Rather Infrequent Open Thread (All Gaming News Edition)
Are you a “game photographer”?
That is: do you screenshot the living heck out of every game you play? Rock, Paper, Shotgun would like to know.
The current state of smartphone and tablet gaming.
Basically: Apple’s iOS continues to dominate as the preferred platform for developers. Android continues to show lots of promise that is far slower to be realized than its proponents say will be the case. And at least one big-name mobile gaming developer has set its sights on Windows Phone 7, especially in the wake of the Mango update thereto.
Speaking of mobile gaming…let’s look at the state of iPhone games.
Just ten (10) publishers account for over half of the top 300 paid iPhone games. Naturally, Gameloft and their prodigious output probably account for quite a lot of these.
Deus Ex 3 (also called Human Revolution) is evidently finished, and has gone gold.
The release date is August 23rd.
Another awesome Skyrim trailer!
This time featuring a frak-off big spider, more dragons, and dual-wielding.
How to survive in the games industry for 35 years.
The Guardian interviews Atari, Activision, and Accolade veteran Alan Miller. It’s an insightful, enlightening interview that anyone contemplating a career in game development should read.
Has anyone checked out Dwarf Fortress yet?
It’s a cross-platform, roguelike and city-building game with ASCII graphics that the New York Times hails as brilliant in a massive six-page article.
What’s more, it’s been around for a while:
Dwarf Fortress is too willfully noncommercial to have any discernible influence on gaming at large, but it is widely admired by game designers. Programmers behind The Sims 3 reportedly played Dwarf Fortress when they were making their game, and several homages to Dwarf Fortress appear in the blockbuster fantasy game World of Warcraft. Richard Garfield, who created the hit card game Magic: The Gathering, once attended a Dwarf Fortress fan meet in Seattle to introduce himself to Tarn. “I told him there’s nothing out there quite like it,” Garfield recalled. He suggested ways of broadening the game’s appeal, but “that stuff didn’t matter to Tarn. The charm of it is that he’s making exactly the game he wants to make.”
Seriously…why have I not heard of this game before?
…Dungeons of Dredmor sounds pretty neat, as well. And unforgivingly difficult and brutal, as well.
Someone made a basically to-scale copy of Middle Earth in (of course) Minecraft.
It’s about as epic as it sounds.
Meet Prague’s new RPG studio: Warhorse!
I’m going to call this an “ensemble studio”, because it is staffed by a pretty powerful cast of well-known European game-makers:
Four eminent 2K Czech and Bohemia Interactive employees have split to form Warhorse, a new development studio in Prague, and are now working on a previously unannounced RPG. Mafia and Mafia II creator Dan Vávra is heading the team at Warhorse, co-founded with Martin Klíma, author of Dragon’s Lair. Viktor Bocan, designer of Operation Flashpoint, and Mafia animator Zbynek Trávnivký complete the fearsome foursome.
Their jobs page contains what I submit is the best opening sentence ever written on a job postings website.
Remember that California violent games law that the Supreme Court struck down?
The legal battles related to it aren’t over just yet. Now the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has filed a motion to be reimbursed — by the state of California — for the $1.1 million in legal fees it spent fighting the silly Californian law.
California hardly has the money to pay such fees, of course…but sooner or later, one shot in the wallet or another will hopefully convince them that passing borderline-unconstitutional laws is just not kosher.
Most of you probably don’t care about Gears of War 3…
…but the latest video (a “behind the scenes” feature) promoting Epic’s next release is still rather entertaining.
Can you believe it? Some people still associate the term “gamer” with being a social outcast.
Yeah, I know, I was shocked too.
Exit question: what does “social outcast” even mean, in the age of Twitter and other social networks?
EA expects to break its $1 billion target for digital revenues.
That includes revenues from both mobile gaming sales and digital retail of mainline console and PC games. Naturally, the acquisution of PopCap earlier this month is going to bring in a bunch of those dollars, as will the rumoured October launch of The Old Republic.
Ultima Online is old, but worth it.
That, as UO Journal explains, is the conclusion of the first article in a new series at MMORPG.com.
Tonight’s post brought to you by Chemistry Cat:
This will be even funnier to fans of The Big Bang Theory.
Bonus:
The longest video on YouTube!
Note that I did not say it was a video with any point or quality...
It was achieved by stringing together many countless thousands of photos, horribly and excessively compressed so as to squeeze the entire 23-day length of it into about half of a gigabyte. And yes, it looks as awful as you are probably thinking it should, given that information.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/25/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-trailer-has-dual-wielding-dragons-and-mega-arachnid/
Is a dead link.
Also, I find it interesting that you’re bringing attention to Roguelikes but poo-poo on poo-pooing in games. Bathroom humor aside, what’s the problem with games having this “feature” considering how fundamental it is to our nature as animals? I think it’s funny how our assumptions about gaming make us so prejudiced about what should be represented in a game. I don’t have a shit fetish or anything, but the reaction really makes me wonder about people’s notion of representative reality in games. I guess it’s okay to get your dick sucked and murder the whore afterward, but God help us you have to eat, drink, piss, or take a crap. Weird, huh?
Sanctimonia: It comes down to the fact that there’s a certain point at which I can no longer tolerate micromanagement of game details. I get annoyed enough in some games where I have to worry about the business of putting food into my party members’ mouths (Ultima 7, for example)…I’d just as soon kill them all as have to worry about the food at the other end of things.
It comes down to the fact, I guess, that I don’t see my character in a game as a representation or extension of myself; the Avatar is not me…he’s like a friend or acquaintance. And since in real life I wouldn’t want to manage when a buddy takes a crap, I have no particular interest in doing so in a game. That goes double for party members (friends of my friend in the game).
I hate making three posts in a row, but I just noticed watching the Gears of War video that one guy sold out his own dead dad and some other developer’s dead dad to promote the game. That is a about as shitty as shitty gets. Wow, wow, and just damn.
Some people still associate the term “gamer” with being a social outcast.
This is kind of silly. ABB didn’t claim he was just a “gamer”, or even a general gaming addict. He specifically claimed to be a WoW addict.
And yeah, I’ve known about Dorf Fortress for years, where’ve you been?
I guess the shit mechanics will go unanswered. HAHAHAAAA. But seriously, shit mechanics will need to be addressed. Haha, again. I forget what it’s called, not a “decision tree”, but some other tree. We’ll call it the “shit” tree for now.
Each player will have a set of variables describing their minimum, current and maximum states of various attributes. Height, weight, muscle mass, fat mass, bone mass, etc. The gastro-intestinal tract will be described as well as their lungs and poison-filtering capabilities.
Anyway, without making an essay of it, you get the idea. Eat. Poop. Laugh about it. Eat again.
Hey, check it out. Troika’s last game – and the only one available on Steam – is on sale with a discount for, I believe, the first time ever.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines
Whoops, make that Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.
@WtF: I agree about the micromanagement part and Ultima VII in particular. The whole, “I’m hungry” thing made me feel like I had a party of babies with me.
Eating and drinking is no problem, as players will do that automatically as necessary or it can be scheduled at specific times via AI. Going to the bathroom may be a little trickier as you wouldn’t want people doing it in the middle of the street, but I plan to have everything as automatic as possible. It’s not like there’s going to be a menu with a “Pee” and “Poo” options (although that would be extremely funny).
Interesting observation on your relationship with your avatar, though. I always thought they were an extension of myself. I wonder how most people feel about it.
Hey, don’t be giving me ideas for Ultima IX schedules. :p
Seriously, though, this aspect hadn’t crossed my mind before, but if there are going to be sewers to Britain, then there will have to be facilities as well. Don’t know if I’ll bother having NPCs go into the them and lock the door, though. That level of detail is already starting to go borderline disgusting.
Don’t know if I’ll bother having NPCs go into the them and lock the door, though. That level of detail is already starting to go borderline disgusting.
JC Denton approves.
@INFINITRON: Haha. “Hey everyone, she forgot to flush.” What a strange and kinda funny video. Deus Ex looks pretty cool. Heard there’s a sequel coming out soon too.
@ICEBLADE: Excluding the implementation used by Postal and those creepy Japanese games, bodily functions and sexual reproduction are the final frontier of gameplay. You just don’t see it implemented too often, if at all. Seems strange as along with eating and drinking those are very basic aspects of humanity and life in general. I guess most cultures consider it taboo and game developers probably have a list of reasons, assuming they even think about such things.
Facilities or not, being able to lock and unlock doors would be a cool feature (especially in dungeons if you had a pack of monsters behind you).
Vampire Bloodlines is an awesome game. I highly recommend playing it if you haven’t already. One of the best games I’ve ever played.
The only annoying part is that the company went out of business after making it.
I’ve always felt that the Avatar is me as well. i like to “be” the characters I’m playing (though the second playthrough I usually play as a woman to see the other side of the game… and therefore make her evil). But going to the toilet is not something I feel a need for. My logic is that gametime runs very fast. A day passes in a hour or so in most games. I figure we are controlling the important parts; the unimportant parts don’t fit into the time we have. Otherwise you would technically have to live out a full 24 hours every day (ie, hour), which is just silly. I play games for the adventure, not to play the Sims.
For the brief (very brief) moments that I even think about it, I assume that such bodily issues are taken care of off-screen while the party is resting/camping.
U9, I don’t really care about the Avatar’s daily necessities. You aren’t forced to eat or sleep, so other things slip the mind rather easily. Though I get on a recent playthrough attempt to keep the Avatar feed and rested at regular intervals (can’t remember if I actually kept that up though).
Ultimately what it comes down to is whether or not I’ll be able to implement it in a way that is not unnatural, tedious or breaks the flow of the other elements of the game. I understand that every “feature” has the potential to clash with other parts of the game, seem out of place, or otherwise harm the player’s suspension of disbelief or gameplay experience. Ideally everything will flow as smoothly as real life. No invisible walls, no fudging with complex menus, no inconsistencies in expected mechanics. No touching the keyboard in general if I can help it, actually.
If I can’t find a way to accommodate the necessities of daily life into the game without committing any of these oft-committed sins, then I’ve failed as a developer and will have to cut them out to compensate for my ineptitude.
I do appreciate your comments and insights however, especially as Ultima fans who have had to deal with poor implementations of similar things in the past. Believe me, a party member having a text pop-up saying, “Avatar, I have to take a shit” is as far from what I want as heaven is wide (to paraphrase Garbage).
I’m facing a bit of a similar challenge in envisioning how sexual intercourse will be integrated. It also introduces the possibility of emergent gameplay such as rape, which is probably a much hotter topic than defecation or urination. Guess I’ll worry more about then when I get to it.
@ICEBLADE: I’m busy too, but as soon as I’m not (or too fucked up to continue programming) I’ll check out your site update. Looking forward to it, and glad people are really getting things done around here lately!
All this talk of the compressed time scales of games and how to implement “bathroom breaks” in games is making me think of a Monty Python sketch…the marathon for people with urinary incontinence.
Haha, that would be a good one. I was just watching The Whitest Kids U’Know last night for the first time and it reminded me of The Kids in the Hall, which then made me realize they were both a bit like Monty Python. A bunch of guys doing ridiculous skits and dressing like women about 50% of the time. Of course no one can match the high-pitched woman voices of Monty Python.
I would probably love the innovative game that incorporates urinating and defecating. In real life, I love to do both. If I didn’t I would die of some sort of poisoning. Who doesn’t love taking a piss in the morning? Honestly! And sometimes when you take that wicked dump, you feel soooo good when you’re done. It’s like, you feel lighter and more capable of handling the issues before you.
I think the defecate command would be the best! You could like defecate where ever you wanted to and maybe people would react to it. I would laugh so hard! You could take a dump on lord british’s throne and then he’d start to kill you. Or take a dump in the street and have the guards come over and force you to clean it up. Or to get REALLY crazy, you could pick up your crap and throw it at people like you’re a monkey! I would be totally addicting to that game if it ever comes out!
So I think it’s almost unanimous, poop and peeing in the next ultima game! I hope you’re listening Paul Barnet!!! This is what the fans want!
BTW, why is the home page in a different format? I liked the regular format better.
The homepage does that from time to time; the mobile site face gets cached instead of the main layout. I’ll correct for it shortly.
@MICRO MAGIC: Funny post. 🙂 While I can’t tell if you’re serious or not, that is what I plan on it being like (other than the menu command). I might use a dynamic “need list” that shows things that are in need of attention. For example, if you’re hungry, thirsty and tired, those needs would appear in a small list in the corner. Pressing a button would cycle through them, holding the button would satisfy the selected need automatically. You could still manually eat, drink, sleep, etc., but the “need list” would be a shortcut and allow you to do things that the game has no mechanics for supporting explicitly. Maybe having sex could be done the same way? For example, if two people were in close proximity with their pants off, intercourse would be added to the need list.
As far as crapping on LB’s throne, defecating in the middle of the town market, or otherwise acting like a jackass, people will be able to attack each other at will and non-lethal combat will be the norm. All bludgeoning weapons (fists included) will knock someone unconscious first. A kill would require the attacker continue to attack them while they’re knocked out. You’ll also be able to tie unconscious people up and drag/carry them around.
I’m hoping these mechanics will encourage the 99% of people who aren’t acting like jackasses to adequately punish the 1% who are so they’ll either learn their lesson or go play Postal or GTA (“Get off my server”).
As far as throwing poo, poo will be treated like any other object in the game. You can pick it up, put it down, put it in a container, throw it, eat it, burn it, etc., and it will biodegrade over time. Hopefully most people will put it in their compost pile to help their veggies grow, or just leave it out in the woods or outhouse.
On a related note, in the middle ages (or was it the dark ages?), in cities didn’t they just throw it out the window into the streets? That’s nasty. No wonder they died of the plague and the like.
“Hopefully most people will put it in their compost pile to help their veggies grow, or just leave it out in the woods or outhouse.”
I’m pretty sure you aren’t meant to use human feces for that…
“On a related note, in the middle ages (or was it the dark ages?), in cities didn’t they just throw it out the window into the streets? That’s nasty. No wonder they died of the plague and the like.”
This would have started before people were living in cities (where they just had grass and plants outside their bedroom window) so wouldn’t have been so bad. They probably just didn’t think about changing once cities were built and people started living closer together. I think that would be one of the first things I’d try to change after trying to walk through it all the first time.
“I’m hoping these mechanics will encourage the 99% of people who aren’t acting like jackasses to adequately punish the 1% who are so they’ll either learn their lesson or go play Postal or GTA (“Get off my server”).”
I think you underestimate the percentage of idiots.
I did find it funny that you could change the babies in LB’s castle in U7 then throw the diapers at your companions.
“I’m pretty sure you aren’t meant to use human feces for that…”
That’s a good question. I know plants need to be cleaned thoroughly before consumption due to possible bacterial contamination, but don’t know if there’s a difference between human and, let’s say cow fertilizer. It may just be taboo rather than based in science, but I’ll have to research that.
Good info about the middle ages. I need to read up on that too when it comes time to build a city and such.
“I think you underestimate the percentage of idiots.”
I hope not. That’s actually one of my greatest fears and something I’ve been anticipating from the beginning. So far I’ve been planning two main methods of “controlling” people:
1) The initial port city is controlled mainly by AI characters and enforces through regular game mechanics rules which result in mostly civilized behavior. No unsheathed weapons, must wear pants, no attacking other than in self-defense, no killing for any reason (only knocking out), etc. This is to maintain a safe place from griefers, and to “train” new players that the game isn’t a GTA fuck-all idiot fest. People can still break the rules, but the consequences won’t be pretty and will include public lashings, stocks, incarceration or banishment. Outright murder will result in a public execution, permadeath style, and your belongings will go to public auction.
2) For every freedom given to players, give them an equal and opposite freedom to mitigate its misuse. For example, if you can walk into a house and steal someone’s stuff, allow the homeowner to lock the door. If you can pick the lock of a locked door, allow the homeowner to bar their door when at home as a secondary defense against unauthorized entry. As long as every possible abuse of freedom can be countered with yet another freedom, order (in general) should be preserved.
And I didn’t know about the throwing diapers bit in Ultima VII. That’s crazy. 🙂
All poo is poo, but all poo is not equal; poo from different species can contain different pathogens, and it’s likely that some forms of poo are worse than others should ingestion occur. I’m not a medical expert, but it seems to me that I recall hearing that most fecal matter includes things like e. coli in it, including (perhaps especially) human feces. That and a whole host of other bacteria, not to mention any viruses that the source human might be carrying.
As to why I’m not so keen on seeing it implemented in games, well…it’s not so much taboo as it is distaste, I suppose. I’m not really that “in” to watching people do their business. Heck, I’m not really that “in” to watching people have sex; I’m more of a “participator” than a “spectator” where that is concerned. It gets back to what I said: I wouldn’t want to have to manage (or watch) every shit and piss that my friends took, or when they had sex or jacked off. Part of that is probably aversion to unwanted exposure to bodily fluids which I cannot be certain are free of pathogens I wouldn’t care to come into contact with, and part of it is just that frankly, I prefer to poo alone and unsupervised…and would just as soon extend that courtesy to everyone else, including my digital avatar(s).
Also, while I’m not opposed to sex in games on prudish (or any, really) grounds, I have to say that I also fail to find it titillating when it is depicted (e.g. Dragon Age, Mass Effect). Maybe it’s that I prefer to participate rather than spectate, or maybe it’s that I don’t particularly find it all that “sexy” to watch polygonal characters gyrating awkwardly against each other (it’s like watching Lego people get it on) and so don’t see what the point is supposed to be. A good romantic subplot is a nice addition to a game, if it’s done well (and I have seen well-done romantic subplots in games, to be sure)…but my enjoyment of such subplots typically has nothing to do with the “consummation” scene, and everything to do with the romantic tension established through dialogue and more subtle character interactions.
Interesting observations. I think it comes down to cultural attitudes toward various natural human behaviors and our preconceptions about what games are and what is appropriate for inclusion within them. Some games are about “having fun” in the pursuit of monetary reward, and others are about art, expression and exploration.
For example, many find it acceptable for “offensive” language (racist slang in an appropriate context, sexism and profanity), murder of both “evil” and “innocent” people, mutilation and dismemberment, self harm such as smoking and alcohol use, and various other “bad” things to be included in games. Many of us enjoy participating in these things in games, but express horror when witnessing them in real life. A bit analogous to film, actually. Most gamers (> 50%) probably consider these things just fine for inclusion in games, and even expect them depending on the genre.
Despite finding such atrocities acceptable in our art, culturally we are either disgusted or embarrassed by certain other aspects of our humanity being represented in it. Sex is largely absent even from R rated movies. When represented in porn it is completely unrealistic and devoid of any of the deep emotions often experienced by lovers in the real world. It also neglects the possible consequences of disease, pregnancy and emotional distress.
If humanity were boiled down to its essential ingredients as a species, number one would include sexual reproduction, which is the strongest instinct in most species. Number two would include the various requirements of self preservation which include eating, drinking, pissing, shitting, sleeping and defending one’s self against exterior threats.
Everything else that defines humanity is built upon this foundation of basic instincts and requirements for survival. Because we’re grown culturally intelligent enough to pass down knowledge and expand upon it to make our lives more comfortable and emotionally fulfilling, our resulting hubris seems to have prejudiced us against what we really are. We try to hide it, silence it, and otherwise act like we’re plastic Barbie dolls and not just another species scratching out a desperate existence on a dirty, unforgiving planet. I feel that’s a terribly unhealthy and dishonest attitude.
Ultimate, we’re still just animals, and the only facet of our fundamental nature that is represented in games is self defense, which almost always takes the form of warfare or just plain murder for resources. Multiple cut scenes between orgies of killing do not constitute an accurate representation of the human condition because games are about gameplay, not cut scenes. Film is for cut scenes, which is why they don’t give you a gamepad when you walk into the theater.
What it is to be human is grossly underrepresented in the gameplay mechanics of games. The idea that I can painstakingly create game mechanics which allow you to burn someone alive or split their skull with a chainsaw, but that it’s somehow improper for me to allow people to have sex (the fundamental act which preserves our species), get pregnant and raise children tells me that as a society, or at least as a society of gamers, our heads are seriously fucked up. No offense WtF, this goes across the board for most all gamers from what I’ve seen.
Also, I don’t plan on having the camera zoom in and go into Matrix slow motion with particles when people use the bathroom or have sex. I’m not trying to exploit it, just allow it.
Fair enough. I can’t comment that much on the reasoning of others; I can only offer my own reasons.
Arguably, if there is a cultural taboo against the depiction of e.g. defecation, it probably has roots in the survival instinct. There are some fairly nasty pathogens in the excrement of even a healthy person…the desire to avoid exposure thereto pretty obviously influences the social unacceptability of depictions of defecation.
To a lesser degree, the same could be said for sex, although there we have to factor in as well the deep intimacy of the act. Despite its ubiquity and necessity to the survival of the species, it still feels very much like a secret that we instinctively shy away from knowing when it does not directly concern us, as we often do regarding other intensely personal secrets when others try make us aware of them.
Arguably, the mystery and secrecy that we surround sex with is a response to its intimate and procreative power; we instinctively recognize that the act has implications far beyond its mechanical aspects, and give it a wider berth as a result.
I wouldn’t argue that depicting sex is improper; I’d argue that I’ve yet to see it depicted in a way that added genuine value (beyond mere titillation, I mean) to a game. I’m not saying it can’t be done…I’m just saying that I’m still waiting to see it happen, and that I can’t personally contrive a scenario in which such a depiction could transpire.
Any piece of content can be meaningful or gratuitous; the challenge is achieving the former.
Good points about the cultural taboos and why they exist. That makes a lot of sense and is similar to my theory about our horror in seeing a dead body. “Oh shit, a dead body. Whatever killed him COULD STILL BE HERE. Run!” I still can’t figure out why it’s acceptible and even enjoyable to watch murder in art though. Even I like it. I love action movies, and I thought Soldier of Fortune II was a great game. Maybe it’s because I have a strong sense of disconnect between fantasy and reality. For example, even thinking about the Al-Qaeda beheading videos makes my stomach turn. I wouldn’t watch them if someone paid me a million dollars, no joke. Yet I thought Rambo IV was a masterpiece.
Maybe I can use those taboos to my advantage. In an ideal Sanctimonia (still don’t have a name for the world, ideas, anyone?) you wouldn’t see anyone using the bathroom or having sex, as they’d be doing it in private for these very reasons (among others). It also wouldn’t be depicted in a detailed way. It would be pretty underwhelming, really, just enough to let you know what was happening and not look weird. No cut scene, for damn sure, haha.
“Any piece of content can be meaningful or gratuitous; the challenge is achieving the former.”
Totally agreed. I’m starting to think that games, much like film, have reached their apex of evolution but fell a bit short of the meaningful part. I enjoy Tarantino-esque stuff like No More Heroes as much as the next guy, but often I want something more. Hopefully I can deliver on that. “Make the game YOU would want to play”, they say.
On a defecation-related note, I just cracked into The Sims 3 on my iPhone…turns out I had forgotten that you can electively make your Sim use the toilet and shower in the game.
It’s not a particularly meaningful addition to the game (nor is the ability to bathe/shower), and I’m not sure whether the “pixelated blur” effect that appears over my Sim’s private parts adds to or detracts from what I assume is supposed to be a titillating diversion in the game.
But for what it’s worth, there it is. I can make my Sim go poo. Yay?
On another related note, who here recalls how the original Hero’s Quest, by Sierra, handled typed instructions (by the player) commanding the titular adventure to “go pee” or “go poo”?
Ken and Roberta Williams had a good sense of humor. I played Hero’s Quest and loved it, but didn’t find that option. I probably have it somewhere in my 14.6 gigs of DOS games. More great MT-32 music. Conquests of Camelot had great tunes too.
What was the program’s response when a player queried with such odd terms?
Sanctimonia:
Well, it wasn’t a selectable option per sé; most of the input in the game was typed, and the game would look for the “pee” and “poo” keywords, among others.
Responses varied, but were along the lines of “What, really?” and “I can’t believe you said that!”
Just caught The Sims 3 iPhone port comment. I’d like to know what the devs thought prior to allowing those features in a public facing version of their application, and how Apple missed it (or failed to care). I guess Apple doesn’t have content filtering based on the subjective emotional responses of its users. More likely, because it was pushed down by a reputable distributor, they just let it pass since it met their revenue requirements and wasn’t advertised as a feature.
Just one more thing in my game that won’t be unique, I suppose.
Sanctimonia:
Plus, it’s implemented in a very tongue-in-cheek way. I’ll try grab a screenshot and tweet it to you. The Sim sits down on the toilet and his/her midsection gets blurred out by that censoring pixelation that was all the rage in 1980s newscasts. Showering is handled the same way; your Sim briefly gets obscured, shoulders to knees, by pixelation before stepping into the shower cabinet.
Not really offensive. Maybe a bit cheeky, but only slightly more racy than what one could find in some Archie Comics. (Betty has a shower scene in at least one issue, although it basically consisted of her head, arms and feet sticking out of a cloud of bubbles!)
For the record, Sims can also have sex in the game, although that too is quite cheeky in its implementation. (I will have to tweet you a few pics, I see!)
I can’t recall Apple’s rating for the game, but there’s nothing in it that would really trip them up. Not when there’s at least one Gameloft title that features bikini-wearing strip-club dancers! (No actual nudity, though.)
I don’t know if this will work, but here we go: see this album on my Google+ profile for a series of screenshots of how The Sims 3 handles sex, bathing, and toilet usage.
Huh… Didn’t know much about The Sims. I’m assuming it doesn’t let you kill people, but that’s amazing they went into that kind of detail for doing normal activities. Thanks for the pics.
Yeah, I don’t think murder is possible in any of the The Sims games.
Although I haven’t yet tried The Sims Medieval, so I’ll have to get back to you on that.
OMG I forgot about the u7 diaper thing! Dirty diapers were the only way to kill liches, or it was a very efficient way by my memory. Man, u7 was the best game ever… too bad I got jaded on that masterpiece.
The Sims is the best selling pc game by far. I’m sure apple wasn’t too concerned about the content. Sometimes Sims die, but they can’t kill each other. I played the original sims back in the day, it’s been a while since I found any new interest in it.
And yes, I think it would be totally awesome to throw virtual fecal matter at your virtual friends. Perhaps there is a chance of poisoning associated with carrying it around and throwing it? I think that would be awesome. And don’t call me a jackass because of that! I bet you’ve powder kegged the blue boar a few times in your day! Who hasn’t?
I didn’t know your game was going to be online. That’s pretty cool, and now I’m totally psyched for it! I suggest if you have players keep their goods in their house, to at least make sure the storage areas can’t be unlocked. From what RG has said about UO, he didn’t believe so many jerks would be playing UO. But eventually they had to change the game mechanics to nerf certain traits I believe. Because there were so many theives etc.
You might want to checkout fallout 2238. They took the game mechanics and graphics of fallout 1-2 and made an mmorpg out of it. A surprising amount of people play it. And let me tell you it’s a friggen wasteland for sure! And it’s really an amazing game to simply exist. It’s the first mmo I’ve ever seen that goes from real time to turn based combat.
You see someone else in a random encounter you better kill them, or they will kill you. Gangs will post up in turnbase mode near a city in a random encounter and wait for people to come by. They kill everyone just for the fun of it. They don’t even need to items they just wait.
And let me tell you how frustrating it is to be going back to your storage area after you finally found some caps (venders regen caps every 2-3 hours or so) and get merked 5 seconds way because of some jerk, lose all your last few hours of work…
I randomly found a hummer in the wastes once. Don’t know how it got there who’s it was or what it was doing there. But I was super excited. Probably someone died and it was left in a random encounter. Now it might take you 3 hours to work up 2000-3000 caps… hummers were about 160,000 caps. I nearly crapped my pants. So I was driving that bad boy around all badass. From one town to another just for the hell of it, just cuz it was so fast and cool. And I left it at the entrance. And these assholes find it. One was a lockpick expert. The other was his friend. One guy kept standing on the square in front of my car, the other was lock picking my car. So no matter how much I tried to get in and drive away, I was unable to do anything. I could get in I couldn’t kill them or the guards would insta kill me. All I could do was sit there and wait for them to take it and laugh at me…
Needless to say, I’m done with that game. I suggest you assume 99 percent of people will be jackasses. Like the penny-arcade theory,
Normal Guy+Complete Anonymity+Audience=Complete Dickwad.
@MICRO MAGIC
I appreciated your comments, though a little off the wall at times. I think you and Kindbud Dragon may have gotten your usernames mixed up.
As far as way too many player acting crazy, I think my two strategies described in a previous post should work in most cases:
“1) The initial port city is controlled mainly by AI characters and enforces through regular game mechanics rules which result in mostly civilized behavior. …
2) For every freedom given to players, give them an equal and opposite freedom to mitigate its misuse. …”
As far as being poisoned by feces, you’d have to eat it or put it in someone’s food. In any case, players would be notified of anything smelling strange nearby, whether sulfur, feces, rotting flesh or cooking food, so while possible is unlikely.
Outside the main city, what it comes down to is what most players want to do. If everyone wants to steal, then that’s what they’ll be doing until they get tired of stealing and having their own stuff being stolen constantly. There isn’t going to be a 100% guaranteed way to do anything, whether preserving your own life or your physical goods. Probably the best way would be to bury your items underground out in the middle of nowhere, but even then someone could find them if they got lucky.
I’m pretty confident that I can balance the game so that freedom doesn’t equal chaos. In life we’re all free to do whatever we like, whether it’s writing a forum post, buying a 12 pack of beer, or kidnapping, torturing and murdering a complete stranger. Most of us behave civilly, despite having complete freedom, for a variety of reasons. I want to recreate those freedoms and reasons for not abusing them in the game. When the occasional tragedy occurs in a free society, we have drama and emergent story. That’s my goal.
Just thought of something… You could smear feces on the blade of your sword or on the tip of an arrow and poison someone. Or would that technically be envenomation? I have this vague memory that some tribe or culture used to do that but can’t remember who. Nasty creatures, we humans.
Nasty, yes, but often terrifyingly innovative.
That is totally awesome! There should be like poo fights too, and when you’re covered in poo your charisma goes down. Just thinking out loud, not telling you how to make your game.
Instead of like a food fight it’s all like, POOP FIGHT! This game is going to rock house!
@Wtf:
I stress your use of the word “terrifyingly”. Things like that seriously make me question the value of being human. If there is a God, either (a) the universe is WAY more fucked up than humans can imagine and our antics aren’t really that bad in comparison, or (b) we’re all going to hell for tolerating what we and our brothers and sisters are doing across the world. I’m not too pleased with the outlook whatever the reality of judgement may be.
@MICRO MAGIC:
Dude, you’re fucking crazy. Put…the…bowl…down. Or give me some. 😉 Maybe I’ll make a separate server on a small map where it rains shit instead of water, and interested parties can have a free for all. Or not.
Sanctimonia: Quite.
It’s not exactly a secret that I believe in God in no small part because I believe in — and see ample and abundant evidence for the existence of — evil.
And whatever your opinion of the rest of the Bible might be, I’m confident you’ll find no disagreement with the reliably bitter St. Paul’s various declarations that mere man is utterly incapable of saving himself. There’s ample evidence in support of that, too.
I see good and evil as concepts of higher reasoning, largely human. As such they’re subject to the whims of culture. We can say, “Well, killing a child is absolutely evil,” but somewhere there’d be a situation in some arbitrary culture where it was considered perfectly sensible, and perhaps even good. People are crazy like that and what little history we know of our species has demonstrated it time and time again. Good and evil changes, as we do. God has changed too, at least our perception of Him/Her/It over the millennia.
When I was young I was an optimist. The world was beautiful and full of possibility. As I grew older and saw what the world really was, it hardened me against the wash of people around me who thought things were normal, and that normal was pretty good. Normal wasn’t even close to pretty good. Normal was like a chapter out of 1984. I felt like I was the only sane person in a world of complacent automatons who accepted everything around them simply because everyone else did too.
I still feel that way, and my reaction never gets old. It’s not possible to be jaded and cynical enough to accept what’s happening around me as being okay. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that we are a deeply flawed organism with a fatally flawed culture. My outlook for the short term future (next thousand years or less) of our species and our ecosystem isn’t pretty. Seems like the more people there are the more impossible it becomes to find harmony, and we’re breeding like we had 1000 Earths.
So yeah, Saint Paul sounds like he knew what he was talking about as far as that goes. We do need to be saved, because we’re too damned stupid to do it ourselves. The sad part is that we’re technically capable, just too lazy, short-sighted and quick to judge to get anything important done.
I’d probably draw a distinction between what society chooses to label as evil and what is actually evil, and note that these two things do not comport. Fallacies, as Chesterton noted, do not cease to be fallacies simply because they become fads. The same is true of evils, though I grant the point that man has proven only too willing to rebrand what is evil as a good when it has suited his agenda to do so.
But if I get too much more involved in expanding that point, we’ll lose the discussion in a side topic. 😉
It’s also worth noting, however, that we should probably differentiate between technical capacity and moral/philosophical/political capacity…and willingness. We could easily fit every living human into the state of Texas with 800 to 1000 square feet per person.
We could feed all those people with less than all the arable land in the continental US.
We could provide water for all those people with less than 100% of the average yearly outflow of the Columbia River.
We have the technical capability to do all of that, but we have no means or capacity to erase the boundaries of tribalism that would, in a heartbeat, tear that hypothetical world apart.
You’re talking about absolute good and evil, then, which of course would have to be dictated by something outside of human culture since human culture is relative. You could call it nature (death is evil, life is good, asteroid destroying Earth is bad, lots of rain and sun is good, etc.), or God (whatever God says, is, period).
The problem is that unless God says something directly, in other words no humans saying “I’m doing this because God spoke to me”, but some crazy shit happening that is inarguably not of human origin and has a clear message, whatever God does say though people is not only going to be said/written/etc. by people but further interpreted by other people. Most people have no freaking idea what to think and won’t know who to believe or how to interpret the interpretation themselves. If the “experts” disagree, the simpletons are surely doomed. That’s what it’s like right now with the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran. All written by people, interpreted by people, and preached by people. 99% of people who “believe” don’t even know what they say, and if they did they wouldn’t be quite sure what to make of it. They certainly wouldn’t all agree about it.
I’m not assaulting religion, I’m just trying to point out the confusion and uncertainty about the idea of absolute good and evil from a religious standpoint. If there is a God, we absolutely need a definitive, in-your-face proclamation of what His basic law is. Why leave doubt in such a time of need? There are endless religious texts that people have to choose from, some still popular, some not, with varying degrees of usefulness and believability. People really aren’t smart enough to figure it out, and there are too many charlatans to just trust someone about it.
I don’t know where you got your statistics from about Texas and the continental U.S., but that is very interesting and even encouraging. What you said after that however sadly has the same ring of truth to it (making the former point practically irrelevant).
While yes, the possibilities are endless and not inherently dismal, the best prediction of the future is to chart the progress of the past. Data extrapolation, I think it’s called.
Perhaps at some future date, while the screams of the suffering accost my ears and the smoke burns my lungs, I’ll fire up my generator with the last of my gasoline and watch Star Trek TNG on my PC. “This is what we could have had,” I’ll tell myself while waiting for them to break in and eat me. Maybe if we’re lucky, after we’re down to our last sinew of existence, cooler heads will prevail and the cycle will start anew. The histories, of course, will be lost and ultimately rewritten.
Ugh…I’d rather die than live in a TNG-like world. Give me the DS9 vision of the Federation any day. Although that sort of space travel would be nice.
By the way, I’m not — strictly speaking — talking about absolute good and evil, because the discussion is not (and will never be) at a point where I would deign to introduce the concept. I am remarking, by a particular means, on man’s unfailing and universal capacity for self-deception, and his ability to redefine maliciousness as benevolence as it suits him.
To be fair, this requires me to posit and imply that concepts like good and evil are…extrinsic to man’s head, at least by some measures. That said, it’s not an unsafe conjecture to make; mankind recognizes this thing called “evil” as a general concept almost universally, even if we quibble amongst ourselves about what specific things are or aren’t evil.
Haha, it’s not so bad. Better than what we have now at least, though definitely pacifistic compared to our generation’s more base tastes. They’re formal, polite, protocol-driven and always yearning for the correct course of action within the greater scheme of things. Perhaps they meant for Worf to represent mankind in its current state while simultaneously making fun of it. It’s my favorite show. Quirky, but satisfying and consistent.
I haven’t seen DS9. Should I check it out? It’s but a few clicks away from a complete series. MUWHAHAHAAAAA…
Interesting that as I enjoy my conversation with you I try not to spark the beginning of a pointless debate/argument, and that it seems you’re trying to do the same with your mention of “the discussion is not (and will never be) at a point where I would deign to introduce the concept”, the concept being absolute good and evil.
Maybe after all I’ve seen I’m still naive, but other than issues of zealous dogma I do think it’s possible to discuss aspects of differing and potentially contradictory viewpoints in a mutually engaging and enlightening way. I actually like the concept of absolute good and evil, I just don’t believe it to be likely. What I believe to be and what I wish were are often two very different things. People are quick to think that because someone holds a belief that they think it is a good thing and should be. In my case, it often is not.
I was talking with my mom and my wife earlier tonight while they were watching the Dr. Phil show about some white trash idiots who blew $40 grand on a wedding that didn’t happen. The woman sued the would-be husband for the loss, including fraud. They were on the woman’s side, and I played the Devil’s advocate talking about how it was human nature to feel justified in one’s actions, however evil they may seem to someone else. I classified it as survival instinct and mentioned that even Hitler, Stalin, etc., thought they were doing the right thing. I also mentioned that any time two people of opposing views were in the spotlight, their nature would force them to defend themselves by crafting a story out of the events to make themselves seem both sympathetic and justified. I posited that they were both lying. I’ve done it myself. It feels as good natural as breathing, yet somewhere inside yourself you actually feel that it’s wrong as you do it.
When you say “man’s unfailing and universal capacity for self-deception”, I think that’s what you’re talking about. To paraphrase my dad, and to quote Edmund Bergler, “Man’s inhumanity to man is equaled only by man’s inhumanity to himself.”
Absolute good and evil would make things all too easy for us. What’s scary as hell is the idea that it doesn’t exist and that our destinies and ideals of self worth and righteousness are truly arbitrary and fleeting. To me the ultimate fear is chaos, meaninglessness and being forgotten (death without remembrance). Since this IS Ultima Aiera, that’s one of the reasons Ultima IV spoke to me so strongly. It was a clear, reasonable yet un-dogmatic voice amidst chaos. A goal that made sense and felt good.
I’m not convinced that absolute good and evil would be easier. I’d actually say it would be harder, in fact, since it leaves us no wiggle room at all to mess around in. It means we are a genuinely ugly people for the most part, not to mention utterly helpless against our own ugliness.
Absent that absolute, how ugly we look depends on which mirror we look in…and since the mirrors are also of our own design, we can exercise some control over just how ugly each one makes us look.
http://www.eightvirtues.com/sanctimonia/misc/ds9.png
THAT’s what I’m talking about. Give me that for $130 a month Netflix/DishNetwork/Comcast/DirecTV/Google/Apple, and I’ll pay you. Otherwise, GTFO. Also please pay for my file server, Internet connection and six TB hard drives, and configure my RAID while you’re at it. Make sure the files DRM-free and can play on any of my PCs on the LAN, including those hooked up to televisions and stereo systems which use VLC for full-screen hardware accelerated playback and support wireless controls. The DRM-free part is important because it allows me to burn DVDs so I can watch them at the beach house. Keep it in MKV transcoded with at least two passes from a BluRay source or better as well, since that’s my preference and I am the customer, after all.
Can’t do that? Nothing even close? Alrighty then. FUCK YOU.
Off to self-flagellate because I feel so damn guilty…
I totally recommend DS9; easily the best of Trek. But you need to let it mature; the first two seasons are in the “meh” range…and then they hit their stride and it’s a tour de force all the way to the series finale in the seventh season.
It engages on numerous levels, and touches in philosophical, moral, racial, and political conundrums in a way that TNG never did. TNG…I can’t even watch it now; it feels so philosophically and spiritually dead to me. Not so DS9.
DS9 is about to run a marathon of nerdlike proportions should it even be close to a worthy sequel of TNG.
If it’s highly shitty and offensive it will get shift-deleted after seeding fully, whether it’s the first episode or some other random episode selection.
TNG sounds like the more respectable show so far, with DS9 seeming ever more sensationalist with its serialized nature and soap-opera like cliffhangers. I prefer logical dilemma to bombastic drama, but I’ll see soon enough, I guess.
Our mirrors always make us look better, unless you’re a defendant in court. They manufacture at least those two kinds.
Also, the wiggle room is what kills us.
The first couple seasons lack focus, so like I say: bear with. From the third season on, the plot really coalesces and gets on with things. Lots of politics, intrigue, philosophy…good stuff. They explore races like the Klingons and Ferengi in extreme detail…and introduce the singular best Trek villain of all time.
I remember my high school biology teacher throwing a stat at us about population. All the people of the world can fit in Jacksonville Florida standing side by side. He was also a creationist who believed the world was 6,000 years old.
Regardless, whenever I heard stats like that, I always questioned them. Depending on your math of what an average human takes up in surface area, I’ll let you have it but here’s my own stats.
If the world’s land area is 238,304,000 mi squared, then we also have 1,258,245,120,000 ft squared. That’s A LOT! We have roughly 6 billion people, I’ve heard it’s closer to 7, and I’m inclined to believe it. But put that into perspective, if everyone lived in a 1000 sq foot home, which is pretty modest. Then we would take up every single sq foot on earth with houses stacked 6 high! That’s how crowded the planet really is. But hey, at least we have skyscrapers, maybe Yahweh changed his mind about man building tall buildings ;).
On a happier note, the world produces about 589 million tonnes of rice each year. Break the numbers down yourself if you want, 2204 pounds in a tonne, divided by 6 billion= 216 pounds of rice per person each year.
It really makes you wonder why we have world hunger with that much rice. Humans can easily survive off of 1 pound of rice per day. Half a pound, you’ll might be a little hungry, but you won’t starve to death from it.
The problem likely is, rice isn’t just cooked and eaten, it has uses in livestock feed and many alcohols.
So if we wanted to, we could feed the entire world, the problem is the developed world is too greedy. As far as water goes, it’s the most abundant resource on the planet, I’m not too worried about that.
I offer no real solutions on changing to world. I’ve given up. At this point, I’ve been informed the planet will be enveloped by the Sun one day. And even if we leave Earth, all the stars in the sky will burn out. And even if we learn to be self sufficient without the aide of stars, in a billion years if technology continues to develop and develop, will anyone remember Eli Whitney? Will anyone remember George Washington? Probably not.
Personally, I like to believe(against popular scientific theory) that the universe is closed and time begins and ends and we live our lives over and over and over again.
That’s why I don’t worry about being remembered! I just try and take as much joy as I can out of life while I’m here and now!
Micro: Your math is off.
Texas has a land area of 268820 square miles.
That’s 7494271487926.11 square feet.
Which, divided by 7 billion, comes out to 1070.61021 square feet per person. And that’s all on a single level.
And since Texas has less land area than the globe…I question your numbers.
For the record, my family (2 adults, 2 kids) lives comfortably enough in our 1100 square foot half-duplex. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t know what we’d do with 4282 square feet if we had it! Heck, the “big” homes we’ve been looking at (thinking of buying next year) barely crest 2200 square feet…and they offer more space than we’d ever use.
Just did the math. If Texas is 268,820 square miles then it’s roughly 518 x 518 miles (square root of 268,820). One mile is 5,280 feet, so if Texas were a square it would be 2,735,040 x 2,735,040 feet. Multiplying those two numbers to obtain square feet produces WtF’s figure of approximately 7,494,271,488,000. So it’s about 7.5 trillion square feet.
Maybe the confusion comes between the difference between square feet and feet squared? I had then problem dealing with Sanctimonia’s square mileage. It’s 12 miles squared, or 144 square miles.
One of the problems of course is that people aren’t collectibles in a glass case. They like to move, which would require roads, and then there’s the question of how food would be grown, what would be done with waste products of production and the people themselves, etc. If we could use similar tech as the astronauts we’d have a chance. Recycle everything, waste nothing.
On a different subject, DS9 has just about been obtained. I started watching the first episode and so far so good. I like the darker feeling already, and appreciate that it looks very much like TNG. I think I may have been confusing it with Babylon 5 in the past, which looked like a cheese fest. The only cheese I’ll ever accept in sci fi is self deprecating, like in Galaxy Quest which was awesome.