What I like about the Bioshock forums?

[somecut8]

You know what I really like about the forums here? I really like that fact that most people here actually want and partake in earnest discussions. Most of the people who post in the forums further enhance a thread, rather than detract from it. Furthermore, people here look to add to the discussion, rather then tear down any opponent who has posted something that may be a little wrong. I have been to many other forums and no other has as many intelligent people as there are in this forum.

Examples in which do not have the nice Bioshock forum atmosphere include:
Halo 3 forum - infested by people who basically have no life
Gears of War forum - kind off liek the Halo 3 forum, but with less little kids and more serious
Viva Pinata - almost a forum for the elitists

[Freddo]

That's mainly only because it's a new and relatively small forum.

If this forum had as many members as the Halo 3 forum, it would be the same deal here. And there will be the same deal here when Bioshock is released.

[jackinthebox]

yeah, that's probably true :P i think one month before the release this forum will grow huge and there are going to be all kinds of people ;)

[Raveness]

The more mature the content the game represents, the more mature and intelligent the community. Out of the forums I've frequented, the title of the game has always given an indication as to the level of quality discourse you will find within, but every single one has been hopelessly subjected to the tidal wave of release joiners who tend to drag down the forums atmosphere into a bevy of daft technical questions, puerile complaints, and superfluous arguments.

As much as I'd like that not to occur here, I seriously doubt even a contemporary game like Bioshock will be able to avoid the mass dullards.

[Hatesink]

As much as I'd like that not to occur here, I seriously doubt even a contemporary game like Bioshock will be able to avoid the mass dullards.The 'dullards' I can handle, it's the griefers I don't like (I mean I really don't like them).

I think on more or less any forum there are plenty of people that would quite happily just sit and chat if it weren't for the few that ruin it by just being openly hostile and abusive. Ultimately it should be the moderators that put a stop to that kind of behavior, but sometimes I guess the lunatics just end up taking over the asylum. I'm a long-term member of another forum with a pretty huge turn-over (of people) and people from all walks of life often diametrically opposed in terms of their politics, beliefs etc., but it's still a pretty friendly community (but probably because the owner of the forum polices it with a rod of iron. If you're a griefer you get an instant ban, no ifs no buts)

I've also been a member of gaming forums where there have been very strong communities indeed. It seems to happen with forums dedicated to racing simulation, probably because it attracts a different type of person. The forums for Illusion Softworks' Mafia were pretty cool too, basically (I'm assuming) because the funky old cars (and not being able to get out of the tunnel or over the bridge without a run-up) was quite a watershed. A lot of the younger audience were probably expecting another GTA clone.

I'm imagining it probably won't be like this forever. The place will probably be swamped around August, but hopefully the griefing will be minimal. I don't mind telling griefers where to get off, but it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth (so to speak).

[Santino]

BioShock forum is a good thing - I am sitting here for a couple of hourse, but I feel friendly atmosphere of this place. Thank you :)

[Laser Eyes]

It's because SS2 was a thinking man's game. So BioShock attracts a similar kind of fan. We can discuss games intelligently.

[Raveness]

A bit off-topic, but I had to watch my 6 year-old niece just yesterday. I usually occupy her with the "gamepad" (Nintendo DS), and she usually plays it, but a lot more recently she bugs me to watch as I play on the PC.

So there I am totally engrossed in my current SS2 playthrough, but usually with her over I get harangued with lots of questions. This time, not a single question in over a half-hour, then all of a sudden my door opens. She says she's leaving because, and I quote: *sniffling and trembling* "I don't like scary game"

I guess the growling of The Many or the audio logs or the dark spooky atmosphere didn't settle with her :p

Am I a bad person? :(

[Redraf]

I think the big difference between us and them though is that most forums are open-ended, and have a general discussion whereas this forum is more a gathering of people that all say BioShock is teh pwnz0rz.

[Hatesink]

Am I a bad person? :(Is that a rhetorical question? ;)

Edit: I used to babysit my nephew, pick him up from school etc. and sometimes my then girlfriend and I would stay around at their house for the weekend, and one of these times we were watching Deep Blue Sea. I was really tired and was basically falling asleep in front of the television, when my nephew came into the room. I knew there was probably a horrific scene coming up so I told my girlfriend to please turn the T.V. off, but she didn't really care and just left it on, and sure enough some woman gets eaten by a shark and the poor little thing sees it and is visibly distressed by it, and I feel guilty forever for not having just got up and turned that damn TV off.

It's a couple of years later, and I get a phonecall asking me to collect my Nephew, take him home, feed him etc., and generally keep him occupied until his mum can collect him. At the same time I'm feeding the fish we keep in the bathroom and dog-sitting for someone— looking after the dopiest Golden Retriever you could ever hope to meet; a six year old Golden Retriever who because of the way he jumps around and fusses over people no one can believe is not a puppy— his coat's always neatly trimmed and people think he's a Labrador pup. He's an extremely intelligent dog but dopey as anything, to the point where people burst out laughing as soon as they see him, which I totally eat up (because I think it's hilarious). I'm thinking we're going to have such a nice day. I've run around tidying up my room and preparing the food, and have postponed walking the dog so that we can walk him around the park in the sunshine, but when I take the dog along with me to collect my nephew from his mom, he's terrified of the dog— I have to put my nephew on my shoulders, and let the retractable lead out as far as it'll go (like I do when I want to stroke the local cat) so that the dog's as far away from us as I can possibly get him, and I ask my nephew why he's so scared of the dog and he says it's because of their teeth, their big teeth, and all the while I can feel this little guy trembling and trembling with fear.

We get back home and I'm feeling really bad about this, so I leave the dog in the front room and we go up to my room to play the computer (I've bought a new Reader Rabbit game so that we've got something fun to do) and he needs to go to the bathroom, so I tell him where it is and he trots off but then he comes back and says to me "There's a fish in there!", and I say yes, that's where we keep our fish and he says "But I'm scared of fish too". I tell him it'll be okay and once he gets back from the bathroom he asks me if I have any games where you can kill sharks.

I guess if there's any kind of moral to that story it's that rather than System Shock 2, Reader Rabbit is the way to go. :(

[Jeff]

but every single one has been hopelessly subjected to the tidal wave of release joiners who tend to drag down the forums atmosphere into a bevy of daft technical questions, puerile complaints, and superfluous arguments.

Oh man, big words get me hot.

Back onto a bit of seriousness, Kids need to be exposed to fiction and horror and things that go bump in the night, half of the fun of being a kid is being scared of the monster in your closet. Didn't you guys ever sneak out of your bedroom and hide somewhere behind a plant or some other crazy place you had to jimmy yourself into while your parents were watching a horror movie, then sneak back up to bed later and nearly wet yourself at the thought of the scary monster? It's a character building thing to expose yourself to fears like that and then conquer them later on in life when you realize there's little to no actual logic behind your phobia.

So you're not bad people, you're actually modern day saints. :P

[Hatesink]

The more fairy tales and similar kinds of stories that you're able to read to them when they're young the better, since those kinds of stories prepare children for the world in ways that aren't overly distressing: Once long long ago far far away [...] and they all lived happily ever after (Horror films aren't something that should be shown to children, I'll probably always regret not having turned that T.V. off).

I think the best thing is to look at the rating on the package. I bought him a copy of the Neverhood and even that was a little scary for him (the transitions at the junctions scared him), but it is rated 'M'. The http://fourfatchicks.com review states that "When The Neverhood was originally released, it had an ESRB rating of "M," but there is really nothing in this game that I would not allow my kids to watch"— I thought the same thing but those transitions were still distressing for him (we stopped playing).

But it is difficult— he almost jumped out of his skin playing Lego Racers when we clicked on the automatic player-character composition button and got a figure all in white and with a skull for face (it can just be really frustrating sometimes, because you try so hard to be a positive influence and then that kind of thing happens (and after all that time I spent building Lego cars that he was able to get around the tracks:confused:)).

I'm not sure if Raveness was joking when she posed that question, if not I hope she's not feeling too beaten up about it.

[v.dog]

Kids need to be exposed to fiction and horror and things that go bump in the night, half of the fun of being a kid is being scared of the monster in your closet. Didn't you guys ever sneak out of your bedroom and hide somewhere behind a plant or some other crazy place you had to jimmy yourself into while your parents were watching a horror movie, then sneak back up to bed later and nearly wet yourself at the thought of the scary monster? It's a character building thing to expose yourself to fears like that and then conquer them later on in life when you realize there's little to no actual logic behind your phobia.I disagree. While kids might need to be exposed to horror, it needs to be at their discression, and at an age-appropriate level. I don't want to start a censorship debate, but Hatesink's story is a perfect illustration of why movies and games have ratings. Young children have trouble separating fantasy from reality, and lack the mental capability to understand the underlying motives of any horrific act (say, shooting someone in cold blood vs shooting in self defence), the ability to distance themselves from it, and the ability to understand consequences of that action.

[Hatesink]

They need to learn about the world. Fairy tales and similar things will do that. Most literature created for children will. Just make sure it's age appropriate.

[Jeff]

well of course there needs to be some discretion, I won't say "age descretion" entirely (excluding things like sitting a 4 year old down in front of nightmare on elm street, that's just wrong.... hilariously wrong, but wrong none-the-less) I remember the first time I watched terminator, would've been in like 91, with a decent explanation of fantasy vs. reality from the parents beforehand, and although even then it freaked me out terribly that's one of the main factors leading to my (thus-far) life-long love affair with movies, I'd say it's also one of the main reasons I'm not at all afraid of robots taking over the world (C'mon, there's no way Arnie is the product of a futuristic world here cyborgs reign).

[nmrahde]

Would letting a 4 year old watch Poltergeist 2 be any better? (Actually I was allowed to watch it then - I still will *NOT* go near Tequilla that has a worm in the bottle)

Although maybe a year and a half later I had a babysitter that let me watch Salem's Lot, Creepshow 2, and Maximum Overdrive (For which he is permanently on a list of cool people); and I didn't develop a paranoia of vampires, sketches with b-list actors, or semi trucks with an awesome Green-Goblin grill.

I think the environment in which you're introduced to it factors in a lot. In the Poltergeist 2 scenario everyone else in the room was jumping when the scary stuff happened so I did too. When Jason (the baby sitter) was watching those movies with me he wasn't scared and laughed at points like when the soda machine attacks the kids, and even pointed out scenes where you could tell the person wasn't actually getting hurt. That helped a lot for me not getting scared, while probably irreversibly affecting my sense of humor.

On a minorly related bit it's incredibly cute to hear my friend's 4 year old daughter say "noogle" instead of "moogle"

[Adam Nuhfer]

A bit off-topic, but I had to watch my 6 year-old niece just yesterday. I usually occupy her with the "gamepad" (Nintendo DS), and she usually plays it, but a lot more recently she bugs me to watch as I play on the PC.

So there I am totally engrossed in my current SS2 playthrough, but usually with her over I get harangued with lots of questions. This time, not a single question in over a half-hour, then all of a sudden my door opens. She says she's leaving because, and I quote: *sniffling and trembling* "I don't like scary game"

I guess the growling of The Many or the audio logs or the dark spooky atmosphere didn't settle with her :p

Am I a bad person? :(



No.

I just don't understand your logic! You take a six year old and expose her to one of the best games of all time. Now, for her young mind, all games will pale in comparison till BioShock comes out. You needed to start her out on something more average, like "Tridents Sugar Shock 2". You know, the one where there's this focus group composed mostly of old aged Dentists whom are beset by the sugar industry. :D

[Club Heaven]

People are clearly smarter and nicer here compared to other gaming forums. It makes me sick just thinking back at the arguments I had with the little geniuses in the WoW community and in other highly populated areas.
I used to be a moderator for a couple of years on my country's leading gaming mag's forum (big responsability, I'm oh so proud...) and it was a painful experience. About 8 out of 10 people were either smartasses or attention seeking children who's every post contained the "words": OMG IT RUUULZ LOL !

But still, the Bioshock forum is kinda slow, too much time goes by until someone posts something. I guess there's just too few of us and we're all the type who only posts when they can say something worthy of being eternally commited to memory, hehe. Although this small, cozy atmosphere is a welcome change to the fast paced bull****ting that goes on about everywhere.

[borgdrone89]

BioShock forum is a good thing - I am sitting here for a couple of hourse, but I feel friendly atmosphere of this place. Thank you :)

Oh man, big words get me hot.

Back onto a bit of seriousness, Kids need to be exposed to fiction and horror and things that go bump in the night, half of the fun of being a kid is being scared of the monster in your closet. Didn't you guys ever sneak out of your bedroom and hide somewhere behind a plant or some other crazy place you had to jimmy yourself into while your parents were watching a horror movie, then sneak back up to bed later and nearly wet yourself at the thought of the scary monster? It's a character building thing to expose yourself to fears like that and then conquer them later on in life when you realize there's little to no actual logic behind your phobia.

So you're not bad people, you're actually modern day saints. :P

@santino: the atmosphere here is good, and the people are great, but i truly believe this community needs a few more like-minded people, so that we have more activity (i don't see much thread motion).

@jeff: scary things are sometimes fun, and usually incredibly SCARY (maybe at the same time).
I remember when i was in grades 6-8 at school i kept on waking up in the dead of the night and thinking there were people in the house, and sometimes, i saw shadows in my room, and mistook them for mad men with guns, snickering and lamenting (in their minds) of how they would carefully aim their barrels at me, and then inflict pain on me, and i would be dead before i could utter a scream to warn my parents of impending doom. and at the same time, i "knew" that these shadow beings knew that i was awake, and they truly appreciated (in a sadistic way) the predicament i was in. Do I scream to save the family, and suffer my fate, or do i eventually get killed off and then so does my family, but in a peaceful way; OR, do i wait it out for a few hours until the sun starts to rise, and hope these beings flee the vicinity?
one day i did actually wait for the sun to rise and i survived (:D).
but, during these horrible nights, i would consider many things.
do i regulate my breathing until it sounds like nothing is there?
do i hide under the sheets and hope the intruders don't notice me?
do i just grab the yo-ho diablo sticks or swiss army knife from under my pillow and try to fight my way out?

these are the horrific things that went through my mind between the ages of 11-13.
thinking about them now, it does still scare me a little.
ps. these are true things that happened to me.

[Hatesink]

ps. these are true things that happened to me.I had remarkably similar experiences around that age, but for me it was the monsters from Dr. Who :p

I'd lay in bed frozen with fear.

I think it must have been a form of sleep paralysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis)

It's interesting the way the woman in the wikipedia article is posed (in that almost universal symbol of sleep paralysis), since (now that I'm older) it's generally discomfort in my shoulders (the feeling of them separating, loss of circulation etc. (and the desire to shift position)) that brings me out of sleep into that kind of awareness state (the reason we're paralyzed in sleep is so that we don't move and act in response to our dreams).

[Raveness]

People are clearly smarter and nicer here compared to other gaming forums. It makes me sick just thinking back at the arguments I had with the little geniuses in the WoW community and in other highly populated areas.
I used to be a moderator for a couple of years on my country's leading gaming mag's forum (big responsability, I'm oh so proud...) and it was a painful experience. About 8 out of 10 people were either smartasses or attention seeking children who's every post contained the "words": OMG IT RUUULZ LOL !
You see those types everywhere, the 'whatever' poster. I think we even have a couple here (wasn't there someone who posted like twenty 1 line responses in a one hour period). I dislike posts that have no substance at all, like the single-smiley posts, or the "I agree" posts that don't have anything beyond that, or the "reading that made me physically ill" type. Example:

Im not gonna lie.....the point of life is being happy and when school is boring and gaming is fun i choose gaming over school....i mean i know in the long run school is prolly more important but i cant get over the fact that we spend years of our life learning when most of the tuff we learn will just go to a secluded corner of our brain and when theres so much more out there than school.....i mean being happy is the freekin point of life so school can kiss my ass

Wonderful isn't it? :rolleyes: And that was from the second most visited forum I frequent. Quality stomping grounds are hard to find these days, luckily the Bioshock based ones (2K and TTLG) have that indelible quality us above-average gamers yearn for.

@ Club Heaven: Almost as bad as those types are the one's who respond to them with serious intent instead of ignoring it, which I find leads to a pseudo-legitimization of idiocy. The world, both online and off, needs a good injecting of some polymer alloys coupled with some dismissal subroutines. This should make people more thick-skinned and less likely to acknowledge the ramblings of Jack Thompson types.

[borgdrone89]

i just remembered that when i was 4, i woke up one night, and the night-light was casting a shadow in the corner (from furniture and other objects) that looked suspiciously like a witch's hat. it spooked me and i was scared to close my eyes for fear of being turned into a toad..
i've also seen a moving humanoid-shadow-figure in my bedroom one time. so i closed my eyes and hoped it would be gone, and when i eventually opened my eyes again, it had left.
all this frightful stuff was in my old house.

@ hatesink. I agree!!

(get it?)
but seriously, i have been to a few forums, and they all seem to have the same trolling 12-year-olds and those annoying moderators that give you an extra warn level for naught a reason (this happened somewhere else to me.. i made a dll request post in the most logical place to put it, which was also the place where you're not allowed to make the post. anyway, i got a 10% warn. 3 months later, my warn was at 20% for some reason, and i had not been active in that period..
yeah. those dam trolling kids and mods..
at least here im almost the youngest person, and all you guys make intelligent (sometimes over the top of my head) posts. this is a rare occurence for me.

[Club Heaven]

Almost as bad as those types are the one's who respond to them with serious intent instead of ignoring it, which I find leads to a pseudo-legitimization of idiocy. The world, both online and off, needs a good injecting of some polymer alloys coupled with some dismissal subroutines. This should make people more thick-skinned and less likely to acknowledge the ramblings of Jack Thompson types.

Aaah, Jack Thompson... now there's a guy who knows how to have fun !
Anyway, I did try at one time to respond to loudmouth smartasses as eloquently as I could, but after about 14 (looong) pages of me giving arguments and they shouting insults, I just left. Though I gotta tell you it was fun for the first half, when those of them who had traces of a brain realized they've been beaten and ran away with their tails between their legs.
Internet communication is sooo watered down compared to the real thing. You never really know who you're speaking to, or if he understands or even cares. So I generally frequent forums where people seem to have a good sense of humor. Getting into (very) serious discussions is always a tricky thing and in my opinion it isn't worth putting too much effort into them unless you have a pretty good idea what type of person you're speaking with.

[borgdrone89]

link me!!!
i want to read said argument!

[Club Heaven]

Oh no :p
Chances are some of you disagree with what I said in there and the last thing I want in my life right now is the continuation of that pointless struggle. But hey, I'm sure there will be plenty of wonderful opportunities for us to argue, outwit and tear eachother to pieces like the true ladies and gentlemen that we are.

[Jeff]

I look forward to such quibbles with the eagerness of a child trying to sleep on christmas eve. :D

[v.dog]

I thought petty quibbles is what the TTLG forums are for. I came here to relax.*

*Actually, I love a good debate as much as the next person, I just don't like it when the arguements turn personal.

[BioShockWins]

just wait till the game is released...

[Hatesink]

I thought petty quibbles is what the TTLG forums are for. I came here to relax.*

*Actually, I love a good debate as much as the next person, I just don't like it when the arguements turn personal.ttlg is the only forum I've ever found where you can effectively grief just by being congenial and friendly :p

[Jeff]

The end appears to be beginning, I apologize if my arrival was the signal fire of the apocalypse.