kyohu:

SO MY FRIEND WAS TELLING ME ABOUT THIS NEW GAME SHE SAW AT E3 AND SHE SAID IT WAS WHERE YOU PLAY AS AN OCTOPUS AND TRY TO LIVE YOUR LIFE AND THIS IS IT


THIS IS FUCKING IT IM CRYING MY EYES OUT

OCTODAD IS COMING OUT WITH A SEQUEL LIFE IS B E A U T I F U L

(YOU CAN GET THE ORIGINAL FROM THEIR SITE. IT IS FREE. GO GO GO.)

(via watertusk)

Source: kyohu

I’ve watched enough games in general and MMOs in particular go from the barely-there early development stages to release to know that the more complex things the community plans to do far in advance practically never come to fruition, at least not to the extent originally intended, unless the game is specifically geared towards that being a Thing, but that link I reblogged is still neat theorytalk.

(And maybe I’m still insistently maintaining my puppy-eyed optimism, oh well.)

Barter or currency?

nerdkingdomofficial:

Neat discussion going on in the forums about the pros and cons of barter vs currency in the TUG economy, what systems would need to be in place to support them, how they could be cheated, and when might one turn into the other!

Psyche Time-Lapse: Aquaria is a glorious exploration-centric Castlevania-esque indie...

impromptuonedykedanceparty:

psychetimelapse:

genderfight:

psychetimelapse:

Aquaria is a glorious exploration-centric Castlevania-esque indie game. It has a lot of points in its favor, one of them being that a good chunk of the characters (few of them though there are) are female. Including the protagonist. Cookie for the devs, yeah?

I was browsing around for mods one…

And it would have been so fucking simple not to gender the difficulty-turner-downer! All they had to say was *anything but that.*

At some other point, I may want to talk about the “girls dislike combat or difficulty in games” thing, though. Because, in my limited and not representative sample, I know an awful lot of lady gamers who fit that one and relatively few who don’t. Basically, my question is this: at what point is a harmful stereotype “true enough” that it’s worth designing around? Is it patronizing, or merely kind and accodomating, to do so?

Lastly, Aquaria is a really good game and people should play it, dev shittery notwithstanding. I picked it up as part of a Bundle ages ago and was really taken with it.

I look forward to the post/article on the lady gamers and preference for toned-down difficulty when it comes about! I’ve never run into a correlation myself (the closest I’ve come is a relative dearth of women who like FPSs but can, say, murder the shit out of Shin Megami Tensei bosses, which gets translated by misogynistic assholes into, “GIRLS DON’T LIKE HARD GAMES,” because anything that doesn’t try to be a white western dude’s power fantasy doesn’t count in their eyes), so alternate perspectives are good to hear when not from misogynistic nerdbros.

ETA: Oh, but I don’t think it’s a stereotype that needs to be worked around, no matter how true it is. Most games these days come with difficulty settings, either easy/medium/hard/some-sort-of-unlockable-supermode or sliders. And while there are some super hard games that don’t make any such allowances, there are also super easy ones. The hard game gamers can continue to enjoy their hard games, the folks who prefer easier ones can go with those. Gender correlations seem irrelevant when it comes down to game design on that front.

What’s worse to me, actually, is the implicit assumption that anyone reading that post will be a straight man. The waaaaaaay-too-common problem, usually from white men, who think ‘talking to a person’ and translate that to ‘talking to a white straight man,’ that totally taken-for-granted bullshit.

It also sours the whole sound of the game for me: it’s not just a game with a female protagonist, it’s a game with a female protagonist that was made by people with the implicit assumption that men are their audience. Which COMPLETELY changes the dynamic; e.g. Tomb Raider.

Anyway, I want to talk about the difficulty thing too, ‘cause it’s pretty ludicrous. Like, when reading that at first, especially when it’s put something like “girls who prefer story to combat in games” - I count myself in that group before realizing, wait, the whole way that’s set up is bullshit. My favorite games are ROGUELIKES and DWARF FORTRESS, for fuck’s sake; not exactly known for easy difficulty! I like incredibly complex systems that I can take my time to mess around with and min-max - not for munchkinly reasons so much as I just actually find the systematizing really fun.

And while I do find myself in many games seeing the combat as an annoyance distracting from the story, that’s not because I ~don’t like combat in games,~ it’s because those games have AWFUL combat gameplay which I tolerate only if the game’s narrative can carry it. I mean, sorry to Remember Me, which I loved - but I didn’t play it for the s-pressen combo system. KOTOR was a formative game for me when I was younger, but lbh, all I remember of the combat was chaining Master Flurry over and over for maximum efficiency, the combat was awful. I don’t actually dislike combat in games, but I have very strict standards for how good the gameplay has to be.

So where is this ACTUALLY coming from? I think it boils down very similarly to the “fake girl gamers!” trend, really. What meets the standard for real games, for difficult games, is a hazy, vague standard, and the goalposts are moved constantly by dudebros with little regard for any actual quality other than how male-dominated it is. So, naturally, that’s the result we get. It even seems natural at first to agree, like I did, until I noticed that I was still going off the implicit assumption that hardcore, combat-oriented games meant ‘games exclusively tailored to cater specifically to male power fantasies and hypermasculinity,’ because honestly that is all that they really mean. Yeah, games that are the most heavily tailored to appeal specifically to men’s socialization are less popular with women? It’s really just a tautology though, and its only real function is to serve misogyny.

(Incidentally, I’d also wager that most people in general play games on lower difficulty settings, and that there’s not huge gender variance there, although stereotype threat probably does impact it. Competitiveness being valued in men, and being devalued in women, also effects how much you’ll hear about it - especially since the myth of ‘fake gamer girls’ gets you instantly derided if you’re a woman who does boast about her gaming prowess.)

Source: psychetimelapse

Psyche Time-Lapse: Aquaria is a glorious exploration-centric Castlevania-esque indie...

genderfight:

psychetimelapse:

Aquaria is a glorious exploration-centric Castlevania-esque indie game. It has a lot of points in its favor, one of them being that a good chunk of the characters (few of them though there are) are female. Including the protagonist. Cookie for the devs, yeah?

I was browsing around for mods one…

And it would have been so fucking simple not to gender the difficulty-turner-downer! All they had to say was *anything but that.*

At some other point, I may want to talk about the “girls dislike combat or difficulty in games” thing, though. Because, in my limited and not representative sample, I know an awful lot of lady gamers who fit that one and relatively few who don’t. Basically, my question is this: at what point is a harmful stereotype “true enough” that it’s worth designing around? Is it patronizing, or merely kind and accodomating, to do so?

Lastly, Aquaria is a really good game and people should play it, dev shittery notwithstanding. I picked it up as part of a Bundle ages ago and was really taken with it.

I look forward to the post/article on the lady gamers and preference for toned-down difficulty when it comes about! I’ve never run into a correlation myself (the closest I’ve come is a relative dearth of women who like FPSs but can, say, murder the shit out of Shin Megami Tensei bosses, which gets translated by misogynistic assholes into, “GIRLS DON’T LIKE HARD GAMES,” because anything that doesn’t try to be a white western dude’s power fantasy doesn’t count in their eyes), so alternate perspectives are good to hear when not from misogynistic nerdbros.

ETA: Oh, but I don’t think it’s a stereotype that needs to be worked around, no matter how true it is. Most games these days come with difficulty settings, either easy/medium/hard/some-sort-of-unlockable-supermode or sliders. And while there are some super hard games that don’t make any such allowances, there are also super easy ones. The hard game gamers can continue to enjoy their hard games, the folks who prefer easier ones can go with those. Gender correlations seem irrelevant when it comes down to game design on that front.

Source: psychetimelapse

On a brighter note, LET’S TALK ABOUT AQUARIA

I don’t feel like composing anything sleek and pretty right now, so here’s a clump of bullet points about Aquaria:

  • It’s a 2D sidescroller released in 2007 that won the Independent Games Festival grand prize that same year.
  • It’s fucking gorgeous. The scenery is hand-painted, the sprites lovingly composed, the environments colorful and varied.
  • The voice acting is also impressive. There are only three, maybe four (it’s been a while since I last finished it) characters who speak, but as one of them is the player character sharing her frequent internal narrations with us and the dialogues happen at pivotal plot moments, you’ll definitely appreciate it.
  • Good fucking story. From the pacing to the actual content, it’s good. With each newly discovered area and defeated boss, you uncover more of the world’s history, and the finale ties together not only all the plot points and mythology leading up to it, but a bunch of the game features too, from savepoints to the fucking soundtrack. It’s beautiful and bittersweet and oh my goodness am I fond.
  • The map is fucking huge. HUGE. There will be a moment where you’re playing the early game, check the map, realize you can zoom in and out, try zooming out all the way to get an idea of how big this thing is even though you can only see areas you’ve discovered, and go, “Shit.” You will be doing lots of wandering about.
  • While the openness of map exploration may leave things a bit more slowly paced than the average gamer is used to, you can’t say this game isn’t stuffed with extra content. Eight optional bosses, two unlockable forms that you won’t be guaranteed just by playing through the main plot, alternate outfits (some of which affect gameplay, others of which are just decorative), pets to help you kill things, all sorts of background info written in strange glyphs throughout the world (it’s an English alphabet substitution), and critters all around that respond in entertaining and/or useful ways to specific actions without giving any indicator of it beforehand. Discovery is really the name of the game.
  • Puzzle bosses! Thanks to the 2D, it feels very much like the Metroid and Castlevania games of old. Figure out what forms to use, when and where and to what it’s weak, and how to avoid its special attacks. Satisfying, that is. If it’s your cup of tea.
  • The soundtrack absolutely blew me away. Not at first, it starts out light and sorta pretty, and then sooner or later, you end up somewhere where shit starts getting heavy, and the music kicks up, and you realize oh, the lightweight stuff was just to fit the lightweight mood, it can pack a punch when it damn well wants to. It fits the game like a perfectly sized corset, is my point, following right along its contours and giving it extra shape and boost.
  • There’s a relationship between two characters that was probably intended to be romantic, but can really easily be read as romantic or not, depending on your preference.
  • If you’re not playing the iPad version (which I’ve never had anything to do with and so can’t speak for), decent mouse (not touchpad) recommended for best experience. It’s doable with a touchpad or keyboard, but ideally? Mouse.
  • It has a free demo that gives you an excellent feel for the pace and gameplay!

AQUARIA!

Special Guest Edition: The Hawkeye Initiative IRL!

thehawkeyeinitiative:

I recently received an email from an anonymous fan sharing how she pulled a Hawkeye Initiative themed prank on her CEO to illustrate a problem with some artwork.
My personal compliments to her and her accomplice on a mission well done; they perfectly took they perfectly took the concept of The Hawkeye Initiative one step farther, and effected actual change. I hope this gives you as much of a laugh as it did me (the artwork is currently my desktop), and inspires you to be unafraid to stand up and take action in your own awesome way.

Now, excuse me while I go play my new favorite mech game. :)
-Skjaldmeyja

AnonymousFan8675309:

I work with an all-female team of data scientists, in the gaming industry. This makes me the professional equivalent of Amelia Earhart riding the Loch Ness Monster.

I love my job. Our company in particular is great. Firstly, our game (HAWKEN) is beautiful and people love it. Secondly, half of our executive branch is female. Half of them are punk rock, and all of them are badassed. Our gender awareness standards, compared to the industry at large, are top shelf. We are talking Amelia Earhart in Atlantis, at a five star resort, getting a mani-pedi from Jensen Ackles. I have it good.

For the last six months of my tenure at Meteor Entertainment, there has been only one thing I did not love about my job. This
picture:

image

Our CEO loves this picture. It is to all appearances his favorite piece of comic art for the game. He had it blown up poster-sized, framed, and displayed on the out-facing wall of his office. There, it looms over the front room like a ship’s figurehead. It is the first thing workers and visitors see when they enter the building and the last thing they see when they leave. This little lady’s undermeats have been the open- and close- parens to my work world for the last six months.
I loathe this picture.

Why do I loathe it? How, you ask, can I stay mad at a sweet young belle who has so obviously taken a break from her important welding to offer me a piping hot cup of coffee and/or a vigorous hand job? (And probably, given her apparent safety consciousness, simultaneously?) If you don’t already know the answer, you might want to check out things like #1ReasonWhy, and the Bechdel Test, and also this, and this, and this and this, and all these other things. (And while we’re talking you should check out this other bullshit right here.)

So at our office holiday party, while our CEO was having everyone in the company sign it, I stand there grinding my teeth into tiny shards. Until, suddenly, it came to me: a vision.

 And so it came to be that I approached Sam Kirk, a wickedly funny co-worker who shared my sentiment. Sam, turns out, is a very talented artist who can be bribed-slash-inspired using a medley of feminist indignation, hysterical giggling, and two $90 bottles of añejo tequila.

A month-and-a-half later, our vision was a reality. I give you:
Bro-sie The Riveter.

image

I want to make it completely clear that everything in this prank that required actual talent was done by Sam. Find this, and more of Sam’s art, at TheRealSamKirk.com.

We blew (ahem) Brosie up poster sized. We framed him. And then, at 7:30 on Monday, April 1st, we snuck into our CEO’s office and switched them.

I stood in the entryway, dizzy with joy. It was glorious. There Brosie stood, proud, nipples testing the air like young gophers in springtime, the post-apocalyptic breeze gently swaying his banana hammock. Brosie said, loud and proud: “Get ready, world! I am here to lubricate your joints and tighten your socket.”

I basically spend the next few hours having a joy-induced neurological episode.

As the morning progressed, Brosie (ahem) revealed himself to our co-workers. The air resounded with startled, suppressed gargles of mingled joy and horror.  Some take pictures. Some instantly turn and flee. Several men blush and grin in vindicated solidarity. Several women ask us for prints. At this point I am in total rapture. This is the moment I have been dreaming about for six months.

Yet somehow everyone in the office manages to keep quiet about it. Until, finally, our CEO arrives.

We hear a loud: “What the hell is this?!” And then all goes quiet. Ten minutes pass. We panic.

We are both suddenly and painfully aware that we have, in fact, just punked the CEO of our company. He is by all accounts an awesome dude. He is also a late-50s ex-army guy who happens to determine our employment futures in an at-will state. Meep.

Twenty more minutes pass. And then our CEO comes up to my desk, taps me on the shoulder, and says this:

“That was a brilliant prank. You called me on exactly the bullshit I need to be called on. I put up pictures of half-naked girls around the office all the time and I never think about it. I’m taking you and Sam to lunch. And after that, we’re going to hang both prints, side by side.”


image

Ruby Underboob and Brosie the Riveter, together at last


Yeah. That happened.

This wonderful experience has taught me two things that I hope to carry with me for the rest of my career in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and in gaming. It taught me this:

  1. Lots of men (like Sam) are already sympathetic to the stupid, constant crap women put up with in gaming/STEM, and they are ready and willing to call that crap onto the carpet.

  2. And, most importantly, many of the guys who are behind that stupid, constant crap are totally decent, open-minded human beings who just don’t realize they’re doing it. You know how sometimes you don’t realize how much you and your girlfriend are talking about shoes or menstruation until some dude walks into the room? Well sometimes guys don’t realize how much they’re talking about titties.

We just haven’t been around enough for them to notice.

There is only one solution to that, ladies. Bust out your baby-Gap tee and your protective welding goggles, and let’s turn this damn industry into the environment we want it to be. It’s hard work, and yes, there are a couple genuine assholes along the way. But if Ruby Underboob can brave the occasional droplet of molten metal, so can we.

Speaking from experience, it’s worth it.

—K2


About our CEO, Mark Long:

Mark has a long and storied history with, among other things, research, games and comic art. He’s a partner in the RoqlaRue gallery in Seattle, representing “chick art.” Mark considers himself a feminist activist. He is proud to have created a graphic novel trilogy with Nick Sagan (Carl’s son) that features a female hero so strong, Hillary Swank is attached to star as her.

Mark and I are now in an open dialogue about gender in comics and gaming.


(via goodstuffhappenedtoday)

Source: thehawkeyeinitiative

If something has so much as the potential to be new or uniquely executed or just straight-up clever, I want folks to get it out there. If its vehicle is the equivalent of a fucking 20-float parade, fantastic. But if all you can put together is a rickety cart? Grab some planks and hammer that shit out. Better creativity come into the world on that than not at all.
So it turns out the point of all that stands pretty well on its own [x]
mypocketshurt90: williams-blood: sporadicintellect: gamesnextcom: How to pick the perfect video game I fully support this flow chart. Impressive. “Do you like being called a n00b by 8 years olds? Yes? Halo 3.” This is beautiful beyond words.
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mypocketshurt90: williams-blood: sporadicintellect: gamesnextcom: How to pick the perfect video game I fully support this flow chart. Impressive. “Do you like being called a n00b by 8 years olds? Yes? Halo 3.” This is beautiful beyond words.
Zoom Info
mypocketshurt90: williams-blood: sporadicintellect: gamesnextcom: How to pick the perfect video game I fully support this flow chart. Impressive. “Do you like being called a n00b by 8 years olds? Yes? Halo 3.” This is beautiful beyond words.
Zoom Info
mypocketshurt90: williams-blood: sporadicintellect: gamesnextcom: How to pick the perfect video game I fully support this flow chart. Impressive. “Do you like being called a n00b by 8 years olds? Yes? Halo 3.” This is beautiful beyond words.
Zoom Info
mypocketshurt90: williams-blood: sporadicintellect: gamesnextcom: How to pick the perfect video game I fully support this flow chart. Impressive. “Do you like being called a n00b by 8 years olds? Yes? Halo 3.” This is beautiful beyond words.
Zoom Info
mypocketshurt90: williams-blood: sporadicintellect: gamesnextcom: How to pick the perfect video game I fully support this flow chart. Impressive. “Do you like being called a n00b by 8 years olds? Yes? Halo 3.” This is beautiful beyond words.
Zoom Info
mypocketshurt90: williams-blood: sporadicintellect: gamesnextcom: How to pick the perfect video game I fully support this flow chart. Impressive. “Do you like being called a n00b by 8 years olds? Yes? Halo 3.” This is beautiful beyond words.
Zoom Info
mypocketshurt90: williams-blood: sporadicintellect: gamesnextcom: How to pick the perfect video game I fully support this flow chart. Impressive. “Do you like being called a n00b by 8 years olds? Yes? Halo 3.” This is beautiful beyond words.
Zoom Info
mypocketshurt90: williams-blood: sporadicintellect: gamesnextcom: How to pick the perfect video game I fully support this flow chart. Impressive. “Do you like being called a n00b by 8 years olds? Yes? Halo 3.” This is beautiful beyond words.
Zoom Info
mypocketshurt90: williams-blood: sporadicintellect: gamesnextcom: How to pick the perfect video game I fully support this flow chart. Impressive. “Do you like being called a n00b by 8 years olds? Yes? Halo 3.” This is beautiful beyond words.
Zoom Info

mypocketshurt90:

williams-blood:

sporadicintellect:

gamesnextcom:

How to pick the perfect video game

I fully support this flow chart. Impressive.

“Do you like being called a n00b by 8 years olds? Yes? Halo 3.”

This is beautiful beyond words.

(via mondaydontmeananything)

Source: gamesnextcom

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