J.E. Sawyer

I was recently surprised to see a compilation of Xbox 360 Achievement data that showed there's a staggering number of people who start a game but do not even get five minutes into it. So even among people who like a game enough to buy it, some people get turned off/bored within those first five minutes and never pick it up again.

Enough to actually make me interested in playing the game.

My favorite internet username is probably Natalie Portmanteau.

I believe that, generally speaking, most people prefer that "the game"/narrator comment on your actions more as a neutral observer than a judge of morality, ethics, or general righteousness. To do otherwise can imply that certain choices are wrong/bad for the game.

I think everyone expects (or hopes) to be judged by people in the game world. When the narrator judges your actions, it has a different kind of impact.

I've heard that. I also heard that you could dual-wield them. @___@ Winchester 1887s are stylistically cool but low-gauge lever-action shotguns aren't the greatest design in the world (evidenced by the almost complete lack of them after the 19th century -- save repros of the 1887).

Best T2 weapon is clearly the Winchester 1887. http://media.photobucket.com/image/termina...ortyWin1887.jpg

Sneaking alone means free kills. Running just makes it faster.

The new translation is from a friend/old schoolmate of mine who now teaches at Boston Latin School.

Fallout 1. Fallout 2 was certainly much bigger and it had a lot of cool RP elements, but it was very disjointed.

IRON TOWER SCREWS US AGAIN.

True, Stockton and Malone did keep the dream alive.

"If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore: If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?" Not actually the most illogical thing I've ever read, but pretty bad. I stopped watching NBA basketball after Bird, Johnson, et al. retired. It moved from a passing game to 3 or 4 step drives to the basket. That really ruined the game for me.

The NWN/NWN2/anything-related-to-those-games codebases are basically an eternal war between code and script for dominance, and (unless DA added this) lack any sort of explicit mod loading/exclusion interface. So yeah that's probably a good attitude to have.

Chief Judge Fargo going on the Long Walk in the Judge Dredd movie was probably the only decent part. edit: w00t: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0wuxm19FHc#t=7m20s

Playing soccer a year or two ago. Ya. Yep.

By the way, playing F3 on your PC in windowed mode helps prevent catastrophic crashes. It doesn't make the app itself less likely to crash, but it's a lot easier to recover from.

It's really unfortunate that so many planets have ground fog that just barely covers up alien eggs.

Iran, a nation with a population that falls in line, lock-step, with its leaders.

I can't speak for all system designers at Obsidian, but what I described is my outlook on system design and it always drives the process. Core gameplay prototyping should define the basic style and flow of gameplay, with character advancement being developed from that core. I think F3's opening did a better job than most at integrating a relatively elaborate CC process into a narrative framework. By comparison, for example, Mass Effect basically just has you build an appearance, select a class and background, and sends you on your way. NWN2 allows you to define a lot of things about your character, but ultimately it's a pretty boring CC experience. Of those, I think NWN2's CC was the worst overall. You had a ton of fiddly options, but those options were presented poorly; you had no connection to the story; and generally it felt like you were interacting with an interface instead of playing the game. Mass Effect's CC was short and to the point. It was somewhat bland, but at least it explained the basic options clearly, got you into the game quickly, and immediately referenced your background. F3's took a while, but it was well-integrated with the Vault 101 sequence. My biggest issue with F3's CC sequence is that it did not give you an opportunity to use all of your skills in Vault 101. When you finally escape, there are several skills you've had no opportunity to use (e.g. Barter, Big Guns, Explosives, Science [i think] etc.), which makes it difficult to re-evaluate your character before exiting.

Basically I think that most designers are overly concerned with what's come before when they sit down to write CRPG mechanics. When looking at mechanics that typically go into CRPGs, it's pretty hard to reverse-engineer a plan of intent. The conclusion I'm usually left with is that they wanted the system to "look like an RPG" on a UI screen. They have classes and stats and skills and skill/talent trees and a ton of derived stats when probably not all of that is necessary. I believe that game designers, whether working in the RPG genre or otherwise, should establish what they want the player to be doing within the world. That is, they must ask themselves what they want the core activities of the player to be. Within those activities, the designer can find ways to allow growth over time in a variety of ways. How they want that growth to occur and what sort of choices they want to force the player to make -- that's what should drive the design of the advancement/RPG system. Instead it usually seems like most designers sit down and say, "Well what are the ability scores going to be?" RE: Moving units: Nobody cares enough about the advancement mechanics to make or break sales. Mass Effect and Oblivion both show that you can have extremely simple (from a player perspective) advancement mechanics and as long as people enjoy the core gameplay, the apparent simplicity/non-traditional nature of the mechanics doesn't matter.

I don't think much can compare to London housing prices. Even 2005's California housing prices were (IIRC) nowhere near London's. Still, they drove me to buy a nice almost-100-year-old two-story brick house in rural Wisconsin. Madison's probably as urban as I'll never need to be; I'm a countryside person at heart.

Do you think that artists and writers today for no explicable reason had all creativity drained out of them compared to the geniuses of the mid-80s?

Since 1989? Yes, but the bar wasn't very high.