http://www.planetmule.com/

FUCK. YES.

This is actually something I've always wanted to see explored more in games. The whole general theme of mistrust and unreliable allies. I've only seen it in a couple examples. The old C64 version of Alien put you in control of a bunch of characters with unique, randomized psychological instabilities, leaving you to figure out which ones were claustrophobic, agoraphobic, or just the damn android that would flip out and kill everyone at the worst possible moment. Defcon and other RTSes with fragile alliances face you with some motherfucker surfacing subs off your coast after you wipe out the poor bastard playing as China. And, sadly, The Thing game completely and utterly failed to make what should have been something brilliant work in any way resembling good.

So... is there any way of, well, not necessarily translating Werewolf into a videogame, but working the central element that makes it so compelling into one? Is there a way of putting a bunch of people together, of whom a smaller number have a contrary agenda to the larger group, and making it work? Would it have to be completely anonymous? Somehow, I think someone who manages to do that in a snappy, attractive, accessible way will walk away with a pot of gold and a fucking unicorn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT7AH4JyuNs

Also, have we ever done a The Thing themed game?

Blood tests and flamethrowers. It'll be like the last time I went to the clinic.

I've been toying with the idea of making a source mod. Mostly predicated on the idea that most of my joy in shooters is found in finding fantastic ways of killing myself. Elaborate, rube-goldbergesque ways, in some cases. And what could make that more fun than a bunch of other people out to kill themselves and thwart each other in their attempts.

I can see this as being a very simple mod: you gain points for each point of damage done to yourself, lose them for each point of damage done to others, and gain for every point of damage you heal on someone else. The artistry would be in making maps that necessitate self-destructive creativity. Ones where a single grenade spawn point is prized because you could pop yourself pretty well with it. But also where a single douche with a gravity gun could snatch it from under your feet and whallop himself at your expense. Environmental hazards could be doubleplus awesome, but you'd have to avoid a situation where everyone just rushes to a pond and drowns themselves.

It seems even more appropriate given the absolute fucking suicidal bleakness of HL2's environments and characters. Hell, have it play the opening bars of the MASH theme whenever you finally succeed in killing yourself.

Fair idea?

I have this probably unhealthy habit of jamming on the prtscrn button pretty much constantly while playing any game. It's mostly training pounded into me from years of having to go back through something to get screenshots for an article, but I do it regardless of whether I plan on writing something. The result is about a hundred gigs of images of pretty much every game I've dicked around in over the last five years. Occasionally I poke through them and find some fun moments.



Like tooling around with Zara in a crazyface spaceship just sort of generally terrorizing Second Life. I love the dialogue that happened here. Pretty goddamn Invader Zim.



Also, for some reason somebody had rented out an entire sim apparently for the purpose of erecting (hurr) a gigantic dick in it, then abandoning the thing. Made for a great sandbox, if you didn't mind the enormous cock crushing the sun. Which apparently most people must have, because we had it more or less exclusively to ourselves.



I think this neatly encapsulates the entire history of my relationship with Zara.

Anyway, with such a rich history of being offensively peculiar in the presence of imaginary people on the internet it seems like the rest of you probably have comparable collections to share.

An ansi art gallery just opened. A physical one, just a couple blocks from me. It's called 20 GOTO 10. I am not entirely sure how to feel about this, but my initial reaction is suspicion and slight pissoffedness.

I think I would very much like to see this thing. Mostly in the same way I'd like to see a three headed man who bites the heads off three headed chickens. I understand that such a thing is possible, but I find it hard to believe that it exists and need to behold it firsthand, even though it doesn't sound like something I'll enjoy watching in any healthy sense. I probably -should-, being the intended public for the thing. But then, cows are the intended public of abattoirs.

You see, the problem is that this is ansi art. This is, if you can but dig it, some of the most accessible art ever conceived. I have a CRT. It'll do that shit. Going to a gallery is entirely unnecessary. The only purpose I can conceive is to change the context of the stuff, and that seems just a little bit too sly.

It strikes me a lot like blown up comic panels hung in galleries. Or that infamous toilet. If the entire point is to challenge conceptions about art by putting it in a gallery, you know, I've seen that. That paradigm shift has sailed. There's also the additional complication that in the case of a toilet there really isn't a lot of original merit to the thing to be cheapened when your whole point is shifting contexts.

Or maybe it's just more Generation Y fuckheadedness. I'm going back to usenet.

Already did a pissy article about this, but never a day passes without encountering some kind of fuckheadedness that really doesn't have any technical excuse.

I would like to go back and revise at least one of those, however. Cut scenes should be skippable, sure. More importantly, they should be pausable and rewindable. I'll spend hours just horsing around, but the moment I hit a half hour long cutscene is the precise time the girlfriend will get home or the building will catch fire.

I also forgot to include the worst offender of the lot. I don't know which fink thought the one thing that should be introduced to MMOs would be unskippable goddamn cutscenes. Not only an MMO, but one of which I was already particularly fond and had stuck a lot of time into. City of Heroes isn't a game I play for the plot. And strapping me down and forcing me to watch what essentially amounts to someone else roleplaying multiple times through the course of a raid does not improve the experience. MMOs are repetitive enough without freezing everything so I can watch some douche in shoulderpads go off about how I just walked into his trap for the fiftieth goddamn time. If they had to do it they at least could have made them long enough for me to go take a leak.

I'll be adding to this one. Bear in mind I'm not talking about design choices you just don't agree with. I mean things that universally make shit less fun for all involved.

Aesir just made fanart of both Inside Out Girl and Derby from the Deep. I'm don't really have anything to say about this. Except maybe to request another one of them kissing.

There are, much as it pains me, more human emotions than Sharkey, Thad, Kazz and Wank. Suitable expressions of these concepts must be discovered.