Jump to content

Videogames 2023: Dreams of the Sandbox Kings


IlyaP
 Share

Recommended Posts

I picked up Monster Train in the steam sake and have been having a pretty good time figuring it out. As to the inevitable comparisons with Slay The Spire I definitely think Spire is the deeper, more strategic game but Monster Train is a ton of fun and has excellent systems for tracking progression through all sorts of metrics which are just the kind of things that keep me playing and experimenting in a game like this, though how far I'll play beyond the 100% completion point I'm not sure to be honest. I don't really see it as the kind of game I'm gonna want to keep playing for years and hundreds/thousands of runs the way I have with Spire but not every game needs to be that, and I appreciate the uniqueness Monster Train brings on how it diverged even as it jumped on the deck building hype train to make something new and different. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been playing a lot of Last Epoch lately while I wait for Diablo IV to release. Really good game. It's nice balance between PoE and Diablo without being a direct copy of either. It's still early access and they just released multiplayer this month so a bit of a ways to go but for an early access game, it's incredibly polished. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey, me too! I've dipped into Last Epoch a few times but the new .9 version finally got me to keep at it. Very fun game.

I still have a lot of issues with it, and am mostly bored of the uninteresting endgame grind. Monoliths are a great idea with some ability to hunt certain item needs, but the game needs a few more carrots for me to chase. That said, I find the leveling process a ton of fun, with relatively simple rerolling and a great in game loot filter. 

I'd prefer the vast complexity and vast lore of POE, but that game's hyper speed screen exploding game play, then bosses with very unclear arenas and mechanics finally has me retired til POE2. 

I am literally playing it today instead of the D4 beta. Both due to my old 1060 struggling, and generally disliking the console dumbing down that is D4's awful itemization, astonishingly ugly UI over a gorgeous game, and current terrible character balance.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Poobah said:

I picked up Monster Train in the steam sake and have been having a pretty good time figuring it out. As to the inevitable comparisons with Slay The Spire I definitely think Spire is the deeper, more strategic game but Monster Train is a ton of fun and has excellent systems for tracking progression through all sorts of metrics which are just the kind of things that keep me playing and experimenting in a game like this, though how far I'll play beyond the 100% completion point I'm not sure to be honest. I don't really see it as the kind of game I'm gonna want to keep playing for years and hundreds/thousands of runs the way I have with Spire but not every game needs to be that, and I appreciate the uniqueness Monster Train brings on how it diverged even as it jumped on the deck building hype train to make something new and different. 

Agreed Slay the Spire is a much better game but Monster Train is fun. It’s just a bit too heavy into the degenerate combos and a bit light in fair decks squeaking through. Slay the Spire even on ascension 20 you have a chance with good play and bad luck but Monster Train I felt was just too much riding on whether I got disgusting combos over the crap cards.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Eh. I also find Trowling repulsive and would rather not give her terfy empire financial support. 

I don't do Twitter. What is a terfy? Is that a real word or just some blathetic made-up blubberish bullshit sprung from TwitTok that you bark onto a keyboard through a stream of pavlovian neuroses? 

Real question. I've gone on record just the other day that I'm very very interested in NewSpeak. 

 

Eta: supplemental inquiry-

Is "terfy" a self-identified association or designation by Ms. Rowling or YOUR word? 

 

Edited by Secretary of Eumenes
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I got home from work this morning and checked Diablo IV. No queue so I jumped right on and played for like 3 hours. Shit was really fun and it makes me wanna try the other ones. 

I played as a Rogue, and gonna at least do one other class before the beta is done. I’m in.


Also, the Ravenclaw common room is pretty top notch! Had no clue it had an entrance from the top so I could’ve just flew right in.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know there's quite a big demarcation between online discourse and real life, but I don't understand how one can be on the internet, and be involved enough to know the Potter game but not know about Rowling's bigotry. Like how are you someone who has a username and online handle, but not have come across that battleground. 

 

Anyway, Dredge is coming out later in the week, that looks cool as shit. Eldritch horror fishing game, getting excellent reviews. Will have to give the demo a go.
 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

but not have come across that battleground. 

I think it's pretty easy. There's lots of people who are interested in Harry Potter games who are not interested in political, cultural, or social controversies, and the game was advertised everywhere, so even non-fans have heard of it. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

'Bigot' is a word I'm familiar with. My mother is a bigot. Literally today repeat-blurted a slur word describing Asians that she enjoys from the series Deadwood and got offended when neither I nor her husband laughed. She used to prompt me to repeat racist jokes that a father-figure of hers would tell, when I was a small (traumatized) child. She thought this was high comedy. Called me several derogatory forms of 'gay' a dozen different times during my teen years because I played sports but didn't go around lookin to  "fuck bitches, braaah!" 

I know what Bigot means. I was born in South Carolina. I know what racism looks like, actual racism. 

My momma has a lifetime membership with the KKK, paid for as a gift by that father-figure. 

She also has MS and can't take a shit by herself and hasn't had a friend in almost a decade. 

I still take care of her when it's my turn. Because she's my mother, and she saved my sister and I from state custody when literally nobody else would take us in.  And I don't have to buy in to (or allow to pass unchallenged) her ugliness in these matters. But I still take care of her when it's my turn. Even when she starts moaning about how "if only you'd told me you were trans..." as she tries to rewrite history as if all of what I described above never happened. 

 

J.K. Rowling, from what I'm able to comprehend out of this inanity... like, made a tweet? Or was it two tweets? 

Or wait, she liked a tweet? Or something? Something, something, twitter twitter? 

I ain't never met the lady. I ain't never seen a video of her saying people like me, Trans people, ain't allowed to like her stuff. Ain't never seen a quote attributed to her that suggests as much.

I read her books. Many, many times each. And they helped heal a broken little boy who didn't have access to anything else in his life worth having. Gave me an ambition I could follow optimistically with the intention to help heal other people with my own stories some day like I was healed. 

Now, it turned out that I was trans. I listened to the books on audible about six years ago while I was doing my driving job, after I was on hormones for several years, and never heard a word that would suggest anybody anywhere would be unwelcome to enjoy those stories. There's, at one point I recall, a silly bit on The Gang's way to the Quidditch World Cup where this batty old wizard is wearing a dress as his muggle disguise. One of the more muggle-conscious wizards tries to explain that this is a ladies garment: at which point the dress dressed wizard explains he doesn't care because "it allows a nice breeze to my privates." Or something to that effect. I don't have my physical copies of the books anymore, can't quickly confirm that; they were destroyed when my parents' basement flooded while I was in the Army. 

Is ^that^ supposed to be the grand proof that this woman despises people like me? I read it when I was a kid and laughed. It didn't hurt me. If J.K. Rowling said tomorrow that she hates trans people it wouldn't hurt me. Not physically, not practically. Certainly not any more than the actual, practical, laws being made in my country to marginalize folks like myself do. 

Orson Scott Card is famously homophobic. Explicitly. Because, in his own words, he has made this part of his character known. Not by association, 'liking' or 'following' people on Twitter. By making public issue of his anti-gay opinions. 

When Ms. Rowling does that, preferably in a forum that isn't a toxic hellhole where semi-literates timeline stalk people trying to prove their moral superiority for their own audience... you let me know. 

 

And, by the way, I read Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind with the full knowledge that Mr. Scott Card most DEFINITELY would not like me 

And I thank him for his art. Xenocide is one of my favorite books. I mentioned on this forum not that long ago that it's a permanent member of the UJ (United Jaces) Top Ten Book Council. Because it is. (The top-ten council is a joke, but it is one of my favorite books) 

Are you gonna tell me that's wrong? Because I feel like that's what you're stopping just short of. 

Strongly, strongly, implying that I'm doing something wrong by enjoying art. Actual, real, speaking-to-something-in-or-about-the-human-spirit art

And if you're not doing that. You're not trying to imply some kind of failing on my part... well, please help me understand. Because I'm obviously confused. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Ran (whom I admire greatly) 

I, of course, have seen folks call her "TERF" and pronounce her a bigot. 

What I have never seen is why I'm supposed to believe... except that just because I'm, apparently, supposed to. That's not how I live my life. 

I use the internet to come here, my estuary where I can engage with literate folks of an almost inherently bookish bent 

To track football "news" (let's call it "happenings")

 And I watch YouTube videos. Mostly, though not exclusively, Sabine Hossenfelder videos on science as well as lectures by Stephen Kotkin or other historians/political commentators who share their knowledge and opinions with the capacity to follow-through with a point or lesson that is worth learning. 

That's what I do instead of obsessing over what other people have 'liked' or 'followed' on an exploitative algorithm machine that employed arbitrary character limits to confuse folks into thinking they're pithy. 

Eta: I forgot Professor Kotkin is of the unleavened heretics. Spelling. 

Edited by Secretary of Eumenes
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In an interesting move, the long-brewing legal case between games designer Chris Avellone (Fallout 2, KotOR 2, Fallout: New VegasPillars of EternityAlpha ProtocolNeverwinter Nights 2Planescape: Torment) and two women who had accused him of sexual misconduct has been resolved, and overwhelmingly in his favour. The two women issued a statement disavowing all of their prior claims, and they have had to pay a seven-figure settlement to him. In the statement they also requested that the blacklisting that has been going on against him be dropped.

This was an unusual case in that Avellone vociferously defended himself from the off, took legal action against the accusers and has now won, fairly unambiguously. Avellone was removed from several projects as a result of the claims, including high-profile writing gigs on Dying Light 2 and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 as well as a plethora of smaller-profile gigs.

Very interesting to see how the media responds to this. Multiple venues repeated the allegations against Avellone instantly, but, despite the news breaking hours ago, none of them apart from Forbes seem to have updated the news that the allegations have been retracted.

It is of course worth noting that the Avellone case being resolved successfully has no bearing on the very numerous and many cases where people have acted like total shitbags and have admitted it, or been found out anyway (the Avellone case broke the same week as Cas Anvar's, and Anvar never tried to defend himself at all, as with 20 accusers over a far vaster span of time, the weight of the allegations was astronomically higher).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Secretary of Eumenes said:

J.K. Rowling, from what I'm able to comprehend out of this inanity... like, made a tweet? Or was it two tweets?

Rowling has made a great many tweets, but also written articles and letters, and used her influence, and most importantly to the discourse around the Hogwarts game her money to support anti-trans causes and groups. It's not that she is bigoted on a personal level which, sure means I wouldn't want to be her friend, but on a political one. She's a major voice in the so-called "culture wars" that have already had real-life negative impacts on the lives of trans people in the UK.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Ran said:

I think it's pretty easy. There's lots of people who are interested in Harry Potter games who are not interested in political, cultural, or social controversies, and the game was advertised everywhere, so even non-fans have heard of it. 

 

Sure, I know plenty of people who haven't scoped the controversy, but they're not active members on internet forums. 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Secretary of Eumenes said:

If J.K. Rowling said tomorrow that she hates trans people it wouldn't hurt me. Not physically, not practically. Certainly not any more than the actual, practical, laws being made in my country to marginalize folks like myself do. 

 

I mean, that's one way to look at it, but Rowling actively campaigned against trans rights in Scotland, and is a huge figurehead for the movement making those kinds of laws. In the UK especially, but when she's shouting out Matt Walsh for his views on the issue, she's gone a little bit further than just 'liking a couple of dodgy tweets'.

 

Like, if your views on separation of art from the artist are different, and the books are important to you, neither me nor Ilya nor anyone else can hold that against you, for sure. But this game didn't become the cultural battleground it did out of nowhere. It's weird and bizarre that it did, but Rowling made herself this figurehead on purpose. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Like, if your views on separation of art from the artist are different, and the books are important to you, neither me nor Ilya nor anyone else can hold that against you, for sure. But this game didn't become the cultural battleground it did out of nowhere. It's weird and bizarre that it did, but Rowling made herself this figurehead on purpose. 

I maintain a policy to each their own, as I know the Potterverse (if that's the term to use?) means a lot to some people - including to friends of mine over here in Kangaroostan who grew up in that media ecosphere of the books, the movies, etc. It just never personally spoke to me, so I was never particularly invested in any of it to begin with. Rowling's later emergence as a representative for politicals views with which I disagree furthered my disinterest in her creative endeavours. But as always, de gustibus non est disputandum, y'know? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, polishgenius said:

I know there's quite a big demarcation between online discourse and real life, but I don't understand how one can be on the internet, and be involved enough to know the Potter game but not know about Rowling's bigotry. Like how are you someone who has a username and online handle, but not have come across that battleground. 

I remember I saw something about tweets years ago, but I came away with the impression she was just an out of touch old lady. Sorta like my dad, I assumed she'd never want to hurt trans people for their choices but just grew up with the idea that you can't change your gender and had a hard time adapting. My dad won't accept that pluto isn't a planet either. 

But yeah apparently she's more activly bad and not even as old as I thought. 

Resident Evil 4 has been a weird experience. I was very excited for it and then it is awesome but it's also just....resident evil 4? Which I just replayed a couple months ago. I don't know what I was expecting and that's my fault. 

The Last Spell meanwhile falls into that "learned the mechanics and now it's less fun as we grind" trap. I could probably set up some kinda script to fake input and level everything up real quick. I won't, but the problem is that I even wanted to. 

I know there are other maps, but I don't know how to unlock them.

So the goal of the game is to protect the mages casting the titular "last spell." Ok so I do that. It's hard because the "seal" doesn't have much HP. I can see that more mages will grant it more HP, but not how to get more mages. 

It turns out to get two mages you have to let the thing you're supposed to defend at all costs fall, twice. All my game overs were "your heroes died." because like....AT ALL COSTS. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Poobah said:

 

 

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

 

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

 

I think there's some confusion: I'm not telling you you should like, or even not-dislike J.K. Rowling for her opinions. Please don't think I'm doing that. I don't like J.K. Rowling- I've never met her, and if I ever do meet her by then I'll be the young writing phenom and she can feel however she wants about me. I don't need her approval to be an awesome writer.

And I don't need her approval to cherish her stories. I don't need anyone's approval, because I make up my own mind. Based on what I feel, what I believe, and what I know. 

And what I know is that there is nothing in a Harry Potter book that should make anybody but a Death Eater feel unwelcome to them. There is nothing -barring some kinda horrid final boss or something, I haven't beaten it- in the Hogwarts game that should make anybody but a School Shooter feel unwelcome to it. 

The thing that irks me about this is that there IS an implicit pressure -on this subject- to condemn Rowling. I'm not talking about Death of the Author or whatever, neither. Where you're giving me permission to like the books while disliking the woman. Nah, no thanks. I don't know her. I don't have to condemn or dislike her just because it's three-on-one. 

Even bad, failed, or perhaps just wrong (maybe she's just wrong!) people are capable of good and noble deeds. That's, like, one of the great messages of the later books. Reinforced many times over. You have to let people be wrong. You have to let them fail, and sometimes to have even been actively bad. You have to remember that not everybody's life was your life, that people can change and become better for it. 

But they won't if you never give them a chance. Why would they? Why SHOULD they? And giving people a chance to become better, or to maybe just learn better, should not come with prerequisites to apologies and grovelings in the "public square"- not in any interaction I wanna be a part of. 

Ms. Rowling is entitled to her opinions and her writings- ESPECIALLY if I don't like them. I won't hate her for it. I don't have to.

2 hours ago, Poobah said:

Rowling has made a great many tweets, but also written articles and letters, and used her influence, and most importantly to the discourse around the Hogwarts game her money to support anti-trans causes and groups. It's not that she is bigoted on a personal level which, sure means I wouldn't want to be her friend, but on a political one. She's a major voice in the so-called "culture wars" that have already had real-life negative impacts on the lives of trans people in the UK.

Frankly, I looked at the GLAAD list of charges against her and the only thing that I really even gave half-a-fuck about was that she wrote that book with the crossdressing serial killer. Which is cringe, and I already knew about- but... Well... I'm writing a book right now in which an character is dehumanized and psychologically conditioned to stop seeing himself as a person, and instead as a thing. While being tortured and sensory nulled. Later, the evil scientist in charge of the program collects this... thing... and on the super-secret mission decides it still has enough going on sentience/personality-wise to treat them like a pet instead of a thing. Gives their new pet a name and decides it's gonna be a girl pet, because the evil scientist is fucking evil 

Am I not allowed to write my story, or try to have it published, because that depicts a transition in a bad light or something? Even though that poor, abused, character is secretly the hero. The only hero in the entire story? Or because I might suggest that a scientist/authority figure might not have a gender-nonconforming person's best interests at heart? Because that's what the GLAAD report on Ms. Rowling reads like. Block after block of text that really boils down to 

"She said or wrote THIS and if we had said or wrote it we would have said THAT."

And frankly, my response is that if they want THAT then they should go fucking write THAT. 

Prolly can't tho huh? Not in a way people wanna read, eh? 

It takes nothing to say "I woulda wrote it like thiiiiiiis" 

Mr. Martin stole my name for a Hellenic princeling in my Magnum Opus. He stole it by beating me to get his art completed and produced/published. That's a challenge for me to make sure he doesn't beat me again. If you're so concerned with Rowling's productions, that they're anti-trans and whatnot, beat her to the ball. Being anti-Rowling isn't going to give anybody anywhere anything except a feeling of righteousness and/or rage. Being pro-trans, POSITIVE actually gives people something on which they can build instead of destroy. 

J.K. Rowling is not the First Order. She isn't a Nazi and she isn't Donald Trump or an elected official. She's a person. You credit her with too much power, that's why her game has power over you. 

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

Sure, I know plenty of people who haven't scoped the controversy, but they're not active members on internet forums. 

It's less that I haven't heard of it. I've just never heard of anything worth the seething hate I see in response to the woman's name. Sorry, that's just how I feel. Also, Bloomberg said...

Quote

The legislation, which passed its first Holyrood vote by 88 to 33 last week, includes proposals that will remove the requirement for someone to obtain a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria before they can seek a gender recognition certificate (GRC).

Now the whole Trans-Raping-in-Bathrooms thing? Yeah, it doesn't happen. But you are allowed to be afraid of things, even irrationally. I'll remind that Ms. Rowling was raped. She's allowed to be wrong without having people send her death threats. Stating her opinion, and writing about the influences on said opinion, is NOT THE SAME as causing harm. 

 

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

I maintain a policy to each their own, as I know the Potterverse (if that's the term to use?) means a lot to some people - 

 

I ain't really got much else to say, just that I don't identify with any Potterverse or what have you. I cherish the books, adore the films, and... Yeah, that's it. Those things, plus refuse to join in the tearing down of somebody I don't know and -surely- don't fully understand when I have thousands and thousands of pages of their art to reference that however wrong, misinformed, or outright irrational they may be about something: that doesn't define her on everything

 

Edited by Secretary of Eumenes
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...