MAX MCGEE'S PROFILE

DrDriscoll: I strongly recommend you cut out some of the music and unused resources you included as right now your demo is MASSIVELY oversized at a seriously unwieldy 624 MB.

@Sooz: well, yeah smartass :P

But the logical word-for-word replacement for the game's short description would be "lesbian" which is only three lousy characters longer and has the added bonus of being an actual English language word. : P

author=unity
That's actually a good question. The way I use it, there really isn't a difference. Which brings up the question, why use that label? It's something I've been pondering.

LouisCyphre's comment about genre conventions are correct, but I'm not sure how much Luxaren Allure falls into those conventions. I was big into anime fandom growing up, so "yuri" was the term for girl-girl love stories in that circle, so with LA, I went with what was familiar. It makes an easy search-term, but it's just as likely to bring you smut (actually, much more likely XD) than it is emotional love stories, so I've honestly been questioning using it lately.

Comments and discussion on this are very welcome, as I'm curious to what everyone else thinks. And if Yuri isn't such a good descriptor, what's the best way to describe what LA offers?

Thanks for answering and taking the question seriously it was meant earnestly and I'm glad it wasn't taken the wrong way. I'm definitely not one to say that Yuri is or isn't a good descriptor for this game but I mean I honestly don't know what it means. I mean let me be clear, I totally get that it means "lesbian" and/or "lady-love" but yeah basically I feel like it has a whole other subtext of meaning that I am not clear on. This would be the genre conventions and whatnot that LouisCyphre was talking about. (Let me be straight with you: I mainly just watch anime with "themes" of violence and/or killing so my knowledge of romance anime tropes and demographics is basically non-existent.)

I mean while I was obviously not looking for any kind of smut or even pseudo-smut from this game I have to admit that the inclusion of "beautiful ladies who like each other" tropes certainly notched my interest up a tick in the converse way that if the game had been said to prominently include 'yaoi' themes I would have run for the hills from the game page and never looked back. That just being chalked up to personal preference I guess. But I mean IRL a couple of my friends are lesbians that are married (i.e. to each other) and I couldn't possibly be any less interested in the physical or emotional particulars of their relationship so idk...it's interesting.

I mean whether the short description said 'yuri' or 'lesbian' wouldn't make me any more or less likely to click on the game personally I just found myself really curious about what additional assumptions came with the connotation of 'yuri'. The layered meanings of Japanese-isms interest me coming from outside of that entire experiential bubble. My own anime fandom is rather idiosyncratic and atypical and restrained so I actually don't have a very deep understanding of a lot of anime fan-isms like "yuri". Even reading this wikipedia page it's not immediately clear if the term 'yuri' is meant to connote a somewhat risque and for lack of a better word "exploitative" (I am actually NOT using that word in a negative or pejorative sense) exploration of lesbian relationships as entertainment or the exact opposite of that.

Later on in this post: I play the actual game and comment. Plz excuse my blathering about yuri as normal people engage with the game on this level:

author=ricifidi
i finished the 65%demo yesterday and after some rest, i'm still wondering if the 10 money chests where real o just picking on treasure hunter type players.
I Loved the cave filled with "there is no treasure head, turn back" posts. If anything, i wish there was a way to check if a map have still treasure in them.

Okay, I played a tiny little bit (just the intro). I'll play lots more later. Some early thoughts: Obviously, the overall level of polish is astounding at least coming from Chase for Divinity. M-3-1's face portraits are lush and gorgeous and awesome and I find myself wondering how much unity's character designs informed them. The (custom?) tiles look great and the XP RTP style sprites (if my eye is not mistaken) complement them nicely.

The intro is an interesting case in storytelling. In it's favor it's got a very good hook and it is really, really fast paced. Like, lightning-fast I would say, which is kind of awesome. On the other hand, it feels slightly rushed but more importantly the entire opening mission to rescue the kid feels like it wants to be playable--with a few battles controlling Aurelie and Karuna together and everything--and I'm not really sure why it isn't. The maps seem like they're all there so I'm not sure why you only seem them in a rapid fire sequence of non-playable cutscenes rather than a little introductory playable mission sequence to introduce you to basic gameplay concepts. Anyway, final thought on the storytelling is that even this early in the story it really feels like Karuna is putting on the idiot hat and acting fully out of character when she decides to just leave Aurelie alone in the creepy mysterious castle to do whatever mysterious and sketchy stuff she feels like doing but refuses to explain. Yuri themes aside I mean if my friend was like "oh you go on ahead I am going to stay in this creepy spook castle to do...stuff...you know, that I can't tell you about" I'd be all like..."Hey, maybe...DON'T do that instead?" I totally get that the game's ENTIRE plot is predicated on this moment but that's probably a good reason to strive to make it feel more natural and logical for the characters.

One final thought...the introduction to basic gameplay concepts by a magic bookstand in the King Ergengard (sp?)'s thronerom after the end of the intro is kind of silly, because honestly if you had not figured out that the arrow keys make you move etcetera and so on by now, you would not have been able to make it this far in the game.

I'm not judging you, Liberty, I just don't think you made the right call there. I understand that having a game denied isn't a 'GET OUT AND NEVER COME BACK' but it certainly can be discouraging and IMHO should be reserved for situations where there is an obvious lack of effort, not just a lack of skill. No one expects you as site staff to be perfect or to make every call correctly, and criticism is not an attack.

Honestly, mapping ("qua mapping" so to speak) isn't even that important or useful of a predictor of the effort put into a game anyway. People put way too much value upon it IMO. I understand that when looking at screenshots there's not much else to judge by but still it's important to separate our standards for "praiseworthy" from our standards for "acceptable for hosting on RMN".

The fact remains that I could find dozens and dozens of screenshots from dozens of games that were accepted at all different points throughout the site's history that showcase mapping either of the same quality or demonstrably worse than waspshadow's March Lord. I'm not going to embark on this project because it doesn't seem like a positive or productive use of my time but just to reach for some particularly low hanging fruit:

I mean just the other day someone (presumably you) accepted Fantasy Gold. Two of its first three screenshots were this and this:





Do these really show a demonstrably more acceptable level of mapping than any of the original three screenshots from March Lord above? I admit to some degree it's a matter of taste but I think most people would agree that they are definitely operating at roughly the same level here.

There is no shame in admitting that occasionally the game acceptance process doesn't apply perfectly consistent standards to each and every game and/or sometimes you make the wrong call.

Why would NK ever do this? North Korea is a weird crazy country with a lot of shit they do off the chain, but their self preservation so far has been good enough to keep them from open war. You could argue from the basis of their back and forth with South Korea, but why would North Korea blatantly commit an act of aggression that would certainly end their existence?

From everything I understand, North Korea does not even have the capability to land bombs in the US. Unless we're talking some "terrorists with suitcase bombs" shit. And in that case...yes, it's as Feld says. In the insanely unlikely event they were that stupid the US and the international community would push their collective shit in so hard they would effectively cease to exist.

Thus, let's not lambast Sony. They aren't the issue and it's their product so they have the freedom to do with it as they wish. The real problem are assholes who step on others' freedom - in this case those who issued the threats in question.

No actually fuck Sony. Assholes making threats isn't the issue. It's just a fact of life. Capitulating to the threats of said assholes in a way that compromises fundamental freedom of speech is what at's issue. Besides, Sony didn't make the decision to pull the movies. The theaters made it for them. Sony was acting out of rational economic self-interest not out of any sense of responsibility to save lives.

Plus the possibility that Feld points out is dark but plausible: that Sony scrapped the movie out of fear of sensitive data being leaked more than anything else. With that possibility floating around, multinational megacorporations like Sony have none of my sympathies.

Edit: Upon reading the above article, it seems like Sony has stepped back from their original 'full pussy out' stance substantially. "Never go full coward' so to speak.

author=pianotm
Oh, for the love of...

President Obama says that Sony should have consulted with him before cancelling the Interview. Read it here.

Obama is absolutely right but (as if often the case with Obama) didn't go quite as far as I'd have liked in some places. But it's a relief to have the President 'get it' on an issue this important.