Amentep

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.

Glad to hear your second appointment was an improvement. When I had trouble with my eyes a couple of years ago I had many appointments with my eye doctor. High pressure can create an issue with sight - I think damage to the optic nerve if left unchecked (as I understand it, Glaucoma's blindness is because it causes increased interocular pressure which is why they test eye pressure in the first place for signs of early Glaucoma). It might be a side effect of the iritis, if she didn't seem that alarmed over it.

No... no it definitely HAD to be specifically about how Anomen was extremely likely to wear a dress. I'm pretty sure that was it. He just liked to feel pretty.

^I believe the argument is that if a character had the second portrait, you'd have noticed the disconnect between what s/he has on in the portrait and what his/her avatar looks like in-game.

They have some Serenity/Firefly ships but it looks like they're the larger ships. The Firefly class itself was about a 3rd of the Longbow Patrol Cruiser in size. Interesting to use this to get a sense of scale for ships from other series (or that aren't included). V'Ger was 3 times as large as the Independence Day ship...yikes! The Sovereign/Harbinger reaper types were about 2km so about the size of the Athena Class Command ship from Starship troopers.

There were actually two attempts to make another game. First one was right after the last one, stopped production because lack of interest. Second one was more recent, but it was also cancelled in favor of this new game. I'm surprised with the "lack of interest" in the first attempt, the second attempt was even tried. Not surprising they decided to do something different with the IP. I figure if they ever go back to the story of Kain (which I doubt, honestly) they'll either ignore or change whatever continuity this game creates to suit what they're doing...so still not seeing the issue.

I still laugh about HOUSE OF THE DEAD. That was a so bad its good film. Sadly ALONE IN THE DARK went past "so bad its good" and was just bad...

The same reason kotor fans will never see kotor 3. So...there were no plans for a Legacy of Kain sequel but the fact that its using the setting and not being a Legacy of Kain sequel is...upsetting?

Since its not trying to be Legacy of Kain but just set in the world...what's the issue?

If a virtual reality is indistinguishable from reality then it is reality for as long as the person is in that virtual world. The problem is in creating something that is indistinguishable.