It’s a new open comments thread. Graffiti welcome.
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Currently thinking about putting more effort into the e-mail subscriptions, and including an ad-hoc “newsletter” to go along with them. It would contain more raw, shorter thoughts, as well as links that no longer have Link Drag as a home, and also some of the stuff I put out on the Electron Dance Twitter for those that don’t do Twitter. That’s what I’m currently thinking about.
FIRST
Second?
I’ve still got my head deep in the Indie RPG Bundle which you all should get. Meanwhile, the Wizardry Cosmic Forge Trilogy is on sale at GoG this weekend–I think something like $7 will get you all three games, which is good because in as soon as I move to my new apartment I”m gonna start on Wizardry 7 so you can follow along at home! And then oh goddammit the last episode of Cognition!
And the last two episodes of Breaking Bad!
And I’ve got one final week to work on Sam and Leo Go To The Bodega because the date of the IF Competition is next week so WATCH THIS SPACE!
I would subscribe to your news-letter.
I acquired Gunpoint a little while ago, and since I felt like I didn’t have enough to say, I’m going to play it now and comment!
(TIME PASSES)
Well, that’s quite a good game. It’s not on sale anymore, but it’s worth it either way! It looks like it could be an action game if you really want it to be, but being stealthy feels right. I don’t know if that means Dishonored has a lesson to learn, or I need to consider how easily available tools of death affect my decision-making.
E DANCE 4 LYFE MANCE N WOMANCE
And that’s my graffiti.
I saw “womance” and I thought about Elmer Fudd saying “romance”. Then I thought about that Eddie Murphy SNL sketch with Buckwheat singing the hits (“Wookin pa nub in aww da wong paaces!) and doing a modern version of Wady Gaga’s “Bad Womance” (“Ahm a fwee bish, baby!”).
Sam and Leo just got funded about fifteen minutes ago. I am completely rethinking my stance towards crowdfunding because quite literally the Internet has made snack money just appear and I’m still not exactly sure it’s real. I’m terrified to withdraw the funds! Crowd funding is scary!
Finally won Gods Will Be Watching. It’s plain and simple resource management, but the full game apparently will also be an adventure game and I’m just very curious about it.
2D so you can’t tell what jumps you can make without rotating your view and trying to remember where everything is!” I will not be pleased. I don’t think that’s quite it, though.
So I was prepping some Jason Rohrer commentary in the other thread , had even typed some out in the comment box, and I figure its closing is God’s way of telling me to keep it short. Actually it’s God’s way of telling me to shut up but I’m not listening. So I will say that self-defense mania and fatherly rage/paranoia can wind up in some very disturbing places in America in particular, and a lot of the disturbing parts have to do with race and to some extent gender (this is a must-read; I guess it presupposes that you know some background on the case, in which a neighborhood watch volunteer followed an unarmed teenager who was returning to his father’s home after buying candy, and after a confrontation the details of which are unclear, shot him to death; he was charged with no crime for weeks and eventually acquitted.) So when Rohrer goes from “kind of dangerous dogs not always properly restrained in my neighborhood” to “MUST KILL THE PEOPLE WHO WILL BREAK INTO MY HOME” it’s not just like a personal quirk. And when Rohrer said that putting a non-male perspective in his games would be pandering he didn’t exactly raise my confidence that he understands how race and gender affect these issues.
Also it seems like his protective fatherly rage/paranoia is more dangerous to his kids than any external forces. Running in between your wife and the dogs is understandable, but maybe you should get your kid out of the street before calling animal control?
Yes, that was me being concise.
Ahhh crap, that was some bad copy-pasting. What I was saying is that the lastest Humble Bundle is really good! I already spent time playing FTL and Fez when I should be doing other stuff. I’m suspicious of Fez, though; I can’t get a handle on the surface puzzles, like moving around, where the mechanisms aren’t revealing themselves the way they did in Sky Island or even gradually coming into focus the way they do in Starseed Pilgrim; and if the gimmick is “I’m representing a 3D world in OK now you can go to the beginning of the post above.
Also the game seems to be doing a lot of pretending it’s funny. I was thinking maybe I should take another wack at Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, which actually is funny.
What is a game? Thinking about these questions are more fun then almost games that are been release or I’m beginning to get old. But… no, it’s just these games, not allllllll of course. I play Volgarr The Viking and enjoy. Make me feel saudade of games considered old school, principally the good and old side scrolling 2D platform ones. Actually I’m waiting Hotline Miami 2 to be release, the first i’ts mind blowing. Remembering now of Outlast that I too enjoy the playing and again make me feel saudade of the horror games, the good ones or the ones that isn’t come in this present time, but I’m have hope that will come someday. Have someone played King’s Arthur World for SNES? Very good and very unexpected game, It deserve a try. I could be listing games for some time if I not stop myself. Just one more thing, kickstarter games i’ts becoming more kick my butt and rob my money. Now I have to continue studying with my good and sadistic friend Gottlob Frege.
@Richard: I’ve only seen the first series of Breaking Bad so don’t spoil any shit, right. I’ve got Cognition episode one installed on my desktop. I played only once so far, still stuck outside the gates =) Let me check when I installed… ah, June.
@BeamSplashX: Well the internet tells me that Gunpoint is good. So your comment was completely superfluous. This is one of those games that I will “get round to” at some point. It’s not on any immediate lists (whereas Pathologic is…)
@David: You didn’t actually recommend Gods Will Be Watching – is it interesting?
@matt: I am fine with Rohrer about making a “personal white man’s game”. A personal game doesn’t need other perspectives because the whole point is that it’s personal. We have problems with mainstream games that purport to be a straightforward game experiences but they all project from the “white man” mindset; they aren’t personal games, but they carry those values without acknowledging it. I’m not really interested in getting into that because half the internet and her brother are doing that right now every day of the week. But I just wanted to clarify that I have no problem with him making a game based on white dude in white dude situation. There’s another thing we could break into here, about how personal games can be judged as personal games – except in cases where we choose not to interpret them that way. But the waters get muddy here because…
…Rohrer’s game doesn’t broadcast his original message, of expectations that you’re responsible for “defending your family”. His game is about a bunch of dudes breaking into each other’s houses and killing their families as collateral damage. I see what he was trying to set up – using multiplayer to create that emotional situation – but it guts the “omg my home was invaded” moment when YOU ARE A HOME INVADER YOU ASS.
That said, I think Rohrer putting an actual game out about the message on male expectations and the fear of failing one’s family would have been useful. And I wouldn’t jump to criticise Rohrer for putting out something about his life: do we think Rohrer is the only person who thinks like this? That home invasion is automatic rights for killing someone? There are people roaming the streets in the US who carry weapons and feel like a victim or potential victim. Does the gun actually empower or is it a dangerous sign of helplessness? I’m not here to say – gosh, the white dude is so oppressed – but inevitably when someone is demonized it doesn’t solve the actual widespread problem.
In terms of freedom of speech, I suppose you might be able to cast The Castle Doctrine as inciting people to murder (of home invaders). Well, no more than any FPS on the market, probably. Everyone who comes at you in an FPS always deserves to die. But it seems people are more agitated about what Rohrer has said than what his game does, which is a PVP strategy game with some interesting twists.
So, what I should have said if I was being concise: I don’t like his thesis on home invasion, but I get his personal story. And his game reflects neither. INTERNET EXPLODES.
I’ll be honest, Fez and FTL are still not on my list of must-do things right now. Nor Barkley. I’m only dabbling in Mirrormoon EP and Myriad right now.
@Pedro: Ah, Pedro. “What is a game” is the subject most likely to put me to sleep! I did glance off the subject last year with A Theoretical War but I find it creates heated debates that have no defined win condition (such debates can’t be a game then! ho ho) But you’ll probably find plenty willing to debate it here. Amanda Lange wrote her own post over on Tap-Repeatedly on what defined a game last year using the work of Bernard Suits.
It’s easy to become jaded by games – too many samey games – but in the indie space there is always something that can pull you back in. Something fresh and different. Something that doesn’t make the creator much money =(
I love “kick my butt and rob my money” and Saudade is a new word for me.
Bit much Matt.
The Trayvon Martin article is an awful purveyor of racism. While innocently scorning the whole of America, they subtly use terms like “Blacks” and “African Americans”, and not “citizens” or “Americans”. We have a black history month and an Hispanic heritage month, but no White history month. And, well, you see what I’m getting at? We delegate each other to second-class-citizenry thoroughly and absolutely, and by the use of simple words!
At any rate, anti-black sentiment is more less dried up in most places across the country. Unfortunately, our new demon is the “Mexican,” so, progress.
Well, I could go on here a bit, especially trying to defend American militarism (the right to bear arms, it is generally agreed, is to protect its citizenry against personal assault, invasion, and unjust government), but I’ll skip the overly contentious bit. Just try and accept that it’s different over here, and that we have so much experience and logic informing our decisions… usually.
Well, that and I’m also cutting short because Bakemonogatari just started an arc about victims and wrongdoers, and I refuse to say anything more on the matter until I can be sure that it’s what Isin would say, ‘cuz, man, I worship that show and its philosophy too.
@HM: The Ludum Dare entry was pretty impressive. A crew trying to survive in a strange planet, having a hunter, an engineer and a doctor yet somehow the psychologist being the most vital element to staying alive. The full game, well, I know better than to recommend a successfully crowdfunded game to you.
Always glad to adding some new knowledge. And I think this word will became a good example for what’its coming in this text or maybe not. Talking on coming, I take yours suggestions and read the Amanda’s post and your Theoretical War trilogy and the epilogue of The Academics are Coming series and comments. I still have to read the interviews to complete the piece. But first things first, this title “The Academics are Coming”, just when I see it come to mind the Jorge Ben Jor’s music “Os Alquimistas Estão Chegando”.
Exactly my point on my interest of “what is a game” it’s all the things that come with, that things are not exclusive to games. When normal people try to identify what it’s something in general they – or we – are trying to identify something that we see every day. This could happen in various ways, but the one that interest us its that situation when someone is incited to respond or and discuss. Then when faced to that situation his sense common will be use, maybe he have an expert knowledge about something, and maybe he have just something vague. But for sure, you can be damn right that we all have our opinion on everything, but most of that thing we just not known how or why or even think if its true or false.
The situation happens in moments like when we see the news and become horrify to some tragedy like assassination, we try to understand the killer mind or mind of god or the mind of the victim, suddenly we discuss ethics, moral, psychological aspects, biological aspects. If the discuss is more advanced the topics will be about the human being, what he is exactly. Of course the discuss will come to a dead end, just like it start. Could happen when someone see a WWII documentary on discovery channel about nazists and they genocide, and the complicity of the german society, the shock could incited to think an definition of good or evil. But not just in these subjects, but things like the definition of learning, justice, art, society, comics, movies, right, wrong, racism, religion, music, journalism, language, etc. Everything could rise up and some time after drop down. Frequently when we try to define something “that big” we get to the conclusion of no conclusion, that there is no right or right, it depend on context, there is no society, it depends on the context, its just a word, there is no definitions at all.
We see that on the battleground about “what its art”, “it needs to have meaning or not”, “can movies be art”, “can games be art”, “can comics be art”, “can cooking be art”. The conclusion of course we already now by now, there is no such thing as art by itself, its too relative, too complex, get all in, lets not be enemies, lets all be friends and not offend each other, everyone can be everything! These discussions are not new. And these days we really forgot that we have past and we have books and we have academics too. The science don’t come from nowhere and the past not disappeared or have become foolish, we still are in the past, needing the same things, but not using, just talking about them without know shit. Some these shits become common language, don’t need to say that language i’ts too a knowledge, but I say anyway. When we realize that what we say, are words, and what we know are relative to a word, and the words we speak and think are just what the people around us understand in some convey, our brain shut down or we become a super saiyan.
Unfortunately when the brain’s shut down we (ironic) think that the problem is over and all the old new relativism jazz come over again. In this discussion on “what is a game” the problem of the no definition is the problem with the attitude and the way we see we have to resolve the problem. The relativism is always on our shoulders he says that everything with a minimal complexity or (,yes,) relativism are undefined. Maybe the discussion some times need to be about not right or wrong, but to search of true and the search of knowledge only for the sake to know, independently of practical reasons. Like someone said: “All the sciences could be more important, but none will be to him superior.”. If you get my drift you will see that I’m talking about philosophy. But I’m afraid to talk about philosophy because like I said, we don’t use things that we need and we say about them without knowing, in our common language with is knowledge. Most people use the word philosophy wrong, thinking the wrong thoughts.
To conclude, just wanna say that someone could consider that everything I said was just a point of view of points of view, i’ts my obligation to say it’s wrong, the objective of the text was not expose a point of view, but criticize exactly the “idea” of points of view and the superficial knowledge we have of most topics, even the topics of our everyday. There is many ways to approach a problem and these ways are being misleading with a company of bad habits.
I cant revise this text, sorry if I got confuse. I’m writing for hours in this little box and I’m in hurry, but I just needed write something that was in my mind all day. I absolutely have more topics to discuss, it will have to wait another time.
I already see many errors. Again excuse my english =)
@Richard Thanks for the headsup on the indie RPG bundle. Totally got that thing. Now to find more time! For example I do not have time for a longer comment, but I always like these threads.
@Lange Yeah I totally am there. I just finished giving all of the games in a bundle a proper try and they’re almost all excellent. I am happy! I’ve still got Cognition 4 all ready to go–I don’t really wanna play that one in shifts and I haven’t had a two hour spot of uninterrupted gaming time. Alas! I have to write like 50 emails today, ugh.
Today I shall finish Sam and Leo Go To The Bodega.
@Pedro I used to write the walls of text around here, but see the aforementioned “lack of time” comment. I’m very glad to see that the spirit of Rambling Game Writing has found a home in someone else 🙂
Just try and accept that it’s different over here, and that we have so much experience and logic informing our decisions… usually.
I’m sorry, are you actually under the impression that I’m not an American?
Because, you know, you said “At any rate, anti-black sentiment is more less dried up in most places across the country,” and I’ve lived in a place that had a law on the books forbidding black people from living west of Avenue C or south of 16th St. This was in 2006. I think you and I are done with this conversation.
@Matt: Heh, I’m guilty as far as the former comment goes. You things counter to my belief and some part of me said “no proper American could ever say such things.” I apologize, so please don’t hold my idiocy against me.
The latter comment, however, means little. In the first place, I am not convinced that it is, in fact, a law, instead of an urban myth (i.e. Texas has the right to secede in its constitution). A few minutes spent googling returned nothing, though that hardly proves anything. Secondly, there is no indication that such a law resulted from contemporary racism, rather than ineptness. Thirdly, it doesn’t prove my point wrong; in places such as Los Angeles and… other places, racism is still very much alive and well, which I fully acknowledge.
Well, now that I’m done covering my own back, I’d like to make something constructive here, even if you refuse to respond. It is my belief, (and I am not the only one, though it is a new idea), that the contemporary means to fighting racism is to destroy race. And, well, I suspect that it’d be pandering to elaborate since you can more or less figure out the ramifications.
The submit button is a cruel, cruel, lord.
@Richard: So, your long awaited crowd-funded game comes out earlier today? I can’t wait to play it.
@mwm I think the timeframe is, something needs to be on the competition servers by tomorrow (although you’re apparently allowed to update as much as you want, so I have been updating it as I do my daily comma fixes). Voting begins October 1 and so I assume the games get released that day.
I should warn you that, uh, there’s a passage about the Trayvon Martin thing in there 🙂
Oh, are you doing IF Comp? From my experience last year, they don’t like it when you discuss the game outside of the comp during that period. Just a quick heads-up; not sure if this rule has changed. Good luck though!
@Lange Thanks for the warning! I have been looking at the rules carefully since there was the GFM and a couple other bits of para text I wanted to make sure weren’t conflicting. I would assume a simple “hey the comp is happening” type note on my blog or twitter is kosher!
I’m not saying this is information is relevant to anyone but I’m just gonna throw this link out there and say nothing further about it:
http://ifcomp.org/comp13/info.php
Now let’s not discuss this any further.