StaceyPowers

In this thread, I cannot help but be astounded by the sheer number of unplayed games @killamch89 and @Alyxx happen to have. Yet this seems very common. I won’t ask “how the heck do you afford all these games?” as that might be rude, so instead I’ll ask, “how do you budget for your video games?” Like, do you set rules for your spending? Is there a certain amount or percentage of your budget monthly you let yourself use to buy games? In my case, I usually only purchase a game if I decide I Must Have It. And if that is the case, I try to do overtime and then shop only out of that budget. Though if I see a good deal or if I am reaching the end of a previous game in a series, I will often make an exception. As a result, I do not have many games.

Are there any video game lines you incorporate into conversation a lot? For example, I have a tendency to say “would you kindly” when making requests a lot, although only people who played BioShock know that I am making a joke. Everyone else has no idea why I seem to say it in italics. @Alyxx @kingpotato @The Blackangel @killamch89 @skyfire @Executor Akamia @DylanC

If you play MMOs, what are some silly stories about how you made friends in the game? As I was telling @killamch89 in another thread I think, I remember one time when I was away from the keyboard in an MMO, because I had to minimize the screen so my parents wouldn’t see it. When I came back, I found that a member of a mafia in the game had robbed me of all my cash. His brother offered to pay it back, which was probably a way to put me in his debt. Ironically, we ended up being friends. Another silly story is a time that someone in the same game killed me completely at random one day. Since he was a new-ish player, I tried to be nice about it and explain to him why this was poor behaviour. He disappeared, and a few days later, one of the game’s top combatants, who I have never talked to in my life, is killing people who have bugged me. It turns out that he was that guy’s alt. Anyone else have any weird or funny stories about meeting people in video games?

Thank you! I second these nominations, and also nominate @The Blackangel!

Heheh, I remember doing that with TV as a kid, but it was because of content, not the time of day. Smart :) My habit was to do as much of my homework at school as possible so that I'd have just maybe one or two tasks left when I got home that wouldn't be too intensive. Then, I would stretch them out over the rest of the afternoon and evening while playing my MUD. Whenever parents would come upstairs, I'd quickly hit minimize on the game, and then appear to be hard at work on the assignments. Meanwhile, as they were standing in the room, I'd be praying nobody was killing me or robbing me in the game while it was minimized, lol. The most dramatic thing I ever maximized and came back to was discovering that a member of one of the game's mafias had robbed me of all my money, and his brother was offering to "help" by giving it all back, thus attempting to put me in his debt =D Ironically, as a result of the incident, we became close frenemies.

There were so many things I loved about the early Aughts, and that timeframe in my life. One of the best things though that I miss the most was the early internet. It wasn't flooded with the masses yet, and was still in the late early-adopter stage, so communities tended to be smaller and closer, and there was very little trolling and BS compared to today. Anyway, this forum reminds me of those times, so it is a throwback in the best of ways. No person should have to survive in such circumstances, but it makes me particularly angry that it happened to you.

Sometimes when I watch the water pouring through the ceiling, I laugh, because I am like "this water has been pouring into this room for years and still hasn't flooded it?? Where the heck is it all going??" I didn't realize that BioShock is among your favorite games! Which of the three do you like best? Also, what are your reasons for picking Rapture? Obviously, Rapture turned into a nightmare, but I'm assuming you are alluding that some of its vision appealed to you? That's why I said if you had to pick one ... Sometimes all the choices you get in life are bad ones. Of course, you could always go back in time and drown yourself prior to the point in time where you'd be forced to make that choice, thus ensuring no version of you in any universe would ever have to move to Rapture or Columbia =D The "under the sea" or "in the sky" are actually both winning points to me =D Its the politics of the places and the gene splicing nightmare that make me not want to go near them.

Damascus steel is ridiculously cool both from a functional and aesthetic point of view. I don't think I've ever bought a game with the intention of being educated either. I just tend to get interested in what I learn along the way when there is educational material which is present. If the game is fascinating enough, I end up getting interested in everything in it which somehow links to real life. That's very practical knowledge!

Yeah, you're both right--that gradual decay is ultimately probably more depressing than the moment when the plug is pulled.

If an educational topic comes up in a video game in some form or fashion, do you look it up and study it if it interests you? For example, the art styles in Fallout and BioShock caused me to look up art deco, streamline moderne, art noveau, and beaux-arts design. I subsequently also bought a set of drawing templates so I can make my own designs. I’m on my second playthrough of BioShock Infinite right now, and decided to learn more about Wounded Knee as a result. While reading up on that, I learned about the Ghost Dance ritual and an indigenous prophet at the time who believed that Jesus would come to earth, take the tribes up into the sky, and their enemies would be wiped out below. Interesting that Comstock did a kind of inverted version of that, bringing the white people into the sky and planning a cleansing of the world below, while subjugating anyone who wasn’t white. It’s cool learning more about history (depressing history, in this case) while also picking up more about what might’ve informed Comstock’s vision of Columbia. Do you ever go on research sprees like this, and if so, what are some of the most interesting discoveries you’ve made? @killamch89 @The Blackangel @DylanC @skyfire @Executor Akamia @kingpotato @Alyxx

There is a lot of discussion nowadays about online game servers being shut down permanently. As a lot of online games become older, support for them is being phased out, with only single player modes remaining (for those which have them). I’ve only ever played a single game that had its server taken down forever, which was an old MUD called Orone. I was actually there when the server was shut down. It didn’t seem like an amazing game, and I was only there a short time (maybe it was a couple of weeks). But what really put me out was that they pulled the cord a few hours earlier than they said they would. One of my friends and I were running around like crazy trying to accomplish as much as possible before the world ended, which was super fun and silly—and we felt quite cheated when they didn’t wait until the clock ran out. Have you ever been online on a game server when it was shut down permanently? What was your experience like? @skyfire @kingpotato @The Blackangel @killamch89 @DylanC @Executor Akamia @Alyxx

What are the most satisfying abilities/weapons in any games, just in terms of the pure joy you experience using them? For me, I think my number one favorite is Murder of Crows in BioShock Infinite. There is just something about sending a flurry of squawking, savage birds to literally tear apart one’s enemies that just never gets old. The bees in the first two games were similar, but somehow not as exciting to watch/listen to. In Skyrim, I really love Storm Call. I love that the lightning strikes multiple foes simultaneously. It really gives you a feeling of godlike power. I can’t for the life of me remember when or how I got it though. I think maybe it was near the end of the main quest line. What to you are the most satisfying abilities to use in video games? @DylanC @Executor Akamia @killamch89 @kingpotato @Alyxx @skyfire @The Blackangel

If you were forced to live in either BioShock's Rapture or Columbia (before the fall of either), which would you choose and why? I honestly can’t decide which would be worse. Columbia seems more prejudicial and autocratic on the surface, but Rapture got to be extremely autocratic as well. I expect I’d pick Columbia just because it would give me the best shot at escape (although, as we know, stealing an airship is harder than it sounds). @DylanC Tagging you on this since you're the only person on here I can think of who has played the series.

I was thinking the other day about just how many video games feature art deco architecture, graphic design, and other elements. Here is a quick list of titles I came up with off the top of my head: BiosShock 1 and 2 Close to the Sun The Outer Worlds Fallout series (largely in the form of Streamline Moderne) Does anyone have any other games to add to this list? I adore the art style, and would love more art deco worlds to explore.

I guess? I mean, I don't really function that way at all. I am still playing the same games I was years ago, but I also am regularly adding to my video game library. I want to explore new worlds and live new stories, I just don't want to give up the old ones.

When you were a kid or teenager, did you have to sneak to play video games? If you did sneak, what creative or inconvenient means did you have to use? Policies toward violent video games were surprisingly liberal in my home (while disapproved of, they were tolerated). But I did have to sneak to play any MMO. In the beginning, this led to me using Telnet to MUD. Telnet doesn’t show you what you’re typing, so it was quite an adventure trying to compose full-length news posts in-game without being able to read a word of what I was typing.

For any of you who play MMOs, what is the longest period of time you’ve played any single character? I think my longest lasted around a year.

Does anyone here use phrases or abbreviations which you learned from gaming, but which nobody seems to use anymore? For example, what most people refer to as “grinding,” I refer to as “bashing.” This was the standard word used in the MUDs I used to play, but I have never heard anyone use it outside of that context. I also use “frag” instead of “kill” or “eliminate” when referencing taking down a player in an FPS game, but that term’s usage (while still common) has dropped considerably since the 90s and early Aughts from what I can tell. I’m curious if anyone else has more of these words or phrases which you use and which seem to have gone out of favour. @Alyxx @The Blackangel @DylanC @kingpotato @skyfire @killamch89

When you are playing a video game, what types of events in the game world totally disrupt your experience in a way you find genuinely irritating? I’m not referring to bugs or glitches here. Like for example, if I am playing Skyrim and I am working my way through a dungeon, I like to just relax and get into a flow of killing things and progressing. So I get genuinely irritated if I run into an unexpected puzzle (unless solving it is easy) which blocks me from continuing. If it takes more than a few minutes, it usually prompts me to get up and check the solution online so I can just return to what I planned to be doing (bashing in the dungeon). Are there things like this for you, where you just genuinely don’t care about doing the task or event, and just want to get the disruption out of your way so you can get back to playing the rest of a game? @kingpotato @killamch89 @The Blackangel @Alyxx @DylanC @Executor Akamia @skyfire I imagine that lengthy cutscenes may fall into this category as well for a lot of folks.

Oh man. Memories!

I keep studying why BioShock Infinite feels so immersive to me, and coming up with new tiny details to add to the list. Last night I realized that when walking toward a static wall or railing, I can detect a very slight wobble in my field of view. It is very easy to miss consciously, but I can tell now that my hindbrain has always picked up on it, and it gives me a stronger sensation of walking on two feet and being in the world than if the movement were completely fluid. I’ve noticed that in games where my gun is somewhat unsteady when I aim, as if I am breathing or my hand is not fully steady (I believe this happens in The Last of Us), I also get more of a sense that I am really in the moment in that location doing that activity. For me, that sense of realism from gun wobbling or wobbling while I walk more than offsets the “annoying” aspects of those things, assuming that neither are so bad as to make the game unplayable. So I prefer them to be there. What about you? Do you prefer these realism elements, or do you find them distracting or annoying? @killamch89 @Alyxx @kingpotato @The Blackangel @DylanC @skyfire

I began my second playthrough of BioShock Infinite last night, and it ended up making me think a lot about immersiveness in video games. I was both looking forward to it and dreading it for around a year now. It’s rare for the second time through with something to have the same magic as the first time, since there are fewer surprises. So I was surprised to find that the game has much the same effect on me so far this time. I have the same sense I did before of being transported from my mundane life, and really being in this other place and time, immersed in this different atmosphere. The sense of place there remains unique. Having played BioShock 1 and 2 now, I have to say those are also very atmospheric games—but not quite on the same level for me. And now I think I can list factors which play into why BioShock Infinite seems to have this uniquely immersive pull on me: It’s in first person. Third-person is too detached and limiting, which is why this game beats TLOU for immersion to me—even though TLOU is very immersive. You have time to stop and look around, and are in fact encouraged to do so. BioShocks 1 and 2 spawn too many continuous enemies to do this conveniently. The soundtracking is often minimal, with the ambient sounds of the city in the foreground. This is more like “real life” than continuous soundtracking. There are often things going on in your environment, many of them unique events. These are timed with your movements so that they seem spontaneous, both drawing you forward and encouraging you to stop and pause and pay attention. In short, the game is paced for you to explore and savour. This is entirely subjective, but I find Booker very easy to relate to. We have a lot of the same reactions to what we see, so it is easy to be immersed both in the world and in his mind. From your experiences gaming, what factors do you think help make a game immersive to the point where you truly feel like you’ve left the room and travelled to the game world? @DylanC @killamch89 @kingpotato @The Blackangel @Alyxx @Aerielle del Rosario @Executor Akamia @skyfire

In this thread on whether we care or not what reviews say, @killamch89 mentioned, "The very best reviewers tend to minimize their bias or at the very least, try to be open-minded about stuff they don't necessarily like." I thought this was a great point, as someone who does typically tend to ignore reviewers, and perhaps overlooks useful reviews. It got me wondering, in order to make a game review as helpful as possible, what are some of the most important ingredients? I think what @killamch89 wrote is a great start, but I would love to hear more input. @DylanC @Alyxx @kingpotato @skyfire @Executor Akamia @Aerielle del Rosario

@kingpotato and I were talking about followers in Fallout: New Vegas, and he mentioned that he has a preference for going it alone in games in general. So I thought I’d ask everyone here: Do you prefer to travel with or without followers, and why? I originally thought when I first started playing open world games that I’d find followers annoying, but I now usually trail as many around with me as I can. I suppose I just like the “being in a party” vibe, and I also like that sometimes they make interesting comments, have quests (i.e. New Vegas), and so on. Plus, they are fun to dress up in nice armour (i.e. the Daedric armour in Skyrim). Mind you, I hate when they get stuck in Skyrim—what a pain. But in NV, this seems to happen less often, and they also tend to be more helpful in combat (especially Boone). @kingpotato @DylanC

For those who are old enough to remember the DOS era on PC, what were your favorite DOS games? A couple I remember fondly are Return to Zork and Heaven and Earth. @DylanC @killamch89 @kingpotato @The Blackangel @Alyxx @Aerielle del Rosario @Executor Akamia @skyfire