SHINAN'S PROFILE

You can have right wing democracy. Democracy basically only means that the people are allowed to vote and that the leaders are essentially chosen by "the people" (Or, "by the people chosen by the people to choose for them")

I pirate. I don't pirate a lot of games, but it happens. If I pirate more recent games I've found that I tend to buy them later. Or at least the sequel. It happened when I pirated GTA3 (I bought Vice City), it happened when I pirated Rome: Total War (I had already bought shogun and medieval, but afterwards I bought Medieval 2 as well). I happened when I pirated Democracy 2 (Shame on me, but I bought Kudos 2 a couple of days after it was released. I'm still thinking about buying Democracy 2 eventually).

Generally when it comes to games I buy more than I pirate, mostly because I just don't feel like downloading those huge amounts of gigabytes all games are nowadays. Lately I've found that I don't really want to buy games either because of ALL THAT FUCKING DRM. (Which is why I want to buy Democracy 2 since it's DRM-free and I honestly do feel bad about pirating that one... Strange isn't it. Though I originally pirated it because the demo was too short...)

Then. Music. I don't pirate as much music as I used to. Mostly because I find I have most of the music I want but now I occasionally get myself a track here and there. I also tend to scourge the internet for legal free music that I try to give a listen to from time to time.

However with all this said it's true that I hardly ever pay for music anymore. It's not really that I wouldn't want to but the fact is that I haven't really found any good DRM-free music seller in my region. In our family we have a wide variety of music players and what works in one won't work in another. So it's actually just easier to download the shit illegally.

But yes, when it comes to music I'm a hugely dirty pirate and I need to change my ways.

Then there's movies. It's a bit dual on the movies. I pirate a lot of movies it's true. But I also pay for a lot of movies. Originally my downloading of movies was movies I'd never see otherwise anyway. But lately those films I haven't managed to catch in the cinemas get on my download queue. I have a 100+ DVD collection though and on average I watch at least one film in the cinema each month, so I'm not sure how much part of the problem I am when it comes to the movies.

TV-series I get as soon as they are on torrentsites. I don't live in the US and I want my stuff immediately. I also no longer like to watch stuff on my TV because I've found that whenever there's a commercial break I just shut down the TV and do something else rather than wait it out. The only thing I watch on TV nowadays is sports events and even then it's only on the commercial free government-funded channels.


These were my honest pirate confessions. I don't think my pirating habits are unique in any way. In fact I think they are pretty regular.

Of course I'm also part of the problem because when I buy stuff it's nearly always out of the bargain bin (or pre-owned). Paying those ridiculous full prices for games or movies that's just sick. Unless its something I really want (LOTR extended, Star Wars Box, Vampire: Bloodlines, Empire: Total War (if it doesn't have heavy DRM that is))

Slightly influenced from tabletops but also from other games I've started to like the "moving away from HP" thingie. It's also because I'm a bit of a sucker for realism. I like the "damage you can take" to be fairly constant. A chopped off head will result in death all the time. (nearly all the time anyway...)

Things like location damage, wounds and bleeding are things I like. There was some (tabletop) game that had a system where every time you got wounded you had a chance of fainting from the pain, the chance increased every time the hurt increased. And there was also a different chance of dying from the wounds. And you had to take a test against the value every time you got hurt.

That game had damage put into four different categories. Trauma (wounds that might not hurt but will kill you), Pain (Wounds that will hurt and will make you faint from the pain), Bleeding (a value that affected bloodloss) and Bloodloss (A value that increased depending on your bleeding and that eventually killed you)

There was also exhaustion, which wasn't exactly wound-related but it could still cause you to faint.

Every wound increased the three values by a certain amount. A flesh wound in the leg might increase your pain by quite a bit but your trauma by very little. A hit in an aorta would cause a lot of bleeding, some trauma, but little pain.

I'm really fond of this system and would really like something like it to be implemented in a computer game. Of course it might be a system that is one of those that somehow works on paper (despite its complexity) but not on a computer. It's strange though because usually computers can do calculations more complex, but this system was really cool when used manually. Sure it took a while to calculate some of the stuff but getting the exact descriptions of things was very satisfying. (Or like it always went. "OOOH The aorta! You're a goner! There's blood EVERYWHERE")


Another system I'm fairly fond of is the treshold system where you (or an vehicle/building/item) has some sort of value you need to pass and once you do that your status changes, like "Unhurt/scratched/wounded/severely wounded/crippled/dying". In a way that would mean that everything would have the same amount of HP, but everyone would have a different "value" you need to pass. So a vehicle to go from scratched to damaged it would take a lot more than to make a human go from scratched to wounded.


Of course now I've made this huge post and not have any HP in it at all. When it comes to classic HP I'm not all that interested I suppose. Of course all of these systems can be in a HP system. Just hide all the good stuff that I've mentioned and boil it down to a single number the player sees. (The treshold can easily be turned into HP, or even a percentile system where you knock down percent of a creature's HP. Combined with a treshold) When it comes to damage I think that certain things should hurt more than others. A rocket launcher should kill people and cripple vehicles. A sword should kill people and dent vehicles (if even that). I want people killed.

It was said somewhere. But it's all about casual gamers. The ad in question isn't directed at gamers. It's directed at that huge majority which are "girly girls". And yes, they DO exist.

It's the same where they target a bunch of games (like Need for Speed or Madden) mainly for boys. The casual boy audience that is. The boys that think it's cool with American Football or fast cars.


The only real problem I see is the lacking quality in some of the "targeted" games. Kid's games suffer from the same problem. They make a subpar game that the nongamer audience will play, because they don't know better.

To be honest what kind of semi-gamer girl wouldn't play a good Sex and the City game? It's a sad fact that most games targeted at girls suck so badly (Except perhaps the Sims, though you could argue it isn't exactly targeted you're not kidding anyone.).

Do those girls up in that picture even LOOK like the girls you do find playing games anyway?

Yes, they look exactly like the girls that would play the games advertised.



Alright. So personal experience and all that crap. I have two younger sisters. They game. They aren't huge gaming nerds but being around me rubs off onto anyone. My older sister plays a fair amount of games. She still tends to shy away from the "overly guy" games and jumps with glee at any release of the Sims or Harvest Moon. She has a pink DS. Of course she also plays the games that essentially are for everyone. And she always beats me in Track & Field in Barcelona for the NES. She's strangely awesome at that.

The younger of the two sisters is still sort of young and I don't know exactly what she plays. But she does have a lot of Pony and Horse-themed games. She's no stranger to kicking butt in sucky games based on stuff she likes (I'm referring to Eragon). And obviously she loves the Sims. And Runescape, for some strange reason I cannot fathom (but that's one of the other girly gamer things. They seem to be drawn to MMOs)

Of course these are only two examples but they fit pretty nicely into the "girly gamer" stereotype.



So this was a long post essentially saying that the difference between hardcore and casual is a lot larger than the whole gender thing. (Hardcore gamers of any kind play the things they like/are good. Casual gamers of any kind play the games they are offered)

I'd like roundtable discussions on certain aspects of *insert aspect here*. A topic that was decided beforehand. Perhaps a game or two that was tested by ALL the hosts and then discussed in some fun and meaningful way.

Perhaps a combination with a couple of games on a certain topic that was played through and then the topic and how the games dealt with the topic is talked about for a while. (or something)

I'm also in favour of more editing. I don't know how much editing is done as it is (It might be a lot I have no idea), but I think you could somehow tighten it with the occasional edit.

I think it would be better to have "multiple shows" on the same feed rather than a strict format for every episode. SO that one show is the "roundtable show" and another is an "interview show" or "release something show". I'm not overly fond of 2-hour shows with every damn segment. I'd much prefer the segments to be cut into different shows.

Of course it's probably good to have some sort of "main show" but that could perhaps be more community based. Stuff like "what I've played" and "latest releases" and "feedback" and things like that could go in there. While there could be "special shows" for those others.

Or something. I'm throwing out a bunch of things here. I think interviews could be good. Like those I was supposed to do last year about this time. (Where the idea was interview with almost any random gamemaker and let his/her voice be heard.) I still wouldn't mind doing those and I really hated how I just abandoned it because of things out of my control.


Another derivative or... uh whatever. Of the multi-show thing could be that the RMN-feed/podcast could be the host of many shows featuring all kinds of people from the community. (by that I mean that instead of having the "regular" hosts users could submit their own shows. Sort of. Not without a proper screening process and all that but you might get the idea. Perhaps a feedback/review show where users could submit their own 3-5 minute reviews of games and they'd all be put into one show. Perhaps with comments by regular hosts (or just with "here's a review of xxx by yyy")

Goddammit. I was supposed to end this post at "I'm throwing out a bunch of things here" but more keep coming up. I'll just press Post now.