Quoting: soulsourceAlso, society has changed over time. The first generation that grew up with video games is now in their thirties to forties.

Fifties even, depending just how you define "grew up with video games".

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: catbox_fugueplease read 1984.

Was that directed at anyone in particular, or as an indictment of any ideology in particular? Or was it just a broad recommendation, as in "Anyone interested in politics should read 1984"?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

It occurs to me that one limitation on espionage in war games hinges on the nature of warfare in war games. In all computer games that I'm aware of, there is no such thing (in game) as "planning". You have armies, you attack by moving them to a place. Logistics is background; there may be provisions for it in the sense that, say, a unit can become "out of supply", or you have to maintain some size of freighter fleet or whatever. But it's pretty much shorthand.
In real life, large army operations typically have to be planned months in advance, sometimes quite a few months. You have to do all kinds of setup, arranging the transportation, arranging the provisioning, sometimes arranging special training for whatever you're asking the troops to do when they get there, not to mention all the generals and relevant politicians arguing for weeks over whether it's a good idea in the first place, and for that matter making special espionage efforts to scope out enemy defences wherever you're planning to attack.
This time lapse means that if you have good espionage you can find out about an enemy operation significantly before it actually happens, and prepare. But that function just isn't relevant in games because that time lapse doesn't exist. You could build it in, but if you weren't careful it would make the game boring.

Huh. Spell checker doesn't like "defences" with a "c". I've seen that elsewhere too. When I was young I'm pretty sure the rule was "defense" for verb and "defence" for noun, but seems like sometime since then "s" has won the war, at least in the eyes of people who make spell checkers.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I remember seeing something about this game here before. I stand by what I said at the time: Feels like Western-style Miyazaki. Which, just to be clear, is a good thing.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

This has been a really interesting conversation to read, although I have to admit I don't know enough to have a good handle on who might be right about what.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: chr

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: chrBut I did want to express my opinion about e-voting.

E-voting is no solution, and for a non-existing problem, that is.

Nonsense. It solves the problem that people have got wise to most of the traditional forms of ballot-stuffing.

Funny and true, but I think the main aspect of it is adapting voting to our 21st century lifestyle, where everything should be like fast food because our attention spans are super short and we can't stand inconvenience. So this effectively gets young people to vote as well. Otherwise our politics would be defined by increasingly old people and the most motivated and perhaps mentally healthy people.

Wow. What I wrote sounds so sarcastic and cynical even though I didn't really mean it that way, but I slightly also did mean the sarcasm.

I don't see e-voting as needed or even a good idea for national elections of representatives. But I do see it as useful for something dear to my heart, direct democracy at smaller scales--people making collective decisions themselves. And when I say "smaller scales" I don't necessarily mean in terms of geography. I envision a lot of governance being kind of like standards bodies--not a whole lot of people involved, but deciding on things that everyone involved has a stake in and some knowledge of. Or, imagine the federal department of fisheries decided the annual allowable catch for halibut by a vote of all the dept. employees, some representatives of commercial, sport, and native fishing groups, and some environmentalists. If your voting is online you can pull that kind of thing off.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Been playing Civ VI, finally finished a couple of games. I dunno . . . I like it well enough, but I guess Civ just doesn't fascinate me like it used to? It has these neat features, the districts and the civics card thing, but I just find myself looking at the annoying side of them more than the neat side. Like the districts, after the first bit of "this is interesting" I find myself mostly thinking "Dammit, to get more buildings I have to kill another of my producting tiles!" And the civics, I start to wonder why I'm bothering because a lot of the cards are about as good as each other, so once I've got a fair number it's like, oh goody, I researched a civic which gives me more cards I'm not going to bother putting in a slot. Frankly, I liked the way Civ V or Civ: BE did it better. Gave you more benefits and more feeling of accomplishment. And religion's probably a bit snazzier than in V, but again, towards the end of last game I started to wonder "OK, is what all the religion-ing did for me worth all the resources and tiles I sank into holy sites and stuff? Would I have been better off just skipping it and building other stuff instead?"
I do appreciate that I can just go ahead and build wide and conquer moar cities. But hey, I could do that in Civ II.

Having got that out of my system, fired up "Total War: Shogun 2". Moderately fun so far. I'm still getting used to it; not sure yet whether I'm going to go off it and get bored, or get smoother with the controls and views and get a better feel for what to do and like it more.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: chrBut I did want to express my opinion about e-voting.

E-voting is no solution, and for a non-existing problem, that is.

Nonsense. It solves the problem that people have got wise to most of the traditional forms of ballot-stuffing.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

"ball-smashing game" sounds rather painful. I am reminded of Douglas Adams' "Meaning of Liff"

Pelutho: A South American ball game in which the balls are whacked against a brick wall with a stout stick until the prisoner confesses

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Well, timely game given the current US political situation. I wish them every capitalist success selling their game about "Democratic Socialism". :D

Incidentally, while it's true Bernie isn't a socialist no matter what he claims, I'm actually rather glad he calls himself one. First, because his use of the word has gone a good way to breaking the taboo on it. And second, because they were going to call him one anyway so he might as well call their bluff by embracing it. Heck, I've seen people and pundits with a straight face call Obama a socialist! Obama, the neoliberal bank bail-out expert whose health care plan was cribbed from Mitt Romney! If they can call Obama a socialist you know they'd never shut up about Bernie being one; if he'd tried to say he wasn't one and explain the difference between socialism and social democracy he'd have been on the defensive for the rest of his career; trying to explain he wasn't a socialist would be the only thing he'd ever have had a chance to say.

View this comment - View article - View full comments