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[George_Chickens]

I'd say always?
It's easy to disagree about genre definitions, but even the first games emphasized ammo scarcity, creepy atmosphere, and being surprised by monsters.  Doom 3 was actually a very loyal reimagining in that way, flashlight-thing aside. 

I don't think you can really call Doom's resources scarce. The reason why you lose all your items upon death is because every level in 1 is designed to have more than enough resources to complete from scratch, as said by Romero if I remember correctly.

It uses scarcity, ambushes and vulnerability to create moments of horror, but I'm rather hard pressed to call it a horror game due to its design. Doom especially lacks the de-emphasization of combat and resource management which add the survival to survival horror

Hell, if you take a random level, you generally find more than enough resources to beat it. I picked E1M6, and you get enough shotgun shells to kill every single enemy and still have some left over. And that isn't even including the resources left from prior levels. The higher the difficulty, the more resources you tend to get, depending on the level. Regardless, most often the resources you get are more then enough to take on the entire level.

IMO, that shows a clear design bias to action over survival. This is again reflected in the design of Doom 2 and early megawads, like Plutonia.

[Kagus]

I'd say always?
It's easy to disagree about genre definitions, but even the first games emphasized ammo scarcity, creepy atmosphere, and being surprised by monsters.  Doom 3 was actually a very loyal reimagining in that way, flashlight-thing aside. 

I don't think you can really call Doom's resources scarce. The reason why you lose all your items upon death is because every level in 1 is designed to have more than enough resources to complete from scratch, as said by Romero if I remember correctly.

Hell, if you take a random level, you generally find more than enough resources to beat it. I picked E1M6, and you get enough shotgun shells to kill every single enemy and still have some left over. And that isn't even including the resources left from prior levels. The higher the difficulty, the more resources you get, most often drastically outnumbering the amount of enemies you'll kill. IMO, that shows a clear design bias to action over survival. This is again reflected in the design of Doom 2 and early megawads, like Plutonia.

On lower difficulties you get less supplies, so I guess Doom can have survival horror elements if you really, really suck at it

Thing is, over the years the definition of "Survival Horror" has changed to mean "It is mechanically beneficial to progression if you remain alive. Also there's blood everywhere".

Just take a gander at the games listed under Steam's Survival Horror category and you'll see what I mean.

[LordBaal]

One of the few administrative saving graces of this country is coming to an end. The gasoline will not be cheap anymore, in fact it will cost as much as in any other place on earth, which brings the gallon to over 5 million Bolivares, or par to the minimum wage. This means you need the monthly payment of at least 30 people to fill a tank. The economic collapse is over us.

An aunt is staying with us, she was making some errands on the capital and is on her way back to Merida (her home). She was supposed to stay with us a night and be on her way, it's been a week because she can't find a ticket, because there's no buses, because there's no spare parts or tires because they are all imported and cost well into the billions each. People are literally going back to use horses and mules as transport means on some cities already. I guess is the perfect setting for a techno-barbarian, diesel punk, western fantasy universe in the making (I call dibs on the idea). Fun to think about it, not fun to live in it.

EDIT: Oh, but of course, the subside to gasoline will remain in place for those that card carrying members of the PSUV (United socialist party of Venezuela). I'll rather die before joining that.

Oh also tomorrow they are going to remove five 0 from the Bolivar "to suppress the inflation". It's like cutting your hair to loose weight.... The only practical effect will be that operations will be a tad simpler because well be back to speaking of hundreds and thousands instead of millions, billions and even trillions. However they are also saying the Bolivar will have a fixed value to the petro, which in practice is a big round 0. Most people are afraid of what all this might represent to our already beaten to death economy. It's most likely a fancy way of eliminating our capabilities to operate most business as the Bolivar will in practice become Itchy and Scratchy money, just like real money, but fun, also not valid in anyplace....

[Doomblade187]

Damn. :O

Is this going to sink the passport plans?

[LordBaal]

Hopefully not, however the cost of it will rise I guess, it's only logical.

[smjjames]

Why hasn't Venezuela collapsed into a barter economy? At this rate, barter would be more economically viable. Not sure what the heck you'd barter though.... beads???

[Doomblade187]

Why hasn't Venezuela collapsed into a barter economy? At this rate, barter would be more economically viable. Not sure what the heck you'd barter though.... beads???

Presumably food and services

[smjjames]

Why hasn't Venezuela collapsed into a barter economy? At this rate, barter would be more economically viable. Not sure what the heck you'd barter though.... beads???

Presumably food and services

Not everybody can grow food and depends on what services.

[Mech#4]

Why hasn't Venezuela collapsed into a barter economy? At this rate, barter would be more economically viable. Not sure what the heck you'd barter though.... beads???

Presumably food and services

Yah, in a barter system you'd be exchanging useful goods for other useful goods (Bread for medicine say). Beads don't really have a use other than appearance so that would be more replacing paper money with some other type of money. It's like, paper money is an I.O.U for a specific amount of goods, but you can exchange these I.O.Us with other people as they have a set value everyone agrees on. Broadly, at least to my understanding.

Bottlecaps in Fallout aren't barter, it's a replacement for money since they're limited in number and can't be manufactured anymore. Though in Fallout 1, if you're exchanging a gun for a stimpak that's barter (making up the difference in bottlecaps presumedly).

[scriver]

Will remove computer viruses for food

[FallacyofUrist]

I'm going to college tomorrow. Er, today, I guess.

I know this is a good thing. Doesn't stop me from being a tad terrified.

Every day I wonder now what my life has become.

Yah, in a barter system you'd be exchanging useful goods for other useful goods (Bread for medicine say). Beads don't really have a use other than appearance so that would be more replacing paper money with some other type of money. It's like, paper money is an I.O.U for a specific amount of goods, but you can exchange these I.O.Us with other people as they have a set value everyone agrees on. Broadly, at least to my understanding.

In the end, money is just paper and metal. If that money and paper ceases to have value as defined by the people of your country? I imagine a barter system might spring up, yeah. Probably better than continuing to use money that's inflating.

[misko27]

That's rough, Baal.

I have to admit, some part of me is genuinely amazed that the bottom has not yet dropped out for Venezuela. All I hear is news of things getting worse; that has to stop eventually, right?

I'm going to college tomorrow. Er, today, I guess.

I know this is a good thing. Doesn't stop me from being a tad terrified.

My sister is going off to college, and it worries me tremendously. Granted, I am also extremely proud of her, since she's been told quite literally for years that she'd never get this far, and this is the culmination of so many childhood anxieties... but that's just it. 20 years of childhood anxieties are creeping in, and I can only hope my sister will be able to take care of herself. And given her situation... that's not the usual concern that literally everyone has about their kids or siblings, that's an explicit "no but seriously can she handle doing basics on her own, can she stay safe, can she handle academic work without anyone else to prod her" etc. That's not even to mention "can she make friends, can she thrive" etc. etc.

[Kagus]

Bottlecaps in Fallout aren't barter, it's a replacement for money since they're limited in number and can't be manufactured anymore. Though in Fallout 1, if you're exchanging a gun for a stimpak that's barter (making up the difference in bottlecaps presumedly).

And funnily enough, they're not even a fiat currency... Each cap is valid for one small bottle of water at whatever-the-place-is. So instead of the gold standard, Fallout uses the water standard, and all caps are backed up by reserves of fresh drinking water.

I'm pretty sure both the legion denarius and NCR dollar are fiat, but they're both backed up by an actually active governing force, whereas the caps are just handled by a loose merchant conglomerate that somehow managed to agree with each other.


And despite not officially being a barter economy, you can bet your beanstalks that a lot of folks in Venezuela have effectively gone over to bartering for a number of things. Unfortunately, when a modern society gets dumped into that kind of situation without being able to plan for it, most of those goods and services are likely to be drugs and prostitution, respectively.

[dragdeler]

-snip-

[LordBaal]

We have years already doing barter along with using fiat. Mostly is you use fiat to buy whatever goods you can and then barter them with some other guy that did the same with other kind of goods. It's exceedingly common to exchange a kg of rice for a kg of flour or sugar. Diapers for deodorant or toothpaste.... You get the drift. All of those things are extra expensive or really scarse or both sometimes.

Chavez may he burn in hell once suggested on a live national allocution we could use pokemon trading cards as local (at community scale) currency or tokens of exchange....

This week I have to vaccine Peter (he's almost a year old now) and I just know that will be yet another Herculan Oddisey.