I Had A Random Thought...

[SuperBiasedMan]

I'm also currently the only person in the office and I haven't slept in about 30 hours.  I'm feeling kind of

 

 

 

 

The new Wolfenstein game got me thinking.  There are several games that take place in alternate histories, mostly diverging around WWII.  Let's say that one of these alternate histories existed and the Third Reich won.  Would they have games that are about an alternative history which depicts our reality?  What would that game be like?  GTA?  COD?  Wolfenstein except Americans and Europeans instead of Nazis?

 

What if someone made an alternate timeline game in which such an alternate timeline game existed?

[Gormongous]

Browsing Wikipedia sometime around five in the morning yesterday, I found the first phantom person of my professional career! It's a classic case in historical Wikipedia bios of an editor copying down some early twentieth-century family trees made by some German nobleman as if they're gospel, even when they contradict each other and themselves. Remembering the last time I tried to make edits on a Wikipedia article to clean up and update scholarship and citations, which ended up with me fighting a long but losing war against a revert-happy editor with more time on their hands than I could ever have, I made a rueful remark on Facebook and left it at that, but then I ran into a friend tonight and he insisted, rather idealistically in my opinion, that I was obligated to make my case briefly on the relevant talk page. Well, I did, so here goes.

 

Why am I not working on my dissertation, my article, or my Leeds presentation?

[Bjorn]

Because Internet.

[Merus]

Because you have been taken in by the idea that you can improve Wikipedia. It is not meritocratic; it is hierarchical, and whoever has the higher status wins. As a new editor, you have just as much sway over the article as a drive-by editor, except now they've made you feel like you're responsible.

[Gormongous]

Because you have been taken in by the idea that you can improve Wikipedia. It is not meritocratic; it is hierarchical, and whoever has the higher status wins. As a new editor, you have just as much sway over the article as a drive-by editor, except now they've made you feel like you're responsible.

 

I actually deeply dislike Wikipedia as a teacher and a scholar. Beyond the questionable utility of encyclopedias as endpoints for research, it teaches people that anybody with a little time on their hands can be as much of a scholar as someone who devotes their life to it and that the only standard of scholarly viability is whether it can be found printed in a book somewhere. It encourages a democratization of academic knowledge, one that I think was and is happening without it, in a way that is superficial and reductive, and I can't really envision where it'll end up. Anyway, I fought those battles years ago, I just did now to please my friend, so I made the edits and now I'll go back to using it only on occasion to double-check dates in footnotes.

[Ucantalas]

So last night I had a dream, and in it I had thought up this perfect thing to put in a game. And it seemed relatively easy to implement into a project I'm actually working on. I was so excited to work on it.

And of course I have no idea what that was (or if it was even a real thing and not just a general dreamy feel-good illusion) so now I'm a little disappointed and discouraged. Ugh.

[Dewar]

At one point in my life, I was having these sorts of dreams a couple of times a week. I finally put a pen and paper next to my bed so I could start writting as soon as I woke up. The things written on that pad were so bad, I burned the evidence. Trust me, it wasn't as good as you though it was mid-dream.

[dibs]

Recruiters are creeping me out.

[Zeusthecat]

At one point in my life, I was having these sorts of dreams a couple of times a week. I finally put a pen and paper next to my bed so I could start writting as soon as I woke up. The things written on that pad were so bad, I burned the evidence. Trust me, it wasn't as good as you though it was mid-dream.

 

I figure my dreams are basically just my brain pooping while I sleep.

[Ucantalas]

At one point in my life, I was having these sorts of dreams a couple of times a week. I finally put a pen and paper next to my bed so I could start writting as soon as I woke up. The things written on that pad were so bad, I burned the evidence. Trust me, it wasn't as good as you though it was mid-dream.

I used to try keeping track of my dreams. I even had a blog that I would post the interesting ones to. Sadly, like many things, I got lazy and haven't kept up with that.

But what if it was good? And even if it wasn't, it might have been the stepping stone to something actually good! I've actually just been in a bit of a drought as far as ideas go, so I was more upset about losing this one than I should have been.

[Thrik]

I've had some pretty amazing ideas for stories in dreams, just the most insane fantastical shit that I had no idea I could come up with. I really wish that I had the bother to turn any of them into anything than hasty bullet points in my phone's note-taking app.

Oh, and I've also dreamt about vortigaunts torturing some naked woman in a changing/locker room by repeatedly whipping her with towels (that curiously made the same noise as the gauss gun upon contact).

[Ucantalas]

So, for whatever reason, I found myself watching videos of "Dark Side Phil", who, if you're not familiar, plays games and records himself playing them, while talking. Except... he's just really bad at them. And he complains about the games being the problem. (It maybe sounds like I'm being overly harsh, but he blames every single problem on poor game design or buggy controls... Here, I'll just throw in a compilation of him attempting to

.)

Anyways, while watching these videos, I thought it would be absolutely hilarious to have game devs/designers sit in with him while he plays their games. Like... seeing Hideo Kojima's reactions to this guy trying to play a Metal Gear Solid game would just be pure gold. Maybe that's just me, though.

[dibs]

I polygonned myself using a little python tool I found.

[Ucantalas]

Thats really cool!

[shammack]

I'm irrationally annoyed by people using the term "RNG" all the time. This seems to have exploded over the last year or two, at least on the corners of the internet where I lurk. I don't know if it's due to the rise of roguelike-like-ish games or what, but it feels like everyone suddenly became aware of the concept of a random number generator and then got really excited about shoehorning it into every conversation about games. I think the part that really bugs me is that it's always abbreviated even on the first mention.

[feelthedarkness]

random half ass game idea: Krusader Kongs. a CK2 mod replacing the map with iconic game territories, and a deep dish of characters. 

 

archduke abobo with the support of sir kranky from the isle of kong has fabricated a claim of duchy of hyrule!

[Bjorn]

Oh god, the fanfiction that could inspire would be terrifying. 

[Justin Leego]

Oh Nintendo needs to license that hot and super serious strategy action for the next Mario Party game right now!

 

WOAH DIBS that image is so much larger on a desktop screen. Also you look kind of Scandi (in a good way).

[Chris]

I'm irrationally annoyed by people using the term "RNG" all the time. This seems to have exploded over the last year or two, at least on the corners of the internet where I lurk. I don't know if it's due to the rise of roguelike-like-ish games or what, but it feels like everyone suddenly became aware of the concept of a random number generator and then got really excited about shoehorning it into every conversation about games. I think the part that really bugs me is that it's always abbreviated even on the first mention.

I feel this way about the phrase "zero-sum game."

[syntheticgerbil]

I want people to stop saying, "Keep on Keeping on."

Also stop fucking type "kk" in IMs. Gah.

[SecretAsianMan]

Also stop fucking type "kk" in IMs. Gah.

 

God yes.  That drives me nuts.

[tegan]

If this is now "words and phrases in the nerd community that we hate," I nominate "The Big Bang Theory is like blackface for nerds." Because the collective societal demeaning of an entire race is exactly like that time some shitty sitcom got the words to Green Lantern oath wrong.

[Twig]

I mean I agree with you but

that time some shitty sitcom got the words to Green Lantern oath wrong.

that's not at all what people are saying when they say that.

[tegan]

A sterotypical nerd doing stereotypical nerd things inaccurately?

[Twig]

I don't really care enough about this to argue about it because who cares about BBT, honestly, it's just a dumb sitcom. I was just pointing out that your assumption isn't really correct as far as the intent of that particular statement goes*. It's more about the spirit of the thing than it is any one specific event. Like, "hey check out these dumb nerds doing dumb nerd things, isn't that funny", and less about having a laugh with some friends at some dumb things you do around each other.

*I only know this because I've experienced enough people hating on BBT to last a lifetime. I personally don't like it, either, but my distaste doesn't go beyond that. But when they find someone else who doesn't like BBT, it's like hoo boy have they found a KINDRED SPIRIT let's TALK ABOUT IT FOR AGES.