The Gamer's Quarter

dhex · Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 9:37 am Post subject:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_150/4911-The-Myth-of-the-Media-Myth

this actually isn't terrible, even if harvey smith's soundbite at the end comes across like he's a jerkoff. (comparing a serial soap like desperate housewives to addiction in any sense is dumb, if not actually irresponsible.)

but what i wonder about, and i truly do wonder about this, is why everyone has to be included in the category of people who like games. it can't all be economic, so some of it is emotional. a need to be loved or respected? i don't know.

not every thing is for everyone. and that's the actual super duper good part of this supposedly fractured, horrible world we live in. you do what you want. i do what i want.

of course, in a perfect world people would understand that employing the state to enforce your choices over others when their own choices do not actually interfere in your life is coercive and morally wrong, but as far as this stuff is concerned (entertainment and the like) i think we're pretty close to ok on that. jack thompson is a joke, the moral majority is being reconfigured back into its original incarnation as a progressive christian left (with some systemic hybridity) and andrea dworkin is dead. art is safe. games are safe. they've learned the lesson of all the other major entertainment industries - every 4 years someone has to pick on you in order to keep their boots on. such is life, send in your donations and tone down the child murder.

but i guess my actual question is this: why are game developers, artists, students and nascent academics so desperate to be loved beyond their actual audiences? especially the academics - i don't think i've ever heard a film studies kid actually expect to engage the public in any real way.* and yet game folk still fall over each other, year after year, trying desperately to be loved.

*such is the similarity between monastic orders and academic pursuits. neither is meant to engage with the public in any real way.
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dhex · Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 12:49 pm Post subject:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/958879,CST-NWS-mell20.article

gee it's almost like the powerful aren't subject to their own rules. weird!
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seryogin · Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 8:07 am Post subject:

http://www.takimag.com/site/article/mishima_postpaleo_of_nippon/

Raimondo+Mishima = makes sense, in some ways, if you take his love for Putin-style Russian nationalism and Catholicism into account. Though the pairing makes me aesthetically uncomfortable.

dhex · Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 11:26 am Post subject:

that's not a bad piece from the prince of froth.

man, taki's rag makes me laugh sometimes:

To the dismay of her more enthusiastic admirers, this popularity doesn’t indicate total agreement with her “Objectivist” philosophy so much as it is a tribute to the author’s talent for telling a rip-roaring fasten-your-seatbelts story.

seryogin · Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 11:51 am Post subject:

Man, I was just about think that Raimondo was an okay guy. And then you linked that. Thanks for bringing me back to Earth. This just further cements that Rand was the Xenogears of the nerds of yesteryear. Atlas Shrugged must look good to a 15-year-old, but I couldn't get through ten pages without putting it away (the same with Fountainhead). There was something very comic book-like, in the corniest, most ham-fisted sense, about the way she set the scene in those books, I even considered reading on for the pure comedy of it all. Though reason won out and into the garbage they went.
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dhex · Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 12:08 pm Post subject:

a friend of mine is trying to get me to promise to read atlas shrugged just so, when i make fun of it, i can honestly say i read it.

i do not think so. this summer i'm going to read up on game theory and try to teach myself soldering and some math. i don't know if i have enough room for cardboard in there.
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daphaknee · Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 12:12 pm Post subject:

no dont listen to them you know enough to make fun of it, so why read it?

dhex · Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 12:16 pm Post subject:

out of an antiquated sense of fairness.
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daphaknee · Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 12:25 pm Post subject:

look im telling you i tried to read the fountainhead and its unfair that they want you to read ayn rand in hte first place

kirkjerk · . Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 1227

TIME TO RECYCLE MY FUNNY JOKE!!!!

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BIOSHOCK AND ATLAS SHRUGGED???

ONE OF THEM HAS CHARACTERS RENDERED IN THREE DIMENSIONS!
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=/ \(<D)_/
==/\/ >_ kirkjerk.com

dhex · Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 1:19 pm Post subject:

it may be unfair, but life isn't fair.

after all, i read the murakami collection too, in the interest of fairness. and i like burroughs, whose characters are really just stand-ins for routines and ideas.
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dhex · Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 1:36 pm Post subject:

http://www.justicefortracy.com/

in case you know anyone with 20 bucks burning a hole in their pocket that they'd just waste on anime or something.
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dhex · Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 7:38 am Post subject:

on that note:

http://www.wbns10tv.com/live/content/local/stories/2008/05/21/foster_interview.html?sid=102

there's a joke here to be made about not following g. gordon liddy's advice, but it's a little obvious.
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dhex · Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 12:32 pm Post subject:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/57-Painkiller
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dhex · Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 7:14 am Post subject:

http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/12/20/

man, suck really was fuckin' great.
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kirkjerk · . Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 1227

dhex · Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 8:24 am Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 10:46 am Post subject:

you know, after all these years, i'm still blown away at how shitty dragonforce is.
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Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

Our bathroom is an odd mixture of aqua, lemon yellow and avocado. I love it.

dhex · Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 11:35 am Post subject:

that does sound soothing!
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Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

http://uk.reuters.com/article/filmNews/idUKL2344657520080523
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

dhex · Posted: Sat May 24, 2008 6:45 am Post subject:

they spent 2.3 seconds thinking up that headline.
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dhex · Posted: Sat May 24, 2008 2:49 pm Post subject:

http://charleswjohnson.name/essays/libertarian-feminism/

agree or disagree, these folk have a good grasp on their history.
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Redeye · . Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 986 Location: filth

I was doing a search on mentats for a Fallout thread, and found:

"... black mentats..."

Scroll down if the intro is boring.

I think "The Doom Projectors" would be a great name for a band.
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I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.

dhex · Posted: Sat May 24, 2008 5:05 pm Post subject:

what curious quotation marks
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Redeye · . Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 986 Location: filth

Too bad you need JSTOR or similar access... this is some apocalyptic shit that would be way
fun to discuss on the Fallout boards. I remember when this shit was going on.
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I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.

dhex · Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 9:11 am Post subject:

man, that is a totally 80s type of paper.

i miss my jstor access. Sad

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dhex · Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 9:23 am Post subject:

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/connecticut/ny-bc-ct--policeshooting-ea0524may24,0,4357668.story
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dhex · Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 8:51 am Post subject:

oooh creepy.

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/126702.html
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dhex · Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 10:59 am Post subject:

there are ups and downs to being self-taught in a number of things. you learn in a natural kind of way, but you also miss a lot of things. i missed "don't try to catch a soldering iron that's been on for 10 minutes" and am now contemplating a life where i just play kalimba and maybe busk for change.
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dhex · Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 10:52 am Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 12:39 pm Post subject:

http://fallout3.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/fallout-3-more-from-tgr/

specifically:

http://fallout3.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/800x600_prop.jpg

fire hydrant? i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
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Isfet · . Joined: 27 Oct 2006 Posts: 107 Location: A New York

hmm.

i still haven't played either Fallout, but i'm under the impression that they had a sense of humor, in spite of the setting, right?

dhex · Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 12:03 pm Post subject:

absolutely. the fire hydrant thing is a bit afield, not like the ghoul harold and his tree (growing out of his head)

more music reviews, in which i talk about post-metal and why will oldham is ok with girls now:

http://dhex.wordpress.com/2008/05/30/isis-in-the-absence-of-truth-mouth-of-the-architect-ties-that-blind/

http://dhex.wordpress.com/2008/05/30/bonnie-prince-billy-lie-down-in-the-light/
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dhex · Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 8:44 pm Post subject:

http://i.electronics-directory.org/css/police/police_13.jpg
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dhex · Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 8:45 pm Post subject:

http://seorant.ath.cx/police/ladybird.html
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Redeye · . Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 986 Location: filth

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

I cracked up at one comment, and then saw it was dhex's. There is something entertaining about a genuine "fuck them" coming in amongst a bunch of finger wagging and humph!ing. Although this did remind me why I hardly ever read the comment sections on websites - I don't like the feeling of wanting to choke someone on my weekends.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

dhex · Posted: Sat May 31, 2008 8:18 pm Post subject:

The more connected you are to the real world, and the more consciously you reject the lure of the speculative ladder, the less of a willing dupe you’ll be in the pyramid scheme that’s in the process of collapsing all around us at this moment.

i think he's wrong in a lot of places, but this is one thing that cannot be stressed enough.
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Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1022840/Al-Qaedas-terrifying-vision-devastated-America-wake-nuclear-attack.html
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

Redeye · . Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 986 Location: filth

kirkjerk · . Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 1227

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

dhex · Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 7:09 pm Post subject:

ugh. what a bunch of bedwetters.

and yeah hit and run's comments section is a fucking wasteland; the offshoots and outgrowths have been far more interesting.
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Swimmy · . Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 990 Location: Fairfax, VA

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

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

seryogin · Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 7:20 am Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 8:07 am Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 1:35 pm Post subject:

the "i will actively campaign against barack" hillary supporters are the new "i'm moving to canada if bush wins."

pass it on.
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