DRENRIN2120'S PROFILE

author=kentona
early failure is totally something that turns me off.

I believe when someone starts up a game, there's an internal clock that starts ticking. If you don't hook them within the first 10 minutes or so of the opening credits/title screen, you're gonna lose them. In an RPG, a gameover within that time frame is a guaranteed way to lose them and never get them back. Because RPGs require the player to invest so much time into their gameplay, a gameover is devastating. They have to backtrack, they lose items/experience/money and most importantly, their own personal time. Gameovers should be reserved for serious mistakes that are clearly the fault of the player. There are lots of other ways players in RPGs suffer from mistakes besides outright death, since every action is cumulative with consequences popping up later down the line. If a player can't even make it 20 minutes into an RPG without dying, I can't help but view that as a serious design flaw.

I really can not believe Enterbrain actually went along with this.

author=CashmereCat
There is possible argument that carbon dating is inaccurately calibrated

This is why I think religion and science just don't mesh, at least, if that's the method of approach. This came up once in a discussion about the age of the universe. Someone made the same argument about C14 dating being inaccurate past 6,000 years, which is true except it being more like around 40,000 years. Regardless of the details, I wasn't going to argue against C14 being inaccurate. I instead brought up the science showing that we can positively prove that some stars are more than a couple million light years away from us, meaning that the light has been traveling through space for more than a couple million years, meaning 'existence' as we know it has to be older than 6000 years.

Then someone said God might have made the universe 'appear' that way. Well, that would be a pretty crummy thing for an omnipotent creator to do to the beings they've created, right? He presumably gave us the ability to observe and understand the universe that He created, He wanted us to revel at his universe, why would He then create inconsistencies that we could never possibly prove or know existed?

Also, science just isn't into the business of proving negatives. There is no proof to suggest that starlight is any younger than the distance between Earth and them so that's that. There's no need to investigate and disprove something that there is no proof of ever existing. Such as God or the possible interventions of God.

Of course, people get offended, but that's not a moral statement for or against religion. It just means science can't prove God exists. It's simply stating that science has no business investigating the meta-physical. So the whole idea of using science to prove creationism is just... odd, to say the least.

There's also the problem of the many other, much more accurate, ways of dating objects right here on Earth. Many of which prove that at the very least, the Bible can not be taken literally.

I'm curious though, my mother is a staunch Christian, yet she thinks creationists are out of there mind. She believes that whatever scientists uncover, they're actually just uncovering the methods of God's creations. She also believes the bible could be inaccurate, mistranslated, or purposefully manipulated, as it was recorded by man to the best of their ability in an attempt to understand God, but recorded by imperfect men nonetheless, and so she doesn't take it literally.

This could very well be some new-age hippy crap. As an atheist, the politics never entirely concerned me, but it all seemed rather rational and I'd be curious to know how others feel about such a position.

author=Shinan
So yeah mostly I'm a militant atheist.

Militant as in Sam-Harris/Richard Dawkins, or more just like being super stoked about being atheist?

I'm not saying race/sex affects who they are. I'm merely saying it's a part of identity that some people embrace and others don't, but a part that society will most certainly not let you forget about. I used the word 'reclaim' specifically to denote taking the power away from society to define it and putting it in the hands of those who it's historically been used to oppress to redefine it.

People reclaiming identities don't do it because they believe in the stereotype. They're not putting themselves down. And obviously, the issue of identity is complicated and nuanced. I don't believe it would be healthy to let one identity consume you, but I certainly don't believe using gender/race/sex as an identity in the face of opposition make them racist/sexist. That's ludicrous.

I scrapped mine and started over at least fives times. The second to last iteration was a lengthy demo I was quite proud of... then I scrapped it again. I released my last iteration of it as a tech demo and I have no plans to finish it.

But hell, I learned a lot from all those failed attempts and I still have something that, while not aging too well or really anything that spectacular, I'm quite proud of personally.