1. The people providing the reviews are other students. How qualified are university students to decide if someone has the potential to be best in the world at anything? That classification is both highly subjective and would generally be expected to require some expert-level knowledge of the field the person is being judged in (which an undergraduate student is unlikely to have).
2. The students only seem to come from a small collection of schools, which unfairly disadvantages skilled students from schools not on the list.
3. The site entirely lacks filtering options, so I am unable to see the top people in the algorithms category, for instance. Furthermore, the listing order seems to be completely static, obscuring students who do not happen to get top placement.
In essence, this is a selection of students from select universities, chosen as the "best" through dubious methods, and then displayed in a static order that greatly advantages some of them over others.
It's interesting that the author's first idea was a combat-based game. For some reason, the world of game development has to a large degree becomes fixated on the idea of combat and violence. So games that don't necessarily need it have it anyway, even when it doesn't make sense (see Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock). Always picking violence as the go-to gameplay mechanic is so limiting, and it's exciting to see games that avoid it and go for something more appropriate to the concept.
It's fun. I like to shoot things and blow shit up and hit people with swords.
Very rarely do I find the story in a game good enough to care about some neologism like "ludonarrative dissonance".
I find these "important" games like Bioshock to be pretty embarrassing and childish in the story department. Ken Levine is not the first person to take on Ayn Rand. That's like shooting fish in a barrel. The pretentiousness of that game is just over the top. But it's a lot of fun, because they nailed the blowing shit up part.
I'm not suggesting that combat-based games aren't fun. I've spent countless hours playing first-person shooters and the like, and they can be absolutely wonderful. However, I am also interested in video games as an artistic (not -commercial) medium, and I think that going to combat as the core mechanic just by reflex can limit games in that respect.
As far as Bioshock is concerned, I think it does a decent job with the story, but more importantly I think it represented just another step forward for video games as an artistic medium. It showed that games with a concept or philosophical point could have market appeal, and it paved the way for greater interest in such games down the road. There are stories and ideas that video games, through their interactivity, are uniquely suited to tell, and as a relatively new medium people are still figuring out what its strengths are, and how to make real art with it.
You may not care for video games as an art form. You may only be interested in them as a source of entertainment. That's fine! That's wonderful! We can have both! I am simply happy to see increased interest in video games as art, and I think that something as simple as moving beyond the idea of combat as the core mechanic is an important step toward realizing all that video games can be.
I am interested in games as an art form. But a lot of these "artistic" darlings strike me as pretentious drivel. To me, Portal was much more successful than Bioshock as an art piece. It wasn't dancing around trying to tell me how important it is.
I also happen to think the mechanics of a shooter can be art.
I also think that. The problem is that most people focus on the "meaning", "emotion", "philosofical" aspect when making these "art games". That mostly involves the game's story and narrative, and that is only a subset of game design/development.
I consider something artistic when it displays the creator's mastery of the craft. So yeah, Portal is art. Dear Esther? Pretentious drivel, without a doubt!
If you want a great art game, that was made to BE an art game and is not a deep philosofical piece try The Marriage [1]. This game actually disturbed me, as I considered Rod Humble to have achieved IT, to have created the first PURE videogame. Give it a try.
If you thought Bioshock or infinite were simply indictments on Ayn Rand or American Exceptionalism, then you must've also thought Grapes of Wrath was just about a family's migration from the dustbowl to California.
Bioshock frames its story with the ideas of Ayn Rand, but is actually a story about objective goodness, family and love.
Infinite is a story about stories and about the cyclical nature of everything.
I'm not sure Bioshock Infinite was really about one thing. Only about 5% of the game is a story about stories. Most of it is a story about a woman learning to be her own agent rather than a means to other people's ends, and after that it's about the question of self-determination versus fate (this is pretty much the Lutece Twins' entire role). It begins and ends on the note you're talking about here, but those themes don't really seem to be as pervasive as the themes of The Grapes of Wrath.
That's fair. Both games were a bit ephemeral regarding their themes (which were numerous), but it certainly isn't fair to say they're derivative because they "tackled Ayn Rand".
There are plenty of games out there that aren't fixated on combat and violence. Strategy games like the Civ series or EU IV have very abstracted combat, and are better described as conflict or competition (combat isn't core gameplay). Strategy games like Spacechem have nil violence. Then there are endless builder games like minecraft, where combat very much takes a back seat, and you can avoid it if you like. There are lots of platformers with no combat - 'running' games, where you avoid obstacles (a category the game in the article falls into). Three are more than a few horror games where you have no combat ability, like Slenderman. There's investigative or story games that have little or no combat in them, like say LA Noir, or most point-n-click adventures. There's also unusual games like Rocksmith where you plug your guitar into the PC. Just now, I've been playing Waking Mars, a game that is basically a gardening sim (oh, and there's gardening sims like Farmville). Then there are the sports and other sims - Steam just had a sale on a 'car mechanic simulator', and I'm not really sure it's reasonable to call things like NBA 2014 a 'combat-based' game. Driving and flying sims are also popular, and the queen of sims is the 'generic human sim' Sims 3, which is combatless. Then there's logic games like Tetris or 2048.
If you think that the idea of a game without violence is worth noting, then you're really not bothering to look at what games are out there.
Violence is accessible. Tom and Jerry could have a nice philosophical dialog in the park, but that would put Tom and Jerry beyond it's target audience. Instead, they smack each other around with frying pans.
Even shows that shoot for the more pacifist/philosophical angle tend to prominently feature violence (Doctor Who seems like an obvious example).
Because combat is inherently exciting in a way that most things are not. Combat naturally engages the mind, it changes the world in a visceral and immediate and often flashy way, and it ties in neatly with the narrative concepts of conflict and struggle. Video games are uniquely well-suited for combat. It isn't the only thing they can do, certainly, but I don't think it's fair to suggest that having combat in a video game is a failure of creativity. Combat just takes up a really large portion of the creative space there. Similarly, dramatic films have a strong tendency to focus on humans despite the fact that there are narratives that could be constructed around non-human entities.
It's already been said, but this whole debacle is ridiculous. The fact that a judge was even willing to give Microsoft (a third-party organization) control over another company's property without that company being allowed to know what's happening is horrifying.
Is there any possible recourse against the judge for the damages caused to No-ip's business? This seems like an incredible violation of their rights, and generally a bogus and abusive use of the legal system.
The rise of gluten-free dieting as a fad has some interesting effects for people who actually have celiac disease or gluten sensitivity. On the one hand, increased awareness has made gluten-free food more available, on the other, the stigma against people eating gluten-free has risen. So people who have an actual medical reason not to eat gluten get lumped into a fad diet group.
I have a friend with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. In recent years several studies have found a potential connection between Hashimoto's and celiac disease (it is still being actively studied, and the link is not conclusive), and so some doctors are beginning to suggest that people with Hashimoto's remove gluten from their diet. My friend did, and sure enough saw some thyroid improvement afterward. She is now entirely gluten free (and has been for over a year), and is often irritated at people judging or questioning her gluten-free diet because they immediately assume it is nothing more than capitulation to an idiotic fad.
> On the one hand, increased awareness has made gluten-free food more available, on the other, the stigma against people eating gluten-free has risen.
I have a friend who was diagnosed with celiac disease in high school and remember how hard it was for her to find more than a few things she could eat at the time (this was around 2006-2007). Now she has very little issue walking into a store or restaurant and ordering something that won't give her severe pain and require some vicodin for a bit. She's said that she is happy that gluten-free diets became a fad and would rather be lumped into this group of fad dieters, than have hard time surviving on the smaller selection of things that were available for her to eat previously. The only difference now is that she really has to make sure that the people taking her food orders at restaurants really know she is severely allergic (clean cooking surface, check the dressings/glazes/etc... to make sure they are GF, etc...). All in all, a fair trade off for those that didn't choose this diet.
Came here to make a very similar comment: I have a friend with Celiac's disease. Wish the fad dieters would stop ruining things for people with actual adverse reactions. That, and people shouldn't be so quick to judge.
>She is now entirely gluten free (and has been for over a year), and is often irritated at people judging or questioning her gluten-free diet because they immediately assume it is nothing more than capitulation to an idiotic fad.
She shouldn't be, because 99 times out of 100, it is nothing more than that. It's a fine fad, though, because it doesn't harm the sensitive dears who have taken it up, and it brings a massive array of options for people whose diets were extremely limited before.
If somebody can come up with an anti-peanut dust fad, I'd support that too.
The issue, though, is when restaurants, grocers, etc. mistake a legitimate medical condition with a trendy fad diet and not take one's gluten-free requirements seriously (e.g. not paying attention to sources of gluten cross-contamination, or not paying attention to which ingredients actually have gluten). They should be erring on the safe side and assuming that all requests for gluten-free are due to a medical condition requiring it, but when the number of gluten-free fad dieters vastly exceeds the number of people who actually need a gluten-free diet, the likelihood of safe-side erring decreases without some other reason (like stronger requirements for "gluten-free" foods, including both ingredient and preparation standards).
>I have a friend with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. In recent years several studies have found a potential connection between Hashimoto's and celiac disease (it is still being actively studied, and the link is not conclusive), and so some doctors are beginning to suggest that people with Hashimoto's remove gluten from their diet.
Do you have any more info on this? I have a friend with Hashimoto's and I'd be curious to find out if this is an approach widespread enough that she might have heard about it/to point her that way if not.
I know that Dr. Tom O'Bryan[0] has mentioned it, and the talk with Suzy Cohen in the recent Gluten Summit[1] he helped host discussed it. There may have been more mentions in the summit, but it's been a little while since I last listened to it.
Tell your friend that there will always be (a) people with legitimate medical issues, (b) people who are fad dieters, and (c) people who judge. She cannot control any of those things, so she should not let those things irritate her. She's improving her life in one way, and letting it stress her in another. Tell her that I said it's okay for her to do whatever she wants for whatever reason she wants to, and it's no on else's business. Also, tell her I said to have a fantastic day!
I have hashimotos and celiac disease. So there's n=1. The worst part about having celiac disease is that I do not have any symptoms whatsoever but am forced to eat this way so that ten years down the road, maybe kinda sorta, I wont get cancer. Also having to explain it to people sucks. Eating meat rice and potatoes is fine by me, explaining why I don't want a beer sucks.
It's a little sad to see things the way they are. Nintendo has a load of beloved IP, and a generation of developers who would likely love to build for a Nintendo platform. But they've failed to capitalize on either.
You have to realize their history though. The "Nintendo seal of approval" exists because the game market was filled with horrible games when they first started, so trusting some other dev with their IP, which could potentially be ruined by a third party. They have been making strides with this (see Hyrule Warriors), but considering the piles of garbage games on the app store, their aversion is understandable. On top of that if you could get Nintendo games on other platforms, their console sales would suffer. Plus, a touch screen would just be frustrating for platformers like Mario, only turn based RPGs seem to port well.
I'm not suggesting they trust another dev with their IP. Perhaps I phrased things poorly. I think it could be potentially worthwhile to make their platform more open to allow devs to introduce their own IP on it. I also think that Nintendo could be doing more to get older gamers who grew up on their games to play Nintendo again (including, yes, potentially making games available on non-Nintendo platform).
Would console sales suffer? I'm not so sure. The market for, say, tablet games may not be the same market that exists for Nintendo DS games or WiiU games.
More than anything, it seems that Nintendo has just decided to do nothing to fix the situation. Even small-scale experiments in expanding their marketplace reach or opening up their platform may potentially encourage investors in their ability to get things back on track again.
It seems some intellectuals take pride in being difficult to understand. As if that difficulty is proof of their intelligence. So they use big words and write big ideas, and wonder why so few others appreciate their brilliance. The truth is that it is often harder to make the big ideas easy than it is to make them hard, and that the goal of the people who do the latter is not to spread knowledge but to show off just how clever they are. I dislike this sort of writing for exactly that reason (and, interestingly, it is almost exactly this sort of writing which Orwell took to task in "Politics and the English Language"), that it is more interested in being noticed than in being understood.
About a month ago I got an old slide rule from my Grandfather that he'd used in engineering school. It's a little thing, but it's amazing to hold something that was some decades ago the standard tool for certain types of computation. It really puts into perspective just how far we've all come in such a short time.
1. The people providing the reviews are other students. How qualified are university students to decide if someone has the potential to be best in the world at anything? That classification is both highly subjective and would generally be expected to require some expert-level knowledge of the field the person is being judged in (which an undergraduate student is unlikely to have). 2. The students only seem to come from a small collection of schools, which unfairly disadvantages skilled students from schools not on the list. 3. The site entirely lacks filtering options, so I am unable to see the top people in the algorithms category, for instance. Furthermore, the listing order seems to be completely static, obscuring students who do not happen to get top placement.
In essence, this is a selection of students from select universities, chosen as the "best" through dubious methods, and then displayed in a static order that greatly advantages some of them over others.