Worth Reading: 01/24/2014

It would have been even nicer if it wasn't completely made up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Wars it was originally released on the 10th. Even more so: http://www.ign.com/articles/2001/05/15/pre-e3-advance-wars-gets-a-date

I would say this is even more interesting: "However, due to the events of the September 11 attacks, Nintendo canceled the originally scheduled Japanese release of the game. It was eventually released in a two-in-one compilation in 2004 with its sequel, Game Boy Wars Advance 2"

my co-worker's aunt makes $61 every hour on the computer. She has been laid off for 6 months but last month her check was $21227 just working on the computer for a few hours. original site,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, http://www.Bay95.com

nah your not rambling :) , thats a valid issue with the series and you are totally right, that series could barely give a shit about catering to newcomers, i mean hell, i do like this series, but i haven't touched the handheld games, im just going to wait for the ps3 hd remixes to come out.

(oh and according to the wiki here for the series, the 3ds one is apparently the most recent game storywise, so thats also why you were lost :P)

@mrfluke: I bought the one on 3DS (Dream Drop Distance) and was utterly lost. I asked my friend who's been playing every game in the series what the hell was going on and even he confessed to not knowing. I went to a faq and then an illustrated faq and it was like trying to read a cliff notes version of Game of Thrones or Wheel of Time. Maybe there's a good game or story in there somewhere but it feels super unwelcoming of newcomers -_-;; I sorta don't like not knowing what's going on with well established characters or feeling like I'm missing out on a lot because of not knowing the history so I stopped.... I'm rambling.

Totally agree, Duder. The situations present are all so different in a many subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Even if you just limit it to the test in the article there are a lot of variables ignored. He does make a good case for further study at least.

Ukraine protest footage and photos look more like Metro concept art... hope all is well with you and yours 4A.

Wesley Yin-Poole visits the offices of Lionhead for an extensive update the studio.

@patrickklepek Little error there, "update the studio".

I'm incredibly glad for the link to that Kingdom Hearts II depression message. It wasn't an article or a long-winded life story. Just a personal message.

I don't think it was meant to make me feel this, but damn does it make me feel like I'm on the edge of crying. For me Kingdom Hearts II holds two important memories for me: Playing it at the start of Summer and hearing Roxas's line on his Summer ending really hit me - there's nothing like seeing a fictional character literally cease to exist at the end of their Summer that makes you determined to cherish your own. And Second, I happened to also end up in Hospital during the Summer and my Dad gave me his portable PS2 (his job required him to go from city-to-city for different Businesses, so he bought a portable PS2 with a screen for hotels) for a good 2 weeks so I could continue to play it while I was in Hospital.

@smorlock: Not quite. It requires you to not save at all, or hit multiple different owl statues, before you get the song of soaring.

That Zelda glitch seems so easy to accidentally pull off in normal gameplay I'm amazed nobody stumbled across it before.

"Spencer Chen uses his own marketing experience to debunk booth babes."

Everything he says seems logical and he has enough circumstantial evidence of 'conversions' to back up his claims. But my questions would be "What happens at e3?" As near as I can tell the buyers for Wal-mart, Target, Sears, Best Buy, or anyone else are not on the show floors of ANY games shows. The business of selling games into stores is not being done on the show floor anymore, and hasn't been done there for more than a decade. The business deals are not even being done in the back rooms of the big booth by appointment either. As near as I can tell EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Take 2, Capcom, Namco-Bandi, Square-Enix-Eidos and everyone else IS NOT DOING BUSINESS at their booth anymore. Its is all media coverage, gland-handing, and "being there", right?

Someone tell me I'm wrong? Isn't that also why there was a crisis of "What they hell is e3 for?" a few years ago? e3 is no longer a trade show, or a demonstration to buyers show - it is a media event. Thus the argument for why booth babes should be removed from gaming shows cannot use the same argument. In fact as a media show, you woudl have to do a totally different study about what effect having pretty women greeting at the booth has on media coverage.

Because that is the question for gaming conventions? What is happening at these conventions? And, what effect to certain spokesmodels (promotional model) have on media coverage if in fact that is what is happening?

That Half-life 2 video was really interesting, also reminds me of a piece about Doom that John Romero shared a couple of weeks ago, about the level design in Doom (and why Brutal Doom is made on an misunderstanding of what Doom is all about). It goes less into the level designs of specific levels the way that HL2 video did, but does instead talk about the monster behaviors and how different kinds of monsters are used in Doom levels: http://blog.danbo.vg/post/50094276897/the-most-misunderstood-game-of-all-time

@bigd145: What I especially like about this is the relaxed tone and fair-minded, reasonable nature of both these blokes. I feel that most of the game developers Kotaku claims are directly responsible for every social ill in the world are probably like these guys. It takes a degree of character to respond in a relaxed manner when someone picks you for public scorn and claims you are contributing to the suffering of others.

The makers of Prison Architect have made a video response to the kotaku article. Must watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=netYNUAq_ZQ

Also, Prison Architect is not set in bloody fucking America!

Just poking fun at Apple which slashed R&D employees and has been running off the same designs for quite some time.

That Eurogamer article was a rag.

What the hell are you talking about?!

Love the video on level design in Half-Life 2: Episode 2, made me remember why I have so much fondness for that series. Man, I should replay that series...

So @amyggen its pretty much this, and also the fact that i know quite a lot of people that started the 1st kingdom hearts when they were 12. so they have a lot of nostalgia with the series,

and similar with the youtube comments, theres are youtube videos and facebook posts where people talk about the sentimental value they have for the series.

Dude, that's some hot Jeanne D'Arc drop.That was a pretty good game.

The KH spoiler video is above for that scene.

I'm not going to argue that the "thing" in To the Moon doesn't hit harder, but it's definitely the saddest and most tragic moment in the KH series. The characters even face a similar "syndrome" that causes them to be emotionally distant and incapable of expressing their emotions. The controversial line of dialogue is what it is because they don't know how else to express themselves.

The story of 358/2 Days does get watered down by the combat/gameplay, but the movie from KH 1.5 Remix cuts it all down to 3 hours so it's a tighter package. If you don't care about the characters in 358/2 Days then the moment wont work. The same goes for To the Moon. If you read the youtube comments posted for each game's scene you'll see people talking about how they cried.

The actual "thing" may be the same, but the relationship between the characters is on a totally different level. Which is why the "thing" hits harder. Also, To the Moon got to the point and didn't have you being errand boy instead of advancing the plot.

Edit: I should say, despite the series best efforts to lose me (haven't played a KH game start to finish since 2), the premise of Kingdom Hearts 3 is amazing and I can't wait to play it.

That tweet about Advance Wars. Damn.

I think selling games in an alpha state is fine, as long as they are clearly marked as such. It can even be useful for getting ongoing constructive criticism for where the game's development should go, from buyers.

I think writing serious articles about sociological shortcomings in the mechanics of a game in an alpha state, is fucking dumb, and another example of Kotaku being... Kotaku.

The thing that happened to Xion in KH: 358/2 Days is basically what happened to another character in To the Moon and a whole bunch of people praise that game for it's emotional impact. I own both games and I'd dare someone to deny the comparison. The same thing LITERALLY happens.

Alex and Patrick's opinion on Broken Age aligns with mine. Shay is boring in comparison to Vella and with 2 or 3 exceptions the puzzle solutions are obvious to the point of being trivial. The game is still good and the overarching story is much more interesting than the character's themselves, but overall it falls far short of Schafer's previous work.

@mrfluke: There's some Things I can't understand, and the KH series being emotional for anyone is one of them.

Can't say I agree with the article about difficulty being the point of games.

Had too much to say for a comment so I blogged a response.

That's a very narrow definition of difficulty, that tries to strip it from other mediums. This is the traditional narrowing of the definition of computer game to exclude things like Dear Esther, Proteus, Sim City, Gone Home. To try and point to competitive games as the origin and then rob the computer of player status if it does not participate enough and reject solitaire games have always existed where there is no other player with agency in the system.

Computers are interactive, computer games can thusly be made to react to the player, to reform the words and images in such a way as to allow the continued consumption and understanding of the message despite the issues of the consumer. This, not their offering of roadblocks, elevates them beyond a book or a film, which must be repetitively consumed in the hope of being able to understand it for anything which wishes to have a message beyond the surface or being fully read by audiences of a range of abilities. Difficulty is not the enemy, but saying one size fits all and difficulty should not be complained about as a wall that should not move to meet the height the player needs is holding the medium back. Also, just immersing the playing in a virtual space has no traditional difficulty, it's still a game. There is nothing special about being blocked from continuing, which is the very specific form of difficulty being expressed in that piece, and nothing core about games that ties them to that design choice.

Here is Jeff Vogel talking about the repeated consumption of something to grok it, to endlessly mine it for more meaning, as being a sign of great art. You may not like his assertion that games have not reached that point but he does point at both the opening fallacy (that a book is read by merely looking at every page or a movie is completely consumed by sitting in the room as it plays) and that games have the potential to really be incredible as adaptive systems that can work on many levels and tune what comes out for which level you want to read, one size does not need to fit all. And it's got nothing to do with difficulty as blocking progress, of giving a path to some mastery or repetitive task.

That difficulty is certainly not THE POINT of games. Failing to understand the variable skills of the many players that will engage with the system, hiding anything beyond mechanical mastery of a system as the proposed pinnacle of gaming, is part of the problem.

Would maybe not phrase it as confrontational, but I have to agree with you. Seems patently weird to buy a game that is specifically not finished and then ruminate about the things that it should have in it.

Spencer Chen's booth babe article is really no surprise. Booth babes might have worked when the press side of this industry (arguably all sides of this industry) were largely amateurs with no credentials beyond an audience (sometimes not even then)... but it's not going to fly when this is a multi-billion dollar industry where the people writing about it need a college degree for an entry level position, not when professionalism is demanded.

I wouldn't ban them a la PAX just because I'm not the kind of guy who is going to tell you you can't be sexy... but I wouldn't use them, because anyone who matters is either not going to be positively affected or will be actively negatively turned off by their presence.

I hear that's the one where minorities and women are whipped with car antennaes! I heard it on the internet!

Apple hasn't innovated in a decade or more, so no I can't tell the difference between those games.

Dojo of Death is legit.

as much as the staff on this site has no interest in kingdom hearts (which is ok)

that series does very much hold emotional value for people.

Prison Architect is in alpha. If you play a game that is clearly marked 'alpha', you are entitled to underdeveloped game mechanics at best. I'm looking forward to Paolo's hand-wringing upon the release of the finished game. No, wait. I'm not. But that's a separate issue.

Don't buy games in an alpha state. Don't talk about games in an alpha state (you should be under an NDA if you're playing an alpha). Don't play games in an alpha state unless you're being paid. "Alpha" in my world basically means, "Fuck you".

Releasing an unfinished game to the public is an attempt to have it both ways: they want the money and attention that comes with a finished game, but the immunity to criticism that comes with an unfinished one. Maybe Paolo has a point, or maybe he's simply jumping the gun on a feature that they couldn't possibly implement given that the developers have admitted the basic functionality of Prison Architect is still buggy and undeveloped. There's no way of knowing. Maybe the things he's asking for don't fit the tone of the game. Again, who knows? It's not fucking done.

A world where critics are forced to generate half-assed critiques (like you all are being forced to do with Unfinished) of half-assed games is a world where something has gone wrong.

The booth babe article is kinda faulty. I mean, if the experiment was putting two attractive models in one booth and two unattractive women with understanding of the subject in the other, doesn't that kinda shows that you could very well use the budget to hire one expert and one model to each booth? Why not go with that, then? Being your public mostly male, as it often happens in tech conventions, a model will always end up attracting people.

Thought I'd agree that adding in some male "booth babes" would also work, since the women (and men that don't like speaking with models) would feel more at ease, I'm against banning them altogether like the folks at PAX did.

@euandewar: I think it is fine to shit on a game as long as you can accept that others can get something different out of their experience.

I don't think Spencer Chen really debunked booth babes. What he has proven is that hired models don't work for his products and services at the type of industry events he attends for the convention goers he wants to attract. I'm pretty sure other companies in various fields have researched the effectiveness of hired models to see if they work or not, much like how many of them look into what type of booth layouts and presentations work for them.

This is not to say even if it is actually beneficial to other companies whether or not they should employ hired models, just that Spencer Chen has only proven what works for his own convention presentations.

@video_game_king: That works as well. Im talking less of an acknowledgement of a game's quality and more an acknowledgement of it's worth to people.

I liked the booth babe article. I've hoped for a long time that some frequent business attendee would be able to empirically prove what we've all assumed for a long time, that shit is just plain awkward.

Now, if only there was some major video game convention that we could praise for having banned booth babes years ago...

@euandewar:

What if it's special to you becauseit's shit?