By Kieron Gillen on July 20th, 2008 at 3:17 pm.
As I return from Jim’s 30th, just in time to actually get my bags together to go to San Diego Comic Con next week – and if you’re there, do pop to say hello at the Image booth where I’ll be most of the time – and… well, do the Sunday Papers, of course. What’s the Sunday Papers? Well, it’s our regular list of reading for a Sunday Afternoon, where I compile smart pieces of commentary which caught my eye this week while trying to avoid linking to two obliquely videogame-related songs.
- I don’t follow the Gold Farmer market, but this report interested me. In obvious relations to the law of supply and demand, the recent mass-banning by Blizzard has caused the market Gold Price to rocket. Lots of analysis here.
- A little more technical than most of the stuff I link to here, but I enjoyed this Gamasutra piece which analyses the various way games have approached the problem of simulating simple human interactions – from dialogue trees to key words to… well, lots others. I’d suggest a thought experiment of how you’d deal with conversations in a game given freedom to try whatever you like.
- You know, developers do actually watch what you guys say. Satine of Codemasters writes a little about female in fashion in games, prompted by the 250+ post thread about Damnation’s somewhat silly approach to ladies’ fashions. Oh – and while we’re talking about that, Leigh Alexander takes on the issue with her examination of why Ivy’s Boobs are such a big, big deal. It’s because they’re enormous tits, Leigh.
- I finally find something about Metal Gear Solid I like. Bristol’s Joker takes his dubstep science to the MGS Snake Eater theme. Also, George Pringle ennui-heavy girl-sighing-spoken-word – start with Carte Postale, specifically the bit about Street Fighter 2 about a minute and a half in. It is sad that Blanka is always gonna be stronger than Chun Li.
Failed.
20/07/2008 at 15:45 Jonas says:
Kieron, what’s the link to Satine’s writings? I’d love to read what they have to say :P
20/07/2008 at 15:58 Kieron Gillen says:
Fixedolio.
KG
20/07/2008 at 16:07 Jonas says:
Excellent. I was hoping for something a bit more opinionated, but it’ll do. Leigh’s article had more food for thought though it provided almost as few answers.
Also, speaking of dialogue systems in RPG’s, Vince (remember him?) had a pretty decent article about that over at Iron Tower’s forums. Can’t say I see the great promise in going back to keywords again, but maybe he’s going to prove me wrong some day.
Personally I think the answer is in better text parsers. At some point AI is bound to get good enough that you can use it to understand language and generate responses on the fly. It’ll probably be a decade or two though, sadly.
20/07/2008 at 17:26 Cooper says:
Leigh’s written about boobs and games before and seems to have changed her tone a bit in this piece to be less accommodating.
Depictions of women (and male for that matter, but I think it’s still pertienent to focus on representations of women) in media need to be challenged when they repeat these stereotypes. Idealising and repeating these stereotypes helps no one, and just serves to perpetuate unltimately discriminatory (or, at least, exclusionary) norms.
That being said, I quite like Soul Calibur, it’s one of my favourite beat ‘em ups, and, though it makes me uncomfortable, it’s not that I don’t think Ivy and her ilk shouldn’t look like that – that would be censorship, which also helps no one. Ideally, what I’d like to see are people generating (more) alternatives (strong lead characters in games which don’t rely upon nonsense heterosexual body fantasies) so that these depictions are diluted, and allowing them to be taken for what they should be – a bit of knowing fun, rather than what they still are, which are reinforcements for said exclusionary ideals.
20/07/2008 at 17:33 Noc says:
THIS is why we aren’t on the gold standard any more.
20/07/2008 at 22:12 Meat Circus says:
I know it’s petty to whine about this, dear RPSers, but the pop-in frame that jumps unbidden into my browser whenever old Mr Pointer saunters across the “share or save this story” link is REALLY ANNOYING.
Can you get Herr Web Developer to add a small (0.5 second delay) or something, so that I never have to see it again?
21/07/2008 at 01:23 James T says:
Or make the frame open on-click?
21/07/2008 at 02:29 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
There’s also the history of Soul Calibur’s buxom-ized ladies: they were competing with Dead or Alive. Though that doesn’t really answer any of the posed questions, to be honest.
21/07/2008 at 06:25 hungSolo says:
“simulating simple human interactions”
He’s missed the most obvious one: Salutations via a bouquet of resplendent virtual bullets. Also, teabagging.
22/07/2008 at 07:26 internisus says:
This dubstep thing is awful. The basic idea is fine, but it needs some serious variety.
George Pringle is really something though. Thanks for that.