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I’m not sure why BioWare has so much trouble with translating real-world ladyfaces to their game. They based Commander Shepard on model Mark Vanderloo, and I think they nailed it. But the in-game versions of Yvonne Strahovski (Miranda) and Jessica Chobot (Diana Allers) seem to come from a deep crevice at the bottom of the uncanny valley. For the record, here is the real Chobot:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 3 EP12: Space Magic Town”
I linked this on twitter a couple of days ago and managed to botch the copy & paste. I’m sorry, but sometimes internetting is hard. If you’re an old person like me who gets confused by clicking on things and using more than one window at a time, then let me do you a huge favor and just embed the dang thing.
Here is Mumbles, doing the first of what I hope will be a series of videos about Mumbles-type vidogames stuff.
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I would encourage you to go to Digital Gumballs to discuss the video. I mean, you’re welcome to talk about it here, but I’m sure Mumbles and Nick would appreciate having the discussion on their own site. Having it here is kind of like throwing your housewarming party at a friend’s house because everyone knows how to get there already.
Some of you – okay, a lot of you – have noticed certain… problems with the earlier seasons of Spoiler Warning. More specifically, every single video hosted by Viddler is no longer available and Viddler itself is offering no explanation whatsoever.
Well, allow me to share an email I received a few weeks ago with you:
Hello Viddlers,
Over the last few years, Viddler has invested in the development and support of our superior online video platform features because of our current and future customers’ changing needs. Because of these additional investments, we're requesting that all of our personal account users using above 2GB of bandwidth per month upgrade to one of Viddler's cost-effective accounts.
Your account is actively using over 100GB of bandwidth monthly, which qualifies you to upgrade to Viddler's Business account for half off the regular cost. For just $50 per month, the Business account will give you 200GB of bandwidth!
Click here to sign up for Viddler's Business account today! Complete the online form and enter promo code “SOBUSY” to apply the 50% discount.
For those personal accounts exceeding the bandwidth usage that choose not to upgrade to the Business account, your account will be removed from Viddler's platform over the next month.
If you have any questions about your bandwidth usage or Viddler's Business account, please email [email protected].
We appreciate your understanding and your continued loyalty.
The Viddler Sales Team
Uh… Sorry, what?
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Spoiler Warning: So What Happened to the Early Seasons?”
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I last visited World of Warcraft about a year ago, and the cities were still flooded with hacked accounts spewing gold farming services into trade spam. This is despite a years-long battle on the part of Blizzard. If they can’t beat this problem, can anyone?
The problem:
“I need 100 gold to get my mount. Hm. But getting that 100g will take a lot of questing. And that questing would go faster if I had my mount while I was doing it! Can’t I just… get the gold now?”
Or perhaps:
“I won’t be able to afford this novelty pet until I’m at the end game. But I want the pet with me while I’m adventuring and leveling! It’s part of my character concept / costume / joke. I won’t be able to get it until I’m done with the character. Isn’t there some way to, you know, get it early?”
If you put goals in the distance, players are going to want to get them early. You can argue that paying for a reward defeats the purpose of having a reward. You can also tell people not to eat greasy food or get large, fad-driven tattoos on obvious parts of their body. You can decry something as a bad idea all you like, but people are going to do it anyway so you might as well put on your engineer hat and work out a system that can tolerate it.
Note: All screenshots here are from Guild Wars 2.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Guild Wars 2: The Gold Market”
Link (YouTube) |
You know, I spent like five minutes going on about how they negated the decision in Mass Effect 1 where you chose to kill the Rachni Queen or set her free. However, I’m remembering now that the first game had this same problem. There were still sidequests in the game where Rachni showed up. So the game let you make a decision and then ignored it. Here in Mass Effect 3, it really does take into account if you saved her or not. It’s superficial, but its there. So, Mass Effect 3 fares better here than I gave it credit for. In fact, for this decision it fares better than the original.
The Space Quest 2 toilet scene I mentioned looks like this:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 3 EP11: Toilets and Fatalism”
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In this episode Chris mentioned a bit written by an actual armor smith, commenting on the various tradeoffs between sensible gender-obscuring armor and absurd stripper armor. It’s a pretty good read. As I’ve said in the past, I’m not against stripper armor in principle. My ideal game is one where everyone gets to choose just where they want to appear on the spectrum between boring and ridiculous.
It’s like a costume party. If a woman shows up dressed as a skimpy french maid I’m not going to be some puritanical killjoy and send her home. At the same time, I wouldn’t stop a woman as she came in, hand her a bikini, and say, “Here, you’re wearing this”. In any case, I give Mass Effect a solid thumbs up for their armor and uniform designs for Shepard.
Also we mentioned “I Remember Me”, a quest from the original Mass Effect. It’s a situation where Shepard has to confront a woman who has been kept in brutal slavery since childhood. I found it to be gut wrenching. Here’s an excerpt.
Also, Two Best Friends Play Prison Break.
Well, Chris brought it up, so we are now officially talking about the ending. This will be the first of many discussions, I’m sure. Once again, no need to spoiler tag Mass Effect stuff. Anyone reading the comments has already bought the ticket and is clearly here to take the ride.
Also, sorry for bringing up my book again. That’s an obnoxious thing to do and I need to stop doing it. “Oh, I’m writing a book with these very themes!” Barf. It’s my innate desire to talk about what I’m working on, but it’s pretentious and it’s actually terrible for my productivity.
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Chris brings up Film Crit Hulk. I like Film Crit Hulk, which is why reading the FCH take of Mass Effect 3 was so painful. Film Crit Hulk wrote this bit about the ending of Mass Effect 3. I was really frustrated with it. As I’ve said before, I don’t mind people saying they liked the end of the game. If it gave you closure or satisfaction, then great. But if you’re going to wade in and say things like…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 3 EP9: Interocitor Cycles”
Both a celebration and an evisceration of tabletop roleplaying games, by twisting the Lord of the Rings films into a D&D game.
Computers keep getting more powerful. So why do the population caps for massively multiplayer games stay about the same?
Remember the superhero MMO from 2009? Neither does anyone else. It was dumb. So dumb I was compelled to write this.
C++ is a wonderful language for making horrible code.
Why was this classic adventure game so funny in the 80's, and why did it stop being funny?
A big chunk of the internet went down in October of 2016. What happened? Was it a hack?
There's a new graphics API in town. What does that mean, and why do we need it?
What's wrong with a game being "too videogameish"?
People were so worried about the boring gameplay of The Old Republic they overlooked just how boring and amateur the art is.
WAY back in 2005, I wrote about a D&D campaign I was running. The campaign is still there, in the bottom-most strata of the archives.
T w e n t y S i d e d
