Happy 2015! Enjoy this extra-long Diecast with a full crew and a lot of topics.
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Hosts: Shamus, Josh, Rutskarn, Mumbles, and Chris.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #87: Batman Endgame, ToME, Stone Soup Dungeon Crawl”
In case you missed it, on New Year we got together with a group of friends and played a bunch of games. Josh and Jarenth played, while I watched on Twitch and interacted with the people in chat. (I love doing this. I just wait for people to say something funny, read it out loud, and take credit for it. It’s like a license to steal jokes!)
We played Spintires, Far Cry 4, Super Amazing Wagon Adventure, and FTL.
Warning: This isn’t pristine HD video that’s been edited and audio-balanced like a typical episode of Spoiler Warning. This is a raw download of the Twitch stream. But while the quality is low, we make up for it in quantity. We’ve got over four hours of quasi-entertainment for you to consume! Enjoy!
Link (YouTube) |
The rest of the videos are after the jump: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “New Year Stream: Now on YouTube”
Link (YouTube) |
Fun fact: This episode was recorded and edited by Chris. Josh was visiting relatives during this session, so we couldn’t do Last of Us. And Chris has been angling to try some “quick look” type episodes where we spend just twenty minutes with a game that’s interesting, but maybe not interesting enough for a whole season of Spoiler Warning. (And we’re calling these short episodes, “Twenty Minutes With X”, even if the episode isn’t twenty minutes.)
Since we were joking around too much to do proper analysis (it’s the holidays, we were in the mood to goof off, and some of us had been drinking) I guess I’ll do my analysis here:
First off there’s the whole “jump scare” debate. I don’t see that as a worthwhile discussion. You can make all the bullet-points you want, you can never make an argument that will enable me to enjoy jump scares. They piss me off, end of story. On the other hand, there’s nothing I can say that will make a fan of jump scares stop enjoying them. This bypasses a lot of our higher-level behaviors and jabs us right in the amygdala. It’s either fun for you or it isn’t, and there’s no sense in arguing about it.
I actually really appreciate a game like Five Nights At Freddy’s. It’s unapologetically all about jump scares, and the gameplay is built around that idea. Now that I know this, I can avoid the game. It’s more of a problem when a game designer starts cramming jump scares into a game but then markets it as if it operates on an emotional level. I go in expecting to be scared by dread, mystery, emotional tension, and body horror, and instead I’m just waiting for the sudden loud noise and spooky face. And after the noise, I’ve got all this angry adrenaline in my bloodstream. I can put the game down, but that adrenaline doesn’t magically go away.
If you think about it, Silent Hill 2 is the opposite of a jump scare. You can hear the static before you see the monster. It’s all about the slow buildup of a fight you know is coming. Then there’s a quick encounter (combat or fleeing) and it’s over. After a session of Silent Hill 2 (or parts of Thief) I walk away with a sense of catharsis. After a jump scare game, I walk away grouchy.
Anyway. FNaF is sort of cute. It’s silly and it makes no sense, but its not trying to. This isn’t like Dead Space 2, a big-budget game with pretensions of terror but totally lacking in mood, pacing, and tone. (And story, and theme, and characterization, and logic.) Unlike Dead Space 2, FNaF is goofy on purpose. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and I can’t fault it for that.
Happy New Year, you gorgeous internet. Have you lost weight and/or become more educated and wealthy? You look sexier/smarter/richer. I guess your resolutions for the new year are really paying off. Good on you.
A couple of weeks ago I got all navel-gaze-y about making music, lamenting that my skills are writing prose and code, and not wasting my time with music that I barely understand.
But allow me to argue with me-from-two-weeks-ago: Ten years ago my only skill was coding, but then I wrote a book. Not because it would make me money, but because that’s where my creativity was taking me. A few years later I branched off some more, and it lead to this website. I seem to have pretty good luck with doing whatever seems fun at the moment. Not all of my projects pan out, but I certainly shouldn’t refuse to do things because I’m new to them. If I followed that line of reasoning I wouldn’t have any of the hobbies that make me so happy today.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Button Masher: Phobos Phobia”
EDIT: Well, that was fun. Thanks to everyone who joined in. We played Spintires, Far Cry 4, and some insane wagon game that I don’t even understand. Happy 2015 everyone!
Original message:
The year is about to change, which means it’s time to watch Josh stream a videogame while you curse at him. It’s like being on the cast of Spoiler Warning except Josh will ignore you because he’s drunk instead of ignoring you on purpose. It’s a magical time of friendship, laughter, confusion, drunkenness, and Murphy’s Law. I hope you’ll join usBecause I wouldn’t want to endure this alone.!
Josh claims we’ll be watching him play Spintires, so there’s at least a 10% chance of us playing SpintiresHe’s more reliable when he’s drunk. Also a better driver..
The stream will start around 10pm Eastern time in the USA. But rather than convert time zones and worry about stupid-ass daylight savings timeIs it active now? Is it active where I am? Where they are? just use this timer:
The stream will be here when the event goes live.
This week I try to explain the Lizard Squad attack on PSN and Xbox Live.
To be clear: We don’t know for sure if Lizard Squad really staged the attack. Or if they did, it’s possible that the guys claiming to be Lizard Squad weren’t them. Or if it was, it’s possible the “squad” is really just one guy. It’s all secrets and hearsay. But for the purposes of clarity we’ll just accept the events as presented and talk about them assuming everything is true.
This hackingThis entire attack involved both hacking and DDosing. is interesting stuff. What if you had the power to make international news without physically hurting anyone? What if you could do something that would get the world talking? I imagine this is a big part of the motivation for stunts like this. It’s the equivalent of being able to spray graffiti on a global billboard. You can’t take personal credit without going to jail, but you can watch the world respond to your actions.
Which is to say: Harsh penalties won’t be enough to keep people from doing this. People regularly risk their lives for thrills, or to prove a point, or just to see if they can do something. There will always be people willing to stage attacks like this, so the only thing you can do is build robust systems, secure them properly, and make them tolerant of attacks. So, you know, the exact opposite of what we’ve been doing so far.
I think it’s interesting that Lizard Squad went after both PSN and XBL. That certainly made the attack more difficult, since it required them to divide the botnet between two targets, thus halving its power. I imagine this was to make it clear that this wasn’t a protest attack. If they had gone after just XBL, people would have been speculating about their motives. Was this done by Playstation fanboys? Is this to protest Microsoft in some way? As it is, it seems like, “Because they could” is the most plausible reason for the attack.
And here is the last Diecast of 2014.
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Hosts: Shamus, Josh, Jacob, and just normal Chris.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #86: Telltale Games, Christmas DDos Attack, Edutainment Games”
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2011.
A screencap comic that poked fun at videogames and the industry. The comic has ended, but there's plenty of archives for you to binge on.
Crysis 2 has basically the same plot as Half-Life 2. So why is one a classic and the other simply obnoxious and tiresome?
A wild game filled with wild ideas that features fun puzzles and mind-blowing environments. It has a great atmosphere, and one REALLY annoying flaw with its gameplay.
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
An unhinged rant where I maybe slightly over-reacted to the water torture of Souls evangelism.
My first REAL published book, about a guy who comes back from the dead due to a misunderstanding.
Lists of 'best games ever' are dumb and annoying. But like a self-loathing hipster I made one anyway.
People fault EA for being greedy, but their real sin is just how terrible they are at it.
Raytracing is coming. Slowly. Eventually. What is it and what will it mean for game development?
T w e n t y S i d e d
