The Gamer's Quarter

dhex · Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 8:12 am Post subject:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Special:Popularpages

giggle giggle snort snort
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dhex · Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 9:00 am Post subject:

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/04/25/who-really-gives-a-s.html

while i tend to agree about listening to albums all the way through, people will still make albums because that's how musicians tend to work. get a batch of shit together, hash it out, and voila. album.
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kirkjerk · . Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 1227

dhex · Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 10:08 am Post subject:

it is all about how you use it, and especially with "the kids these days." i was trying to explain this to my wife, who teaches freshman comp on the university level, that the reason they think wikipedia is an acceptable information source for academic work is not just because they're stupid. it's because it's part of what's always been around, and the barriers to entry are very, very low. it's a lot like music, or even games piracy, in that the work that has gone into it isn't real, so it's not seen as being real in any way, shape or form.

it is a bit disturbing that they don't realize an entry that anyone can edit may have structural difficulties, but there are (some) upsides to this enmeshing as well. someone i know tweaks his student advisement routines based on what he can glean from their facebook entries. me, i'm just happy not to have to deal with any of this shit firsthand - i got sick of explaining why wikipedia is not an acceptable source years ago.

anyway, retailers are slowly adapting to this along the lines of itunes, though it seems drm may prove unpopular enough with a sizeable minority to make that a bump in the road. now that labels are even adopting releases with varied artwork for shuffle play and whatnot - i.e. each song is tagged with a different image to show up on the ipod/itunes/etc screen - there's the view that a dollar or two in profits is better than zero dollars in profits. if people are going to download anyway, may as well make it possible to recoup some of those losses beyond touring.

and yeah, touring is going to continue to be the way people keep their heads above water. some do very well for themselves, despite being very small market. (i count a six figure income as "very well" for an independent musician)
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dhex · Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 10:43 am Post subject:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7379554.stm

whoa there fella!
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Swimmy · . Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 990 Location: Fairfax, VA

dhex · Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 1:07 pm Post subject:

yeah i think it's just their thing.

on the other hand it's pretty sad if getting laughed at is the lion's share of your hits.
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dhex · Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 2:22 pm Post subject:

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/126342.html

the vpc's at it again.

it is a very strange thing; to continually argue against obvious facts for the sake of an ill-defined policy recommendation that is far more complicated than they allow.

japan being the obvious example of place with low licit and illicit gun ownership compared to their suicide rate.
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dhex · Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 2:31 pm Post subject:

i am a little blown away at how this whole national gas tax amnesty load of hooey is actually - apparently - taken seriously by some people.
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dhex · Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 7:23 am Post subject:

scratchmonkey sent me murakami's "after the quake" - to be honest, i almost stopped reading at the end of the first short story because it was so damn new yorker fictiony. one could nearly hear the single, solitary tear being absorbed by a wispy mustache.

however, i soldiered on and i think it actually ended quite strong. i wish the entire collection of stories had been as solid as the last story, though.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Oh, hey, so... I should probably finish that then. I had the same experience as you but stopped!
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dhex · Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 2:44 pm Post subject:

the last story is worth the price of admission.
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Isfet · . Joined: 27 Oct 2006 Posts: 107 Location: A New York

that's the reaction i expected, dhex. actually, most people generally feel the same way. maybe they don't hate the other stories, but the last one is definitely the strongest.

i still say go for Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

dhex · Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 7:37 am Post subject:

ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh maybe.

also dude last night i returned the audio buddy preamp i got on saturday - because it either sucks terribly or was broken because i got virtually no signal whatsoever - and got a second (nicer) akg condenser. which of course needs a euro mic stand threader because apparently mic stands aren't universal! anyway, that's not the cool part - the cool part is that shitty acoustic i have actually sounds pretty fucking nice.

but i fotzed with that for a bit before grabbing a loop, pitching it down and tossing it through one of the amp modelers i have and holy shit instant doom metal.
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dark steve · . Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 1110

dhex · Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 1:27 pm Post subject:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/4878-Zero-Punctuation-Mailbag-Showdown

oh how i'd like to gay marry him. (i'd still be the boy though)
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dhex · Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 2:28 pm Post subject:

my bloody valentine tickets go on sale tomorrow morning. rumor has it mogwai will open.

wish me luck!
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dhex · Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 8:28 am Post subject:

wooooooooooooooooooot!
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Swimmy · . Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 990 Location: Fairfax, VA

dhex · Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 7:27 am Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 8:51 am Post subject:

http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=d8731cf4-e87b-4d88-b7e7-f5059cd0bfbd

worth reading.
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dhex · Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 12:35 pm Post subject:

http://www.massively.com/2008/05/12/player-vs-everything-putting-raiding-on-your-resume/

i think we're taking the whole "don't be ashamed of your hobbies" thing a bit too far.
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seryogin · Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 12:59 pm Post subject:

Man, just man.

When you post shit like this, I really want the human race to disappear, stop embarrassing the shit out of itself. At least you aren't linking to Gawker...
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

anecdotal, and limited, but from being around jayme's old roommate while she was raiding, and her friend that was big into wow too, I have a hard time imagining a lot of the guild officers not getting hurt if they spoke to others in person they way they do over teamspeak. "Don't grab the fuckin' pen!" just doesn't translate well.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

dhex · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:40 am Post subject:

the author posted what was basically a huge retraction on rock paper shotgun.

yeah, i guess you can build skills in worlds of warcraft. you can learn all sorts of things while doing all sorts of hobbies and whatnot.

none of which necessarily has to do with specifically marketing oneself to employers. or potential investors, for that matter.

as an aside:
what i find interesting about the critical reaction to grand theft auto is twofold -

1) pointing out the character really has no shot at starting a new life (just same old shit in a different day) either highlights a grander message from rockstar (i.e. you can't get away) or is a weakness in the series itself (not yet a sandbox, really).

2) i am continually amused at the whole "you can kill women / women of color and sex workers" as if men - and men of color as well as the colorless - aren't murdered at three times the rate of women. i know everyone has their thing, but when a conservative trots out that women are special and need protection, they're some kind of paternalist, sexist asshole. when the right kind of communist does it, well, that's just plain social justice or whatever.

they're both paternalistic, and for really good, deep down human reasons - women are a resource, and men are a cost.

edit: i ended up having an accidental conversation about this over the weekend with a colleague of my wife's whose sole takeaway about the game has been via leftish/feminist media sources. while i don't particularly have a problem with self-selection - it's how most people, especially those who define themselves as "well-informed" are going to learn about any subject - when it comes to media choices, i may only feel this way because it is far too tiring to actually have discussions with people about disagreements. for the record, i do no think games have any real impact on behavior beyond hand-eye coordination. were the case otherwise you'd have a whole slew of jrpg fans who were interested in - or even obsessed with - incremental personal development, instead of a gang of milquetoast wispy mustache types who turned my soul cancer gag into a neverending reality nightmare that i cannot escape. jokes aside, there'd at least be some measurable cultural responses beyond ha ha gags and lots of income burned up on nintendo remakes.

anyway, beyond that - and i think it ties into the whole WOW on your resume thing above, there is a cultural current (and tgq is at least a part of it) that has taken the "we love games and are not ashamed" thing over the cliff into retardo land, a kind of reverse jack thompson where games become a tool of social engineering and fluffy bunnies whose fluffiness is just so bunnifying.

i love music beyond reason. i love books to fucking death too. but they are not prime movers when it comes to social behavior. yet they were all treated as such, and still are in some cases, for any kind of larger social ill - be it rape, violence in general, violence from particular social quarters (i.e. rap trains men to rape or shoot each other or whatever), "female novels" creating uppity women or the dread currents of jazz music and the miscegenation it engenders.

or maybe i'm just emotionally sore because my wife explained that whole harry potter fandom which wizard house are you from and oh here's a matching scarf thing this weekend (i'd seen it in the stories about the recent lawsuit) and i'm still spitting up blood.
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seryogin · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 11:27 am Post subject:

I don't know what it is, mike, but you've been getting a lot better lately.

And, well, this is why I've become bummed on the whole enterprise of games journalism, just one retarded virtual gangbang. Shit, it's stuff like this that makes a universal draft and some kind of perpetual war seem like a good idea, get these people doing something productive with their lives (hell, put me on the list too, I could use some fresh air).

Sadly, that's not going to happen.
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kirkjerk · . Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 1227

seryogin · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 12:10 pm Post subject:

Jeez, you must get depressed pretty easy. They've got drugs for that, dude.

Guess I should've wished all those wonderful blogger guys an awesome time with plenty of other awesome dudes and dudettes. Maybe the Murakami route would've been best. All right, now then, perhaps we could draft all those bloggers into a perpetual New Yorker short story instead. Have them muddle around some New Hampshire shoreline, wondering about how all those damn pretty rocks symbolize the desiccated inner states of their neurotic marriages, perhaps we could throw in a few of those Raymond Chandler metaphors for an extra bit of punch. Man, am I on a roll, someone's MFA professor is going to be happy.
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Redeye · . Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 986 Location: filth

dhex · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 12:46 pm Post subject:

i thought the golden compass was too jesus-y for hipster abandonment?

i do try to speak from the best kind of ignorance possible - awesome ignorance.

dhex · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 1:08 pm Post subject:

in happier news, i do look forward to far cry 2 and clear sky with a hope that the open-ended fps will become bigger than life and twice as angry.
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Redeye · . Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 986 Location: filth

dhex · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 1:31 pm Post subject:

it's more like "i have no idea what's going on because when i was a kid i read books about world war 2 more or less exclusively."
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

dhex · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 2:11 pm Post subject:

mirror's edge looks good too.

but what i don't get - and this should probably be a tgq piece if i were able to make it so - is the whole "it's just a shooter" thing. shmups are just shooters. racing games are just racing. puzzle games are just a bunch of puzzles. adventure games are for people who can't afford valium. etc.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

If you're referring to my post as being a comment saying "it's just a shooter," well I would like to expand on it a bit because that's not what I meant. All I mean is that I would like to see the FPS playstyle explored outside of shooting also. I'm not attempting to discredit what is/will/has been made in the slightest.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dhex · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 2:49 pm Post subject:

well, i was thinking of it in the context in which it has often come up.

a lot of fps games are far more flexible now. many have moved beyond the core mission somewhat (a la stalker) but the central complaint, i think, is more against bad fps design. i do like the fps+ genre quite a bit - it may be the best thing ever - but i don't think most genres get the "it's just a [blank]" treatment nearly as much. why? i don't know.
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Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

I'd like to see FPS games with less, but much smarter enemies, to give a greater sense of being threatened by individuals with actual training and possibly personalities.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

dhex · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 3:12 pm Post subject:

that's one of the things about stalker's mutants that really worked out well. not seeing them that much at the beginning helped reinforce just how fucking crazy the place was.

unrelated:
http://www.creators.com/opinion/lenore-skenazy/cell-phone-holdouts-are-right-buy-a-phone-become-a-baby.html

i kinda wanna marry her, despite her being a columnist for the sun...and my being married...and her having a kid and being married...and uh stuff.
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kirkjerk · . Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 1227

dhex · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 3:22 pm Post subject:

this is dhex land so all insults have be phrased in the form of hilarity, guys. (i prolly shoulda said that sooner)

a crazypants story from my imaginary girlfriend's blog, http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/:

kirkjerk · . Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 1227

dhex · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 3:33 pm Post subject:

cod2 on the harder difficulties nailed this particular aspect of "war is fucking awful" quite well, for what it's worth, particularly in stalingrad.

it probably helps that i suck at games as a general rule so i experience that in a lot of titles.
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Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

That stuff happens when you're swamped by them too. Hell, that stuff happened a lot in Operation: Flashpoint, and that game was fucking awesome.

I don't see how having generally featureless respawning automatons is preferable to individuals with a sense of self-preservation, really. I'd like to see more of the latter, but I wouldn't necessarily want them in a context that's just pure warfare.

Say you're in an urban setting, and you're being tailed, but you don't know by whom. All you know is there's one, two, three of them. And you have to figure out who they are and how to best lose them or defeat them discreetly. Stuff like that.

I mean, Die Hard was a pretty cool film, you know?
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

kirkjerk · . Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 1227

kirkjerk · . Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 1227

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

dhex · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 4:59 pm Post subject:

the minimal hud/no hud thing is worth exploring. far cry 2 might start a trend, depending on how well they pull it off.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I guess all I'm saying is that I'd like to see other genres (other than shooters) in first person. Condemned kind of does this but in a haphazard sort of way. Elder Scrolls probably use this the most.

Also... theif 3 in first person.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"