discovergames:
Just for my own curiosity (and perhaps to start a little conversation), I was wondering what makes you guys and gals buy a game. Is it name recognition (be it franchise, character or developer)? Is it genre (maybe you love 2D brawlers or RTSes)? Is it a particular art style (cel shading,…
The first factor for me is almost always price: I feel so weird spending more than $15 or $20 dollars on a game, and that weird feeling sometimes lingers at the $5 and $10 range. I’ll tend to skip out on a game I might be interested in for a long while before buying and playing it. Buying a game at full price actually makes me feel physically ill, and buying a game that I’m uncertain about whether I’ll enjoy it or not will also make me feel sick when I start playing it. Unless a game demonstrates pretty early on that it has a pleasurable experience for me (either pleasurable in the sense of fun or pleasurable in the sense of Deep Thinking™), I’ll feel like a chump. If it weren’t for Steam sales I wouldn’t have played nearly as many games in the past few years as I have.
Another factor that keeps coming up lately is a matter of system specs. Since my laptop has an integrated graphics card from 2011, it won’t play games that use the current top-end graphics. This has bummed me out a little recently because of games like Strike Suit Zero and Blade Symphony that look like games I would be interested in at a decent price point but that I wouldn’t be able to run on my laptop (which is where I do most of my game playing). Although this has had the added benefit of making me look back at older games or games that don’t prioritize up-to-date graphics in their designs.
I’m a really emotional purchaser, I think. Much of what gets me to buy a game is based on my mood at the time and how the games I see for sale links up to a desire or an interest I have at the moment. For instance, when I was watching a lot Star Trek: DS9 earlier this year, I had this feeling of wanting to play something that would put me in space as an actor in some serious political or military drama. I saw Endless Space was on sale on Steam so I picked it up and really enjoyed playing it. It had a lot of things going for it mechanically and aesthetically that I dug, but the biggest reason why I bought it was because I had this desire and it seemed to do some interesting things with it.
I’m a sucker for pixel art and midi synth music, so I’m more likely to check out a game that uses these elements for their own sake rather than capitalizing on a sense of nostalgia (I’m getting really tired of games advertising their games as throwbacks or tributes to these styles, but that’s all just PR anyway). Games that hook up to my critical or poetic interests (I’m looking at you, Proteus) I’ll feel better buying, and when people start to do critical work I like on a game I haven’t played I’ll buy it, especially if I get to be contrarian about it (Don’t think I don’t see you, Dear Esther). Otherwise, I don’t usually buy games that are new.
adornoble:
rumirumirumirumi replied to your post: You Can (Not) Advance BEAST MODE or You Can (Not) Redo BEAST MODE?
I really like the redesign on Unit 02, but that movie is so fast-paced you dont really see it for very long in any particular image.
It’s the same with all the Evangelions in the movie, though, and I think it’s important because it’s emphasizing speed and movement more than anything else (and so harmonizing with the music stuff Kaworu says)
as a text I think Rebuild 3 ties itself together most neatly of all the Rebuilds
We’ll have to agree to disagree here, I think. That first movie did a really good job of condensing the early part of the show and establishing and building on themes. It’s the only one I could think of as a stand-alone story.
I’ll have to watch 3.33 again because it is very quick, but I’m not really convinced of this. To be sure it gets me very excited as a fan of the whole series, with all these strange new inflections to the characters and actions (things you want in new Eva material), but I’m having a hard time seeing a unity to it beyond how the pacing just changes how action takes place (and not necessarily what action takes place).
@bdreid-gaming
First, I don’t know where you get this theme of “zero-sum thinking.” Would you be willing to elaborate on this? Because I don’t think people who work with twine are working a zero-sum game. The value that people take from twine games isn’t a value that comes at the expense of other experiences: learning someone else’s perspective, coming into contact with their craft, enjoying and engaging with their language, and having the opportunity to be enmeshed in their utopian visions does a double-whammy of both generating more desire for such experiences and (because of the very simple platform) promoting the creation of more twine. This is antithetical to zero-sum thinking.
You may want to think about the art you make and consider to what extent it engages with violence. Because language is a powerful source of violence, and just because your poems don’t blow up cars or break windows doesn’t mean they don’t enact violence, whether on the reader or on the writer. There are writers who I think are really active about undermining language’s propensity for violence, and I really admire them for that, but I don’t necessarily see them building communities or enacting utopian visions either, and I don’t see your work making those kinds of non-violent gestures.
That’s not a personal indictment of you, but it speaks more to the point of seeing art as violence: so much violence is already being perpetrated in overt and covert ways that it often takes powerful countervailing forces to disrupt a pattern of violence. The fact that the countervailing force is coming in the form of art (instead of, you know, militarized violence) is what opens violence up to conversation in a way that you assume is a closing off of communication. When you say “this feels premature — to say that violence-in-art is the right mindset for the problem at hand,” it might be because you’re thinking of a different set of problems as someone else. Like, it’s not what kind of art is in and what kind of art is out, but like what world do we live and how do we make it better.
I think you’re really overstating this “us vs them” case. I still play Super Metroid. I want to play TF2 with you. It isn’t even a matter of factions but a matter of material and aesthetic practices, some of which perform as well as represent an alienating regime in game design and others of which perform as well as represent a different model.
it is not enough to say we can replace this nightmare reality with beautiful art–we must consciously ensure the violence of our art
porpentine:
twine succeeded precisely because of its violence–because it was suited to guerilla warfare–a weapon for underdogs
replicating, breeding, virulent–cheap pipebombs and tin can landmines
randomstuff134:
sodamnrelatable:
take a moment to realize you have never seen your face in person, just reflections and pictures
some scientists agree that if you saw a clone of yourself, you wouldn’t recognise it as you, because our idea of what we look like is so different from what we actually look like
The body of Phelps.
(via schoute)
May 15, 2013 at 11:15pm
1 note
Whether it’s a PC monitor or a smartphone display, indie game-makers tend to thrive on smaller screens. But when Josh DeBonis and Nik Mikros worked up the idea for their co-operative strategy/platformer hybrid Killer Queen, they went really big. So big they had to make their own unique stand-up machine for it. But, don’t worry: you don’t need quarters.
Watch the video and see if you can spot the Cole Sprouse.
satanic2chainz:
gatsbywasacommiee:
satanic2chainz:
rumirumirumirumi:
maka-baka:
“I love Pokemon”
“But only the first 151 because the rest are dumb”
Scizor everyday, all the time.
lol @ 4x weakness to fire doe
how you going to make fun of the 4x weakness like that almost every dragon in the game gets one shotted by a snowball and they still fuck everything up. tyranitar has a 4x weak to fighting but its still poke godzilla
because dragons are useful
scizor isn’t
Choice Band + U-Turn is a high-power combo that automatically switches him out. And his move set as an attack sweeper is really good.
maka-baka:
“I love Pokemon”
“But only the first 151 because the rest are dumb”
Scizor everyday, all the time.
(via satanic2chainz)
nevver:
Birds and Dinosaurs
I’m pretty sure humans are also dinosaurs. Still checking though.
(via lokathor)
overthinkingvideogames:
A quick Twine game about videogame morality.
brotherbrain:
Jeopardy! (SNES) GameTek 1992.
TrebeK’s face slick as oil, slick and soft as cathode. The mitten shape of your lapels I want to fold my thumbs around, the gray hatching’s so soft. Take me down to the paradise city, TrebeK.
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