dragontology

Wild guess: aggregated score card with individual reviewers having a score card. Let users vote up a reviewer to make their vote count more (or down for less) or ignore/block a reviewer to make theirs not count. That way, the user’s own views weigh the score card.

Mass Effect. I didn’t get far in the original. Played the Legendary Edition trilogy all the way through. Went back to the original. It’s the tank (Mako). It dies in like 2-3 hits and you get less XP for kills in it. It’s just not fun and they never fixed it in the original. Legendary fixes it. At the very least, it’s balanced to the game’s difficulty setting. Where in the original it’s stuck on the hardest setting, but only for the Mako missions.

Original came out in like 2007, Legendary came out in like 2016. Might be off by a year or two with one or both.

Mars family is pretty private, not much is known about them. The people behind M&Ms, Dove, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, Snickers, and a few others. I think they make the best mass marketed chocolate in the US. They’re owned by the Mars family (it’s actually their name) but very little is known about them.

Bought for me: the NES deluxe kit with console, controllers, light gun, and Mario/Duck Hunt.

I first bought Super Mario Bros 3 as in, with my own money.

A friend told me about Bad Omens (metal) and I’ve been listening to them. I don’t usually like heavy music these days, but sometimes it can be cool and they have some clever lyrics.

First anime was .hack//SIGN.

First impression of anime was, giant robots, fights that took several episodes, and girls way too young to show that much skin. I asked my anime obsessed cousins to show me something intelligent that didn’t have any of those three things, and they delivered — see first answer.

Favorite series is Sword Art Online, but I prefer one season and done miniseries like Erased end Your Lie in April. Also The Promised Neverland and Tokyo Ghoul — we don’t talk about their seasons beyond the first. Favorite movies are your name. and Wolf Children.

Only one bad experience with anime I can think of. My cousins who got me into anime were watching one when a child goes into a changing room and it shows everything. That was creepy AF. We were all teenagers so it wasn’t like “I should report this to the police” but more like “let me catch you looking at that again and I will kick both your asses.” I don’t remember what they were watching, if they told me.

The game is what wasn’t ready. They shipped without a map for about a year. They ignored game breaking bugs posted to their community Discord (the official one they moderate). One notable one that was still unpatched after a year of being notified was how in random ship encounters, the leader of the enemies would be aligned to Constellation, meaning if you or anyone in your group killed them, all your allies turn against you. That should have been an easy fix. They just did not care.

Wait hold up, wasn’t Sherry like 10 when she met Leon in RE2 back on the PS1?

One-Winged Angel. Just the intro, before the Latin. Specifically this version.

The best final boss music to a video game was 29 years ago and has not been topped since. Of course, with the rise of PlayStation and disc-based games (ironically, where Final Fantasy 7 was released and in which form), games became more about the journey than that final fight. There were still “last boss fights,” but they became less the focus and more about the end of the journey. But after beating Sephiroth for the first time, and he sprouts a wing (just the one!) and this song kicks in, and the real fight begins… that’s when you knew you were in some shit. Especially if you reached max level and Sephiroth took literally an hour to beat (I think this was an early anti-cheat thing).

Because they’re not computers, they’re media devices, like Xbox and iPod. They’re not meant to be open.

Yeah, it’s not so much gamerscore as it’s gamer history. So if you look at my gamerscore, the actual number of points doesn’t really matter, but you can see I’ve been gaming on Xbox for like 20 years, I’ve played so many games, you can judge me as a gamer based on what I’ve played and how far I got. It’s not fair to mistreat a person based on gaming preferences, I’m just saying you get a clearer picture. So on mine you’d see a lot of RPGs, action/adventure games, point and click adventures (Dontnod/Telltale stuff), and Metroidvanias. You wouldn’t see many sports games, racing games, or simulation games, and that would tell you things about me as a gamer.

Of course, I’d been playing video games for about 20-25 years before I ever heard the name “Xbox,” but that’s not tracked.

We could get into how achievements are just a stupid collectible for gamers, but are used by Microsoft to monetize anonymized gaming metrics to inform publishers how their games are played. Not all of them care, and this service is part of what Microsoft charges ~30% for, it’s not an extra service. Some do, and most famously to my knowledge, it’s why you didn’t get an evil path in Fallout 4, because an overwhelming majority of Fallout 3 players went for the good karma achievements. Fallout 3 gave you achievements at levels 8, 16, 24, and 30 (the cap), but it also noted your karma level (good, neutral, or evil). And at each level it was like a stupidly overwhelming win for good, so they assumed most players didn’t want the evil option. I mean, they did give you a couple evil factions to work with (the Institute if you were scientifically evil, and the Brotherhood of Steel if you were militarily evil), but ultimately your character is a good person.

PC has been coopted by Microsoft and gamers to mean an x86-64 box, and it kind of applied to Intel Macs since they could run Windows and could have graphics cards (specifically the Mac Pro which had PCI-E slots and was really just a traditional PC that happened to be macOS certified and shipped with that OS.

So yes, it’s a specific kind of PC. It’s like saying a truck is a car. Yes, technically, if you wanna split that hair, but it’s not like people calling it a truck are wrong. And maybe they are proud of what they have, but they’re also just trying to be accurate and not disingenuous.

By saying it’s a Mac, I avoid people suggesting I run tools only available on Windows. However, I attract haters. I’d rather be concise and informative than well liked. I don’t care that you or the next guy doesn’t like Macs, but yes, I’m going to call it what it is, because while it’s also a PC, it’s different enough and I’d like to avoid the chain of conversation that comes with “just use X app” and then I have to say “it doesn’t run on my platform” and then we’re back to here with the haters. So I just cut out a step.

She doesn’t have no gamerscore, she has like 1200 because her account was set up like a month ago and she has some token achievements she probably didn’t earn.

It’s not about the amount or how much. Phil Spencer had a lot because he was a gamer and an exec. He was one of us, more or less, he played games and he liked working in gaming. I don’t agree with all of his gaming opinions (in fact, mine are fairly uncommon, so that just comes with the territory).

I have a pretty high amount just because I’ve been gaming since before most people here were born. So I’ve had an Xbox account for something like 20 years. I’ve only really gone after a few achievements. Mostly I just play. Over time, that builds up. I’ve worked longer hours than a lot of people, in jobs most people are too good to do. “Work hard, play hard” may be a cliche, but I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t do recreational drugs, and I don’t engage in extramarital affairs. I’m not a woodworker or a gearhead — gaming is my hobby. It’s what I do to relax at the end of the day, if I have time. If I don’t have time for a more “serious” game on the Xbox, I fire up my Switch and dick around on my Animal Crossing island. I’ve already rolled the credits (several times, long story, AC fans get it) but it’s somehow fun to just run around and talk to animals and catch bugs and shit. Either way, it’s what I do and I’ve been doing it for a long time.

I just think someone who’s been playing games for years would make a better executive of a company’s gaming division than someone who’s never picked up a controller. LOTS of people play games. If someone never games, that says to me they don’t like gaming — and they possibly don’t like gamers. It’s not a good look. Especially juxtaposed with the rise in AI and Microsoft bringing an AI exec in to run Xbox. It’s not a good look at all.

Meanwhile, their biggest competitor is either Linux or UNIX. That is, if you accept that macOS “is UNIX.” It’s been UNIX certified for a couple years now, but it’s UNIX in name only. While Steve Jobs’ NeXTStep was based on UNIX, NeXTStep was also vapourware. Still, it became OS X which became the macOS we know and love (or hate) today. But the truth is, it’s UNIX 3 certified, which is a decades-old certification, and it only just barely makes that. So it’s a thing Mac users brag about. “A UNIX system! I know this!” Jurassic Park meme. And then of course there’s Linux. And of course Windows has the Linux subsystem. Still, non-*nix is going the way of the dodo, just like Win9x did when Microsoft realised WinNT was the future. First with the tranwreck that was WinME, but much more importantly with WinXP. And NT was good, but its time is up (or will be soon).

On my Mac, I just use whatever the default static wallpaper is. Or I pick one of theirs. I always have widgets covering my wallpaper and I don’t know how to easily see what it is (short of  → Settings → Wallpaper), but I think it’s like a forest/hills. On my MacBook it’s a lake.

On my phone, I have a Star Trek theme. LCARS (the OS on Next Generation) lock screen, and one of the ships (I think it’s Discovery, I never really look that closely at it) warping up toward the top with the trails down between the icons.

I mostly don’t care what the wallpaper is because I never look at it, but I’m too proud to just have it black (nothing there). I know that’s an option on Windows (no wallpaper, and there’s a setting for the desktop colour), but I’m not sure about Mac or iOS.

I almost envy people who have “cool” wallpapers (my wife has a bunch) but I mostly can’t be arsed. Like… I wouldn’t mind having digital frames with rotating wallpapers or fan art or whatever. But my desktop? It’s a workspace and I have work (or “work”) covering it all the time.

To literally any Xbox gamer reading this: how do you feel about having a higher Gamerscore than the (new) CEO of Xbox? Rhetorical question. I don’t expect (or have any use for) an answer. Rather, I just want you to think about that. You might not be qualified to be a CEO of anything. But you undoubtedly know more about gaming, and what Xbox players want, than this person who has only recently taken up gaming to say she has (or maybe she has assistants playing on her account for some fake cred).

Mine’s not worth bragging about, but I’m sure it’s over 100k. That used to mean something. Now it just means Xbox has been around for 20 years and you’ve played a lot of games on the platform. Either you platinumed 100 games, or you played a lot more (including Arcade titles which were capped at like 200-250GS, IIRC). I actually only have like five platinums. Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Oblivion, Skyrim… maybe one other? (Bethesda games are easy to platinum.) (Yes I know platinum is a PlayStation term. We all know it means to get all the achievements.)

Achievement I’m proudest of? Rockband 2, Bladder of Steel Award. Complete the “Endless Setlist II” (all 84 songs on the disc!) without pausing or failing at any difficulty other than Easy, on any instrument. I did it on Medium Vocals (easiest way really). Regardless of instrument or difficulty, playing the ESL2 without pausing takes 6 and a half hours. It takes longer if you fail, obviously, but once you fail, you may as well stop, since you’re out of the running for the achievement.

Until AI can game for you, I don’t think Sharma is going to get 100k GS, or do something like the Bladder of Steel Award that requires more than just casual interaction with a software title.

The Super Bowl (American football championship game) promotes betting. What’s the problem? Is gambling legal in the United States outside of Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Native American reservations, or isn’t it? They need to make up their mind about that. Either allow it everywhere and post gambling help lines like the casinos do… or don’t allow it.

I’m not a fan, personally. I don’t gamble. Period. I have no real opinion on whether it should be legal though, where I am, where you are, or in the state of New York.