Tigranes

I didn't want to get into a foundational debate about whether humanistic studies as we know it is capable of providing 'objective' knowledge (however we define that), so I was only working with norms in academia. I'd personally say that interviewing 30 people is perfectly fine for some things, but too often, the authors (or readers) take that and try to turn it into a big scientific claim, which is rubbish. (Amentep, sociology as a discipline these days is very social 'scientific', or tries to be - so depending on which branch of sociology, they would insist on pretty rigid and large scale measurements. Personally I've been in cases where I do 150 interviews, and after about 30 I'm not finding anything new anyway - a point of saturation. That would change if I wanted to study not just, say, American LGBT gamers, but a more diverse sample of global gamers, older gamers, etc, etc.) I'll only mention one pertinent point - it's usually impossible to study 300 people and do so in a way that gets you quantitative measures (e.g. did they clean their room this morning?), qualitative insights (I need to talk to and observe each one for a while to see what might motivate what they do, etc) and neurological / psychological data (I'll see whether their amygdala or medial pre-frontal cortex responds differently to dirty rooms). That is very very rare due to the costs and difficulty. So it's not really fair to take a study, look at it from outside and say "pfft" on that basis. Anyway, yes, I would say that this particular study is pretty much useless for the wider Gamergate debate. As I said, game studies is still at that stage where they try to test, theorise and validate many things that people like us already know as common sense. (Of course, even in this one forum, we see so many people with wildly different ideas about what passes us matter of course re. gaming, so it's not entirely useless.)

That's a difference of discipline and methodology - that would be equivalent to 'failing' a Pew survey (the authoritative institution for polling American political beliefs) because they didn't do eye tracking, or because they didn't do a long-form interview with each person about what they mean about 'democracy'. It's also naive if you think every study is or should be 'scientific' - because our society doesn't consider science the only way to knowledge. Getting away from the generals, just asking people about what they see and how they interpret things can be a valid way to do research - it just changes what kinds of questions you can answer. In this study, it looks like the point was to discover how gamers interpret their own experience and how they think about their own approach to games. Oh, and you can't do long form interviews and observations with 300 (the accepted N for quantitative, survey-based social science) unless you are a huge institution and you want to spend a huge amount of money on every single study like this. Not to be provocative but purely to be accurate, if we use existing academic standards, it is you or aluminium that has "failed to comprehend it on a basic level", because you are expecting it to answer questions on a different level then accusing it of having no methodology. After all, I'm assuming the author didn't write this study as an answer to the GamerGate controversy or its attendant questions. It is a valid, if not stellar, study that makes a basic, preliminary examination: do LGBT, etc. gamers take their avatars in games to be a 1:1 representation of themselves, or any such kinds of 'identification'? Findings suggest this does not seem necessarily the case. Presented in a conference by the way, and not in an academic journal. If a more finished study is available I assume that would be more helpful to anyone in this thread. My criticism would be, as I said, that 'identification' means so little, and most gamers knew this already. (Actually, this reflects a lot of the problems with studies on games - it's still so underdeveloped that they're still having to 'test' things many gamers would say is already obvious, because, you know, to be 'scientific' you can't just go by gamers' common sense, which isn't uniform anyway...)

Adrienne Shaw is a fairly well known figure in game studies as an academic field (which remains small and underdeveloped). Its methods aren't a huge problem. Within cultural / media studies, where this study would fit, it is seen as sufficient (though whether those wider standards are OK is another issue). 'Identity' is often a very limited term, though, and when you use that word with your interviewees and to do your analysis you often end up getting into loops where it just catches too many things in its net. What does "I identify with this character" mean, anyway? A lot of things, depending on the circumstance. Which is one of the reasons that paper boils down into something what most gamers know: playing or creating a character, LGBT or not, doesn't mean 'identifying' with them necessarily. *shrug*

It's not got much to do with escapism for me, but there's multiple reasons that I usually do SP. Firstly, MP takes logistics. You gotta get people together, arrange a time, not have anyone bail (which is difficult when you and your friends are no longer 13)... and I generally don't enjoy playing with random people, unless it's against them. I don't see the appeal of random groups in MMOs any more than I'd enjoy talking to random people on the subway (which, of course, some people do like to do). Secondly, to me gaming is about getting in a zone, not about relaxing. I don't watch television, I don't generally like to just 'relax' - I don't see the point. (Part of that, of course, is a not physically intensive day-job.) So for one thing, I play a lot faster than most people in a non-hardcore setting. If I can't skip over the dialogue when I'm done reading, or the other guys take more than a couple of minutes to do whatever they're doing in a shop, it just kills the pacing. I did enjoy random drop-in rounds of Diablo 2 back in the day. The logistics were quick, you hardly ever needed to talk to each other, everyone just jumped in and got going and people who were slow or clearly off the pace naturally dropped out.

How is it? I love the concept and art but most such games are very gameplay-light. Is the combat actually fun? Is it puzzle-based?

HK-47 is just a walking punchline, but hey, that's a fun thing to have. Certainly a lot more fun than Carth or whatever. K2 also had some cool NPC interactions between HK and the R2-D2 thing, etc.

Yes. And you know how terrible those are!

Step back, start 'charging' the weapon until light gem goes green, step forth and slash. The weapon range seems to be pretty long, hitting them from 2-3 steps out. That seemed to serve me just fine in UU1. Missile weapons I never got the hang of, and I heard they kind of suck anyway.

Well, it's not like we're trying. It just happens. Thankfully, the Lord has given me the strength to soldier on.

Twist probably was awesome if it wasn't so obvious. But I guess it wasn't so obvious given quite a few people were surprised by it. I don't remember enough of the game anymore to say, I just remember that the game seemed to build up to it pretty openly, especially because what they did with Bastila was a pretty clear derivation of what they did with the NWN1 heroine. Then they did the exact same thing in Jade Empire, so that you could tell what the big twist was in the very first scene of the game. "Hey, man, look at me, badass teacher dude who talks with a low villainy voice and is kind of Machiavellian! I'm gonna tell you about this mysterious flaw in your martial arts that has no gameplay impact but you know one day somebody might cripple you through that!" All it needed was a bu-bum bu-bum MWAHAHAHAHA sound file.

Well that ruined my day. That was like a cosmic event of absolute uselessness. I feel entirely pointless by extension. TWO OPEN GOALS, GUYS

All media has its presentists, obviously. Most of the time, stuff that is produced now is always going to be the most popular. I don't think anybody's arguing that every gamer should play every classic or anything like that. The point is that people who want to make games, be a game journalist, critic, etc. should take some time to learn and experience some relevant older games. Instead, today, they are too busy apologising for how bad older games are and how new is better because it is new. One of the benefits is that we get better games, because so often games today go backwards and reinvent the wheel. Another is that more gamers are enticed to try a wider variety of games. One consequence of that is that it is less of the case that everybody has to make the same kind of in-fashion game to survive. I don't like the fact that a company like Obsidian, which clearly is the best at making games like POE or MOTB, is forced to do things like Armoured Warfare or Dungeon Siege 3 to keep employees on its books. I'd rather that it was able to just make the games it is good at, and do well enough to survive - without convincing everybody in the world that those are the only games to play. There's many factors behind what would make that possible, but one is surely a world where you don't say, "have you played POE?", and people dont just chime back, "oh man, that old looking game, I hate old games, old games suck because they're old." How is that history in the sense that eveyrone else is talking about? And indeed, it's funny that many people still read Thucydides, Homer, Shakespeare, etc. or listen to music more than five years old, if the new is always indeed better... Erm... How is that not history? A recording of a first-hand impression that details his or hers experience with a game in detail? It's probably the best kind of history, because it's actually useful in the same context and for more than just making up your mind about whether you want to be part of that history. What sense is that? Everyone else, who? I see a whole who isn't talking about anything in the same sense. Everybody seem to contribute in their own way, which is perfectly fine. Should I quote the whole thread and point out how each and everyone is contributing with different threads on history and some who isn't? I don't think so, but you can name a sense, that you would like me to contribute to. Sure, if you want to argue that walkthroughs and other player-created content is an important part of the history of gaming, and they communicate a history that not everyone has time to experience. Your original comment was just "I don't care about history unless I get stuck in a puzzle and I need a walkthrough". I had no idea how that was meant to connect, so I asked.

How is that history in the sense that eveyrone else is talking about? And indeed, it's funny that many people still read Thucydides, Homer, Shakespeare, etc. or listen to music more than five years old, if the new is always indeed better...

You... need history when you get stuck in a puzzle? What?

Bruce you are once again pushing your own agenda while pretending not to. It's irrelevant whether you do it deliberately or not - but basically here is X, and it's loosely but not strongly related to Y given the basic facts. You just sit there and keep asking "hey do you think X brings up a problem with Y? I"m only asking." Well I might take the same strategy and just keep talking about how I wonder whether this attack is another case of exposing a fundamental brokenness in Western society. I wouldn't claim that is the case, of course not, I would just ask everyone whether they think perhaps this attack is showing that Western society does not work? It's called agenda setting and it already shows your bias towards thinking a certain way. The reason that this attack doesn't really have much to do with judging the success of the Danish integration strategy is that (1) with this guy it wasn't a question of integrating in that sense; (2) nothing in that policy had specifically caused any of the key factors that allowed this guy to run free and shoot people; (3) if an integration strategy was judged by singular attacks then we might as well get rid of every security system in the world. The problem with what you are doing is that it creates an association, and encourages a culture driven by fear and anxiety where we say, well we know this guy was just a drug dealer out on a crazy shooting spree, just like the unstable and life-ruined half-con man in Sydney, but maybe it has something to do with integration strategy? Does that mean we need more guns? Maybe we need to be harsher on Muslim immigrants? etc, etc, etc. You see this kind of thinking in US schools. There, at least, they are justified in being worried; there have been literally over a hundred school shootings in recent memory, not just a single nutjob. But this has led to some crazy things like the state basically getting armed police to invade middle schools in a gun attack drill that neither students, parents nor the teachers were told about in advance, making 13 and 14 year olds experience what it is like to have gunmen literally attack their school. Because it might save lives. Because clearly previous systems "didn't work". The thing is, you need to be very careful about assessing whether a safety system "didn't work". Singular attacks don't do it. And even if there are frequent attacks, you have to do some analysis to find out what is responsible. Otherwise it's like saying, hey, I got hit by lightning, I will never stand under a tree the rest of my life. Or hey, look at all the car crashes still happening, the traffic lights system clearly needs to be scrapped. There needs to be a sense of proportion. The heinousness of this kind of attack and the lives on the line mean we have to be even more careful. For example, the new anti-terror plan linked in this thread - I haven't read about it in more detail, but it obviously doesn't have much to do with stopping this kind of killer, who properly speaking is a domestic deviant and not much to do with terrorism. To just sit there and idly say "hey, someone killed some people, maybe integration strategy isn't working?" or "hey, they're arming police better, that's always a good thing and makes us safer, right?" is (1) basically making zero use of the information available to you and working on the broadest levels, like saying "hey going faster is more dangerous right", and (2) constantly asking other people about such associations basically invites people to associate some things as if they really are related. We're just shooting crap on an internet forum, so OK, but if I saw a journalist or politician or analyst doing such a thing, they would be not only inaccurate but irresponsible.

Are you saying integration isn't successful if one dude goes out and kills people?

Yeah, that sounds cool actually. A lot of games are inaccessible on tablets right now only because of the controls. Can you tell us the specific model?

Personally I found Labyrinth of Worlds to be a far better, tighter narrative and the slowly unlocking worlds to be a very refreshing mechanism that really rewarded exploration. The interconnectedness of the worlds and the amount of content even in Castle British itself was also quite well done. Yeah, UU1 became a bit of a slog after level 5-6 because I was already far too powerful and understood how the rest of the game would work. As I understand it UU2 isn't just one dungeon level afer another.

Finished Ultima Underworld, going on to 2. I put it off for years because I didn't think I'd like an old clunky blobber. Well, I don't think it's the greatest thing in the universe, but it was good fun and it is definitely a special game with sometimes outstanding level design.

Not quite, but: http://irontowerstudio.com/

Yep. The longer they go not telling us about the basic systems, the less interested I am.

What else is new. Reading Walker's tweets about this were pretty funny as well. "I know that some people aren't going to like the interview. But the rules change when it's the players' money being messed with." was the best one. You can't combine the whimsical flights of fancy 'oh this bothers me but i dont know why and this is just WONDERFUL it must be the coffee i had this morning' that is RPS' standard style with random bouts of 'THIS IS SERIOUS EVIL' - especially if you think the misdeeds of the other person entitles you to be a jerk so much that it gets in the way of actually conducting the interview. Look, it's super easy to get self righteously angry about anything. But you always have to check if you're feeling a bit too good about it. As for Molyneux, I do feel for him, but you know, he's opted not to try and get business men to discipline him. If you go twenty years making the same mistakes and you still try to make all those decisions yourself, then you really are incorrigible.

Molyneux has always been good intentions, useless at management, never learnt to keep his mouth shut for his own good. It's been known for, you know, a couple decades. RPS doesn't need to get sweaty about its own self-righteousness by interrupting him every other line to call him a thief, pathological liar and whatever else. It's easy to talk crap about someone everybody knows has screwed up. They're not bringing new information, they're not delivering 'justice', they're not enlightening the population. They're just jerking off to themselves.

Huh. So basically a generalisation of 3E's Empower spells? That's a possibility. THere's a Mordekainen's Sword II, so I guess that could be 8th level if you are correct. As you say, we'll see when/if they release some proper details. I'm certainly not very familiar with 5E.

I'll also add, from my own rewatching: fireball and call lightning are cast simultaneously. So what it seems to suggest is that at the very least, working only with what we can see, playing a mage is going to be nothing like a D&D mage. Because without assuming anything, (1) it's cooldowns, (2) there's no use-per-day, (3) casting is instantaneous - which means, apart from not having mana, it's basically closer to Diablo 2 mages or whatever. We'll see. That could still be fun if it's balanced right and there is a full complement of D&D spells. But hey, as soon as you make such huge changes, "a rules system developed for 30 years" is already out the window...