Sorting your video game preferences

Can’t deal with all the news of the past few days. So instead, I’m taking online quizzes and distracting myself with my self care regimen of video game consumption.

Sorting 100+ games in order of preference is no easy task, but it can be done with some perseverance. Go here for the quiz. My results below the fold. The top 20 are not surprising at all. I’d maybe sort some of the ties, of course, but the results are really uncanny otherwise.

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Sorting your video game preferences
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What alignment are you?

I think this is very proximate to our discussions about gender, given that gender and sex are both social constructs and the problems we’re seeing with having in-depth discussions about these constructs being spectra rather than binary is that it seems those people who can’t answer “trans women are women” think this means we’re creating and reinforcing a binary rather than demanding a spectrum of genders.

Good and evil, order and chaos, are two axes describing spectra of behaviour related to social standing and pro-social behaviour. Dungeons and Dragons has a mechanic wherein you can assign your character Good, Neutral, or Evil, and Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic, making a 3×3 grid of alignments. It’s certainly more interesting than a binary Good/Evil choice (or, say, Paragon / Renegade, or Light Side / Dark Side), and it means very little outside of the scope of interactions with other human beings. It’s still by necessity an abstraction. Something like the Kinsey Scale for hetero/homosexuality being a 1-9, or Dawkins’ atheist/theist 0-7 scale — neither of those describes the panoply of positions one can stake coherently.

But, still interesting. Take this alignment test to see how you stack up. A number of my friends (including my wife) got Chaotic Good. I got Neutral Good:

A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because when it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Yeah, that does sound a lot like me. Including the sentence fragment in the last sentence! (I assume the “when” is superfluous.)

What alignment are you?

"Please don’t make the super suit green. OR ANIMATED!"

My gods. I might actually have faith that they’re about to get Deadpool right.

But here’s the thing. This is not for kids, it is super violent, and it is probably going to be problematic as all hell. I know I’m still going to love it though. (It’s okay to enjoy problematic things as long as you recognize them as such.)

So, below the fold the video goes. Along with the trailer’s trailer.
Continue reading “"Please don’t make the super suit green. OR ANIMATED!"”

"Please don’t make the super suit green. OR ANIMATED!"

Actually, let's talk about ethics in Watch_Dogs

Let’s all say it: Ayden Pearce is morally repugnant. Errant Signal does an excellent and thorough job itemizing exactly why.

I had been interested in this game, and in the concept of hacking-as-superpower, but when it turned into yet another white-guy-does-whatever-he-wants story, where every moral decision boils down to “shoot the guy or blow up the guy”, where you’re given tidbits of information about the lives and dreams and desires of each person you’re systematically murdering, where you’re essentially obligated to spy on and not intervene in situations where you could actually legitimately make a difference because they’re just cut-scenes inserted for flavour, I couldn’t bring myself to play.

It’s like all the power they give you is misdirected, where you can’t fix the system but you can take advantage of it for your own gain. Where you become judge, jury and executioner for crimes that haven’t yet been committed, and you let other grievous crimes go entirely unpunished because you, omniscient privileged douchebag, cannot be moved to actually do anything. And when you DO do something about an injustice, it’s the wrong thing entirely, against the wishes of everyone around you. Where you’re both the cause and the violent solution to the problems in your life. Where your actions are supposed to be good but your opponents’ actions are bad, despite the fact that you’re doing a thousand times objectively eviller things as a matter of course.

If we’re going to talk about ethics in video games, this is ultimately a Douchebag Hacker Empowerment Fantasy simulator, and it doesn’t remotely touch on any of the things that need to be discussed with regard to the disturbing surveillance culture we’re in. I can get empowerment fantasies in far less problematic worlds than this, without feeling like I’m railroaded into the Evil playthrough of a game like Infamous where the moral choices are approximately “save the box of kittens, or stuff them with grenades and throw them off a building indiscriminately”.

Actually, let's talk about ethics in Watch_Dogs

War never changes, but it gets a bit more saturated

FALLOUT 4. Now in Technicolor! It’s going to take place in Boston, because we don’t have enough New England as yet in the Fallout lore. *snrk*

I am so happy this is not an MMO. That would have been a monumental mistake, I think. And I really hope they don’t fragment the content the way Rocksteady just did with Batman: Arkham Knight and the pre-order bonuses.

For the uninitiated, the Fallout universe is not, actually, about an alt history with the Cold War resulting in the apocalypse, believe it or not. It sure looks that way, though, with its 1950s arrested development. Instead, in this universe, nobody invents the transistor during WW2, and instead we invest all our tech development on the vacuum tube. The Great War happens in 2077, over resources, because humanity never gets away from the larger and more resource-consumptive technologies. For some reason, culture is slowed drastically, and by the time of the Great War, America is roughly in the 1950s, only with a Mr. Handy helper robot in every kitchen. After the apocalypse — when India, China, Russia, North Korea and America all nuke the living fuck out of each other (and everyone else, for funzies) — the only survivors are those who went underground into Vaults. They emerge to a wasteland that is populated by mutants, ghouls, raiders and the very dregs of humanity.

I’m happy with this incarnation of the Wasteland. It is significantly closer to Fallout 1 and 2 in looks than 3 ever was, and at the moment, during my replay of Fallout: New Vegas, the only way I can stand to look at it for any length of time is with the Imaginator plugin that offers different colour palettes. (I am presently using the Trek Vaseline Cam palette, which makes the Mojave look a lot like that planet where Kirk fights the Gorn. You know the one.) So I’m looking forward to scavenging the wastelands with more varied landscapes, and with my dog inevitably named Dogmeat at my side.

The only way they could have made this better — at least in my mind — is to have the generic character at the end be a woman, because it’s *just* a generic character, and there’s nothing holding you to picking that specific dude they showed. Could you imagine the outrage from certain quarters? The only way I could think of to make hateful antifeminists lose their shit more than that, though, would be to force the character creation to only allow you to create women. In either case the resultant rage could power me for centuries.

War never changes, but it gets a bit more saturated

Geek Girl Con: Carol Corps (the Carol Danvers fandom)!

I did a special guest run-in to talk about the skeptical/atheist communities and inclusion at the amazing Sigrid Ellis’ behest at Geek Girl Con last weekend. She posted the audio of the panel to Youtube — here it is.

I seriously had no idea there was a fandom for Carol Danvers, but I’m totally sold. I’ve been nattering on Twitter about why there isn’t already a Captain Marvel movie yet, what with Phase 2 dealing with space-stuff heavily. Dammit, it’s time for SWORD to exist, and for the Ms. Marvel cycle to get out of the way so we get our powerhouse colonel taking her rightful place in the Marvel cinematic pantheon. She outranks Captain America, so she should get more movies than him, right? RIGHT?

Geek Girl Con: Carol Corps (the Carol Danvers fandom)!

The Curious Case of the Mega-Shark, Locked in Mortal Combat with the Giant Octopus

My forfeit for Geek Girl Con having raised $2500. Yes, this means I’m participating in the DIY Science Zone track at GGC, specifically, doing a set of demonstrations about statistics, randomness and 20-sided dice.

A silent film about two giant underwater monsters. Done for Geek Girl Con 2014 fundraising, with great regrets. When the fundraiser hits $5000 raised, I vow to play Battletoads beginning to end, with unlimited lives, on Twitch.tv! Donate now to inflict pain upon me in retribution for my making you watch this nonsense!

Fonts:
Nickelodeon NF – http://www.1001fonts.com/nickelodeon-font.html
Little Lord Fontleroy – http://www.dafont.com/little-lord-fontler.font

Music: Royalty Free silent film score by Kevin MacLeod
http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/?genre=Silent%20Film%20Score
Hyperfun, Fig Leaf Times Two, Amazing Plan, Villainous Treachery
(and some sub-thirty-second snippets that would be spoilers)

Visit the Donations Page to donate to Geek Girl Con. Do it now!

Visit… well, right here… to point and laugh at the performing monkey.

The Curious Case of the Mega-Shark, Locked in Mortal Combat with the Giant Octopus

CONvergence 2014 panel audio: Superheroes in our Modern Day Pantheons

This conversation ended up taking quite a few unexpected twists, including a lengthy interjection by a stalwart of the comic books industry that you’ll need to hear if you’re any sort of comics nerd. It was a small room, thankfully, and he was seated in the front, so it should be relatively audible. The panel also took a number of theological turns that I wasn’t expecting, mostly owing to ideological differences between myself and one of the panelists.

Nobody really worships Hercules or Thor as Greek and Norse gods anymore, but don’t despair, because now they’re both members of The Avengers. This panel will explore the commonalities and differences between our ancient and modern pantheons.

Panelists: David Schwartz, Jason Thibeault, Roy T Cook, Jonathan Palmer, Ryan Consell

Sincere apologies for the noise at about 20 mins — I tried to quiet it somewhat, but you may want to be careful with your volume then nonetheless. Ryan Consell dumped half a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper on my phone when he reacted to a comment by one of the other panelists. Luckily, the phone survived, and wasn’t even sticky thanks to it being “diet”. But boy did mopping it up cause a racket on the mic!

[audio:http://cdn1.the-orbit.net/lousycanuck/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/cvg2014-panel2-superheroes_modern_pantheon.mp3]

(or download the Superheroes in our Modern Day Pantheons mp3 – 31.1 megs)

CONvergence 2014 panel audio: Superheroes in our Modern Day Pantheons