rolling thread of stuff worth reading on videogames

i really liked that article comparing photoshop to portal, mostly because it's one the few things i've seen (recently anyway) that explains why gamification is actually a cool concept (yay fun learning fast!) without hammering on its abuses

t’s incredibly satisfying to sneak out of a tight spot by performing an action you didn’t know you could do, but created instinctively because of your experience.

shooting the moon was the absolute peak moment of this.

http://insertcredit.com/2012/05/14/tentacle-bento-and-kickstarter-when-no-regulation-is-bad-regulation/

not sure if this is worth reading, or just because i want to pooh-pooh it

very well-meaning and very dumb i think

just glancing at that article, the first line i saw was "Again, Tentacle Bento won’t make anyone rape a girl"
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this is worth reading b/c it is stupid and ridiculous and New Games Journalism should just take a max payne slow mo bullet to the jaw http://killscreendaily.com/articles/essays/dealing-urban-decay/

Verdigris is the word I thought of most through Infamous 2, along with corrosion.

You are lying, sir!

I liked that article a lot, though I would like it less if it ended "7/10"

http://lukehalliwell.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/where-realtime-worlds-went-wrong/

so that tentacle game had its kickstarter revoked

Mr. Cadice: as a fellow game developer and designer, I hope you're reading this page and still open to comment and critique of your work despite the conflicts that have erupted around your game.

It sounds to me you're trying to have your cake and eat it too -- you're claiming that your game references rape, but doesn't actually include rape. So what you've created ends up looking like a painting with a big rape-shaped hole cut out of the middle of it

classical japanese manga hentai action linkified

Cool NSFW image. Mods???

i am giving that post the shifty eye, just so you know

"rape-shaped hole" is a top ten ugggggggh phrase

do y'all thing this'll be good? http://www.theverge.com/about-vox-games

is Tyler Bleszinski related to Cliffy? i don't recognize i think any of the names on the masthead but that doesn't necessarily mean anything...

i'd say it won't be good just bc 99% of video game writing isn't

lol

thanks mod, i almost got peeped at work with that post. ilx needs a spoiler hider

btw the tentacle hentai thing moved to its own site and already exceeded their donations on kickstarter, proving once again - nothing

also the only name i recognize in there is Crecente, not a good sign

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_board_games

http://i.imgur.com/TYfJS.jpg

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/physics-are-the-new-graphics

tom bissell's cool http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7989584/on-rockstar-games-max-payne-3

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.co.uk/

i don't know whether this is so much 'worth reading' as 'a thing that i just spent six hours reading' so eh

that bissell piece was better than i expected, i guess he goes on my very short list of People Actually Capable of Writing About Videogames

super cool blog! xp

i've got his wasteland blogs opened up in my browser to read throughout the day

whelp thomp, u have fucked me royally here as not only do i want to read every entry in this blog, but i'm thinking about playing thru a bunch of these games on a DOSBOX emulator myself. goodbye lif.

unsurprising and depressing
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18280000

Tom Bissell sucks dick.

nb, I did not read the Max Payne article.

Multiplayer taunting is & has been generally incredibly juvenile and offensive to everyone involved for a long, long time.

the bissell article was ok, but he still needs a few more to undo the "gta iv on coke" crap

this CRPG website has broken my brain

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/08/ah-i-just-need-to-share-this-day-z-story/

mordy i feel ur pain brah, i have like 48 hours left to hand in my dissertation and i'm still going 'i'll just finish the entries on might & magic ii'

guy plays same game of Civilization II for 10 years, posts the results
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_playing_the_same_game_of_civilization_ii/

lol that is fucking mental

The results are as follows.

The world is a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation.

There are 3 remaining super nations in the year 3991 A.D, each competing for the scant resources left on the planet after dozens of nuclear wars have rendered vast swaths of the world uninhabitable wastelands.

I like that there are people proposing victory strategy, and he's going "That would take an actual year! Thank you!"

I guess there is no shortage of the materials to make nuclear weapons and other weapons of war? Despite there being shortages of everything else?

i don't think civ2 really simulates material shortages. natural resources are never exhausted in 4 (my civ) and iirc it was the same in 2. the food shortages are because the world's been nuke-trashed and farms don't work at all. although the cities are so depopulated i'm a little unclear on where he's getting the workforce to pump out icbms and tanks. maybe he has a couple industrial hellholes where he's managed to keep people concentrated and working. anyway, shortages of everything except weapons is very soviet.

i played a game of age of empires once that was so prolonged eventually every nonrenewable resource on the map was exhausted and none of the players could train advanced units and everyone went back to fighting with clubs over the decaying cities no one knew how to build anymore.

civ2 doesn't really simulate anything!

i don't really understand that post. how do you play until the year 4000 with two other civs remaining? that guy sucks.

also iirc if you have spies in your own cities it prevents other spies from doing anything

man i'd love to play this again, haha

also how does it take ten years, he must be playing this game very occasionally indeed

He mentions that he's 'won' the game already (you just have to get to 2020), and once again by the space race. He's just interested in the fact that he's got a balanced stand-off, I reckon.

what an asshole! man fuck that guy

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117848-Kickstarter-Video-Project-Attracts-Misogynist-Horde

Oh, ha, just posted that to a different thread. I guess it's not surprising, but still. Fuck humanity.