New efforts!

[brothermutant]

I think I was nine when I first saw Interplanet Janet, and I used to wonder why Janet thought Mercury was too hot to visit when she had just come from the Sun.

If I had to pick a favorite Schoolhouse Rock, it would probably be Interjections.  But I loved pretty much all of the original run.

Also, by the time I thought to make my hero Zero, the name was taken.

Three, its a magic number. My favorite right up there with Rufus Xavier Sasperilla (probably spelled that wrong).

[pinballdave]

Three, its a magic number. My favorite right up there with Rufus Xavier Sasperilla (probably spelled that wrong).

I liked Lolly Lolly Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here as much as any, but Conjunction Junction was very catchy.

[umber]

I think I was nine when I first saw Interplanet Janet, and I used to wonder why Janet thought Mercury was too hot to visit when she had just come from the Sun.

I had Interplanet Janet on (Triumph?  Protector?) way back when the game first launched.

Don't recall the build at the time but would definitely need Afterburner if rebuilt near the closedown.

[HEATSTROKE]

i have these on DVD

[Arcana]

i have these on DVD

I made a collection on VHS tape way back when, and then I managed to collect most of them digital via various extra-legal means, and then when they announced they were coming to DVD I made it a point to buy them as soon as they came out.

I think the only other thing I pursued with as much vigor was the original Connections series and the original Cosmos series.  Although back in the day I used to be an internet tape-exchanger.  I remember hooking up with someone in Australia to get me tapes of the last episodes of The Hat Squad which didn't air in the US.



What?  I liked that show.  Three brothers fight crime while wearing fedoras and trenchcoats after being adopted by James Tolkan?  And it opened like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym1IyQZ7NRk

Come to think of it, I never made a mastermind homage to that show.  Gotta add that to the list if/when the game comes back.

[Victoria Victrix]

The smart thing (which my accountant would be on the phone to me to do the second I won anything substantial) would be to incorporate, with the winnings going to the corporation and the corporation paying you a fixed salary.  Corporate income taxes are obscenely smaller than individual income taxes.

[darkgob]

The smart thing (which my accountant would be on the phone to me to do the second I won anything substantial) would be to incorporate, with the winnings going to the corporation and the corporation paying you a fixed salary.  Corporate income taxes are obscenely smaller than individual income taxes.

Funny how that works. ;)

[Beltor]

Talking about School House Rock. Like i don't have enough reminders that I'm getting old.

:)

[Arcana]

The smart thing (which my accountant would be on the phone to me to do the second I won anything substantial) would be to incorporate, with the winnings going to the corporation and the corporation paying you a fixed salary.  Corporate income taxes are obscenely smaller than individual income taxes.

I don't think that's going to work for a couple of reasons.  First, if the lottery ticket is already known to be a winner, then I believe the value of the ticket become taxable income, and giving it to a corporation would be considered an equity investment in that company.  If you try to play this game ahead of time by giving the lottery ticket to a corporation *before* you know if its a winner or not you run into another tax doctrine: the IRS considers any attempt to convert future revenue that would ordinarily be considered normal taxable income into some other non-taxable form to be a tax dodge, and there's tax court precedent that you'd lose.

But suppose you find a legal way to do this.  Its unclear if it helps.  The maximum tax rate for corporations in the US is 35%, which is less than the maximum individual rate.  But the corporation would get taxed on the lottery payments first, and *then* when it disbursed them to you you'd get taxed yourself.  The combined bite of both taxes would mean you'd probably net less money.  There are games you can play if the amount of money is small enough; if you are a small business, you can attempt to exploit the 15% corporate rate for income under $75k and the maximum 20% tax rate on qualified corporate dividends (15% below a certain income level) but that only works for relatively small amounts of money - $75k.  The effective combined tax rate here would be 32%, which is less than the maximum 39.6% federal tax rate.  That might maybe help for something like a megabucks jackpot in the ten million dollar range.  But it doesn't help for giant mega lottery winnings, unless you figure out a way to get paid $72,000 a year for ten thousand years or something.

Now, there are potentially grey area ways of attempting to shield that income using shell companies, but most of them are significantly more complex than just moving to another country with a lower tax rate for lottery winners, and have shaky legal status.  Very large corporations have ways of attempting to avoid domestic taxes by exploiting the different ways the tax law treats different parts of their vast set of operations, but here you have one lottery ticket and one localized source of revenue.  I don't think there are enough loopholes to cover that simple of a situation.  Most importantly, the reason why i think this won't work is because people have tried this before and legal precedent has already been set against the practice.

Here's a specific one I think has been tried, and been ruled against.  Suppose you set up a corporation, and you "invest" a hundred bucks in that corporation.  The corporation then buys lottery tickets.  Now suppose one day it wins a hundred million dollars.  You immediately turn around and sell the company to someone else for $99 million dollars, and then claim that the $99 million is a capital gain, subject to a maximum of 20% tax.  I think the courts have determined this is an attempt to convert future taxable income into a lump sum, and therefore an illegal tax dodge.  You'd owe normal income taxes of that money, subject to the 39.6% maximum federal limit.

I actually wear the de factor CFO hat for our company, and I don't claim to know all the rules for how this works.  Doing what's best for the functioning of a company *and* what is the most advantageous for tax purposes is an incredibly complex min/max problem.  All other things being equal, reducing corporate income to as close to zero as possible via ownership disbursements (compensation, dividends) prevents double taxation.  But it also causes large cash flow problems.  Retaining earnings so the company has cash to operate is better in a lot of ways (like not having to borrow money to fund operations constantly via credit lines) but it means that money will get taxed as corporate earnings, and then taxed again when at some future date the company pays those profits to its owners.  Figuring out the "best" option is a complex problem, not unlike trying to optimize a build in Mids.  Except if you don't do it right, you go to jail or go broke or both.

[pinballdave]

The smart thing (which my accountant would be on the phone to me to do the second I won anything substantial) would be to incorporate, with the winnings going to the corporation and the corporation paying you a fixed salary.  Corporate income taxes are obscenely smaller than individual income taxes.

To be brief, the income from the lottery ticket would be taxed at the maximum marginal rates. The salary to yourself would be taxed again at the personal rates. (If you won $1.3 Billion, your salary would probably push you to the maximum individual rates.) The other aspect is if you pay out to yourself individually as a salary, you pay another 15.3% in payroll taxes. (edit) at least social security wages are capped.

[brothermutant]

GAH! I want my game back!

[LaughingAlex]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V5eq4IQ6Go  This kind of has to be watched for the second part to really make sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiOA_CS25Kw  I think this would be a good discussion while we wait.  Because how many times has someone argued "well over a thousand iterations the dice rolls are random"?

[Arcana]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V5eq4IQ6Go  This kind of has to be watched for the second part to really make sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiOA_CS25Kw  I think this would be a good discussion while we wait.  Because how many times has someone argued "well over a thousand iterations the dice rolls are random"?

Although some of the concepts are generally useful in all gameplay, most of the ones discussed are very specifically expressed to address a very specific kind of game: essentially strategic player vs player games with an explicit victory condition.  You have to be careful trying to generalize any of that to MMOs, where randomness shows up in all sorts of other non-congruous areas like reward tables, or actual combat.

Although those two videos give a good flavor of the issue, I think if you really wanted to discuss that subject in a serious manner you'd need as a prerequisite a discussion of the mechanics of turn-based strategic games, specifically the way we analyze those games in terms of expected-value.  For example, the videos discuss Hearthstone cards in terms of their intrinsic value - like a four-four card with mana three.  Those numbers convey a certain intrinsic value.  But the *ways* the card can be played can alter its actual value in play, and randomness affects that value in specific, theoretically calculable ways.  This is discussed in the video in a cursory manner to explain the "whys" of randomness balancing, but not the hows.

But that gets into discussions about how expected value can vary situationally, or what someone might call tactically: a card can be more valuable when played late than when played early, say.  And when the video talks about symmetric random cards where they do not add any net value but increase the overall randomness of the game an interesting topic for discussion is the question of how, as a designer, you decide where the "tactically neutral" balance point is.  In other words, you assume that someone winning a game wants the game to become more deterministic, because they are winning.  Someone losing the game actually wants more randomness because without it they become increasingly locked into a losing position.  So as a game proceeds to its conclusion, randomness actually becomes more valuable to the losing player and more detrimental to the winning player.  Designing for this fact by factoring in player valuation of that randomness adds another factor to consider.  Even when randomness doesn't quantitatively benefit either player in the long run it can benefit them in the short run because the current probability that each player will win in a specific circumstance is not always even.

The notion of an intrinsically bad or neutral move having significant tactical benefits comes up a lot.  For example, hitting 16 in blackjack is an intrinsically bad move: the probability that you'll bust the hand is almost 2 in 3.  However, hitting 16 in blackjack is the right move when the dealer is showing 10.  That's because the odds of the dealer winning at that moment are *more* than the odds of busting.  In other words, although the odds are pretty good you'll lose immediately if you hit 16, if the dealer is showing 10 the odds are very good you're already in a losing hand now.  Hitting improves your chances of winning, even though more than half the time it will cause you to instantly lose.  The "Hail Mary" in (American) football is another example: it almost never works.  However, its generally only used in situations where the team throwing the ball is already in a losing situation.  The Hail Mary has a small probability of dramatically altering the game, and while the odds of it working are low, its better than the zero chance of winning the team is often in at that point without it.

In City of Heroes, randomness in combat is tricky to analyze in the sense the videos do, because a) the player is intended to win most of the time in even combat and b) the move-chain for the standard difficulty fight is extremely short: just a few moves.  Its difficult to analyze how randomness works without the context of how combat is actually intended to work, and the intent of how combat should work in City of Heroes is somewhat nebulous.  You probably wouldn't even be able to get precise agreement between any two CoH developers who ever worked on the game.  My assertions on how I believe the overall median intent works is a judgment call on my part, for which I could probably get general agreement but not complete agreement.

[Arcana]

What's the definition of a "twitch game?"  Well, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQYBzEreO5k

Those other games?  Shooters.  This?  Twitch game.

[Sinistar]

To be brief, the income from the lottery ticket would be taxed at the maximum marginal rates. The salary to yourself would be taxed again at the personal rates. (If you won $1.3 Billion, your salary would probably push you to the maximum individual rates.) The other aspect is if you pay out to yourself individually as a salary, you pay another 15.3% in payroll taxes. (edit) at least social security wages are capped.

Mainly this: IF you win, congrats. Speak to your lawyer/accountant and get things setup with as many legal tax breaks and benefits as you can.  Just be sure to not pull a Wesley Snipes and end up in Club Fed for a few years.

[LaughingAlex]

What's the definition of a "twitch game?"  Well, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQYBzEreO5k

Those other games?  Shooters.  This?  Twitch game.

I dunno, I watch my nephew play CoD occasionally and it's truely a twitch fest.  Whoever shoots first is the one who always wins.  Or more often whoever's crosshairs are lined up when they shoot first.  It just as well be insta-gib without any dodging.

[Arcana]

I dunno, I watch my nephew play CoD occasionally and it's truely a twitch fest.

Can he get thirty head shots per second?

[Vee]

That is some serious twitch. Twitchiest thing I ever saw is a guy who was really really good at Tapper.

[LaughingAlex]

Can he get thirty head shots per second?

Firstly, that game does require 'some' aiming, but secondly, you don't even NEED a headshot to kill someone in CoD.  Even chest shots are near instantly fatal.  It's litterally "Hold button down if they are in crosshairs, they die almost instantly!".  It's not like older shooters where only headshots from certain weapons were insta-kill :/.  Now, I will speak in favor of the game ya posted, its a skill game, but thats kind of what it is.  It's basically Simon, in a way, without memorization and just reflexes.  That game you posted takes skill of which there isn't really any in CoD.

[Arcana]

So because LaughingAlex decided to post some Extra Credit videos, I thought I would watch a few more recent ones I hadn't seen yet.  Mostly, I've been playing them in the background while working on other things, but then I played this one, and I had to actually stop and play it a second time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5camMoNw-o

Here's what I find fascinating about this one.  This video says that basically progression systems are often a transparent grind and that's bad, and it says there are lots of ways to make it not bad.  And then it proceeds to name exactly none of them.  I think this is an important thing to point out.  Every time the video says something like "here's a way to make progression systems good" it proceeds to say what a good perception of one would be but *not* how to actually produce it.  For example, the video says one way to make a progression system better is to design it so that it adds a strategic element to gameplay, where people are thinking about the progression system in the long term.  Great.  So how do you do that, or rather how do you do that in a good way, because every progression system can be said to offer this.  Clearly, the video narrator doesn't think all of them do this well, so how would you, as a game designer, make a progression system that does this in a good way rather than a bad way?  The video doesn't say.

I know the video producer means well, and its clear he's thought about these things more than his short videos can convey, but its also true that whenever someone, anyone, says stuff like "the problem with this game is that its not fun, the developers should make it more fun" they imply that fun is an ingredient that the developers decided to leave out.  That's not how that works.  If you want someone to make something more fun, that's great.  But that presumes they aren't trying to do that in the first place.  Its easy to say that if only you make your progression system add strategic elements, gate your learning curve, and target the most interesting gameplay to the most efficient progression strategies, but you could also say "the best progression system is the most funnest" and that conveys the same amount of information: zero.  *How* do you target the most interesting gameplay to the most efficient progression strategies without essentially over-rewarding min/maxing and railroading gameplay?  *How* do you design a progression system so that it gates the progression complexity without becoming overly repetitive?

Most importantly, almost every game can claim to have achieved the goals the video narrator espouses, but by what objective criteria can we judge whether they actually do so, if any?  If you believe there is no such criteria, then you believe these videos are worthless, because there's no way even in theory to know if you're doing anything good as a game designer.  There's no point in having design goals if its literally impossible to know if you're doing anything helpful to achieve them.  Subjectivity plays a role in how a consumer might judge your work, but there still has to be an objective way to judge the creation process.  Otherwise might as well hire a bunch of monkeys to bang on the keyboards instead of gameplay designers.  If the video narrator believes that there is at least some kernel of objective way to judge good gameplay design (and I assume he does, because he makes a video series on that subject) then he should try to explain in what way can you at least try to objectively judge when these goals are being achieved.  The only concrete example he provides for how to make a good progression system is to allow respecification.  And even that I would contend is a situational design benefit.  How much should it cost before the cost becomes oppressive?  How much should it cost so its not trivially easy?  Which *parts* of the decision tree should be subject to respecification, and which should not?  All?  Why?

I think the Extra Credits guy has a lot of good ideas in general, and I also think his real world view of games is more nuanced than his videos allow him to show.  But I still think this is a critical flaw in this video even accounting for all of that.  The video suggests that if only game designers would prioritize what he mentions, progression systems would be so much better.  I think the reality is that many if not most game designers actually *do* prioritize those things, and they just aren't doing it right.  And that makes it difficult to really gain any real useful perspective on what the difference between "good" and "bad" games are.  The subtitle of the video is "how good games avoid Skinner boxes."  The video doesn't answer that question.  It answers the subtly but significantly different question "why do I think the games I think have good progression systems succeed at giving that impression?"  And that's interesting commentary, but not with regard to the question of what makes a good progression system.  All food would be better if it was just made more yummy, all movies would be better if they were made more entertaining, all novels would be better if they were more vivid, and all games would be better if they had more fun in them.  The important part is how to do that.  And that's hard.

And if anyone thinks I'm just slamming the video guy because I don't like him or his videos, not true.  In fact, I think this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iklM_djBeY is mandatory viewing.  Its a simple concept, but its oh-so important to game design and often overlooked by designers and players alike.  It touches upon a concept I used to harp on in the CoH official forums: the notion of the "informed choice."  What does it mean to make an informed choice in a game, and what should the consequences of a choice be.  This is a restricted topic in MMOs as opposed to more narratively driven single player games, but its still there, and still very important.  The idea he describes in five minutes could easily be dissected and debated for days.