brkl

After the patch, my character is now a thousand years old.

I had that with Beyond Earth. I had to turn vsync off and back on again every time I played.

I was just hit with that the last time I played. Lost like 45 minutes. That scene was another pointless break in my DA history. I'm still really disappointed with that stuff. Playing is mostly a slog. There's a lot of content that only serves to distract but not entertain and I find it hard to figure out what's actually worth my time.

Awakening is like DA:O but tighter and better. Definitely play it if you are interested. So far, out of all Mass Effect and Dragon Age games, I've been the least interested in talking to my mates in DA:I. MA3 was maligned quite a bit, but I enjoyed getting to know the characters a whole lot more.

Sort of, except I don't remember anything about resurrection. I definitely did the whole thing, I don't understand how it could have failed to import unless there's a bug. EDIT: I went to check the keep and it should have everything. Apparently I didn't kill Leliana. A bunch of stuff is still wrong, though. EDIT: I found the option in the Keep that let's you check the game you're playing, and it's wrong. The heroes have totally unfamiliar names. I took me hours to actually get into the game and apparently for nothing. I still don't understand how I could start a new game that would work properly, because there's only one world state in the Keep and that's has my characters. Guh. Where did I go wrong in just following the instructions and then starting a game? EDIT: Yup, I started a new game as a test after exporting my world state from the Keep again, and the heroes in the new save are different but still wrong. I don't get it.

Man, talking to Leliana, who I think should be dead, she talks about Hawke's brother in Kirkwall even though he died before they reached it and she refers to the Hero of Ferelden as a a friend and a 'she' even though he was a man (who had her executed). I would be okay if they didn't talk about the past games, but having them talk about and getting everything wrong messes with my mood a lot when playing.

I didn't like any of that. Deflated.

I need to read it again. Wonderful book, very weird and forward thinking.

The Finnish parliament voted in favour of gay marriage today. I was actually surprised, we could have easily remained the only Nordic country without equal marriage rights.

I wonder. So far Varric's been talking about Hawke's brother even though he's dead and they never met.

Doing the Dragon Age Keep thing, it's a wonderful feeling when it finds my characters and choices and reminds me of them. It also reminds me of the promise of Dragon Age 2. There was potential for a great game buried there, apparently marred by lack of time and money. The Qunari conflict was amazing and Hawke's story up to that point was very different from standard fantasy fare. The story after the Qunari is not so hot and of course the whole game is marred by repetition. I'm still bothered by how no-one cleaned up the bodies in an Elven friend's mansion in the years that the story takes. The passage of time in one place is a fantastic idea very poorly executed.

So the last thread went way off the rails (sorry about that). I've collated the suggestions mentioned in that thread into a list. I'll try to add others when they are mentioned. Let's keep the suggestions to the format of 1. What is it? 2. Why did you find it interesting? Debate should be handled by night-time back alley meetings organized through private messaging. That is, not here. tberton Academic journal: Games and Culture Dinosaurs http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-11-02-the-seven-year-shadow-left-by-modern-warfare ReyTurner Rob Sherman: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/11/03/i-did-a-thing-on-a-hill/#more-245459 TychoCelchuuu http://altgamescrit.tumblr.com/ http://www.critical-distance.com/ http://iam.benabraham.net/ http://nightmaremode.net/ http://this.isnotablog.com/freeplay/ http://goodgameswriting.com/ http://www.hitselfdestruct.com/ (see the "video games" section in the bottom right) http://exploringbeli...y.blogspot.com/ http://gamesthatexist.com/ http://www.reactionzine.com/ http://twofoldsilenc...enes-lamp.info/ http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/ http://thiscageisworms.com/ http://www.critical-distance.com/2013/12/30/this-year-in-video-game-blogging-2013/ juv3nal GDC talk: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/228400/Video_Why_everything_and_nothing_is_killing_the_game_industry.php http://www.lostgarden.com/ http://www.psychologyofgames.com/ http://emshort.wordpress.com/ http://www.filfre.net/ http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/ http://www.playthepast.org http://gamestudies.org/ http://critical-proximity.com/ & http://www.twitch.tv/criticalproximity/profile/pastBroadcasts jmbossy Tim Bissell: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8157257/ elmuerte GDC Vault: http://www.gdcvault.com/ Game Dev Magazine: http://www.gdcvault.com/gdmag sclpls Jon Shafer of Civ5: http://jonshaferondesign.com/page/7/ Robert Yang: http://www.portfolio.debacle.us/ The Cineaste Leigh Alexander: http://leighalexander.net/ Chris Franklin: http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/ George Wiedman: http://www.youtube.com/user/bunnyhopshow?feature=watch Mattie Brice: http://www.mattiebrice.com/ clyde Jon Ingold writing about text-games: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1019346/A-World-from-Words-Highly http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/10610001/How-Octodad-works-as-an-analogy-for-invisible-illnesses.html Lacabra Claire Hoskins: http://clairehosking.tumblr.com/ ihavefivehat Narrative in games: http://www.ludology.org/articles/VGT_final.pdf Impossidog Tom Francis: http://www.pentadact.com/ gray117 Marshal Mucluhan: Understanding Media Neil Spiller (ed): Cyber_Reader Jesper Juul: Half Real aperson Tom Bissell: http://www.brainygamer.com http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2013/06/the-games-we-deserve.html Jesse Schell: The Art of Game Design - A Book of Lenses brkl Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman: Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals Ian Bogost: Persuasive Games (interesting, but I read Bogost with a pinch of salt handy) Tristan Donovan: Replay (video game history) Steve Ince: Writing for Video Games (maybe) prettyunsmart[/size] Kurt Squire: [/size]http://website.education.wisc.edu/kdsquire/ Ian Bogost: http://www.bogost.com/ Journal of Games Criticism: http://gamescriticism.org/ SpennyDubz Ian Bogost: Playing Politics: video games for Politics, Activism, and Advocacy Tim Bissell Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience Ian Bogost: How to Do Things with video games Johan Huizinga: Homo Ludens Jane McGonigal: Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World I. Bogost, S. Ferrari, B. Schweizer: Newsgames: Journalism at Play D.B. Weiss: Lucky Wander Boy Tristan Donovan: Replay: The History of Video Games Tom Bissell: Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter Mary Flanagan: Critical Play: Radical Game Design Koster: Theory of Fun for Game Design Jesse Schell: The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses S.Swink: Game Feel: A Game Designer's Guide to Virtual Sensation McKenzie Wark: Gamer Theory Alexander R. Galloway: Gaming: Essays On Algorithmic Culture Ian Bogost: Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of video games

I'd be interested in this. Friday and Saturday evenings Euro time or maybe Sunday afternoon. Twice a month at most.

I kind of loved The Killing, even though the plots are not great. I just love the main characters and how they are performed.

I wish I had bought Endless Legend, but I trusted Firaxis to deliver. Unfortunately, the game feels kind of cheap (hire an artist!) and fails in a totally different department than I thought. In the Strategy Games subforum I go on about stuff like having the map start out black, which I think is a missed opportunity to try something new and fits poorly with any fiction about colonizing a new planet. But despite how bland the fiction and the faction design is as discussed in the podcast, the game's biggest failure is that it's boring. I never thought it would fail as a Civ game. There's no meaningful interaction with the other factions and I just haven't felt any tension yet. There's room to make the thing shine with DLC, but with the core game far less successful than Civ5, how will I trust the DLC to truly improve things? Especially when DLC tends to stay very expensive forever. A proper global diplomacy system where you could actually put favours gained through trade to use... There are many features that feel like one half or one third of something that's actually interesting.

Guh, as soon as UNIT is mentioned, there's no way it's not going to suck.

In my second game I really felt like the game let me win. I had been falling behind in victory stuff, but it's like the AI didn't go for it when it was in reach. I had two states with at least as many cities declare war on me, but only launch wreak attacks and get their lone units chewed up by my boats mostly. I took three cities late game because I thought I must have lost. Razed them because cities seem to just slow you down and was surprised that I was able to reach the Emancipation victory. There's a very serious lack of tension in this game.

Torchlight is earlier than D3, isn't it?

Because this is not 1984, the meaning of words is up to people and not governments. If you want to protect the meaning of 'gamer', defend it from Gamergate's attacks instead of siding with them. They are the one's who are changing its meaning, while many progressive people who play games see that meaning change and want nothing to do with the new connotations Gamergate is loading the word with. I'm a 'gamer' as long as the word means I love games in general, comparable to the word 'movie buff', another word I associate with. But if Gamergate gets their way and the meaning changes, I can't associate with the word anymore. If 'movie buff' meant I only wanted to allow Transformer movies to get made and receive attention, I wouldn't associate with that word either. The "Gamers are dead" articles sometimes go a bit overboard: there are bookworms (or bibliophiles) and movie buffs. The main difference is that there are already all kinds of books so if there was an insular reactionary contingent of bookworms once upon a time, it was a long time ago. The term is fine as long as we don't let GG define it, and I still don't believe there are enough of them to do anything apart from ruining lives.

I was using the largest map, mind. I'll steer clear of it from now on.

I love the final paragraph of that story.

I played my first game at Vostok difficulty to an easy Transcendence victory with essentially no conflict at all. Can't really be happy with that.

You don't understand what the concept of patriarchy is. You should study up on it, at least in order to not utter complete non sequiturs when talking about it.

I can't really agree with Vice's move either. Even if those were an infringement, they would be a very petty one.

Simmons. Haven't read Card because I heard of that stuff in advance. Although from what I've heard of Card, I think Simmons is more obvious with it. Thing is, it wouldn't have bothered me nearly as much if he was clever about it, but instead of forming a coherent argument he just preaches.