Uhhh. . . that's not even remotely correct. The core cast of characters—which is, by the way, far larger than what many other developers have to offer—are the most published, but by no means the only ones published.

That's exactly it, really. As polished as every aspect of the best selling MOBAs are, it's just longer than I usually want to play. If I knew that a match wouldn't go over 30 minutes, for example, I probably would have sunk a lot more time in them. A little ironic, really.

This is one of my favorite recent animes. The entire thing is a satirical deconstruction, as you mentioned, of the archetypal roles of villain and hero and Japanese, but also of the tropes which very often pop up in anime. The whole "epic struggle between the Dark Lord and the Forces of Light," which is exactly what…

I actually quite liked Apocalypse, though there were flaws. The big problem was that it didn't feel like a finished game . . . precisely because it wasn't a finished game. They had to cut out several features they had been working on. Oh well.

Yeah, it's a bit of retconning, just like how Enemy Unknown did a fair bit.…

What was?

I'm agreeing with Owen here. There's a level of abstraction with user interface that you really need to maintain. Otherwise you run into some amount of dissonance between what you "ought" to be able to do and what you actually can do. With a gun controller, aiming may be more intuitive (depending on how good of a shot…

Call me blind, but I'm not seeing you talk about a division between games and online interaction. But it's not really important either way, we agree on this point.

Not going to agree with you on the 2nd point. There is a distinct difference between something done out of compulsion—i.e. going to work—and something done…

Well, keep us posted if you pursue it further :)

That's a good point, but anonymous online interaction is not the same as gaming. Some games have that online components, others don't. Likewise, a great deal of online interaction exists outside of games.

Further research is absolutely warranted, as is civility, but let's not confound what we are talking about here.

Th…

I wonder how she would have felt knowing where the beef she ate came from. Or if she would be willing to kill the cow herself.

Well, all's the better. Wonderful how we all cherish dialogue and discussion, isn't it?

Oh GOSH the D&D scare. That was fun :)

Link to the publication?

To begin with, most Americans are religious, and most religious Americans are Christian. That's neither good nor bad, it just is.

Also, I'd LOVE you number breakdown on your "100x" figure. I'd also love a nuanced and balanced discussion on how you plan to parse out what deaths were caused by religion as opposed to…

Umm. . . it's really not that simple. The role of politics, general (not religiously confined) bigotry, and simple in-group out-group bias are not to be understated when we're talking about the wars and genocides of history. Blaming religion for the atrocities of the human race is just as as silly as blaming "the…

And that folk, is an ad hominem. Not to be confused with an actual argument.

I'd be careful here. Plenty of things make people mad. I get mad when my commute takes too long, or when I sleep through my alarm, or when another character I like dies on the Game of Thrones. And that's okay. Anger and frustration are valid emotions and can be expressed constructively. . . say through a video game. .…

*sigh* And generalizations and straw man arguments do not a logical statement make.

It really depends. In the more secular areas—New England, the West Coast, and most major cities—you don't really ever see this. It's just not acceptable unless, as you mentioned, a religious figure is being interviewed on a topic pertaining to religion. In highly religious areas . . . that's a different story. The…

Blizzard has done this kind of thing for decades. One of my favorites was the probe in SC 1 quoting the orc from the original Warcraft.