Worth Reading: 02/01/13

@InternetDetective said:

Re: The Model Ted Talk

Patrick are you trying to tell us not to be jealous of your beauty? Not to assume that your life is any better or easier because you were born thin and graceful like a Tolkienesque forest elf? I get it man. Although my physical appearance is on the opposite end of the spectrum from yours and Ted Talk Model's, I still believe we can relate to one another. If not through common life experience, at least through common interests. Like video games! You see, both sparkly-eyed young gods and godesses and asthmatic, greasy, socially rejected pizza-faced internet trolls can come together and feel a kinship over these magical virtual worlds. And perhaps someday, with a little patience and a lot of tolerance, our two peoples can even get along face to face someday. Let's all try to make that someday a little sooner.

Can't tell if serious? LOL

Re: The Model Ted Talk

Patrick are you trying to tell us not to be jealous of your beauty? Not to assume that your life is any better or easier because you were born thin and graceful like a Tolkienesque forest elf? I get it man. Although my physical appearance is on the opposite end of the spectrum from yours and Ted Talk Model's, I still believe we can relate to one another. If not through common life experience, at least through common interests. Like video games! You see, both sparkly-eyed young gods and godesses and asthmatic, greasy, socially rejected pizza-faced internet trolls can come together and feel a kinship over these magical virtual worlds. And perhaps someday, with a little patience and a lot of tolerance, our two peoples can even get along face to face someday. Let's all try to make that someday a little sooner.

Yeah, really bummed out to see that cold math put out there in regards to Splinter Cell. While the option to limit the wanton killing, is there, I'd like a rethinking of the stealth elements. Not because of concern for fake electronic people, more the nonsense even a preturnatural badass could hope to mow down a battalion of folks as a part of a moderately exciting weekend.

@Terrorbite said:

@Hailinel said:

@Dezztroy said:

What's so different about real guns appearing in games compared to, say, real cars?

By paying for the license to use real gun models in their games, developers are effectively funding weapons manufacturers.

I don't see the problem, even if citizen of a country couldn't privately own guns the gun manufacturers would still be around to make money off the governments of the world, so who cares if they make money of video games?

Because gun violence is a real problem in the US, and we want to believe that video games do not contribute to that. But even if violent video games are not directly linked to violent crime or gun deaths, the fact that publishers like EA and Activision are paying large fees to showcase brand name weapons in their games means that no matter how many studies are done that exonerate games from inciting violence or making people more prone to hurt or murder others, there is always going to be an explicit, if not quite as glaring, connection between some of the biggest games on the market and the gun manufacturers that are fighting to keep gun control off the table.

Yeah, gun companies are going to make money elsewhere, and games are never going to be a major form of sustenance for them, but it's hard for people who WANT to make the argument that games are completely innocent in our track record of violent crime when there is such a blatant hypocrisy like the direct funding of firearms manufacturers through licensing.

Note that the NRA doesn't specifically call out the biggest violent games on the market, like Call of Duty and Battlefield, when they rant about how games are ruining our children. Probably because those games are directly contributing to the financial success of the gun manufacturers that support the NRA itself.

@x0mb13 said:

The best part of that Ted talk is that it has about 900k views, 9x as many views as any other video featured on their front page. Why? Because it has a hot chick on the thumbnail and looks are everything after all haha.

Yup

I never read any of these things that Patrick linked. But they're good reads and thank you for sharing these!

That zelda clip was crazy!

Interesting articles this week: the Simon Parkin, Christopher Dring and 1 year old Clint Hocking talk were all good stuff.

Searching for greater meaning in the things we do, it's part of being human. There's a strange dissonance in video games (or I should say the people that play them) between wanting to just enjoy a game and trying to get something more out of the experience. Not saying it isn't possible to have both, but spending any amount of time on enthusiast websites (especially this one) makes it seem like people want one or the other.

@Hailinel said:

@Dezztroy said:

What's so different about real guns appearing in games compared to, say, real cars?

By paying for the license to use real gun models in their games, developers are effectively funding weapons manufacturers.

I don't see the problem, even if citizen of a country couldn't privately own guns the gun manufacturers would still be around to make money off the governments of the world, so who cares if they make money of video games?

@SharkMan said:

sucks that it looks like chris taylor lost his mind from this, i mean that video makes him look like he is barely holding it together. all their games were great minus supcom 2.

I think he was handling things pretty well, alll things concidered. He's got thirty people's lives on his shoulders right now.

that speed run was pretty damn impressive =)

@Inquisitor said:

@redelectric said:

@Inquisitor said:

@Mr_Misery said:

What does that Cameron Russell video have to do with video games?

QFT. This TED talk stuff seems interesting on its own right but......

Quit Fucking Talking.

Not everything has to be gaming-centric. Get Expanded.

I'd expect it to be at the very least gaming-peripheric. If i wanted to get expanded i'd certainly find my own destinations.

Well, not every TED Talk is about gaming. Hell, the vast majority of them aren't. So as long as Patrick includes TED Talk videos in Worth Reading, there will likely be material off the subject of video games.

That article on gun licensing in games was amazing. I usually have a number of tabs with various video game stories open at any given time, to get to when I feel like reading them. I just read that whole article now. It was gripping and thought-provoking.

I reckon Simon Parkin is about as good as games journalism gets these days. Every single time that guy gets published it's fantastic work, even when I don't agree with him.

sucks that it looks like chris taylor lost his mind from this, i mean that video makes him look like he is barely holding it together. all their games were great minus supcom 2.

@redelectric said:

@Inquisitor said:

@Mr_Misery said:

What does that Cameron Russell video have to do with video games?

QFT. This TED talk stuff seems interesting on its own right but......

Quit Fucking Talking.

Not everything has to be gaming-centric. Get Expanded.

I'd expect it to be at the very least gaming-peripheric. If i wanted to get expanded i'd certainly find my own destinations.

Arms companies licensing their iconic products in video games for money? Oh god, I'm sooooooo disturbed.

@Inquisitor said:

@Mr_Misery said:

What does that Cameron Russell video have to do with video games?

QFT. This TED talk stuff seems interesting on its own right but......

Quit Fucking Talking.

Not everything has to be gaming-centric. Get Expanded.

@patrickklepek you are awesome. Worth Reading is great. Keeping me sane while I'm waiting for Unprofessional Fridays to go up.

Worth Reading has become one of my favorite features on the site.

@patrickklepek Regarding losing your strong characters and thus not being to finish the game, Fire Emblem, at least on normal difficulties, actively prevents that from happening by constantly giving you new characters every few chapters. These characters have rarely been the best in terms of stats, but on normal difficulty, they are more than enough to carry you through. At the risk of scaring you off the franchise, may I suggest you check out www.serenesforest.com, and check out the spreadsheets of growth rates for characters in the games, the percentage chance that a character may gain stat points upon level up. While it might not help you in playing the game, seeing all the math (and RNG) behind the game should be interesting.

Also, since you posted a video of Awesome Games Done Quick 2013, may I suggest a future story. Speed Demo Archives have been hosting charity marathons for years, for various things from autism to cancer. This latest marathon was so successful, it raised over $400,000, more money than all previous marathons combined. I'm sure talking to them and writing about how it all came together would make for an interesting story.

There is a kickstarter by the name of Unwritten: That Which Happened. It looks very interesting and sadly hit a wall.

Giantbomb is the cutest!

The best part of that Ted talk is that it has about 900k views, 9x as many views as any other video featured on their front page. Why? Because it has a hot chick on the thumbnail and looks are everything after all haha.

When the new Fire Emblem came out, I felt guilty at not having played the series, and then I remembered the "if you lose a unit, they're gone forever" mechanic and that that was part of the reason I hadn't gotten into the series before. I think sometimes I don't trust myself not to screw up on something like that.

Little Inferno is a game I really want to play, and yet I still don't like fire irl, just like...I think video games have actually made me very certain I never want to own a gun. Weirdly enough.

@patrickklepek You're doing what pretty much every Fire Emblem player does as they play through the game, which makes your segment on the last Bombcast where everyone took a shit on Casual mode that much more painful. I feel that Casual mode solves the problem of the constant restarts and keeps you in the story. The permadeath is a great hook in theory, but no one is going to willingly let their favorites die if they can help it, and the game would be lose story and become a slog if it did what XCOM does.

I actually watched the entire Chris Taylor interview. I like that guy. I still don't like his games. I find them boring but I want to root for him. He's a good guy.

@Mr_Misery said:

What does that Cameron Russell video have to do with video games?

QFT. This TED talk stuff seems interesting on its own right but......

@Rxanadu said:

The "XNA is no longer supported" link directs me to the same article about Brian Reynolds' farewell letter from Zynga.

Does anyone have the link talking about the lack of support for XNA by Microsoft?

Fixed, sorry!

Disregarding actual Barret M82's, don't semi-auto BMG .50 (.guns chambered for 50 caliber Browning machine gun ammo) "anti-material" guns run around $6500 at the very low end (Serbu) and the single round bolt action ones(Serbu, Amrmalite) come in at around $3000. The ammo is like $4 a round. $40 fills the ten round magazine. I'm sure the price drops if you buy 100 rounds or more maybe to $3 a round. They need to be fired from a bipod. They are awfully loud.

I frankly doubt many of those get sold because they are similar to a very expensive gun that showed up in a video game or movie. It's a rich man's toy like most big bore guns.

The TED talk is fantastic. I've studied in graphic design, and going through that you begin to realize that absolutely nothing you see in any media form is truly real. 99% (hyperbolic) of everything is "constructed" or photoshopped to look better than reality. The other 1% is when they deliberately want the people to look worse, like in those gossip magazines.

It's had a reverse effect on me when I see that kind of stuff. I'm more visually interested in flaws than perfection nowadays, because when everything "looks" perfect, it becomes boring (like that fantastic Twilight Zone episode, "I'm beautiful! Just like everyone else!"). Those models do nothing for me because I already know they're completely fake. That woman looked better to me in her "natural" photos because I could see an actual human being in there.

It might not be all that related to videogames, but it kind of is. We have the power to make anything look like anything; and what we choose to make with that ability is sometimes disappointing.

@takkun169: They pay for the brand name gun licenses for the same reason EA pays a shit ton of money to the NFL for the Madden games. Sure you can make a football game with generic teams and players, but anybody who actually follows football will want real teams/players for their video game.

@ICantBeStopped said:

Where's Unprofessional Fridays?

Last night's was a long one. It's probably taking longer to process and upload.

Where's Unprofessional Fridays?

What world does Cliffy B live in? He might as well have been clanking pots together while he said this in the mirror.

What next, is David Jaffe going to say that fucking shouldn't be in videogames while screaming into a paper bag in a soundproof room?

Is Peter Molyneux going to chide game developers for overhyping their games?

@patrickklepek: The last link (XNA story) is broken. leads to the zynga story

@Korosuzo said:

@Fleshfeast said:

I'll watch this TED talk later out of curiosity, but I'm instantly skeptical when someone tells me something isn't important, but has it or plenty of it. Don't trust a pretty person to tell you looks don't matter, don't trust a rich person to tell you money doesn't matter. I find it hard to believe that you know it doesn't matter, when you've never had to deal with not having it.

I was curious too. It's short, about 8 minutes or so, and interesting if nothing else. Her perspective is actually quite insightful and something little girls who want to be a model should watch. She's just one of the few who won the genetic lottery and realizes that.

Yea I watched it last night. The title implied that she was going to explain why being good looking doesn't matter. She was actually saying the opposite, and also talking about how the life of a model isn't quite what it seems.

I must say, that Chris Taylor video was rather moving.

Wait, there are only 177,000 black and Latino men in New York??? Where in the hell is she getting her statistics?

I've just watched that TED talk three times in a row. Holy freaking wow.

great stuff as per usual Patrick

I like that fairwell letter from Brian Reynolds on leave Zynga.

@bunnymud: The most twisted part of having these guns in games is who is paying whom. If a publisher is looking to get a bit of money for product placement, the contact Coke or Nike or whoever, depending on the type of game. Then said company pays the publisher so for that product to feature somewhere hopefully prominently, inside the game. Ta-da, everyone is happy (well, except for us who are being advertised to because, lets be honest... it rarely fits well).

The people who commented for that article, all said that they essentially see their product being included in these games as advertising to young prospective buyers. So why are the publishers paying the gun manufacturers to advertise their products? Shouldn't it be the other way around? If I were some one who ran a company that had to pay to have my product included in a game, I would be super fucking pissed. But this may be the best way to get these licensed guns out of games. Start making the gun manufacturers actually have to pay for their advertising. First off, they would be beholden to certain rules as far as what ways they can advertise (alcohol and tobacco companies sponsor racing teams but cannot be included in games because they cannot advertise their products to children). Secondly they may not be so ready to actually have to pay out for that sort of thing.

Game publishers need to open their eyes to the fact that they are paying to advertise some one else's products.

Lists..

@sissylion said:

@Mr_Misery said:

What does that Cameron Russell video have to do with video games?

It doesn't. Patrick is just posting the TED talk he's going to watch/has watched for the week because he finds it interesting and wants to share.

Giant Patrick Blog

@Alex_Carrillo said:

@Antithesis said:

@Hailinel said:

@Antithesis said:

@Hailinel: The implicit design of something has little to do with how it is actually used. I get enjoyment from running a slick ar15 in 3 gun competition the same as a porche gt3 owner gets enjoyment from taking his car out on track days. An irresponsible or unstable person could use my 3 gun rig to hurt or kill people, and irresponsible person in a porche gt3 speeding on a highway could cause an accident and hurt or kill people.

A responsible driver won't kill anyone by driving their car unless there is an accident. A responsible gun owner could still injure or kill, based on the nature of their occupation.

While it might seem farfetched, it's not impossible for someone to be against the idea of funding a gun manufacturer with their own money (where profits go to the publisher/developer that licensed the rights to the models) while also buying and playing video games that prominently feature gun use.

I can understand not wanting your money to go to a weapons manufacturer if you aren't into the whole gun thing. People just need to realize that licenses for firearms are the same as licenses for anything else, some money has changed hands to have that thing appear in a game.

People do realize that and they're disgusted by it. That's kind of what this whole thing is about. A bit of reading comprehension would do you well.

BAN ALL PRODUCT PLACEMENT IN EVERY GAME!!!!

Alas, that will never be.

@Senno: "The horror and the horrible act of bringing to death someone at the end of a gun is nothing compared to the carnage and delightful glee that can be seen on a childs face as they play that title."

Really? Having joy at the representation of violence is worse than killing someone?