*tears up*

The ghost of Ayn Rand?
Why, what are you doing here?

It doesn't take much for a person in their 70s to suddenly crash from even the smallest operation.

Add to this three plane crashes, combat stress, torture, years in captivity, an ongoing battle against skin cancer, plus the stress of being president, and I think you've got a good reason to 'discriminate' against John McCain.

I guess I'll just have to settle for Laura Logan...

Moreover, I've heard that you can't really 'exercise' this arterial plaque away.

Sarah probably has to hit him to prevent him from running out into traffic.

So, for example, if gay people object to John McCain's homophobia, then they are actually attacking his military service [since the Vietnamese gay-guards subconsciously conditioned him to dislike gays] which makes them anti-American and anti-US Troops.

"...However, the word "Bear" means many things to different people, even within the bear movement. Many men who do not have one or all of these characteristics define themselves as bears, making the term a very loose one..."

Or maybe, Cooper: Artic Fox?

...polar bear?

What does this even mean?

I recall the commentary from Half Life: E3 where they discussed the need to provide visual cues to grab the player's attention. It can be difficult to get a gamer to look in a given direction. Feeding an inattentive player the story is not easy. This, I think, explains the continued popularity of FMV in video games. It's a way of forcing the player to focus on the story so they know *why* they are playing, and how the playable environment is relevant to the story.

The other option, which I think we see a lot these days...especially in FPS, is a real focus on optional/'ambient' audio. I'm not a huge fan of the (long) cutscenes in Metal Gear Solid, but I do really like some of the shorter CODEC conversations. These conversations are optional, so if a gamer wants to uncover the story, all he/she needs to do is call. More recently, I think BioShock has used optional audio story to great success, in the form of recordings lying around Rapture. Since the player must find the recordings, they are actively involved in constructing the story.

Portal, Bioshock, and even Halo rely heavily on the 'ambient' element of audio conversations to construct their narratives. GLADOS blares through the speakers, Atlas leads you around Rapture using his radio, and Cortana informs you about the Covenant by occupying your helmet's audio system.

Some games, such as Shadow of the Colossus, rely heavily on visual aspects to construct the feel of the story, but I notice that these this style of story construction is rare.

Obama promised to meet with McCain to discuss public financing and *possibly* negotiating a mutual agreement on it.

However, McCain has since broken the campaign finance law that he himself sponsored. The notion that Obama is somehow breaking a promise is laughable when McCain didn't even meet him half-way.

Last Alert...a treasure trove of hilariously bad voice acting.

One of my friends is an excellent bass/classical guitarist, and he argues that Guitar Hero songs on expert often include:
1. Extra finger work...for instance, holding down three buttons when the real song would only require that you hold two strings.
2. The real song includes two guitars, but the GH 'solo' makes you play both parts at the same time.
3. In the real song you are allowed some variation in timing which GH doesn't allow.

So...
A rainbow isn't art: it's beautiful, but no person was involved in its creation. Natural beauty exists: it's not art.

If I accidentally drop a slushie on the ground and it happens to splatter into the shape of a wax-winged Icarus flying high on a sunny day, I have not created art--odd as that may seem.

Now, what makes art good or bad is a separate question.

I'm not sure I understand Travis' point either.
Perhaps Travis is confused?
I haven't read your book on persuasive game design, but from just reading the outline it seems to take the 'metatheoretical' approach.

If I understand Travis correctly, then I've seen mistakes like his before in the philosophy of film.
[Bear with me, a long and twisted road lies ahead]
For instance, Kendall Walton, an analytic/cognitivist philosophers of film, has argued that we don't have a true fear response when we watch frightening horror movies. He proposes that we play a game of "make-believe" when we engage with fictional film, including make believed fear.

So, it might be tempting for Joe Scholar to reply: what about the role gender theory plays in our understanding of horror films? Why isn't that in your article?

This question, however, is ignorant of the theoretical level of Walton's 'make-believe' thesis. Joe Scholar wants to discuss the effect of sociological, historical, and anthropological context on interpretation of film ('cultural interaction').
Walton isn't strictly addressing these concerns; rather, he is providing a universal explanatory framework for our objective, non-cultural interaction with cinema.
Of course, Walton's argument has bearing on 'cultural' considerations, such as gender roles in horror movies, because he is providing theoretical tools. Indeed, Walton actually discusses cultural concerns in other papers--Joe Scholar myopic vision has mistakenly focused on just one part of Walton's approach to film studies.

At any rate, both Joe Scholar and Kendall Walton belong under the umbrella of 'Film Studies.'

If I'm right, Travis thinks you don't (properly?) explore the sociology and anthropology of gamers.

That said, Gears isn't my cup of tea. It's not that the gameplay is too slow, it's just that combat feels restricted and two dimensional.

There are only three terrain types in GoW1: perfectly flat ground, smooth gentle slope, or stairs. Even the 'friggin descent in the cave level occurs on a gentle slope.

I want rugged terrain, and I also want dynamic terrain objects. One of the joys of Halo 3 was taking out a Scarab or Phantom, climbing on top of it, and then using the wreckage as a protected vantage point.

Stuff like that just isn't possible in GoW1. Anytime I want to jump (not roll!) over an obstacle in GoW1, I have to hold down a button and allow the game to take over with a scripted jump sequence. I can't even fall down from a ledge unless the game scripts the action.

Give me a slow, powerful jump that I can only use once every 15 seconds...hell, give me fall damage if I fall even 7 ft. I just want the extra layer of vertical, truly three dimensional combat that terrain 'scaling' provides.

Zeus: Kratos, the gods of Olympias are troubled. It seems the word 'gullible' isn't in the Dictionary of Hermes.
Kratos: Woah, really?
Zeus: No, I was kidding you moron.
Kratos: ARG! You tricked me!

"Good graphics" isn't equivalent to high resolution. Even if a game rendered stick figures at IMAX resolution, we would still be justified in saying the graphics sucked.

Don't get me wrong, developer's should back-slide and settle on 480p. However, they just shouldn't worry to0 much if their game works best at 630p.

*But publishers should be upfront about inherent resolution versus upscaled resolution on their packaging.

Take a look at the bloodiest school shootings in North American history--where 10, 15, or 30 people died--and you'll see that semiautomatic pistols and carbines are the weapon of choice. I don't want to say it would be impossible for an experienced shooter to kill 32 people with a revolver, I just want to say that reload time would make that figure improbable.

Revolvers and bolt-action rifles are sufficient for home defense and hunting. The greater efficiency of semiautomatic weapons just makes them too prone to be used as instruments of mass-murder.

And in the long run, robot bomb technicians and soldiers are cheaper than real soldiers. Heck, in the skies, we could probably design and produce 10 to 20 fighter drone-aircraft for the cost of one F-22 Raptor. [Of course, the pilot-riddled bureaucracy of the Air Force would go ape-shit if we ever tried to take away their manned aircraft.]