rolling thread of stuff worth reading on videogames

probably, they like doing that kind of stuff

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/02/gamings-long-con.html

Surprised he didn't mention the fuss about the sub 2 hours runtime that the next MGS has

re: Dungeon Keeper: original is now FREE on Gog.com for the next couple days. Ha!

Nice!

great game, many hours lost to that back in th' day

download queue is apparently long as fuck, understandably. hey, it's free!

Kinda LOL at the parallel 90% off sale though. Oh boy, Rise of the Triad for only $2.99!!! Duke3D for $1.19 is cool though.

some great stuff in the 80% off pile - don't let the multiplayer description fool you, there's stuff like System Shock 2 and Alpha Centauri in there for buttons

sorry, that is the 90% off pile, 80% is other RPGs, might take the punt on Neverwinter Nights 2 cos at that price if it runs like shit on my machine i won't feel hard done by

oh, didn't realise you had to buy the whole pack full of stuff i already own

once you add the game to your account, you can always download it later - give 'em a few days. i might buy DK2 for $1.50 for the hell of it, though sadly it's not mac compatible. There's also that Chaos Engine remaster

System Shock 2 i'll wait for a sale on Steam.. for the Steam cards. yes I'm ashamed

alpha centauri has been my best (well from one perspective worst) gog purchase so far. idk if i've played a better strategy game.

90% list also has magic carpet and ut2004 -- the former totally sui generis, the latter representing the furthest quakestyle shooters were willing to take themselves before turning towards military hardware and people who can't jump 15 feet in the air

http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/2/24/5419788/eve-online-thrilling-boring

Great article. I tend to love these EVE anthropology stories

fantastic article, best I've read in the "explaining the appeal of EVE online" subgenre

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2014/02/left-behind-women-video-games

predictable post, but, good article

i really need to play left behind still huh

great piece, makes me wish left behind was on xbox. laura was a fantastic editor on comics alliance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KMlXRshQ0Y
New Chrontendo! Covering:
Defender of the Crown
Cobra Triangle
Thundercade
Strider
Mother(!!!!)
Famista '89: Kaimaku Han!!
Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti
Twin Cobra
Cosmic Wars
Meimon! Daisan Yakyuubu
Moeru! Oniisan/Circus Caper
Magma Project - Hacker
Melville's Flame
Shingen the Ruler
Captain Ed

an episode of this is two hours!?? sorry man

you never seen chrontendo? dude is playing through every nintendo/famicom game ever made and giving background, creator stories, design commentary... they're great. best served by skipping around though. I had no idea there was an nes splatterhouse

it's SUPER nerdy stuff but loads of fun

crazy stuff going on in the world of professional gaming
http://www.dailydot.com/esports/league-of-legends-promise-suicide-match-fixing/

yikes. and i thought the pot-splitting in the fighting scene was bad! this sort of thing is inevitable once gambling creeps in, unfortunately

http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/3/24/5519352/defense-grid-2-fun

Uhhhhhhhh I'm just going to put this here.

Just skimming the photos - these are teenagers doing an elaborate performance piece for April Fools, right? Or am I old?

I can't get over how long that thing is

thanks for reminding me this dude still exists. and by thanks I mean BLARRRFFFFFFFFF

It says he wrote 3 essays on SMB3? I've only read the one on Actionbutton, are the others published online?

Starbaby

i preferred seanbaby

DISC 1: Roy Ozaki of Mitchell Corp / Kouichi Yotsui of Strider / Westone offices / Ryuichi Nishizawa of Wonderboy / Cannon Dancer director's commentary / TGS 2013 tour / Yusaku Yamamoto of GameSide / BEEP Shop with Takayuki Komabayashi / Keigo Matsubara and his 14,000 books / Data East's Deco Cassette / unseen footage of Flash Boy & Ninja, the rarest Deco games / Michitaka Tsuruta of Solomon's Key / Sony Indies Stream / Yuzo Koshiro of Sega / Bare Knuckle 4 / Professor Yoshihiro Kishimoto of Pac-Land / BONUS: photo slideshows

DISC 2: Hifumi Kouno, Masaki Higuchi, and Masatoshi Mitori on Human Entertainment / Toru Hidaka, legendary Enix programmer / Yutaka Isokawa of Catrap / dissecting Namco's neGcon controller / visiting Kobe, Kyoto and Osaka / unreleased MSX game by Yuichi Toyama / PCE vs FC audio with Takayuki Hirono / design documents for Guardian Legend, MUSHA, and Aleste 2 / Masayuki Suzuki explains Taito pixel art / parallax scrolling on PCE / artist Satoshi Nakai / flying to Hokkaido / composer Yasuhito Saito / Sapporo by night / capsule hotel / Hudson's abandoned R&D laboratory / The Game Preservation Society / the rarest PCE game / OutRun tapes with Yoji Ishii / Famicom programming with Manabu Yamana / Yoshiro Kimura / unreleased CBM game / Hiroshi Suzuki / Masakuni Mitsuhashi / prototype MSX / Akira Takiguchi / rock, paper, scissors with Kotaro Hayashida of Alex Kidd / Akihabara / Nakano Broadway / Night photography / BONUS: photo slideshows

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

A DVD accompanying a book, with lots of interviews of Japanese game developers. Looks very interesting!

40 pounds, fffffffffffff

articles about EVE never not good:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/04/28/eve-diary-part-three-oui-together/

true but also supports the axiom that its more interesting to read about eve than it is to play it

a great chick article even if i don't imagine i'll ever get around to playing the game: http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2014/05/05/ten-reasons-imperialism-ii-greatest-strategy-game-ever-made/

i disagree w/ his take on civ iv (that it has no opinion about history - i think it pretty obviously has a techno-neo-liberalism opinion), and i think he's a little confused about french colonialism (and the ottoman empire's endurance), or just eliding it. otherwise pretty great and makes me want to play.

still maintain that despite all the obvious nonsense in its modeling (and only at slow speeds) civ4 can teach you stuff abt how history works in a v general tolstovian way because it's such a sandbox, because things you do (or find in the ground) ripple outwards in coherent ways you don't always expect. have never played imp2 but played a lot of 1 and chick is right that it is much more specific: most of what it is is an elegant lil game-model of an industrial economy (raw materials, labor, manufactured goods, imports, exports) so if yr even a lil bit marxist and who isn't it's immediately more provocative and interesting than civ (where cities can't even feed each other).

mordy right about civ4's ideology too. alpha centauri is much more opinionless i think (a strength). in civ4 unless your plan is to kill everyone on the planet the right answer by the end is almost always to be a democratic capitalist state with freedom of religion and maybe a lil bit of environmentalism if the game goes on long enough; in smac i've built glittering rich-and-happy regimes of every political kind. though i favor total thought control.

my takeaway from that article is that imperialism 2 is a terrible game for which the writer has fabricated an elaborate personal narrative

but maybe that's just how paradox games get you. anyway, i've got to get back to orchestrating genoa's global trade empire.

the Civ games always come from a liberal capitalist perspective, maybe 4 more than most, will have to think about it later when i've read the article

I actually owned a copy of Imperialism II when I was in high school, and remember playing for many hours. Most of the stuff he says is bang on, but most of what I still remember about the game these days is how broken the combat model was once everyone maxed their artillery out. I might try loading it up again.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.de/2014/05/the-indie-bubble-is-popping.html?

eh, he complains about this all the time
and also steadfastly refuses to make games that look like they were made after 1994

I've been getting into rpgs lately for pretty much the first time in my life. Now that I'm older and smoke weed I have a lot more patience for the reading/slow pace. And general strangeness of it all.

Moral of the story..smoke some weed before you read things in video games.

two words deus ex