Behold the truth, surrounded by more truth!!!



Adding a digg to the shit stream and seeing it come back instantly covered in wow gold spam just amused me. I shall go back to making more games now.

Microsoft "avatars" , do of course have two problems.

#1 the quotes around the word scare me, I'm not sure why but it just feels like microsoft are trying to claim the word avatar. No doubt putting quotes around a word helps them achieve this. These are the people after all that feel they own the word windows no matter in what context it is used.

#2 it already costs big bux to have random retarded bitmaps as your avatars, exactly how much they plan to charge for accesories and every pixel in these avatars will probably make the kid who thought up the million dollar homepage (no link for you cock fucker) hang their head in shame.

There is all, it also looks like too much body emphisis, thats not a smart plan. Focus on the heads guys, bodys are not recogniseable and should be mostly throwaway. You know, like on the wii where they know what they are doing, unlike the xbox live arcade random word marketplace place, where they have how you say, "Design issues of great incompetence."

Something I spotted in a newsgrounds comment and it relates to making games easy. My personal opinion is simply that you need to make gamers smarter not the games dumber.

This game, is nice, Pop_Pirates but its also designed to be retard proof as such it has that floating I will last forever feel to it and one doesn't so much lose the game as lose the war of attention attrition and become bored into submission. Still its a nice looking game, just needs some actual challenge and gameplay etc etc as per usual, please remember that I blame the audience for this not the developer.

The game design obviously encourages long play sessions simply by making it hard for them to end, unfortunatly they forgot to add a pause button ( apparently pause buttons represent 20% of a games value, along with mute buttons representing another 20% which only seems to leave about 60% or less for the actual game content)

Some poor soul suffered from this missing feature terribly, it turns out that after they started playing their body informed them in no uncertain terms that they needed to evacuate their bowels. The evil game then forced them to continue playing for who knows how long under considerable discomfort.

If only all games designers would remember that the audiences is at least 20% retarded this tragedy could be easily avoided.

Second preview of ItsaCoop!!!

Now featuring online drawing, you can watch the person draw :)

Some comments about difficulty in games ( http://vgbm.blogspot.com/2008/05/take-it-easy-on-me-difficulty-in-games.html ) that grew into what should really be a post so here it is :)

Difficulty should of course be kept low, as low as can be, however challenge must be kept high.

Difficulty and challenge, are not quite the same there should be a certain level of ability to play games. I don't mean that to be snobish. This level is not exceptional high and is similar to the need to be able to read before you can enjoy books. Or understand a language before you can understand what people say in that language. This is not an artificial barrier but an implicit one.

In fact let me put it in terms of books and reading. It is up to you, as the reader, to understand and apply these ideas to the medium of games.

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It is expected for a reader to have the ability to read, however they do not have to be a speed reader. It is not expected that the reader has to read at 100 pages a minute or even understand every word perfectly to enjoy a book.

It is expected that the reader brings a sense of imagination and is willing to participate in creating the world with the author. It is not expected that the reader sits there turning pages demanding each page to bring them bigger and better pornographic delights than the last page.

It is expected that upon finishing the book the reader should feel that their reward for doing so is implicit in the act of reading. If anything finishing a good book should bring a sense of remorse that you will not be able to read that book for the first time ever ever again. It is not expected that the reader demands a badge because they beat the book.

It is expected that when a reader likes a book they may read it more than once. Simply for their own enjoyment. Every time they do they will increase their understanding of exactly what is contained within that book. Conversely if they do not like the book they may stop reading at anytime.

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Not finishing games is OK, people buy books and then don't read them all the time too. Different people like different things and not every game is suited for everyone. For many games finishing or completing doesn't even make any real sense.

Please note that it is not impossible to make games without challenge and requiring almost no skill to play but still deliver huge rewards. These are called gambling games. They often hide behind complex rules to disguise their basic nature.

When people complain about overcomplicated games, this need to hide the lack of game tends to be why they seem so complex.

Personally I always choose Go over Chess and have no wish to smother simple random number generators in bullshit.

The problem is todays gamers refuse to accept any challenge, they must always win and win with little to no effort. Time sure, effort no. Making games feels a bit like playing monopoly with a spoiled brat where you eventually have to resort to cheating to make sure they win in order to stop the tantrums.

thats not really very healthy

I suspect most of them would be happier watching tv

Some obvious points to back this up is the way ultima online turned from an interesting dangerous world into the bland grind machine that players demanded.

Also all the reviews of shiren. Where the moronic gamer press reflects the minds of the moronic gamers. "WHEN YOU DIE YOU GO BACK TO LEVEL 1 AND THERE IS NO SAVE!!!!"

gamers really need to evolve or go back to watching TV :)

Yeah, I know, wishful thinking. But I'm not talking about become a super gamer god, just be prepared to accept *some loss and risk* and learn from it rather than throw an instant tantrum.

*sigh*

Preview of ItsaCoop!!!

you can click and draw and everything in this here test so go do it

Play PixlCoop at www.WetGenes.com

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