Native Jovian

http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/why-would-gamestop-sell-new-games-as-used-profit-rarity-and-of-course-profi Relevant to this thread.

How the hell does that follow? Just because there's no objective standard of artistic merit doesn't mean that centuries of refining and exploring within an artform is worthless. Until science invents a machine that can measure "artness", then artistic worth is necessarily a subjective judgement. Reasonable, intelligent people can and do disagree about it. I mean, shit, this is a video game music remix site -- you and I both know that there are people out there, some of them well respected in their fields, who would dismiss it as artistically bankrupt just because of that. Now, there are plenty of objective statements you can make about art, particularly in terms of technical aspects. You can say that someone's performance is "better" if one plays the music exactly as written and another plays wrong notes or messes up timing -- but that's an extreme example and I don't think that's the sort of thing you mean.

Is it odd that the first thing I thought was "Donna Burke? Didn't she do the English voice work for Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles?" (Yes, she did. And was good.)Anyway, congrats on the successful Kickstarter! I'll definitely be watching this as it goes forward.

No, I think you've got it right. The article was essentially patting him on the back for agreeing with Feminist Frequency's critique of his game. Which is fine, except for when it goes on to call out anyone who disagrees with said critique unreasonable, ignorant, and wrong by definition.

I like how the way the article is written, it's tacitly dismissing all criticism of feminism -- or at least implying that the only reason to criticize Feminist Frequency is because you dislike feminism as a whole. It makes comments like this: and then gives examples like this: That seem like legitimate commentary to me. Maybe not as respectful as it could be, but still legitimate. The first one doesn't like Feminist Frequency and is disappointed that a developer he likes does. The second is pointing out that labelling certain things as inevitably bad and wrong is, indeed, a form of (or attempt at, at least) censorship. Meanwhile, we get this: So apparently having an opposing opinion makes you unreasonable! And makes you ignorant, not a decent human being, and guilty of blind anti-feminist rage, too. Nice to know that we can have an amicable conversation where both sides are taken seriously.

So I've been out of town for like a month and haven't been able to do any trading since before the summer sale. If anyone wants to, you can take a loot at my Steam inventory and make me an offer (I'll take pretty much any card I don't have for any card I have extras of), but in particular I'm looking for: Steam Summer Getaway -- Chivalry: Medieval Warfare for Bioshock Infinite, Kerbal Space Program, Prison Architect, or Skyrim Team Fortress 2 -- Heavy for Pyro

Haha, that's a sweet fucking cake. Thanks guys. I haven't had the chance for any birthday festivities yet (I've been stuck on a business trip in Canada for almost a month, which is rather far from my usual stomping grounds in Orlando) but now they may be delayed indefinitely until I can find a Jupiter cake of my own.

That sounds like something I could get behind, but how would you accomplish it? I suppose that you could create zones with content suitable for every level (eg, level 10 is "scout the location of this enemy camp", level 20 is "take out enemy sentries in preparation for the main attack", level 30 is "attack the camp proper and destroy their supplies", level 40 is "break into the camp and kill the enemy leaders", etc) but then you just have people of all levels playing side by side without really interacting (level 10s just care about finding the place, level 20s only care about killing sentries, level 40s ignore everything except the leaders, etc). That would solve the problem of the world feeling "empty", but wouldn't do much toward making the gameplay itself more social. Well, the "dungeons and raids" style gameplay has more or less become synonymous with MMOs. When you talk about playing an MMO, that's what people expect until it's said otherwise. The fact that it's a genre convention doesn't make it bad (no more so than having little to do besides shoot at bad guys in an FPS is bad), it just means that you may not be interested in a traditional MMO. Something like EVE Online -- which essentially drops you in a virtual world and says "okay, go to it" and lets you do everything from mining raw materials, trading goods, and building weapons or ships to becoming a pirate, joining an army, or just blowing up anything you can get away with -- might be more of the experience you're looking for. Hell, it even sounds like you're talking about something akin to Second Life, which is definitely massively multiplayer, very social, and certainly has no lack of things to do.

Gecko, what you're describing is the neverending conflict between "hardcore" and "casual". It'd be great if every time you logged into an MMO, you could easily hook up with a group of friendly, competent people and go do some adventuring together. Unfortunately, that's simply not possible unless you're part of a large, well-organized guild -- and 90% of MMO players are not. The rest of the customer base has to deal with being unable to find a group, having group members who are simply bad at the game, and group members who are actively malicious trolls. If you want those people to be able to enjoy the game (and from a business perspective, you do), then you need things like soloable content, automated group finders, etc. The alternative is a game like EVE Online, which is nigh-unplayable unless you're in a decent corp, and even then you're basically completely on your own as far as making your own fun. That's fine -- and the continued success of EVE certainly proves that there's a market for that -- but that doesn't mean that all MMOs should be like that.

I'm curious as to what you think that is. It sounds like you're saying that it's not a "real" MMO if it includes any sort of strong narrative component.

So, despite her positive examples near the end of the video, I'm still not sure what would make her happy re: damsels in distress, except to avoid the entire concept. She doesn't like damsels in distress. She doesn't like inverting damsels in distress (using dudes in distress instead), because that doesn't go far enough in combatting the damsel in distress image. She doesn't like parodying damsels in distress, (making fun of the whole concept by exaggerating it to a ridiculous degree) because she apparently believes that that means making fun of the damsels, and thus women in general, rather than making fun of the trope. She doesn't like subverting damsels in distress (when rescuing the damsel results in punishment for the player rather than reward), because that makes the damsels look evil. Apparently we're just supposed to avoid the whole idea of someone rescuing someone else entirely. Oh, but even that's not enough if the playable character is male. So, in order to make a non-sexist game, you have to have a female or androgynous playable character, who isn't allowed to help anyone else (unless, in attempting to do so, they actually fuck up the plans of the much-more-competent person they were "rescuing"). Except that, at the very end, she says "of course, I'm not actually saying everything I've been saying for the last twenty minutes", just like the first two videos.

Best one-sentence summary of the issue I've ever seen.

I honestly can't even explain what it is I like about Harvest Moon, so it's really hard for me to critique it. All I know is that I've enjoyed every Harvest Moon game that I've played except for A Wonderful Life, which I found terrible, also for reasons I can't really explain.

How is Nintendo's online stuff these days, anyway? I recall hearing painful things about the process of moving Wii VC stuff to your Wii U because they don't have any sort of XBL/PSN account system that your stuff gets associated with. Have they changed that with the Nintendo Network they're using now, or is it still just tied to your hardware and if your system craps out or something you're SOL? (Also, I did almost the exact thing as ocre re: Harvest Moon, except with Harvest Moon 64.)

I don't think she is contributing any meaningful analysis. Her argument boils down to "games are sexist and that's bad". It's neither particularly convincing (certainly some games are sexist, but so are some books, some movies, etc, and she makes no argument to extend her specific examples to the medium as a whole) nor particularly helpful (even if we accept her point... well, what then? She gives us no answer). Well, I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt that she's actually played the games in question, or at least done close-enough research on them (ie, done enough to put the scenes she's calling out into context). Given recent posts, it seems that that's not actually the case at least for some games, but assuming it had been, I don't see the problems with, in effect, using stock footage (I've already said that using other people's footage without crediting them is a dick move, but I don't see anything about her specifically capturing her own footage that makes a difference to her point one way or another).

You realize that there's been plenty of both, right? I mean, the signal-to-noise ratio isn't as high as one might like, but there's been plenty of legitimate discussion in here as well as the occasional "lol she's dumb". On top of which, categorically dismissing all criticism of her videos because some of that criticism is stupid isn't exactly a sign that you're doing a brilliant job of good-faith argumentation yourself.

If she's really using other people's YouTube footage then that's kind of a dick move in terms of not crediting them, but I don't see how it makes much of a difference in terms of her point. How does her argument become any more or less valid depending on the source of the video she's using to illustrate her point?

Kiz, if your machine is overheating to the point of automatic shutdown, it's on its way out anyway. That shouldn't happen; instead, the computer should be processing as fast as it can safely handle, and if that's not fast enough for the game, then the game lags. If you're hitting auto-shutdown, then it's because there's a disconnect between what the computer thinks it can handle and what it can actually handle -- which usually means degrading hardware, and is a sign that your computer is about to crap out entirely.

Most adorable badass ever. I actually got into the beta a couple weeks ago, but I left for a business trip a few days later and haven't been home since. All I did was the introduction part and wander around the city a bit, but I'm definitely looking forward to doing more. Like, actual combat and stuff. Woo!

Seconding "first-party N64 controllers are shitty". The control stick -- you know, the single most important input for basically every game ever? -- inevitably breaks down into nigh-uselessness, no matter how carefully you handle it. Generally I'm pretty content with first-party controllers, but if I ever found a third-party N64 controller than didn't suck, I'd buy four of them almost no matter what the price and never look back.

Yes. characters; ten of them.

My damage: Saint's Row the Third: The Full Package + Unlockable Pack ($7.98 ) System Shock 2 ($2.49) Dishonored ($10.19) Monaco ($7.44) Terraria ($2.49) Total: $30.59 I'm also thinking about picking up Rogue Legacy, but it's only 20% off -- it'll probably be on sale again, for less, before I actually get around to playing it. So yeah, basically what The Damned said. I didn't get nearly as much as I have in sales past, but that's probably a good thing, overall.

It's -66%, which makes it $23.79, for the next 19 hours.

I don't get the mindset of playing ridiculously hard games in any case, but yeah, my first thought was "FFT wasn't exactly a cakewalk in the first place" too. Though it was possible to outlevel the story content, even if the random battles would be kicking your ass by levelling with you.

You get a card every time you a) vote on three community choice games, craft a game badge (I think? They said something about that happening before the sale started, not sure if it still works), or c) spend $10 in the Steam store. I think there will be enough community choice votes to get all the cards (or at least enough cards to trade duplicates you have one-to-one for cards you don't have) without having to do anything else, given that the sale is 11 days long and there are more than three votes a day.