rolling thread of stuff worth reading on videogames

^i love that book! it is as if the 60's hippie dream of no country boundaries where everything was free and shared was somehow made flesh by all those acid-dropping engineers.

yeah, it's great! been on my list for ages so i'm glad i finally got around to reading it

everything on jimmy maher's blog (filfre.net) is super worth reading, he's great

having now read quite of few of jimmy maher's articles i can confirm that he is indeed great

this one, on the utterly bizarre story behind the neuromancer videogame, is particularly good: https://www.filfre.net/2016/11/turning-on-booting-up-and-jacking-into-neuromancer/

was reading the good ol' sermon on the mount today and realized that jesus was talking about roguelikes in Matthew 6:19-21

“19 Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

jesus is basically pioneering the structure of a roguelike, where you always start back from level 0 but you can spend accumulated treasure to increase permanent attribute bonuses or to purchase starting items or whatever. heaven is HQ, life on earth is the temporary attempt

he's saying "spend some of that gold on this store here on the 4th floor, but don't forget to reserve most of it for after you die, where the bonuses are permanent. we should cut INT and boost CON"

i believe i am finally ready to accept jesus christ as my saviour

(massive bonus in exchange for in-game purchase)

Revelations is like some surreal text adventure

 After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.
> up

2 And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.
>examine throne

3 And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.
4 And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.
>touch throne with scepter

5 And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.
> extinguish lamps

6 And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.
> examine beasts

7 And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

>examine him on throne

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.
2 And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?

>look at book

3 And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.

>open the book

4 And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.

>give lion to elder

5 And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.

>feed seals to lion

6 And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.

>administer field sobriety test

7 And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne.

>give poison to elders

8 And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.

>sit on throne of god
>there’s someone sitting there!

>ask god to get up
>you can’t do that!

>craft throne
>you can’t do that!

>ask god to dance
>you can’t do that!

Man, revelations the game sucks, come on

Now that's something you don't often hear about Goldeneye. pic.twitter.com/WLMG4MnVv0

— Kat Bailey (@The_Katbot) March 10, 2018

Miyamoto otm

it is true that james bond kills at least 700 people in the course of a typical goldeneye playthrough

i made that stat up, but the number is high

that's a lot of handshaking. just impractical.

if only you could talk to sean bean and famke janssen, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them, form alliances... now that would be interesting

maybe he could just shake the hands of the doctors that just saved hundreds of lives and tell them to pass on his well wishes to victims

you know within 5 minutes of the patch coming out, someone would be repeatedly crouching behind sean bean's butt and triggering the handshake animation and over again

xxp, and I’ve said this before, the Book of Judges is totally a warhammer / RTS setting waiting to happen

someone should also consider an Old Testament inspired MOBA at some point imo

good piece on the increasingly prophetic metal gear solid 2 in the era of cambridge analytica: https://www.gamesradar.com/how-metal-gear-solid-manipulated-its-players-warning-us-of-an-age-of-fake-news-cambridge-analytica-and-data-surveillance/

i've been meaning to replay mgs2 for a while, i really need to get around to it soon

excellent piece

Interesting fact: the IDGA is against unionization for its members.

http://www.jetlaw.org/2018/03/24/unionization-within-the-video-game-industry-is-a-looming-threat/

I wonder what the real underlying rationale is here, other than “the leadership of the IDGA are clearly on the take from the publishers” - and of course it probably is that simple, or worse, they’re just sissies

This was good on the push for unions, GDC this year and the IDGA: https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/7xdv5e/after-destroying-lives-for-decades-gaming-is-finally-talking-unionization

tbf we're talking about an industry noted for the odd political maverick

Jen MacLean, IGCA’s executive editor, is worried unionization may improve working conditions, but may also have unintended consequences. While increasing game developer’s leverage, MacLean raised concerns of unions controlling the jobs developers take, the projects they work on, and potentially force companies to be understaffed. She also discussed union abuses in other industries, specifically the construction industry.

i mean i think it's pretty obvious the underlying rationale is def 'we are deathly afraid of the terrifying power of our capitalist overlords'

(also can we not call people 'sissies' pls)

I totally forgot the connotations my bad

Time to dust off the old craven poltroons

*lowers cudgel*

devvvine’s link is much better than mine btw, everyone should read the whole thing.

I’m now curious about what a national union for developers in games might mean for developers, period.

"MacLean raised concerns of unions controlling the jobs developers take, the projects they work on, and potentially force companies to be understaffed."

lol this is classsssssic union-busting rhetoric, based around confusing people about what labor contracts actually look like. you negotiate over conditions of work, you don't magically become the owners and management of the company (sadly).

i know i'm violating the principle of the thread here, but man speaking as someone who's loved jimmy maher's writing up until now, this series he's doing on civilization is excruciating. he's been regurgitating fukuyama for months now. god, i hope this isn't a shark-jump.

I’d buy an album titled Regurgitating Fukuyama

i googled "jimmy maher civilization" since i had no clue who he was, and the first thing that comes up is a post with a ludwig von mises quote at the top

oh, that's probably the post that prompted you to bump this, rushomancy! it does look excruciating. he was good in the past, i guess?

Fukuyama is pre-regurgitated iirc

most of his writing is good, yeah. his series on tetris is pretty great.

Had no idea Francis had written a book about Tetris, very interested in his lapsed neoconservative take

https://www.themillions.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/570_AmisTop.jpg

otm. he's usually a solid in-depth historian of pre-web games/computing culture, but this series on Civ has been painful, a liberal amateur history of everything that has happened. Started just fine when he was on home ground - business and personalities at Microprose, the narrative of development - but just flat summarising of ideas over the last few articles.

haha i've been trying to push back in the comments and i do appreciate him engaging with me but he ultimately concluded that we were talking past each other and that's kinda true because our premises/paradigms are soooooo different.

he is unbelievably worth reading on video games though.

in its worst moments, the civ series reminds me of precocious high school student essays on world history. huge armchair theories that explain everything, timeless correspondences where x always gives rise to y, economics/colonialism sidelined or inconsistently treated.... massive revenge of the grand narratives. he's so good on video games though. the best moments of the civ series still let that peek through, whenever he gets back to the actual game and tries to close-read the stories its mechanics are telling, he's on more solid ground. the first half of the most recent one on the game's economics is pretty good at doing a takedown of overly broad cross-time generalizations based on this game. maybe he's having second thoughts.

The idea to show the ideological premises of something like Civilization is awesome, but the last posts it's been more about explaining what he himself thinks about the world that Civilization doesn't explicitly agree with. The one on Religion was when I got off.

haha yeah I saw you there Dr C (thinking "hmmm is that the ilxor or another Dr Casino?"). He's so good natured, but it's a hard gap to cross.

yeah he's thoughtful and considerate and meticulous and thorough and usually has a lot to offer on any topic he addresses - but here he just doesn't seem to have anything to say that fukuyama didn't say already, which is a disappointment.

the thing is that the series has gotten me to think a lot about that game! and the kinds of assumptions baked into all such games. like the idea that the tradeoff mechanic is between cash, productivity, science research, and "luxuries"... he chooses to interrogate different aspects of that but it's really striking that it's "luxuries" and not "infrastructure" or "essential social services" or whatever. something that's passed by me unexamined since age 10, playing hundreds of hours of that game, and now to my eye strikes me as a profoundly reaganite way of thinking about the thing, a bunch of unnecessary goodies that are just placating people. IRL people don't turn to civil unrest and overthrow the government because of a lack of "luxuries" so on its face the game's logic is goofy. so, y'know, this got me thinking about that.

idk eventually he'll be done with civ and back to, i hope, deep dives on all kinds of crazy old gaming software and hardware history. when he's working in his own field the armchair theorizing is nowhere to be seen - he has this close-grained attention to the interrelationships between business decisions, personalities, technological developments, game genres., etc., that's so fantastic. you can learn mountains from practically any random article on there.

he is /unbelievably/ worth reading on video games though.

Yeah, he is great. Still great.

You guys are fuckin’ nerrrrrrrrrds

I want Mordy’s take now