rolling thread of stuff worth reading on videogames

those dudes seem to be at abt the same level of discourse as ILG, they should post here instead, that would require the less effort of not typing a different address in my web browser

god, chrome has the eight most frequently visited sites and i only even use about five of those, what happened to the internet

lol i wouldnt inflict ILG on them. they all post on another board im on, u should join it instead

cruel!

lol ade. what is this other forum?

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2012/03/13/bioware-plays-the-gay-card/

one of the reasons i love tom chick

g1

lol ade. what is this other forum?

Permalink
― bosomy English rose (thomp), Tuesday, 13 March 2012 15:14 (2 days ago)

hope this hasn't already been posted: http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/

ah, nhex posted it back in november. still a great read.

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2012/03/24/the-official-journey-review-faq/

my fave part: had no idea Chick was a Harvard divinity student who learned Hebrew

ha for a mo I thought you meant Jack Chick lol

well, he does clarify that in the article

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7793059/john-burgeson-ibm-computer-start-baseball-video-games

nice story!

i like this one too, even if it's a bit bloggy:

http://insertcredit.com/2012/04/09/playing-to-win-at-life/

more worth seeing than reading but:
http://www.campbellwhyte.com/8-bit-dreams/8-bit-requim-for-a-dreams/
he's selling originals for fifty bucks, i'm tempted by a few of these
http://www.etsy.com/listing/79423771/adventures-of-lolo-original-nes?ref=v1_other_2

some of those are pretty neat. i would certainly not pay money for them

i suppose i wouldn't either but i'd entertain the idea

i guess what i'm saying is, don't do it man :P

heh, okay

i often feel the past couple years have been a futile waste of time but then i read a sentence like "i spent a year and a half playing starcraft 2" and momentarily feel better about myself

I bet you guys are real excited to read another long feature about JBlow, the game industry's "most cerebral developer":

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/the-most-dangerous-gamer/8928/

stopped here:

“It just drives home how fictional money is,” Blow said, squinting against the unseasonably bright December sun. “One day I’m looking at my bank account and there’s not much money, and the next day there’s a large number in there and I’m rich. In both cases, it’s a fictional number on the computer screen, and the only reason that I’m rich is because somebody typed a number into my bank account.” For the world’s most existentially obsessed game developer, coming into seven figures just provided another opportunity to ponder the nature of meaning in the universe.

jesus christ STFU

tell you what, let me hold six of those figures and then call me back about existential meaning

nothing jblow says there is as bad as whoever wrote it

^^^^^^^^^^

Yeah, the bit where he tries to make out that games were wall-to-wall Call of Duty and nothing else before Braid came along is the worst.

What I got from that article is that one of the philosophical changes made by fictional money is that it will cause some journalists to cast you as the next Howard Roark rather than say "Dude has autism-spectum disorder".

the atlantic's such a good magazine, why would they have published this laughable profile?

this bugged me the most but it's my problem really

This means, somewhat incredibly, that Blow doesn’t believe in even trying to communicate a game’s central message in words; the medium itself, he argues, is the message.

YOU DON'T SAY

i wonder what the odds are that the profiler thought "the medium is the message" was an original blow nugget

jotted it down in excitement w/ a little arrow pointing to it: "somewhat incredible!"

although since most professional editors get paid by the inserted adverb (bonus pay if what it's modifying is already an adverb) i'd say chances are good the first draft called that insight straight-up incredible

although since most professional editors get paid by the inserted adverb

lol i wish. in fact, reading this i just thought if i'd been editing it, i'd have given up halfway through as a bad job. such a credulous interviewer, such a douchebag interviewee, such a bad combination. and i enjoyed Braid, kinda.

lol at little arrow saying "somewhat incredible"

not even gonna read that sigh

i like how the guy's next game is myst.

what an asshole/also what a terrible article/also like the worst issue of the atlantic i've ever read--did yall see the piece about how qaddafi's son was sad when his dad died and the reader is supposed to give a shit? or the kanye thing? tho the br meyers takedown of chad harbach was good.

His face, bounded by a closely cropped widow’s peak on top and a clenched jaw on the bottom

Friendship with Blow requires patience for his rigid, often puzzling personal codes. He enjoys talking, but abhors idle conversation and is intensely private.

what a deep and paradoxical fellow!

fuck braid

coming close to that opinion without ever actually having played it.

nah, braid was cool. soulja boy nailed it.

braid was gorgeous and inventive and fun but of course every think piece about how paradigm-shifting it was concentrates on the parts before each level where you read some coy prose about being a sad boy, because obviously that's where the Art is

nah fuck braid, any game that relies that much on hushed artifice and a busted prince of persia gameplay mechanic is just as phony and overblown as modern warfare 3 but way less honest.

i don't even like braid that much but whaaaa?

braid is great, jblow sucks

i always walked past the books without reading them

"he enjoys talking, but abhors listening"