I’m all for conflict in my video games; that’s been pretty well established. I’m also on the record with war games, games and real world guns, and censoring violence. With all that I’ve said before, this article on Eurogamer brings up a point that I had not really thought of before. To use Simon Parkin’s own [...]
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Games are Child’s Play
Hello! Today is a repost of the tl-dr inaugural post last year on 12-7. That’s right! One year strong! (I also updated the $$ count in the middle of the post) Thanks to everyone for reading! Welcome to the inaugural post for tl;dr, a blog dedicated to bringing together games, gamers, librarians, information scientists, and information about games. In [...]
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What is it with gamers and drawing penises?
I’m serious. Gamers LOVE to draw penises. There are many opportunities to do so, what with the amount of creative games around. Let’s take exhibit A from Penny Arcade. Quoth the Tycho: You almost certainly know about Draw Something already – like Words With Friends or Hanging With Friends or Inadvertent Castration With Friends, it is an [...]
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Want to get yer ass kicked at a game by a librarian?
We here at tl-dr are pretty relaxed about what types of games we talk about. It’s more about the experience and the ways information and games interact (which gives us a wide variety of things to talk about, which is nice). I talk quite a bit about the hardcore gamer side of things, Diane does as well, [...]
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GW2 Trading Post
Blogs have a tendency now and then to focus on things that are negative, or to whine about a company (guilty). This is not one of those posts. I’m making an effort to talk about the good work games are doing when I see it, cause good work like that should be rewarded. Onward! GW2 [...]
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Riot: ur doin it rite
I would love to not write about harassment, trolling, griefing, and racism anymore. It would be grand. The good news is that, today, I get to write about a positive spin for it! This isn’t another “u fuked up” post, but a post giving kudos to a specific game: League of Legends. There are two things [...]
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List of non-violent video games
There’s always a discussion about how to find “non-violent video games” (which I have issues with), but I wanted to create a list of non-violent video games for people that I could refer to if needed. The list will be ongoing, and I’d be happy to add any other suggestions that people have. Without further ado: [...]
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LoL – The New King?
So, do you play LoL? According to this infographic, it’s a pretty good chance that you do. Personally, I play a decent amount of LoL, less than I did before GW2 came out, but I still play a couple times of week at least. I probably will keep playing it for quite a long time, [...]
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eSports Need to Grow Up
Leodar and I had a good conversation over twitter the other day. The tl;dr of it was that we both felt the eSports community is seriously lacking in both maturity and role models. Leodar thought the role models could be fixed pretty easily, but the problem right now is twofold in my mind: lack of [...]
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Of running guilds, and morale
Guilds within games are a very funny thing, and running them is even stranger. They are a weird conglomeration of people, and come in so many shapes and sizes no one has time to describe any of that. Karen over at Massively does a regular column that attempts to bring order to the guild chaos (and [...]
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Game Advertising: Who is the target audience?
I don’t think most advertisements for games are actually directed at gamers. Hardcore gamers already know about the game, and usually know if they want to play it or not. So, then, are advertisements directed at non-gamers? The casual gamer? The friends of the gamer? Are they designed to excite the gamer so that they [...]
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Censorship or protecting the community?
Massively had a nice write up about forum censorship and trolling, related to Firefall’s forums. There are a few good gems I want to pick out of it: From the original Firefall forum thread: If you intended to frustrate me, you have. From now on, we’re going to start moderating the negativity on these forums [...]
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Taking Aim at the Issue: Real World Guns and Games
This article is a bit of a rebuttal to a Medium Difficulty article. While I agree with that article, and it hits many good points (especially the history of the arms industry and its relation to politics), it does not give a way to actually change or help the system, and also does not give [...]
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When does a gamer become a gamer?
How do you become a gamer? What constitutes one? Hardcore/casual gamer aside, what really makes someone a gamer? Just playing games? Or participating in the community? Or just saying “Hi! I’m a gamer!” What about those people who play video games a lot, but still think they aren’t gamers? I’m talking about the people that [...]
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What kinds of jobs do gamers have?
This post is pretty simple, and less of a statement, and more of a conversational question. What kind of job do you have, as a gamer? I think it’s an assumption of many muggles (as I like to call them) to think of gamers as highly technical people. While it may be true that most [...]
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Full Steam Ahead
I love Valve and Steam. Alot. I’m definitely not in the minority here either. Why do we like Steam, and not the other platforms, like Origin? Because Steam gives us a “why”. In my mind, when I think of Origin, I think they want to give me a product. They want to sell me their [...]
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Violence vs. Conflict in Video Games
I don’t really enjoy violent video games. Or games that are gorey. I don’t want games that just shoot and kill people. That being said, I love me some L4D. It’s gorey and violent. A hack and slash FPS with plenty of guns and killing. Did I just contradict myself? I don’t think so. I like L4D [...]
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How does lag change gameplay?
Lag, that nefarious culprit that is to blame for every single death in a video game. It is a truly gruesome and cunning opponent. Did you know that there are different types of lag? I hadn’t even thought about it until a recent article pointed it out to me. Then I realized I did know [...]
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Racism, Harassment, Griefing, Bullying, Trolling…whatever you call it… just stop.
[Editor's note (Yes, I'm the editor and the author, shut it)] I’m having trouble getting the full emotion of this post out into the writing. I may be writing in a pretty technical way and presenting facts of why this is bad, and saying it is bad, but I really hate bullying, racism, or harassment in games. [...]
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Gaming Communication: When Not Playing Games
Social gaming is something I enjoy, and it’s one of the main reasons I game. I like the community aspect of gaming, whether it’s just social, or moves into the competitive realm (which is also social to me). The hard part with this is what The Mighty Viking Hamster (amazing name for a blog amirite?) was talking [...]
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