So, what's the whole "vibration" thing about? And, how much does it matter? And if it's a significant missing feature, anyone know what the chances are of Linux accessing it at some point?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Well, I hope Mr. Dawe now does cool stuff where he doesn't have to deal with creeps.
I've noticed a few people saying to take pride in what he does and ignore the haters, or even in semi-contemptuous tones to suck it up or whatever. This is misguided talk. People aren't all the same; some are simply more affected by hateful discourse than others, just as some are simply more extroverted than others, shyer than others and so forth. Those of us who are one way can't understand what it's like to be different, so it's too facile to say "Oh, he should just ignore the haters". For me, something like dorks on the internet trashtalking me might be a minor irritant, while something else that wouldn't bother Liam much would cause my blood pressure to go through the roof. It's no challenge dealing with things that don't bother you much to start with, so it's stupid to dismiss the troubles of people for whom it is a very big challenge.

That said, I hope this site continues and prospers, and Liam Dawe has been so huge and foundational here that it is going to be a major task for those working on it to fill those shoes. So I wish everyone stepping up the best.

Even if they succeed, I'm sure that if Mr. Dawe ever feels like returning he would only enhance things all the more. But if he does, I would suggest there are things that might be done to take his sensitivity into account rather than fighting through it, trying to force himself to be something he isn't, and burning out. For instance, it seems to me he is not suited to be the filter/moderator of communications received by, or postings on, GoL. If Mr. Dawe works on GoL, probably he'd be best off if there were an email address for GoL, which is not a personal email of anyone involved, and have someone hard-nosed look through and purge crap before forwarding things to Mr. Dawe. Have a designated asshat-handler, so if an issue comes up like with these idiots of whatever-the-heck-it-was he won't try to deal with it, he'll have a procedure--hand it to the designated hitter and forget about it. Things along those lines might help him just get on with the articles and research for same rather than wasting time and nervous energy dealing with trolls and creeps that he's not suited to handling.

But that's all if he were to come back. I don't think Mr. Dawe has any obligation to pursue a labour of love that is now instead making him unhappy. I'm sure whatever else he does will also be worthwhile. Best of luck, Mr. Dawe!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

700, huh. By the time they release Steam Machines they'll be able to talk about a 1000-game library, which may not be huge by Windows PC standards, but certainly blows most new-release consoles out of the water.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

"With no stretch-goal for Linux it would be great to see Linux users flock to help them bring it out."

IMO no, it wouldn't. I hate to be negative, but are Linux users really the right people to be asking to support a game with no plans for Linux support? Surely there are games to support which do have Linux plans, no?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GuestI started playing it today and I can’t stop. Easy to pick up. Unfortunately it’s not finished and many things are strange, some not working at all. And there is no goal.

Huh. Just like a real prison.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Well, played through it and I must say, if everyone in their military is as ludicrously undisciplined as the bunch in that story, it's amazing their little empire-thing hasn't fallen apart long ago. I myself am far from the most disciplined guy, but sheesh, those people make my library department look like a model of heel-clicking obsessive saluters. They squabble more than the kids in a badly run pre-school--while sudden-death deadlines loom. I kept wanting to scream at the screen "Would you idiots focus for five seconds?!"

View this comment - View article - View full comments

The phenomenon you're describing is not the tragedy of the commons. To the contrary, it's a purely market-driven problem. People imagine that "free markets" produce efficient outcomes and "clear" because of the relentless propaganda to that effect, but it isn't the case. All copyright-oriented industries at this point are suffering from serious market failure problems of one sort or another. In most of them the problems are aggravated by the ease and near-free nature of digital copying. At this point, it would probably be better for both artists and consumers if we scrapped the whole model of selling this kind of stuff, in favour of a public system of subsidies to creators combined with free access to all content via portals which tracked popularity. Subsidies ideally would be a declining function of popularity, so that an artist with at least modest popularity could make a modest living, and an extremely popular one would be pretty well off but not buying islands.

On the other hand, while the troubles of hypercompetition are noted, it's silly to talk about the "actual" worth of something that you put in a set amount of work to create in the first place, but derive a potentially endless stream of free revenue from. Since copyrighted material can be copied and sold effectively for free, the relationship between effort and reward is completely dependent on total sales. At a given price, sell too few and you're in penury; sell three times as many and you're upper middle class; sell twenty times as many and you're rolling in dough with a reward far beyond the effort you put in. And it all could depend on the right person making a tweet at the right time as much as on all the effort you put in making the game. What then was the "actual" worth, the proper price? Of course personally, I derive much of my entertainment from paper-and-pencil roleplaying games. Totting up money spent on rulebooks (much more than I needed to spend) divided by time gaming on those, I come up with about 12 cents an hour. Most of the people I play with, however, bought far fewer rulebooks than I; I doubt they've spent more than 5 cents an hour. Should I consider the "fair" price of computer games to be that much? Of course not, but it's as defensible as your "actual worth" notions.

View this comment - View article - View full comments