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aurimeanswind · 6 years

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Your Greatest Gaming Binges & ExtraLife 2017—Sunday Chats (11-5-17)

There is a lot going on. And I mean a lot. Behind the scenes. In front of the scenes. All in preparation for this coming weekend, where we and my team of internet friends from all over the Continental United States will be participating in ExtraLife 2017, an event I have participated in for seven years, and this will be my eighth.

First, some context.

I tell this story every year, so I apologize if its trite to you, but its the truth. In 2009 I was diagnosed with a more ethereal-type disease called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It plagued my life for about seven months, causing me to be homeschooled during my Junior Year of High School, drop all of my Advanced Placement classes, and stop seeing my friends for weeks on end. It through off my college plan. It ruined my life. It made me miserable and unhappy. And I lost hope until I started seeing a specialist, Dr. Rowe, at John Hopkin’s Medical Center in Baltimore Maryland. With physical therapy, medication, and exercise, I was able to finish my Junior year of High School, and live a normal life until I relapsed in my Senior Year of High School, and had to retread old ground again, more frustrated, and more determined this time.

In 2012 i fell into a deep depression. Scared, alone, and as I slowly coiled up into my room and stopped seeing my friends, going to school, going to work, or doing anything, I had no one to turn to. Until I reached out to Dr. Rowe. He was a Chronic Fatigue specialist, but I remembered part of CFS is depression, something that I didn’t have to experience at the time. He gave me the depression test that I had passed with flying colors every other time I had seen him, and, stunned at the change, helped me start a path on a better and less mental-illness-plagued life without depression.

Every year, my team donates to John Hopkin’s Medical Center. It’s a place that irrevocably changed my life. It gave me hope when I had none, and set me on a better, healthier path. This is my way to give back.

So join us, this coming Saturday starting at 12pm Eastern Standard Time, at http://twitch.tv/IrrationalPassions, and donate to a cause that has helped me and countless others. All the details of who is coming, what we’re doing, and what you can do to help are or will be live soon at http://IrrationalPassions.com/ExtraLife.

Thank you, for all your support, and I hope to see you there helping us stay up and keeping us jolly.

It’s also with massive pride that I can fully announce that Greg Miller, Gen Miller, and Joey Takagami will be joining us from San Francisco California, and Greg is bringing Portillo too! Check out this video Roger Pokorny and I made to convince him to come:

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I’m excited to see you all there, in spirit, for our wacky shenanigans!

Now... I onto the entrée.

Your Greatest Gaming Binges

Today, as is now customary for the first Sunday of each month, I asked YOU ALL a question, and it was about the most intense gaming marathons you all have gone on. Specifically single-session, and specifically why.

Now, I’ll say, full disclosure, you should always remember to consume the average amount of calories, vitamins, and minerals in your diet everyday, and take care of yourself: sleep when you need to, drink plenty of water, and listen to the recommendations of the FDA and USDA (here in the states) to better understand what your body needs, to live a better, and more fulfilling life. But I aside from the self-destructive aspects of binging gaming sessions, I love a game that gets its hooks in you so hard that you just can’t. Stop. Playing.

I have had countless 12-hour+ gaming sessions that have left me bleary-eyed, but still bushy tailed from the amazing stories that have come from them, and with a year like this year, I think there are many out there from this year alone. I wanted to hear your stories!

First, one of mine.

Danganronpa 1. Boy oh boy. I think I’ve infamously talked about it at this point. But when that came out I was so incredibly obsessed with it. It was all I played for days, and I’d roll out of bed, grab my Vita, and keep playing, until I rolled into bed, played until I felt asleep, rinse and repeat. It was an incredible few days of gaming, and it was what got me back into visual novels.

Now, to the audience!

See, I love the classic gaming sessions. I think that was a totally different era of playing games too. Hearing times of people playing Street Fighter 2 and just going were the best. And shoutout to Super Techmo Bowl, because that game is fucking rad.

I can’t get into Minecraft, but I like the multiplayer love. Scott, Evan and Tony, my cohosts on IP, helped run a big Minecraft Server for over a year. The stories to come out of those play sessions are magnificent, and I was into the jolly cooperation.

MGS4 is fucking crazy. Luckily there is plenty of movie time to go get snacks in that game. I think I beat that game in three or so sessions, so I get it.

BUT HELL YEAH JAK 3 AND SLY COOPER. Those games are so rad. Well deserving of massive play sessions. I remember going out and buying Red/Blue 3D glasses because I rented Sly 3 from GameFly and didn’t get them. I ended up steeling them out of a display box in a Blockbuster (DON’T TELL ANYONE) so i could have the cool Sly Cooper branded ones.

But boy. Jak 3 in one day. That’s a tall ask.

See, I wish I played MGS at all in the era of when you only played one game because it’s all you had. I only ever really experimented with multiple play throughs when it came to MGS4, and that was still a ton of fun, but I wish I could have done it with something like MGS2 or 3.

The different styles of play are what make those games so hard to put down too, even though I just played the same way the whole time. Like a loser.

Get a better game Plankfan, because I can’t do this Garden Warfare bullshit.

Kidding, but yeah I think of the multiplayer bingers, Overwatch has taken the cake, and that’s the most class-based of all, considering each character is their own cup of tea.

Very much so! Game rhythm is super important to how hard you can binge it. Especially with single player stuff. Like, Rocket League has tons of ups and downs and variety therein, so the rhythm is changing all the time. Single player games need a good loop, and facing off against the next villain really pulls you through Akrham Asylum. Especially with the Metroidvania-esque format.

I’m curious to what you thought of it, ultimately, because I like that game a great deal, but nothing in Deus Ex really blew me away. I think it was just a very good “one of those” with no unique hooks really. I know a lot of people have different feelings about that, but any immersive sim really makes me never want to put it down, so I get it.

You should do the same with Dishonored 2, because it’s v good.

FUCK YEAH.

Kingdom Hearts 2 is one of those games I spent 14 hours straight playing during ExtraLife 2010 and never looked back on. I love it. I could play that game all day.

Oh my god yes. Just like the Minecraft love I love this too. And the loop of that is great.

I have never really had a LAN party for anything, but ExtraLife is the closest I’ve come to that. I really like the loop of all that too. I played Halo 2 with my brother and his friends when I was younger and it was a blast. Boy... This sounds like it’d still be rad today.

Another Arkham game. I really jive with this one too, but City has just enough Open World in it to keep me fully immersed. I started playing that game after a midnight launch and just didn’t stop. It’s the same idea of wanting to see the next villain, especially after Freeze shows up. Whoooooo boy.

Oh boy. My recent trip back to Skyrim has brought me back here, because good lord do I just want to grab everything everywhere forever. And my inventory limit simply does not agree with my life choices on that front.

I think Skyrim was the game that got me to break away from my completionist tendencies too, because It’s just a game that I don’t think would be fun to fully complete after a while. It’d just burn thin too soon.

Hell yeah! That’s a game I played a ton of when I first started it. I think my second session with that game was somewhere around eight hours, but then Zelda came out and I just stopped. I want to finish that game before the end of the year, if anything to see the story through, but those open world games just bring the most out of all of us.

BRING IT BACK.

Bloodborne is just so incredible. I love just letting myself go in that world too, because that truly is a game I could sit down with for an entire ExtraLife. I know it wasn’t your cup of tea, but I love it. The same has been true of all my other Souls experiences, because those are games that get their hooks in and just don’t let go. I think those are the games best suited to playing across multiple sessions too, since some time away is usually what you need to get past a boss you’re stuck on.

The ultimate binge game: The Witcher 3. That’s a game that I couldn't really podcast with either, because every snippet of every conversation was just so compelling for me. But of course, the monster dens and boss fights were where the podcasts came in anyway. Boy. What a fucking game.

Thank you all for writing in your answers! I hope folks still like this format, and I’m excited to do more of these. Been thinking of ways to spice up Sunday Chats going forward, and while I have some soft ideas in the pipeline, we’ll see what I ultimately end up on.

As I said last week, I currently have no intention of doing a Sunday Chats next week as it’ll be as we wrap on ExtraLife 2017, and I’ll preferably be dead. But we’ll see! Just don’t expect one, and certainly won’t be taking questions.

Regardless, I’d love it if you tuned in next week, Saturday, starting at Noon Eastern Time, to watch us play games and do dumb stuff!

http://twitch.tv/irrationalpassions

Be there

And keep it real.

#video games #sunday chats #gaming #extralife #skyrim #rpgs #binging sessions #gaming sessions #24 hours

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63824peace · 4 years

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Tuesday, 22nd of november 2005

A friend pulled me into conversation this morning without even saying hello. "I saw a Quake-Cloud last week. It was terrible, frightful... just awful."

He claimed to have clearly seen a cloud shaped like an arrow, pointing from the sky to Roppongi Hills. He said it was obviously a Quake-Cloud... a premonition that Roppongi would suffer tremors.

The sight had shocked him so severely that he couldn't tell anyone about it until today.

"Last week?" I said. "But when? Which day?"

"I don't remember... perhaps Thursday."

"I hadn't heard any news of this."

"No, there's no mistaking it!" he insisted. "I saw a Quake-Cloud!"

He usually watches all sorts of television programs related to these matters. He's probably an expert by now.

"A Quake-Cloud, eh?"

What do Quake-Clouds even look like? Are they magnetic fields created from seismic distortions in the bedrock? I'm clueless on these matters.

I listened to him doubtfully, and he seemed to lose patience. The prophet muttered his forecast: "A huge earthquake will hit within two weeks." He appeared somehow relieved, and then he hastily tottered away.

A big earthquake, huh... maybe it'll come, and maybe it won't. If I start to worry about something as small as this, I might as well worry forever.

I should still prepare for the worst though. I have readied myself for the reality that a huge earthquake will hit someday.

I relayed the story as a joke to Matsuhanan, and he reacted with a serious expression.

"What's wrong?" I said.

Matsuhanan lowered his voice. "I'm not saying this to scare you, but--" His voice cut on the word. He leaned closely and hardened his expression. "I dreamed of an earthquake over the weekend."

"So?" I said. "What about it?"

"I had a dream, and in it we all got hit by an earthquake."

"Hmm. Well, still, that's just the sort of thing you'd expect from a dream, right?"

"However," he said. "On top of that, my wife also dreamed of an earthquake that very same morning."

Two similar events can happen, and we can still dismiss them as coincidences. Something more enormous than mere coincidence emerges when three similar events occur. How ominous....

Everyone who had not paid attention to our conversation earlier now listened intently. The air thickened, and the very atmosphere changed immediately.

Matsuhanan and I had both experienced the Kobe Earthquake. Memories from that time bubbled to the surface of my thoughts. I don't ever want to experience or see anything like that again. I decided to shut off these negative emotions as soon as possible.

"So you and your wife both dreamed of earthquakes? The answer's pretty simple here--you must have been on top of your wife without knowing it!"

"H-hey! That's not true!"

"Sexy Matsuhanan!"

"Oh, be serious."

I managed to ease the tense, nervous atmosphere with a little juvenile obscenity. We settled the matter with laughter.

We've seen some pretty scandalous problems lately regarding cover-ups of some buildings' vulnerability to earthquakes. The news broke when everyone concerned themselves with earthquake preparations. "How can we prepare for the big earthquake?" they asked. "And what will we do after the earthquake actually hits?"

I heard that some buildings can topple even under a small earthquake. If a building will collapse under just a small one, what will we do when the big one hits?

Dangers fill our world.

An earthquake will definitely hit us one day. No one knows when, of course, but Tokyo can't avoid its fate. It may hit tomorrow, within ten years, or even fifty years from now.

Still, we can't squander time worrying. We live in Tokyo, and we can't leave it. We certainly won't abandon it. We live with the possibility of disaster every day. Most importantly, we must avoid panic while also keeping ourselves prepared for our future quake.

A long time ago, Toho produced a movie called Jishin Retto (1980). Kaneto Shindo wrote the film's scenario; he's one of my favorite directors. The last scene disappointed me because it was just a rehash of the famous panic movie, Earthquake (1974).

The film's contents aside, the advertisement copy was great. It went something like this: "I knew it would hit one day... but I never thought it would hit today."

Over the past weekend I finally got to watch the bonus disc's extra footage from War of the Worlds. It lasted a total of 165 minutes.

They presented the Previsualization Method developed by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). The method draws out the full potential of scenes that use a lot of CG and CGI.

Film-makers traditionally edited the CGI and V/A composition into the film after they had finished shooting. There's a problem with that method though. According to these traditional methods, we needed to shoot the film against a blue screen background. We could have a hard time feeling out where the non-existent objects, scenery, and atmosphere belonged in the shooting studio.

Each person's imagination differs from other people's imaginations. We have a lot of room for miscommunication and misunderstandings. The shooting studio only becomes more chaotic when everyone on the set works out of sync with the total scenario conveyed on the blue screen.

ILM invented Previsualization to solve this problem. Think of it as a storyboard transferred into 3D images.

Each person can coordinate himself with the total scenario when he examines the Previsualized images in the shooting studio. People can arrive at a consensus understanding among themselves before they shoot... the actors, the special effects team, the stuntmen, and the CG team.

We can use this to determine how all the visual elements will correlate. We'll also work more efficiently with ILM's Previsualization Method. Production costs will drop. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

James Cameron made a small model of his set while working on Terminator 2 in order to shorten his production period. He used a small camera to test various angles, and then he started to shoot. He cut back on the time needed to make his set that way.

Previsualization uses the same idea. We can decide how to adjust our special effects and our camera placement by moving character models through scenery in 3D space. We can decide how to handle our set, visual characteristics, props, and CGI usage after selecting the camera location.

This is how they produced War of the Worlds so quickly. Spielberg is known for a quick turnaround on his films, but Previsualization made this one possible.

I thought about how similar Previsualization seems to resemble our own development methods when I saw it in motion. We naturally used those methods when games became 3D in the late 1990s. We didn't pick it up from anyone... it's simply necessary to make our games.

We first construct the game using simple models and scenery. We treat the cutscenes the same way because they require cinematic effects. We test the module while minimizing all our resources, such as processing speed, MGS-defining characteristics, camera, and general operations. We must reduce everything to its bare qualities in our Previsualization Phase.

Once we fix everything using trial and error, we move on to full-scale production. The film industry's shooting phase equates to this.

Likewise, we don't use the older methods of making the game's map. Instead of drawing it directly, we structure the game according to the script team's provisional map. Once we've done that, we hand everything over to the designers. The pre-production period always lasts the longest while making a game.

The film industry could only have realized its Previsualization Method through digital technology. Film has finally evened out with the game-making process. Some aspects of game-making are behind the times. Other parts, however, are well ahead.

I ate lunch at the Nishi Azabu restaurant La Brace. I ordered spaghetti with ground chicken and Chinese cabbage. I wanted a drink of wine, but I controlled myself. Customers all around me wet their throats.

It's only on the lunch menu, but that was a big salad.

The pasta tasted delicious too. I paid a cheap price considering how much I ate.

We held our hiring interviews in the afternoon. After that we worked on our projects for MGS4 until evening, just like yesterday.

The project certainly is fun. I'd love to work on it twenty-four hours a day. I only want to create.

I'll totally shift my focus onto MGS4 once our new PSP project gets off the ground. I'll try to avoid entanglements such as interviews, clients, meetings, or lectures. I have to focus on my work during the pre-production and Previsualization periods.

At the bookstore I bought the fifth volume of Complete Cobra. I buy manga to read at a later date these days. I haven't got time to read any of them now, and the same really goes for novels. I finished reading Mr. Kurokawa's book Ansho, and I have started reading Parker's latest, Melancholy Baby.

I received my copy of NewWORDS, an entertainment magazine for mature adults. Kadokawa Publishing will release it November 25.

The cover really impacts the reader. It's a shot of Natalie Portman with her head entirely shaved! It will catch the attention of people in the bookstore. The magazine's first issue comes with a UMD Video that contains an episode of Blood+. I think it's really hip that they're not just including a regular DVD.

I wish this mature entertainment magazine great success.

I am actually helping NewWORDS by giving them an interview and writing introductions to movies. I'd like many adults to read it.

People in the past used to call Otaku a new type of subculture. Now we have all become adults. These Otaku now work as members of society, and they pay the usual taxes. They register to vote, and they participate in politics. They have married and now take care of families with children. They have become aware of their larger human community.

The Otaku's loneliness has disappeared, but his responsibilities have increased. These Otaku swore never to grow up -- yet they grew up without even noticing.

Nonetheless, games and anime still mean a lot to them.

People started calling manga "graphic novels." Manga became acceptable as dignified adult entertainment as time moved on. We also ought to have anime and games made specifically for adults.

But here's the question: will supply or demand come first?

Nothing will happen if we just wait for an answer. We're not looking at an issue of "When will it happen?" We're dealing with an issue of ‘Who will do it?’"

Who will innovate products to serve this market?

Now that I think on it, people in the last century used to call Otaku a new type of human being or an alien race. I think that Otaku should take a lesson from War of the Worlds -- they should return as adults from underground.

Our bodies retain the sturdy weight of our time's residue. As adults at last, we shall shed the filth on our own.

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