A Trip Through Illusia

SWTOR

2012-03-17T11:11:44Z

Just watched the intro cinematic... and while it's entertaining to see Definitely Not Bastila, Definitely Not Bao-Dur, Definitely Not Han Solo (now with an Indiana Jones hat!), Definitely Not Revan, Definitely Not T3-M4, Definitely Not the Millennium Falcon and Definitely Not Imperial Star Destroyers, the sheer sense of deja vu overwhelms me...

Maybe I'm just too old to take Star Wars seriously anymore.

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Stranger Than Fiction

2012-03-12T08:52:19Z

So, yesterday on the way back from the club, I had to take a taxi. It was almost 22:00 and the only public transport remaining that went from downtown to my outskirts did so in a very roundabout way. And I was hurrying home.

I had no cash with me, only my Visa card, and the trade center with the nearest and apparently only ATM around was closed. So I promised the taxi driver that I would hand him the money when I get home, or from an ATM on the way.

So he drove me off the main road, onto a dark, bumpy path to a gloomy factory, saying there was an ATM there. I was scared, of course. It was late evening, it was dark, and there I am sitting in a taxi, being driven who knows where. I mentioned my fears to the driver, and he realized the implications and apologized for making me uncomfortable. There was indeed an ATM near an entrance there, with ISO standard grumpy Soviet-style clerks around. I got some money off my card, paid the driver, and we drove back, with me recovering from my initial fear.

He was a forty-something guy, and really seemed humble and well-meaning. I felt mostly comfortable there, but there were just a few things that raised my eyebrow.

When we were about to enter the main road again, he laid his hand on mine, saying I emanated some kind of positive aura that made him warm. Then after a few minutes of random small talk (which taxi drivers are often prone to), he asked for my name.

Wait, what? Why is he asking this? I noticed he's never used any gendered language so far. Is he confused about me? Is that his roundabout way of finding out? Which name should I tell him? Does he see what my makeup is hiding? Crap, how does he read me by default, anyway? My coat and trousers probably register as masculine, but it's dark and we're driving without lighting... Gah... I wish I knew...

.
.
.
"Maia."

"Name or pseudonym? You... took a long time answering that..."

"Well, it's because no taxi driver has ever asked me my name before, so I was wondering why you did..."

Our random small talk continued, about just about anything really - he said he didn't like driving in silence. From that point on he used feminine language when referring to me. And when we were close to my home, suddenly he asked, out of the blue:

"Maia, perhaps we could stop here for five or ten minutes to talk?"

What?! What's on his mind, anyway?

"Well, we've talked for the whole road, haven't we?"

"But..."

"I'd rather just go home. I'm in a bit of a hurry."

He didn't insist, nor did he seem angry or upset, so he just fetched me to my house. "Come again!" he said as I exited the taxi. I dropped a glove, and he called my attention to it, calling me Nastya.

"I'm not Nastya."

"Oh, sorry... Maia."

Seriously...

What. The. Heck. If someone else told me such a story, I'd think they made it up...

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One

2012-03-10T21:10:59Z

”I wasn't expecting Ammon to clap us on the back and say "Great job kid, now let's go home," but it'd be better than what we got. As it is, all our work, all our effort invested into NWN2 as a game is undone in seconds because Obsidian wanted a 'tragic' ending. It is tragic, mind, but only for the player.”

~ Let’s Play Neverwinter Nights 2, by Lt. Danger

How do you end a game? Especially one as ambitious as Mass Effect 3?

BioWare had a tremendous task ahead of it. It had to tie up the loose ends from the first two games, resolve its own Reaper invasion plot, and account for a multitude of variables, including providing alternate plot branches for main characters who could be alive or dead based on your past choices. The writers even admitted that they shot themselves in the foot with some ideas, like the idea of a suicide mission in part 2 of a trilogy.

Overall, I’d say they did... adequately. It’s linear, railroaded, the writing is uneven - some of it brilliant, some of it corny, and some of it plain tired and uninspired, as if they gathered every idea they had and threw them all into a blender - and most of your past choices amount to little more than some numbers and tweaked lines here and there, but your decisions do matter overall and you get the power to shape the fate of the galaxy.

ME3 is a decent game, better than I expected based on marketing material and previews. I’m sure Yahtzee will do a better job at picking it apart than I can, and mainstream critics are already gushing out compliments left and right, like they tend to do with games of such calibre, focusing on its good sides, which I have trouble describing - despite their abundance - because I usually focus on the negative. But the part of almost any game that interests me most is the story, so let me say some words about that, in particular.

Is ME3’s story good? Yes. It’s a competently written three-act story, with a clear beginning, middle, and climax. You could even say it has an end. With some reservations that I’ll stop on later.

But even discounting the ending, ME1 still had overall better writing. Even despite all the cheese, being essentially a rehash of Knights of the Old Republic, despite everyone living in a world of boring copy-pasted grey boxes, it had a sense of “realness”, verisimilitude, relevance, an extrapolation of our own world into the future, that the other two games failed to replicate.

* * *

Mass Effect has been, at its worst, a somewhat more verisimilar Star Wars clone. At its best, it has been a solid SF setting with a well-thought-out, interesting background and plenty of untapped potential. Each game had its share of good writing and bad writing, as it is common with BioWare games. But in the chain of ME1 -> ME2 -> ME3, we can see the proportion of plausible elements gradually diminish and the outrageous elements, inserted only for the Rule of Cool (and for the sake of flashy trailers), take over.

Perhaps it is inevitable that given enough time, any game franchise that sells itself on visuals is going to pile on more and more ridiculous over-the-top stuff, simply because publishers need copies to sell - and for that, they need engaging, action-packed trailers, logic be damned.

I can forgive such elements as a Cerberus cyber-ninja, curvaceous robot girl squadmate or Shepard lines ripped out of your average generic war movie, because mainstream games need a mandatory amount of cheese to sell themselves to their target audience. And I went into ME3 with low expectations to begin with, so I was pleasantly surprised a few times. Which, if anything, makes the ending even more bitter to swallow.

There was a time when BioWare endings had a simple dichotomy about them. As Yahtzee puts it: "In the good ending, you're a virtuous flower child with love and a smile for all the shiny-coated beasts of God's kingdom, and in the bad ending you're some kind of hybrid of Hitler and Skeletor whose very piss is pure liquid malevolence." I would be deluded to think that those were good times. Rose-colored nostalgia glasses are not in my arsenal, and have never been. The studio has matured, and so did their endgame choices. I welcome that.

You could have a “light side” ending, a “dark side” ending, and a middle ground ending. This is ME1.

You could have several morally ambiguous choices, some more repugnant and some almost happy - almost. Black, grey and light grey, if you will. This is Dragon Age: Origins.

You could make a scale based on your success, with one shining, golden ending you have to work for, and some less satisfying endings. This is ME2, and previously, Obsidian Entertainment used it in Mask of the Betrayer, the (much superior) expansion pack to Neverwinter Nights 2.

And finally, you can do the kind of ending that renders the entire buildup to it pointless and moot.

[continued...]

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Money Effect 3

2012-03-05T04:08:42Z

Looked at the leaked endings.

Roland, I guess this is the part where I say "I told you so".

Edit: The truth is, I'm bitter. It even taints ME1 and ME2 in hindsight and makes the whole trilogy feel like a shaggy dog story.

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My BioWare PCS

2012-02-11T16:21:53Z

I played these games more than once, but these particular playthroughs I regard as "my personal canon". The way the events "really" happened in my imagination.

	KOTOR Light side Soldier/Jedi Sentinel No romance Spared Juhani Spared the Progenitor Killed Uthar, spared Yuthura Redeemed Bastila Destroyed the Star Forge
	KOTOR II Light side Jedi Guardian/Jedi Watchman Sided with Ithorians Defended Khoonda from Azkul Sided with Talia, Vaklu in prison Left Tobin behind to set off charges Malachor V destroyed
	Abigail Shepard (Mass Effect) Earthborn Sole Survivor Vanguard Saved the Feros colonists and Shiala Left Anoleis in charge Saved Ashley on Virmire Spared Wrex Romanced Liara Saved the old Council, put Anderson as human councilor Mass Effect 2: Reignited romance with Liara Spared Harkin and Sidonis Killed Morinth Got Miranda to talk to Oriana Turned Jacob's father over to the Alliance Proved Tali's innocence, her father not implicated Saved Joram Talid Spared Maelon, downloaded genophage cure research Spared Aresh Rewrote the geth heretics Destroyed the Collector Base, entire squad survived
	Lyna Mahariel (Dragon Age) Dalish Warrior Cured the mabari dog Recruited Leliana, Sten, Oghren and Zevran Romanced Leliana Left Flemeth alive, lied to Morrigan Lifted the werewolf curse, left Lanaya as Keeper Saved the Circle Cured Connor Recovered the Urn, cured Eamon, Jowan executed Killed Branka, destroyed the Anvil, made Bhelen king Made Alistair king, Anora imprisoned Convinced Alistair to do the ritual Awakening: Spared Nathaniel Recruited Anders, Oghren, Velanna, Sigrun, and Justice Sided with the Amaranthine guards Defended Amaranthine personally; Vigil's Keep saved Sided with the Architect
	Liscara Hawke (Dragon Age II) Sword and Shield Warrior Made Aveline captain Romanced Merrill Recruited Fenris but ignored his questline Lost Bethany to the Circle, later reunited with her Isabela ran away with the relic Killed the Arishok Sided with Orsino Spared Anders Supported by the whole party against Meredith

Edit 14.02: Just realized KOTOR II isn't actually a BioWare game. %) Epic facepalm.

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Phone

2012-02-08T19:05:04Z

Rooted my HTC Wildfire S, installed CyanogenMod 7.

It's neat. I don't think I'll go to the stock HTC ROM again. It's so bloated in comparison.

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Random Post-Midnight Thought

2012-01-28T18:27:59Z

If a gay woman lives on Lesbos, does it make her a Lesbian lesbian?

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Oh good golly...

2012-01-26T03:32:13Z

Dear taxi driver: just because you're older than me doesn't automatically make you an expert on every subject in the world except for computers.

And not everything you hear in a crowd is absolute truth. In fact, most people don't know what they're talking about when they just repeat rumors, often mangling them even more, and if I, 25, have to explain such things to you, old enough to be my father, then something is wrong with the world.

And I don't think you're in any position to accuse women of being gossipy when you spent a few dozen times you've driven me to work saying nothing but hearsay, and I've always been the one calling you on lack of facts and critical detail. You know what it's called? Hypocrisy.

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The Soviet STTOS Jr.

2012-01-20T10:22:31Z

Mostly writing this to coherently sum up my thoughts.

For better or for worse, I was born in the Soviet Union. It's an unfortunate reality that people don't get to choose where they're born. Maybe someone out there is working on fixing that. :)

In particular, Soviet fiction has influenced my own writing. My pet project in progress, a time travel thingy called Insight (it sucks, so I wouldn't dare call it a novel), has throwbacks to Soviet science fiction of all timeframes, from We to Alice, Girl from the Future. Soviet SF from about the 1960s onwards, especially aimed at children, has an air of optimism about it; it has this spirit of benevolent exploration, broadening the horizons of knowledge, eternal moral values.

One of the unconscious influences -- ones I didn't realize until I rewatched a bit of it -- was an old children's movie dilogy that rubbed into my own childhood: Moscow — Cassiopeia. Of course, back then I was too young to realize its main fault: that it was a work of socialist realism, which was less about showing reality as it was and more about how it "should be", from the perspective of Soviet ideology. Everyone, both child and adult, acts "too perfect". The positive characters are ideological embodiments of qualities, not reading like real people, and the negative are likewise symbolic embodiments of flaws. The end result is that it ends up feeling wooden, unrealistic (and I don't mean unrealistic in the sense that it has an FTL starship and an alien planet).

And the plot itself? Well, it's nothing surprising to anyone who has seen any Star Trek series ever. Again, I only know that now. You don't particularly expect a 1973 movie to be original by modern standards, so it follows the usual route: robot creations blah blah turned against their masters blah blah emotional suppression blah blah mind control rays blah blah blah. The resolution was narmy even by STTOS standards: the deus ex machina came in the form of an iron nail stuck in a power socket! Ah well, it's for kids, you don't expect them to appreciate clever writing, right?

Still, it has the kind of innocent charm in it that I like in Soviet movies in general, so it would be watchable for me now if not for one factor that utterly kills my enjoyment.

It's this guy.

I hate him so much. He's basically the antithesis of everything emphasized in Soviet SF.

He has no name, he is referred to by the unwieldy acronym "IOO" (in Russian, "one assigned to special responsibilities") and he never directly interacts with any of the adults, only with the children. And with the audience, who are, again, assumed to be children.

The movie starts with him directly addressing the audience and claiming that the events of the movie really happened "next spring". He speaks in a somewhat playful, pointedly polite, almost patronizing manner. And he fulfills the role of a deus ex machina, nudging the events to get the story going. He's apparently omnipotent -- he can teleport, even across planets, contact an FTL starship from an ordinary rotary phone, etc.

Who is he? An interdimensional bureaucrat?

Nah, that would be too generous an interpretation. (Incidentally, although I don't exclude the possibility that Valve was influenced by the IOO, the chances of this are slim.) Although he drops hints that he works for some kind of superiors, he is human and benevolent in his emotions, very much unlike the G-Man, despite fulfilling a similar handy deus ex machina role. The IOO is Gandalf assembling the company together on an adventure -- in this case, the space expedition.

Ahem! This movie is otherwise very serious. Imagine the most straight-faced moments in Star Trek without all the character-based humor, where every character is Picard and can do no wrong. Perhaps the IOO was an attempt at injecting humor? But I'm sorry, it's supposed to be SF as in "science fiction", not "space fantasy". It's not about space princesses, space emperors and space dashing swordsmen. A Gandalf figure, or even an Obi-Wan figure, is utterly out of place in a movie that spends about a fourth of its run spitting out relatively realistic scientific jargon.

Another version is that he's an author stand-in. Based, of course, on the assumption that children are such morons that they can't tell reality from fiction unless they're constantly pointed out that it's fiction (in this case by drawing attention to the IOO's outlandish antics). Is it the same kind of logic that has prompted Soviet writers to constantly put fantastic elements in framing stories, for example, by making Ivan Vasilievich revealed to be a dream in the end? (Just in case, you know, the audience thinks time machines are actually possible?)

There is, however, a certain point at which the character appears too often, turning from a "necessary plot device" into an "author's pet character". The IOO not just gets the plot going, but he also appears several times later, randomly teleporting around, acting as a mysterious advisor living outside time, showing knowledge of the future, switching between acting playful and patronizing...

Why, hello, sweetie.

Like River Song, the IOO ultimately suffers from overexposure, to the point that he stops being that interesting quirky enigma and simply steals too much of the spotlight for himself. But the absolute nadir is the finale, in which, after the kids resolve the conflict on an alien planet, he simply teleports them back home. Just like that. Leaving the expensive starship behind.

Even if it's not an "all just a dream" cop-out, it has the effect of saying: "Hah! You thought you were watching a space exploration story! But what you were actually watching was an imaginary fairy tale about space exploration! None of this was real!" And it cheapens the moral and emotional impact of the story.

In an interview to a Soviet newspaper back in those days, director Richard Viktorov had this to say about the concept of the IOO: "To make it easier for kids to understand the film, we have added a familiar archetype of the kind wizard."

In other words, the director's stance was that kids are morons and won't understand a plot without an archetype that is completely inappropriate for the genre.

Goshdang it to heck.

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Apparently I'm narrow-minded now.

2012-01-17T04:29:28Z

From an LGBT event a week ago (I'll get to writing about it when I stop procrastinating...):

Everyone is standing in a circle...

Host: [holding a pen] This is a magic pen. Whoever you point it at, when you make a wish, it will rub on that person!
Me: I'd like to stay out of this game. Its setup conflicts with my rationalist worldview.
Guy standing opposite to me: Can we still target wishes at you, though?
Me: Sure, I guess.
Guy: [points the pen at me] Maia, I wish you to broaden your worldview!

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A Reply to Ryan Keyworth

2012-01-04T19:50:19Z

Since I can't find your email address anywhere, I'll use the comments to post a summary impression of your Mass Effect posts so far.

I found your blog in a Google search for "ME3 will suck", and I found myself agreeing with most of your five-part series of caution about ME3. I've been following the development of ME3 for the past year, and the more I learn, the more it seems they're steering development in a direction that goes away from what got me hooked on ME1 in the first place.

Story is the main reason I play video games at all, and I often set the game to an easier difficulty if the frustrating save-load cycles distract me from story presentation. I look for themes, messages, clashes of ideas, and I like to ask myself, "What was the author thinking when they wrote this scene?" In your analysis of the ME games, I saw a kindred spirit.

ME1, if you ignore the fact that it was basically KOTOR without the Force and lightsabers - in other words, it had the same kind of basic story as every other BioWare game - it was indeed about humanity proving itself to the rest of the galaxy. We are, for all intents and purposes, aliens to them. Alien immigrants who've been taking their jobs and demanding privileges. My Shepard's goal was to prove to the galaxy that we could all live in peace, and that we could be trusted with responsibility - and to prove to the Alliance that they were right in advocating her for Spectre status. And although the side missions were mind-numbingly repetitive, I took them too, because I actually felt like an officer on duty - an officer responsible for the lives of her crew, and for making hard decisions.

And when I was scanning unexplored planets, it felt like I was really treading into the unknown, like Columbus sailing to the west, ready to do a service for the Alliance - and for the benefit of the entire Citadel space.

Then in the first minutes of ME2, the hand of the cosmic Author cuts that entire Gordian knot of relationships surrounding Shepard, estranged from the Council, the Alliance, and the ME1 crew, and puts us back at square one. And it feels jarring. It almost feels like Shepard's story was supposed to go in a different direction, like ME2 is an altered timeline that went off the rails. It's like seeing your protege ascending a lavishly decorated stairway, only for a trapdoor to open at the worst moment and kick her down into the garbage dump.

At first, I was prepared to hate ME2. I was skeptical about the "streamlined" direction they took, as well as the superficial "darker and edgier" elements. I hated Cerberus, I hated being railroaded into working for Cerberus, and I still do. I chose the most "in your face" options when talking to the Illusive Man, I avoided talking to Miranda and Jacob or taking them on missions at first. In the end I'm glad I did, because there were layers to them that I wasn't aware of, judging them based on initial impressions.

The story took a very different turn than I expected based on ME1 alone, but now I think you are wrong about ME2 not having a theme. I agree it has a weaker main story than ME1. Much weaker. But in my eyes, ME2 isn't really about the Collector arc. I don't even see the Collector Base mission as the sole ending of its arc. The Collector Base, LOTSB and Arrival each provide some kind of closure for parts of Shepard's personal arc. But none of them provide the definite end to anything. This game has no end. Shepard is restless. The mission is accomplished, but the adventure continues.

Here's a comparison I saw somewhere: if ME1 is a novel, ME2 is an antology of short stories. The Collector plot only serves as a premise to bring the characters together, while they themselves are the real meat of the story.

As I see it, the main theme of ME2 - at least the Paragon story, since I haven't played Renegade - is healing broken minds. Shepard assembles a team of ten (Kasumi and Zaeed, as DLC characters, don't count) dysfunctional, messed-up individuals, and gives each of them a renewed sense of purpose and hope of recovery - as well as helps with one of the causes of their grief. It's not enough to fix them completely, but it's a start. And then there's Liara, the not-quite-companion, for whom LOTSB serves a purpose similar to the one loyalty missions serve for your regular companions.

And my Shepard, in my personal internal view of the story, was also healing herself as well. She didn't ask to be revived - she was forcibly pulled out of the grave, kicking and screaming. She came back broken, if not physically, then at least mentally, seeing everyone she knew and cared for bite the dust or go their own separate ways. Dumped to the bottom of society, working with the trash and scum, so she could find herself again.

I wouldn't say that the theme is executed particularly well, mind. With two exceptions, the companions feel like they ignore each other's presence, and the choices made on loyalty missions don't affect the finale, either. DA2 did better with its "Questioning Beliefs" series, when your actions towards your companions meant a lot in determining who would stay at your side in the end, and for what reason. And in the end, I think both ME2 and DA2 were damaged by being marketed as sequels, while they were really side stories.

Just like DA2 was better off being something like "Hawke: A Dragon Age story", so was ME2 not really a sequel, and ME3 would probably work better being called ME2. It's not about the Reaper menace, and I'm fine with that. Screw Reapers. They've served their purpose in the story. We've gone from Sovereign, whom I found the one BioWare villain that actually scared me by creating a sense of unstoppable approaching doom, to Harbinger - a total joke after you kill its avatar the first five or so times. I actually applaud Dragon Age for having the guts to shift from a bland and arbitrary external threat to exploring conflicts inherent in the system. Alas, ME is set up as a trilogy about the Reapers, so it will have to bite that bullet, even when I think there's inherently no satisfactory resolution that won't feel like a deus ex machina.

Regarding the treatment of Ashley and Kaidan in ME2... I'm obviously biased, being pro-Liara, but I think the main problem is not the shifted characterization per se: it lies deeper. It lies in the merging of two very different Alliance officers into one combined "Ashdan Willenko" hybrid that doesn't do justice to either of the original characters. Their lines in ME2 are exactly the same, from what I can tell. It seems that ME3 is bound for the same treatment. It saves the writers the bother of writing different situations for them, sure, but it also takes away everything that made them unique and memorable. And don't get me started on the redesign of Ashley's looks in ME3. EA's "streamlining" and "wider audience" in action. Ugh.

I actually read through the leaked ME3 script you avoided. Without spoiling anything, I think that it's bad, that it doesn't do the setting justice, and that there are some ideas in it that should have never ever entered the brain of any halfway competent ME writer. Between that, and everything else you said - the excessive marketing focus on the wrong elements, shooterization, EA influence, having a story too crammed with characters to do each of them justice - we have a recipe for failure. With the exception of SWTOR sales, since SWTOR has already launched and is apparently doing well, I expect your worst-case scenario to kick in.

Strong clever writing can still be that game's saving grace even with everything else ruined, but I already know this is not the ME3 I want. Whether or not it's good or bad, it most likely won't be a part of "my personal canon" and I'll end up plotting a different conclusion to Shepard's story in my mind.

And weeping over what could have been.

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Fearful Symmetry

2011-12-25T18:00:38Z

Plucked my own eyebrows for the first time.

Good golly is it time-consuming. But worth the experience.

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First Day in St. Petersburg

2011-12-16T19:44:27Z

Well, technically second. But this is the first day where I actually managed to see something, not clouded by night.

It goes... quite against the stereotypes, to say the least.

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Shaking Fists After the Fight

2011-12-12T07:11:55Z

Attended the rally in Pervomaisky Square on Sunday.

Never thought I'd see Soviet and Imperial flags in one crowd. United Russia truly united Russia. Against itself.

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All Similarities to Real People Coincidental

2011-12-10T19:15:14Z

Vladimir P.: Targeting me won't get their money back. I knew the opposition wouldn't go down without a fight, but this is different. They crossed the line.
Vladislav S.: You crossed the line first, sir. You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation. And in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn't fully understand.
Vladimir P.: Opposition leaders aren't complicated, Aslambek. Just have to figure out what he's after.
Vladislav S.: With respect, sir, perhaps this is a man that you don't fully understand, either. A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in three months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.
Vladimir P.: So why steal them?
Vladislav S.: Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

I'll get back to ranting about games soon, I promise.

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Some Kind of Map

2011-12-09T19:15:53Z

Ignore this, Channel One.

Just try. I dare you.

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Google It

2011-12-08T09:37:09Z

632305222316434

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That asari mind control thing

2011-12-03T18:12:18Z

I don't know how this keeps popping up, and the only way I can explain it is with the ease with which humans fall for conspiracy theories, arguments that purport to "explain everything", no matter how flimsy the evidence is and no matter how strong the counterevidence is.

But let's examine the gory details.

"Theres a conversation on Ilium between a Salarian, Turian and Human where all 3 say that Asari look more like their own species than any other. Its also hinted at that Asari use their psuedo telepathy to alter how other species see them.

In conclusion: Asari are pleasure GELFs."

~ A user on the ME3 forum

It's a one-shot joke based on comments by three drunken guys ogling an asari stripper in a bar, who were likely not serious themselves. It's amazing how many people make theories based on that one mention of supposed mind control.

To hopefully sink this theory, let's look at the evidence for the null hypothesis: that asari actually look, within the fictional universe, the way they look in the game.

First of all, postulating such an extraordinary claim -- that a species doesn't really look the way we see it -- by itself requires extraordinary evidence, so the burden of proof lies on the proponents of this hypothesis.

What would be the purpose of such an ability in the first place? If the idea is to appear to each species as an attractive potential mate, they fail at that even for humans (the image we see). Never mind that blue skin and head tendrils are decidedly not attractive traits to many humans -- why do they always appear female-shaped? Wouldn't it make more sense if they looked male-shaped to women?

Apparently this postulated ability also works on cameras, holographic projectors, monitors and printers everywhere, because drawings, still images, and video footage of asari look like we would expect them to look.

The ability would have to extend to their clothing, which would need to be made in the dimentions of their real appearance rather than the projected human-like appearance. There is no evidence of this. Furthermore, Liara in ME1 wears human armor, while the other three alien squadmates each use armor custom-made for their species.

If this ability really existed, it would have been studied and catalogued centuries ago. Instead, everyone except our bachelor party trio is completely silent about it -- including Dr. Chakwas, who has been tending to Liara and said by her to have good understanding of asari physiology.

The ability to alter other beings' perception without consent would not be tolerated by other species, and a countermeasure would be developed.

That about covers it. Based on this evidence, we should assume that their appearance in the games is their real appearance. Why, then, they look so human-like? I don't know. Maybe the developers know; maybe they don't. Normally I would say "widespread humanoids are a genre convention", but seeing how BioWare doesn't like using tropes verbatim without at least giving them some justification that makes sense in context...

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Ah, Valve, How Charming

2011-11-29T10:24:18Z

Valve has consistently been remaining the voice of reason in the PC game industry.

In a situation where Activision has been systematically crippling Blizzard games with DRM, Ubisoft caused a drop of their PC sales with their own folly (with pirates as a scapegoat, of course), and EA is pressing on BioWare to turn their RPGs into shooters (to say nothing of the spyware vomit that is Origin), Valve's Gabe Newell isn't afraid to state the obvious.

He's fundamentally right. Digital distribution is a competition between publishers and... people who can offer the same services cheaper. I've been saying this a lot, and I'll say it again: DRM, ultimately, does nothing but complicate life for legitimate customers.

In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty.

Our goal is to create greater service value than pirates, and this has been successful enough for us that piracy is basically a non-issue for our company. For example, prior to entering the Russian market, we were told that Russia was a waste of time because everyone would pirate our products. Russia is now about to become our largest market in Europe.

I can see why.

Back in 2004, when Steam was introduced as a distribution platform with the release of Half-Life 2, the situation seemed hopeless. Russia was still covered with a network of semi-legal stores selling pirated games in heaps. Piracy was second nature for Russian software users through the nineties and early 2000s. Most people couldn't afford licensed software or thought the prices were outrageous. It was not competitive. A lot of it still is. How many Russians do you know who have bought a retail copy of Windows? Or bought music in an online store? As long as there is no practical reason to prefer licensed versions, piracy will continue.

Meanwhile, back in those years, the prevalent forms of Internet access in Russia were dial-up and per-traffic billing plans for Ethernet ISPs. My ISP charged $0.05 per megabyte downloaded. Steam has an offline mode, sure, but Steam games, even those bought in retail, insist on downloading all available updates at first activation.

Under these conditions, introducing Steam in Russia seemed like tactical suicide.

And indeed, back then, Steam was widely unpopular around the world, and especially in Russia. Howeve, it has proven to be the right solution in the long term. Today, however, in the age of cheap and reliable Internet access, Steam has shown its true appeal.

Traditional DRM only makes users' lives worse. With region locks, requirements for a CD in the drive, for perpetual Internet access (Ubisoft really shot itself in the foot with this one), registration forms, rootkits in the system, and so on. Under these conditions, pirated versions start looking more appealing -- at least for purely single-player games. World of Warcraft, for example, has little to fear because you pay for an online service, one that private servers simply cannot hope to match.

Steam is a service, first and foremost. The convenience of having your games bound to your account, now and forever, on any computer you access. Automatic updates. No annoying third party DRM... usually (yes, I'm looking at you, Ubisoft). No tying to physical media.

Today's Steam, a far cry from the messy state it was released in, found acceptance first and foremost in games where pirates couldn't hope to compete with it. This includes, first and foremost, multiplayer games, where Steam provides instant tools for building communities. Even for single player games, now it is often more convenient to find a game on Steam than run around the city looking for a retail copy, or searching Google for a torrent.

I'm not saying Steam is perfect. A lot of its UI decisions are counterintuitive even now. Localization is often an issue: sometimes, for odd reasons, a Steam release is missing either the English version or the Russian version. (Steam has often allowed me to play English versions of foreign games, which I generally prefer, when only Russian versions are available in retail.) And now, since September, Valve has forced publishers to cut their prices in Russia. Not everyone likes this. Some publishers have decided not to release their games in Steam for CIS countries for this reason. I personally find it ridiculous. If the lowered price isn't acceptable for you, let me pay the European price, just as long as I get worldwide access to the game. Why should I be treated as a second-class customer just because I have a Russian IP?

Nevertheless. Thank you, Valve. For not being evil.

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And Another Quote for Today

2011-11-26T19:27:20Z

Of course, the real problem isn't women bishops, it's bishops at all; or, rather, the creation of a set of people called 'clergy' and saying they are in some way different from non-clergy. Whether women are allowed in the clergy club is rather an insignificant point when the main theological failing is to have set up the club in the first place (and was compounded by not getting rid of the club properly in the seventeenth century when you had the chance).

Source

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Sounds Familiar...

2011-11-26T18:22:29Z

Amati, the last woman to race in Formula One, described her experience there for F1 Racing Magazine, saying: "It's a male environment and they want to keep it that way - the drivers, the journalists, everyone. Only one person came up to me and offered me his hand at my first GP in South Africa - and that was Ayrton Senna. He came over and said, 'Welcome Giovanna, I'm glad you're here. My congratulations.' The others ignored me, and when I failed they shrugged and said it was because I was a woman." True Champions, it seems, are sometimes proven as Greats not just on track...

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On Skyrim and Hype

2011-11-23T20:06:52Z

Recently I've been unnerved. The pre-election craze left me to spend two evenings doing nothing but reading about recent political events, and it seems that no matter what scenario unravels -- a more peaceful or more violent one -- the common people will be the ones who lose.

Anyway, still bitter after the My Little Pony hype -- a show that I would just ignore otherwise, but which I got to utterly hate despite never watching it because of its obsessed fandom -- I decided to finally take a peek at the next big thing, well, you know, that game with number five which is a sequel to the big thing of five years ago, more or less the same thing but with number four.

Hype has its downsides, and I've learned to set my expectations low by default when taking a look at big things, because a lot of the hype comes from blinded fanboys who refuse to see any fault in their precious franchise and from mainstream critics, who basically have to write positive reviews lest they lose the press benefits. But that's just repeating the obvious banalities by this point.

Sometimes I get pleasantly surprised. Often I don't. I thought Mass Effect was a genuinely great franchise despite my initially low expectations (I expected a bland KOTOR clone with silly implausibilities galore), and I thought Dragon Age was solid but needlessly dragging, unforgiving, and retreading on BioWare's earlier grounds that had become cliche by that point. Certainly not the avatar of perfection on this sinful Earth whose very piss smells of nectar and makes flowers blossom. On the other hand, I installed the much-maligned Dragon Age II fully thinking it'd be good but not my kind of game, and well... it's actually good, story-wise and presentation-wise, and my greatest issue with the game is the patently ridiculous and unfair encounter design: somehow they managed to make combat even worse than in DA1. (I'm expecting inquisitors with stakes and bonfires any time now.)

Even Portal, which I would call the overall best game I've played (first game, not second), would probably have ended up in my blacklist had I not had the fortune to play it before the hype wave started. But I was fortunate to play it when it was still not a big thing. I was looking for something to play while taking a break from Episode Two, and I thought I could as well try this puzzle game bundled with it. It was before the cake and companion cube craze started. The rest is history. Portal 2, on the other hand, was a big thing from the very start. I preordered it knowing exactly what to expect -- more of the same, more puzzles, more portals, more Chell, more GLaDOS, more black humor -- and that was exactly what I got, no more, no less. I don't really have a problem with Portal 2 -- it's Valve's best executed game from a technical standpoint. But story-wise it's a sequel to a game that didn't really need a sequel, and one that made the story of the first part retroactively impossible to take seriously, turning all of Aperture Science into a cartoonish farce.

Anyway, the great and bountiful Skyrim.

I'll be brief. It's atmospheric, yes. The music especially captures the mood from the get go. As a sightseeing exercise, a sort of fantasy Google Street View, or for someone who wants to actually pretend to be a denizen of a fantasy world -- as opposed to realizing they're a real person playing through someone else's story -- it may be the way to go.

Let me reiterate, Skyrim is not a bad game. It has its players and I think they deserve the right to enjoy a game they like. But it's not my thing. It doesn't inspire me, it doesn't capture my imagination or instill a sense of awae in me. To my eye, it's just unmemorable, in a "so okay it's average" way.

One thing BioWare and Obsidian games in general did well is inspiring you to care about the world even in sequels. I'll be honest: I started Skyrim completely new to the TES franchise. The earlier big things, namely Morrowind and Oblivion, passed by me.

I can start a BioWare or Obsidian game and immediately feel engaged, even when I don't know anything about the setting. Here, after ten minutes of a scripted scene where I ride a cart while listening to small talk without being able to do as much as turn my head -- a scene that would make Valve scratch their heads, then scrap the prologue and start over -- I'm suddenly dumped into the world as ye olde Adventurer Classic, the one that fetches bear asses to ungrateful villagers, and I just find it hard to care, or to even understand why I'm supposed to care about these empty forests and bare hills, with bland and unmemorable NPCs in between.

B-O-R-I-N-G.

I heard that the focus is on immersion and exploration, but well, to immerse yourself into a setting and explore it, you first somehow have to start caring about it, which brings me back to square one.

And I'm probably a minority on this one, but to me, a game (except for little timekillers like Tetris and Minesweeper) is first and foremost a work of literature -- like movies and TV series, but with different media possibilities and conventions in each form. And I prefer a game to have a story: a clear beginning, end, and a suitably complex storyline with a fleshed-out cast of characters in between. The TES series is... quite different and, again, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's just not what I like in games.

Speaking of conventions, Skyrim deserves a special award for quite possibly the messiest video game UI I've seen. I'm not a designer by any means, but I've read essays and saw quite a lot of desktop software, and my experience as a programmer has taught me to distinguish good UIs from bad UIs. Bluntly, Skyrim doesn't have a good UI. It breaks too many principles to count, the most important of which is the principle of least surprise. Conventions don't exist for this game. Keys do unexpected things, widgets behave in an unexpected way, and just about every screen -- trade, inventory, spells, you count them -- is done in a "new and improved" way that goes completely against existing RPG traditions. I understand developers' need to feel original, but originality shouldn't get in the way of usability. Conventions exist for a reason: they let users easily get used to a new interface. Bethesda instead preferred to confuse the heck out of the user in the name of looking "trendy".

With that said, I'm back to hacking and fireballing my way through the remainder of Dark Messiah. This game might not have been gushed by critics and fans, but I would prefer even a bad game (not that this is a bad game) that at least tries something interesting, anything at all, to a game that appeals to reviewers with form while feeling trite and hollow on the inside.

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Adieu, Gmail

2011-08-12T13:55:46Z

(Crossposted from lucidfox.org)

Normally, I don't care for Google+, or Facebook, or other similar "social" noise. I once had a Facebook profile before it became, well, the Facebook of today and was still a relatively low-profile place which I could conveniently use for my and other people's contact details.

Normally, I also pay little attention to the privacy concerns surrounding Google's web services since pretty much their inception.

However, the recent pseudonymity controversy demonstrated that Google's "don't be evil" motto did not pass a reality check. Google has demonstrated that it would rather allow the jerkassery to continue than listen to the concerns of the very community Google+ is supposed to be supporting. Typically for a corporation, money -- in this case, advertising revenue -- won over civility and common sense.

It is always sad to see a corporation damage its popular support through bulldozing tactics, because ultimately it harms both the corporation and the community. When Wikia, capitalizing on the success of the wiki model, unilaterally imposed its new skin on hosted wikis against the wishes of their contributions, it caused many of them to fork the projects -- including the flagship, WoWWiki -- and move elsewhere. The result was dissipation, confusion, and the reduction of Wikia's role as the leading host for specialized wikis. The remains of forked projects remained as rotting carcasses -- again against the wishes of the community. Wikia would rather profit from advertisements on dead but popularly visited wikis than put them out of their misery.

Google, likewise, had the potential to be a great all-in-one Internet company, trusted by casual users and power users alike. There were a few things about its web services that made me raise an eyebrow in the past: increasingly obtrusive integration (no, please, don't add annoying useless "features" to Gmail unless I enable them explicitly), censorship on YouTube (which I left earlier, seeing how many videos were blocked in Russia or vice versa, enabled _only_ on Russia), personal censorship of search results, Gmail privacy concerns, and so on. Instead, they chose the path of alienating themselves -- the corporate equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "la la la, not listening". It's a tragedy -- both for Google and for the users.

So be it, then. As I said, I wouldn't use Google+ even without the real name policy, since I don't care about that particular site, but the trend is worrying and Google's behavior -- from addressing the wrong problem to silencing its own employees -- is extremely offputting. I find it better to jump ship now than later regret postponing it too much.

Under different circumstances, I wouldn't consider leaving Gmail. From a technical perspective, it's a fast, reliable, and highly flexible mail service. If I only cared about the technical perspective, I'd stay and recommend it to others. But I care about ethics. Luckily, I used my ubuntu.com email address almost exclusively, rather than my Gmail address directly, so all it required was pointing my Launchpad account to the newly enabled account managed by my hosting provider.

Here's a possible lesson to be learned: keep your online identity in your own hands. Count on the possibility you'll want to switch services, and manage your online handles in a way that they can be easily redirected to another service provider, if needed. In programming terms, keep the interface separate from the implementation.

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To paraphrase Paul Krugman

2011-08-04T17:57:13Z

There are two classic Soviet movies that can change the life of a Russian child: Guest from the Future and Irony of Fate.

One is a childish fantasy that can instill wishful thinking and unrealistic expectations for years to come, leading to a lonely, crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.

The other, of course, involves space pirates.

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"My name is Lor'themar!" - "Who?"

2011-07-27T12:29:54Z

A paraphrased conversation:

Me: Huh. News title: "Medvedev wants to create a Russian World of Warcraft based on national history".
Friend from US: Who's Medvedev?

Meanwhile, everyone outside Russia heard of Putin, of course.

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