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Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

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The year winding into its back half just has me thinking about GOTY. TW3, MGSV, and Rocket League all seem like frontrunners, but I’m more curious about the debate actually goes. Austin is a new face and he argues with vigor. He’s like the wildcard. Just hoping he doesn’t fall into the “I’m gonna bring this game up just to say it got brought up even though it’s not gonna win so I’m taking it off” kinda conversation that dominated last year.
Last year’s was a big of a train wreck in terms of that kind of conversation, although maybe that was just due to the general lack of games last year. And it seems like not enough of the guys have played The Witcher for it to really make the impact it should.
Dan’s beaten it, and Brad will probably put more time in before GOTY. Jason also seemed to love it, but yeah I could see them going “Meh, rough launch, too long.” and it goes to the bottom 5 or so.
The guys are usually pretty good about playing the clear frontrunners. A few great games are overlooked because of staff disinterest - Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Saints Row: The Third being the best examples I can think of.
To me, The Phantom Pain is the clear favorite. Jeff has swayed several GOTY discussions because of minor, but prominent, gameplay problems, and nothing so far has indicated that he’s gotten over The Witcher III’s borderline awful movement scheme. Phantom Pain, on the other hand, has just about as much content, just about as much variety, and a combat system that feels just about perfect. It also has an online mode, which was a main factor why Uncharted 2 beat Arkham Asylum. Coupled with a recency bias, I believe the staff will remember their time with Phantom Pain more fondly.
The Witcher III may have a serious narrative edge on just about every game this year, but given Jeff’s total dismissal of The Last of Us and The Walking Dead, I don't think he will be swayed by that fact.
Between Nintendo with the amiibos nonsense and now Valve with taking 75% of paid mods' profits, which seemingly benevolent, beloved developer will piss away their good will next?
Amiibos seem wildly popular (even though I think they’re fucking stupid) and the cut on those mods appears to be largely determined by the publisher of the game, not Valve. But by all means, rage away.
hey rocco, can you explain the meaning behind the Timbo vid?
Sure! More or less, life’s meaning through fighting, combat, and existentialism. According to existentialism, each man and each woman creates the essence (meaning) of his and her life; life is not determined by a supernatural god or an earthly authority, one is free. As such, one’s ethical prime directives are action, freedom, and decision, thus, existentialism opposes rationalism and positivism. In seeking meaning to life, the existentialist looks to where people find meaning in life, in course of which using only reason as a source of meaning is insufficient; this gives rise to the emotions of anxiety and dread, felt in considering one’s free will, and the concomitant awareness of death. According to Jean-Paul Sartre, existence precedes essence; the (essence) of one’s life arises only after one comes to existence.
Søren Kierkegaard spoke about a “leap”, arguing that life is full of absurdity, and one must make his and her own values in an indifferent world. One can live meaningfully (free of despair and anxiety) in an unconditional commitment to something finite, and devotes that meaningful life to the commitment, despite the vulnerability inherent to doing so.
Arthur Schopenhauer answered: “What is the meaning of life?” by stating that one’s life reflects one’s will, and that the will (life) is an aimless, irrational, and painful drive. Salvation, deliverance, and escape from suffering are in aesthetic contemplation, sympathy for others, and asceticism.
For Friedrich Nietzsche, life is worth living only if there are goals inspiring one to live. Accordingly, he saw nihilism (“all that happens is meaningless”) as without goals. He stated that asceticism denies one’s living in the world; stated that values are not objective facts, that are rationally necessary, universally binding commitments: our evaluations are interpretations, and not reflections of the world, as it is, in itself, and, therefore, all ideations take place from a particular perspective.
Logical positivists ask: “What is the meaning of life?”, “What is the meaning in asking?” and “If there are no objective values, then, is life meaningless?” Ludwig Wittgenstein and the logical positivists said: ”Expressed in language, the question is meaningless”; because, in life the statement the “meaning of x”, usually denotes the consequences of x, or the significance of x, or what is notable about x, etc., thus, when the meaning of life concept equals “x”, in the statement the “meaning of x”, the statement becomes recursive, and, therefore, nonsensical, or it might refer to the fact that biological life is essential to having a meaning in life.
The things (people, events) in the life of a person can have meaning (importance) as parts of a whole, but a discrete meaning of (the) life, itself, aside from those things, cannot be discerned. A person’s life has meaning (for himself, others) as the life events resulting from his achievements, legacy, family, etc., but, to say that life, itself, has meaning, is a misuse of language, since any note of significance, or of consequence, is relevant only in life (to the living), so rendering the statement erroneous. Bertrand Russell wrote that although he found that his distaste for torture was not like his distaste for broccoli, he found no satisfactory, empirical method of proving this:
When we try to be definite, as to what we mean when we say that this or that is “the Good,” we find ourselves involved in very great difficulties. Bentham’s creed, that pleasure is the Good, roused furious opposition, and was said to be a pig’s philosophy. Neither he nor his opponents could advance any argument. In a scientific question, evidence can be adduced on both sides, and, in the end, one side is seen to have the better case — or, if this does not happen, the question is left undecided. But in a question, as to whether this, or that, is the ultimate Good, there is no evidence, either way; each disputant can only appeal to his own emotions, and employ such rhetorical devices as shall rouse similar emotions in others … Questions as to “values” — that is to say, as to what is good or bad on its own account, independently of its effects — lie outside the domain of science, as the defenders of religion emphatically assert. I think that, in this, they are right, but, I draw the further conclusion, which they do not draw, that questions as to “values” lie wholly outside the domain of knowledge. That is to say, when we assert that this, or that, has “value”, we are giving expression to our own emotions, not to a fact, which would still be true if our personal feelings were different.
But then at one point, the combatant battling Timbo states he is beginning to pass out, which is an entire statement on consciousness.
The nature and origin of consciousness and the mind itself are also widely debated in science. The explanatory gap is generally equated with the hard problem of consciousness, and the question of free will is also considered to be of fundamental importance. These subjects are mostly addressed in the fields of cognitive science, neuroscience (e.g. the neuroscience of free will) and philosophy of mind, though some evolutionary biologists and theoretical physicists have also made several allusions to the subject.
Hieronymus Bosch’s Ascent of the Blessed depicts a tunnel of light and spiritual figures, often described in reports of near-death experiences.Reductionistic and eliminative materialistic approaches, for example the Multiple Drafts Model, hold that consciousness can be wholly explained by neuroscience through the workings of the brain and its neurons, thus adhering to biological naturalism.
On the other hand, some scientists, like Andrei Linde, have considered that consciousness, like spacetime, might have its own intrinsic degrees of freedom, and that one’s perceptions may be as real as (or even more real than) material objects. Hypotheses of consciousness and spacetime explain consciousness in describing a “space of conscious elements”, often encompassing a number of extra dimensions. Electromagnetic theories of consciousness solve the binding problem of consciousness in saying that the electromagnetic field generated by the brain is the actual carrier of conscious experience, there is however disagreement about the implementations of such a theory relating to other workings of the mind. Quantum mind theories use quantum theory in explaining certain properties of the mind. Explaining the process of free will through quantum phenomena is a popular alternative to determinism, such postulations may variously relate free will to quantum fluctuations, quantum amplification, quantum potential and quantum probability.
Based on the premises of non-materialistic explanations of the mind, some have suggested the existence of a cosmic consciousness, asserting that consciousness is actually the “ground of all being”. Proponents of this view cite accounts of paranormal phenomena, primarily extrasensory perceptions and psychic powers, as evidence for an incorporeal higher consciousness. In hopes of proving the existence of these phenomena, parapsychologists have orchestrated various experiments, but apparently successful results are more likely due to sloppy procedures, poorly trained researchers, or methodological flaws than to actual effects.
So more or less, that stuff, but it was also a parody of a Kimbo Slice video where he punches this guy in a parking lot really hard. Anyway, hope that helps!
And that's just the abridged version.
Mike Maulbeck, creator of Paranautical Activity, says he released the final version of his PC game on Steam today. When it went live, the game's Steam page indicated that the game was still in Early Access, which Maulbeck believed would "greatly cripple sales and confuse customers."
...
Maulbeck let loose a series of vitriolic tweets, calling Valve "incompetent" and expressing anger at Steam's "awful f***ing monopoly." Maulbeck then allegedly said in a since-deleted tweet, "I am going to kill gabe newell [sic]. He is going to die."
In response, Valve pulled Paranautical Activity from Steam, and according to Maulbeck, contacted him to say it was terminating its relationship with the developer and closing down his Steam admin account. The game no longer appears on the Steam website. In a statement to Polygon, Valve confirmed that the game was pulled as a result of Maulbeck's threat.
I swear there's a rule somewhere that indie devs need to spout every thought from their head without any sense of professionalism. Phil Fish chastising a Japanese game creator to his face was bad enough, but Maulbeck literally could not have picked a worse time or target to issue a death threat. This is career-ending.
Valve's decision to cut off all ties to Maulbeck's company may seem harsh, but even condoning such a massive degree of unprofessionalism and disrespect shouldn't be tolerated, period.

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I'm not here to tell you what to do. But you might want to really look in the mirror and ask yourself if you're spending your time crusading for the right fight. That's all. Make sure this is the position you want to take and, more importantly, how you want that position to be represented. If you genuinely care about ethics in games journalism, GamerGate is not the spot for you. To some of them, "unethical" is being used as a synonym for "a viewpoint I don't agree with." That's not an ethics discussion. That's an attempt to silence criticism. Again, if you do care about ethics in games journalism, GamerGate is destroying your message.
I'm saddened to see the topic that has driven much of my career become so wholly co-opted for hate. Ultimately, that's a side note to the main event, of course. Having people toss all discussion about ethics in games journalism under a bus to hide politicized harassment campaigns is sad for me, but I'll be fine. Games? Game developers? That's what's actually at stake. I'm not sure what the actual end goal of GamerGate seems to be, but it seems to be somewhere between "destroy the careers of anyone who would make a game that falls outside of a certain-yet-unspecified scope and/or topic" and "let's burn it all down because it's fun to see how much trouble we can stir up."
But GamerGate is a speed bump for the video game industry, at best. It was already on its way to the back burner when a fresh crop of death threats whipped everyone back up into a frenzy. The core group of instigators will probably find another group to target, and they'll leave behind a big mess of harassment, hurt, half-truths, and twisted words. It'll be fascinating to see how video games--whether you consider that to be a community, a business, a profession, or a hotbed of increasingly political bickering--moves forward.
In my opinion, a better open letter than Polygon's, or at least a more magnanimous one. Gerstmann brings up a point I've been arguing for weeks: if you really vie for more transparency in gaming journalism, GamerGate isn't an appropriate vehicle to have your voice heard. If you want to talk, talk. And if you're ignored, walk. GamerGate, even in a hypothetical universe where it actually accomplishes something, isn't necessary.
They say they want an ethics code? OK, we had that ready at launch and update it when appropriate.
They say they want transparency? We try for that, too!
They say they want objective game reviews? That ... well, that doesn't make any sense.
They say they want politics out of video game coverage? OK, now we're getting somewhere.
By politics, the voices calling for ethics reform really mean "progressive" politics. The so-called corruption that needs to be rooted out is a focus on "diversity" and the "magnitude of the human experience." It should be no surprise that the outlets and voices specifically targeted by GamerGate are progressive. Baldwin was the first of several notable opportunists who, despite caring little for video games or video game culture, were more than happy to contribute to any movement that counted "SJWs" — that's "social justice warriors," for those of you out of the loop — as enemies. That "social justice warrior" is considered a pejorative at all speaks volumes about the motivations behind much of GamerGate and its fixation on progressive voices.
This letter needed to be published a month ago, but better late than never. I'll even eat my own words on one point: I was previously critical of the confidential communication network setup between several journalists, as I suspect collusion could result from its use. I had no idea journalists have been using private communication channels for centuries, so it wasn't fair of me to direct my concerns at gaming writers alone.
Then again, if such a network is traditional, what was with all the apologies after it got exposed? More importantly, would it be out of the question to grant readers access to the transcripts after time-sensitive material has expired?
Great suggestion for how Twitter can suppress bullying tactics on their service without having to develop censorship protocols:
Here’s a handful of things Twitter could be trying to protect its users. Allow users to optionally:
Block all users whose accounts are less than 30 days old
This is easy—it takes an arrow out of the quiver of serial harassers who use alternate accounts generated as needed.
Block all users whose follow counts are less than whatever threshold users set
Google used the social proof of “back links” to establish credibility and ranking for content over 16 years ago. This is old hat by now. Users should be able to block anyone who can’t convince other people to follow them.
Rings of followers created just to subvert this will have to be detected.
Again, hire a Google engineer. They’ve cracked this one.
Block new users whose @replies include any words the user decides
Users who are on the receiving end of harassment face startlingly unimaginative adversaries. The same slurs and threats are used over and over. Brand new account with no followers using the n-word? Block!
That’s stupidly easy to express algorithmically.
One of the things I'm discovering about Twitter is that everything awesome about the service is by virtue of its terrible design and corporate ineptitude, unlike Facebook, where everything awesome is by design and corporate micromanaging.
I for one am curious if it would be possible, and feasible, to build a browser extension that does as much.
We want the same thing, better games. We have different ideas about how to accomplish that goal. We don't need to destroy each other to get there, nor ignore what came before. There is no benefit to trying to be inclusive while simultaneously using exclusionary tactics to achieve your goal. There is no benefit to driving critics out of the industry, even if you don't agree with what they say or even dislike them as a person. Try to realise that these are real people you're going after, on all sides of this thing, try to understand why they feel this way, why they're angry and upset and perhaps common ground can be found. I'm not trying to reach across the aisle. I was never in the other aisle to begin with. I walked into the chamber and it was on fire and people were stabbing each other. It sucked. I have a slant, I have biases and I have things which I believe to be true and things which I do not. You can probably see that in this blog, but my opinion like so many others is nuanced, not neutral. That's ok.
As always, Bain is about ten steps ahead of everyone, likely resultant of both his experience and independence as an internet commentator. Firmly dividing this issue, and any other, into two houses is about as logical and analogous to politics in America: liberal vs conservative, fascist or communist, there's-no-god or God-controls-everything. Most rational people don't fit neatly into any of those camps, so why bother erecting them in the first place?
Campaigns of personal harassment aimed at game developers are nothing new. They are dismayingly common among those who happen to be women, or not white straight men, and doubly so if they also happen to make the sort of game that in any way challenge the status quo, even if that challenge is only made through their very existence. The viciousness and ferocity with which this campaign occurred, however, was shocking, and certainly out of the ordinary. This was something more than routine misogyny (and in games, it often is routine, shockingly). It was an ugly spectacle that should haunt and shame those involved for the rest of their lives.
It’s important to note that this hate campaign took the guise of a crusade against ‘corruption’ and ‘bias’ in the games industry, with particular emphasis on the relationships between independent game developers and the press.
...
Today, videogames are for everyone. I mean this in an almost destructive way. Videogames, to read the other side of the same statement, are not for you. You do not get to own videogames. No one gets to own videogames when they are for everyone. They add up to more than any one group.
On some level, the grim individuals who are self-centred and myopic enough to be upset at the prospect of having their medium taken away from them are absolutely right. They have astutely, and correctly identified what is going on here. Their toys are being taken away, and their treehouses are being boarded up. Videogames now live in the world and there is no going back.
Hard to argue with most of this article, but not all of it. We can all agree that the vitriolic attacks on documentarian Anita Sarkeesian - that ultimately led to her going into hiding as I write - are in no way justified or acceptable. It may not necessarily prove that gamers are by nature misogynists, but it absolutely insists that misogyny exists, is cultivated, and is largely condoned amongst gamers.
That being said, the neat dismissal of the "Quinnspiracy", which alleges (with evidence) that several game industry individuals and journalists received personal favors in exchange for favorable press, as a blatant derailment tactic is troubling. While the insinuation that Kotaku hosted stories that were tainted may have initally been a means to attack the "Social Justice Warrior" movement indirectly, it's not a tactless concern. We now know that journalists support developers financially over Patreon, don't recuse themselves when there's an apparent conflict of interest (after-the-fact or otherwise), and that neither are reprimanded in doing so. If a Apple columnist at The Verge was found to have secretly invested in Apple stock, they would surely be fired on behalf of a major conflict of interest. But gaming journalists demand the benefit of doubt, because they believe they deserve it, but journalists by nature never do.
It was uncomfortable to see the lot of game journalists either ignore the complaint completely, or brush off such concerns with an almost explosive indignation, as if one is ridiculous for even asking. Game designer Mike Sacco quipped on Twitter:
Games journalists now cannot play any video games to avoid potential conflicts of interest related to liking video games
which a group of journalists (including one I admire in Jeff Gerstmann) held up as a sort of ironic manifesto. "Don't like us fraternizing with developers behind closed doors? Fine! Guess we won't play video games anymore, so that our views aren't 'tainted'!" was essentially their point. It's like a bad political debate; "Don't want to invade Iraq? Fine! Guess we'll let anyone blow up our country whenever they want, so that we're not bullies!" This constant black-and-whitening of opinions is making it impossible to even hold discussions anymore. It is impossible to compromise and see reason from such polar extremes. It also prevents us from asking important questions.
Why, for example, did the media feel justified and obligated to disparage Cards Against Humanity co-creator Max Tempkin on the basis that a random woman claimed that he raped her in college over a decade ago, which he flatly denied, yet when allegedly photographic evidence emerges that suggests a reporter failed to recuse himself from promoting on a game whose developer he is romantically entangled with, and said developer admits - in writing - that her promiscuous behavior would qualify as "raping" her unaware boyfriend, nobody bats an eye because it's a "personal matter"? I don't deny that it is, indeed, largely a personal matter, but I fail to see why the accusation against Tempkin isn't a personal matter either, especially when it is merely an accusation that lacks any substantiation. Tempkin wasn’t given the benefit of doubt, because he apparently doesn’t deserve it. When David Jaffe was accused of misogyny because of the “tone" of an off-hand remark, he didn’t receive it either. In contrast to journalists, private individuals have a right to the benefit of doubt when their very character is called into question.
Journalists, I'm not asking for much, just some transparency and cautionary measures on your part, and to have an appropriate response to criticisms of your integrity. Buy your games out of your own pocket. Don't accept gifts at conventions, be it swag, attractions, or even free food and drink. Don't let people who cover a game also review it, unless no one else is qualified, and if so have them disclaim this fact. Disclaim any past or present affiliation you have with the developer and publisher. Have a standard of what you refuse to report on and stick to it. Most of all, don't presume that you have earned the benefit of doubt, because you never earned it, and you never will. Respect us, our intelligence, and our wallets. You need us. We don't need you.

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One such policy was the requirement for delivers to have their own offices. If you ran your studio out of your home? No go. And according to Adelman that rule was strictly adhered to.
"It was crazy. There were people whose job it was to look up addresses in Google maps to see if the business address was a home or an office building. And if it looked a little residential, they'd ask for photos,"Adelman told Kotaku. "There would be e-mail threads with literally a few dozen back and forth exchanges about whether the couch in someone's office was really used for business purposes or did someone really live there?
Honestly, Nintendo of Japan needs entirely new leadership, and that starts with giving Satoru Iwata the much-deserved boot. Policies like this aren't merely conservative, they are militant conservatism that actually consumes far more resources than it could ever hope to, well, conserve. Only purely out-of-touch ideology could ever spawn such a backwards policy as not letting indie developers work at home. Have the executives at Nintendo even heard of Bastion? FEZ? Cave Story, which they even had ported to the 3DS? These are all made from houses, not office buildings, and guess what? It never showed.
Oh, and the guy who worked to eventually remove that backwards policy? He just parted ways with Nintendo, and I don't blame him.
Seriously, Nintendo, show Iwata and his gallery of yes-men the door. Now.
Because a phone is a necessity – everyone is going to buy one – there is going to be a very large segment of the market whose purchase decision is driven primarily by price. In turn, this means the minimum acceptable product with the lowest price is going to garner the largest market share. Indeed that is exactly what has happened with phones: while the iPhone is actually increasing its dominance of the high end, Android has covered the entire rest of the market. And, as we learned yesterday, that market is now >1 billion in size (and the purpose of Android One is to capture the huge swathes who cannot or will not pay more than $100).
To put it another way, in the case of a phone, the only decision to make is which phone to buy. When it comes to a watch or other wearable, though, there is another question that has to be answered first: do I even want to buy one at all.
This additional question will make wearables a much more difficult market for Android to crack. Instead of simply making available an item the customer needs to buy at a low price, the wearable maker must first demonstrate a reason to buy into the category in the first place, and only then does price come into play. Moreover, any item that is purchased because you want it is a sort of luxury good, at least relative to something you buy because you need it, which by extension means the percentage of buyers who will prefer a premium option will be much greater. This is the primary reason why Android’s tablet share is much less than its phone market share, and its usage share lower still.
This is why I feel Android's dominance is heavily over-valued. Sure, they have a ton of phones activated and running some version of Android, but in terms of expanding into different tech markets, or selling premium goods, or even repairing the growingly glaring issues with the Android ecosystem (malware and horrid update rates being chief among them) I suspect Android is approaching a wall that Apple - maybe even Microsoft - will coast around.
More significantly, Apple is loosening some of the restrictions on third-party applications to allow them to interact with each other more easily. In older versions of iOS, only third-party apps and services "blessed" by Apple (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) could easily upload and share pictures and other files from most apps via the Share menu. In iOS 8, people who want to post a picture directly from the camera roll to Google+ should be able to, as will anyone who wants to upload a Word document from Office Mobile to Dropbox.
Developers will also get an API to add widgets to Notifications Center, system-wide third-party keyboards (hello, Swype), and an API for the TouchID sensor. Apps can use TouchID for logins and to organize user data, but developers will not get direct access to the fingerprint data itself. Apple revealed that it is developing a network protocol, HomeKit, to allow users to control things like garage doors and lights from their iOS devices.
This is a devastating blow to Android, during an already aggressive keynote that poked fun at many of Android's foibles: the awful upgrade rate, the uncontainable spread of malware, and the alarming number of users abandoning the platform. For developers - and power users - the staple advantage of Android over iOS remains its hands-off approach to sharing data between apps, which is nifty for services that integrate with other apps, i.e. DropBox with a photo app. iOS, until now, walled off everything, so data could only be shared over the internet, in a terribly roundabout, limited manner.
Allowing "widgets" to inhabit the Notification Center allows for a customizable experience that previously was a signature of Android. Even the keyboard can be replaced.
Handing the adult keys to developers means iOS will start to feel like a phone that simply does everything, rather than a phone that runs apps that all do something on their own.
Moreover, Apple got to flex their hardware-software muscles in Google's faces, with simply brilliant integrations with OS X. Using the phone as a relay, Mac devices can use the phone as a hotspot with reportedly no setup. Moreover, SMS Messages and phone calls can be sent and received from a Mac, so there's no need to keep both devices on hand. Google doesn't even have a major operating system capable of doing this, whereas Microsoft has abysmal Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 numbers to contend with. This feature is exclusively, and unmistakably, Apple.
Similarly unique was the introduction of Swift and Metal, two software technologies that will further the quality gap between iOS and Android. The default programming language for iOS/OS X - Objective C - is old and cumbersome, as is the default language for Android, Java. Employing a new, simpler language automates the tedium of coding apps, which is great news for everyone. Metal, a new graphics interface, promises to yield free performance boosts by leveraging Apple's innate understanding of their own devices - which would be downright impossible for Google to attempt, given the myriad devices and OSs within their ecosystem. The result is games just plain looking, feeling, and playing better on iOS. Yet another exclusive weapon in Apple's arsenal.
What a spectacular conference!
When video games first entered into our world as a source of entertainment, designers didn’t really have trouble attracting people to their products. A lot of designers figured out that the best mechanic for players to “feel good” about playing their game was a makeshift currency system called “points”. For the sake of argument, I’ll be referring to this kind of design choice as a system of possessions; because, in essence, the player is accruing objects (abstract or otherwise) to give their player character a purpose.
Games like Pong and Pac-Man used pure systems of possession to make games addictive and fun through multiple play-throughs, since, at the time, there wasn’t a reliable way to introduce other ways of drawing players in. Narratives weren’t capable of being formed fully, and most levels were limited to only 5 or so variations. Therefore, in order to keep things fresh, these systems of possession were put in place to keep people playing games.
The trick of this all comes when systems of progress were introduced. Think about your average Metroidvania or Zelda-like. The fun of the game is tied not only to the progress of exploration, but also to the progress that comes out of possessing more powerful items. The missiles in Metroid are a great example, because they’re both for progress and possession: they can open all sorts of doors that you couldn’t before, and the more missiles you have, the more equipped you’ll be to tackle tougher situations.
Now, they aren’t equatable, for sure. However, they did become almost interchangeable for a lot of designers, and that’s really problematic.
Think about it: when’s the last time you played a game that didn’t have your progress tied to what kind of possessions you have? It’s actually a really tough question to answer, because games at their core have this really heavily ingrained idea that in order for them to be at all rewarding, their must be something to possess, something to collect, something to have for later reference.
So, what’s the big deal? If almost every game uses possession as a system of progress, why’s that a problem?
Well, because then it gets applied to every aspect of game design. Most AAA games fail to understand that progress shouldn’t be intertwined with possession when it comes to things like relationships. Think Persona: the game asks you to make the right dialogue choices in order to foster better relationships faster. You gain better demons to use in battle when you answer correctly a number of times, and if you fuck up, you might have problems leveling up that arcana later. Thus, you’re forced into this really sociopathic method of choosing the right dialogue options instead of building the character up at all.
The worst offender here might just be the Mass Effect series, particularly 3. Romance plays out as this fucked up system of possession and progress where you seduce a member of your crew and try to sex them up. There’s no obvious incentive to do so, however, there are hidden incentives: there’s an achievement, there are hidden costumes you can unlock, and hey, the game practically tells you to do so in your downtime. And you can’t romance more than one character, because you’re trying to “level” this romance up. You pour a certain amount of time into one character, and they reward you with awkward sexytimes.
Hopefully, I don’t need to outline why that’s totally fucked, but just so it’s a little clearer: a designer should not be making romance into a mechanic just for the sake of doing so. It should be taken with a certain amount of care, and there needs to be consideration for what’s at stake. One shouldn’t get rewarded for “finishing” a relationship, nor should one feel that there is benefit in fostering only one relationship. Possession as a mechanic has nothing to do with relationship dynamics, and since games have possession as a constant mechanic for the most part, it’s been really difficult for designers to even think about implementing that change.
But, hey, consider: please do.
A couple of arguments:
(Yes, missiles is spelled wrong. Not what I'm getting at.)
The point system was likely never intended to reward the player, but to put their accomplishments in perspective. This is especially true for single-action games such as PONG, Space Invaders, Asteroids, i.e. games with a singular challenge and functionality.
This all changed with Donkey Kong, which while bearing a points system (not unlike most Mario games TODAY), doesn't establish progress by points as much as by player height. People across the room with no exposure to Donkey Kong, or video games in general, could appreciate the height of Jump Man and his proximity to Donkey Kong, and thus they immediately appreciate the progress of the player.
Additionally, Donkey Kong featured different levels and obstacles, yet another way to conceptualize progress beyond points. Points, I'd argue, were reserved to comparing player progress competitively, thus the all-telling High Scores list. My point being, points - the seemingly iconic form for rewarding a player with possession - were intended as a progress-marker, not a reward in-and-of itself.
As for progress serving as reward, The Legend of Zelda did this first (in no small part by ditching the points system altogether). It also did so exceedingly well, arguably better than more recent entries in the series; Skyward Sword comes to mind.) There, progress is not just a reward, but the very act of the playing the game correctly. The game is not locked down in any arbitrary way, thus all exploration is a form of progress. Amazing how games have soundly regressed from this model.
As for Mass Effect, we need to stop heralding that series as the model for storytelling and character-building in games. It's not a masterclass in either. It's legitimate writing talent distilled into AAA gaming goo for mass-consumption. The "relationship" system IS, in essence, a "Meet-and-F*ck" choose-your-own-adventure where sex is the prize. That being said, it fits the narrative. Shepard doesn't fall in love with any of his crewmates, and vice versa. Sex in Mass Effect is about stress-relief. Nothing more. While that might indicate that Shepard views his partners as objects, the same is true likewise. I'd rather have superficially unfulfilling relationships portrayed in games than superficially perfect ones.

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The popularity of the game, which Nguyen revealed to The Verge generates on average $50,000 per day from in-app ads, appears to have had its negatives. "My life has not been as comfortable as I was before," says Nguyen. "I couldn’t sleep."
The bigger headline here is how on Earth "Flappy Bird", which from any mature perspective, was intended to be a personal, tiny project to exist in the outer fringes of the App Store, go so damn popular. It wasn't the first of its kind (I even played a similar game called "Helicopter" on the first color cell phone), nor was it the best. It was just...popular.
"Interview" with Microsoft's new CEO, Satya Nadella
"In a software powered role, what's a better place than Microsoft to take all this human potential we have and apply it to a world that's rapidly becoming software-driven," Nadella said. "That opportunity is what fundamentally drives me and got me to raise my hand for this job."
Satya Nadella is an excellent choice to lead Microsoft, provided the company is willing to embrace a more behind-the-scenes, high-tech role in the Internet industry, rather than continuing (fruitlessly) to compete within the computer industry with Apple, Google and Linux server.
Coming from a background rooted in web-technologies and enterprise-class software, Nadella is a stark contrast to outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer, who was (at his heart) a salesman. Taciturn, humble, always thinking a sentence ahead, it's hard to imagine the same minds that elected him to the hot seat had similar expectation of Ballmer. He's expected to direct the company under one banner, not just maximize today's profits.
Again, excellent choice.