I used to play a mix of FPS games and MMORPGs online.
FPSs always seemed a bit problematic, but I think they’ve gotten significantly worse over time. Part of it is the explicit political content, with several of the most popular ones being “realistic” prominently featuring the US military and its missions. Contrast that to the Unreal series, with its semi-dystopian future from a cyberpunk tradition, or to the Halo series, in which the storyline has some moral complexity to it. And the sexism has gotten worse. Somewhere along the line, emphatic sexism seems to have become part of the popular identity of FPS players.
I think it’s telling that MMORPGs are now generally referred to as MMOs, and it seems to me as if the trend in design has been to sharply cut down on efforts to facilitate role-playing. One of the many reasons this is sad is that in the past, MMORPG participants seemed to have fairly good demographics, and I participated in several persistent online role-playing groups that had even numbers of genders, which I think helped make the groups work.
I bought an ex day-traders machine on ebay last year with a couple of Xeons in it, and judging by what ‘can I run [$new_game]’ sites tell me, it’s future-proof for a while, as long as I keep banging a mid-range graphics card in it every two years or so, and it was less than 200 quid.
I played through 2 first, then picked up the original when it was on sale and had a I blast playing 2 and was curious about the backstory. The second is a definite improvement over the first in story and side missions as well as the one liners and while I am still in the progress of playing through 2 with all the available classes I am not sure I will go back and do the same with the original. Maybe when I have to burn some more use it lose it vacation time I will revisit it.
I haven’t played the first one, so I can’t do a direct comparison.
I’d say just look at some of the promos and game clips on youtube to see if you like the humor, or some Hey Ash Whatcha Playin which is by the writer.
It’s been my favorite blowing off steam game. It’s easy but not so easy it feels pointless. You don’t have to go crazy with micro managing status effects and how you use your powers until the hardest setting. It’s super violent but in a cartoonish way. The characters are terrible people but in a fun, silly way. Women are pretty well represented except for low level villans, gay characters are just dropped in like it’s no big deal.
Right now I’ve got a region 2 copy and I need to borrow a region 1 copy so I can play though the Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep DLC, which is basically a D&D style game that Tiny Tina runs for the main characters after the events of the story are over.
Ahh the Broken Sword games, I loved them. Which reminds me of Gabriel Knight, one of the first, best p&c adventure games ‘for adults’. I was heartbroken to learn that they hadn’t employed Tim Curry in the 20th Anniversary edition.
It sounds like we may have more than enough Borderlands 2 players around for some co-op games.
I’ve played through the base game and some of the DLC, but I never completely finished it. Good news: Borderlands 2 runs well on Linux. Bad news (for me at least): saved games don’t port over, even thought they’re stored on the Steam cloud.
It’d be simple enough to set up a Steam group for Boing Boing. We could make it public, or invitation-only, and whoever runs it invites people who post in a thread for that purpose. The latter is less convenient, but given recent controversies and some of the stories related in this very thread, I think it might be better.
I’d want an okay from the people who’ve got a claim on the Boing Boing name, first.
If you’re up for being a mod, summon beschizza (probably frauenfelder would be more appropriate) and ask. Although I don’t think the loomio book group asked permission, although (again) Steam is more culturally front facing.
If you put the same unreasonable amount of time that I have into BL2, you will come to hate it for its evil ways. Otherwise, it’s just a slightly better designed (mostly), slightly worse written (mostly) Borderlands.
If nobody’s said this already, people who like The Binding of Isaac should all buy/play Nuclear Throne. You can be a fish.
For what it’s worth, the book club was a very informal proposition, made up of people who frequent the BBS/Discourse side of the Boing. I don’t think it got a mention on the front page, but having Jason involved does give us legitimacy, were it needed. In the same vein, the Badass games are BBS-centric as well, and made virtually no impact on the main Boing page. But if you’re wanting to solicit gamers (er, uh, I mean “game-players”) from outside the smallish confines of BBS regulars, that would probably entail front-page mention, and in any case yeah, you’d want the thumbs-up from the Powers That Be if you’re going to have any but the most tangential and informal relationship to the BB brand.
Heh. Half-joking, in that it’s a perfectly serviceable joke if it never goes anywhere, as 99.3% of polled Magic 8 Balls opine.
But way back in a dusty corner of my heart of hearts, I really hope it does. It’d be a hoot.
I notice a lot of people mention Binding of Isaac, and it’s a game I purchased solely on the strength of the universal praise I’d heard for it. I can see the appeal of the concept, but I just don’t find it much fun to play. Perhaps I’m a statistical outlier, but I feel like I’m missing something. Maybe it’s better with a gamepad?
We could start a topic here, asking if anyone wanted to be a player in a group, the steam group name doesn’t have to include the word ‘boingboing’, ‘bb_gamers’ would be enough. I do think we would need express permission to use the full moniker on Steam.
Wait. Surely SJW or Social Justice Warriors would be a more awesome name.
I seriously like the idea of collaborating on writing a film, even if it’s just in the ‘throw ideas around and see what sticks’ stage.
The total bizarre grimness of made me love it more than anything. I totally suck at that arcade style of game but I did play the heck out of it for awhile though I have yet to defeat mom. Also I think the fact you can play it easily in 5 to 15 minute chunks is an appeal.
Yeah, the book club was my hairbrained scheme, and I didn’t even think about seeking out permission from anyone about it. I just assumed that since the BB folks had set us up a nice, swank pad here, that they expected us to use it wisely. A book club seemed like a good idea to me. We’ll see how it goes!
So far it’s seeming like an excellent idea indeed! There are some sharp and opinionated and well-cultured minds in that group (and there’s also me, too) and I think this will be a superb forum for wringing plenty of insight and added value out of that book.
As it turns out, though I haven’t played any co-op or multiplayer games in years, I would like to play with many of the folks that frequent these pages.
