Amentep

I'm not saying it isn't a concern, what I am saying is that there has to be an acceptance of some arbitrariness at the end of the day and that we shouldn't assume that one arbitrary element is inherently better/worse than others without considering the context of the greater game design. Based on the discussion I've had with a lot of people (obviously not everyone so perhaps my perspective is skewed). From my perspective, the argument seems to come from roughly two groups, those who feel that the inability to not have friendly fire is unrealistic and believe that any hostile/non-hostile/friendly target should be considered, for tactical purposes, when throwing around area effect attacks or line of sight attacks. And then there are the other group, who seem to show up and say, more or less, "OMG, I got to chunkify the brats! This game is 1337! Its sooooo realistic that I can hack and maim all the kids!". This group is, IMO, not that dissimilar to the group that thinks "romance" in games means you should be able to have sex with your sister (like some on the Bio boards when Bethany was announced in DA2) or that slave ownership should be in the game so their PC can own slaves, rape them and kill their inevitable offspring. Its the latter group that I feel see these elements as "edgy" thus desirable in all games.

Ah, you're using damages different from how I initially took it. Yes they are liable for restitution of what you paid (if you can track the entity down and it has assets). I imagine you'd be hard pressed to prove them liable for anything beyond that though (which is why I think Kickstarter added the refund caveat to their contracts).

The problem - IMO - with this argument is that it comes back to the arbitraryness of ANY kind of "well this can't happen" in the game. Take BG2, for example, you can stretch an argument that your main villain didn't kill you initially because he wanted to study you. There's no reason why he shouldn't have killed you (there were other Bhaalspawn and you were a problem) when you get captured in Spellhold. Other than that would suck as a game ending. A REAL sadistic monster would put your hand in a vice crushing it, rape your friends, etc. etc. But I don't really want to play a vice crushing minigame and can't imagine playing my PC being raped and left for dead because I sided with doffy old King Niceguy whose army got obliterated by the REAL sadistic monster would ever be "fun". YMMV, of course.

Yes, I believe it was to address some "take the money and run" scenarios still being played out.

AFAIK, that one is creator owned, not DC owned.

They're not AFAIK liable for damages. As I understand it by contract, they either have to give you what is promised in your tier or refund your money. (That doesn't mean one couldn't sue, but damages aren't inherent in the Kickstarter contract). What isn't promised is that the product will be made (they could just refund all the money), the product will be made in a timely fashion (I think some early kickstarter "successes" still aren't finished) or that it'll be good.

I only ask because my eye issues were acting up over the weekend and I couldn't figure out why I felt so sleepy (right after falling asleep) only to realize that my eye drying out made me think I was sleepy (I was wide awake after getting my eye drops in). But it could be anything - not a doctor.

Are your eyes dry? Do you look at a computer a lot? Could it be Computer vision syndrome?

With it being the point of the game, I have no problem with it. Done with a certain sense of humor, it might even be fun in a blood bowl kind of way. But again, the scope of the game puts that element front and center.

Immersion to me is the ability of a consumer of a work to forget that they're a consumer of a work and engage directly with the work without any attention being paid to the medium of the work or the disconnect between the environment of the consumer and the environment presented by the work; in short the total of the consumers imagination and the imagination presented by the work itself via its creative design equal. Because the immersion threshold will be different for each player and triggered differently, I don't think its possible to create a game where you maximize immersion for all players, rather you must focus on creating a game where you minimize immersion-breaking.

My day so far = On the plus side I might actually get my reports done... On the negative side I had two different employees miss a deadline despite them receiving multiple reminders. One of them from me the day before the deadline. Me, when talking with them at our group meeting Wednesday =

Yeah, that's it.

I watched DAY OF THE ANIMALS (1977) - Christopher George and Michael Ansara lead a group of hikers (including Susan Day George, Leslie Nielson, Richard Jaekel, Ruth Roman, and Paul Mantee) into the mountains. Unfortunately, a hole in the ozone layer triggers a viral outbreak driving animals and some people insane. Animals attack in hordes and people begin to lose it. Goofy fun Animal/Environmental 70s horror film with a great highlight where a crazed Nielson attacks a crazed bear during a thunderstorm. DRAGON HUNTERS (aka Chasseurs de dragons) (2008), French movie based on a cartoon I've never seen, apparently. Strange but fun in a fantasy all-ages cartoon kind of way. Nice visual sense to the world that makes it unlike a lot of other cartoon fantasy films. MURDER ON THE BLACKBOARD (1934), second in the Hildegarde Withers schoolteacher-detective series. Amusing, like the first (Edna May Oliver and James Gleason had great comic timing with one another) but I thought the mystery to be rather thin in terms of hiding who did it.

You may not realize it, but you're arguing for more arbitrarity in the game, which seems very odd at best. Anyways, this argument is pretty weak, as the inclusion of killable children is one aspect of verisimilitude that is very easy to achieve. Other things, like a believable economy and its related aspects like architecture are much harder to simulate realistically. I'm not arguing more or less arbitrary elements, just pointing out they'll always be there regardless. And frankly a better economy would be a higher priority to me than being able to mow down children or punt babies like footballs or whatever passes for dark/edgy/adult/buzzword these days.

Yeah high larva mortality rate was what I was thinking, not low birthrate.

You're ignoring the point where I said that you can kill NPC's. So what exactly is the reasoning why you can't kill children? Do you really see a logical leap required here? It doesn't matter; its a video game which has to have a fairly well defined operational parameters. There will always be arbitrary things you can't do because they're outside of the scope of the game. I see no particular reason to treat one arbitrary thing you can't do from a different arbitrary thing you can't do. But then I really don't give a crap about having all the NPC's killable in the first place (unless the game in question is a serial killer simulator, in which case that would be entirely within the scope of the game)

At this point, yes I would support it.

Fictional things are not real, ergo they are fantasy. Genre is also an artifice, typically used to sell things.

Probably immersion purposes. You know, the same reason why you want towns that actually have buildings rather than a few NPC's standing out in the open. But you can't destroy those building either, usually. Or the trees. Or poison the watering hole or invite the dragon for tea. You can't forgo all of that "questing" stuff and become a lint farmer in the Dryer-wood and live a happy life where you never ever fight or go anywhere. At some point the realization that its a game matters, I think. Didn't help Alpha Protocol...

Her hair looks fine to me.

Thinking about this some more, maybe Elves don't have babies, maybe they start as eggs that hatch into an "elf larva" state and squiggle around forests mindless for 80 years, make a chrysalis which they stay in for 20 years at which point the elf baby emerges from the Chrysalis ready for 20 years of education. Would explain the low birthrate and affinity for nature - there has to be some nature for those elf larvae to squiggle about mindlessly in and they'd be very vulnerable to predators, disease, falling off tree limbs, etc in their larva state. Half-elves skip straight to the baby state thanks to their human parent and earn resentment from elves because they didn't spend 80 years squiggling about a forest like they did.

IIRC the flying car is actually nod to Nick Fury's Flying Car from the 1960s Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD book. http://marvel.wikia.com/S.H.I.E.L.D._Flying_Car

Hope they're ants and not termites... Anyhow, speaking of bugs, insects, arachnids, etc... I had to kill a spider (he made a web on one of my comic books. Which you know on the one hand could have kept them safe if there was an invasion of silverfish, but also no one likes to read a webby comic unless its THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN in which case its at least ironic). I was sad, but he was too small and fast to capture (read I tried to capture and release but accidentally squashed him). There was a yellow and black "writing" spider building a web outside one of the windows though.

Happy birthday! I

Yeah, you don't want to start the pump then get in and of your car - very easy to build up static electricity and ignite fumes.