T w e n t y S i d e d
Thankful for: A day off. Whew.
I’m not so much looking forward to tomorrow, national Take Stuff for Granted Day.
For those that are celebrating, I hope you have a great one.
Worst Rule Ever
I’ve already made it clear which rule I think is the most annoying in tabletop gaming. (Aside from the rules preventing me from hitting other people at the table.) But I haven’t played that many game systems, and I have never sampled the gaming systems of yesteryear. Certainly there are worse out there.
Topic for discussion: The worst rule you’ve ever encountered. Perhaps it breaks immersion. Or starts fights. Or unbalances the game. Or leads to excessive paperwork. Or it’s just, you know, stupid. Please identify the worst rule “ever”, and why it ruins the fun.
I’m very interested to hear the responses. Yes, I’m sure this is a terrific idea for a discussion and won’t lead to any flame wars or rancorous debate. I mean, this is the internet, and everyone is so nice here, right?
If you need me, I’ll be in my bunker until this thread blows over.
Stolen Pixels #41: Pick a Perk
My latest strip pokes some fun at the perks in Fallout 3, but it’s really a vehicle for a question about why PC games are dumbed down (simplified) for consoles.
Dvorak vs. QWERTY
Last week’s post on my arm ache (I’m not going to call it carpal tunnel, because I don’t actually know what it is, besides annoying and painful) spawned a side-conversation on the merits of the Dvorak keyboard layout. It turns out this is another Mac vs. PC or Xbox vs. PS3 issue:
- It’s totally better. Like, for sure.
- No way. Not better at all.
Great. Why are we still having this debate 72 years after the Dvorak layout was introduced? This disagreement over something easily quantified is kind of strange coming from the tech community. I can understand debates over acupuncture, herbal medicine, flavors of Linux, game consoles, and other things which have subjective quantities, differing user priorities, placebo effects, and multiple variables to be weighed. But when we’re talking about keyboard layouts we’re all comparing one quantity: Words Per Minute. It’s easily measured and not subject to user bias. Oh, this “feels” faster? You clock it on a stopwatch and look at the results. One study found no advantage, but it took existing professional typists and compared them after a couple of months. That’s not really reasonable or fair to take someone who’s been touch-typing QWERTY for a decade, give them a couple of months at Dvorak, and compare the speeds.
A real test would be to take two large groups of non-typists and teach one Qwerty and the other Dvorak. Every week we see little news tidbits about stupid studies (usually paid for by the government) that stun us with revelations like, “fat people eat more food than thin people” or “teenagers think about sex pretty often” or “unmarried men have more disposable income than same-age married couples with children”. We can find time to have scientists tell us the sky is blue, but in all these years nobody has ever sat down and really quantified the difference between Dvorak and QWERTY in a proper unbiased scientific study?
This wouldn’t, in and of itself, tell us if switching to Dvorak would be worth it for an individual or organization. That question is naturally going to be a fiendish one, but just having the WPM of QWERTY vs. Dvorak would go a long way to telling us if it was even worth thinking about.
A Pet Project, Euthanized
You may recall some earlier posts where I whined about how video editing software is either bare-bones useless, or more expensive than having platinum dental work done on a cloned T-Rex. There doesn’t seem to be any real mid-range software available for people who just want to dabble. I’ve had a video project that I’ve been tinkering with for some time now, and I’ve been trying to line up the tools and assets to make it work. When The Escapist film festival came along, it seemed like a good time to buckle down and make it happen.
Between the day job, this site, and Stolen Pixels, (and the videogames required to supply the latter two) I just couldn’t come up with something in time for the film festival. But even after the deadline for the film festival ran out, I didn’t want to give up on the idea. I was still holding out hope that I could scrape together some time and finish it, even if all I did was put the thing up on YouTube.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “A Pet Project, Euthanized”
The Escapist Film Festival: Unskippable
Indignation: I just now noticed that the embeded player doesn’t work for me. It acts like it works, bit it won’t actually play. It works just fine at The Escapist, though. I’m not sure what the deal is.
Original post follows:
The Escapist recently had a film festival where they invited people to send in their entertaining videos. This is one of the winners. It nails the MST3K rhythm and feel, which is oft attempted but rarely with this much success.
Congrats to creators LoadingReadyRun for a funny and satisfying entry. (And I’ll bet I’d enjoy it even more if I’d actually played the game they’re lampooning.) I’m really looking forward to the series that results from this.
Penny Arcade Turns Ten
I missed this the other day, but Penny Arcade just turned ten. Given our (gamers) fondness for both Penny Arcade and base ten numbering, I guess I expected more of a fuss.
I like this one, which was mysterious to me when it first appeared. Then I read it years later – this particular year, to be precise – after having finally played the game in question, and discovered the truth that it contained. That is to say, it took me three years to get the joke.
I am still waiting for the bright new future promised in this one.
Ten years. Amazing. Congrats to Mike & Jerry.
From The Archives:
A Star is Born
Remember the superhero MMO from 2009? Neither does anyone else. It was dumb. So dumb I was compelled to write this.
Who Broke the In-Game Economy?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
What is Vulkan?
There's a new graphics API in town. What does that mean, and why do we need it?
I Was Wrong About Borderlands 3
I really thought one thing, but then something else. There's a bunch more to it, but you'll have to read the article.
Internet News is All Wrong
Why is internet news so bad, why do people prefer celebrity fluff, and how could it be made better?
How I Plan To Rule This Dumb Industry
Here is how I'd conquer the game-publishing business. (Hint: NOT by copying EA, 2K, Activision, Take-Two, or Ubisoft.)
What is Piracy?
It seems like a simple question, but it turns out everyone has a different idea of right and wrong in the digital world.
Video Compression Gone Wrong
How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
A Telltale Autopsy
What lessons can we learn from the abrupt demise of this once-impressive games studio?
Starcraft: Bot Fight
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.