In the Way

I was working on a Round Table post and couldn't find anything really interesting to say, so I scrapped it. Mostly it was about how the concept of hardcore is mostly semantics and self-identity and that industry people who concern themselves with hardcore vs. casual are spitting out buzzwords and run the danger of disconnecting their metaphoric understanding from the way people play in real life. I prefer a system that is measurable, not based around endless ego-inflation. Developers need to pay attention to two things: accessibility and duration.

How difficult is the control/concept/customization? How long does it take to play a session/reach the next "carrot"/finish the game?

There you go.

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Extraordinarily busy right now. I've got more games on deck than ever before. The big thing, though, is that a design internship position is opening up at work and I've got to put something together. This is pretty much the dream. Even if I'm shunted back to QA after the intern period it's still the opportunity of a lifetime. But it means finishing a mod and putting together some quest writeups with dialogue. I've got concepts and stuff down, but the learning curve for the mod stuff is pretty long.

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I've also found my tastes in video games suddenly changing. I don't know why.

Maybe not changing. More like expanding.

I've actually started playing roguelikes and enjoying them. The last time I tried them (which was also the first time), I played for two minutes, quit and uninstalled and vowed never to bother with them again.

I also started up Eve Online and am considering picking it up, at least for a few months. This is my third or fourth time trying it out. The other times I never played for more than a day before uninstalling.

It's very strange. I think I'm just enjoying minutiae more, which used to turn me off. We'll see where this leads. Probably to me picking up a Warhammer 40K Chaos army.