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Comment: Tough slog (Score 1) 9

by Mr. Jaggers (#40204895) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Re-kickstarting our Kickstarter?

I love the concepts in this project; in particular, I've been waiting nearly 20 years for sci-fi satire this good in playable form. Recent reboots of Hitchhikers Guide and other sci-fi comedy have been largely disappointing. Here comes a project with fresh ideas populated within a classic milieu; the adventure game. The fan base for this genre is surprisingly broad, but distributed, and it's terribly frustrating to continually (nearly each day in the campaign) find interested parties who were completely unaware of even the most basic of campaign details (i.e., the game creators recent reunion, as reported, finally, by Gamasutra).

This recently came to a head when one of our backers discovered a Google+ hangout in progress with a group of classic adventure game fans were replaying classic Space Quest , blissfully unaware that simultaneously, the very creators of the franchise were running a public live steam of commentary on the very same games!! It was the first head-through-keyboard moment of frustration I've had in years...

Space

Ask Slashdot: Re-kickstarting our Kickstarter?-> 9

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "We are supporters of an old-school adventure game Kickstarter that is dealing with "Kickstarter fatigue". The project itself is a sarcastic/comedic, science-fiction adventure, with reknowned and proven talent behind it — now that Kickstarter's adventure game honeymoon period is seemingly over, the big gaming and news sites are not interested in the project, community sites are not interested in front paging articles about the project, and famous twitterers with sci-fi leanings have all but ignored our request for twitter help. Due to the reluctance of the big gaming sites in talking about Kickstarter projects, it is up to the fans to try and get this across the line in the next 8 days — what other avenues or sites can we use to get word about our project to a wider audience, without coming across as spammers?"
Link to Original Source
Games

After 20 years, Space Quest creators reunite for new game-> 3

Submitted by auhsor
auhsor writes "It's only taken 20 years for Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe ('The Two Guys from Andromeda'), creators of Space Quest, to settle their differences and reunite for a new game. They have set up their own indie studio to create a new game respecting the style of art and comedy for which they are remembered.

They've lined up a stellar voice-acting cast, including Rob Paulsen (Animaniac Yakko, Pinky, TMNT's Raphael), Ellen McLain (GLaDOS), John Patrick Lowrie (TF2 Sniper) and radio legend Gary Owens. It's being promoted with regular live chats, videos, podcasts and fan efforts including SQ marathons, comics, and fan videos. The Kickstarter project targets PC/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android for release and includes awesome rewards such as a real life buckazoid or a mention in the game.

With new adventure games from Double Fine, Ron Gilbert, Jane Jensen, a Leisure Suit Larry remake, a new Tex Murphy, a new Kings Quest and of course SpaceVenture from The Two Guys from Andromeda, 2013 is going to be a great year for adventure gamers."

Link to Original Source
Wikipedia

Statisticians Investigate Political Bias on Wikipedia

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The Global Economic Intersection reports on a project to statistically measure political bias on Wikipedia. The team first identified 1,000 political phrases based on the number of times these phrases appeared in the text of the 2005 Congressional Record and applied statistical methods to identify the phrases that separated Democratic representatives from Republican representatives, under the model that each group speaks to its respective constituents with a distinct set of coded language. Then the team identified 111,000 Wikipedia articles that include “republican” or “democrat” as keywords and analyzed them to determine whether a given Wikipedia article used phrases favored more by Republican members or by Democratic members of Congress. The results may surprise you. "The average old political article in Wikipedia leans Democratic" but gradually, Wikipedia’s articles have lost the disproportionate use of Democratic phrases and moved to nearly equivalent use of words from both parties (PDF), akin to an NPOV [neutral point of view] on average. Interestingly some articles like civil rights tend to have a Democrat slant, while others like trade tend to have a Republican slant while at the same time many seemingly controversial topics such as foreign policy, war and peace, and abortion have no net slant. "Most articles arrive with a slant, and most articles change only mildly from their initial slant. The overall slant changes due to the entry of articles with opposite slants, leading toward neutrality for many topics, not necessarily within specific articles.""

Comment: Re:Oh yeah! (Score 1) 62

by Mr. Jaggers (#40139827) Attached to: Space Quest Spiritual Successor Project, SpaceVenture

If the project does well, they'll have proven to the rights-holders (Activision) that they are, in fact, the right guys for the job, and that they were the creative driving force, not the specific IP itself. That gives them leverage to license it and work together to create a proper sequel (can't imagine it being called SQ7, but that would be hilarous!!).

Of course, the price of the IP would go up, but the alternative is that it goes nowhere and languishes until a contract house is hired to turn it into some cartoony 3D platformer for middle-schoolers... oh, wait... that DID happen. Well, it could happen again.

Comment: Re:Native Linux, sci-fi, comedy, adventure game... (Score 1) 62

by Mr. Jaggers (#40139767) Attached to: Space Quest Spiritual Successor Project, SpaceVenture

That's my understanding as well. My methodology might go something like; buy the GOG license, and torrent the floppy version to install in DOSbox.

SQ1 can be played for free at http://sarien.net/spacequest

And lastly... in the above methodology, one could, perhaps, "pay" that license to the Kickstarter project, and select a reward tier below one's pledge (say, choose the $30 reward tier, pledge $50, then *not* have $20 to GOG, but to the Two Guys instead), and then go torrent the floppy versions :-D

God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.

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