Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

recent posts

about

An Australian statistician and role-player living in Japan, interested in the theory and practice of role-playing…

Category: computer games

  • A New Reactor at Fukushima

    It’s 1943, and in honour of the Japanese recovery from the Great Hanshin Earthquake I have installed my first nuclear reactor at Fukushima. We are, of course, talking Hearts of Iron 2 here. I’ve captured China and established the Empire of the Sun God (better names accepted) and I’ve also installed a rocket research facility…

  • Current Gaming: Hearts of Iron 2 As Japan

    I can’t find much information online about how to win Hearts of Iron as Japan, so I thought I’d try it again for myself. I played once before, and got all the way to 1944 before it all collapsed in a heap. The reason that time was that I failed to plan certain things properly…

  • Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – Warcraft Style

    The issue of gender inclusivity in gaming has been around the traps for as long as gaming, and is something I’ve discussed on this blog before. One of the main reasons for this in both the computer and table-top gaming world is the images that are used, which signify gaming as a man’s world where…

  • Current gaming: The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness

    This game gets added to the small list of games I have managed to complete, so it enters the hallowed halls alongside Baldur’s Gate 2, Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich and Halo. It’s a short, horror/comedy game apparently based on a comic book from Penny Arcade, and is completely hilarious from the opening moment.…

  • Grindin’ for Gygax

    I am a regular reader of and occasional commenter at the left-wing political/academic blog Crooked Timber, though I don’t usually link my blog to them (the American political blogsophere is a bit scary). Recently, however, I discovered this post on the new Dante’s Inferno computer game, where anonymous commenter noen makes this great claim: The…

  • On the mischaracterisation of role-players as escapist loonies

    Over at Terra Nova there is news of the release of a study conducted with the help of Sony, which is essentially a large survey of MMO users’ role-playing style, their attitude towards the game, mental health and degree of social exclusion. It’s an interesting attempt to characterise the qualities of MMO players by their…

  • The Internet, 10 years ago

    I found this through Monsters and Manuals, a website devoted to people kicking their World of Warcraft Habit. Nothing special! I hear you say – but it has a number for a suicide help line, and check out the comments. 2250 pages of them. Here’s a sample: It’s no game anymore it’s like a gigantic…

  • Current Gaming: The Witcher

    I received The Witcher for christmas 2 years ago from my Australian friend and his Polish girlfriend, who live in Amsterdam. At the time my laptop couldn’t handle it so I put it aside, but since I completed the dark ritual of invoking the elder gods, I seem to have developed strange new powers of…

  • In place of Japanese Reading, Randomised Block Experiments

    I use a Japanese social networking site called Mixi, that is a kind of blogging/photo uploading/community/facebook style site all rolled into one, minus (mostly) the spam weirdness of facebook, with a lot more privacy settings and slightly more obtrusive advertising. Recently I have been roped into playing a farming game with my friends, called Sunshine…

  • So many bullets, so little time…

    The Guardian has a Friday article about which computer game its readers would most like to see deleted from History. Amusing points from this article: a surprising number of people hate Halo Guardian readers say really nasty things about people they don’t like WoW is seen by some commenters as a nasty influence on computer…