Recent content by Alex Mac

The comment about board games brings up an interesting consideration though: is there, if any, separation between "gamers" of different mediums? Is there a different defining attitude or characteristic to video "gamers", for instance? Or is the over on the venn diagram enough to make it...

It's almost as if something happened and a bunch of folks began robbing the term of a positive meaning.

Possibly. Someone mentioned "hardcore" and "casual" above but I think that sometimes "gamer" itself is used as the new delineating term between "hardcore" and "casual". That is, everybody can play games but not everyone is a "gamer". In this case, the term connotes a certain level of enthusiasm...

I'll be bold enough to throw my weight behind some of what Alexander is saying. I think that as the space "gamers" inhabit becomes more varied, the term itself is going to move away from a traditional connotation into something broader and more general. I don't think we're watching the death of...

Can you elaborate at all? Was there a certain moment that really prompted this decision?

Those are fair definitions but do either of you think the term carries connotations beyond "person who plays games"?

In light of all that's being going on within games this week, Leigh Alexander wrote a rather passionate article on the death of the term gamer. (http://tinyurl.com/nlf4zh8). At the same time, Dan Golding wrote a similar piece on his personal blog. (http://tinyurl.com/lsel7wf). The general...

Derivation in art style when it comes to independent games. Just because you think something looks like Mother 3 doesn't mean the game is trying to be Mother 3. A retro style is not merely there for nostalgia or for the sake of ape-ing a successful game from the past. There tends to be more...

I'll only comment once more (and only once; this conversation is beyond inane at this point) to say that this would matter if OoT had formal rules. It doesn't. Neither is the exploit outside of the bounds of the core mechanics. It is actually the mechanics that allow it to occur. You can sit...

Except it's actually not programmed into the cartridge at all. "Supposed to" is not the same as is. What is "supposed" to be the case or what you want to presume the developer intended to be the case have no relevancy. What matters is what the programming permits and what it does not. As a side...

To win a game, you merely must complete the end goal. To win Chess I need to capture your King. It doesn't matter if this takes dozens on dozens of moves or two. I captured the King. I've won. In the case of OoT, the end goal is defeating Ganon. Which he did. Under those criteria, he absolutely...

It takes hours and hours of practice and optimization for this sort of thing. People want to act as if what Cosmo is doing is "cheating" but I promise you that most of the people saying that would struggle amazingly to pull off a great deal of the things he's doing. Sit down, crack out Ocarina...

On a general level: self funded. More often than not: self published. There are exceptions to these circumstances, however.

I want someone to hire him. So they can fire him.

Nothing, really. The question is implementation. It's not terribly impractical but there's some large scale logistical things to consider. And costs. So it makes the country hesitant to consider changing it.