Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Apr 3, 2012

Filed under: Movies 267 comments

 Errant Signal - Violence In GamesPrevious Post

It’s obvious I’m a fan of long-form game analysis, particularly story-based. I love to write about games, read about games, watch reviews of games, and talk about games. In a way, the retrospective is just another stage of the experience.

This is producing a strange side-effect where I’m starting to feel glad that the Mass Effect 3 ending was so completely awful in every way, lacking in both coherence and closure, and completely discarding core themes in the last minutes of the game. Sure, a high-profile series ended in a train wreck and a great chunk of lore-rich world-building has been reduced to pretentious mush, but the resulting conversations and deconstructions have been more interesting to me than the game itself. I enjoyed assembling my own list of objections, and I’m still collecting new objections to my running mental tally.

Here is yet another person stepping up to deconstruct the ending. Yes, they lead off with a nod to Red Letter Media, but the review doesn’t go that way. This is actually the most highbrow one I’ve found so far, and the author plays things very straight.

Link (YouTube)

The bit about the Socratic exercise really resonated with me. Yes, this is the thing I love most about sci-fi.

I’ll actually be glad when people stop saying, “You’re ripping off Red Letter Media!” when someone does a long-form analysis. There’s a lot of room for different approaches in this gig, and the more the merrier.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Errant Signal - Violence In GamesPrevious Post

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267 comments

PAX East: Friday Schedule

By Shamus Posted Monday Apr 2, 2012

Filed under: Notices 68 comments

 Minecraft DiscussionPrevious Post

Next PostPAX Meetups - Who wants books? 

This weekend, Josh and I are going to meet for the first time at PAX East. I’m going to be appearing on a Q&A panel hosted by the Escapist, along with MovieBob and some of the Loading Ready Run crew.

Here is how PAX works:

The main attraction is the show floor. In the middle of the convention center is a massive (airplane hanger sized) area where different companies have booths for showing off their goods, games, demos, previews, and otherwise vying for attention from the press and gaming public. Some of these “Booths” stretch the definition of the term, and are more like self-contained marketing theme parks. In particular, Xbox has enough territory to declare themselves a sovereign nation and field an army to defend it. People are saying they might even have enough space for two people to play with the Kinect. The mind reels.

Around the edges of this mayhem are tiny booths owned by starry-eyed indie developers and middle-aged guys selling overpriced T-shirts, buttons, posters, and other gaming culture accoutrements.

Elsewhere in the convention center are other ongoing attractions: An arcade, a beanbag lounge, a PC lounge, etc. These are quiet places to get off your feet and recharge yourself, your Nintendo DS, or both.

In the outer rooms are “panels”. These events can encompass a lot of different things. Movie screenings. Presentations. Interactive question & answer events. Some are aimed at the press, or developers, or the public, or certain gaming demographics. Read the schedule before you go and see if you’re interested in any of them.

Last year I didn’t have a game plan, and this resulted in a lot of spine-destroying hiking around. This year, I have a careful plan.

For the curious, here is my schedule for Friday. If an event isn’t here, it doesn’t mean I don’t care about it. It probably just conflicts with whatever else I’ve got going on.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “PAX East: Friday Schedule”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Minecraft DiscussionPrevious Post

Next PostPAX Meetups - Who wants books? 

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Spoiler Warning: Questions

By Shamus Posted Monday Apr 2, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 208 comments

 Spoiler Warning: Elevator SourcePrevious Post

Next PostJosh Plays Shogun 2 Part 18: Anno Domini 

I sat down with the rest of the cast Sunday night and we made it official: Barring any unforeseen difficulties, our next game will be Alan Wake. The game has a lot of interesting hooks for discussion: In-game advertising, the changing nature of survival horror as a genre, Stephen King, a troubled development history, and so on. It’s also short by the standards of the show, which will let us move on to Mass Effect 3 before we lose our passion for it.

We’re moving to five cast members: Chris, Mumbles, Rutskarn, Josh and myself. I have no idea how we’ll keep it on the rails. We’ll see how it goes.

Reader Atma asks via email:

[…]Well, i for one would like to know how the new format has impacted your audience, if the pipeline has improved, if the custom endings hit their goal (keeping people watching up to the end). I’d also like know out of curiosity how you are financing yourself on this show (if you are at all); i mean it’s a lot of work and although i imagine it’s nice having fun among a group of smart and talented people, it’s still a lot of work.

The pipeline is the same as it ever was, except that Josh keeps raising his standards as he gets better at Adobe Premiere, which kind of negates the time he saves.

We’re not making any money from the show. Individual episodes only score a few thousand views. Less than half the people who read the site actually watch the show. It’s probably not worth turning on advertising for that. Ultimately, it would probably boil down to a dollar an episode. Split between the cast members this would be joke money, not worth the time and expense of distributing it. Even if we gave it all to Josh, it’s still pretty much a tiny payout in the face of how much time he dumps into it. I get the impression that advertising really isn’t worth it until you’re into the tens of thousands.

The coming weekend is PAX, and the next weekend is recovering-from-PAX, so the next season won’t begin until the week of April 22.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Spoiler Warning: Elevator SourcePrevious Post

Next PostJosh Plays Shogun 2 Part 18: Anno Domini 

208 comments

Interview With MeNET

By Shamus Posted Sunday Apr 1, 2012

Filed under: Links 57 comments

 Streets of BedlamPrevious Post

Next PostHomestar Runner 

On Friday I sat down with some of the guys at Middle Earth Network and talked a bit about the Witch Watch, Project Frontier, DM of the Rings, and other assorted topics.

You can hear an archived version of the interview here.

It was fun. Thanks again to the MeNet guys for having me on.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Streets of BedlamPrevious Post

Next PostHomestar Runner 

57 comments

Spoiler Warning: Elevator Source

By Josh Posted Saturday Mar 31, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 156 comments

 Deus Ex Human Revolution EP41: Did We Ask For This?Previous Post

Next PostSpoiler Warning: Questions 

Link (YouTube)

In case you didn’t already have enough vertical lifting devices in your life.

I meant to have this up earlier this week, but a combination of technical problems (i.e., Adobe Premiere memory leaks) and mild illness thwarted that plan. That’s also why there wasn’t a Shogun 2 post this week either. Fortunately, I’m feeling much better now, which is good, considering PAX is next week.

On that topic, next week is probably going to be pretty weird. I’m not sure what sort of content Shamus has planned for PAX, or if he has anything planned at all, for that matter. But you can probably expect at least a Shogun 2 post sometime early next week, to make up for the missing one this week.

Now what are you doing still reading this? Go watch us fight the elevator gods!

Josh Viel is the primary editor and producer of the Spoiler Warning video series. You can support the show by backing the Patreon.

 Deus Ex Human Revolution EP41: Did We Ask For This?Previous Post

Next PostSpoiler Warning: Questions 

156 comments

Experienced Points: The Story Doesn’t Matter

By Shamus Posted Friday Mar 30, 2012

Filed under: Column 128 comments

 Experienced Points:
Mass Effect 3 Ending ControversyPrevious Post

Next PostExperienced Points: In Defense of Hepler Mode 

In talking about the recent Mass Effect 3 ending controversy, Daithi Farley asked:

The weirdest thing about this debacle is the almost complete disparity between game journalists and fans. I mean you'd think it vary from site to site but it all seems so oddly consistent. Does any one know why this is?

My article this week is my answer.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Experienced Points:
Mass Effect 3 Ending ControversyPrevious Post

Next PostExperienced Points: In Defense of Hepler Mode 

128 comments

Supplying Demands for More Demand

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 29, 2012

Filed under: Rants 228 comments

 Programming Language vs. Written LanguagePrevious Post

Next PostSWTOR "Free" Weekend 

A recent headline caught my eye: Silicon Knights Boss Says Used Games Drive Up Prices

I would title this article “Silicon Knights Boss fails to Grasp Supply & Demand”. The thrust of the article is that they’re only making “burst” sales at the launch of a game, so they’re trying to make all their money in those first few weeks. This is in contrast to Ye Olden Days, when games would have “long tail” sales, having sales figures that slowly tapered off over time.

This is a horrible and suicidal way to do business. You’re going to spend $50 million to make a game and then hope you can make more than $50 million in a few weeks, which you can only do if it has great reviews and it flies off the shelves? What if a really big surprise hit releases next to your game? What if your game gets dinged in reviews down to (oh no!) 75%? Or what if it’s just too dang similar to a game that came out few months earlier and even if your game is better consumers just aren’t ready for ANOTHER one?

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Supplying Demands for More Demand”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Programming Language vs. Written LanguagePrevious Post

Next PostSWTOR "Free" Weekend 

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