Quotulatiousness

July 4, 2014

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:32

My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. Living Story Season Two began on Canada Day this week … so my Canadian friends were heavily represented in game right as the new content launched. So far, we’ve only seen a small section of the new region, but it’s been a lot of fun to explore. In addition, there’s the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.

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June 30, 2014

Guild Wars 2 – The Living Soundtrack

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:01

Published on 30 Jun 2014

Guild Wars 2 composer Maclaine Diemer gives a sneak peak of the soundtrack for Season Two, which was performed and recorded by a live orchestra in Germany.

To know more about the Living World of Guild Wars 2, make sure to regularly check the Releases page of the website: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/

June 27, 2014

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:06

My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. The Festival of the Four Winds is finally drawing to a close, and the Living Story Season Two debuts on July 1st. We’ve been getting a few cryptic hints about what’s ahead, in the form of a teaser video and some audio “omens and portents”. In addition, there’s the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.

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June 20, 2014

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:24

My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. The Festival of the Four Winds event continues (and will run through to the end of June), and the Living Story Season Two debuts on July 1st. In addition, there’s the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.

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June 13, 2014

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:29

My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. The Festival of the Four Winds event continues (and will run through the rest of June), and the Living Story Season Two debuts on July 1st. In addition, there’s the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.

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June 9, 2014

QotD: Economic modelling

Filed under: Economics, Gaming, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:03

If we think of ourselves as empiricists who judge the value of the theory on the basis of how well it predicts, then we should have ditched economic models years ago. Never have our models managed with data to predict the major turning points, ever, in the history of capitalism. So if we were honest, we should simply accept that and rethink our approach.

But actually, I think they’re even worse. We can’t even predict the past very well using our models. Economic models are failing to model the past in a way that can explain the past. So what we end up doing with our economic models is retrofitting the data and our own prejudices about how the economy works.

This is why I’m saying that this profession of mine is not really anywhere near astronomy. It’s much closer to mathematized superstition, organized superstition, which has a priesthood to replicate on the basis of how well we learn the rituals.

Yanis Varoufakis, talking to Peter Suderman, “A Multiplayer Game Environment Is Actually a Dream Come True for an Economist”, Reason, 2014-05-30.

June 6, 2014

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:18

My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. The Festival of the Four Winds continues (and will run through the rest of the month). ArenaNet announced that Living Story Season Two will be permanent content, and that they’re hoping to also eventually make the Season One content available through the new Living Story Journal. Season Two debuts on July 1st. In addition, there’s the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.

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June 5, 2014

Silly anti-gaming columnist soundly rebuked by readers

Filed under: Gaming, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

In the Telegraph last week, William Henderson first made it clear that “until recently, I’d never played a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. I’ve dabbled in Call of Duty on the Xbox, but that’s as far as it got.” Having gotten that out of the way, he then launched into a condemnation of the very games he admits he doesn’t play and has already explicitly admitted he knows very little about:

… I felt like Neo at the end of The Matrix when he sees the shimmering green code of the system, and finally realises the true nature of the prison for his mind.

I won’t name the game in question: there’s no need – so many of them feature similar ways of getting the gamer hooked. Is it cynical of me that I no longer view video games as a means of innocuous pleasure? Definitely. But that cynicism is entirely justified: it’s a reflection of the nature of video games today. As I’ve previously written about, games today tend to reward repetition rather than skill, and gone is the social element where guys would go round each other’s house and actually be in each other’s company. The more successful you want to be at video games nowadays, the more you need to be a hermit.

This is not to say that I begrudge gamers – everyone needs their downtime. However, the key word here is ‘success’. I’m tired of seeing capable, talented young men numb themselves out from the world in a cocoon of fake achievement. I’m tired of how their reward for completing utterly meaningless tasks is another load of worthless digital points – and more meaningless tasks. I’m tired of how the biological mechanisms which ensured their survival and evolutionary success are being hijacked to make them slaves to their own mind.

I rarely bother to read the comments on any site, but I was impressed with the quality of the comments here:

Gaming article comments 1

Gaming article comments 2

Gaming article comments 3

May 30, 2014

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:29

My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. The Festival of the Four Winds continues (and will run through the month of June). ArenaNet gave us a teaser about the start of the Living Story Season Two … a single image with the date July 1st. In addition, there’s the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.

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May 23, 2014

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:15

My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. The Festival of the Four Winds is underway, which is a return of some content from a very popular event last year, plus the Crown Pavilion in Divinity’s Reach. In addition, there’s the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.

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May 16, 2014

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:36

My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. ArenaNet has finally broken their uncharacteristic radio silence since the release of the April Feature Pack, and announced the “Festival of the Four Winds” to celebrate this week’s full release of the Chinese version of Guild Wars 2. In addition, there’s the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.

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May 14, 2014

Turning pixel weapons into bronze and steel

Filed under: Gaming, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:41

I thought this Geek & Sundry project might be interesting. It’s called Arcade Arms and the idea is they take a weapon from an online game and try to create a real-world version, then use that to see what kind of damage you can do with it. The first episode is about a massively oversize mace from the game Elder Scrolls Online:

Published on 13 May 2014

Jake Powning shows Nika Harper how to forge the Mace of Molag Bal, featured in The Elder Scrolls series. Then Andre Sinou shows her how much damage a mace can really do!

Get Elder Scrolls Online for yourself: http://www.elderscrollsonline.com

In Arcade Arms Nika brings gaming into real life by taking the most potent digital weapons, from Final Fantasy XIV‘s Gae Bolg to Elder Scrolls Online‘s Mace of Molag Bal, and smashing things with their real life counterparts.

Real world downer note: most single-handed weapons were significantly lighter than this fantasy mace: it clocks in at 35 pounds, which is a lot more weight than you’d be able to swing in a real fight (their combat demonstrator also points this out … and note how much smaller the examples he shows are compared to the “Mace of Molag Bal”).

I’d hoped there would be more “how we made this” footage, but I understand the majority of the audience only really want to see how much damage the weapon can do…

May 9, 2014

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:23

My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. ArenaNet has continued to be unusually quiet since the release of the April Feature Pack, but last week’s release of the Chinese version of Guild Wars 2 is undoubtedly keeping them very busy indeed. In addition, there’s the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.

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May 2, 2014

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:28

My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. ArenaNet has been unusually quiet since the release of the April Feature Pack, but they’re not sleeping: this week saw the release of the Chinese version of Guild Wars 2. In addition, there’s the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.

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April 25, 2014

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:01

My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. All zones have now been transitioned to the Megaserver, and players are still chewing over the various elements of last week’s Feature Pack. In addition, there’s the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.

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