Recent content by James Joseph Emerald

Thanks! Turns out this was it. God, the stone pillar thing is just as freaky as I remember: https://youtu.be/VrF0-MegbHQ?t=748

Here's one that has been bugging me for a while. It's a first person fantasy game from the mid to late 90s. You play as a kid/teen, and in the beginning you're in a village. Your father is a character, and at one point he gives you a knife. If you attack and kill your father, the whole...

Superficial perks and luxuries actually save money in the long run. Studies have shown that buying a $5 pizza for each of your employees every week garners more job satisfaction and loyalty than a $1,000 raise.

How about "Soft" armour? That doesn't necessarily imply weakness, just that it's not hard/rigid. Or, if the fact that the armour is stitched together is the common thread (no pun intended), you could go with something like "Tailored Armour" or "Jacket". Maybe "Hide", which would cover...

Does anyone recognise this game? It was one of my favourites growing up, and I still enjoy playing it, but nobody else ever seems to have heard of it.

Interesting. I have an anthropology degree, and as part of it I did an undergraduate thesis where I did a netnography (or digital enthography as you call it) on hacker culture. Got an A. Let me know if you want some advice. I could point you toward some references. Also, lecturers love...

That's exactly what I was going to say. Quantum physics, by its very definition, can only be applied to sub-atomic particles. Any larger scale than that and it completely falls apart, which was the whole point of Schroedinger's cat as a thought experiment: it isn't supposed to make sense. It...

I played Space Station 13 after reading some suggestions in this thread. You're right, it's very close to what I was describing. It's way over-complicated and the controls are atrocious, but the core idea is cool. It's fairly popular too: I don't see why more games like this aren't around...

That's true to a certain extent, but I can think of hundreds of ways you could enhance the experience and encourage role-playing. Many RP servers operate in spite of an MMO's mechanics, rather than in synergy with them. Additionally, providing specific constraints, I find, can be even more...

That may be true of a linear, single-player game. But I'm talking about a multiplayer open-world game designed to be played over and over again, where the branching story is created organically through player interaction. A bit like one of those murder mystery party games where everyone plays...

In a video game context, RPGs are now so synonymous with leveling and loot that the original/literal meaning of the term has pretty much been 100% supplanted. But it's not just the term that has dropped from the collective consciousness. Multiplayer games almost universally allot players one...

Battlestar Galactica is actually really really good. It surprised me. It has the mystery and addictiveness of early Lost (except it gets even better as it goes on, instead of worse), the post-apocalyptic atmosphere of The Walking Dead, the brilliantly subtle character drama of Breaking Bad...

I think you've hit the nail on the head there. Even when there are characters who aren't straight, white, "regular" men, they're inevitably bland and dull because the focus becomes making them inoffensive, rather than interesting. But I don't think the problem is with inexperienced writers...

I did notice the falling animations seemed weird. Then again, maybe it's one of those things where we're so used to seeing unrealistic animations in games, that a realistic depiction looks jarring.

You're probably right. I just think it's more reasonable to say "there should be more games with a focus on fun over gritty realism" than to say "there should be more games with superhuman characters, except more superhuman than the normal level of superhuman that most games have and like...