i was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt at first but… i absolutely think said person is a grifter at this point. it just reminds me of multiple people who had extremely one dimensional, combative identity-based positions got elevated online in the trans community… and therefore they set the standards for the discussion which everyone had to react and respond to. said people often ended up being accused by other people in their community of abuse and mistreatment.
this is the same person that, by the way, was the person who initiated a twitter blow-up about racism within Game Workers Unite. which as far as i can tell from everything i saw, came out from one interaction which was either just genuine miscommunication/misunderstanding or someone who was on a committee somewhere saying slightly ignorant things and it being blown up into a larger thing. not that there weren’t plenty of issues with GWU (there are many) but i feel like at least a couple people kind of clung to that blowup opportunisitically as a hobby horse and it kind of torpedoed a lot of shit that was happening in there. i think there is a lot of shit that sunk the momentum of GWU (and i think it was kinda doomed from the start as a lot of kind of top-down movements are) but all that stuff certainly brought in all the Professional Strivers who just wanted to shit on the idea of unions and unionization from a position of moral authority. basically: it muddied the waters and certainly did not make things better or easier to fix.
having taught so many Chinese students now, and having learned a bit more about a lot of developers in China… it is like becoming more clear that there needs to be a place for broader understanding and acceptance of game economies in places like China or Korea, etc, and the struggles and dynamics that are faced by so many workers and artists there. it’s like untenable to be ignorant of something so huge and impactful if you wanna have an understanding of the industry at all. and in the context of GWU, obvs global solidarity is super important. which is why i find one-dimensional sanctimonious attempts to push a narrative that primarily relies on like… shame… as its carrier without really providing much context or acknowledging the like numerous dynamics that exist behind that really… tiresome. if we can’t grant people some humanity and agency within these systems then what is even the fucking point.
which kind of solidifies my point that these kinds of personalities are actually a huge liability to any sort of movement towards broader inclusivity… or better or more nuanced cultural critique. because they will make genuine tensions/debates fully about themselves, and destroy attempts at solidarity and holistic understandings. and there is very little to stop new people like this popping up and having a platform.
Finally playing EDF2 right now…I tried getting the PAL version to work a while ago, then it occured to me I don’t really need to be able to read or understand anything so I might as well go for the JP version. It is so atmospheric to play EDF with japanese voice acting and menus full of thick ass kanji. This might end up being my favorite one, it seems at least as good as 3/2017 which I have said is my favorite.
The default control scheme is really funny like on some japanese spyro the dragon shit, it auto aims vertically and there’s no right stick–sort of like doom on paper, but your whole torso/reticle/camera is getting jerked up and down to follow every ant on every distant building. They must have taken this out in the PAL version or else I feel like there’d be more people talking about it.
Playing Lord Monarch on SEGA Genesis right now.
Its apparently come out for everything
Its an RTS game with a pretty simple premise. You, build bases. Bases spawn units every day based on a hidden number, you have a variable tax rate that funds construction of things like fences and bridges and that tax takes from that 'maybe spawn a unit" number of each base. Each unit has a sort of energy number and each action they take (including walking) depletes it, it also stands in for HP. Units occupying the same square combine and their energy is added together. Units can build things like more bases, bridges over water etc or they can tear down said same things.
The commander / you can also leave the castle and destroy things way faster than units can but you cant collect taxes if you leave the castle and every second not spent on a a base or a road between your bases costs you energy you can only restore by going back to the castle.
Campaigns but not individual battles are time limited.
There are of course other features and hazards as time goes on.
You win by either killing the enemy commander or destroying all their bases.
The game has nice art, cute characters and 3 zoom levels.
Difficulty ramp is pretty gradual and pleasant and Ive def defeated a few foes in ways that felt unintended.
Time will tell if the difficulty ramping runs the game off a cliff and ruins the fun but for now I love it.
Played Star Citizen some today. Didn’t “do” anything, in terms of missions or money making or whatever, just kinda been kicking my way around Stanton.
First login was into my ship that I had logged out safely from only for my character to pull themselves up out of their bunk, through the hull, and out into space where they promptly began suffocating. Normally I’d have a space suit and helmet on, but I kinda lost them (along with a full set of light armor) when I bought myself a new set of clothes and equipped them while planet side.
A quick Alt-F4 and log back in saw me back on the planet I had left. Took all of about 45 seconds to reclaim my ship, check my inventory, and discover that my shit hadn’t been lost, I’d just misread the UI and left it in the local planetary inventory instead of the one attached to my character.
Eventually I got my shit together and started visiting random small stations around the system, doing little hops in my Aurora and familiarizing myself with the controls…which included figuring out why my ship’s maximum cruise speed kept creeping downward. Turns out there’s a little box on the HUD next to the throttle that sets how fast the ship will accelerate to, allowing you to keep your maximum speed under control for fine maneuvering with thruster inputs and cruise control, and wouldn’t you know it, you use the mouse wheel to adjust it. Fancy.
It would, however, had been nice to figure that out before I smashed my ship nose-first into the wall at the back of the landing pad, nearly crushing the cockpit and utterly wrecking the nose guns which were not covered by basic repairs, unfortunately, so they’ll need to be replaced.
I was, at my most recent port of call, able to buy all the attachments I’ve been meaning to for my pistol of choice…but not the pistol itself. So, as soon as I can get past the possessed elevators (fitting for a place named “Grim HEX”) I’ll be off in search of a handgun.
yeah, the pal version just has normal twin stick third person shooter controls.
this game has an enemy that for some reason wasn’t re-used for over a decade (i think it came back in that recent voxel-based edf game): the giant centipede that splits into segments
Game creators in South Korea, it’s more desperate.
The traditional video games I know which created by Korean, it’s not more than 10 after 2010.
I’ll turn this topic to some hopes and not anthropology, here’s a recommended of South Korean indie game. Not a innovative gameplay, but has unique vibe. I really like its music, but cannot found any OST video on youtube.
on this topic, the jury i was on had a South Korean indie game come up that we nominated for the IGF Nuovo award just this past year that’s def worth checking out btw:
That first big boss took me 10 tries on hard, I had to give my sweet, 5 levels above everyone else demon girl Leanan Sidhe a fish’s soul so she could learn Bufu, I also got a bunch of dampeners from Gustave to cancel fire weaknesses, so the mermaid could scream a lot and neko shogun stack kundas before they got the hell out of the battle when the dampeners ran out
JRPGs…………
I went through one year of Sakuna: of rice and ruin this Thursday then made sushi in real life, and it felt like I had made the rice myself. Growing rice is so deep and there’s so many steps to do and info in that game that I don’t even care about making superb rice anymore, I just want to make OK rice. I don’t have it in me to find good fertilizers to counteract rice blight AND pests BEFORE they become a problem
Beat Guardians of the Galaxy last night. What a hoot of a game. Hell of a story/presentation, just a shame the shooting never really clicked for me.
I also had the unfortunate luck of having my “huddle songs” never be, y’know, blood-pumping stuff like Motley Crue or even Bonnie Tyler, but again and again Bobby McFerrin. C’mon, game
Anyway! Hell of a game, probably just recommend cranking the difficulty down and just enjoying the story. The combat just isn’t fun enough for how bullet sponge-y everything is.
I have now sampled every Gameboy game released in 1989 and 1990. Many are bad but endearing, such as the Godzilla game that opens with a slideshow of photorealistic monsters before revealing itself to be a very poor riff on Lode Runner. These are the games I would probably make if someone paid me. I love them.
I played more of Penguin Wars. I love how every character AI is a little different, showing off the possible strategies one might take. @HOBO, it is a Beautiful Game.
I also played more of Dr. Mario. This time, it clicked with me. A certain amount of germs at a high enough speed feels impossible, but the game lets me pick whatever I want. The ending is eerie and beautiful.
I’m still playing The Final Fantasy Legend. Now that I understand the structure of the game and the Tower’s place within it, I am fully drawn into its world. It’s so evocative. There are so many worlds contained within it. There’s a hellworld where people tell me they must suffer in order to reach paradise. There’s a paradise with no shops because nobody works. There’s a world filled with statues: some hold items, some trigger fights, and others drop little warnings. I didn’t know I would love this game so much.
All’s I’m sayin’ is that “Don’t Worry Be Happy” doesn’t exactly get the blood pumpin’, haha. Felt the same way when the game would play “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and I love that song.
That said, the game did choose to blast Jefferson Starship and Wham! during two very intense boss fights, so it worked out more often than not.
it is kind of gratifying to hear this, because i played this game a ton as a kid and it always felt kind of haunted for this reason. later on i was convinced that it was all in my head, and the little character designs and animations were just convincing me there was more going on than there actually was.
I probably have not played Penguin Wars since I was a kid but I very vividly remember that rat motherfucker and his strategy of ball carpet bombing and every time I would stunlock that asshole were the only times I would truly be happy
Still playing GTA 3 “Definitive” and having a good time going back to it. I’m at 41% completion and going to try and get it wrapped up by tomorrow so I can move on to Vice City.
Here’s a good video showing the weird rain effect and discussing some of the other problems with these versions.
I managed to find a spot on the first island where you can fall through the ground and land inside the tunnel below. Other than that, the hard crash during the vigilante missions and the weird rain effects I’ve not noticed any other bugs. No weird body-geometry distortions going on like people are reporting in San Andreas or goofy misspellings on the signage or anything like that. It’s been pretty, well, adequate for the most part I guess is how I’d describe it.
I do wish they had put some more thought into the presentation and art style. I wish they would have kept each game with it’s own distinct look and not flattened everything into being so similar. I wish they’d been able to keep all the music etc.
It’s depressing that these “definitive” versions of the games are basically replacing the original versions on all the digital store fronts. It would have been nice to have had the option to switch between the old visuals and the new visuals like those first two Halo Anniversary versions did.
At least there is the community to pick up the slack for anyone willing to seek out a version closer to the original experience.
