Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Jar of Jam]

So now that the gems are back, if I'm reading it right, emoticons and backgrounds have shot up in price, while card price stays pretty much the same. I'm assuming that if I don't want to bid on auction games, I'm better off selling my emoticons/backgrounds on the market and reinvesting the money back into cards?

[Sappho]

I got I Have No Mouth and was really excited about playing it, after hearing so many great things about it. Everyone said it went deep into the dark side of human nature, and how we destroy ourselves with our violence and selfishness. Then I start up the game, see that there's exactly one female character, and her "fatal flaw" is that she's... neurotic and hysterical (which, although it is not explicitly stated, is clearly the result of some sort of trauma). She destroys herself by being a victim. Wow. That's some pretty old-school misogyny right there.

I think I got through about half an hour of extremely tedious and difficult gameplay, during which I had to consult a walkthrough several times to get past pixel-hunt nearly-impossible puzzles, and during which my female character more than once had a panic attack because she had to touch something yellow (PTSD... the dark side of human nature?), before I gave up and quit. So I'm going to add my vote to "just watch a good LP."

EDIT: Oh, and apparently it's not just me. I just did a quick google search and found an entire essay on how the story this was based on is one of the most misogynyst things she's ever read: http://www.anamardoll.com/2013/10/tropes-i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream.html

[i2amroy]

So now that the gems are back, if I'm reading it right, emoticons and backgrounds have shot up in price, while card price stays pretty much the same. I'm assuming that if I don't want to bid on auction games, I'm better off selling my emoticons/backgrounds on the market and reinvesting the money back into cards?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

TL;DR: Always just sell stuff, don't convert to gems unless you plan on bidding or actually go work out the numbers since usually they have a worse old stuff:new cards ratio than just selling stuff straight onto the market does (~4 old cards per 1 [random] new card for gems, with ~2 old cards per 1 new [specific] card for cards).
You can convert cards over to gems as well, they just don't give you as much for each (of course once you factor in that it takes like 4-11 cards to make a single background and emoticon, some cards might be more gem efficient to just turn straight into gems instead of trying to forge them to backgrounds/emoticons first and then convert them into gems).

In general I'm finding that if you don't have any desire to bid on auction games most of the time you are overall better just selling cards to buy booster's/cards straight if that is what you are looking for. This is because selling cards/items usually lets you get around a 2:1 old card to new ratio (as well as letting you purchase exactly the cards you want), where gems require more like a 4:1 ratio (and just give you 3 random cards). That said there are some exceptions out there, and the line is close enough right now that you really need to look exactly at what the prices are for the cards that you want, the price of cards/items you would transmute, and how many gems that you would get for each them. Depending on the exact numbers and how lucky you are feeling it could really go any way right now. My personal suggestion would be to just wait, there are gonna be tons of people out there who just go "ooh, gems!" without actually realizing that their stuff is worth more as stuff than as gems and convert their stuff over. There will probably be an initial small price drop as all the people who weren't using their stuff for anything convert over to booster packs and sell them, but after that it should actually drive up most item market prices a bit IMO.

Wow. That's some pretty old-school misogyny right there.

Of course it is, it's based pretty directly off a book that was written in 1967 by a writer who isn't particularly equalitarian even to this day.
Edit: And a quick check shows that he wrote most of the dialog for the game too.

[Sirus]

-snip-

Don't worry, it's not just women getting a good-old taste of values dissonance. Although it is never stated in-game, one character has a terrible secret so horrifying that it is implied to have driven him to commit multiple murders to hide it: (spoilers)he's gay(/spoilers).

[Sappho]

-snip-

Don't worry, it's not just women getting a good-old taste of values dissonance. Although it is never stated in-game, one character has a terrible secret so horrifying that it is implied to have driven him to commit multiple murders to hide it: (spoilers)he's gay(/spoilers).

Good thing this game is almost universally praised for its gripping plot and storytelling. It's the realism that sucks me in.

I suppose these things probably aren't even noticeable to most typical straight male gamers, but seriously, it's massively problematic. Stuff like this, especially when it's so highly praised, sends the message to people who share those outdated and often dangerous views that they are perfectly justified in their thinking. Look, the characters in this game fit those ideas perfectly, and everyone loves this game! Must be right, then.

Gah. Sorry, I could very easily start ranting about this, but it's clearly not a good idea to start this kind of discussion in the Sales thread. In fact, I'm a bit tired of having that discussion in general. I'm just going to let that one go for now and say, yeah, probably don't buy this game. Not only is the story horrifyingly offensive to various groups of people, the gameplay is also tedious and frustrating. I'm going to go play something better now.

On a more positive note, I do recommend Words for Evil. It's on sale right now (and is cheap anyway), was gifted to me by one of our generous giveaway-hosting residents, and I've already lost a couple of hours to it. It's not perfect. The controls can be slightly glitchy, and you have to focus so much on spelling your words that you don't really get to watch the action at the top of the screen. It seems to exist more for the entertainment of onlookers than the person playing. But the music and visuals are just so gorgeous, and the mechanics work quite well. I expect to lose quite a few more hours to this one.

[Kaje]

Hating this Steam Auction, traded in my entire 10 pages of inventory and got....just over 500 gems. Almost every single item in the auction has bids of over 2,000 - some have 20,000!

Ridiculous.

[Sinistar]

Yeah, apparently a whole bunch of shenanigans happening with this Steam auction thing, there was a discussion couple of pages ago about it.


Kinda on topic with misogyny in games: I recently found this game and it's on sale right now.

Why is that on topic? Because it features a female main character (Huzzah!) that searches for her female lover (Huzzah!!).
Not having played it personally so I can't comment on it more, but I do find this to be a nice change of things. Unless, of course, Angelica is in this case in fact a male name (which I sincerely doubt).

[Eurylochus]

Yeah, apparently a whole bunch of shenanigans happening with this Steam auction thing, there was a discussion couple of pages ago about it.


Kinda on topic with misogyny in games: I recently found this game and it's on sale right now.

Why is that on topic? Because it features a female main character (Huzzah!) that searches for her female lover (Huzzah!!).
Not having played it personally so I can't comment on it more, but I do find this to be a nice change of things. Unless, of course, Angelica is in this case in fact a male name (which I sincerely doubt).

You're not going to stop misogyny in video games by forcing this type of shit into our throats. This game was obviously created for the sole purpose of showing that they can make a game with 2 female leads. What does this game even contribute? I really hope no one buys this game.

[BigD145]

All the characters in I Have No Mouth are severely broken people. It's not a happy feely romp in unicorn land. The stuff for the guys is also full of hatred towards men. AM hates humans. REALLY HATES THEM. He picked the worst, most easily exploited, to torture. He's torturing more guys than gals.

[Sinistar]

-snip-

You know, I actually expected this kind of response. Not necessarily the first one but hey.

Oh and good job instantly dismissing a game on the premise of it being made just "for the sole purpose of showing that they can make a game with 2 female leads" despite, you know, they not even trying to push this as any sort of "feature".

[penguinofhonor]

.

[Neyvn]

Starting to wonder how much all my Steam Cards are worth...

[aristabulus]

So.... Sales!  We all keep an eye on them, right?

GOG has moved to finale/encore mode in their winter sale...  A large spread of bundles for the last two days, no change on the flash deal ticker.

[Mephisto]

"About Love, Hate and the other ones" came out yesterday. It's got an interesting mechanic, but it seemed a little slow in the video.

It's not currently on sale, but I did receive a -80% coupon and presume others did as well.

I'm not sure what that says about the game, though. 13/14 positive reviews on day 2 and already a steep discount.

[mattie2009]

I noticed that the market for gem bags is fucking nonexistant now, no doubt because it's not being endlessly flooded by counterfeit gem bags.

You're not going to convince me that this whole thing is anything more than an intriguing novelty, but I have to hedge my bets that Valve was banking on people attempting to ruin everything.
I mean, my advice is still 'wait for the christmas sale', but good on Valve for correctly predicting human nature, I guess.