Krall

I posted this poll on another forum I frequent, and I want to see how our results compare with theirs. Please read this post before voting, or it's likely you will not understand the categories. Okay, so, this poll is essentially about video game genres. Conventional video game genres are pretty useless as categories - think about it; Portal, Fallout 3, and Call of Duty: Black Ops are all FPSs, but they're different types of game that we play for fundamentally different reasons - so I'm here to tell you about the generally accepted 8 core game aesthetics. A core game aesthetic is a fundamental reason we play a game. Games usually deliver on two to four of these, but they can deliver on a lot more. Most games contain elements of all the 8 aesthetics, but are only played for two or three (for example, Mario games have storylines, but I don't think anyone plays them for the narrative). These 8 core game aesthetics are: 1. Sensation This one is easy to define - it's any game that gives you pleasurable sensual stimuli (or "sense pleasure"). It's a game you play because it looks great, or because the music is amazing. Games that fall clearly into this category tend to be music-focused rhythm games - things like Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution - but there are other games that we play because of the great sensations we get from playing them - Cave Story has great music, as do most Mario games, so they deliver on the aesthetic of sense pleasure. 2. Fantasy Games that you play for fantasy are those that you play because they let you take on a role that you couldn't or wouldn't do in real life. It's playing Call of Duty because you want to be a badass US Marine, or Star Wars: The Old Republic because you want to be a Sith and shoot lightning from your hands. 3. Narrative Narrative is games as drama. These are the games you play for the story and the characters. Mass Effect, Final Fantasy, and The Sims are all great because of their strong, dramatic narratives. 4. Challenge Challenge is when you play a game specifically to overcome the arbitrary obstacles it places in your path. This is not the same thing as difficulty - difficulty can deliver challenge, but there are games which are centred around challenge, but that you can never actually lose. Most games (try to) deliver on the challenge aesthetic, but the most obvious examples are puzzle games - like Portal. Essentially, challenge games make you feel great for beating them. 5. Fellowship This is when you play games in order to work together with or alongside other players. Any sort of team-based or co-op multiplayer game delivers on this - Team Fortress 2, World of Warcraft, or Journey. 6. Discovery This is when you play games to, well, discover new things. It could be discovering how to make a pickaxe in Minecraft, to uncovering more of the map in Skyrim. Games that delivery on discovery give you plenty of opportunities to explore what they have to offer, without telling you up front exactly how stuff works/where everything is. 7. Expression This is when you play a game in order to express yourself. Stuff like building things in creative mode in Minecraft, or designing your character in City of Heroes (RIP). Expressive games let you make choices in order to create something that's entirely your own; even the class and race systems in World of Warcraft count, as they're letting you make choices in order to create your own character. 8. Abnegation Abnegation is games as a past-time. When a game lets you just tune out and do whatever without thinking too deeply or putting any great obstacles in your path, this is abnegation. Grinding for levels in Pokemon or World of Warcraft is abnegation, as are most Facebook games like Farmville. So, those are the aesthetics - which ones do you most like to play games for? I know you can't choose just one (most games deliver on more than one aesthetic, after all) so I've made this multiple choice poll. Oh, and if there's some reason you play video games that doesn't seem to fit into the above categories please feel free to mention it in the comments.

But the Higgs Boson is a sub-sub-atomic particle that acts as the force carrier for gravity - not a huge, unstable molecule whose degradation releases unfathomably huge amounts of energy. They're about as similar as weapons grade plutonium and delicious medium cheddar cheese.

You wouldn't happen to be a Fitzmaurice, would you? I mean, it's entirely possible - your profile says you're from France, and the Fitzmaurices are an Iricised Anglo-Norman clan, and a considerable amount of Irish people have fled their homelands to settle in France (due to that nasty Catholicism vs. Protestantism business)!

According to the one linked to in the opening post my pony name is... "Pinkie Dash"!? That's not a pony; that's a ship! And not a good ship like the the Warspite, the Victory or the Hotspur! Heck, it's not even the Mariposa! I like this generator a lot more, for it claims that my pony name is - wait for it - "Handsome Masquerade".

I'm offended by all of those things!

Random fact: Words often have more than one meaning, and their meanings often change over time. Whilst both of the above meanings are acceptable, "decimation" also means "to destroy a large portion of" and "ultimate" also means "the greatest possible, maximum, or most extreme". The first country to recognise the USA's independence was the Sultanate of Morocco. Thomas Paine - one of the USA's founding fathers - was elected to the National Assembly of revolutionary France despite not speaking French. Mongol warriors had 3 or 4 horses each, and could survive for about a month on these horses' milk and blood alone. The human race produces enough food to feed 11 billion people. A huge portion of this food then goes on to feed livestock.

I generally dislike the term "brony" - it being gender specific - but I have never heard of sexuality impacting on whether one is or is not a brony. Provided you are a fan of MLP and want to be referred to as a brony, you're a brony; no ifs, no buts.

England, Wales and Ireland - also Normandy, but that's not a British country any more. I don't truly consider myself ethnically English, Welsh, or Irish, though; heck I barely consider myself British. I think the most accurate description of my ethnicity is "British-Internetian", since I identify with my online fellows a lot more than I generally do the standard Briton.

British - though I joke that I'm ethnically Brummy, as both of my parents are from that great city of Birmingham.

Yeah, it's kind of like that, only with more intense paranoia and possibly a mental breakdown. Also I'm not Carrot Top (yet).