rolling thread of stuff worth reading on videogames

no way dude I beat Contra before cheats
shoulda gotten a badge or patch or something

same, it was sheer memorization

im in that Contra club.

i was super impressed with the cheat codes in GTA:SA. "make everyone a clown" "make everyone an Elvis impersonator" "cars have moon gravity" etc.

http://kotaku.com/the-year-in-video-game-paintings-1790382713

not worth reading (apparently neither Orland nor his editors know which decade WWI belongs to; only one non-PS4/Windows/XB1 game makes the cut) but I thought this pattern was of interest. The parallel evolution of games and cinema end-of-the-year detritus?

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/12/ars-technicas-best-video-games-of-2016/

20. August 2
19. October 6
18. October 13
17. March 11
16. October 21
15. June 29
14. October 10
13. November 29
12. November 17
11. October 28
10. October 28
9. August 23
8. February 5
7. October 18
6. May 10
5. November 11
4. May 12
3. January 26
2. February 25
1. May 23

think it's worse for video games because you need a ton of time to really examine them (especially certain genres like multiplayer shooters and RPGs) unlike films. video game reviews generally have the deadline rush problem

http://www.vulture.com/2017/02/video-games-are-better-than-real-life.html

(as with most things on the internet, ignore the headline/URL)

kind of an interesting article. tbh i'm not sure if i agree with the final assertion. the world IS shit, but is that why video games are great? um... no.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/soviet-arcade-game-museum

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/musicofcastlevania/musicofcastlevania.htm

Castlevania is where the series starts and more or less defined what the follow two games will sound like. The heavily syncopated rhythm with the octave leaping bass in "Vampire Killer", the first level of the game, is present in nearly every level track of the game and is very common amongst these three games (as well as most Konami games of this era). Every song is also in a minor mode, which is a bit unique. While the levels have a distinct Konami esq. rock like drum accompaniment (indicative of their style and the era), there are still numerous baroque influences that dot the OST. The "Alberti Bass" figure that accompanies boss fights and the second phrase of the level five music are perhaps the biggest indicators of a Gothic/baroque influence. Even though "Alberti Bass" figures relate to classical technique, it's especially synonymous with older harpsichord and clavecin music so the intent is rather clear.

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-oral-history-of-oregon-trail

Interesting analysis by Liz Ryerson on Duke Nukem & toxic masculinity, in Jacobin of all places:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/04/duke-nukems-dystopian-fantasies/

http://kotaku.com/how-three-kids-beat-the-odds-and-translated-final-fanta-1794628286

^^^ enjoyed this, thanks.

Yah me too

https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive

I love Steam sales but yeah, this is pretty otm

hard to argue with any of that, really

thx for posting

wow that is a truly terrible article. the premise is that valve is a business and not our buddy, written by someone who apparently thought valve was their buddy and is now bitter about it. powerful.

If you were to ask the average PC gamer, they’d swear up and down that there’s no way they’d ever give their money to such a corporation. They’d not only be caught dead before helping a company like that come to power, they might even join the resistance to stop them.

lol are you serious

Valve didn’t always seem like the sort of corporation which thought of its customers as meaningless numbers in a colossal profit machine

so does this guy realize that Microsoft exists and has been doing this for not just games but all global software since MS-DOS

that was awesome

Adam I think you're missing the point

I mean, the thrust of the piece is that lots of gamers who will rail against Microsoft, and EA, and various other big evil companies, continue to put Steam and Valve on a pedestal, when its practices are right up there with other terrible tech companies. I enjoyed it. I didn't know about the Australian court case or about the insane "workshop" aspect at all.

the workshops section is the very worst part despite stiff competition. completing ignoring the reasons why anyone might benefit from engaging with the steam platform, like oh idk, an insanely huge install base and a level of exposure that doesn't exist anywhere else.

"Maybe it's time for all of us to wake up." jfc

lots of gamers who will rail against Microsoft, and EA, and various other big evil companies, continue to put Steam and Valve on a pedestal

they do? are there really lots of articles praising Valve and Steam these days necessitating this? feels like one of those controversies that only exists on message boards and in comments.

i never played Half Life and am pretty oblivious to any hype Valve as a company gets. i signed up for Steam a few years ago and just like anything on the internet plenty of people knock it, plenty of people like it.

Steam is Good, and Origin is Bad. Steam is run by Good Guy Valve, and Origin is the devilspawn of EA, the Evil Corporation Who Doesn't Care About You. We know these things to be true ... right?

i don't really have a borse in this race. it seems like you really need to be bought into this thing that is similar to the Console Wars but about digital game download services for the same platform. ridiculous consumerist purity wars. i thought Polygon was started so there could be more intelligent game writing? sad that they have sunk to perpetuating outrage cycles by validating the vapid consumerist purity wars of videogame message board detritus. there is some interesting stuff in here, the legal cases are good to note in particular, but i wish they would tone the divisiveness down rather than capitalizing on it.

JOIN THE RESISTANCE

guys, this massive multibillion dollar corporation is EVIL

WAKE UP SHEEPLE

Fairly certain that you guys are helping prove his point

I DON'T BUY GAMES ANYWHERE ELSE
SO FUCK YOU IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT

IT'S JUST CAPITALISM LOSERS

i used to pirate games and then signed up for Steam to be legit and use multiplayer but i'm cool with going back to pirating games if it is helping The Resistance

with a dash of "It's just another global corporate monster like apple, microsoft, facebook and whatever, I don't know why anybody needs to single this firm out for scorn when they ALL DO IT"

Seriously let's get into the robust defenses of Steam's monopoly, come on dudes

http://ctj.org/images/2014/googleevil.jpg

Oh Adam thank goodness there was a service that made it easy for you to stop blatantly stealing other people's work without suffering any consequences

the resistance is free to join but if you want access to the higher ranks and badges you need magic gems which are only $2.99 for 100 or $5.99 for 250

tombo, i would argue that it's phenomenally naive writing and is being written with the presumption that I as the reader have all sort of preconceptions that i flat out don't have
corporations are inherently amoral by definition

please note all resistance dues accrue directly to @CEO who reserves the right to dole them back out to the loom operators and mining subcontractors at @CEO's discretion, dependent on quarterly expectations - we are beyond criticism because this is literally how every other company works we swear. did you know Windows is actually developed by slaves it's a fact

corporations are inherently amoral by definition

oh fuck I need a drink now

i will join the street team at microsoft if they give me 500 magic gems for $6.99

A well written critique of Steam's poor business practices would be of interest to me!
This one includes the following sentences:

Good Guy Valve worked hard to make us believe that willingly installing surveillance and control software onto our computers was a morally benevolent, perhaps even righteous act — and we swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

But it took the better part of a decade for enough people to start noticing that Steam's refund policy wasn't so much a “policy” as the words “eat shit and die” printed in huge size 72 font and to start raising hell about it.

This is the Good Guy everyone seems too afraid to call out, the toxic friend who is so popular that upsetting him will just make things worse for you, so you convince yourself he's really not that bad and that everyone else is over-reacting

xp show me a for-profit that's kept to a morality-above-profit mission statement and I'll pour you that drink

personally, i am extremely smart and don't need a filthy article to point out a monopoly, but p sure monopolies are still problo

people really do like valve. and EA has been seen as the quintessential heartless corporate philistine for like decades now. when they tried to wrest some distribution control from valve it was annoying and made the consumer experience worse and there's nothing more morally obscene to consumers than worsening their experience.

anyway this about covers it i think?

god this is written in an irritating fashion, but it makes a good point

— Inventor of Leftism (@ByYourLogic) May 17, 2017

NO SALE, NO OWNERSHIP, NO REFUNDS
We all eventually discovered that our close, personal and entirely fictional relationship with Valve did not entitle us to any kind of refund on our purchases.

*11 paragraphs follow about how shitty Valve was for not offering refunds*

Even when Valve finally did get around to launching a refund program (a full two years after the supposedly evil EA did it!), many people quite accurately and angrily observed that the default refund option was in Steam credit, which means Valve wins either way. It's almost like Good Guy Valve just ... doesn't want you to have your money back.

ffs they made you uncheck a box get a grip

We love the Steam Sales and the discounts they bring. But perhaps even more than we love the low, low prices, we love The Sale Event itself. We love the pre-sale videos that we carefully cut together to hype each other up for the imminent spending spree. We love the in-jokes and the memes, the constant banter about the bleeding wallets and the screaming, tortured credit cards that just can't take any more.

There's a word that people use to describe “creating a sense of excitement to improve spending on an upcoming commercial event,” and that word is “marketing.” Marketing is a job, and in the real world, people get paid for it.

But in the world of Good Guy Valve we give that marketing away, for free, to a billion-dollar corporation every year (sometimes twice a year, if he asks nicely), doing our bit to help that corporation make more money during a sale event.

We’re colleagues in the sense that Valve gets our money and our labor, a topic we’ll talk more about later. We do our part with the memes, the articles and the social media posts, and our good friend Valve does the rest. The rest meaning taking our money.

what is he talking about he is professionally writing about all of this for a major publication presumably he is being paid for this. is he upset that Valve isn't paying him directly for message board comments and retweets?

lol otm that article was dumb

DLH OTM

Adam and Tofu just more accelerationist than the rest of us

Adam, yes, please go back to being a thief, that seems to be your aim here

as monopolies go valve/steam isn't much of one

it's approximately as much of one as twitch, youtube and the itunes store