imsh_pl

Played a couple rounds of Mysterium with my family. It's like a better Dixit in that it has a goal you work towards and an incredible atmosphere. It's a coop game where you have to solve a murder case based on hints you get from one player who's a ghost and can communite with you using only visions, ie Dixit-style cards. Really great for beginners, only one person (the ghost) has to be competent for everyone to have a good time. The rulebook makes the game seem way more difficult than it actually is.

Started playing 7 Wonders Duels with my girlfriend on the weekend. When I came to visit her yesterday she had the game waiting on the table and we spent the entire evening playing it. So far it's been a blast, it's a great couple's game if your better half enjoys board games. There's a multitude of playstyles to choose from, you can either have a very specific plan that you set up a number of turns ahead or focus on your short-term goals. The game has a lot of ways to mess with your opponent's plan without feeling like it's too aggressive so it shouldn't discourage people who aren't that competitive.

Please let Midnight Brown be his wedding band.

Outrageous. The game isn't old. How can the best video game be one that isn't old!

Bad menus.

It's been 30 years, there is no excuse for traversing the menus in your game to be a chore.

That's fine.

My personal problem with this issue is with people who when there is a conflict between diversity of character models and diversity of experiences choose the diversity of character models (or rather criticize its lack).

@dray2k: My response would be that you're making a mistake that many people who expressed their opinion in this thread and outside of it are prone to making as well:

you are conflating diversity of experiences with diversity of character models.

Having character models that visually resemble a wide range of ethnic groups and sexes doesn't mean that the characters will have interesting, original and genuine personalities and story arcs.

Conversely, having character models that are unoriginal in the context of the current state of the medium/market doesn't define how interesting, original and genuine their personalities and stories are.

Representation goes deeper than your skin. That's why you feel more emotionally attached to the characters in this clip

than to the characters in this clip

even though there are no actual human beings present in the first clip, while the second one has a wide variety of people representing multiple ethnic groups and sexes.

I pray to God you would never consider saying that the emotions and interactions present in the first clip are less genuine and touching than those in the second one because they involve robots. All I ask is that you extend that same principle to video games.

@imhungry: My gripe with your comment is that you seemed to imply that there's nothing more to representation than a character sharing your skin color and sex, and that the presence of merely those factors in the protagonists of most major games makes the desires for more representation by people who happen to be white males unwarranted.

@danieljw:

"Why do you get to decide whether or not people can enjoy being represented in games?"
What? My position was the exact opposite, that we shouldn't decide for others what makes them feel represented, which I said as a response to someone who actually said that specific people can't feel under-represented:

"White males [...] don't and never have felt under-represented in media and don't need any extra empowerment."

"Is there some fault in being a person of colour or a woman and wanting to play games or hear stories about people like yourself?"
No...

"It's easy to say representation is trivial"
I've never said that.

"because there has literally never been a point in the life of a white male where they couldn't walk in to a game store or movie store and pull several hundred titles off the shelf about people that look and talk like they do. If I lived in a society where I very rarely and infrequently saw stories being told about people like me then I'd be pretty happy to participate in or consume one when it comes along."
Why do you think that people's desire for representation of them as human beings should be limited to playing as someone who 'looks and talks like they do'?

Why do you think a person's desire for feeling represented should be satiated because they can shoot other players as a character who shares their race and gender?

I don't really care. I don't think diversity in games is, by default, bad. But I also don't think it is by default good. If tackling the issue of diversity in any way you want helps you tell the story that you want to be told, go for it.

Personally, I think video game audiences still have a long way to go when it comes to the maturity of their desires. I think we should first and foremost care about how accurately a game portrays the human condition; usually this translates to the quality of writing, the genuineness of the struggles of the characters, the way their interact, etc. (EDIT: that is, in character-driven games. Don't really need that in Pacman.)

I hold video games to the standard of being art and if you (the general you) think that stressing what real-life groups the made up characters we explore in fiction belong to is necessary to the process of conveying emotion and exploring the human condition then frankly I think your taste in art hasn't quite developed yet.

There's genuine criticism of art, and then there's complaining that you can't relate to the character of Lady Macbeth because she has a vagina instead of a penis.