Gwardinen

I have a friend who's very excited for the opportunity to play the Lego Lord of the Rings video game with his fiancée. I don't know if he's as into the physical stuff. I definitely used to enjoy Lego when I had the Lego MindStorms kit, which basically allowed you to use a basic visual programming language to save a simple program to a big Lego controller brick. That brick could then be connected to various sensor, motor, light, and so on other bricks to execute its program. When I was in school I built a Lego robot with it that would drive around an area, detecting the edges of things and making noises and using lights to communicate its movements without falling off/driving straight into anything. It was the only time I can remember bringing something into school for a presentation that I actually gave a crap about. Also, somewhat related, I've been playing Lego Batman 2 and I am amazed by how much I am actually enjoying it!

I tried SMNC actually, but didn't have a particularly good time with it. That doesn't mean the third person perspective is necessarily a bust, though. That said I'm not sure exactly what it would bring to the table in a game like this either, so I'm curious to see how Smite does.

I presume that explains the Hunger Games' name? If so that's probably a pretty strong aspect of why people can't just not engage with it - perhaps the Capitol's grip on the food supply is sufficiently tight to make the districts' only realistic way of feeding themselves relying on the Capitol and (perhaps secondarily) the Hunger Games. But yeah as I understand the books are largely about revolutions and such, so I guess the answer to "why do they stand for it?" is "eventually they don't".

Wow. Sometimes I think humanity's capacity to adapt and grow accustomed to such a wide array of circumstances is one of its greatest strengths, but... sometimes it seems to lead us down profoundly dark paths. That we could be so shocked and appalled by that and the people actually living it could see it as simply "the way things worked" shows how scary the relativity of normality can be.

I may well be interested, but I won't claim a key just yet. I've already got League of Legends and Dota 2 to play, and I'm growing more wary of betas in general, so I'd like to hear some reactions of players before I dive into another game like this. I watched the official trailer and the perspective intrigues me, but yeah, anyone that plays this should throw up some feedback!

Brilliant episode. I watched the entirety of the West Wing a couple years back, after having seen it in bits and pieces. Still remains one of my favourite TV shows of all time, despite the lull in the middle seasons.

Agreed, that character definitely is close. The first episode also reminded me a lot of the start of Studio 60, because in both they're kind of rebooting a show and bringing new people in. The difference is the new people in this case do not include the main character, but there is also the "now I'm working with my ex-girlfriend who I never got over again" angle as well.

Well without having read the books or seen the film I can't give an answer, but that is usually the question asked about war in the real world. The answer tends to be that war arises out of the needs and desires of one group coming into conflict with those of another. So even though no one wants to be at war, sometimes the other things we want and the other things another group wants are opposed and those other needs are more important than our need for peace. Does the world of the Hunger Games have a similar situation? Is there a scarcity of resources? Or is there a societal system which requires a certain class of people to be oppressed to maintain it? Or is it actually just that there's a flaw in your question, which is that maybe everyone doesn't see it as awful? If there are people who want the Hunger Games to exist, then the answer is probably as simple as "those who want it are powerful enough to maintain it".

That troubles me, because the writer basically says that it starts decently and then goes downhill. The reason that worries me is because I just watched the first episode and I thought it had great potential, but as it was the first episode it was kind of held back by the structure of setting up the premise and the characters. I hoped or expected the series to then gradually take off over the next few episodes, but I suppose we'll see how it goes. As for the interview with Aaron Sorkin that was posted... in this thread? Elsewhere? I can't remember now. It's a shame that he seems like kind of a jerk in some ways, but in the end the chances of me spending much time with Aaron Sorkin are pretty slim, so the greater question is still whether I enjoy his writing. So far, it seems like I still do. We'll see how the Newsroom pans out.

I think the maximum number of players that can be connected to a game is eight, but given it's a turn-based game (and therefore everyone must wait for everyone else to finish each turn - although turns are taken simultaneously at least) and there have been issues with multiplayer stability in the past, it may be best to limit ourselves to smaller numbers than that in any given game.

Not sure whether it still has issues with particularly large maps, but the multiplayer in general has definitely become more stable. Resuming games and recovering people who have disconnected both work much better as well, for when things do go wrong. I don't think player skill is a particularly big deal, although one of the things I don't like about these kinds of games in multiplayer is that when you're eliminated, you're done personally. It's kind of the Monopoly problem of there not being one end stage, the game just has a slowly dwindling number of players, which has kind of a strangely exclusionary feeling and means anything interesting that happens after a player's elimination is essentially lost on them. As for time commitments, I definitely envision this being a game played over several sessions - though yes, each session does have to be synchronous.

Yeah, if it was just the Earth section I might go in for that but since you have to start from before the Cerberus Base mission, I don't think I can be bothered. YouTube for me too, I suppose.

Yeah that was mostly quite an interesting article. Two things that stuck out for me: "My rights as a person end where yours begin." - That's a really neat, succinct way of putting it. I'm certain I could find a way in which it was flawed in some situation, but then all "golden rules" are. Still, it's a very elegant statement. Those retro ads! Holy shit! Sometimes I forget how far we really have come in a comparatively short space of time. Some of those adverts are bizarrely aggressive and derogatory. Also, yeah, BigJKO, I sat there and thought about it for 20 seconds or so before clicking on the first NSFW reddit link, and after I saw that one (the misogyny category) I decided I didn't need to see the other two, as they could only be worse. I originally decided to look at the first one because I think exposing myself to viewpoints I don't agree with is often a good thing, but firstly I already know that kind of stuff exists on the internet and secondly there isn't much "viewpoint" there to learn from. I had been hoping for some real communication that I could analyse, but that isn't really that kind of place.

I'm not really going to weigh in on the jokes thing in general, partly because I'm not sure what my stance is on many of the points that have been raised and partly because those I do know how I feel about have mostly already been communicated. I wanted to quote this, however, as I have found the particular effect of cutting really base-level, dumb stereotypes out of my joking vocabulary to be beneficial as well. Again, I'm not really referring to anything to do with giving offence, but I do feel like I make better jokes if I don't rely on this stuff, and Twig has also mentioned how a lot of these jokes are just stupid and he tends to ignore them, even if not offended by them, so I think there's common ground for most of us here. Interestingly it's largely playing Lords Management games that has brought me to this conclusion. Over the past couple of years I've been playing a lot of League of Legends, and now Dota 2, and as most of you know the communities surrounding these games are... imperfect, shall we say. There is a hell of a lot of racism and sexism in them, but the most obvious and prevalent issue is jingoism or xenophobia or however you would like to describe the constant belief in and use of national stereotypes. Since these games attract players from many different countries (particularly when playing on European servers as I tend to), there are a lot of anti-whatever-country insults and stereotypes flying around at all times from many directions. You would think us all having to play these games together would make us more aware of how these other people are actually human beings who we probably have a fair number of shared interests with, judging by the fact that they're apparently spending time doing the very same thing we are! Yet, no, I continue to see pretty aggressive attitudes towards those of other countries at all times, and the continuing use of the tired old stereotypes and "jokes" that come with that have made me lose all taste for them. So, as a result, I now use them a lot less, even though I only ever used them with people who would not be offended anyway and within the context of being a multi-national, bilingual European myself. One of the side-effects of this is that I feel when I do comment or make jokes about other players or trends in the game, I think it's generally funnier, because I stop for that extra few seconds to wonder if I'm actually saying anything more insightful than than Germans are boring, French are cowardly or Russians are drunk.

The latter two had very obvious connotations for me but "A Private Little War" was somewhat less immediately recognisable. Is it just meant to be an indictment of the way western countries have armed developing countries for their own interests in the past? Certainly it's something the US did a lot to try to push back communism, and that would be at around the right time for Star Trek I suppose.

I don't know if this is the case on iOS, but the PC/console versions of Duels of the Planeswalker can usually turn many of the slowing down frills of the game off. For example the auto-zoom-in on new cards and combat animations are two things I know can definitely be turned off in other versions.

Steam says it will unlock in three hours in my region (UK). No idea about other platforms.

Much sympathy for you, subbes. Hopefully the knowledge that this pain is the price of such a great opportunity will comfort you a little. I hope you're reunited soon.

I saw the preview for him on DotaCinema. He looks like a very interesting character, but also one that I am not nearly good enough at the game to play.

I... what. Man, I don't know if I'm getting older or if it's the lack of sleep or what but more and more when I see something like that, particularly when it's Japanese, my brain just sort of flicks into a "don't even try to understand this, just enjoy the pretty colours" mode.

This episode is not showing up in my iTunes feed for some reason. Anyone have any idea why?

Yeah that game was a trial, I tell you. Four of us in a party and it picks the fifth guy to be captain. He is Russian, none of us speaks Russian, he picks and bans almost at random. That's just a kind of funny accident in itself, but he then proceeded to feed horribly before disconnecting. Sad times!

Well Henroid specifically mentioned mobile broadband caps, which are actually there for a reason. This video explains it better than I would. As for main landline internet connections, I'm not sure if they're running into the same issues at all or if there are other reasons for the caps.

I don't, and I don't have the money to buy it either so that trailer was a very cruel tease for me.

Oh well, at least we won our game. Though we kind of had to drag our team kicking and screaming into finishing it. Still loving Warlock, despite his effusiveness. Generally speaking I really like the voice clips in Dota 2 and the fact that they're often transmitted to other players and some characters even act as if they're talking to each other, but Warlock will just not stop talking. Literally anything that happens entices him into another soliloquy about his damned grimoire.