Interview with Joshua

[Santiago]

Hi

 

Grupo 97 interviews Joshua about gaming, old days and such of things.

http://grupo97.halconesrojos.com/index.php...sawyerinterview

 

I hope you find it interesting

 

Regards

[samm]

Here I was wondering for almost a whole second who Joshua is Thanks for the interview!

 

Why didn't he react on the "BG built by BIS" part of one question? [edit] There were other, more interesting ones to focus on obviously. Good read!

 

[edit2]

To the OP: Why we're wondering for a moment who Joshua is: He's usually just known as JE or Josh Sawyer here.

Edited June 24, 2009 by samm

[Gorth]

Interesting read

 

I wondered who "Joshua" were too >_

[kirottu]

- Would you have enjoyed Fallout following the targets aimed with Van Buren?

 

I would have. I think that Fallout fans would have enjoyed it as well, but you never know for sure until a game's out.

 

Bold statement protecting a game that would have had melee grenades! No true rpg or fallout fan would have enjoyed it!

[Rostere]

Game developers often take their jobs very seriously and pour their hearts into their work, but I believe developers and publishers often do not use games as a medium for exploring serious themes or issues. And when games are used to explore themes, such exploration is normally done through proxies (e.g. elves vs. dwarves as an exploration of racism). Because these proxies are alien to us, the emotional impact of their struggle is often diminished. I think that designers should attempt to ground their themes in issues that will really resonate and raise questions with the audience. It's difficult but important.

 

I hope he was serious here, because that is a pretty good answer to the question. In order for a player to be involved in a game, he (or she) must be faced with important issues and questions they're able to relate to. Choices in a RPG can and should be about much more than just "should I do the fetch quest or the kill quest and get item X or item Y as reward?".

[Oner]

Game developers often take their jobs very seriously and pour their hearts into their work, but I believe developers and publishers often do not use games as a medium for exploring serious themes or issues. And when games are used to explore themes, such exploration is normally done through proxies (e.g. elves vs. dwarves as an exploration of racism). Because these proxies are alien to us, the emotional impact of their struggle is often diminished. I think that designers should attempt to ground their themes in issues that will really resonate and raise questions with the audience. It's difficult but important.

 

I hope he was serious here, because that is a pretty good answer to the question. In order for a player to be involved in a game, he (or she) must be faced with important issues and questions they're able to relate to. Choices in a RPG can and should be about much more than just "should I do the fetch quest or the kill quest and get item X or item Y as reward?".

I agree almost completely, except that it doesn't matter if the theme is done with proxies. If the player doesn't get the lesson with pointy ears, then s/he won't get it with darker skin. And the elves don't exist thing keeps the moron guardians off everyone's backs.

[Rostere]

Game developers often take their jobs very seriously and pour their hearts into their work, but I believe developers and publishers often do not use games as a medium for exploring serious themes or issues. And when games are used to explore themes, such exploration is normally done through proxies (e.g. elves vs. dwarves as an exploration of racism). Because these proxies are alien to us, the emotional impact of their struggle is often diminished. I think that designers should attempt to ground their themes in issues that will really resonate and raise questions with the audience. It's difficult but important.

 

I hope he was serious here, because that is a pretty good answer to the question. In order for a player to be involved in a game, he (or she) must be faced with important issues and questions they're able to relate to. Choices in a RPG can and should be about much more than just "should I do the fetch quest or the kill quest and get item X or item Y as reward?".

I agree almost completely, except that it doesn't matter if the theme is done with proxies. If the player doesn't get the lesson with pointy ears, then s/he won't get it with darker skin. And the elves don't exist thing keeps the moron guardians off everyone's backs.

 

I think Arcanum was a pretty good example of how you can raise such questions by usage of proxies. It's a very satirical game, take for example Gilbert Bates, the orc workers, the gnomes and lots of other small details... I understand that not every gamer wants a mass of text rivaling PS:T, but that is no excuse for not writing high quality script and fluff, however small that amount of text may be.

[jjc]

I agree almost completely, except that it doesn't matter if the theme is done with proxies. If the player doesn't get the lesson with pointy ears, then s/he won't get it with darker skin. And the elves don't exist thing keeps the moron guardians off everyone's backs.

Actually, I think that depicting racial conflicts as occurring between fantasy creatures who literally are separate species is an extremely poor analogue to real-world conflicts that occur between members of the same species differentiated only by culture or superficial genetic traits. Regardless of your good intentions, you're reinforcing the idea that there is a physically insurmountable divide between groups of sapient persons that will always tend to create these conflicts; you're turning the perception of otherness into a literal fact.

 

It's a kind of speculation in fiction that may be useful when applied to a description of humanity encountering a really, genuinely alien intelligence that we can't breed with: "lower" apes who can learn symbolic language; a hypothetical species of extraterrestrial. Even then, we have so little real-world experience to refer to in this area that the author, more likely than not, will fall into the trap of appropriating a historical model for the conflict, and then he's right back to filtering history through proxies.

[Oner]

I really can't see the difference between hating a subrace and hating a race of pointy eared ballet dancers. Like in South Park, the kids didn't see the difference between a hanged white man and a hanged black man, neither do I see the difference between humanoid meatbag and humanoid ballet dancer.

[Rostere]

Actually, I think that depicting racial conflicts as occurring between fantasy creatures who literally are separate species is an extremely poor analogue to real-world conflicts that occur between members of the same species differentiated only by culture or superficial genetic traits. Regardless of your good intentions, you're reinforcing the idea that there is a physically insurmountable divide between groups of sapient persons that will always tend to create these conflicts; you're turning the perception of otherness into a literal fact.

 

It's a kind of speculation in fiction that may be useful when applied to a description of humanity encountering a really, genuinely alien intelligence that we can't breed with: "lower" apes who can learn symbolic language; a hypothetical species of extraterrestrial. Even then, we have so little real-world experience to refer to in this area that the author, more likely than not, will fall into the trap of appropriating a historical model for the conflict, and then he's right back to filtering history through proxies.

 

I fear you're missing the fact that in many fantasy worlds, these so called "races" can actually breed with each other. We've all heard of halfbreed yuan-ti, half-elves and half-orcs, for example. I bet the only reason for there not being any half-halflings is that the name sounds so silly.

[Oner]

Quarterling?

Oh wait, pintling!

Edited June 24, 2009 by Oner

[Rostere]

Quarterling?

Oh wait, pintling!

 

Since "half-halflings" would be expected to be taller than their halfling cousins, I must say that "three quartersling" would be a more fitting (if less aesthetically sympathetic) name.

[Oner]

You may have a point.

[jjc]

I fear you're missing the fact that in many fantasy worlds, these so called "races" can actually breed with each other. We've all heard of halfbreed yuan-ti, half-elves and half-orcs, for example. I bet the only reason for there not being any half-halflings is that the name sounds so silly.

Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't. They still keep typically keep "half-breed" as the alternative to "full blood," especially if we're talking RPGs and want to determine stat modifiers by race. Racial stat modifiers themselves bring their own brand of trouble, especially in CRPGs: min/maxing leads to a kind of weird system of eugenics through metagaming. How can I argue in the narrative space that race X isn't inherently smarter than race Y when X's INT is always higher?

[Rostere]

Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't. They still keep typically keep "half-breed" as the alternative to "full blood," especially if we're talking RPGs and want to determine stat modifiers by race.

 

Then we agree.

 

Racial stat modifiers themselves bring their own brand of trouble, especially in CRPGs: min/maxing leads to a kind of weird system of eugenics through metagaming. How can I argue in the narrative space that race X isn't inherently smarter than race Y when X's INT is always higher?

 

I don't know of any fantasy world where a playable race by rule always has lower intelligence than another race.

 

I'm sorry about nitpicking whenever you post, but it's hard to restrain myself when you write all that crazy stuff.

 

Also, if you agree to that some beings are more intelligent than others (not saying any specific race or group of humans is more intelligent IRL), a race within a species theoretically could be smarter than one other given race. (and if you want, exchange intelligence for any other measurable ability)

 

Fine, if you say that there is no way to measure intelligence, that would end our argument. However if you do believe in a measurable intelligence, the you must necessarily have the same viewpoint as me. That is, there are no big problems with how races are treated (rules-wise) in DnD (or, most modern role-playing settings, for that matter).

[ramza]

Lol, Sawyer has some problems with his fans:

 

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=33808

[Oner]

facepalm.jpg

[Darth InSidious]

Oh, ramza...

[ramza]

Oh, ramza...

 

What's up, onionhead?

Edited June 25, 2009 by ramza

[Morgoth]

Wow, those Codex folks really are a bunch of clueless idiots.

[Rostere]

Wow, those Codex folks really are a bunch of clueless idiots.

 

I think they're mostly intelligent people, but they're also horribly egocentric. If you can just see through their bias, you can get a decent discussion out of some of them.

[Darth InSidious]

They're both egocentric and stupid.

[H]

They're both egocentric and stupid.

Kinda like modders.

[Darth InSidious]

No arguments here.

[Zoma]

Sadly, the Codex is no longer a place I frequent to anymore. Most of the posts there got misplaced from Retardo Land.

 

Now I only head there just to read the Lets Play threads and Comics section.