Pinboard (jm)
https://pinboard.in/u:jm/public/
recent bookmarks from jmThe Not So Hidden Israeli Politics of 'The Last of Us Part II'2023-12-04T20:57:25+00:00
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bv8da4/the-not-so-hidden-israeli-politics-of-the-last-of-us-part-ii
jmThe Last of Us Part II focuses on what has been broadly defined by some of its creators as a "cycle of violence." While some zombie fiction shows human depravity in response to fear or scarcity in the immediate aftermath of an outbreak, The Last of Us Part II takes place in a more stabilized post apocalypse, decades after societal collapse, where individuals and communities choose to hurt each other as opposed to taking heinous actions out of desperation.
More specifically, the cycle of violence in The Last of Us Part II appears to be largely modeled after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo.
(via Alex)]]>vice commentary ethics games hate politics the-last-of-us israel palestine fiction via:alexhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d186b719864f/29 best games on Xbox Game Pass (August 2022) - Polygon2022-08-17T11:26:16+00:00
https://www.polygon.com/best-games/22372750/best-game-pass-games-xbox
jmgames gaming xbox game-passhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b2a515a8977a/Roblox 73-hour outage write-up2022-01-24T10:56:22+00:00
https://blog.roblox.com/2022/01/roblox-return-to-service-10-28-10-31-2021/
jmThe root cause was due to two issues. Enabling a relatively new streaming feature on Consul under unusually high read and write load led to excessive contention and poor performance. In addition, our particular load conditions triggered a pathological performance issue in BoltDB. The open source BoltDB system is used within Consul to manage write-ahead-logs for leader election and data replication.
Also worth noting: 'We are working to move to multiple availability zones and data centers.']]>postmortems outages roblox games ops consul boltdb replication uptimehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3f5e3d936d4b/GeyserMC2021-04-09T15:04:11+00:00
https://geysermc.org/
jmkids minecraft interop bedrock papermc switch gameshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c87668e34684/A game in a font2021-03-19T10:52:12+00:00
https://www.coderelay.io/fontemon.html
jmfonts pokemon bizarre games coding hacks ligatureshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ad7f5c80f1df/How Competitive Matchmaking and Rating Works In Overwatch2021-02-26T11:50:09+00:00
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/how-competitive-matchmaking-and-rating-works-season-26/581181/9
jmmatchmaking overwatch gaming games pvp player-ratinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7aa7f9ae7399/Gnome launched into space in a real-life reenactment of a Half Life 2 achievement2020-11-25T10:08:44+00:00
https://www.usgamer.net/articles/half-life-2-episode-two-a-13-year-old-game-gets-new-achievement-for-a-real-life-rocket-launch
jmA new achievement called "Gnome Alone" was added to [Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Half-Life: Alyx, and Left 4 Dead 2], and the description sums up exactly what's going on. "If you are reading this achievement, Gabe Newell has successfully launched Gnome Chompski into space. If you did not also receive the achievement 'Manufacturing Ascent', Newell has abandoned his plans to shoot Noam Chomsky into space."
...There's an Amelie-inspired achievement for picking up the gnome at the start of [Half Life 2: Episode Two] and bringing it all the way to the rocket at White Forest Base, an arduous task involving lots of item juggling and repeated cramming of the gnome into a crevice in Episode Two's muscle car. Similar challenges made their way into Alyx and Left 4 Dead 2 as well.
]]>garden-gnomes gnomes funny noam-chomsky achievements games half-life history gabe-newell rockets spacehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a726c3dc3437/This War of Mine to be added to school reading list in Poland2020-06-18T14:17:54+00:00
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-06-18-this-war-of-mine-will-be-added-to-polish-schools-reading-list
jmThis War of Mine, which was first released in 2014, drew on the experiences of the Bosnian people during the Siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s. It won widespread acclaim for its realistic portrayal of the human cost of war, and had sold more than 4.5 million units in April 2019.
The game will be included in the Polish reading list for the 2020/21 academic year, but will only be available to students aged 18 and above due to its age rating in the country. It will be recommended for those studying sociology, ethics, philosophy, and history, and will be available to students of those subjects for free.
]]>war history bosnia sarajevo games gaming poland schoolhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3ab29b1397a8/The Board Game Remix Kit2020-03-27T09:40:49+00:00
https://bgrk.itch.io/the-board-game-remix-kit?fbclid=IwAR1O9YPzEYVzPFJ2-V3wltUADjwWDn-LPBn4713DSB_ujkiVo74eEnY_a0M
jmNew rules for old games! The Board Game Remix Kit is a collection of tips, tweaks, reimaginings and completely new games that you can play with the board and pieces from games you might already own: Monopoly, Cluedo, Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit.
(via Macker)]]>via:macker games boardgames trivial-pursuit cluedo scrabble monopoly remixinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5b5939cfd5ba/How to crossplay Minecraft on PS4 with Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PC2020-03-13T14:40:00+00:00
https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/02/08/how-to-crossplay-minecraft-ps4-with-nintendo-switch-xbox-one-pc/
jmHowever, while the new snapshot is extremely neat, so too is the ability for PlayStation 4 players to crossplay with mates on Nintendo Switch, PC and Xbox One. This feature was introduced to Sony's version at the tail-end of last year, and in this article you'll find out how to play with your mates on other devices.
]]>minecraft crossplay ps4 switch gaming games kidshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:2feababcfbe3/Sprouts2020-02-24T10:51:25+00:00
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprouts_(game)
jmSprouts is a paper-and-pencil game that can be enjoyed simply by both adults and children. Yet it also can be analyzed for its significant mathematical properties. It was invented by mathematicians John Horton Conway (*that* Conway) and Michael S. Paterson at Cambridge University in the early 1960s.
]]>games paper sprouts kids funhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ac8d2376eae2/The Truth Behind The Theory That Control Was Inspired By The SCP Foundation2020-02-11T13:05:31+00:00
https://kotaku.com/the-creepypasta-community-that-influenced-control-1838283594
jm“I just had this warm fuzzy feeling throughout the game, seeing the cultural influence of something I’ve spent eight years of my life kind of doing as a hobby,” Pierce said. “I think in fairness, they clearly had the inspiration [from us], but they took it in their own direction. They did something with it that we could not do in a thousand years.”
This is fantastic -- the SCP Wiki is behind so many great SF/horror tropes over the past decade. what a legacy. And "Control" is in itself a fantastic game.]]>scp scp-wiki wikis collaboration art writing horror science-fiction control gameshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:6c42dbb574b1/Not able to configure more than 3 PS Move controllers on a Macbook Pro Retina 13 inch, Early 2015 :: Sportsfriends General Discussions2019-12-05T11:37:53+00:00
https://steamcommunity.com/app/277850/discussions/0/154641879455478145/
jmjoust sportsfriends games bluetooth tips osx macoshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:01ace6a0e2e2/THE HISTORY OF GAMING MAGAZINES: A GALLERY - DIGITISER2019-10-09T11:11:13+00:00
https://www.digitiser2000.com/main-page/the-history-of-gaming-magazines-a-gallery
jmgaming magazines funny retrogaming arcade-games games parody digitiserhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a79dd8a83719/The history of Tetris randomizers2019-09-10T20:29:08+00:00
https://simon.lc/the-history-of-tetris-randomizers
jmtetris algorithms coding games prng random randomnesshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:50cb39f93bb5/Minecraft now publishing deobfuscation maps2019-09-05T09:25:45+00:00
https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/minecraft-snapshot-19w36a
jmIn an effort to help make modding the game easier, we have decided to publish our game obfuscation maps with all future releases of the game, starting today. This means that anyone who is interested may deobfuscate the game and find their way around the code without needing to spend a few months figuring out what’s what. It is our hope that mod authors and mod framework authors use these files to augment their updating processes that they have today. These mappings will always be available, instantly and immediately as part of every newly released version. This does not, however, change the existing restrictions on what you may or may not do with our game code or assets. The links to the obfuscation mappings are included as part of the version manifest json, and may be automatically pulled for any given version.
]]>minecraft obfuscation microsoft mods modding community coding gameshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5211c2f6d1cd/twitter thread on how same-sex romance was added to The Sims back in 19982019-07-25T09:28:24+00:00
https://twitter.com/ItsTheShadsy/status/1151868012707962881
jmdon-hopkins games history the-sims design romance 1990shttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b0a787e27996/PUBG players arrested in Gujarat2019-05-28T10:29:44+00:00
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/pubg-video-game-arrests-india-ban
jmTheir strategy was simple, said two police officers involved in the arrests in Ahmedabad who asked not to be named: They swooped down on all groups of boys they saw with their heads buried in smartphones held in landscape mode. More often than not, they struck gold. Some of them were let off with stern warnings. Others had charges slapped against them, were convicted in court, and fined. A 19-year-old college student from Rajkot spent a night in jail before being bailed out the next day. Singh, the police commissioner, compared the severity of the PUBG arrests to a traffic offense, but to those arrested, the consequences are personal. “I feel tainted by this incident,” one of the boys who was arrested told BuzzFeed News. “My parents were mad I got into trouble with the police when they found out. They’re okay now, but sometimes, my relatives and cousins will still tease me about it and I don’t like that.”
]]>pubg gaming videogames games gujarat india hysteriahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:df978fe21a91/Brian Moriarty - "I Sing the Story Electric"2019-04-26T16:23:16+00:00
http://ludix.com/moriarty/electric.html
jmgeniac kinoautomat borges narratives non-linear branching interactive-fiction games gaming ludology history stories storytelling talkshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:68321979bf37/"Baba Is You" is Turing-complete2019-03-25T10:37:04+00:00
https://twitter.com/mattar0d/status/1109987662608384000
jmbaba-is-you games turing-completeness computinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:2fef7b9b10f4/The right-wing history of the urban models which inspired SimCity2019-01-31T10:11:27+00:00
https://logicmag.io/06-model-metropolis/
jmLargely forgotten now, Jay Forrester’s Urban Dynamics put forth the controversial claim that the overwhelming majority of American urban policy was not only misguided but that these policies aggravated the very problems that they were intended to solve. In place of Great Society-style welfare programs, Forrester argued that cities should take a less interventionist approach to the problems of urban poverty and blight, and instead encourage revitalization indirectly through incentives for businesses and for the professional class. Forrester’s message proved popular among conservative and libertarian writers, Nixon Administration officials, and other critics of the Great Society for its hands-off approach to urban policy. This outlook, supposedly backed up by computer models, remains highly influential among establishment pundits and policymakers today.
]]>simulation cities society politics history simcity games jay-forrester will-wright sociologyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:96baa15de88a/PRNG-predicting bot ascends in Nethack in 7 minutes 15 seconds2019-01-11T10:12:44+00:00
https://pellsson.github.io/
jmSo, we could now go from starting inventory to RNG-seed in no time, but we still had to ascend. While we could write a simple “wish”-bot, get +127 Magicbane and then ascend by hand from there, achieving both fastest realtime and lowest turn count in the same game would not be easy.
First idea was to start a NAO game, fetch the seed, then saving and perfecting the seed offline. It was quickly ruled out though as the game is reseeded each time it is started (i.e. when you load your game).
Loooong story short, we wrote a bot. You had to play the first turns (offline) and move her to a non-magic fountain located next to a wall. If you died, no big deal, just retry on the same seed. This is why SWAGGINZZZ stood still for 6 minutes, we had absolutely horrible RNG when trying to get the specific fountain needed on dlvl2.
The fountain is required for wishes. The wall is required to be able to offset the random state without advancing the game state – every time the character attempts to walk into a wall, it calls random() without wasting any in-game time. From the fountain, the bot ascends completely on her own.
]]>nethack random prng games hacks cheats nao amazinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:607a62e9d57b/Your Kid’s Apps Are Crammed With Ads - The New York Times2018-10-31T15:44:29+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/style/kids-study-apps-advertising.html
jmIn apps marketed for children 5 and under in the Google Play store, there were pop-up ads with disturbing imagery. There were ads that no child could reasonably be expected to close out of, and which, when triggered, would send a player into more ads. Dancing treasure chests would give young players points for watching video ads, potentially endlessly. The vast majority of ads were not marked at all. Characters in children’s games gently pressured the kids to make purchases, a practice known as host-selling, banned in children’s TV programs in 1974 by the Federal Trade Commission. At other times an onscreen character would cry if the child did not buy something.
“The first word that comes to mind is furious,” said Dr. Radesky, an assistant professor of developmental behavioral pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School. “I’m a researcher. I want to stay objective. We started this study really just trying to look at distraction. My frustrated response is about all the surprising, potentially deceptive stuff we found.”
brb, installing Pi-Hole.]]>children kids ads advertising apps android google ftc games iaphttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:0ee970b2c02b/archive.org C64 software library2018-10-05T21:10:24+00:00
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_c64?and%5B%5D=emulator%3Avice-resid&sin=&sort=
jmc=64 history commodore vice web internet-archive gaming gameshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:713bf268fbab/Anatomy of a tabloid Fortnite front page story2018-08-10T13:10:49+00:00
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-08-01-anatomy-of-a-tabloid-fortnite-front-page-story
jmfortnite pokemon-go gaming tabloids uk newspapers truth the-sun gameshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:9795b42fa526/The best Mario Kart character according to data science2018-06-15T14:17:49+00:00
https://medium.com/civis-analytics/the-best-mario-kart-character-according-to-data-science-7dfb65d4c18e
jmUnless you’re going all-in on acceleration, it looks like a heavy character is the way to go; the two heaviest character classes (Wario and Donkey Kong) account for 11/15 of the Pareto-optimal configurations.
Wario/Sports Bike/Slick or Wario/Gold Standard/Slick get the top billing!
]]>wario nintendo mario-kart games wii switchhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:06f36c20d7b9/How the Game Genie worked2018-02-09T11:26:03+00:00
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-09-24-game-genie-declassified-that-summer-i-played-230-game-boy-games
jm"Sometimes it was really easy to find cheats, because the code was very straightforward, and sometimes it was a massive pain in the arse," recalls Jon. "In simple terms, if a game started you with three lives I'd set up the logic analyser to stop when it found the value three being written to RAM. Then I'd use the Game Genie to change that 3 to say a 5, reboot the game and see if I started with 5 lives. If not, then I'd let it find the next time it wrote 3 into RAM and try that.
"Infinite lives codes were always the best. Once I'd found where in RAM the lives value was stored I'd then monitor when it got decremented. What I was looking for was where the game's original coder used -most likely - the DEC A (&H3D) instruction after reading the lives value from RAM, and then storing it back into RAM. If I found this then all I had to do was swap out the DEC A (&H3D) decrement operation with a NOP (&H00), which performed no operation. So the lives value would be left as-is and voila the player had infinite lives."
]]>games gameboy game-genie via:its logic-analysers reverse-engineering history hackinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7f2bfe0006e2/European Commission study finds no link between piracy and lower sales of digital content2017-09-25T10:06:51+00:00
https://www.finder.com.au/eu-piracy-study
jmAccording to the report, an average of 51% of adults and 72% of minors in the EU have pirated digital content, with Poland and Spain averaging the highest rates of all countries surveyed. Nevertheless, displacement rates (the impact of piracy on legitimate sales) were found to be negligible or non-existent for music, books and games, while rates for films and TV were in line with previous digital piracy studies.
Most interesting is the fact that the study found that illegal game downloads actually lead to an increase in legal purchases. The report concludes that tactics like video game microtransactions are proving effective in converting illegal users to paying users.
The full report goes in-depth regarding potential factors influencing piracy and the challenges of accurately tracking its impact on legitimate sales, but the researchers ultimately conclude that there is no robust statistical evidence that illegal downloads reduce legal sales. That's big news, which makes it all the more troubling that the EU effectively buried it for two years.
]]>piracy eu studies downloads ec games movies books contenthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ce0babb6cff3/'Hey #gamedev, tell me about some brilliant mechanics in games that are hidden from the player to get across a certain feeling.'2017-09-22T12:46:43+00:00
https://twitter.com/gaohmee/status/903510060197744640?lang=en
jmgames gaming cheats tweaks game-mechanics til twitterhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:273fe12f954d/Determinism in League of Legends2017-06-21T10:43:57+00:00
https://engineering.riotgames.com/news/determinism-league-legends-introduction
jmclock realtime time determinism testing replay games league-of-legends via:nelsonhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:14fb1751e281/Reverse engineering the 76477 "Space Invaders" sound effect chip from die photos2017-05-02T11:32:34+00:00
http://www.righto.com/2017/04/reverse-engineering-76477-space.html
jmRemember the old video game Space Invaders? Some of its sound effects were provided by a chip called the 76477 Complex Sound Generation chip. While the sound effects1 produced by this 1978 chip seem primitive today, it was used in many video games, pinball games. But what's inside this chip and how does it work internally? By reverse-engineering the chip from die photos, we can find out. (Photos courtesy of Sean Riddle.) In this article, I explain how the analog circuits of this chip works and show how the hundreds of transistors on the silicon die form the circuits of this complex chip.
]]>space-invaders games history reverse-engineering chips analog sound-effectshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:08ec1c5c9802/Fans of chess were outraged when the queen piece was added2017-04-12T08:45:43+00:00
https://twitter.com/Lawrence_Miles/status/851630819131224065
jmgamergate funny 16th-century history chess gaming games queenhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7051c120c6a3/The Lord British Postulate2017-03-15T22:28:04+00:00
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_British#Assassination_of_Lord_British
jmOne of the most famous attributes of Lord British is that he is almost invincible. In every Ultima game in which he has appeared, he is designed to be almost impervious to a player's character predations. However, there are ways for a player thinking outside the box to assassinate him. This phenomenon is the origin of the Lord British Postulate which states: "If it exists as a living creature in an MMORPG, someone, somewhere, will try to kill it."[7] Virtually every MMO game displays numerous instances of this, with players attempting to kill (or, in the case of friendly NPCs, cause the death of) virtually every NPC or monster, howsoever powerful, meek, friendly, or ethereal.
]]>npcs gaming games lord-british murder rules mmorpgshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b1a7e7c2f6b0/Fides Raising Gamers (age 2 - 5) | BoardGameGeek2017-03-13T11:41:49+00:00
https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/193078/item/4577451#item4577451
jmgames gaming boardgames kids children reviewshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:186f16c041b5/Dinosaur Escape - BoardGameGeek2017-03-13T11:39:56+00:00
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/175497/dinosaur-escape
jmThe object of Dinosaur Escape is to get all three dinosaurs safely to Dinosaur Island before the volcano erupts! Work together to move the dinosaur movers around the board and uncover the matching dinosaurs under the fern tokens.
On your turn, roll the die. If you roll a number, move any dinosaur mover the indicated number of spaces any direction on the path. Then turn over one fern token anywhere on the board. If you reveal rocks, bones or other items, flip the token back over. If you reveal a dinosaur, and the dinosaur mover of the same species is in the same habitat area, move the dinosaur moved and matching token to Dinosaur Island. You just helped a dinosaur escape!
If you reveal a dinosaur but the dinosaur mover of the same species is not in the same habitat as the token, flip the token back over. Dinosaur movers and matching tokens must be in the same habitat to help a dinosaur escape! If you turn over the T-Rex, RUN! Move each of the dinosaur movers in play back to a start space. If you roll a volcano, place volcano piece number 1 in the stand on the board. If you can find and help all three lost dinosaurs escape to Dinosaur Island before completing the 3D volcano puzzle, you all win!
]]>boardgames reviews kids children co-op games gaminghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:31ae6d3b556f/a digital clock in Conway's Game of Life2017-03-10T17:19:54+00:00
http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/88783/build-a-digital-clock-in-conways-game-of-life/111932#111932
jmlife games alife conways-life gliders hacks coolhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8f9329e09710/Parable of the Polygons - a playable post on the shape of society2017-02-09T11:13:52+00:00
http://ncase.me/polygons/
jmOur cute segregation sim is based off the work of Nobel Prize-winning game theorist, Thomas Schelling. Specifically, his 1971 paper, Dynamic Models of Segregation. We built on top of this, and showed how a small demand for diversity can desegregate a neighborhood. In other words, we gave his model a happy ending.
]]>games society visualization diversity racism bias thomas-schelling segregationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d1cb75dc3622/OK, Bear With Me: What If Mario And Wario Are The Same Guy?2017-01-13T12:19:52+00:00
https://kotaku.com/ok-bear-with-me-what-if-mario-and-wario-are-the-same-1791132939
jmsilly theories mario nintendo wario kotaku games gaminghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:035126b90698/Final Fantasy 7: An oral history2017-01-10T11:25:41+00:00
http://www.polygon.com/a/final-fantasy-7
jmTetsuya Nomura (Character and battle visual director, Square Japan): OK, so maybe I did kill Aerith. But if I hadn’t stopped you, in the second half of the game, you were planning to kill everyone off but the final three characters the player chooses!
Yoshinori Kitase (Director, Square Japan) No way! I wrote that? Where?
Tetsuya Nomura (Character and battle visual director, Square Japan) In the scene where they parachute into Midgar. You wanted everyone to die there!
]]>games history gaming aeris final-fantasy square-enix ff7 storieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:297c5a38ed8d/We planned for Brexit at Football Manager. So why did no one else? | Miles Jacobson | Opinion | The Guardian2016-11-24T16:33:48+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/14/football-manager-anticipated-brexit-why-not-government?CMP=fb_gu
jmbrexit uk games gaming football-manager forecasts simulationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:eaef981e060c/Video Games Are Boring2016-11-08T11:55:36+00:00
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-11-07-video-games-are-boring
jmI'm not remotely interested in shockingly good graphics, in murder simulators, in guns and knives and swords. I'm not that interested in adrenaline. My own life is thrilling enough. There is enough fear and hatred in the world to get my heart pounding. My Facebook feed and Twitter feed are enough for that. Walking outside in summer clothing is enough for that. I'm interested in care, in characters, in creation, in finding a path forward inside games that helps me find my path forward in life. I am interested in compassion and understanding. I'm interested in connecting. As Miranda July said, "all I ever wanted to know is how other people are making it through life." I want to make games that help other people understand life.
We are all overwhelmed with shock, with information, with change. The degree of interactivity in our lives is amazing and wonderful and I wouldn't exchange it for anything, but it is also shocking and overwhelming and it's causing us to dig in and try to find some peace by shutting each other out. On all sides of the political spectrum we've stopped listening to each other and I fear we are all leaning toward fascist thinking. We should be using this medium to help us adapt to our new, interactive lives. This is how we become relevant.
]]>essay feminism society culture games gaming life arthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:23d3685d0a2e/Cloudy Gamer: Playing Overwatch on Azure's new monster GPU instances2016-10-20T09:47:37+00:00
http://lg.io/2016/10/12/cloudy-gamer-playing-overwatch-on-azures-new-monster-gpu-instances.html
jmgaming azure games cloud gpu overwatch streaminghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:17e5c6788e78/Is Pokémon GO down or not?2016-07-20T10:14:40+00:00
http://ispokemongodownornot.com/
jmdatadog games monitoring pokemon-go pokemon uptimehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a69910d88699/'Virtual nose' may reduce simulator sickness2016-05-31T11:15:55+00:00
http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2015/Q1/virtual-nose-may-reduce-simulator-sickness-in-video-games.html
jm
Anecdotal evidence has suggested simulator sickness is less intense when games contain fixed visual reference objects - such as a racecar's dashboard or an airplane's cockpit - located within the user's field of view. "But you can't have a cockpit in every VR simulation," Whittinghill said.
His research team was studying the problem when undergraduate student Bradley Ziegler suggested inserting the image of a virtual human nose in the center of the video display. "It was a stroke of genius," said Whittinghill, who teaches video game design. "You are constantly seeing your own nose. You tune it out, but it's still there, perhaps giving you a frame of reference to help ground you." The researchers have discovered that the virtual nose, or "nasum virtualis," reduces simulator sickness when inserted into popular games.
]]>virtual-nose nose vr simulator-sickness nausea vr-sickness gameshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a60b342153d8/For World’s Newest Scrabble Stars, SHORT Tops SHORTER2016-05-20T19:51:27+00:00
http://www.wsj.com/articles/for-nigerian-scrabble-stars-short-tops-shorter-1463669734
jm“ ‘What would the robot do?’ is now the key question in Scrabble,” said Mr. Fatsis. Often, he said, the robot plays five letters: “There are inefficiencies in the game that you can exploit by having a mastery of those intermediate-length words.”
]]>games scrabble nigeria ai word-play stratshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:05b073e3118f/SNES Code Injection -- Flappy Bird in Super Mario World2016-03-28T23:32:52+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0
jmgames hacks exploits buffer-overflow snes code-injection amazing flappy-bird seth-bling video youtubehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a9e5be1705d2/League of Legends win-rates vs latency analysed2015-12-15T12:02:11+00:00
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/page/ping-winrate-and-vayne-probs
jmIt appears that more mechanically intensive champions are more affected by latency, while tankier champions or those with point-and-click abilities are less affected by latency.
(via Nelson)]]>games league-of-legends latency ping gaming internet via:nelsonhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:fc8a4454ba09/PICO-8:2015-11-04T09:55:41+00:00
http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
jmPICO-8 is a fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs. When you turn it on, the machine greets you with a shell for typing in Lua commands and provides simple built-in tools for creating your own cartridges.
So cute! See also Voxatron, something similar for voxel-oriented 3D gaming]]>consoles games gaming lua coding retro 2d pico-8https://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:fd0e7c8a7944/GTA V - Graphics Study2015-11-03T16:28:03+00:00
http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/11/02/gta-v-graphics-study/
jmgames graphics coding gta gtav 3d rendering gfxhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d1391bcf733f/Little Drummer Boy Challenge2015-09-21T22:05:51+00:00
http://littledrummerboychallenge.com/
jmldbc games funny xmas christmas music songs cheesehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:77bbc3a0bf3d/The Alternative Universe Of Soviet Arcade Games2015-09-07T10:56:16+00:00
http://io9.com/the-alternative-universe-of-soviet-arcade-games-1729012559
jmUnlike machines in the West, every single machine that was produced during Soviet-era Russia had to align with Marxist ideology. [...] The most popular games were created to teach hand-eye coordination, reaction speed, and logical, focused thinking. Not unlike many American games, these games were influenced by military training, crafted to teach and instill patriotism for the state by making the human body better, stronger, and more willful. It also means no high scores, no adrenaline rushes, or self-serving feather-fluffing as you add your hard-earned initials to the list of the best. In Communist Russia, there was no overt competition.
]]>high-scores communism russia cccp ussr arcade-games games historyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ec3a87c954a2/Revised and much faster, run your own high-end cloud gaming service on EC2!2015-07-10T22:49:32+00:00
http://lg.io/2015/07/05/revised-and-much-faster-run-your-own-highend-cloud-gaming-service-on-ec2.html
jmgaming games ec2 amazon aws cloud windows hackshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:aa886a192762/Cover Story: “Playdate” - The New Yorker2015-06-16T21:58:46+00:00
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/cover-story-playdate
jmminecraft chris-ware art kids play gaming gameshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a3eeb101df0e/Me vs An Post2015-06-04T13:31:20+00:00
http://meversusanpost.tumblr.com/
jmI have decided to see what you can post [....] My first experiment was a dice [sic] with one line of the address on each side. An Post delivered two days later. They win this round
Via JG]]>fun an-post post games funny tumblr via:johngilberthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a4a0f20329b2/Dong detection in LEGO Universe2015-06-02T09:33:51+00:00
http://www.exquisitetweets.com/tweets?eids=SOlZp2L8I8.SOl4CsO6YC.SOmhNAiuES.SOmlJ2T2Gq.SOmpjeGn1w.SOmwta15gX.SOmB4207kO.SOmJPgkOFU.SOmOl1j08a.SOmW0jPTRA.SOm72fKFfE.SOncwNl2SP.SOnlkgH05k.SOntnuAhGw.SOqg0uZR8K.SOqkXGJtbU.SOqrXBJruS
jmpenis funny games lego lego-universe minecraft gaming mmo ugchttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5095a631e824/Developer believes he can turn digital game into global hit2015-05-18T11:25:42+00:00
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/developer-believes-he-can-turn-digital-game-into-global-hit-1.2214138
jmcolm-larkin guild-of-dungeoneering games presshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:14d1abe1d6f0/Run your own high-end cloud gaming service on EC22015-04-20T20:22:35+00:00
http://lg.io/2015/04/12/run-your-own-high-end-cloud-gaming-service-on-ec2.html
jmaws ec2 gaming games graphics spot-instances hacks windows steamhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7df32acf0f2e/Llamasoft 8-bit game images now available for download2015-04-01T10:10:09+00:00
http://minotaurproject.co.uk/lc-8bit.php
jmjeff-minter llamasoft yaks games history c=64 commodore vic-20 emulation via:shanehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:62c9e8afe966/Sony PSN hacking horror story2015-03-12T11:36:51+00:00
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2yq8oq/my_psn_account_got_hacked_this_morning_sony/
jmMy account got hacked, running up over $600 in charges. Here's the conclusion after running through the Sony support gauntlet.
They can only refund up to $150.
I can dispute the charges with my bank, but that will result in my account being banned.
I cannot unban my account, and will thus lose my purchases ("but you only have the Last of Us and some of our free games, so it's not a big deal")
Whomever hacked my account deactivated my PS4, and activated their own. Customer support will only permit one activation every 6 months. I'm locked out of logging into my own account on my PS4 for six months.
]]>games sony psn playstation fail ps4 hacking security customer-support horror-storieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8ff825ac5265/Halcyon Days2015-03-02T21:30:57+00:00
http://dadgum.com/halcyon/
jmHalcyon Days: Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Game Programmers was released as a commercial product in March 1997. At the time it was one of the first retrogaming projects to focus on lost history rather than game collecting, and certainly the first entirely devoted to the game authors themselves. Now a good number of the interviewees have their own web sites, but none of them did when I started contacting them in 1995. [...] If you have any of the giddy anticipation that I did whenever I picked up a magazine containing an interview with Mark Turmell or Dan [M.U.L.E.] Bunten, then you want to start reading.
]]>book games history coding interviews via:walterhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f2cf5db2e5fb/Embed-able Computers are a Thing. — February 12, 20152015-02-13T11:42:45+00:00
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4588
jmsharing embeds html javascript emulation msdos burgertime games archive.orghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a789dc88f475/The Pizza Party Where Everyone Got Fired2015-02-12T23:49:22+00:00
http://kotaku.com/the-pizza-party-where-everyone-got-fired-1685455125
jmThe testers at [MAJOR PUBLISHER] had just finished wrapping up testing on a project we'll call "Biolands." And to congratulate them, the man in charge arranged a huge bowling/pizza party for the end of the week. Of course everyone is hyped for the event. So the day finally arrives and all the testers show up. They all start bowling and eating pizza. After a few hours of everyone enjoying themselves, the VP asks for everyone's attention. When he does manage to get the team to listen, he begins to thank them for their hard work and has the leads hand them their termination papers.
And many other horror stories from the worst software industry of all -- games.]]>games software jobs bowling pizza fired horror-stories hr employmenthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7bd7eda61ce9/A NetHack bot ascends!2015-02-02T23:14:13+00:00
http://www.reddit.com/r/nethack/comments/2tluxv/yaap_fullauto_bot_ascension_bothack
jmclojure via:negatendo pudding-farming games nethack botshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:4730c1721eae/One Hundred Miles of Solitude2015-02-02T00:34:54+00:00
http://www.failbettergames.com/one-hundred-miles-of-solitude/
jmMinecraft is exceptionally good at intrinsic narrative. It recognises, preserves and rewards everything you do. It presses you to play frontiersman. A Minecraft world ends up dotted with torchlit paths, menhirs, landmarks, emergency caches. Here’s the hole where you dug stone for your first house. Here’s the causeway you built from your spawn point to a handy woodland. Here’s the crater in the landscape where the exploding monster took out you and your wheatfield at once. And, of course, here’s your enormous castle above a waterfall. There’s no utility in building anything bigger than a hut, but the temptations of architecture are irresistible. Minecraft isn’t so much a world generator as a screenshot-generator and a war-story generator.
This is what will get the game the bulk of its critical attention, and deservedly so. That’s why I want to call attention to the extrinsic narrative. It’s minimal, implicit, accidental and very powerful. It’s this: you wake alone beside an endless sea in a pristine, infinite wilderness. The world is yours. You can literally sculpt mountains, with time and effort. You’ll die and be reborn on the beach where you woke first. You’ll walk across the world forever and never see another face. You can build a whole empire of roads and palaces and beacon towers, and the population of that empire will only ever be you. When you leave, your towers will stand empty forever. I haven’t seen that surfaced in a game before. It’s strong wine.
]]>minecraft narrative gaming games storyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:75b816c16007/NA Server Roadmap Update: PoPs, Peering, and the North Bridge2015-01-31T11:31:16+00:00
http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/help-support/0hVNFnPH-na-server-roadmap-update-pops-peering-and-the-north-bridge
jmvia:nelson peering games networks internet ops networkinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ea32be9d710e/Stop Playing Monopoly With Your Kids (And Play These Games Instead) | FiveThirtyEight2015-01-26T16:16:07+00:00
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/stop-playing-monopoly-with-your-kids-and-play-these-games-instead/
jmboardgames games kids children 538 statistics ratingshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:72d6c2d53a07/BoardGameGeek's best board games for kids2014-12-21T22:22:07+00:00
https://boardgamegeek.com/childrensgames/browse/boardgame
jmboardgames games kids toys toget listhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:fbc782f5f7e3/Sportsfriends on Steam2014-12-18T22:15:15+00:00
http://store.steampowered.com/app/277850/
jmjsj johann-sebastian-joust games fun die-gute-fabrik sportsfriends gaming linux machttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:29e3df2a889e/Goat Simulator's fake MMO2014-11-21T10:40:17+00:00
http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/20/7254251/goat-mmo-simulator-interview
jmWe also wanted the Rouge to actually look like a stealth-oriented make-up artist, but our 3D artist thought the goat looked ridiculous with a pink wig and a Gucci bag, so we remade the Rouge to actually look like a Rogue.
]]>rogue rouge goats goat-simulator funny satire mmos mmorpg games warcrafthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:be44af83004f/A Thing About #GamerGate - John Walker's Electronic House2014-10-12T22:01:49+00:00
http://botherer.org/2014/10/12/a-thing-about-gamergate/
jmgamergate rock-paper-shotgun rps games gaming politics misogyny sexism 4chan reddithttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:57fe07d516f2/