clyde

You are on to something. I love the concept of a game where you are the coach of some little-league team. You level them up (by allocating them to training excercises), give them fund raising assignments (whose funds you can spend on fresh uniforms or pizza parties for morale). You have to balance parent's expectations, individual skills, and relationships between players; when assigning positions. Each player would have a Mass Effect 2 style loyalty mission. That would be awesome. Little Bobby is having a hard time with his parent's divorce, he's taking it out on the other kids but if you play it right, you can convince him that he might be able to get them back together by winning the tournament.

Well if you decide to watch them, be prepared for a slow pace and a lot of monologues. Sometimes I'm in the mood for that stuff, other times. . .not so much.

Is it because you haven't seen those movies that you don't know what I mean? I wouldn't know what I meant if I hadn't seen those movies.

"like"

I know it's probably an unpopular idea, but I wish there was a "like" button on this forum.

The twist is that BonnieDowling is actually Nick's throw-away account. He's trying to sow dissent in preparation of their next round of Risk Legacy.

What is the narrative style of this game? Are there authored side-quests? I get the impression that there is an authored main quest, but that you can accomplish it with a variety of styles (diplomatically or agressively). I guess what I'm wondering is this: is progression of an authored narrative what is motivating you to play or is it something else, like accumulation of power and wealth within a sandbox.

That akward moment when you realize that you suck at video games. Next, y'all are gonna tell me that Mario eventually finds the princess in a castle. After the sixth one I was like "ok, ok, I get it she doesn't want to see me more."

WHaT??!!

I give up, but I enjoyed playing it.

This is pretty great. Spoiler in between brackets [I really like how the context of the options changes in such a sardonic and morbid way.]

That's awesome. And yeah, I get that too. Here is a weird permutation to that. Super Monday Night Combat is free to play and you earn in-game money that allows you to get more content by winning games. You can also just spend real money for the same content. The weird part is that when I win a game, I feel like I am winning U.S. dollars. Dangerous, I know, but I live for danger.

Jason Rohrer had to change the theme of his game from a divorced couple to the diamond trade because of the publisher. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=118565 Besides, how is this taking advantage of a fanbase? No one is compelled to give them money.For me, there is a lot of value in knowing that you provided capital. I don't know which I'm more excited about, the game or the 2player production videos.

Yup. But I'm cool with collecting them. It's fun to have a library to look through. I had to put myself in check though. I now have a monthly video game budget with roll-over. It's actually really fun for me. Figuring out how much I have left in my gaming budget for the month, waiting til the beginning of the month to get something I've been looking forward to; I like to have some self-imposed limits. In some cases, I doodle about the games I'm looking forward to in my sketchbooks and speculate on how awesome it will be to play them. Before I had the gaming budget I would just buy them if they were already out. Now I got a hype train the size of one of those where the conductor straddles the engine. It's changed my gaming habits too. I play more iphone games and I believe that I savor my existing library a little more than I did.

Richard Scarry's Busytown appears complex compared to other childrens' books, but it still simplifies occupations into caricatures. There are way more ways to make money than being a Doctor, Lawyer, Taxi driver, or Pharmacist. Take out a pen and paper, write down a list of things you enjoy doing for extended periods of time. Once you have a list, look for similarities and write those down in a separate column. For each activity you listed, write a description of what you enjoy about each of them. This is important and let me tell you why: If I write down that I like vandalizing abandoned buildings, that isn't very helpful. But if I explain that vandalizing buildings is fun because I like getting my name out there, exploring new places, I enjoy a sense of danger; then I can begin to look for paying opportunities to do those things. If I like getting my name out there, I should consider content creation or sales. If I like exploring new places then I could be an appraiser, or surveyor. If I like a sense of danger, I could be a cop, a social worker, maybe go into the Peace Corp, be a merchant marine. The most valuable thing you have are your enthusiasms. The things that excite you are the things you can learn quickly and they are the places where you will be seen as valuable.

The debt part can be very relevant. You have to choose a job that pays you $30,000 a year even if there is something else you would rather do when you get out. Going to college to learn is like buying a boat to be a ship captain. It's possible to do it that way, but it's a very expensive and somewhat inefficient means. College has no monopoly on learning. It's a certification program. I'm sure you had some great experiences in college, but you might have had some interesting experiences by using that money to start your own business. Even if it failed, you would have highly valuable work experience. I went to college for two years, and I had some valuable experiences. And I like where I am now, but I could have gotten a comparable education by moving to an exciting place and reading postmodern novels while I worked odd jobs. I understand that some people go to college to learn things like medicine, law, and engineering; that is a completely different thing.

My friend, never give up on your dreams. There are plenty of jobs where you can browse Reddit and Idle Thumbs all day. You just need to know how to look for them. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/r4prr/people_with_office_jobs_that_surf_the_web_all_day/ The trick is being honest with yourself about what you REALLY want instead of how your desires are symbolized. Figure out what you want to be doing and there is usually a job where you can do that.

If you had enough money to get by, what would you do for 40 hours a week? Also, we should impose a new rule. If you recommend school then you should include how much debt you are in.

Weren't they talking about something similar to this on the podcast? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vDqQBvtu0NU

This is the type of humor I really dig. The type that creeps you out. I don't know how to embed videos. SOrry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5rO-I7butL4

I actually enjoyed it. It was like a 30 Rock episode of proper length. The jokes were pretty good and the timing was right. I don't think it had much of a message and jokes were mostly stereotype humor. . .it's no Kids In the Hall, but . . . I wonder if it is better to be more ambitious and fail to execute or to do what you can do well. Either way, I'm glad the artists made something and put it out there for some people to like and others to hate.

Now I'm playing SSX again; with headphones on. I forget how empowering this game feels, and so chill when I just cruise looking for jumps on Serenity.

Chime has pretty good dynamic music. As you get more and more coverage, the musical track fills out. This actually adds a lot to the sense of progression. When you start a new game or get 100% coverage, it feels weird starting with a sparse track. SSX also adds dub-steppy fade outs when you jump off something really high, and then when you hit the ground the music reaches full volume again. And you do rail grinds, it kinda wickity-waks the musical track.

I would like to see this done with AI that learns and is persistent. I've mentioned it is another thread, but from what I've read, I think Mew-Genics is going to make progress in this area. My hope is that the AI will react to my decisions in unexpected yet logical ways that I can understand in retrospect. Then as the behaviors change over time, as a player, I will have some ownership over the history and causes of their behaviors (knowing them on a personal basis). Of course this is nothing like looking in your dog's eyes and knowing that there is a person in there who has instinctual, species dependent ancestral tendencies, but it's is closer. I'm kinda wacky into Futurology and my thoughts about how we will eventual interact with personified AI can get kinda creepy. Once technology begins making artificial personalities that can wholly convince us that they are sentient persons, deserving of compassion; innovation will start going towards fetishizing the artificial personality by creating them with symbolic authenticity. An example would be this: An android is made and people are like "Wow, it's just like a real person, if you hadn't told me it was an android, I wouldn't have known." Once that happens, the innovation will be like "We have analyzed John's lifetime's worth of Facebook status updates, likes, and his credit card purchases and found some elegant algorithms. These algorithms have been put into the Johndroid." So then the Johndroid will be just like John from a social influence perspective. How much longer would it be that science determines the "spark" of life that allows us consciousness? It will then be put into the androids. Hypothetically. All of this because people like you want believable dogs in computer games. Great, thanks. No, I'm kinda excited about it too.