SatelliteOfLove

Clint Hocking's talk from GDC 2011 is still relevant today.

This was one of the interviews/blogs/speeches/articles/etc that clued me into just how willfully ignorant the relative majority of developers talked themselves into being after 2006. Such untoppled truths were not superceded, just ignored, and around that time, you started seeing men and women like him "waking up" to those laws still holding sway, whether they're obeyed or not. Thankfully, the malaise is lifting in places it was thick as fog until recently.

@Brodehouse said:

@fartGOD666 said:

@Brodehouse said:

Call of Duty has no more responsibility to make sure that children aren't playing it as Captain Crunch has a responsibility to make sure kids are eating healthy. This is a free society, one in which you unfortunately have personal responsibility.

Hahaha you're going to hate the way you used to view things once you actually grow up

No, actually I have grown up, and my opinion on the matter has completely reversed because of it. Because taking responsibility for yourself is pretty much the definition of growing up, and expecting that it's the media corporations who need to safeguard your children is the opposite. And "they need to do more to protect our children" is the same finger-waggling, Helen Lovejoy-esque caterwauling and moralizing to remove the rights and responsibilities of adults that it was during the temperance movement.

Combine this with shitty parents (in the biological sense only) and voila!

Glad you brought up about the early "bwuh?!?" reaction to these. I chimed in on the goading you to play these back when and that was my reaction to getting the Sub ending. I had spent $35 dollars and I'm not mad but "bwuh?!?!".

For those of you reading this uninitiated in Uchikoshi's high-grade MINDFUCKERY this is the distance you're going to need to be willing to go to meet the game halfway. It's worth it.

As for the puzzles, I liked VLR's better than 999s, often because VLR's wasn't interrupted by intellegentsia info-dumping. "LETS TALK ABOUT CRYOGENICS!" whose necessity was much better handled with VLR'.

It hardly forgives the game's repeated indulgence of the player's character cracking cheap, juvenile sex jokes at the expense of every single one of these characters. It comfortably discredits the argument the characters were designed this way other than to be provocative. The next Zero Escape game would do well to dispense with this.

Funnily enough, this confusingly didn't happen to the unnamed character!

And for those going shit-flinging ape-shit over this, its just as much about the creators in the eyes of others than tender-hearted feminists. I like my sexual stuff in games with some taste and self-respect from the devs, as those two characters needed to show skin for their role as the 8th Enneagram.

Speaking of taste and self-respect, Sigma would've been much better served if the adult language from him was...adult, or at least funny like the infamous Elevavator Scene from 999. It makes it feel like it was written for the no-game losers back home and not the decent men with needs that populate the world over, especially someone as cut as Sigma. If we're going to talk "Japan" in this, we need to laser focus this issue onto that, as difficult as the video game-buying demographics over there have gotten for that to happen.

A good recap.

Telebunny's articles are just quality period. Parish is one of the few journalists in the biz that still understands game design as it once was judged by.

"Six games every libertarian should play"

Ethical vertex, how does it work?

@Morrowind & Agency:

Nobody told me that I was special. No one held my hand. There was no mystic prophecy about how I would be the one to save the world. Not yet.

This is one of the reasons I have problems with alot of recent RPGs. They try and "fluff" me too much. It's like "I'm already great and the forthcoming game is just grind towards the inevitable." Even back in the day, the prophecied hero was more along the lines of "the best we got right now" versus a guarantee.

The Player Character Nepotism needs to be curtailed a good bit.

@DevourerOfTime said:

The genesis Shining Force games are great, Patrick. The translations don't hold up very well and the storylines aren't that deep, but the games are still mechanically sound. Not as cutthroat as X-Com is, as there is no permadeath, but they are still fairly challenging.

They are actually very similar to Fire Emblem. Maybe you should check out the new FE as well when it comes out next month?

The art and music are also top notch.

• ”The Year of Antisocial Gaming" by Gavin Purcell for The New York Times

Gavin Purcell likely speaks for many of us when he talks his guilt from playing with the popular iOS word game Letterpress in 2012. I went through a similar psychological arc years ago when Words With Friends, and it surfaced some of my worst tendencies. It’s awfully easy to start a game with someone, but I’d usually never make it past the second turn. Then, you’re trying to avoid the messages from people asking you to keep playing, and you resent the game, the concept of push notifications, and, ultimately, your friends. Terrible! I don’t blame people for giving up.

That is because Playing in Parallel is not Multiplayer.

"I name thee annihilator" is very stupid but very funny.

@LordXavierBritish said:

@Bocam said:

How much story does this have?

It seems like there is a much bigger plot that's going to unfold at some point, but at where I am in the game so far I've just been trekking through a dungeon.

The game opens with one of your party members waking up from a coma with some kind of black knight who seems to be a government official or something. It's kind of fucking confusing although it's been clearing a few things up the farther I've progressed.

They've constructed a very complex fantasy world and I think it's a little overwhelming at first as they try to cram in all these descriptions of races and Chasers and all this other shit. That being said it's done a good job of making it seem as though there is a lot more going on than just looking for a magical red blanket so hopefully it gets more interesting deeper in.

As is typical with Matsuno-crafted narratives, this is a snapshot on a larger whole. And it is whole. This isn't like most RPG narratives which pile on useless details and microcosm events that don't affect or shed light on the world or tale at large, each snippet of info or desciption is key to understanding or foreshadowing other things, or at least vital towards setting the mood. The most interesting part is that depth and maturity mirrors the gameplay always.

In other words, Matsuno Game.

and weirdly flop when seemingly destined for triumph (3DS).

Paaaaaaaaaaaa-triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick, come out of the Echo Chamber! Head towards the light! Grab my hand! Live, dammit, LIVE!!!!