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kapow comments on Fake Non-Fiction Best Sellers

kapow — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:00:40 +0000

That second one hit a bit too close to home on some of the books I tend to read.

circadianwolf comments on Fake Non-Fiction Best Sellers

circadianwolf — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:55:40 +0000

This, in particular the first one, is FANTASTIC. So, so accurate.

Alli893 comments on The Update of Incipient Narratives

Alli893 — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 07:13:25 +0000

Congrats on 5 years!!

JP comments on In the Realm of the Dragons

JP — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 16:13:07 +0000

This can't possibly be about what I first assumed it was about.

obdurate hater of rhythm games comments on His Vexing Inability to Put Down Roots

obdurate hater of rhythm games — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 20:26:12 +0000

This is why we, especially video game players, must understand the importance of the suspension of disbelief. We have a world produced from the mind, and eight bits on the n---- are best. Media have evolved, and the ones who have not the handiwork to prove themselves worthy shall die with the primitives. Images are as valuable as words, and the most unappreciated are often the most precious. Marry idea to work, or yourself to a breeding partner, but remember that in the universe there are star systems of millions, and though each can produce new systems, it can only travel perhaps a hundred light-years before they fade.

Egypt Urnash comments on The Update of Certain Wakefulness

Egypt Urnash — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 18:50:01 +0000

Watching the tutorial dissection, I really feel like you're making the game Harmonix WANTED to make when they did Frequency and Amplitude. But those were flawed IMHO by being about the same rapid-fire button pressing mechanism that they'd later turn to such great success with Guitar Hero and Rock Band; it was really hard to think about the shape of the track while hammering a button for every single note and being hammered with FAIL noises if you missed.

It's definitely shaping up into a game that makes me want to put it on a big screen and DANCE AROUND while playing. Especially with the preview of the dubstep second level. Oh god I would have a squeegasm if there was a big nasty dubstep level with an epic multistage boss, Uranus is always the highlight of a playthrough of Rez for me.

Consider me an interested party. n.n

Griff comments on An Excerpt from the Novel “Departure,” by Alan Wake

Griff — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 14:22:17 +0000

Gaming has evolved; it isn't the same as it was when hardware limitations alone made it impossible to have a story. Today, there are two types of games. Games with not a lot of story that are mostly competitive (Halo, CoD, TF2) and games that are entirely about the story and exist for an artistic purpose (Alan Wake, Portal). That isn't to say they are mutually exclusive, but you have to realize that things are going to change and have done so since the late eighties. As I always say, things need to change, lest they become stagnant.

Andy Durdin comments on One Experiment, Four Theories

Andy Durdin — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:06:28 +0000

Another possible subtle dig at game design tropes is Wheatley’s rail—because that’s the only way he has to get around, his whole life has been an “on-rails” experience. And he’s scared to death of doing anything else: “they told me, if I ever left my rail, I would die.” Of course Portal 2 was largely on-rails itself.

sebmojo comments on In All the Wrong Places: A Response to n+1

sebmojo — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 22:31:34 +0000

This is a fantastic piece.

My own perspective is that art is a relationship, not a thing. Art happens, between the thing and the individual. Look at it that way and you come back to a much less syntactically tortured result, which is asking 'can this thing (=book, film, buildling, game) create art-feeling?'.

But I completely agree with Tynan Sylvester that the root of much of this argument is social exclusion.

Plus, to be fair, most games are really crappy art.

Danda comments on One Experiment, Four Theories

Danda — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 12:38:00 +0000

I'm sorry about my English, I'm Spanish. Well, one month ago Spanish film director Nacho Vigalondo wrote an article about Portal 2 also hinting that GLaDOS is, in a way, a game designer. But I particularly liked what a commenter said, expanding that vision:

http://www.mondo-pixel.com/2011/05/03/%c2%abportal-2%c2%bb-suelo-firme/comment-page-1/#comment-77448

Here's my rough translation of this comment:

"What Portal 2 makes is just that, toying with our expectations. It's not hard to figure out that Weathley is a villain (which is hinted when he says the hilarious line about "stinking humans"), but his clumsiness makes him a dangerious villain for more amusing reasons: puzzles created by GLaDOS smash against each other, they fall apart and become seemingly unsolvable, leaving behind them just a glimpse of what they could originally be. In other words, not only GLaDOS is presented as the game designer... Wheatley is clearly a modder. A particularly clumsy modder which takes everything apart to rebuild it again, and which finds that there are unused parts left. Game mods are always perverting (in a broad sense) the original goal of the programmer. Where GLaDOS sees science (that is, work), Wheatley sees pleasure (literally, with no double readings: Wheatley does it because he gets off on it). For GLaDOS it's a way of life but for Wheatley everything is a way of showing off... just like a modder that needs to prove that he's as clever as the original programmer. Almost at the end when Wheatley announces a surprise (paralelling GLaDOS's fake surprise... God, this game is so well written!) and he brings forward the surprise breaking his own countdown, he does it by offering us a closed puzzle that he subverts by casting us against other wall. When we finally face Wheatley, the first thing he does is laying down the rules of combat precisely in opposition to GLaDOS's original death. Finally, the last and wonderful portal opened in the game is so unpredictable because it turns a minimalistic game, a closed system, into an epic act which takes galactic dimensions. For me, that continual challenge to expectations is the best way to disarm even the most grizzled gamer."