Posts made by Thenomain

@Auspice

Am I the only person left on the planet who doesn't use Spotify?

I always care what other people listen to. I might not like it, but it keeps me aware, and being curious is a key in staying young.

Final review of Divinity: Original Sin, Enhanced Edition.

Not the best writing in the world, but holy shitballs is it fun with others.

70 hours. Not even 2/3rds of the achievements. Check it out.

For those of us who are still living the joyous life of children, Infinity Train has apparently been made into a series.

It's no Unikitty, but then since Teen Titans Go and until Thundercats Roar, what is?

Remember Me

Again, not the worst game I ever played, but it was so dull though it had no reason to be. It was disappointing in the Mirror’s Edge sense, but with worse writing and the kind of uncreative villain escalation where there are just more of them with more and more hit points.

It could've been a good game. It wasn’t.

@Auspice said in Consent in Gaming:

@Tinuviel said in Consent in Gaming:

@Thenomain said in Consent in Gaming:

We really should find a time to let you drink me under the table.

We should sell tickets.

Gany still owes me whiskey.

I wouldn't get through one drink.

@Ganymede said in Consent in Gaming:

holy fuckballs it can be tiring to be nice over time

You know what else is tiring? People constantly grinding their petulant desires into your eyeholes as if any deviance from the way they think the world should operate is a sin.

there will come a time when the mainstays who have been tolerant "within reason" are going to toss their hands up, and find a place that may cater to them as often as they cater to others.

The truly reasonable people are often the first to leave any game, even though they're the last you want to go.

We really should find a time to let you drink me under the table.

Funny, I was just starting to reply to this before it was even posted. Spooky!

@Ganymede said in Consent in Gaming:

Clearly, direct insults are ineffective, but at least you understand how I will think of you were you to respond as others have to me.

Well I do now. Context can be quite personal.

But, as I said above, it seems readily apparent to me that the problems we have regarding consent in gaming has to do with a profound lack of self-awareness and a general lack of communication skills. You can see how the combination can kill not only the interest of newcomers but also tired veterans.

But as we are no good at it, the give and take should be treated with a grain of understanding, an attempt at understanding the communication from the other side.

All of this within reason.

Such a contextual term, "within reason". And so I'm going to contextualize it to Mushing.

"Reasonable Consent": what is emotionally healthy for you at the time

"Reasonable Sociability": what is emotionally healthy for you to give to others within the scene

And I think another term for "self-awareness" is "learn to read the room!"

@Ganymede said in Consent in Gaming:

@Thenomain said in Consent in Gaming:

GASP! Mass Effect?

No. I mean, I could, but -- no.

Insert a gif of frustrated Theno here.

At what point is it considered reasonable for me to put my foot down and request in firm tones that people either start to or learn to communicate better in a hobby that is undoubtedly reliant upon one's ability to effectively communicate?

When did you start Mushing? That's when it would've been reasonable.

You said all the points I could dance around, but let's be brief:

• Players generally have poor communication skills.
• We can solve an important social issue or two if we all communicated better.

But nitpicking about how we communicate is not addressing the problem?

This was a frustration on my part that the nitpicking raises the drama. Drama is a barrier.

But let me put my hands up and sue for peace here with the following statement:

If you want to engage in RP on a game, reacting to a proffered suggestion with "that doesn't sound like fun" will likely paint you as a petulant child.

How am I supposed to accept that? To me, "That doesn't sound like fun" might make me huff a bit, but I'm not going to throw a fit because someone isn't offering a direction for the discussion.

At least not the first time.

Saying

"I'm not really interested in engaging in that kind of RP."

is much more useful feedback. But "meh" has never come across to me as useless nor petulant. At least not the first time. Here's how easy it is to reply to the above:

"What are you thinking instead?"

Trying to wrap my brain around your viewpoint on this has taken far more emotional energy than coming up with that reply.

@Ganymede said in Consent in Gaming:

Point 2: I have actually had someone say to me 'that doesn't sound like fun' to a suggestion I made recently.

And so we hit the nub of it. You've hit an emotional response to someone who knows nothing about it. Is there a better way to communicate? Usually. Is insulting people a good way to treat the problem? Rarely.

But I understand and am patient. Because that's my solution. Gonna try to stick to it.

Bonus points: Link game to Metacritic.

Star Trek (2013)

Not the worst game I've played, I'm sure, but it's the first one that came to mind. Played with a friend and it was so just too bad to be forgettable. The writing was tepid, the acting was mediocre, the set-pieces were barely sets and hardly challenges, the combat came and went like a nervous virgin.

@dvoraen

If you can afford or beg for Tiny Tina's Assault on Dungeon Keep, do so. There's an interview? video rambling? with Anthony Burch where he says that TTAoDK was their third attempt at making a popular DLC, after the first two were critically meh'd. He says how he noticed that most of what people were excited about and repeated in Borderlands was the writing.

So they did TTAoDK as this DLC where nothing much happened, and it exploded.

Watch a playthrough of Tales from the Borderlands and tell me that the corporate lobby scene isn't absolutely amazing.

So yeah, it's good that Gearbox is sticking with that.

--

Hm, no Anthony Burch in the Wikipedia writing credits. I wonder if he was asked.

@Ganymede said in Consent in Gaming:

Is that punitive? Arguably. Consider the following:

@Thenomain said in Consent in Gaming:

Who you decide to help and spend your time with is up to you. This is ultimately a selfish hobby, and nothing, nothing can make you play well with others if you don't think they deserve it.

I think it is unreasonable for the player who elects not to play through a scene that I would like to player through to expect me to carry on, my wayward son, as if nothing at all just happened.

As do I. But I detected a quite negative bent toward anyone who would even consider it. The key is to work together as much as possible, which is how I take @faraday's "good sport" comment.

But being a good sport is not a rule, it's a method. You can absolutely be frustrated when someone doesn't give you a chance, but is it reasonable to complain about it? Sometimes.

The solution is to be deserving of it, of being self-aware.

Being self-aware sometimes means understanding that you may have to play through something that is boring in order to let others have their fun. It means understanding that it's not just about you and, maybe, you're part of a group whose needs and wants may be different from yours.

Hold on, I've got something about that here...

@Thenomain said in Consent in Gaming:

It would be awesome if we all got what we want out of it, but we can't. We have to negotiate, because we're not in it alone.

Yeah, okay, there we go.

If someone says, "Hey, this doesn't seem like fun," don't think less of them. Think, okay what can we do that's fun? Have a conversation.

To be honest, if someone says "hey this doesn't seem like fun," I'm probably going to believe that they have the maturity of a pre-pubescent. One might as well say "I think this is boring" or "you're boring me," or something equally ribald.

Better approach: "I think we're heading in a direction I'd rather not RP through. Can we figure out a resolution that works out for both of us?"

Or: "I'm not really feeling this path of RP. Can we take it in a different direction?"

These are good suggestions. We can all have better communication skills, but part of what you're either going to have to get used to or not (that's my I-M-Smrt comment of the day) is that a lot of people don't.

In my vocabulary, if you can't take "that doesn't sound like fun" as open feedback, I could say that's on you. Then we get into one of those truly fucking annoying pedantic discussions about how something was said ruined everything.

Is it up to me to change because you don't take the connotation the same way as I? Because I've been blamed many, many times of not saying something correctly enough.

On here.

Recently.

(note: If anyone wants to accuse me of same, that's a fair cop, gov. I'm willing to apologize and try to understand better, or explain myself better. I am not trying to be hypocritical.)

If anyone wants to see a barrier to newcomers, it's this kind of nitpicking which is not the slightest bit useful.

I have become increasingly frustrated with my experiences on games. I have trouble connecting by reaching out publicly to do so. So I am preparing not to give up, but instead to go back to building the game I want to see.

GASP! Mass Effect?

@Ghost

And I really really really really really want people to be good sports to one another. I want people to enjoy failing. I want people to give up the spotlight, to try something new, to get out of their damn holes and start interacting instead of waiting for someone else. I've been ranting about this for decades.

I can't upvote @Warma-Sheen enough for the comment:

Jaded people got paranoid of being burned.

I've been trying to explain the history of (at least WoD) mushes for a long time, and this summarizes it well. Even people who are in good places now carry around the memories and scars of abusive staffers hiding behind sweet voices and enabling bad actors, of players politicking to make you look bad so you can't defend yourself, of good people letting bad players continue because they're trying to be good people.

(edit) And this is still happening.

Who you decide to help and spend your time with is up to you. This is ultimately a selfish hobby, and nothing, nothing can make you play well with others if you don't think they deserve it.

The solution is to be deserving of it, of being self-aware. Of being understanding and patient because nobody is perfect at either of those. If someone says, "Hey, this doesn't seem like fun," don't think less of them. Think, okay what can we do that's fun? Have a conversation.

Treat your comrades like a fellow player, not a character who has to do things because otherwise your character won't get their spotlight time. Appease to their better nature or let them go.

This is a game, people. This is a hobby. It would be awesome if we all got what we want out of it, but we can't. We have to negotiate, because we're not in it alone.

Pax.

@Ghost

Haven't played.

Not willing to give money to Epic Games.

No logical reason. It may be overridden at the first sale.

But that screen-shot reminds me of everything I love about Borderlands.

I'm glad they're still writing for the immersive universe.

I can wait for it to get out of Epic.

@faraday said in Consent in Gaming:

The problem with that is that by glossing over the trial entirely, you're basically depriving the judge PC of the opportunity to do That Judge Thing.

This is the Spotlight Problem. Everyone wants to play their character. And while I agree it's being a good sport to let everyone do their thing—and I think you addressed this in anecdotally—it's still a question if the player should be penalized, literally or socially, for not wanting to help someone else do their thing.

To punish someone for not RPing out a scene is untenable.

To punish someone for not RPing out the consequences of a scene is fine. (edit: Within the scope of the scene and consequence.)

"Good sport" is a matter of opinion and has been used in the past as a weapon to punish players who did nothing more but try to avoid a situation that made them uncomfortable. Avoiding situations has likewise punished innocent players from being able to realize their character concept.

But whose job is it to help a player realize their character concept? Is it other players'? Is it staff's? Because around here the most common answer is "not mine".

@Ganymede

@Pandora said in Consent in Gaming:

Remember when roleplaying used to be roleplaying, and organic RP happened without being pre-screened and pre-scripted, and none of us died from keeping it IC?

For every good thing you can say about those days, I can name at least one bad.

Because yes, I remember it.

It worked when people let it work, when people wanted it to work, when people worked together to make it work.

I don't know what changed that people decided that it couldn't work without rules and code and things that made it more like asking permission to get a cookie than "yar, I raid the cookies, I am the cookie king, muahahaha!" Though when I phrase it like that I can imagine a few reasons why someone would want to shut that down.

I do miss those days for rose-colored nostalgia, but realistically we were struggling with our era's own social and consent situations.

Now excuse me, but I have cookies to plunder.

@insomniac7809

Asked and answered, y'r honor.

I'm making fun of this entire hobby for missing out on some wildly key concepts and at once encourage and complain about them.

--

@thesuntsar

That's what consent is all about.

@thesuntsar said in Consent in Gaming:

@Thenomain I mean, it's fine if people want to play those kind of concepts. I just find that most people don't understand where the line is between 'this is fun for me' and 'oh I might be annoying the shit out of this person who has had to deal with my crap 89 times this week alone'

But is it? Is it fine? As a hobby we have never been able to come to a conclusion on this.

On the surface, yes, people who suck are a problem. I also hate people who suck. I think from perspective, not a single person likes people who suck. We constantly rally behind "people who suck are not good!"

And then one person says what they mean by "suck" and it ends up being a clusterfuck of an argument.

@Thenomain said in Consent in Gaming:

I love our broken hobby.