Posts by Thrik
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I don't think that the term 'social justice warrior' really applies here, if people find the content distasteful then that's a very different phenomenon.
I don't have that much of a problem with this game's existence because I think that any creative work has a right to exist, but it's not difficult to see why people might find this game's presentation of its theme upsetting or offensive — particularly those who happen to live somewhere like the US or Norway where indiscriminate shooting rampages have occurred quite recently.
Offense is always worse the closer to home it hits. For example, if you've ever been raped or know/love someone who has, then you're most likely going to find a game like RapeLay which allows you to go ahead and do just that quite difficult to accept. If you live in France, you might find a game based around breaking into newspaper organisations and shooting up their staff inflammatory. If you live in Poland, you might not be impressed by a game that lets you simulate harassing Jewish people.
I think that when a game like this comes along, it's important to remember that offensive material is always relative, and there is no black and white. Just be understanding of other peoples' feelings, don't try to upset or antagonise them, and above all accept that regardless of what we might prefer censorship is wrong and all expressions of creativity have a right to exist so long as they don't actually break laws and cause harm to others.
Going forward, there are only going to be more games that cross lines and appeal to the fetishist/niche tastes out there, kind of like how there's pornography available to suit every interest. I think I made this point in an earlier post, but I predict that interactive entertainment as a whole is going to split. There're going to be the traditional games we all know and love, but also more simulators that explore the limits of sex and violence — probably utilising things like Oculus Rift to make the experience even more realistic.
We can already see this happening, and while I won't judge anyone for enjoying such entertainment, I also believe that like porn they don't belong in shops or online stores along with everything else due to their obvious potential to trigger distress, and of course they're incredibly unsuitable for children to even see advertised. Instead, they should be available via vendors specific to that kind of thing. Kind of like how you might be disgusted by certain categories of porn, you just have to accept it and not waste your life worrying about them, and you don't have to unless you go seeking out the sites that distribute that material.
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Hey,
I appreciate that you want to spread the word about your project, but please don't just use MapCore as an advertisement/promotional tool. You're welcome to discuss your game if you're an active member of the community in other peoples' topics too, but we get a lot of these drive-by promo posts and can't allow them all.
I'm happy to leave this thread open for now in case other people wish to comment seeing as you're publishing development-related articles, but further bumps by yourself will necessitate closing the thread.
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Yeah, I can scarcely believe that the interview is even for real considering how flustered and unprofessional this guy is behaving.
It's also misleading due to the journalist being both incorrect and badly worded. You could easily interpret that as meaning that Godus is running three years late, when in reality it's actually running about 1.5 years late.
There have been much, much worse delays and the phenomenon is not infrequent — even less so when we're talking about a brand new indie studio. Raking Molyneux over the coals for something that happens to countless project just because it was fan-backed seems silly. Isn't it kind of a given of Kickstarters that if anything they're more risky than publisher-backed projects?
As I say, 22cans has clearly had some problems and failed to do certain things in the ideal manner. But the severe attacks against Molyneux have been highly unwarranted. Apparently he's even been getting death threats and such, as seems to be the norm in today's world of Twitter-fuelled controversies where every week there's a new person everyone must hate.
I just find the whole Molyneux outrage thing ridiculous in general. Just play his games when they come out and judge them based on their final form. Why is so much scrutiny being applied to what he says in interviews and the internal set-up of his studio? Have people not seen the hyperbole almost all developers and publishers spread about their in-development games? Do other studios not have split resources and delays? If anything, this industry has a problem with games being pushed out too quickly.
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Yeah, that guy has basically cemented his position as being somebody no game developer will ever interview again.
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There's no doubt that Molyneux has messed up a bit with Godus, but I do feel like a huge amount of general pent-up frustration about Kickstarter in general is being taken out on him. The problems Godus has faced aren't unique, other developers — including the wonderful Double Fine — have been hit by very comparable issues (we're still waiting for half of Double Fine Adventure/Broken Age three years later), and many Kickstarters have turned out to be damp squibs.
That's kind of the business of games because not all games are good, and I think that people find that harder to accept when they're funding the development, i.e. taking the kind of educated gamble that publishers normally take. OK, Molyneux has always been a hype merchant, but I've always seen that as done out of unrestrained passion rather than malice.
He's clearly a good guy having watched and read many things featuring him, and I think that his apologies are sincere. He's made some mistakes and wants to make reparations, so what more can you ask really? Sometimes the internet seems like it won't be satisfied until it's utterly destroyed someone, as if everything is black and white, and everyone can be put into a 'good' or 'evil' category (the irony of that being a core theme of Molyneux's games).
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On a snow-themed quest for the secret to immortality, sounds like Uncharted 2 to me!
Joking aside, really looking forward to this. Its predecessor was such an unexpected gem, but as a result it has a lot to live up to this time. It's also got stiff competition in the form of Uncharted 4, which of course exists in that same Indiana Jones-esque genre. Hopefully the end will be two fantastic games of that type this year.
It'll have to be really good to make me get an XBone, though. I'm still waiting for a killer title to convince me to hand over my cash.
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I watched the first two episodes, #3 is out today I believe. I really enjoyed it, and it's definitely not as light-hearted as I was expecting. With Saul bringing a lot of the comic relief to Breaking Bad, I assumed this would play off of that — but so far it's actually not very far removed from Breaking Bad in terms of tone and drama, particularly that show's earlier episodes which saved a lot of the seriously hard-hitting darkness until much later.
I'm very interested to see whether or not Better Call Saul goes down the road of Breaking Bad and becomes extremely dark, or if it avoids going that far. A familiar character who appeared at the end of episode one brought a particularly tense edge to the show, immediately taking me back to when Breaking Bad 'got real'.
I didn't really appreciate in Breaking Bad that he was really just a persona/shtick, although looking back there were obvious signs that there was a different man lurking beneath. Seeing a good man lose his morality out of desperation is definitely revisiting the themes of Breaking Bad, but it's evidently going to be handled in a very different way.
Basically, a great start. I'm hooked already, and am really looking forward to seeing how the hybrid approach of this show plays out. As was made obvious from the very first scenes, this series (which has already been renewed for a second season by the way) takes place both before and after Breaking Bad using time jumps.
I'm just as excited to see where the post-BB Saul ends up, and it adds an extra level of tension to the show because obviously Saul couldn't die if it were purely a prequel — but anything goes in the post-BB world.
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I thought I could do better with my last musical attempt — that it'd be nice to get some strings in there rather than wall-to-wall synth pads — so I just blew my afternoon reworking it from scratch. I'm still feeling hopelessly out of my depth, but actually putting stuff on SoundCloud so I can call it 'done' is very motivating and keeps me focusing on making something better.
Rising Joy - SoundCloud -
Quote from Vilham
That is true, the drop in housing prices did cause some people to lose about 20k if they had bought between 2005-2008. Guess what though, I lost that much too. By renting.
It doesn't quite work out so cleanly in real life, though. I know someone who got a house exactly within that time frame for about £100k, with the mortgage of course being based on that. She soon found that she was struggling to sell it for even £80k, and for an easy sell she'd probably have needed to have dropped to £60–70k.
Where it gets really messy is when you then want to move, but you've still got this mortgage hanging over your head. If you can even get a remortgage — banks are a lot more conservative nowadays — you're still limited to buying something of a similar value, which might not be what you want your next move to be, especially if your salary and lifestyle expectations have improved.
On top of that, a lot of houses just won't sell these days even if they'd have flown off of the market 10 years ago. With so many younger people not bothered about renting, it's making it a lot harder for even decent houses to sell. And because property chains can be so long and fragile, it can take years to successfully sell.
I'm not saying it's an unwise thing to do, but for me to even consider it I'd have to be absolutely certain beyond doubt that I'll be staying in a given town and that the property is 100% perfect for me. That in itself a dicey area, because as I've discovered from renting numerous properties there are always annoyances. Sometimes something that you don't think will be too bad becomes an irreconcilable issue and you'd rather just move on, examples being horrendous neighbours, atrocious internet connectivity, plumbing or electrical issues, etc. This is where renting is wonderful.
I'm not trying to slam anyone who's chosen to buy, by the way. It's just that I know a number of people who have been chewed up and spat out by the whole process for numerous reasons, and the toll that it's taken on them financially and psychologically has been significant. Comparatively, I've heard of very few renting horror stories, and even in the worst scenarios you can escape relatively unscathed. Buying is just something that should be treated with the utmost of caution, and you have to be sure that it's right for you — never mind what family says.
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Quote from Vilham
In addition, real estate isn't always the "awesome deal" people think it is. Part of the increasing value is just inflation, not real value increase. People just think in pure numbers and think about what they paid for a place (which is usually way back when).
Financially no matter how you look at it, home ownership is more profitable than renting. Even if the market collapses and your house value halves, that is still money. Renting earns you nothing and forces you to pay more. If I wasn't moving around for jobs I would 100% be buying.
The house market did collapse in the UK not many years ago though, and because almost everyone here buys their houses on mortgages (Who can seriously afford to buy outright?) many of them ended up in negative equity — the value they could sell their house for was significantly lower than what they'd mortgaged. Most of those people are still fucked, and as an added bonus because the number of people turning to renting has exploded they're finding it almost impossible to sell their houses.
You can theoretically make profit from a house, but that isn't proving true for a lot of people 2008 onwards. You're also tied into a lot of things, whereas with six months notice or less I can walk away from a rented home without a single obligation or task to sort out. And of course I'm not responsible for anything that goes wrong with my home, which is in itself something that can cost thousands.
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Whoops! We'll close this one.
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Oh yeah, one thing I've noticed is that older people seem to almost universally buying a place as 'the done thing' and what you should strive towards. I just don't think they understand the modern world of people wanting the freedom to move around said world, not be tied into what can easily become a huge ball and chain around your neck, etc.
Obviously there are valid arguments for buying, but there are just as many for not as we've gone over in this thread. I've just started to completely disregard thoughts from others on whether or not I should buy because I know my own situation better than anyone — and I'm happy.
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Still playing around. I know what an arpeggiator is now, lmao. https://soundcloud.com/ryan-williams-…-cliche-snippet
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2014 was a year of strong, upward growth for MapCore. Our relatively new Features section played a huge part in that growth. In interviews, editorials, and educational breakdowns, senior MapCore members shared their expertise on issues that matter in game development. And the articles they wrote gathered tremendous interest on places like reddit, the official Unreal Tournament and id Software pages, Facebook, Twitter, and more. We want to thank all the wonderful people who took the time to spread the love in 2014!
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My ex was like that for over two years because she couldn't find a job she was happy with. I have to admit that it really wore me down, because being faced with that kind of negativity almost all of the time when I myself am an extremely positive and optimistic person is difficult.
I also found it difficult to really empathise with her. I knew that she was unhappy, but in her shoes I would have kept my mood upbeat and focused on the future — which indeed I did when I was surprised by redundancy. She couldn't do this, and bad moods went on for days after a crappy day at work.
It's like, I'd say comforting things but I found it hard to feel like I truly meant them deep down, and in most cases it didn't help anyway. I kind of just wanted her to be like me and snap out of it, keeping herself busy doing fun things rather than dwelling on problems that nothing can be done about other than applying for and trying new jobs, which she was doing anyway.
I learnt through the experience that I am absolutely not compatible with pessimistic personalities. I realise that this may not be helpful for you.
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My Logitech G9 just wouldn't die. I had that thing since 2009, and put it through so many hours of gaming. Even when I replaced it a few weeks ago, it was still working fine and didn't even look that bad — the finish held up really well.
But I wanted a wireless mouse with better OS X compatibility, so I got a Logitech MX Anywhere. This is a very nice mouse.
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Quote from Sentura
Out of curiosity, which town was this?
Mansfield. It's not even an especially small town for the UK. It's horrifying to think of what a considerably smaller town or a village would be like. I guess the lifestyle I enjoy just isn't compatible with that kind of environment — I know lots of people who enjoy being in smaller, quieter places. I'm the kind of guy who pretty much needs urban noise at night to sleep peacefully.
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Hell no. OK sure, I pay as much for a one-bedroom flat as someone further out would pay for an entire five-bedroom house. But in my building I've got a pool, hot tub, sauna, and gym; work is a one-minute walk away; and within five minutes of walking I can get to 50+ bars, clubs, and restaurants, and shops of every kind imaginable.
I grew up in a town for 23 years, which comparatively was total shit. Deafening silence during the evening and night, nobody around (good if you want to be single and sexless for life I guess), 30 minutes to the closest shops, basically no genuinely good places to eat or drink in the entire town, social and job opportunities as rich as a pig's arse... man, I wouldn't go back there even if you paid me the rent.
But each to their own.
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I'm going to end up renting until the day I die. Fuck dat buying shit.
