Rythe

The story of God and humanity. Homecoming - Luke Chapter 15 Sermon by Erwin McManus, Mosaic Church Streaming Link and Direct File Link

Well, I should have done this a week or three ago. It was something I badly needed to hear when I first heard it. A Place Called Home - Ruth Chapters 1 - 4 Sermon by Erwin McManus, Mosaic Church. Streaming Link and Direct File Link

It's been too long since this forum has been used, so let me offer an interim service. No Waiting For Daylight - 2 Kings 7:3 - 16 Sermon by Erwin McManus, Mosaic Church. Streaming Link and Direct File Link

Well, since we went there... The www.eff.org writers make a good writeup on why the TPP would enact policy that has the teeth of the DMCA in the US (and then some) without many of the protections or the ability to adjust domestic policy appropriately to the times, tech, and conditions because international trade agreements don't work like that. And then the TPP goes further in areas like putting liability on ISPs to do something about copyright complaints. For us little guys, there's a lot to say that the TPP will be worse that what the US currently enjoys.

I've wandered past some news about the TPP as a mere trade agreement and had to come to the conclusion that it's one most muddied bit of politicis I've seen in a long time - so much disinformation. I should have known that was a bad sign when combined with a few other things. But I hadn't seen any mention of the intellectual property rights provisions before, so thanks for bringing this up Adair. On the quick browse, https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp seems to be a good writeup of the issues without being particularly partisan about it.

Down to the River is Christian themed at least. Kind of a Folk/Slave Hymn with muddy appearing origins. The version sang here is a bit more Christian than older versions.

My standouts from Seasons 7 and 8 of The Voice. There's quite a few other Christian songs that've had great performances on the show too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHQStBH2TXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amxE80Zj1Ys

Skype is a bit obnoxious these days, but it works and I've no preference. I keep saying I mean to stick my nose into these things, but the moment always escapes me for one reason or another - I've been occupied and away the past week or so, for instance - but I'll try to keep an eye open for this one. And generally speaking, I'm flexible on the day and time.

The easy connection between the various agencies and their scandals is the operating attitudes and beliefs among them. Also humanity. Also command structure. But this is politics, Foxbunny, where the so-called smart practice of dealing with problems is to tell as little of the truth as possible and hope the widespread response doesn't go too badly against you. A sober, honest and comprehensive root cause analysis of the various acts of corruption coming from the US government would likely give us the reasons these problems are happening, and would let us identify and target those root causes in the various agencies, or at least gives us the odds on which agency is going to give us the next failure. That sober, honest and comprehensive root cause analysis is not going to happen though, and so your desire for comprehensive and sure data is naive and futile. It's a case where the certainty and clarity you want will never happen, so we have to settle with trend analysis and best guesses given the available data. In other words, the reality is almost certainly worse than we can definitively say it is, and we should account for that. There is also a lot we have to try and infer here, and we should try to infer what we can. And in other words, it's all a bit of a crapshoot. If a conservative source is wrong about something, that doesn't mean they lied, it means their analysis was off (assuming analysis situation or their sources were wrong, and maybe used the word 'promised' inappropriately which is a thing political types and sales types do). And you're misrepresenting the ACA thing, given that it gave Pres Obama the political lie of the year award, and given that it was the duty of the people selling and presenting the bill to understand what was in that bill and what it would do. (It was also the duty of the reps voting on the bill to understand it before passing it). That's not a case of best analysis on available data, that's a case of having all the data available and either lying outright, or giving claims about something they did not know. Somebody did a lot of lying with the ACA, if at least the people who wrote the thing and didn't tell anyone otherwise when all the false claims were coming out. Also this. Nextly, I first presented the idea that the 'General Conduct' clause is rife with potential for abuse, which it is. It's basically giving the FCC veto power over any ISP practice, which is basically giving the FCC the ability to set any ISP practice, which is basically giving the FCC the ability to run all ISPs in large part. They have to justify it based on a number of standards, but really, the government at large is justifying just about anything it pleases on the flimsiest of pretexts these days. See abuses of Imminent Domain laws and what people are saying the Constitution really means. As a part of said government, the FCC likely will join those ranks, but the real problem is that the FCC is giving themselves this power that is rife with the potential for abuse and misuse in the first place. Thenly, I presented the idea that this will morph into an Orwellian anti-'hate speech' setup. Is that certain? No. Is that likely? Depends on your analysis. Is it possible? Well, much, much more than it use to be, which is an aspect of the real problem above. And if that isn't a valid merit on the FCC's decision, then why not? And speaking of the FCC's recent decision and new slew of regulations being unnecessary and a bad idea - it looks like the FCC might have decided to break internet streaming, whether they realized it or not. See this.

A number of things. The evidence is comprehensive that the IRS targeted conservative organizations in a way well outside the norm, and in a way that differed considerably from liberal organizations and their other allies/associates at the same time. The IRS, in effect, punished political enemies. Secondly, all government agencies are government agencies. If there is something effecting government agencies across the board, then it follows and is valid to say that said something can and likely will effect any government agency. Maybe not necessarily, but I did present it as a wager, which is asking people to play the odds here. I am saying the odds I'm right are good, of course, and in that case, it is prudent to raise an awareness and maybe effect a change that would alter the situation to something more desirable or favorable to all of us. Nextly, it's not the 'Affordable Care Act', it's 'the US government lies to us'. Although now that you bring it up in the general case, it is another wonderful example of expecting us to form a comprehensive opinion on something we know far too little about before it becomes law/regulation, and in the case of the ACA, that mystery turning into something full of problems and things we were told it wasn't going to be. Also unconstitutional. Also going against a certain campaign promise and general claim to 'transparency'. If the trend follows, the FCC's new regulations for the internet are going to be full of issues too. Not necessarily, which is your point, but why should we bet otherwise when that's the way it's been going? Which is my point. If you want to play it that absolute certainty is the only game in town worth talking about, then that's your deal, but that's not the world I'm living in.

This is where your argument instruction works against you, Foxbunny. The slippery slope might be a fallacy in the realm of pure logic. But it is also a very real phenomenon in humanity. It's observed in gateway drugs, the progression of soft porn to hard porn, and the progression of tyranny. There's multiple aspects of the psyche at play. One being tolerance build up to stimuli. Another being the fallacy that a little bit of something being good means a lot of that something must be very good. Admittedly, the first two are primarily about stimuli and tolerance, but with tyranny, people build up a tolerance to oppression in incremental steps. Oppression is a means for those who are in power to get what they want, which creates a positive feedback loop where more oppression seems the best way to get more of what they want. And when I look at the rampant corruption coming from the US Government, that slippery slope of tyranny seems to be very much in play. Which is what I tried to explain/present in my second post here. And which is why you claiming slippery slope fallacy isn't what you think it is. -edit- And thank you, I do appreciate the apology.

Well, Foxbunny, let me put it this way. You claim to be certified to teach argument, and sure, I'll believe you there. What that means is that you should know what constitutes a sound argument and what creates a logical fallacy or otherwise unsound argument. You should be better than me at picking these things out. So if I'm able to pick logical fallacies out of what you say all the time, that says something. The biggest possibilities being that you don't know what you're talking about and I'm better at your job than you are, or you are fully aware that you are using unsound arguments, or I'm mistaken. No one has put forth the case that I'm mistaken in the vast majority of these moments, mostly besides you, and I've been able to demonstrate that you're mistaken about me being mistaken most of the times you try. And given the consistency of these things, I get the feeling that it's intentional. I have a hard time believing someone can be that unaware of what they're saying when they try to dig into the details. But generally speaking, there's lazy, there's unawares, there's zealotry, and then there's intentional. I don't believe you're that lazy and you've made a claim suggesting you're not unawares, so that leaves the last two. My preference then is to go with intentional. I'm not trying to slander you here, Foxbunny, I'm merely going with what you've presented and claimed and following those things where they lead me.

That actually makes it worse, Foxbunny, because now I believe you have the training to understand the tactics you are using. It's also a bit of confirmation that you have been intentional in your repeated use of them. I looked up a list of logical fallacies the other day and realized that some can be a matter of perspective and ignorance, but the basic problem is this - if you use the tactics of manipulation and falsehood, what does that say of you if not your position? It might be a slick move to pull one over on someone in a debate, but you did not win that moment on the basis of truth and honestly, and in a real debate on real matters that shape people's perspective on the world around them, truth and honesty are the only things that matter. To intentionally use logical fallacies is to make the people around you worse for your contributions. We are not here to win the debate; we are here to reach a common consensus that reflects the world around us in a true and useful way. A great deal of the reason I find your contributions annoying is because the logical fallacies obfuscate and prolong that process. Which is a great deal of the reason I focus on how you present your case. On one hand, if you are wrong in your logic, then the conclusions you reach based on that logic are also wrong. Your position might be right ultimately, but if you cannot get us there by honest and true means, then it's not actually helpful to those around you, because when someone like me comes around and destroys the argument that belief rests on, their belief is also destroyed. On the other hand, attacking how you argue is an attempt to show you where you have gone astray and made mistakes so you can reevaluate and adjust to a sound frame of mind that better reflects the reality of the thing we are discussing. And this would explain why that hasn't worked with you.

Well, I did explain one thing rather wrongly, which added some confusion, so sorry about that. And not that it's going to help, but what I meant about your arguments that tire me are ones that are variations on the 'Black or White' fallacy, or in the above case, just a black fallacy. Where the argument creates the presumption of a single answer and is framed in a way that it seems reasonable, but the reality is very different than what the presumption and framework suggests. These types of logical fallacies are slippery, which vexes me. I also have to spend time deconstructing the framework of the argument, which usually takes more effort, which also vexes me in the case of it being yet another logical fallacy to deal with. So put that paragraph in place of 'utterly disconnected from the discussion/situation at hand'. I was just having a hard time encapsulating it before. And I'm sorry for being shorter with you than I should be, but I would also really appreciate it if you stopped with the logical fallacies, Foxbunny.

Where was this game when I was twelve? And, uh, who's actually played this Sonic Successor that we've all been quietly hoping and waiting for?

Oh, one other thing I'm tired of seeing is you frame your arguments in a way that there's only one answer but also in a way that's utterly disconnected from the discussion/situation at hand. In support of your misguided notion that 'all' corporations 'want' a monopoly, you asked me to name a corporation that was glad for new competition that resulted in profit loss. While I could easily find a gaming company that was happy there were other gaming companies out there (which are competition), the nub of your argument rests on the question of whether anyone is glad when they lose money, and generally speaking, no one is. So in your framework, anyone who regrets money loss must want a monopoly, and that simply is not true. If for no other reason than some of those people realize that a monopoly can result in the loss of more money (if the monopoly goes against them) and a loss in prosperity in general (because monopolies trend toward incompetence, inefficiency, stagnation, etc).

Well, the problem with your alphabet soup argument, Foxbunny, is that the FCC is the same as all the rest in that they are all government agencies. And when we can (and have) started going down the list and are able to say 'This one is corrupt, this one is mired in malfeasance, and this one is showing contempt to the citizens...' and on and on and on, then the burden of proof shifts to you as to why the FCC is any different than the rest of the alphabet soup. The other problem is that I already mentioned an incident where the FCC, in specific, has fumbled in regards to free speech in such a dumb way for an agency whose job is to know better. It's annoying that you ignored it and I have to remind you, but fine, try looking up the part where the FCC tried to stick government officials in news rooms across the US. Again, the burden of proof is on you here. I've already done it for my side. Yet another aspect of the situation that your argument is ignoring is that the FCC is doing something new here. What worked before between the FCC and the internet is no longer going to be operative, so their past track record isn't going to be the answer you want it to be. Analysis and speculation of what is going to happen going forward is entirely warranted and prudent, and that is what I have provided while much of your argument is mired in what has gone on in the past, that again, is no longer going to be operative. The fourth problem you're ignoring that I already explained is the trajectory of our political class and our government in general. Nothing exists in vacuum, as much as you might like to argue otherwise. What goes on across that vast alphabet soup likely has common root causes, and those root causes can, have, and almost certainly will continue to effect the FCC as any other agency. To believe otherwise is the foolish choice. And touching on intent and fear mongering, what is your intent with your demonization of corporations, Foxbunny? Is it for people to share you paranoia? You think I should trust government more? Why don't you consider that frame of mind from the perspective of anyone else watching you continue to speak of corporations as the root of all evil? But even teasing a basis of 'intent' as anything like valid disgusts me. People do terrible things with the best of intentions all the time, and it crops up rather consistently in the analysis of failed government programs. But case in point with you in specific is your misguided belief that 'all' corporations 'want' a monopoly. There is a great deal of literature and opinion against monopolies in general, much of which comes from free market think tanks, much of whom have corporate funding. Is it really so hard to believe that some of the people in corporations, even the people leading those corporations, don't like monopoly systems as a matter of basic self-interest and social conscience? Here is just one of the many examples that disproves your little 'fact' - The Cato Institute with it's long list of corporate sponsors and donors. A second example is John Mackey, co-CEO of Whole Market Foods, who is an outspoken supporter of Free Market economics. There are many people who believe market competition is healthy and leads to a better economy which creates not only a better society, but an environment where said corporations have greater stability and more opportunities for future growth and further profit. So before these real facts, isn't your belief that 'all' corporations 'want' a monopoly simple, misguided fear mongering, Foxbunny? Also, It'd be nice if you brandied about 'facts' that weren't so preposterous and easy to disprove. And it's quite ironic that you would spend words on people confusing opinion with fact when you are one of those people, isn't it?

Let me answer your point 2, because there at least, you've overlooked what I said. It's an easy and lazy defense to say your opponents are doing nothing but 'fear mongering'. I could say that about the Global Warming Alarmism crowd, and while I think it's true, simply leaving it at that is insufficient and not a real argument. To make a valid point, I would also have to get into the effects of CO2, the history of CO2 levels, the flaws in the models that support the Alarmism crowd, the history of the climate in general, and should especially talk about the solutions being offered and their effects on the situation. But to the FCC matter, I did not simply say 'these horrible things could happen because government'. I said 'these things could happen because they already have and continue to happen within the US government'. So to your claim of fear mongering, I should ask you at what point does rampant, obvious, and publicly documented corruption matter? And I haven't even brought up the Affordable Care Act, the Google-CIA-NSA spying story, and the Benghazi story where the US government is on record for lying to us. -edit- Oh, and one other point. The problem isn't that some companies are trying to stop cooperating which would segment the internet, because that is a situation people won't put up with. The problem is that some companies are trying to put toll roads into the internet and some are using extortion to do it, which said companies might get away with if people don't know about it. The other thing is not all corporations want monopolies, and that is not a fundamental aspect of their design but more a reflection of general human greed and powerlust that can infect anything. There you simply are fear mongering, so I suggest if you want to use the tactic, don't try to call other people out on it at the same time. You are right that cooperation is what has helped the internet be what it is today, you are also right that the FCC has kept a light touch on internet things and it has worked up until this point. The problem is, again, that the FCC have decided not to use that light touch anymore. Instead, they have decided that they need to be in the middle of everything, that they need to have much greater control because their previous light touch was too successful or something. This net neutrality/toll road thing is another moment where a light touch is all that is needed, but they have decided to do something much, much more involved instead.

Which is why I've been specifying ISPs, Foxbunny. But let me spell out how this could work, and likely will given the quality of our political establishment these days. There's an "impact on free expression" piece to the "general conduct" rules. Now normally, we'd go "Ahah! Freedom of expression is protected!", but the reality is very different. Case in point are US universities, which are suppose to be havens for discourse and debate but some have taken up the practice of designating small, out of the way 'free speech zones' for the discourse and debate that they feel will make some students uncomfortable. Some others have made blanket 'hate speech' rules where certain opinions aren't considered 'free speech' and excluded from the classrooms and such. So what we have here is 'freedom of expression' in theory, in lipservice, because it only applies when it's convenient to the people in power. If that's the approach our universities are starting to take, even public universities, how much do you think our Freedom of Expression is really going to mean in the near future? The other problem is the 'yelling fire in a crowded theater' exemption to our right to the Freedom of Expression. If there is no fire, you're breaking the law, as doing so can cause injury and such. It's an exemption based on public safety, and it's an exemption that some are trying to turn into an exemption for what they consider 'hate speech'. And since ISPs are and will continued to be allowed to filter out bot and criminal traffic (as far as I know), it's a very small step for the US government regulators to have them filter out 'terrorist websites' and then it will be a small step for them to filter out 'hate websites' both of which will sometimes have the funny habit of resembling the websites of political opponents at some point in the future. It's not suppose to happen that way, but our political class won't be able to help themselves. See the IRS scandal of recent years. Which is another part of the problem. This general conduct rule may work in the hands of the right people, but in the hands of government underlings, there will be people who twist and abuse it to their own ends. For the most part, over time, they'll get away with it too. See 'activist judges'. So once the FCC creates the capability to regulate how the ISPs regulate content, these things will happen at some point in the future, mark my words. The short version of the because is that it's already happened in other government entities. If the IRS scandal wasn't enough, you can check out what the EPA has been up to. If that isn't enough, check out the time the FCC itself tried to place government monitors in news rooms for 'research'. - Now let me answer a part of the reason internet in the US is lagging behind parts of the developed world. First of all, the US has had to go through pretty much all the growing pains, from Dialup to DSL to Cable to Satellite to Cellular to the future. That's a lot of investment in temporary tech. Secondly, the US is a massive chunk of land with a very dispersed population. It's easy for nations like Japan and Taiwan to put in the latest and greatest when they're the size of Texas (at worst), have very dense population centers, and have a very tech-centric culture, as opposed to, say, the situation in the actual Texas, nevermind the whole of the US. The infrastructure investment in the places the US is often compared to was very small with a much greater return than what the US has to deal with, so it's not a valid comparison. Thirdly, let's go back to that FCC piece. Isn't it ironic that the ISPs are taking over the phone business with their digital offerings as opposed to the established phone companies taking over the internet business? I submit that a good part of that is that 'ISPs' wren't regulated nearly as hard as the established phone companies. Fourthly, Cell Phones have not 'flourished' under FCC rules. I have Sprint, and the service has this funny habit of bouncing me around towers and kicking me off for mild to moderate data usage, even in areas with 'decent' coverage and 4G capabilities. Most areas are spotty, even when they shouldn't be, and cities the size of Albuquerque still have very limited 4G coverage. It's also far too expensive for what I'm paying for. The only reason cellular services have 'flourished' is because the tech is so useful that the US puts up with the crap, expensive services we have in the states. The reality is that those services are incredibly behind the demand curve for what we do with them and what we want to do with them. I have more faith in and better experiences with cable providers than cellular providers, which is about as big an insult as can be given to a service provider in the US. And given the trends with crap service and government involvement, the government involvement is probably a big part of the 'crap' there. - What should have happened instead of the FCC regulatory takeover thing is a simple, straightforward law that prohibits ISPs from charging content providers for priority access, prohibits ISPs from artificially throttling down transfer speeds for legal content providers, and prohibits ISPs from charging special rates for certain kinds of content. What we got was 300+ pages of mystery that will let naive (at best) politicians dictate the future of the internet in the US. The flip side of the coin is what this situation suggests about our ISPs, that maybe one of the big reasons this is even an issue is because the internet's infrastructure in the US is struggling with the demands that video streaming is placing on it. Which goes back to the expense of covering a piece of land the size of the US with the latest, or even somewhat latest, bit of ISP tech. The money has to come from somewhere. - And speaking of monopolies. A healthy capitalistic system would have enough competition that an ISP would never get away with breaking the net neutrality concept. People would flock to the competition in protest, and the government wouldn't have to do anything about it. The situation in the US with ISPs (along with a few other sectors that could be mentioned), is not the picture of a healthy capitalistic system. Not even a little bit. I'm sure someone in the know could go to great lengths on why that is, but that person isn't me. Which is also to say, the government did have to step in a little bit here. But to reiterate, the problem is that instead of stepping in a little bit, the government decided to jump in all the way and go full on, big brother mode with all the horrors that entails.

Not exactly. The part of the US government that regulates our communication and information networks has voted to shift Internet Service Providers under a much stricter regulatory regime. What that means, exactly, has yet to be disclosed as far as I'm aware, but there's 300+ pages of it. Previously, the US government has had very little oversight over what happens in and to the internet, and was largely bound to law enforcement and intelligence gathering activities. So the internet was able to develop as the leaders of the tech saw best without politicians getting in the mix. Soon, the internet will be treated like our telephone services, which seems like it makes sense on the surface, but in effect, has helped make those telephone services mediocre and expensive. Politicians were able to set a lot of operating parameters and guidelines, which stifles things for various reasons. It's also a significant step toward the US government being able to regulate content as happens in China.

It looks like the new FCC regulations are going to go into effect soon, whatever those 300+ pages turn out to be, exactly. Which, as warned by conservative politicians based on how these things typically go, apparently includes a "General Conduct" rule for government oversight of ISPs. So. Who wants to bet on how soon it gets abused? And then who wants to bet on how soon this rule gets morphed into some Orwellian anti-"hate speech" regulation? A semi-brief writeup is here.

The cover part was really, really good. The instruments complimented each other and it was pretty much everything I could have hoped for. My one suggestion would be to do more with the bass line, but that might make it less of a cover? Great choice of song to cover too. The first minute felt like you were demoing sound bites, and I'm not sure I should critique that part? It seemed like you were fiddling around and warming up rather than composing, or maybe you were trying to explore your way up to a theme. The first minute also had the unfortunate affect of reminding me of progressive style music, the kind that layers in instruments and things as time goes on and only gets good at the last quarter or so, which makes me annoyed that I only get a sliver of the good stuff and a lot of the incomplete "we're working on it" on stuff. But great job with the cover! ^^

The ARPG mechanics and visual style of Bastion can throw people, but there was a point where the gameplay just clicked with me, and it was all gravy from there. I thoroughly enjoyed how each level, challenge mission, weapon, and difficulty tweak had a story or cultural aspect associated with it. You found something new, and learned how it all fit into the world that once was. And as much as people complained the visual style was 'cluttered', I appreciated how it was used with the level design and mechanics to showcase a world in the process of falling apart, bit by bit. The narrator aspect of the game directly responding to player actions and thus adding those player actions into the narrative being told was a brilliant touch too. In a lot of ways, your review on The Last Remnant does remind me of FF6, Salem. There's also this reverse design doc on FF6 that digs deep into what that particular game does right, both as a game and medium for a story. It was quite the read. Helped, of course, because I had experienced what it's dissecting. Very insightful on game design and such in general, tho'. Your review also makes me think you would enjoy Disgaea 1: Hour of Darkness. As a side note, you may appreciate Zero Punctuation's take on FF13, Salem, and it compares FF6 to the newer titles in the series. When I say 'Witcher', I really mean Witcher 2. Never played the first, myself, so there was quite the learning curve at the beginning, but once I got over that, enjoyed it much more than Skyrim. There are two endings in Today I Die that I recall. One involves acting at the very end, the other requires inaction. And I forgot to mention the 13 something multiple endings to Chrono Trigger. Given time travel, you get a different ending if you manage to beat the game at specific moments or during specific eras. Puts a fun spin on player action determining the outcome of the story, far more than you usually get. The reverse to that idea played out in Radiant Historia, which I felt was like a Chrono Trigger light (high praise from me). The way Radiant Historia works is that you constantly hit a point where you 'lose' the game, the story ends in a fail state, and then you have to go back in time to change events and circumstances so the story can progress past that fail state towards a 'victory' kind of ending. A bit repetitive if you don't master the skip button, but a very interesting take on telling a story and expanding out events for the player. Much of the above speaks to the question of how video game developers can integrate stories with player action, but there's one bit I wanted to highlight - It's less a choice between a quest and personal story and more how those two things are presented and developed. The 'quest' of today's games is basically the easy way of throwing any character into a situation and have some sort of consistent narrative. As a game design concept, it's intentionally made to work independently of the player's character. That method is easy, but is not nearly as rewarding as a narrative that is dependent on the player's character. For a story with a completely player made character, you basically would have to design a system that reacts and changes itself according to the player character's actions and presence in significant, rewarding, meaningful ways while still funneling them along a plot structure and towards an end state of the story being told. There's a couple ways to do that, but all of them quickly grow into massive, complex undertakings. One is to create NPC characters that react realistically to the situations the player is allowed to present them, and rather than default the end state of those reactions to a very limited set of possibilities, let those reactions build naturally and cascade throughout the game system. The problem here is that the NPCs become obvious machines (guard types) most of the time because it's very difficult to developed them enough to properly tell a story through. Civilizations in strategy games, often represented by some avatar, typically pull off this trick better, but still fall short because there's no overarching narrative entity guiding those reactions along some predefined plot structure. That 'overarching narrative entity' is the piece most often missing in this formula, but I believe games like Left 4 Dead are playing with the concept. A second is to massively expand a finite state narrative structure - the writers account for a specific set of player choices and write in how those choices effect each part of the story. This second option is like a choose your own adventure type novel, only a very, very big one, or the Mass Effect approach. In short, difficulties abound the moment you put a computer in the seat of a human GM type.

The final level of Bastion strikes that balance between gameplay mechanics and storytelling about as good as it gets, and in general, the game wove the two together incredibly well. Also amazing soundtrack. Brothers: The Tale of Two Sons is suppose to be one of those games to play if you want to see what games can do with storytelling as a medium, but it's still on my to-do list. Final Fantasy 6 has some remarkable moments of storytelling given it lived on a SNES cart, the famous Opera Scene for instance, and even added characterization to battle mechanics. But the game is paced JRPG slow and sooo many hours. Still, a wonderful title and wonderfully powerful story if you can get through the gameplay slog. One of the top JRPGs of all time. Which brings me to Chrono Trigger, which tells a delightfully wondrous tale of time travel, sacrifice, and hope. It's actually themed very heavily on things surrounding Christendom, and as far as my opinion is concerned, fixes the typical JRPG slog. As to storytelling mechanics, there's this one scene in the middle of it where your gameplay actions and choices at the very beginning of the game have great impact, and going into the game, you have no idea. It's an eye-opener moment. My favorite JRPG of all time. But even then, I can't say I don't prefer the gameplay updates that Kingdom Hearts did to the formula. There's also an old Tower Defense game named Immortal Defense that did something special in mixing gameplay aspects and the story it wanted to tell. Your towers are aspects of your personality - anger, Id, fear, and the like - for starters, and the rest, well, you'd just have to play through it to experience it. The problem with Myst is that it's expansive and bewildering. There's suppose to be an amazing story there, but unless you're incredibly dedicated or most of the way to a genius (or use a guide, but that kinda defeats it), you'll probably lose the thread of that story trying to get through the puzzles. I'm not that sort of puzzle person, so didn't have the patience myself despite trying a time or two. I much preferred the 'Drawn' series (Dark Flight/Painted Tower) where the puzzles are a pleasant distraction. I do need to play Spec Ops: The Line still. And I really do need to mention Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It's a game that not only tried to ask the question 'What is it to be human?', it tried to make you question yourself as a player by the choices presented via game mechanics. It all fell apart at the boss battles, but eh, certainly met with some success in the general sweep of things. - The type of thing that Direlda is talking about falls under 'Emergent Gameplay' or story in this case. Simple elements combine up to something greater dependent upon the player's actions. It's the narrative we impart on a sequence of events to find meaning, which works very well sometimes, and at other times, unravels a bit at 'On his way to build a castle, Steve blundered into a dark pit and got half-eaten by spiders, then drowned upon breaking into an underground reservoir'. You can spruce those events up any way you like, reach deep into the human experience, but will still be hard-pressed to make a satisfying plot out of them alone. So in that way, such stories can be lacking, or missing some of the elements we look for in a good story. Which has all been said before, but felt like putting my spin on it. - As for the Skyrim piece, I fell into the same problem as you did, Salem. Enjoyable to begin with but lost its way when I found myself spending hours selling junk and wandering the wilds for no particular reason. The narrative structure was too loose, too samey,and easily lost, largely due to the experience presented by the gameplay. I much preferred Witcher's model, although that is a game I'm obligated to say you shouldn't play due to adult content and straightforward pagan themes. - But back to the point of the thread, I think video games as a storytelling medium 'works' when gameplay mechanics are given meaning and import to the story being told. Most gameplay mechanics are completely unhinged from the story the video game is trying to tell, and it's that dissonance between action and narrative that breaks video games as a storytelling medium. World of Warcraft is very good at creating that dissonance sometimes. I remember one quest where you're basically told 'You! Prove you're different than the murderous barbarians slaughtering my people by going out there slaughtering all of them!' That doesn't work, as much as the writers try to hide it behind the world's generally broken morality. The 'trick' is to remove that dissonance between action and narrative, and it's a very hard trick to pull off sometimes. Here's a little ten minute flash diversion as one possible example - Today I Die How well do you think it did as a storytelling medium or experience?

Heh, you should have caught me fifteen or so years ago in my Roleplaying days. We did all sorts of world building and collaborative fiction as said Roleplaying. I regret to say that I don't have the time to commit to it these days with my projects and other doings, but good luck.