#vidjagame

[loki-zen]

counterpoint: without us, would it have been all that interesting anyway?

D&D going mainstream really messed up people's expectations cause chances are you're not gonna find a DM who has the free time, talent and resources to put on a tale that competes with Tolkien. you're gonna find your friend's roommate Phil who's read one of the manuals a few times and has to pause to get a calculator out to figure out how much damage your attack did and his story is blatantly ripping off a dragon age 2 side quest

[gorbalsvampire]

God damn it, now I'm extemporising a VTDA game - War of Princes. RTS/RPG hybrid, think Dawn of War II, Retribution style 'cause swapping heroes for honour guard units aligns really nicely with bringing along other members of your coterie or retainers. Would need to flesh out the between-levels storytelling with some more meaningful choices, maybe espionage opportunities or managing Traditional violations. Bring in a little bit of map play - not full on 4X but some domain level stuff in between taking your squad out to kick ass and chew necks.

It could map really nicely onto some of the less-commonly-seen-in-vidjagames clans, ideally ones with cool and unusual minions to bring along - like, you'd have Gangrel with ghouled animal retainers, Cappadocians with animated corpses and wraiths (obviously hot swapping for a named Giovanni), Tzimisce with revenants/szlachta/vozhd, Tremere with familiars and gargoyles, Lasombra with eldritch summoned shadow things? Reverse the usual expectations and have the Boring Clans and their ghouled humans as the antagonists. Really lean into "you are the monster" as an aesthetic and gameplay theme.

[raksha-the-demon]

Just curious what the difference between a roguelike and a soulslike actually is? - I see those descriptors a lot but it's hard to grasp as someone who doesn't play a variety of games

THANK YOU for giving me an excuse to talk about this. Also sorry for taking so long, it's just that every time I started writing this out I ended up getting way too lost in the weeds and having to backtrack so it didn’t just turn into a meandering essay of Raksha’s Opinions On Vidjagames. (Also shoutout to the spellchecker that thinks it should be “vidja games”. Perfect software, zero notes.)

So, first, a quick disclaimer that these terms, like all genre terms but particularly gaming genre terms, are fuzzy and ill-defined. Not everyone draws the line between them in exactly the same place, but the important thing is that there is a line, and some games are clearly on different sides of it. Like Hades and Elden Ring, which was the comparison that gave me psychic damage.

Roguelikes (named after the 1980s game Rogue) and soulslikes (named after Dark Souls et al) are both known for being difficult genres where you die a lot and it takes many, many, many attempts to actually win. The major design difference between them is that roguelikes use random generation that changes things up when you die, while soulslike games keep the world pretty much static. But I think a more useful distinction from a player perspective is that roguelikes emphasize strategy while soulslikes emphasize tactics. 

Strategy is about broader planning and overall intent, while tactics are about specific actions taken moment to moment. If you were cleaning a room part of your strategy might be “work top to bottom” while your tactics would be more like “clean this specific shelf first”. Both types of planning are used in each game (it's kind of impossible to have one without the other), but the emphasis changes. The randomized nature of roguelikes force the player to constantly adjust to new situations, whereas soulslike games encourage players to continually iterate on and perfect methods for dealing with very specific and known problems.

Let’s imagine two scenarios. Both start off the same way, with a player exploring a dungeon. They start in a room with three skeletons, which they kill. In the back of a room is a chest with a cool sword. It’s better than the player’s current weapon, so they equip it and continue to the next room, where the boss is waiting. The boss does a stomping attack that the player wasn’t expecting, and the player dies. They respawn back at the start of the dungeon.

In the soulslike scenario, the player still has the cool sword equipped, which they use to kill those first three skeletons even more easily than before. There’s no longer an item chest in the room because they already looted it, so the player continues to the boss fight. They know about the stomping attack now, so when the animation starts they’re able to dodge out of the way. This time they are killed when the boss throws a rock at them, so on the next iteration the player tries standing under the boss during the rock throw, so that they can’t be hit. This process continues with the player iterating on their battle tactics until they eventually win and can proceed further into the game. 

In the rougelike scenario the player no longer has the cool sword when they respawn, and the first room has a pair of wolves instead of skeletons, and no item chest. The next room doesn’t contain the boss this time, but five skeletons and a spike trap. The player does find an item chest here, this time containing a bow. They equip it, and then proceed through several more rooms of random monsters before coming to the boss room. The boss does exactly the same things it did the first time around, but this time the player is using a bow, so they decide to keep their distance and attack from range. They don’t have to dodge the stomp attack because they’re too far away for it to hit. The rock toss almost gets them, but they see it coming and are able to duck behind cover. The boss eventually kills them with an area attack, and the player goes back to the start, where they fight through a new version of the dungeon and find a new weapon, which opens up different strategies for how to tackle the boss. 

Personally I find the soulslike model frustrating, because it feels like I’m just running headfirst into a wall over and over again. Roguelikes don’t give me that same sensation despite being more punishing in a lot of ways, because each run keeps things fresh. Other people love soulslikes because they enjoy perfecting their skill, and find the randomness of roguelikes to be an impediment to that.

[janedoe297-art]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who liked or reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers.

(No Pressure 🌻)

Ahhh ok let me think... • Playing AND discussing d&d with my friends! theories, character meta, memes etc ( I'm sure theyre aware by now ty for indulging me <3 ) • Aperitivo w my friends!! Especially this time of the year, the days are getting longer and meeting up at the local park to drink aperol spritz and chat under the sun..... mwah 10/10 • stationery 😭 I know, basic, but its so nice to get yourself a fancy pen or notebook or washi tape every once in a while. • vidjagames (im a gamer....) • embroidery!!! I'm in my grandma era. It's a nice way to still be creative but in a different medium were I don't feel the pressure to be "good"

[brightbrightlover]

to my fellow gays who love to explore all the nooks and crannies- play hollow knight babes u wont regret it x

The main bundle has 69 (heh) games for $60. The sister bundle has 66 games for $10.

The sale runs Feb 10-24, 2023

[plumcoloredblazer]

15 People, 15 Questions

tagged by @redaynia (cheers, bruv)

1. Are you named after anyone?

My naming seems to have been a nonchalant affair. Biblical. The fifth most common boy name in the US of A the year I was born.

2. When was the last time you cried?

A movie, certainly. I believe it was when I was rewatching "Nimona" while I was disconcertingly drunk.

3. Do you have kids?

No, and I don't think I will at this point.

4. What sports do you play/have you played?

I played soccer in grade school (football GoooaALLL! YELLOW CARD! for my offshore acquaintances). I've never been a "joiner" or gotten myself heavily invested into athletic institutions, so I'm a severe disappointment for this one.

5. Do you use sarcasm?

I don't know, do I? (Generally, I don't in text form, but I employ all the linguistic tools at my disposal)

6. What’s the first thing you notice about people?

How empathic they are and how well they adapt to the vibes, needs, etcetera of others.

7. What’s your eye color?

Green.

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

Scary, I suppose. But I'm always hoping for fulfilling happy endings.

9. Any talents?

Writing (to some regard). Tidiness. Deescalating situations. I don't know. I'm boring.

10. Where were you born?

KILL-ingly, Connecticut.

11. What are your hobbies?

The usuals: reading, writing, vidjagames, contemplating thematic structures...

12. Do you have any pets?

Rest in peace Basil and Briar, my darling Labradors (Especially Briar, my literal pick of the litter). Welcome, Arugula, the puppy I'll probably be getting in February.

13. How tall are you?

180-ish cm. 5'11''

14. Favorite subject in school?

English. It's the language I speak, innnit?

15. Dream job?

Creative director of an animation studio. Novelist: my New Years resolution is to finish a book this year. To be rich and beneficent.

Don't have many people to tag, but: @thehiddenbaroness, @pmmdj, @cajolions, @combustibabe

[hlvrai-stuck-together]

You know what I think would help everyone feel better? Some vidjagames

HELL YEAH!! Gonna beat everyone here with combined gamer skills.

I don't think so! I'm ALWAYS the winner at the- at Mario Kart!

I do believe my copy of Super Punch-Out! for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System™ should still be around here somewhere, if you'd like to challenge me!

You're so on oh my god dude.

We still have a while before lunch gets here. I do believe we should have enough time.

The only issues is... I have no idea how to connect anything to the television.

I can get everything set up, don't worry.

...If we can work in a game of TF2.

Pyro Update?

Hell no.

Damn. Mean to us.

[hug-your-face]

Hey @digitaldiscipline did you know SWG has been revived?

time loop that’s set to end when you’ve completely fucked your life up in a blaze of hedonistic glory under the assumption that it’ll all just reset at the end of the day

[nerves-nebula]

Do you play vidjagames? If yes, which are ur favs?

i dont play a ton of video games cause i get too stressed out about not doing them right. here are the kinds of games i've played recently:

cult of the lamb

sims 4 (build a perfect house in a summer depression spiral and then trapped a shitton of sims in my basement to make paintings for me so i didnt have to work)

wobbledogs. my dogs were sooo fucked up. beloveds.

games i used to play as a kid

wild world animal crossing

super mario bros (was never very good at it tho)

my free zoo

nintendogs (obsessively. i had like 5 different nintendogs games i'd switch between)

oh yeah and i play mobile games too cause i have ADHD or something and need constant dopamine and numbers to go up, but nobody gives a shit about those.

my girlfriend is a real Gamer Girl tho. like she'll 100% games and everything. fun stuff.

[titleknown]

"Some random people told me they don't think video games are necessary. And this is why degrowth should scare everyone!"

Okay. That's still a strawman. But if video games are the issue you care about most, that's fine. Just say that up front next time. So anyway, how exactly does growth make better video games than degrowth? My favorite video game is Zelda Windwaker. A decade of exponential industry growth has not been able to bring me a better game than Windwaker. In order to continue industry GDP growth, it's an endless cycle of expensive DLC and labor abuse. That's the reality.

So, once again, read some JK Steinberger and maybe you'll calm down. Or, if you don't like listening to women, you can read Jason Hickel and calm down that way.

[In reference to this post]

...I feel like I'm being strawmanned here, because it wasn't just about vidjagames, but rather about the ways in which they treat "inefficient" interests, and what that says about the problems with their philosophy.

Like, while videogames can be useful as a metonymy for that, even with devices as broad as desktop computers or art tablets, I have never heard anyone into degrowth say a fucking nice thing about any of the computing devices I use for self-expression.

From everything I've seen, they regard it as the same sort of wasteful toy for the Global North as Hummers or McMansions, even if it's a lifeline or a vital means of creation for some of us. In fact, it feels like they regard any new technology that can't be kitbashed together or that doesn't work with their "hippie aeceticism for all" vision as being Like That.

Like, I've heard them shit on automation, on nuclear power, on asteroid mining, the list goes on. I'm afraid to have any hope in any new technological changes these days because I know they'll come out of the woodwork to say "Oh, this is bad actually and you're a bad person for taking hope in it," because it always happens, in real time on my Tumblr dash!

Like, I don't bring up the person saying that "Any new technology that can't be kitbashed from existing parts would devastate the global south" and "the idea of emerging technologies is a capitalist grift" as a singular gotcha, but because I've heard the sentiments animating that from the degrowth crowd so often that it feels like saying the quiet part out loud.

Like, to cite Giorgios Kallis again, he's said stuff like this

Indeed, I have made a general case for a culture of prudence—a culture that is reflexively inclined toward limit rather than limitlessness. One area where precaution is necessary is technology. We cannot cease to pursue knowledge, but we can no longer pretend that the limitless pursuit of technology is unproblematic. Ours is the first predominantly secular society that will have to devise institutions to limit the directions that knowledge takes without limiting knowledge itself. How we will be able to achieve this is hard to say, but recognizing that we have to is a crucial start.

and

Scaling up limits controls free-riding and absolves individuals from having to be ever vigilant of their conduct. I don’t want to wonder constantly whether I should consume this or that; I want government to tell me what we have agreed not to consume.

Like, that rings alarm bells to me on the idea that the vision of degrowth includes chokepoints on resources to choke out "inefficient" uses in the arts or sciences, the same as under capitalism just with a different underlying worldview justifying it.

That you would be technically free to do whatever you want, but if whatever technological project you wanted required something more complicated than a peanut crusher you'd have to beg and plead for them to let you access it, same as under capitalism.

Like, again, these people who think that the devices I use as a means of expression and communication are decadent toys, what would they say when I need a replacement?

What would the hypothetical organization Kallis says to stop the "bad" pursuit of technology say to the scientist researching a "niche" field for science's sake, or an emerging technology that would enrich human life but would require new infrastructure?

The sort of politically-active class-resentful person who wrote "About Hating Art" and who seems to infest degrowth circles would probably love to shrink any discipline that requires specialized artists (such as say, animation) small enough to drown in a bathtub!

...To digress, the reason I haven't read Steinberger is because I haven't seen specific stuff of theirs cited in a place where I could read it (Or pirate it in the case of Kallis' book).

But I do know about Hickel. And I know he's cited a lot as a "hopeful" face of Degrowth. I also know he's buddy-buddy with Kallis. You know, the very dominant person in Degrowth circles who said all that crazy bullshit, from what I know they've collaborated a lot.

That says to me that either A) Hickel is ignorant of the implications of what Kallis says or B) He knows about them but does not care that Kallis is saying the quiet part out loud. Neither of these are good.

And like... the thing is on games you're not wrong. Like, there's a reason I mainly play indie games or older games these days.

Hell, there's a reason that, as I said in another post, I think that GDP is very stupid! I think that the modern means of growth and its dependence on collapse as a form of "degrowth" is also very bad and stupid!

The old aphorism "Fire is a good servant, but a terrible master" very much applies to growth! But it also applies to degrowth, and so much of what I read appears to show that y'all don't get that!

Like... leftism's promise to me always felt like you don't have to choose between the wellbeing of all and the freedom to create, where everyone could live comfortably and have the time and resources to pursue their passions.

But from everything I've seen Degrowth betrays those by saying you have to choose, and that the "good life" only applies if you want to live a very specific way or can forcibly modify your desires to do so. It all comes off as very "Bread and roses, but fuck you if you like tulips."

I see this especially from Resilience.org, which is where I was first introduced to degrowth, which loves the shit out of the atomized hyperlocal bootleg-Ghibli "transition town" movement, which probably shaped my negative view on it if that helps you understand me better.

And like... I get you're approaching in good faith, and I can understand where you're probably coming from. But like, I wish y'all could understand why so much of what your movement says sounds like that beyond blaming us

[illieous]

6, 14, 21, 24, 25 vidjagames askgayme hi ilu

First game you ever played?

Uhhh probably Super Mario Bros for NES. It was either that or another NES game. It's been so long since I was little though it's hard to remember. LOL

Worst Game you ever played?

Man it's hard to pick one. I guess most recently it was a game called Oriental Valley. It was supposed to be a farming simulator with some unique twists but the game was poorly optimized and I got locked out of the very first quest by a glitch. There was absolutely no direction on where to go and the quest item that was supposed to be in x place just was missing entirely. There's been others in the past but that was the most recent I could think of without breaking my brain.

A game you thought you wouldn't like, but ended up loving?

Monster Hunter. I'm terrible at action games. Just the worst. But I found a niche in Monster Hunter that let me play the genre in a not stress-inducing way. I could easily grind monster hunt after hunt in those games, whereas normal grinding gets repetitive fast. It also is the right level of challenge for me with what Im physically capable of playing with my bad hands.

If you could live in one of the games you've played, which one would it be?

Probably Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons. I'd kill to be able to just farm the day away without much care in the world without my body breaking from the stress. I can't pick just one game though because each has its own merits and detriments. Every time the weather gets cloudy or the cicadas start to sing I get nostalgia for these games and wish to spend the day away in them.

Favorite environment in a game?

I really like wooded areas with water sources. So if I had to pick someplace I'd say Skyrim where everywhere you sneeze at is practically woods and water. There's nothing better then being able to look in the water and see the reflections of they sky and flowers along the river bank.

[geeoharee]

Yup. People are inventing whole scenarios in the comments because Vidjagames. I think if it showed a man saying "stop going to your stitch 'n bitch or there'll be consequences" they might get it.

[pinkiepieaddict]

SMBC: Vidjagames

[swannkings]

i have 3 old PCs at my mercy and i'm hoping i can learn to fix/refurbish/rebuild them and maybe finally get to play all these cool vidjagames the youths talk about

[lyeekha]

ughhhh but it doesnt help me nowwwwww what else i got on here i need to avoid going back to bed at all costs, is the point. i know im too slow for non-vidjagame wholesome activities but if i can avoid just curling up that will help

[snickersnek]

Why aren't there more playable birdmen in vidjagames? A furry race isn't that uncommon, a scaled race maybe, but when you start looking for birbs you've got.. what, Starbound? Falco in Smash?

Looking at you, Guild Wars Tengu.