StaceyPowers

I remember reading that piece and enjoying your analysis. It's great seeing you around the forum more, btw.

I suppose that is the downside of mixing work with play.

Bioshock Infinite wouldnt' work as a film--too much complexity to pack into a couple of hours. I'm not sure about 1 or 2 though. That might be doable. But I think I'd almost rather they told another story about Rapture if they made a movie. But mostly just because I always want more Bioshock stories.

I'd sum them up as that you cannot choose what the characters do, but you can choose how they go about accomplishing it. In any case, it would not have made much sense to allow player choice in Bioshock Infinite for multiple reasons. First of all, not having meaningful choices to make actually helped me empathize with the "we're stuck in this scenario and never get it to turn out right" problem. Secondly, the ending ... Booker and Elizabeth were in a sense trying to delete a choice from existence and make Comstock's nonexistence a fact. Player choice at that point would have contradicted their success.

I've played a few DLCs that I really enjoyed and thought were well worth the money, but a lot of DLCs fall short for me in terms of value. Obviously what you're looking for in a DLC is going to vary a lot depending on the game, but what in general do you hope for? I look for solid story, a deeper understanding of the characters I love, and hopefully new areas to explore. Closure can be nice too--i.e. answers to questions that were left open in the main game, and/or emotional closure for narrative loose ends.

What are some games which feature truly unique or unusual gameplay mechanics?

@The Blackangel That is true. There are some games with formats that can get redundant fast. @killamch89 Ironically, a good story is more likely to cause me to push forward rapidly through a game, because I'm dying to know what happens next. I usually still try and take my time though and explore as much as I can.

That'd be an example, sure. There are less extreme examples too though. I mean, I routinely see gripes about TLOU being basically a movie-as-a-game, where there are people who don't enjoy all the story elements and cutscenes (or are annoyed that they aren't making choices for the characters). I'd also argue that Bioshock Infinite plays as a kind of movie-with-fighting-sequences. I'm a big fan of both of those games, but the backlash I sometimes hear made me curious to bring up the topic.

I wonder how many kids sitting in that church were like, "The devil invented video games? Sweet. Now I'm looking forward to going to hell."

As a Communication major who studied social constructs in depth in university, I do believe gender is a social construct. And I can tell you as someone who experiences chronic pain tied in part to my estrogen levels, that belief has done zero to crash my hormone levels. Plus, if belief were that powerful, trans persons would not require hormone therapy to transition. It doesn't work that way. I want more testosterone to curb my runaway inflammation. Maybe I need to find ways to feel more "manly," rofl.

That does sound like a pain in the ass. The triangle shape just doesn't sound like the most ideal dispersal pattern. I think devs sometimes throw in what they think of as "challenge weapons," i.e. "it's hard to use, so we'll reward you if you succeed with it." But those weapons usually are not as much fun as weapons with practical designs that make them actually effective.

What are your favorite and least favorite typefaces in video games? I don't know what it's called, but I absolutely despise the typeface featured in the books in Skyrim. It isn’t ugly to look at, and it fits the character of the world, but it is very hard to read, especially at length, which actually deters me from the books unless I am very interested in the subjects. I wish Skyrim did things like TLOU, where when you look at a book or note, you see it as it exists in the game world, but you can then click again and it will overlay easily legible text. This lets you pick the levels of immersion versus legibility you prefer. Most of my favorite typefaces are in Bioshock games: https://bioshock.fandom.com/wiki/Fonts I like Century Gothic with the wider tracking. Andes is beautiful, and I currently have it on my desktop fonts. I’m head over heels for Eccentric as well. Triforce being a Zelda reference intrigued me.

I can understand people doing speed runs in games as a way to challenge themselves or compete, but why do people rush through games in general? I know that I’m probably at the opposite end of the bell curve in terms of taking my time—I literally explore every detail I can of every room I enter in every game I play. But I often manage to clock 50% more time in games than most times I see posted online for completion. I can’t imagine blazing through games that fast; I feel like I’d miss so many cool details. If one pays a lot for a game, it seems like one would want to get everything possible from it, and as much time as possible. So why do people rush through games?

Are there any research studies on these apparent testosterone effects?

I have issues which are similar to this, though I can usually figure out the reason for the wrong word. It also happens more when I'm typing than talking. Like I thanked a person once for "planets" instead of "topics" for a work assignment. I did this because I'd been writing about a planet that day, and it was still on my mind. I think that if one has a lot of branching thoughts, this sort of thing may happen a good deal. I used to live in Washington DC, and I loved visiting the National Cathedral. It was located nowhere near any metro stops, unfortunately. Since I didn't have a car, there was no easy way to get there. I once walked like 10 miles or more just to visit it. The architecture felt like "home" to me.

What types of maps do you find confusing?

I'm not sure why games were let off the hook in my house, but probably because my mother didn't really "get" technology stuff, and my dad didn't care. They had a similar attitude to what you describe though when it came to movies and TV shows. Oh, and music.

I’ve just remembered another one—the Ebony Blade in Skyrim. For those who don’t know, it’s a special unique Daedric weapon you can get through a quest. It has very little base damage. I experimented with the thing for weeks, and couldn’t figure out what was supposed to be so great about it. I finally remembered to look it up, and learned that if you kill friendly characters with it, it gains power absorbing health. Great, I guess? The very fact that I never figured this out on my own shows how useless the sword is to me. Just more weight in my inventory, ugh.

Were there any video games that were forbidden to you by your parents when you were a child? My parents were actually pretty liberal about video games; it was everything else that they censored. There was some complaining about “violent video games” by my mother, but she never did anything to stop them.

In this thread, @Christopher Robin was talking about how it can be a challenge to begin a new game owing to needing to get used to the new mechanics and get through what can sometimes be hours’ worth of tutorial content. This made me wonder how long it takes most gamers to adjust to the mechanics of a new game, plus other aspects (i.e. movement in the game, general look, feel and navigation, etc.). It seems to take me about a week of nightly play to get really comfortable with something brand new. The first several days are very awkward. Learning the new controls can be hard, as can learning how to control character movement (not the controls, in this respect—more issues involving speed and sensitivity). Arguably the most challenging adjustment though is something more subtle than all of that, and hard to express. It is kind of like “motion sickness,” only not quite—just the overwhelming sense of difference in being in a new, alien world. I suppose it is because video games not only offer us new worlds, but create new perceptions of those worlds. In a way, it’s like being dropped into a new body and having to learn the basics of a new existence every time. No wonder it can take a while. What are your experiences with this?

... Lovely. And I thought censorship during my childhood was harsh. I have that same issue to some extent--except the difference for me is that I kind of enjoy it. It's like learning a new language/culture while travelling to a foreign country or something.

@Alyxx Thanks! I will check those out!

Those little pistols in Fallout games that are easy to get near the beginning, energy-based and otherwise. They're really pointless after you get a better gun. I end up with massive amounts of unused ammo for them as a result (which doubles as currency, so it's fine).

The Healing Other spell in Skyrim is like that. It's a really useful spell, but the moment I'm done with it, I have to select a different one, because when it is equipped but not in use, it emits this high pitched whine. Ir drives me absolutely bonkers.

@kingpotato @Dragonborn Either of those would be cool.