Irrational Behavior Episode 6 Discussion

Talk about Irrational Behavior Episode 6 here!

Part 1: Team Deathmatch
Part 2: Appetite for Deconstruction

And for the discussion starting question. What games influenced you or have been monumental in your life?

I will never forget playing "Simon the Sorcerer 2" and "Day of the Tentacle"

My influential games are Call of Duty, Sam and Max Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle, Maniac Mansion, and Bioshock.

I find myself referencing to Bioshock a lot for Art I design for games. Whether it's water, animations, or textures.

mine must be

Thief
Dungeon Keeper
Planescape Torment
Ultima Underworld
Fallout
Heroes of Might and Magic

System Shock 2 and Fallout.

Concerning LGS legacy, the Thief & and SS series (especially the sequels — Metal Age ftw!) shaped my tastes in many ways, both in gaming & related arts. And later on, Deus Ex completed the Holy Trinity and inspired me to check out Chesterton & Eco. Thanks fer gettin' me in!

Daggerfall was the definition of monumental as I've put hundreds of hours into it and still have very fond memories of traveling through the vast land.

What I loved about these games is the way they opened up their genres: Daggerfall lets you design your own class & spells, which just made sense to me as I was always yearning for virtual freedom. Climbing and levitating around the cities at midnight (VENGEANCE!) was such a Garrettian delight. Thief & SS took the first-person perspective and ditched you into worlds where pulling the sword / trigger wasn't the only way to have a meaningful experience and the experience itself was exceptionally brilliant.

I skip the question and cut to the main one:

"DO GAME MAKERS GAME DIFFERENTLY?"

'End consumer' - you guys used the term in the podcast. Here's how I play games:

# I like to 'see' what the game engine of a new game does.
# I browse through the installed files to figure out what's what - reading files, if they are in clear text (no, I am not one of the 'reverse engineering'-squad)
# If available, I played the same game in software mode, Glide, OpenGL, DirectX - just to find out if it matters. (Unreal 1 engine based games in Glide!)
# I like to see how fine grained or where the limits of a game mechanic is/are.
# I like to break the game.
# I like to play the same sequence for 50-100 times with different settings to see if there is a difference or how subtle the differences are.
# While others run happy trigger through levels, I just want to enjoy the level design, art assets, sound design, visual effects ...
# I like tweaking ini files; changing settings constantly - from the UT-Engine settings to changing LUA scripts, modifying whatever files I can... depending on the game. (Yes, Baldurs Gate self-made scripts, ftw)
# I rarely 'finish' or proper 'play' a game - when I 'get' how it works and where the game limits are, I am bored instantly.
# Peter Molyneux's Black & White did cost me quite a while, figuring out if the creature is as 'dumb' as it unfortunately was
# I spent hours/days in GTA IV just walking - watching/listening the events I trigger

If games fall back to repetitive gameplay, they lose me.

( = Games that want me to do the same thing over and over again - giving me an achievement in the end for doing it... is insulting my intelligence. Getting 'better' in a game, by memorizing patterns is for Robots/CPU's - I am not your Pavlovian Dawg. Life is too short for stupid games. You game devs share also a responsibility, 's all I'm sayin'.. )

I remember playing Half Life when it came out. It crashed at one moment and started the MS Visual Studio debugger, showing me the source code, where the game crashed. THAT was an awesome gamer moment.

Do I play differently than you, Duders? You judge...

Clock Tower, Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

I loved this podcast--but god I just hung my head at the exchange about film school and a loss of immersion.

I spent a couple of years in film school before moving to playwriting and poetry--but that just means that I have a growing list of artistic mediums that are poisoned, to some extent, by my attention to craft and tropes and so on.

It's why I hate Heavy Rain desperately not only as a game, but as a piece of fiction.

Freedom Force and Diablo.

Mostly new games such as the production values in Uncharted 2, the world of Half-Life; I also really liked my experiences as a squad in the Battlefield franchise.
-And they are right, Dead Space contains some excellent sound design.