story's logic out the window. So, Booker "replacing" Comstock (rather than existing alongside him as happens in every other part of the story) just makes no sense at all. It's a total reversal of the logic the story has presented thus far regarding multiple universes. I know, Elizabeth has magic powers, but that's a classic deus ex machina resolution and therefore pretty annoying in my opinion. I also didn't feel any real emotional resonance. Booker is such a cipher that it was hard for me to feel anything for him at all. Elizabeth is more interesting, but the resolution of the story means that the Elizabeth you come to know is actually voided: the only Elizabeth that remains is Elizabeth as a baby, and I don't care about Elizabeth as a baby. Booker cares about Elizabeth as a baby (I guess), but Booker is barely a character, so who really cares what Booker wants? Not I. e: also if you think about it, by preventing Comstock from ever coming to be and preventing Columbia from existing in the first place, all of the people you encounter in Columbia ceased to be: all of those memories, consciousnesses, and selves are wiped out forever. That basically amounts to an appalling multiple-dimensional genocide. Way to go, family De Witt!

I don't really love RTS campaigns, but I do like them sometimes. I find skirmishes and multiplayer engaging, but often stressful, and I feel I need to turn my full attention to them. If I'm home late after a trying day, I don't always feel like something that intense. A scripted campaign lets me get some of the RTS gameplay at a slower, less intense pace. It's gaming comfort food, basically. Also, I feel like you guys are prejudiced against puzzles. Puzzles are fun! I like puzzles. There's nothing wrong with an RTS-puzzle, as long as it's well executed.

Incidentally, I've started up Far Cry 3 again. I really hated it the first time I played it, but thanks to a little modding it sucks considerably less. I've turned off most of the interface, replaced the minimap with a compass, modded out any of the requirements to do the story missions (e.g. the whole of both islands is open from the start, no restrictions on guns or perks), turned off the "tagging system", and tweaked some of the weapon settings. I also changed all of the language options to French, thereby avoiding the awful voice acting. I basically just drive around and take over bases, and the game is fun on that basis. The only thing that really bothers me still is the crafting system and the lack of an in-game map.

I read this book a number of years ago, so my memories of it are not very clear. I do remember really disliking it. I think my own feelings about masculinity and the relationship between sexes are so opposed to Hemingway's that I find it very hard to relate to his characters in any way. I also felt like the characters in this book in particular were terribly unsympathetic and frankly unrelatable, to the extent that I just really didn't care about their problems or even find them interesting. The other thing that bothered me about the book was its antisemitism. The single Jewish character is treated with utter contempt, both by the characters and by the author, and for no particular reason (as far as I remember). There is something ominous about a book written in the inter-war period, set in Europe, and that treats a Jewish character so badly for no reason. So long story short, not my favorite Hemingway. I'm looking forward to hearing others' thoughts on the book though.

I only have one really good example of a disruptive event. In the card game "Hearts", the general objective is to avoid taking points. Each round contains 26 possible points: one for each card in the heart suit, and 13 points for the Queen of Spades. However, if one player manages to take all of the points in a single round (ie. all of the hearts plus the Queen of Spades), that player takes no points for the round, and the other players take 26 points each. This is called "shooting the moon" or "taking control". So when playing the game, players will be playing so as to avoid taking tricks. However, once it becomes evident that someone is attempting to shoot the moon, each player's objective changes completely: you want to do what ever you can to take at least some points, because otherwise you will take the full 26. So within this one round, everyone's goals change completely. Further, "Shooting the Moon" successfully is rare and difficult enough that I think it still counts as disruptive.

If you have an XBOX-style controller for your PC, then PC is probably the best version, if only because you can mod in higher-resolution textures. There is still an active community, although the online functionality is always a bit spotty. Getting to the first bell only takes an hour or two, so I'd say you might as well restart even if you pick it up on 360 again.

Make your Sims smile with the Attractions Set--five fun tourist hot spots that will not only make your Sims happy, but bring in more tourists. If you want to plop these playful attractions in your city, you need to be located in the United States and you’ll also need to purchase a specially marked Crest or Oral-B product to receive a code good for all five attractions.

Another thing about time-travel/replacing self: