drdrslashvohaul

Cheers Fronzel!

Hmm. Since I'm working on the history of vaccines and vaccination in the public imagination, maybe I can claim back a pledge from work... :)

Aren't adventure games by their nature single player? Because of the need for scripts, lack of procedurally generated goals and the focus on telling a story, I'm not sure it could work. As Fred intimates, it would require a shift towards RPG mechanics. Maybe Elite Dangerous with dick jokes? </Toleman>

I don't quite get the hate for SQ6. It's a game with loads of great set pieces (Polysorbate LX, the DeepShip, etc.), it just lacks the narrative to draw it all together. It's far from my least favourite.

When Spaceventure was announced, I bought the SQ collection off Steam and played them back-to-back. The first four are where it's at for me. SQ5 amd SQ6 were good, but (for obvious reasons) didn't have the same feeling. SQ2 was the first I ever played as a kid in the early 90s, so I've probably played that most. And SQ4 least because of the timing bugs. Not sure on my "favourite". It's either SQ4 or Incinerations, but my moods change over time.

Perhaps SQ invented "timey-wimey" as an explanation decades before the Dr Who reboot.

Saw this on the twitters. Awesome.

There's a lot of qualified opinion and nuanced conclusions going on in this forum at the moment. I don't like it.

DosBOX worked surprisingly well on my GOG version of Theme Hospital. Really expected it to grind, especially given how poorly it used to handle SQ4 and the like in the mid-noughties. As with all these things, I don't care how it's emulated so long as I can double click the desktop icon and have it in my face. And working. I suppose it depends whether you're buying the games digitally now, or trying to use your old CDs/disks to play on your modern 64-bit PC that, frankly, would have been a supercomputer in 1991.

50% of a 0.0001% turnout. So about 0.00005% of the electorate. ;) But I would agree with our MusicallyInspired comrade that most people probably prefer the VGA version for ease of access, and a number of other reasons. But then many people prefer CD to vinyl...

Kudos on the new sig. :)

Which is fine, and your prerogative. Nobody is saying you have to dislike it because it isn't a Two Guys game. We're just saying it's one of a handful of reasons why we might prefer the EGA version.

Yes, there's a distinction between assuming the outsourcing affected the game and knowing that it did. We're in the latter camp. Not all outsourced stuff is shit (as Brandon shows with Monkey Island) and not all of it is out of step with the original team. This just so happened to be. Prejudice is where you assume something based on stereotype. In this case the accusation fits the reality. It could have all been done in house and been equally out of step with the rest of the series; or outsourced and captured Mark's style seamlessly. But, anyway. I like the VGA version, but I also feel like it didn't feel like "proper" SQ. Someone here said it was like a fan game, and I'd go with that. Having discovered the series via SQ2 (which my dad bought based on playing SQ1), I prefer the parser and keyboard interface, as well as the overall feel of the original. Didn't realise it was drawn in Korea. Ultimately, I think it's a but of a diversion. It's simply another example of how it was a) not Scott and Mark and b) done to maximise profit. Which I think was The Two Danes from Danedromeda's original issue that started the bun fight. Nowt wrong with any of what Sierra did, by the way. Just makes me think a little less of it (personally) as an overall package.

Scott Manley backs quite a lot of Kickstarters and Early Access titles, mostly to do with sci-fi. Anyway, one of the good points he makes here is that Double Fine spent far more and got far less productivity out of their project than comparable games. Rimworld, FTL, Maia, Kerbal Space Program. Despite having a bigger, more-established studio, they were pumping out less material than one guy in his house in Canada (Rimworld). Pretty pathetic, really. I know a lot of Kickstarters - the Two Guys Included - have realised that maybe having a developer forcing you to keep deadlines isn't always a terrible thing. But they were, for the most part, 1-5 people in a virtual office. Double Fine has the infrastructure. Just needs a man with a whip...

Christ on a bike... Nobody said that the only reason they didn't like SQ1 was because of Scott and Mark not being involved. It was just the one point they made in the thread before moving on. So you're not "just sayin'" about there needing to be more valid criticism (because nobody claimed or denied that). You're just shit stirring. But, hey. You're edgy. You speak your mind. You're not going to kowtow to what "the man" says you're supposed to behave like. Manners are for squares. For mealy mouthed sheeple. You talk. You bring the truth. You say what needs to be said, because it needs to be said. You are: Fronzel Neekburm. :wub:

Of course you can judge the game on its own merits, but if you're a fan of Scott and Mark's work it will colour your overall impression of it. Don't be so obtuse.

Yeah, if you're going to do a joke like that (and it was quite funny), you're going to regret it if you don't deliver. To be fair, though, there's an instagram account of Mark Crowe and Chris Pope shoving twenties into strippers' underwear at a club in Des Moins.

I agree entirely. There's a lot of entitled arses complaining, effectively, that they bought an early access game and got one. There is, however, a trust issue. I'm not sure I trust these guys to deliver what they initially plan to. That's not wrong, or dishonest on their part. This is the nature of prefunding. Just don't expect people to keep trusting you if you consistently fail to deliver.

Double Fine not able to plan, again... Not entirely Broken Age related, or even adventure game related, but I was quite looking forward to the ongoing development of SpaceBase DF-9. There was quite a lot of potential to "Dwarf Fortress in space", where you can get quite attached to the rich world and personal relationships between your dwarves/crewmen. Now, there's a game there. It's OK. Probably worth the £12 (or so) I paid for it. But given that it was sold on the premise that it would keep improving, this is a bit of a kick to the groin. Makes me wonder, given the way in which Broken Age ended up being developed and the money management issues - as well as the criticisms here about a lack of depth (precisely the current issue with DF9) - whether this might be a company to think twice about in the future? Not sure. :huh:

There could be a whole host of reasons. It wouldn't be in keeping with the Two Guys' (and Chris's) style to do this to drum up capital investment and/or an impending release, but, yeah, could be that. There's also nothing to suggest that it wasn't just a fan, or someone following the kickstarter story who wanted to do a very easy, very quick piece of e-mail copy and paste to get something up on the site and earn his/her $1.75 for a puff piece. There's no analysis there - it's just like one of those "interviews" the fan sites used to do back in the day. What concerns me more than anything is the cynicism. Free thinking and critique requires questioning people in the public eye. It doesn't mean assuming that everyone is up to shenanigans and everyone is out to screw people over. Ask those questions about Scott and Mark. But don't assume it's the default position. Because if you think that's how they operate, then why give them any money in the first place? I prefer Hanlon's razor - Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. If you genuinely think all journalists, businessmen and politicians are totally corrupted and have no desire to do good, then either: a) do something about it and become a good journalist, businessman or politician; or b) find your nearest doomsday prepper colony and ask about their long-term membership programme.

The most heinous crime a journalist can commit is not being specific enough for gamers. Boils my piss.

There's also the more likely possibility that sci-fi recurring tropes recur. Lazy artists/writers. :P

Was going to draft a full reply, but then I saw this. You've clearly never watch South Park, or at the very least haven't seen it in the past 10 years. Possibly the best satire on TV at the moment. I'm a university lecturer and use it as a teaching aid. If you haven't seen it recently, I'd urge you to do so. If you have and still think it's fart jokes, then it's clearly gone straight over your head. I'm not asking for stuff to be banned, either, which undermines that point you made. So... meh. Boring argument is becoming even more boring. Time to bow out.

I've sort of said this on the twitters, but there's not enough room there for nuance, so forgive me. I don't think that episodic anything really works unless one starts the project from the outset to be so. There may be natural breathing points where one could end a "chapter", but if a story arc is supposed to be in one piece it takes an awful lot of work to make it fit to two or more pieces. A game like Space Quest III, for example, couldn't be episodic. The whole exploration thing simply wouldn't work. You'd also have problems with SQ4 and SQ5. Sure, you could instigate insta-death if you go to a world you're not supposed to, or find some other clunky mechanic to get Roger back in his time pod, but I don't think it would really work. Seeing as Spaceventure was - even if only implicitly - "sold" to us as, and no doubt originally intended to be, a "feature length" game, I personally would rather a vastly delayed full game than a still-delayed episodic version. I would also be rather worried. If you're going episodic as an attempt to raise enough capital for the later parts, there's no guarantee that this will actually work. More to the point, if you need extra capital to finish those parts, I can't imagine that after investing in the equipment, coding, art assets, etc. that parts 2 and 3 cost that much compared to getting part 1 out in the first place. In short, I find it doubtful that if the company cannot afford to release all the parts together that it can afford to get out 1, fully-polished and well-crafted opening chapter. However, Troels "devil's advocate" defence of episodic games, coupled with the fact that it was raised on the podcast makes me think that Scott and Mark are seriously considering doing this, if they haven't made that decision already. If that's the case, then I'm sure they'll do the best with what they've got to work with. I can't help but think, though, that something will be lost through such a compromise. And that will always taint the game for me. (Not a rational response, perhaps, but true.) I could be talking out of my arse, here. But to me, it doesn't seem like it can really be justified from an artistic standpoint. Though the economic realities may dictate otherwise.

The hilarious thing is, though, Sarkeesian starts each video with "I still like video games, I just find some of these things problematic. Yes, you'll find examples that go against these tropes, but these tropes are still far more common than the exceptions - that's what makes them tropes." And she often takes time to praise the games that she thinks offer a great counter-balance. The people who don't like her, though, immediately ignore the caveats - and crucially ignore what she's trying to do - to jump straight on the attack. I don't find all of her arguments convincing, and I do think (despite the inevitable shit she would get/has got) that there should be comments on her videos. But if you're going to attack her, at least try to debate her on her own terms rather than on some weird fantasy of what art critique and feminism are.