T w e n t y S i d e d
My tirade against terrible writing in games. Probably should have made this a multi-part series. I’ll ask the same question here that I asked over there:
What game has such horrible writing that it angers you with its stupidity?
Stolen Pixels #160: Rorschach Interview, Part 2
This is the sort of exchange that could go on for a long time without going anywhere.
Lonely Girl
Second Life and The Sims get used for a lot of machinima, but not Activeworlds. (There are reasons for this – which, as part of my policy of not talking too much about my job – I won’t go into.) So I was thrilled when one of our users let me know about this one. It’s a music video made with our software.
Link (YouTube) |
I admit this probably interests me more than most. I’m just sort of sharing the moment here.
EDIT: Shoulda followed my own policy and not talked about my job. Comments closed.
Journalism Fail
The story so far:
On Dec 31 of 2009, developer Brian Green announced the closing of Near Death Studios. NDS is the company behind the venerable Meridian 59, the first graphical MMO. (Although M59 will continue to run for the foreseeable future.) The story was picked up by Joystiq, although some of the reported facts were wrong. This led Green to post a sharp critique of gaming journalism. It’s an interesting read, and one of the guys from Joystiq jumps in to the comments at the end of that post. You don’t need to read it all to follow what I’m about to talk about, but it’s still interesting and worth a look.
Part of the problem with the lack of journalism in gaming journalism is that a lot of gaming sites – mine included – mix commentary and humor with news. People seem to have this impression that it’s okay to joke around on your blog, but once you’re a “real” site you need to straighten up and start behaving like a J-school professional.
It’s not clear where the line should be drawn, and ignores the fact that many sites grow gradually into larger ones, and that they often get big because of their lack of professionalism. There’s often this disconnect with blogs: The writer sees it as a conversation with friends, and the readers think of it as a hobby news site. The writer is wanting to comment and gossip, but once a site gets so big the readers start expecting journalism. I think this is a cultural problem, mostly. We haven’t had something like blogs before, and so in many cases people are still working out what to expect from them.
(This is even more true in the political arena. Web surfers will think nothing of stumbling onto some random small-fry political wonk and demanding that the author familiarize themselves with Dr. Humphrey J. Poncebottom’s 700 page tome, “A Treatise on Regionalism and Steel Tariffs in 16th Century France” before they have the audacity to complain about the cost of canned soda.)
But this serves as a good launching point for something I’ve wanted to say for a while now…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Journalism Fail”
GM Advice: Guns and Dice
I had an interesting conversation with my gaming friends a couple of weeks ago. They’re looking to start a game in a semi-modern setting, and were casting about trying to decide which system to use. We played a game in 2008 that used D&D modern sourcebooks, and we were all unhappy with it.
It’s mostly a problem with guns. If you’re making something modern, you have two choices:
1) Have it be fun & varied.
2) Have it make sense.
Whether or not it succeeded is open for debate, but D&D modern obviously went for #1. The game is balanced so that melee combat is useful and that the game isn’t just a huge crapshoot. This means the weapon mechanics don’t make a lot of sense, because they don’t resemble the real world. And I don’t mean they break from the real world in a few minor details. The rules can be downright silly if you try to picture the fight as it takes place. You end up with situations where you hit the bad guy with a shotgun at point-blank, and yet he still somehow has enough vigor to continue fighting or even outrun the players, simply because he’s the “boss”.
The problem is that the needs of a roleplaying game are usually completely at odds with how things work in regards to guns. If you’re going for a heroic tale of champions overcoming evil, then the presence of guns in your setting is going to work against that, because guns flatten the power curve quite a bit. In the real world, there is no such thing as game balance.
Put a sword in the hands of a couch potato and send him up against a decent swordsman. He has zero chance of success. Now give an untrained dolt a firearm and send them up against a decent gunslinger. Their chance of success is low, but it’s there. If that gunslinger is going to have many such encounters, then sooner or later the odds will catch up with them.
Consider that:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “GM Advice: Guns and Dice”
Two Important Announcements
1) It looks like the crew from Loading Ready Run has sold out. They used to be this cool indie comedy team, and now they’re trading all that in and appearing at The Escapist. Oh, their stuff is just as funny as it ever was, but it’s a shame to see them lose their underground status just so they can cash a paycheck.
2) In completely unrelated news, my Let’s Play series has been picked up by The Escapist, and it will appear on their site. I’ll be covering Lord of the Rings Online first. More details ought to be forthcoming in the next week or so.
Stolen Pixels #159: Rorschach Interview Part 1
Proof that my self-indulgence knows no bounds.
I’m limited in who I can have on Breen’s show. I can only feature characters that appear as ragdolls in the Garry’s Mod dB. (NSFW) Some of the interesting options include: Vin Diesel, Leon from Resident Evil 4, Superman, Link, and a Big Daddy from BioShock.
The database is mostly models that were ripped out of other games and ported to the source engine, but a few are original creations. They don’t always work perfectly, though. Sometimes the limbs don’t bend properly, and their faces can’t be manipulated. Still, it’s an interesting exercise finding usable models and dropping them into Breen’s world.
From The Archives:
The Brilliance of Mass Effect
What is "Domino Worldbuilding" and how did it help to make Mass Effect one of the most interesting settings in modern RPGs?
What is Vulkan?
There's a new graphics API in town. What does that mean, and why do we need it?
Bethesda’s Launcher is Everything You Expect
From the company that brought us Fallout 76 comes a storefront / Steam competitor. It's a work of perfect awfulness. This is a monument to un-usability and anti-features.
Final Fantasy X
A game about the ghost of an underwater football player who travels through time to save the world from a tick that controls kaiju satan. Really.
Internet News is All Wrong
Why is internet news so bad, why do people prefer celebrity fluff, and how could it be made better?
Crysis 2
Crysis 2 has basically the same plot as Half-Life 2. So why is one a classic and the other simply obnoxious and tiresome?
The No Politics Rule
Here are 6 reasons why I forbid political discussions on this site. #4 will amaze you. Or not.
The Truth About Piracy
What are publishers doing to fight piracy and why is it all wrong?
What Does a Robot Want?
No, self-aware robots aren't going to turn on us, Skynet-style. Not unless we designed them to.
The Best of 2016
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2016.