Recent content by Luke Bean

The differences between imperial and metric just don't matter for most everyday purposes. Obviously the metric system is dramatically superior for anything involving science or engineering, but most people don't deal with that on an everyday basis, and Americans who do all use the metric system...

I've a hunch that the way Mass Effect assumes you're playing a guy is part of why Femshep is so endearing.They gave both Shepards the same distinctly male body language (it's most obvious when Femshep sits with her legs spread apart) so to me she came across as a socially awkward schlub who's...

I named mine (and made her look like) Angie Jordan, like from 30 Rock. I like to imagine her and Lydia trading sassy banter as they stomp Frostbite Spiders.

I completely agree; I made a thread a lot like this a little while back. I think incorporating the ability to undergo character development over time without the game penalizing you for it would take games a lot further along the road to being art. I sort of liked the Origins solution to it...

In Dragon Age Origins, the classes were incredibly unbalanced. Mages were simply better than the other classes. If your character was a mage, you could make a team of three mages and a tank a quarter of the way through the game and from then on you'd practically have to be napping to lose. From...

True, but less catchy. I made the title provocative on purpose because nothing develops your ideas as well as lots of people disagreeing with you. I agree, and I think all of the games I mentioned are good examples of that. But that's not quite as interesting to me, since they develop them the...

By "linear," I mean games in which player input doesn't substantially affect characterization or plot. I deliberately didn't make that an absolute statement, because I know that there are counterexamples-- excise the moral-choice bullshit from Bioshock, and it would be completely linear and...

That means we should demand more of developers! Games will have a harder time producing their first great work of art than film did, since film was building on the traditions of theatre, whereas games have been devising very different narrative structures, and it'll take time to perfect them...

My problem isn't that static characters exist, it's that they're the only option.

I know Bioshock isn't an RPG. The fact that the gaming part is done with guns and not dice rolls isn't relevant to the narrative structure. Narrative conventions can be consistent across media. Literature, film, and theatre all have fundamental differences and similarities, and character...

All right, maybe the OP was a bit absolutist. How about: this isn't a problem that absolutely forbids games from being art, it's just one I'd really really like to see fixed. The games I listed didn't run with the refusing-to-change angle the way greek tragedies do, so I'd still consider it a...

I know this probably won't be a popular opinion here, but I don't think games are art yet. I'm starting to be convinced that they can get there, but there's one big problem they'll have to overcome first-- games that allow you to make choices for your character disallow or actively discourage...

America. No other country is even in second place. 1. Nukes. Lots of 'em. Duh. 2. Most advanced army in the world, costing about as much as the rest of the world's militaries combined. Not the largest, but in an invasion it would immediately be made immensely larger by the draft-- remember...