What are /r/truegaming's favorite Products & Services?

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Guys, relax.

This case was decided in 2011, and all of the arguments hold true here:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12960598670321445636&hl=en&as_sdt=2,5

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/08-1448.pdf

Just because Mr. Matheson is bad at history doesn't mean we all have to be.

I am one of those people who wrote a FAQ (shameless plug here). It wasn't a full walkthrough, but it still covered a lot of ground for a game that is pretty huge.

My reasons for writing it were varied. At the time, I was really into the game and frequently posted on the DQVIII message board on GameFAQs. There was no "Boss FAQ" available yet, which is unusual for a popular JRPG, so I took it upon myself to write one. If you look at the version history, you'll see that it took about a month to write the bulk of the content. Oh, the free time you have when you're in high school... :)

To this day, I still get an occasional e-mail about the guide - usually it's a question about the game, but sometimes it's just to thank me for my work. The FAQ has over 190k hits to date (GameFAQs has a "stats" page that contributors can view). So basically, I wrote it because a) I loved the game, b) there was a need, c) I like to write, and d) I had the time.

From the developers:

"We make these single-player missions that take up all the focus of the studio, that take a huge team six months to make, and players run through it in 8 minutes," he said. "And how many people finish the single-player game? It's a small percentage. It's like, everyone plays through the first level, but 5 percent of people finish the game.

"Really, you split the team. They're two different games. They're balanced differently, they're scoped differently. But people spend hundreds of hours in the multiplayer experience versus 'as little time as possible rushing to the end' [in single-player]. So why do all the resources go there? To us it made sense to put it here. Now everybody sees all those resources, and multiplayer is better. For us it made sense."

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/24/why-titanfall-has-no-single-player-campaign

The creators of Amnesia made two and a half Penumbra games before The Dark Descent was released. They may not be equally as scary as Amnesia, but are still extremely interesting in the horror survival genre. You can get all of them for $20 here. Penumbra Overture, the first one in the series, was featured in the original Humble Indie Bundle. If you missed that I could send you a key.

On a GameSpot podcast the lead writer said that one way to interpret that "haven't I seen this before?" comment is that "the opening helicopter sequence is the only part of the game where Walker is alive". After that he's reliving his mission and recreating the horrible things he did.

Also the phosphorus part was absolutely intended as a comment on those parts of other games where you're an invulnerable god of destruction and the enemies are no longer human. Spec Ops takes that stuff and slaps you across the face with it. Perhaps the minigun part was also meant to be like that. I actually didn't think of it that way, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention to the subtleties.

Even as one of the people who loved the past games and want more like them, I really doubt there's enough demand for a competitor to magically "drive [Bethesda] to reach back to their core niche, RPG audience that played Arena, Daggerfall, and Morrowind back in the day," there's just too much money in making their games more accessible. Even if another developer made a highly-regarded spiritual successor to the earlier Elder Scrolls games, Bethesda would just nod graciously and release a tens-of-millions-selling user-friendly Elder Scrolls VI.

I'd still love for that to actually happen, but so we can have more awesome games in that style to play, not so we can cow Bethesda into doing what we want.

It's not quite the same, but I've got my eye on Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which is currently in development. It's got a historic setting and theme instead of fantasy (well, there's alchemy, but no spell-slinging), and as far as I know doesn't let you customize your character. But it's an open-world game with tons of dialogue, quests that can be solved multiple ways, and a variety of crafting and other mechanics to fiddle with. Combat is apparently going to be as realistic as they can reasonably make it, with damage based on hit location, weapon type, and various layers of clothing and armor. As an Indie game, it won't be as sprawling and visually impressive, but it's one of the few games I've seen that's trying to emphasize the 'go anywhere, do anything' freedom that sets Betheda games apart.

Little Healer - Google Play Store

I've played this as well. Amazingly well done, with a lot of raid encounters being based on some earlier (MoP and before) raid encounters in WoW.

Well, the problem with open source gaming is that there are much more coders than designers, so most games have good code (engine etc) but lack levels/characters/story.

For that reason, many open-source games seem to be clones of really simple games (like pong) or simply engines that run datafiles from the original (doom).

The two games that stand out IMHO:

Frogatto

Wesnoth

EDIT:

Just read the games wikipedia pages, and it turns out those two share some of their lead staff.

Seems an AMA request for David White is in order.

The original Prince of Persia was quite realistic even though it was a somewhat Arabian Nights type magical setting. You had several "lives" but mostly they represented wounds, and sudden death was also possible in cases where you fell to your death or were attacked and caught off guard. It's actually widely seen as what started realism in games. While Super Mario jumped several times his height, the Prince barely reached the platforms above his head with his hands when he jumped. He also ran and fought much more realistically than was possible in any other game at the time (and even today).

I mean, 5-10 scale aside, RDR2 received superlative reviews from critics. It's sitting in the top "0.0%" of games at opencritic – that's the most highly rated game of all time, if I'm reading that right.

I do agree that game reviews can be deceptive. It takes time for critical consensus to form, and launch day reviews are going to be shooting from the hip, so to speak. I do think there's an interesting disparity for RDR2 in particular, where the game has some big areas that are obstacles for a lot of people, which reviews either glossed over or didn't mention at all.

You might be interested in "Universim", a currently kicktarted game, its campaign finishes in a few days and will probably be funded!

In the OP's defense, this is PR drivel and they're obviously not going to admit that sales underperformed in such a public way, especially at the moment since many large investors are likely watching the situation.

In any case, even unsuccessful games can often be considered "hits", since that descriptor is usually a function of sales, not profit. The real measure of a game's success is obviously dependent on costs as well, and those haven't really been disclosed for comparison. Given the profile of the game, it's likely both its development and marketing budgets were huge (perhaps not quite as big as one of the usual AAA dudebro shooter titles, but still very high).

As for the "consensus among critics and players"... well, that's just plain old-fashioned bullcrap based on the actual numbers, which are already well below "great" territory and still dropping.

Well, the developers actually didn't want it in the game. The publishers actually forced them to put it in, though.

I guess MP sells.

Factorio, build a factory and defend it from aliens. It's like all those Minecraft mods that introduce automation but top-down and with a much deeper technology tree and with the end goal of launching a rocket into orbit. It's currently in an independent form of early access but could release tomorrow and be considered finished, it's definitely doing things properly a la KSP and Prison Architect.

If you like planning, organising, and optimising you'll love this game and sink days into it. Plus, I'm pretty sure it has one of my favourite game trailers.

If you're looking for a truly gut wrenching story, I've yet to find a more poignant example than One Chance

It may just be a short flash game, but it does a fantastic job of pulling you into the universe.

Edited for stupid spelling

Spacechem is an example of one that does this, although you're not presented with actual coding you are still working towards making a process to transform input to output

Robocode is one where you're coding virtual robot tanks to fight. Corewar is where code is trying to attack other running code.

Subnautica is also an interesting example because while it's clearly a survival game in its current state, that's not actually how the final game is intended to be.

>We’re not making a sandbox game, nor a building game, nor a survival game, although at times we thought we were. We’re building a game where you feel like a scientist who has crash-landed on an aquatic alien world and is learning how it (and its strange inhabitants) work. It’s a game of exploration, discovery and theme. A game currently without a specified goal. A game without extrinsic rewards. A game without combat and weapons (more on this later). I guess we shall call it an Adventure Game, for lack of a better term.

The devs have been pretty careful not to call it a survival game in any of the media I've seen, but that hasn't stopped journalists or anyone else from calling it what it pretty obviously is in its current form.

The Long Dark is doing something similar, too. The original pitch was for a game with both a story mode and a survival mode, and they decided to only have the latter in Early Access so people won't burn themselves out on the half-finished story mode before it's finished.

It will be much easier to know when a game has issues, or is just not a good game. Devs will loathe to admit it, but they abused the fact that returns are so difficult with day 1 DLC and buggy early releases. This is just the market reacting.

Valve faced legal pressure in court over their previous return policy:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/valve-calls-for-mediation-before-accc-court-challenge/

It was extremely unfriendly towards consumers, and the new policy is a huge leap forward in fixing that. It's a big win for people that love games, because passionate devs will be able to take advantage of increased customer confidence in the marketplace - when too much shovelware gets pushed out, good games suffer. People are going to shovel it right back towards devs and publishers now!

> The long-term goal is to create a fantasy world simulator in which it is possible to take part in a rich history, occupying a variety of roles through the course of several games.

-- found here.

For one, you're completely missing adventure mode, and neither of those games come even close to the depth DF already has, much less what it aspires to.

It really is a world simulation, the playing modes are secondary. Once more stuff is in place it'd be possible to build a politics sim on top of it, for example, managing whole civilisations.

Blatant sexism is iconic of videogame advertising. It has matured a little since the nineties but don't convince yourself this ad is why the game failed. It was an objectively terrible game.

The biggest factor for game design budgets is salaries. Rockstar has over 900 employees and an additional eight studios globally. If 900 employees make even just 40k per year, they cost the company 36 million dollars annually.

Hiring, not just a competent, but highly qualified computer programmer and game designer is considerably more expensive than 40k/year. The average salary of a game designer was 79k/year in 2014, or over 71 million dollars annually with those 900 employees.

Rockstar North began to develop Grand Theft Auto V in 2009 and released on the 17th of September 2013. That's three years of development time. A conservative estimate of how much Rockstar paid in just salaries over those three years would be about 200 million dollars. Imagine how gutsy it must be, to sink 200 million dollars into something before it ever hit the shelves. Coincidentally, GTA V by Rockstar's numbers cost 265 million to develop and market. Which if my estimate is even somewhere inside the proper ballpark, would mean 75% of the cost of GTA V was paying people to make it.

Not on supercomputers, not on super high-tech software licensing, not on rendering hyperealistic fronds - they spent it on people. People are why triple A games cost so much to make. Because domestic triple A games are made by American corporations that by definition employ a large amount of people. People are great, because we are them and we like to be paid, but we are by far the number one reason these games are so expensive.

I think the "Ubisoft formula" is getting a little stale. In many of its games, it uses a region-based system wherein you do something to unlock stuff in that particular region like with Watch_Dogs (hacking the hub) or Assaassin's Creed IV (synchronization points) or even Far Cry 3 (radio towers).

Here's the original story:

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/will-watch-dogs-break-free-from-the-ubisoft-formula/1100-6417156/

EV Nova. Literally the best game I've ever played. Hands down. Worth every penny of the $30 it costs. It will provide you with hundreds of thousands of hours of entertainment (I played just about every day 2003-2013). I wish I still had my activation key.

The game is hard to get into. But it's so freaking good.

It's got political intrigue. Deep stories (and tons of them). Billions of ways to build your ship, and a billion different jobs you can take on with it. There are mini stories, missions, and grand galaxy-shaking quests which ACTUALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE. When you play the rebel story to its conclusion, THINGS CHANGE IN THE GALAXY. Real, tangible changes. That pirate trade run you so enjoyed? It's gone if you do a certain number of missions. You offend the wrong people? You dun screwed up, son, but you can fix it with hard work and dedication.

Everything role playing games usually promise is in that game, but it doesn't even advertise itself as an RPG.

It's the purest essence of "obscure gem."

I'm the lead developer and lead technical artist on an open source game.

There's still a cultural divide between coders and artists with "open source". GPL has been around much longer that Creative Commons. It takes work to educate artists about copyleft licenses and to convince them that it's a good use of time/effort.

You're much more likely to see fan projects attract artists. Artists put in incredible work towards HD remakes of games like GTA, Morrowind, Sonic. Those games already have a huge following of fans; some percent of whom are talented. Open Source games don't have that kind of brand fandom. Worse, our alpha tech demos are directly compared to AAA titles of the same genre, and no one's interested.

What others have said here about art quality is true. Good games require a cohesive vision and a lead artist. Good open source games need a hardass lead artist who is able to reject low quality art coming from well-meaning young enthusiasts. This is not easy; I'm currently doing this role in my project and I hate turning people down. So it's not just finding good artists, it's finding an artist who is also a project manager type. That's rare.

I'm content moderator at OpenGameArt.org. We're attempting to solve part of the equation -- creating a repo of copyleft game art. Anyone can contribute; awesome! But anyone can contribute; ew. 90% of everything is crap, included art submitted to our site. Because we have relatively few submitters (compared to, say, DeviantArt) we don't have enough high quality art. We're a long ways away from having enough to build a game with modern visuals.

Put all this together and, currently, the free/libre gamedev community can barely mimic games that are 10 years old. We're nowhere close to doing something of AAA quality from this generation.

Well.. it has been confirmed that Activision is working on a new Tony Hawk game - and one could argue to some extend that it certainly will have a different feel and different aesthetics... because it will be a mobile exclusive. -.-

I'm glad that you enjoyed it.

Here is a breakdown of why a (large) set of people think that the ending was poorly written.

• First, all of the endings are essentially the same. This is lazy, regardless of how you feel about the endings themselves. Even if the idea behind all of the endings are good in terms of writing, which has some significant backing, different colors a different ending does not make.

• It nullifies any and all prior choices that you have made during the game. The entire series was based around how your choices have larger repercussions in the grand scheme of things, and that your choices were important. It is thematically different from every other aspect of the series. This is not helped by the first bullet point. Some people enjoyed the endings because of this. Flipping the player's expectations on their heads might be seen as a powerful deviation from the norm.

• The entire ending turns the plot into swiss cheese and doesn't make any god damn sense.

My opinion? The developers used the ending to decide whether or not they wanted to sell, give away for free, or drop a DLC ending altogether based on the consumer reaction. They claim indoctrination if they decide to use the DLC, and if people like the game enough they sell it. If there is a large enough backlash the DLC is either free or dropped. Probably the latter.

Also, its a really good overall game. And I've seen endings done much more poorly than that.

I might get shit for this, but I play almost every game on easy. I have a wife and 3 young kids, boardgames/tabletop RPGs for hobbies, other social events for our family or friends, dates with my wife, and I workout 4-5 days/week. I have very little time to play. I hate repeating the same area because I died, and if a game's game-play starts to bore me but I like the story, I just cheat to speed things up. I generally rate games by how long it takes me to start cheating, with the better ones never giving me that urge. I review the website How Long to Beat for almost every game I play. The Witcher 3 took me over 2 months to beat, and that was playing more than I normally do. The longer the game takes to beat, the more averse I am to playing it (typically, but I'm a sucker for good RPGs). I also look at reviews for every game I want to play to make sure it'll be "worth it".

In my life, I love short and easy games or games that can be advanced a small bit at a time. Yes, there needs to be a bit of challenge, but I much prefer to coast through it to be honest. I play on hard-mode in life, so i don't feel the need to excessively challenge myself or spend tons of time getting S-ratings when I can just sit back and enjoy the ride. I use to play much more than I do now, and I find that the inclination to unlock everything in a game, beat every mode, etc really comes down to how much time is available. The more free time you have in life, the more time you might want to spend unlocking everything in a game. I'm a sucker for being a completionist, but I often shortcut it by cheating so that I don't spend 100 hours gathering shit for a game that I'll never play again.

The two pieces I can find that are the most recent (As far as I know) are the final update from the official Command & Conquer website as well as this notice regarding refunds.

Two relevant quotes:

> For those of you who bought The C&C Ultimate Collection, your early access to the beta will be honored once production of this title resumes under a new studio.

> We believe that Command & Conquer is a powerful franchise with huge potential and a great history, and we are determined to get the best game made as soon as possible. To that end, we have already begun looking at a number of alternatives to get the game back on track. We look forward to sharing more news about the franchise as it develops.

So the official position is that it's not dead, but I don't think we've heard anything more since then.

Honestly, I feel like people put forward reasons like security, moral/ethical concerns, and all the other things they criticise about EGS because they're nice-sounding rational reasons, but I truly believe the biggest reason people dislike the EGS is the fact that it divides their collection yet again into yet more launchers. I know that is the case for me, at least. What this industry needs, more than anything, is more stores but less launchers -- sort of like how Ubi games work on Steam but without launching UPlay before the game.

No one likes to see their collection split up across multiple libraries, and I know I've bought a few games I forgot I already owned on other launchers or that I rebought on Steam just to have it there as well. All that being said, I don't know how to solve this, I like the approach of something like Discord and Razer Cortex of trying to collect all your games in one place, but all they can detect are those you have currently installed. But I know I'd buy from GoG or even itch.io a lot more often if it meant that these games were to be automatically added to a all-encompassing personal library of mine.

I've always been a fan of Progress Quest, myself. No illusion that there's a game mechanic other than "putting in time." No wearing out a mouse for a while. Just an entertaining screen-saver that you feel kind of sad to shut down.

Escape from Tarkov

Wildly popular, and MUCH more in depth than you've described.

Also, you drop ALL your gear on death, which you lose permanently. Anyone can loot that gear off the map, or if it stays on the map it's still gone forever. You can somewhat mitigate this by paying "insurance" that will return any equipment that isn't looted off the map by opponents - but at best you're getting back your worst shit. Good gear is guaranteed to be gone to looters, even though you insured it.

To balance out people ending up with nothing, you can do "SCAV" runs, where YOU take control of the lightly armored NPCs that die in one shot. You can try to make it off the map just with your SCAV gear to use or sell on your PC, or you can try to kill other players to get better stuff. Same rules, though - you die, you keep nothing.

No armor? 1-2 bullets max kill you.

Shot in the leg? Gotta crawl.

Have armor? Opponent has armor piercing bullets? See above.

I'd say it works quite well.

If he's into stuff like that, consider games like Civilization which can be played completely with a mouse. One hand is more than enough, there's no time constraint, he can take as long as he wants for whatever he wants to do.

Best thing: Right now there's a Humble Bundle with multiple Civ games available. https://www.humblebundle.com/

There's also other strategy games like Crusader Kings and and Europa Universalis. Or Settlers. Or Anno. And so on...

edit: Sorry, don't know if those are easy enough. If they're too complicated they could make for a good experience for two though.

> AI RNG: This is for enemy behaviour. Things would get old fast if enemies behaved completely deterministically.

Hi, I'm a videogame AI engineer with a decade of experience, and just wanted to weigh in on this.

You would be surprised how little RNG is used for enemy decision making. Actually, things do not get "old fast" if enemies behave deterministically, they just get old fast if they always do the same thing. There is a very important difference here.

You absolutely can have enemies make decisions based on the roll of a dice, but this does nothing to telegraph to a player how to approach an encounter, and can be extremely frustrating. In very difficult encounters, you want the player to realise what they are doing right or wrong, and reinforce their actions. If random reactions happen in response to player action, the player can't learn, and they will continue banging their head against an impenetrable encounter instead of learning, and progressing.

Alternatively, you can have enemies make decisions based on the situation of the world. And this is the correct, and more fun, way to do it. The more variables that you can add in to an enemy's decision process, the more varied the combat will be. But keeping these as real world variables allows the player to understand and reason about what is happening.

Examples of decision making variables: count of allies, count of enemies, positioning of allies vs. enemies, weapon I'm holding, weapon enemy is holding, vehicle placement nearby, flank routes, visibility of encounter space, etc.

I have done extensive playtesting of RNG vs. non-RNG AI, and the non-RNG AI plays far, far better.

It's alive and relatively well; mainly on the Nintendo DS.

Incidentally, have you tried Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes? I've played so much of that game - it's brilliant. In fact, my only complaint about it is the lack of a "New Game+"

Hope I helped.

It’s not about traditional video games, but you 100% need to read Addiction by Design: https://www.amazon.com/Addiction-Design-Machine-Gambling-Vegas/dp/0691160880/ref=nodl_

Goes into the psychology behind addiction, and now slot machines have been designed to exploit it. It’s both disgusting and weirdly inspirational as a game designer.

Owning a majority share in a company does not guarantee that you'll always have control. Take a look at how Gary Gygax lost control of TSR and D&D. Beware unexercised stock options from 9 years ago!

It will run at 30fps.

>We're going for this filmic look, so one thing that we knew immediately was films run at 24 fps. We're gonna run at 30 because 24 fps does not feel good to play. So there's one concession in terms of making it aesthetically pleasing, because it just has to feel good to play.

>Source

So they are trying to claim that they made the concession to run it at 30fps instead of 24fps rather than the concession to run it at 30fps instead of 60fps. They are giving players more fps than what their vision called for not less... apparently.

Some people do not have their consoles hooked up to the internet.

Using this as a source.

There are 70 Million Xboxes Sold.

Only 40 Million XBOX live accounts.

That is 30 million unaccounted for xboxes, 30 million people potentially getting a broken game.

Keep an eye on A Hat in Time. It's a collect-a-thon inspired by Banjo Kazooie with music done by Grant Kirkhope himself.

https://www.amazon.com/keyboard-One-Handed-Mechanical-Keyboard-SADES/dp/B07D6NTPWH/ref=mp_s_a_1_2_sspa?keywords=left+handed+gaming+keyboard&qid=1562780875&s=gateway&sprefix=left+handed+gaming+&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1

Why not get something like this and continue to play with your mouse left handed? Just typed left handed gaming keyboard or keypad and got a bunch of similar hits. I’ve seems pros in some games who are left play like this. Opens up a of binds for you

If you think Blizzard is an exception, here are the credits for Dragon Age: Origins, artists outnumber programmers about 2:1, not even counting voice actors. And yes there are many temp contracts, but it's not like they don't get paid.

>And yet, even E.T. is important, because it taught the industry just what can happen when you get caught up in hubris and try to cash in on awful shovelware.

I'd argue that the industry learned absolutely nothing from E.T.

Games built on licenses have remained largely synonymous with crap in the years since. At a glance, It looks like somewhere between half and three-quarters of these games with a Metascore below 40 are based on a movie or TV license.

By the way, a quick anecdote about E.T.

Sometime in the late 80s I received a used Atari 2600 and a handful of games for Christmas. One of those games was E.T. It was frustrating, seemingly unplayable, but being 9 or 10 at the time I figured I had to be missing something - something I wasn't seeing on my black and white TV or instructions I needed from the missing manual.

Fast-forward ~10 years and I'm reading article in Next Generation about what a broken, half-assed piece of crap E.T. was.

Suddenly, it all made sense.

One of the Knytt Stories default stories is based around exploration. While there are power-ups, obstacles and a ultimate objective, a lot of effort was put into making an explorable world full of details.

It helps to view Spec Ops: the Line in the time period it was released in.

SOtL came out in 2012. It was released right in the middle of a glut of high-profile military shooters:

• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007
• Battlefield: Bad Company in 2008
• Call of Duty: World at War in 2008
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 in 2009
• Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in 2010
• Call of Duty: Black Ops in 2010
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in 2011

People knew the Spec Ops series as another brand of military shooter. In particular, a brand that hadn't seen a release since 2002. People thought it was going to be another mindless shooter trying to ride the coattails of all these extremely well received and highly-profitable games.

They went into it expecting to just run through another military campaign, shooting the baddies and saving the day.

Except SOtL turned that all on its head

It's a game that knew exactly what people expected and then used that to their advantage to twist the whole genre upside-down. It was extremely ambitious, self-aware, and a beyond a doubt a risky proposition.

If anything, it speaks volumes about the integrity of the development team, and the ability for its publisher to trust that team. The only major blemish to the game was the shoehorned-in multiplayer mode that felt like it had to be attached because every other military shooter was doing it.

Regardless, the game was an artistic statement about the video game environment in which it was conceived and that's why it is so highly regarded and worthy of respect.

With that in mind, I highly recommend you give it a try, and for further reading, Walt Williams the lead writer of the game, recently published a book worth looking into: Significant Zero: Heroes, Villains, and the Fight for Art and Soul in Video Games.

Historically speaking, most games used to be 1-2 hours long, all the 8bit and 16bit jump'n runs are really short. They sometimes stretch it out by being difficult, but games like Kirby and Disney's Magical Quest could be beaten on the first try with ease. Howlongtobeat lists literally hundreds of games that don't even reach the 1h mark.

Essentially the issue is never length, but if the game feels complete. Many 2h games can feel satisfying and complete, while some 15h games end up as incomplete mess.

As for Steams return policy, since they track achievements it should be easy to spot abuse.

In a follow-up, Nintendo Japan has posted on Twitter that there's a price to pay if two Gamepads are active. Frame rates drop to about 30 fps if two are active; any games that really want that extra controller won't be quite as glass-smooth.

The thing is, GPUs have been very well optimized specifically for drawing flat triangles. They're versatile enough that you probably could command them to draw a genuinely curved surface, but they would do it much less efficiently, so you'd get a huge drop in performance from the same hardware. In order to render the game at a playable framerate, you'd have to make enough concessions in graphics detail that it would just end up looking shittier anyway.

There are a number of 3D art programs, such as POV-Ray, that will gladly give you a 'true' curved surface. However, they run on the CPU and use different algorithms, and do not render nearly fast enough for typical gaming purposes.

Estimated 2009 WoW Subscribers: 5 million (admittedly not a great citation)

Estimated 2011 WoW Subscribers: 10.3 million

Would love a game set in the Warring States period. Open world, you play as a fictional version of Sun Tzu. You travel across the Seven Warring States and perform missions based off the 13 Chapters of The Art of War.

I always thought it was really supposed to be about learning, and how we tend to think we understand something even when we never truly understood how something worked. We solve one set of puzzles and think we understand how a block works, only to find out later we didn't truly know all the rules.

I developed a game this year called LINES, trying to bring line puzzles to a more casual audience on mobile. Even with just the simple color blocks, I found people who didn't play the witness really struggled with learning the rules on their own. It is really amazing how well Jonathan Blow designed that game.

That is definitely worth mentioning! I find this incident particularly interesting and I'm intrigued by the possibility that ever since it happened, the CDC and other groups have continued to run experiments on gamers: quietly, invisibly, and harmlessly infecting us with digital viruses!

This ties into another area that interests me and that's ethics, because, is that actually harmless? There is a frequent assumption by researchers, when talking about harvesting this kind of data, that they've somehow sidestepped the usual ethical considerations.

There is an excellent paper on this very topic, if anyone's interested: Virtual Guinea Pigs: Ethical implications of Human Subjects Research in Virtual Worlds

In fact here is Jeff Gurstmann himself talking about the incident in an interview shortly after it was announced that his new company, GiantBomb, had been purchased by CBS interactive (which also owns Gamespot - where he was fireid from)

So I'm not sure how much detail you were looking for, but there's nothing very complex being done, really.

I'm using the reddit API through mellort's python wrapper for it. Every 5 minutes, a script connects to reddit, logs in as FilterBot, and starts going through the newest submissions to /r/gaming, starting from the newest (like going from the top of the /new tab).

For each submission, it first checks if it's already made a decision about this one on a previous run, and if it has, it stops executing. If it hasn't, it applies a few checks to it. Right now, the checks are whether it's an image (by checking the extension at the end of the URL, if any), whether it's a self-post, or whether its domain is on my banned list (stored in a database). If it passes the checks, it submits a link to the post to /r/filteredgaming.

Whether the checks pass or fail, it records some info about the post and the decision it made (and if it filtered it, why) into the database. This is where it checks to see if it's already decided on a post, and I'll also be using the data here to make a publicly-available "decision history" page, which should help for figuring out if some of the conditions need to be changed.

That's really about it, let me know if there was some more specific information you wanted or anything.

You should check this out:

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/12/mits-media-lab-releases-experimental-game-that-bends-the-laws-of-relativity/

The MIT media lab tried to really simulate what moving at relativistic speeds would be like.

I haven't had the opportunity to play MAG so I can't say whether or not anyone is going to attempt their specific play-style, but the biggest game player-wise that's going to come out in the near future is the MMO FPS Planetside 2 (http://www.planetside2.com/). If it's anything like the first one in its heyday you're going to be looking at some of the largest scale FPS battles ever played.

I don't think it's about needing to play Undertale to understand what people like about it, so much as that the experience is something better experienced without being told those things.

I played the demo years ago when that's all there was, and that alone was an awesome experience. If anyone reading this happens to still be on the fence, please stop here and go play the demo for yourself. Anyone who's already played, is determined not to give the game a chance, or has just been spoiled on everything already by the crazy fans who turned all of the interesting surprises into memes, go on ahead. You may still not like it, but if it resonates with you, it'll be worth it.

By the time you get to the end of the demo, the game comments on what you've done. If you spare the boss but kill other encounters, it asks why you didn't care about them the same way. If you killed the boss, it asks you how you feel about that. If you wind up regretting killing the boss, loading your previous save, and sparing it this time, the game calls you out on it. The game is loaded with little things like this that make the game feel intimate in a way that doesn't come across by watching clips from someone else play.

The gameplay is really simple, and so is the writing, but it feels engaging in a down-to-earth, friendly way that many other games can't because they've been scrubbed into the most clinically crowd-pleasing form possible.

One Chance is an interesting take on something like that. Through cookies, it literally gives you a single run through the game. Once the game ends, you can never replay it (barring some work arounds like private browsing).

I think what makes permadeath investing is the mechanical sensation of building something big up, and knowing that a single mistake means that it's gone. But being able to keep playing on, with a new story about these new characters, over and over again seems like it directly contradicts with a goal of making the narrative more engaging.

I'm just gonna quote from the Romance FAQ for Viconia, the evil aligned drow:

> You will have to find a neat balance between making fun of her, getting angry and being sensitive. One usual tactic I have is to be relatively harsh to her at the beginning of the romance and then when she talks of her experience in the Underdark and on the surface show some caring and consideration.

>For starters you must not seem weak in Viconia's eyes otherwise she will despise you. Thus, always choose options that seem to make you a more courageous and daring man that you are. She will think that if you are too nice to her she will be disgusted claiming this to be your weakness.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/258273-baldurs-gate-ii-shadows-of-amn/faqs/12164

>>The publishers effectively pay the salaries of IGN reviewers. Drug money laundered through the HSBC is no less dirty. Reviews paid from IGN coffers filled by the publishers of said games are no less bought.

Holy strained analogies, Batman!

Instead of relying on innuendo and a few cherry-picked examples, why not reference the closest thing we've got to real statistical analysis?

According to metacritic:

For 11,914 reviews, IGN has graded:

• 60% higher than the average critic

• 7% same as the average critic

• 33% lower than the average critic

On average, this publication grades 4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

If anything, IGN seems to be comfortably close to the center of grading, rather than some brazen outlier. You can perhaps fault them for being too close to the consensus, but the evidence is extremely scant that they are corrupt, influenced by advertising revenue, or otherwise abnormal in any way.

EV Nova.

A relatively unpopular Space Trading game from 2002. It's the best game I've ever played. It's big, complex, mysterious, and there is an unbelievable level of content in it. It's got factions with realistic political intrigue and interactions, missions you can do that really do effect the world (I remember one where you terraform a planet!), great depth to the combat (if you're willing to get into it), and the stories are presented with luscious prose. There's villains and heroes. You can pick sides, or just roam without taking up any big stories. There's smaller side quests like the Wild Geese storyline, or the delivery of a strange probe to an even stranger world.

It's everything I've ever wanted in gaming.

And I've lost my activation key. :(

>While a good game designer probably can make a game entirely based on achievements that will actually work

I believe that already happened.

I was reading some of the negative reviews on metacritic, and while I feel that these people have exaggerated how low the score should be, after watching a few hours of day9 play (full disclosure: I haven't played), it does seem that most of the complaints are valid (all of these are from metacritic PC reviews):

• Much of the game doesn't look any better than Oblivion

• Stiff animations

• Very buggy: "There are 42 known critical bugs at the moment with work arounds. For those of you that need help you can visit - segmentnext dot com/2011/11/11/skyrim-crashes-freezes-sound-keys-errors-fps-lag-textures-and-fixes/."

• Bad user interface

• Poor console port: ~~no key bindings~~ (this appears to be incorrect), alt-tab issues, mouse acceleration always on

• "It really feels awkward when swinging your weapon. Your just slashing your way at an enemy, occasionally blocking and pulling back until a random finishing kill pops up. Using magic and weapons during combat is a pain in the neck. You have to un equip your weapon to use spells, and re equip your weapon once your done. AI is not that great either to not say worse."

• World looks dull

• "They released oblivion, again"

• The fighting is very easy

• No challenge

• "repetitive gameplay, [...] boring AI,"

Edit: http://www.listal.com/list/rpg-world-tactical-rpg

Above is a pretty good list for trpg/srpg (the terms are roughly the same)

The genre is called SRPG you can google it to find a list of every SRPG released.

Some gems are:

Disgaea

Tactics ogre

Front Mission

Hoshigami

Fire emblem

Advance wars

Phantom brave

La Pucelle Tactics

Makai Wars

Shining Force

Soul Nomad & the world eaters

The banner saga

Arcanum of magick and obscura

Fallout 1 and 2

Shadowrun returns series

Shin megami tensei: devil survivor

Pokemon conquest

X-com series

There are a lot more out there but this is from the top of my head. Also note that final fantasy tactics for the psx and tactics ogre: let us cling together, are my two favorites.

Probably not. They'll just sneak "not for use by people under 13" into the EULA (which I'm sure everyone reads all 100 pages of), and carry on as normal.

Case in point. Fall Guys. A game with a PEGI rating of 3.

https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/product/EP3643-CUSA17714_00-FALLGUYSPS4EU000

>Online play required

>PEGI 3

And yet...

https://fallguys.com/eula-combined

>You are not allowed to use our Services if you are less than 13 years of age, or the laws of the jurisdiction in which you live prohibit use of our Services. If you are between the ages of 13 and 18 (or the age of majority where you live):

> * You and your parent or guardian must review this Agreement together before you use our Services;

> * Your parent or guardian enters into this Agreement on your behalf and their own behalf when you use our Services; and

> * Your parent or guardian will be responsible for all of your activities when you use our Services.

hehe, you could try Dwarf Fortress.... Losing completely and utterly is part of the Fun! Lazy Newb Pack to help ease into the game a little bit

I don't think OP means scripting in the games development or programming sense. I think he's talking about MyCareers mode and his dislike for scripted events.

At least, that's what many forum posts about the game seem to be complaining about when you google using those terms.

MyCareer games scripted?

Not your fault you're confused, OP didn't explain himself properly.

At a guess? Multiplayer.

Turn-based multiplayer frequently sucks rocks, particularly for games with long turns. You have to wait for the other guy to complete his turn before you can do anything.

Simultaneous turns partly solves this problem, but usually at the cost of being really counter-intuitive.

That being said, here's MetaCritic's list of most recent turn based games. I count 12 titles released in 2012, with 3 of them being new IPs. Certainly seems like a still alive genre to me.

STALKER is written using a goal-based Planning AI, Also known as Hierarchical Task Network or HTN. FEAR uses a similar technology. For more information, read this paper Jeff Orkin wrote for GDC 2006. It explains how Planning-based solutions are different from the standard state-based AI you see in most games.

I haven't played all of these but I really liked The Majesty of Colors and The Company of Myself. The former more than the latter.

I'll also add Don't Look Back - a short game by VVVVVV creator Terry Cavanagh, inspired by the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.

That was how much I had played but I've been playing through it lately and I think I'm almost done. It's fairly short according to HLTB, you just have to know that a dark corner is the friendliest face you'll see in the game.

You can hide better in the darkness. Don't sprint, they'll know. Know where your exits and hiding spots are before picking up anything shiny. Put a stuffed animal on your shoulder for support.

Betrayal at Krondor. I played it in 1993, when it came out; it was the first computer RPG I ever played and it was good. The story was amazing (it's written and set in the universe created by Raymond E. Feist, Midkemia).

The characters "felt" real to me in my young age, the gameplay was awesome (first person for exploring, 3rd person turn based tactical combat), it was a semi-sandbox game, in that you were allowed to reach your goal in more ways than one and it was a single, huge, open world, the storyline was deep and involving and the action was visceral (for that time). It is the game by which I compare all RPGs, and the game that made me an RPG fan.

The impact BaK had on me was immense, considering that my entire gaming experience by that time consisted almost solely of NES platformers (and a few arcade fighting games), it was like seeing a motion picture for the first time, after spending my whole life looking at still pictures...

The second game that changed my life was Conqueror: 1086 A.D. It was a great blend of multiple genres, quite unique to this day. At heart, it was a First Person Medieval Combat game, but it had elements of citybuilders and management games, RPG games, a rudimentary tactical engine for army-battles, tourneys and jousts, damsels which the player could woo and some nifty minor storylines going on between in-game characters. The main objective of the game was to either become the king of England, by usurping William, or to gain his favor by slaying a dragon which was terrorizing the lands.

Of course, as I got older, I started appreciating other games (Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment etc.), but none marked me as deeply as Betrayal at Krondor and Conqueror 1086 have done.

No matter what happens, there will always be a way of playing pretty much every modern video game ever released.

Whether that way is actually legal or sanctioned by the developers is another question though. But emulation and piracy will always mean there is at least some way of playing these games far into the future - at least for single player stuff. Online multiplayer is more tricky, but even then if there's enough interest there will be enterprising fans who will still find a way - look at how various old MMOs have been resurrected - Toontown Online and Star Wars Galaxies for example.

Steam probably won't be around forever, and as much as people like continue to state that rumour from the early days of Steam that Valve would suddenly release a service update that unlocks the DRM for every game on there from the goodness of their hearts, the fact is the huge expansion of the service and the complex licensing agreements Valve have with hundreds of developers means it's virtually impossible to do so today - if that statement was even true in the first place.

But regardless of that - it doesn't matter. Because let's face it, on the internet you're always only a search term away from grabbing a "DRM free" copy of the game from less-then-legal places. And if Valve doesn't release some system wide DRM unlock for the service once it shuts down, someone will do it for them. That's just how the internet works.

A magic system is simply one component of an overall game. As a general philosophy for game design I believe everything should be focused towards non-overlapping, non-obvious choices. Far too many games out there have a glut of very obvious choices (linear upgrade paths with built-in obsolescence). What's the point of having a choice if one option is always better than the other?

One example of a rather well designed magic system is that of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It features many spells, divided into schools, with very little overlap. Any overlap that does occur is mitigated by the fact that you cannot reasonably master all of the schools with one character. The spells are extremely varied in their costs, utility and rarity. There are also many different ways to utilize the natural synergy that exists between a lot of the spells.

Just pulling out the relevant quote from the polygon article and confirming the relatively low cost of voice acting:

> "Voice actors are essentially paid $200 an hour to do up to three video game voices"

Skyrim apparently has 60k recorded lines, which ends up being about 20 hours.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/615805-the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/64221607

So yes, cheap.

That said, in my personal opinion, voices help keep a game world relatively interesting, at least in comparison to having no spoken dialogue, or one person doing all of the dialogue. One of my qualms regarding a conversation regarding voice acting is that information is relatively sparse.

I can also say that the voice acting's quality may be limited to the quality of the script - as you said, some of the Mass Effect dialogue can become overly verbose. But there are other games in which the spoken dialogue (may) add to the experience. Hearing the back-and-forth in Arkham Asylum improved player engagement.

TL;DR voice acting isn't too pricy, the game's dialogue needs to be both well-written and meaningful

> It's so stupid. Don't people realize that publishers don't give a fuck about reviews?

Here's just one example of how wrong this statement is. http://www.gamespot.com/news/obsidian-denied-bonus-over-new-vegas-metacritic-score-studio-head-6366337

Incorrect. Planescape: Torment contains a total of four unavoidable fights. The one most often mistakenly omitted, of these four, is the opening zombie, since it's so forgettable. The other three are boss encounters. One of these provides a dialogue option which serves as a potentially satisfying alternative, but ends the game at that point, making the large portion of the game which comes after uncompletable.

Qwinn and Skard name the other three here for anyone wanting the spoilers. Qwinn identifies an arguable (but less concrete) fifth.

Moonbase Commander

A turn-based strategy game with some neat twists. You start with your main Hub and must protect it at all costs. You send out new units by shooting them out from your Hub by setting direction and shot power. Almost like Worms, but top-down. These new units are connected to your Hub by cords.

There are towers that push back more of the fog of war, energy collectors to place on pools, anti-air units that will shoot rockets at anything the enemy shoots your way, domes to block projectiles from coming in, mini-hubs like you main one only its ok for them to be destroyed, and artillery hubs that can only shoot weapons but with twice the range.

So your base ends up becoming this massive spider web on the surface of this planet as you spread out to find resources and find your enemies main hub. You have a selection of weapons at your disposal, from heat seeking rockets, EMPs that disable everything in the area for a round, and even a Spike that will travel along the cords. That last one being my favorite because most player forget to protect their cords.

Its a fairly simple game but a ton of fun. Manually aiming and trying to set the right shot power to land things where you need them keeps you engaged. There is no "set and forget." The game went with a "kid friendly" look with advertising to match so people sort of ignored it. They missed out on a very fun title. If you can track down a copy I recommend it.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/moonbase-commander

Turns out it was made using SCUMM, same as old Lucas Arts adventure games. Crazy.

Uplink is pretty much the apex of the genre, imo.

If you're looking for something a little less puzzly and a little more story-focused, check out Digital: A Love Story. It's sort of an adventure game that takes place on the internet of the 1980s. The aesthetic makes you feel like you are on an old fashioned BBS. Rudimentary hacking plays an important role, but its just a good game in general.

The current Summer of Arcade titles look good:

From Dust

Bastion

Have only played From Dust, which is flawed but magical at the same time.

Daikatana wasn't even that bad. It was mediocre, and had some questionable design decisions, but it was not a totally awful game. I think a lot of the backlash came from that very "John Romero is going to make you his bitch" campaign. If it had been released quietly without the ridiculous hype, it would probably be considered a flawed cult classic these days similar to the original Shadow Warrior or something. As well, in this interview with Romero, he cites that ad as one of his biggest mistakes throughout his career.

It is unfortunate that so many games now have such complex controls that it invariably ends up less accessible to people like us with mobility based disabilities.

One thing I would recommend, though it won't help with the games you've listed here as they're PS4 (or at least console) exclusives. Consider moving to PC gaming. I personally prefer console gaming, with PS4 being my system of choice, but the ability to change key-binding with PC makes it much more accessible. I'd also highly recommend this controller.

UK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Xbox-One-Elite-Wireless-Controller/dp/B00ZV0NH40

USA - https://www.amazon.com/Xbox-Elite-Wireless-Controller-one/dp/B00ZDNNRB8

The added flexibility this controller gives should improve your gameplay experiences.

This is not the first time the military has used games as a recruitment tool. One of the earliest uses of this tactic, that I can remember, was in 1995 with the game Return Fire. It was a top down war game where two teams were tasked with blowing up the other team's base. You were given control of a tank, jeep, rocket truck, and helicopter. when you paused the game you were met with this screen.

I felt it was wrong at the time, and I still do, but the game was fun as hell. I'm sure there were others that payed the game and did end up joining the military. Hopefully not due to playing Return Fire, but I'm certain that a percentage of people that played the game did end up calling that number.

Advertising for military recruitment in games is wrong, but so is recruiting in high schools. Neither one will stop anytime soon though, because they both work and no one will stand up and stop it.

Skip the user reviews. User reviews are about haters and fanboys having a pissing contest. Too many scores are perfect 10 or absolute zero. Check out Diablo3. It has a score of 3,8/10.

Seriously? I didn't buy D3(got already disappointed in beta), and certainly thought it was unworthy sequel for D1&2, but still, it's not a bad game. I'd rate it 7/10 easily. Wouldn't play it though, not my kind of a game.

*edit: And thats why nobody cares about the user scores enough to manipulate it. Or hell, maybe someone has done it already.. maybe some of the zero votes are fake accounts. Still, nobody cares.

Could I suggest Nitronic Rush? It's a free futuristic race/survival game very much in the spirit of F-Zero and the like, with excellent Tron-style visuals and a great soundtrack.

It's not anything new and revolutionary, but if you want a fresh and updated take on the race games of old, it should be right up your alley.

If you want present the most extreme example of auto-battling/grinding, I would recommend you introducing your friend to Progress quest (http://progressquest.com/).
 
Personally, I am against grinding in RPGs. Either provide a battle that is different or challenging for the player, make a combat system that is fun enough that it doesn't feel like grinding, or don't waste their time automatically or manually.

You might consider this educational (perhaps it is), but there is a protein folding puzzle game that has made use of user solutions to better understand protein folding. I believe they published a/some papers that credited the players as well.

https://fold.it/portal/

Rimworld, a base-building colony simulator that can be as chill or crazy as you want it to be. It's my go-to game when I just want to sit down, listen to a podcast, and turn my brain off for a while.

https://rimworldgame.com/

I feel the exact same way. There's something about a pirated game that is just not as fun.

EDIT: I downloaded (via torrent) Dragon Age and played it for a couple of days. Somewhere deep down inside I just knew that if I had bought the game I would be enjoying it so much more, because it isn't a bad game. It has to do with the psychological principle of expected value. Basically the more you invest into something the greater enjoyment it offers. I do not have a peer reviewed source for this principle right now, but it's pretty common knowledge.

EDIT: Here is the citation for the article about sunk cost effect:

Arkes, H. R., C. Blumer. 1985. The psychology of sunk cost. Organ. Behav. Human Decision Processes 35(1) 124–140.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0749597885900494

I could not locate a free version of this article, but I thought this would at least add some credibility to my argument.

>Gibraltar: He likes to go on motorbike rides with his boyfriend

And what?, as I said it's just a character trait, the whole Gibraltar character doesn't revolve around him being a gay guy that likes to ride motorcycles with his boyfriend, personal relationships are a bigger central aspect in other legends. Wattson and his father, Crypto and his family, etc.

And btw this is Gibraltar's official description no mention of his boyfriend, and even if they mentioned it wouldn't be a problem at all.

>Gibraltar is a gentle giant with a wild side. The son of two SARAS (Search and Rescue Association of Solace) volunteers, he has always been skilled at getting others out of dangerous situations that are common in the Outlands. However, he only began to understand the value of protecting others when he and his boyfriend stole his father’s motorcycle, took it on a joyride, and got trapped by a deadly mudslide. His parents saved them, and his father lost an arm in the process. Gibraltar has never forgotten that sacrifice and has devoted his life to helping those in need.

Just under 750 up to about 800, according to others. It depends on how you count them, I suppose.

>the only ones that are not sequels from third parties. That doesn't exactly scream confidence from those developers

Come on, man. No platform is free from sequelitis. I can't even remember the last major title that came out for the PS3 or 360 that wasn't a sequel.

Not sure if it's quite what you're looking for, but I'll occasionally install "ProgressQuest" and let it run silently in the background for weeks to a couple months..... until the novelty wears off. There's literally nothing to it. It's a vaguely amusing "game". You can find it here: http://progressquest.com/. I've heard that it inspired Cookie Clicker (which I know next to nothing about).

From what I understand the CEO of Red 5 was completely indecisive and an utter dick. In forum post written by one of the developers they mentioned that the CEO would ask for a certain feature to be implemented, then leave for weeks at a time. This would mean that the developers implementing the feature would have to take certain liberties with the way the feature got worked in. The CEO would come back, say it was implemented wrong and that he wanted it this way, then leave again.

It honestly sounded like a cluster fuck. And after reading that post it makes a lot of sense at to why firefall didn't do so well.

Here's an article about the ridiculousness that went on ad Red 5. But it's not what I remember reading initially.

It's also incorrect. Civ V was never intended to be a console game.

http://www.gamefront.com/civilization-v-will-never-be-seen-on-consoles/

http://www.vg247.com/2010/07/09/interview-civilization-vs-dennis-shirk/

My guess is that he's using quite a bit of confirmation bias to fit that narrative, but there's never been any real proof to support that theory. It's actually disheartening to me to see his post get upvoted and getting the "thanks for enlightening me" kind of posts, when I feel like /r/truegaming should be a little better than the typical hivemind "console games are ruining everything" mindset. It's far more likely that they simply designed certain UI elements in a way that happens to bother certain people, which happens all of the time in software development, even if we're not talking about video games (and thus consoles would have nothing to do with anything). UI theory is complex stuff and sometimes people just don't get it completely right.

Huh, I googled a bit, and it seems they really do have a very elaborate annual report:

http://www.metacritic.com/feature/best-video-games-of-2012

http://www.metacritic.com/feature/best-video-games-of-2011

To quote the probably most relevant part for this topic:

> Just 14 console games—and 18 products overall, including PC and handheld (non-iOS) titles—scored 90 or higher in 2012. Those figures represent a huge drop from the previous year, when 23 console titles (and 32 games overall) met or exceeded the 90 mark. In fact, since we started publishing these year-end reports in 2009, we have never encountered such a low total number of great games in a single year.

>Oh I dunno, how about the literally dozens of women and male feminists who receive thousands of daily death and/or rape threats, with detailed personal information about their loved ones?

Specific examples please - who harassed who and when. As for death/rape threats one of the people from the anti-GG side looked into it in real time and haven't found anything, so I'm not convinced at all. Don't forget that you also need a proof that the person harassing these people is connected to gamergate - threats alone will not suffice as it's possible for anyone to make them.

>What about the threat that a GGer was going to commit a mass shooting at the recent Anita Sarkeesian lecture at Utah State University?

You have zero proof that this person was connected to gamergate. How do I know that? Because it was gamergate that tracked him down - it was a game journalist from Brazil.

>There are literally thousands of possible answers to your question.

Great! If there are so many, you should have zero problems with presenting them!

'One Chance' is relevant to this, though it's not a videogame...but if you complete the game, you cannot play it over again. Made me sad for a few moments since I ended up [staying in the park with my little daughter dieing, eyes closed.](/spoiler)

From what I remember reading they pre-recorded many common names and if your name matches one that they have recorded then it'll do it, otherwise it wouldn't.

I'm having trouble finding information about it but did find someone else talking about it happening in B&W2

That sounds a little entitled to me. You have to adapt to the market.

If you're going to turn your nose up at a totally flexible, versatile, and adaptable platform then you'll be stuck with whatever scraps are thrown at the consoles.

PC gaming isn't terribly difficult to get into. Plus, most games have controller support. The experience is virtually the same.

I'll bet you know at least 1 or 2 people that can help you out. Between them, /r/buildapc, and gaming subreddits it's not too tough. Once the system is built, it's pretty easy to maintain.

There are plenty of ways to gain access to the indie market through XBLA and Steam.

Hell, if you're really interested in the indie market, you'd be surprised what your rig can run. Check out your system requirements here

My most recent addiction is RockSmith so this is important question for me and even more important to the developer (as they want to make more games like this). Extra Credits has an episode on Gamification, if you don't know these people, they are great.

Ok, why use games as an instrument to help us do what we should already want to do? Especially things like guitar which are thought of as "fun" by themselves. The problem is with the human mind. We evealuate effort vs reward all day, every day. But there's a catch, we are hardwired to overvalue "close" rewards over distant ones. Why did you play games instead of study for that test? That's why.

Games allow us to short-circut this behaviour by giving us a (lesser) short term substitute which we can then add to the long term goal, allowing us to "choose" the correct option: to continue learning. Even if it is not rewarding in the near term.

As for these games, video games do one thing amazingly well: instant feedback. It's strong enough to become addicting. Things like testing memorization (Mnemosyne)[http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/] (computer aided flashcards), computers can figure out when and how often to test us so that we learn faster and retain the information longer with less effort. Mix this with a "game" which constantly pushes us to learn more and you might have a winner.

Here is a another question: what if we created a learning enviroment which wasn't restricted by subject. In which learning about the civil war would also teach physics and math, anatomy, interpersonal relationships, the history which surrounded it, and the moral and ethical struggles which it embodied? Why not allow the 'player' to pick up clues and require new ones from 'areas' they need to learn from? What if 'educational' seemed an unnecessary moniker and the game was interesting becuase of its content and not in spite of it?