As someone who did, indeed, play Vanilla WoW—who used to raid in Vanilla WoW, even—I am certified to tell you that, for however much you legitimately enjoyed the game, your nostalgia is bad and trying to go back is worse.
Fun little browser-based Skynet simulator, in which you are the titular AI. Also serves as a not-terrible introduction to actual really-real-world hacking techniques, for what it’s worth.
“I think we miss a lot when our sole attraction to Sierra’s legacy is fixated on Roberta [Williams], or even on Sierra’s larger cadre of female designers” says [assistant professor of media industries at New York University, Laine] Nooney. “…it reinforces very conservative ideas about creative authorship and authorial intent.” In other words, neither Roberta nor any other talented game designer is solely responsible for the final product; it’s a group effort. The reason Sierra makes for such a compelling case is because it “reveals a history that intersects labor, class, and gender—a history the game industry very much needs to understand right now.”
It’s certainly not the history Roberta ever set out to write. She was never a crusader for equity, never a spokesperson for the women in her company, let alone her industry. And it’s not just Roberta, it’s all the women we cherry pick as signs of progress. We like to assume that any woman who once stood alone, surrounded by men in the tech world—or the science world, art world, or political world—must have held a torch fueled by some inner Joan of Arc or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The role of Roberta, Queen of Inclusion and Gender Parity, is something we’ve collectively written into the historical record. It’s not only wrong to place the weight of feminist activism on the unsuspecting shoulders of women like Roberta, it’s dangerous. This revisionist history may be inspiring for young women today, but a falsely positive story is a false story nonetheless. “Video game history doesn’t know how to make sense of her except to single her out,” says Nooney.
Perrin Drumm on the complicated history of Roberta Williams.
I confess that, as a young girl, seeing Williams’s face on the King’s Quest box was definitely effective marketing, if nothing else.
From an adorable YouTube channel that attempts to cook food from Final Fantasy XIV for real.
Really interesting look at the logistics of making 2D sprite art in old Japanese videogames.
Are you a bad enough dude to say it with Doom text?
… aa-aa-and nearly exactly two months after finishing A Realm Reborn, there’s Heavensward done!
The writing is definitely getting better, though still suffers from the problem games with unvoiced protagonists often have wherein you kind of end up feeling like a side-character in everyone else’s drama (despite doing all the “work” to fix it!).
On the plus side: flying is still awesome, and the gating requirements feel natural and manageable.1 Also I… really, really like Dancer? Like I wanted to unlock it because of (ahem) the aesthetics but I actually really enjoy how it plays, to the point where I’ve switched to it as my main (from Summoner).
And now… to slog through the 3.x content filler before the next expansion (ugh). Hopefully it won’t be as tedious as the 2.x stuff, though looking at the wiki there are still way too many Duties and way too much run-here-watch-a-cutscene-run-there-watch-a-cutscene-run-back-watch-a-cutscene.
Also: I have discovered Triple Triad. Don’t ask me why it took me this long to actually start playing it.2 I was the, like, one person who really enjoyed Triple Triad in FFVIII, and… I still really enjoy it. I’m not actually good at it, but luckily you don’t really have to be.3 So… on my way to grinding out that 100,000 MSP for those sweet sweet arch-demon horns…
