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[Christian Knudsen]

For the first time, my internet supports watching twitch streams. It's fun.

Does anyone else here watch streams?

I like watching Beaglerush play XCOM. He plays Impossible/Ironman and constantly ends up in situations where I'm sure his entire squad will be wiped, then ends up completing the mission without a single casualty.

[Gimym JIMBERT]

http://www.nantucketproject.com/danielle_fong_a_time_for_urgency

[Nillo]

I'm back home from Poland (Warsaw, specifically). It was a morbid place and I'm not sure if I recommend it. The city tour I went on essentially consisted of going to a bunch of places where someone died or something exploded and hearing about how they died/exploded. I spent hours looking for a store that sold video games and when I found one called Games World in the Zlote Tarasy shopping mall it was just a tiny little room with four shelves of games in it. So if you like vidyagames as much as I do this is probably not the best place to be, haha.

The Copernicus museum or whatever it was called had some awesome-looking board games for sale but I couldn't purchase any of them because they didn't come with an English rulebook. Jeez.

[SirNiko]

If you play Video Games as a hobby and live anywhere but the United States or Japan you're playing on Hard Mode.

Australia is Hell on Earth difficulty.

What's the countryside like in Poland? Any good mountains, forests, plains, beaches? Interesting wildlife? That's usually what I try to enjoy when I travel abroad.

[Nillo]

Haha, yeah. I have a friend who lives in Australia and he often talks to me about the ridiculous state of gaming in the country. Not only do you have to pay twice as much for games, you then have to deal with the ping of the legends unless you play one of a handful of games that actually hosts game servers in Australia.

And I don't know. Like I said, I was specifically in Warsaw so I can't tell you anything about the rest of the country. I was there on a company trip with my coworkers and they paid the travel expenses for me so I'm not really in a position to complain too much about it honestly.

[C.A. Silbereisen]

i can usually get the games i want where i live. one problem is that console gams are hideously overpriced. some new releases are 70 euros (a little less than 90 dollars) and the average is 60. they also never drop below 20. this is why i have pretty much stopped buying new-ish console games. i just can't justify dropping that much on a single videogame unless i'm *really* hyped (which is rare). there are also very few dedicated videogame stores here, i buy most physical copies of games from electronics chain stores.

i don't think the differences in availability matter that much anymore in this age of digital distribution and online retailers, tho the price problem persists. on steam you often just pay the dollar price in euros meaning games are about 20% more expensive than in the US.

[Gimym JIMBERT]

And I thought europe was good ... It seems france (or french speaking belgium) is clear, but damn in the (french) caraibe the price goes up, not unlike CA's price above +10€.

Steam is cheaper if you wait enough time ... I don't play new release at all

[Leon Fook]

is the price related to VAT? cause i just don't remember getting charge anything extra other than the 3.2X conversion rate for my country currency, whenever i buy game in steam.

[Nillo]

is the price related to VAT? cause i just don't remember getting charge anything extra other than the 3.2X conversion rate for my country currency, whenever i buy game in steam.

I'm not sure, but I'd say that's a fair assumption. The increased prices here seem roughly equivalent to the Swedish VAT on video games (25%).

But taxes don't really bother me personally. I will gladly pay a 25% tax on everything if it means I get to live in a country with a functional welfare system and universal health care.

[C.A. Silbereisen]

ya that's probably true for the steam prices, but some retail prices are pretty ridiculous, particularly for console games. why are console games more expensive than pc games anyway (there's almost always a 10 euro price difference between console and pc versions of a game). pc games are actually reasonably priced at 40-50 euros (i still don't buy too many new pc games tho haha)

[Nillo]

ya that's probably true for the steam prices, but some retail prices are pretty ridiculous, particularly for console games. why are console games more expensive than pc games anyway (there's almost always a 10 euro price difference between console and pc versions of the game). pc games are actually reasonably priced at 40-50 euros (i still don't buy too many new pc games tho haha)

Well, I can think of a few reasons.

1. It's a lot easier to pirate a PC game. In a sense, PC developers compete with torrent sites that cost nothing and have to keep their prices low to make the user willing to pay instead of pirate.
2. Physical copies of video games (in other words, console games) have resale value and when they enter the secondary market the developer stops receiving any profit from sales. I think the used games market pressures developers into setting a higher price so they'll get a bigger cut from the initial sales.

[Gimym JIMBERT]

This Brazilian woman pie maker sold everything to learn game design — and her Oculus Rift game is incredible

http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/11/pixel-rift-oculus-game/?utm_content=buffer4a1e0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[rj™]

holy shit, that's mad impressive

i wish i could just dive into c++. maybe one of these days i will

[C.A. Silbereisen]

Carefully avoiding the unwanted gaze of the teacher, you’re free to sneak some time on the Gameboy (renamed “Game Girl”) that you’re hiding under your desk, using the NES pad you’re holding in real life.

me in highschool simulator 2014


anyway is it, like, bad that this is the first oculus rift thing that sounds actually interesting to me?

[rj™]

honestly it's the first one i care about besides games that just incidentally use the rift as an option

[rj™]

post 666. spooky scary

[SirNiko]

Also, I want to make it clear that my post was pretty exclusively an excuse to say "Hell-on-Earth difficulty" because I enjoy making up amusing names for highest difficulties.

I have trouble believing any really stand-out Rift titles (like that one) will not get quality PC / Console ports. Head tracking is neat, but could easily be simulated using the 3DS gyro or WiiU gamepad (similar titles already exist), and maybe modern smartphones could make it happen too. But maybe I'll be wrong.

[Gimym JIMBERT]

Apparently so far the best input for occulus has been to strap a "leap motion" onto the headset to have in game hand replica in Firt person view (fpv). Of course does not track outside the visual range.

[Boreal]

So tempting...

[rj™]

i really want a soft grunge keyboard