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Posts By Caleb J. Ross

began writing his sophomore year of undergrad study when, tired of the formal art education then being taught, he abandoned the pursuit in the middle of a compositional drawing class. Major-less and fearful of losing his financial aid, he signed up to seek a degree in English Literature for no other reason than his lengthy history with the language. Coincidentally, this decision not only introduced him to writing but to reading as well. Prior this transition he had read three books. One of which he understood.

I want to help you love video games even more. Sometimes I do that by reviewing books about video games. Today is one of those sometimes, because I’m taking a look at the first issue of A Profound Waste of Time.

The credits are rolling on Horizon Zero Dawn. Yes, I’m late to the party. This game was released about a year and a half ago, but being late to a game doesn’t make the experience or the game any less amazing. And Horizon Zero Dawn is amazing.

Over the years I've acquired a series of books written by modern day ninjutsu practitioners. Some are informative. Some are practical. But most have trouble balancing the desire to demystify with the need to sell books. Let's talk about them.

Gamers want realism, but we also want enemy AI to respect our need for fun, meaning we don’t want our enemies to be super smart. We need our inept guards to eat discarded poisoned rice balls. We need our machine gun-toting soldiers to ignore a conspicuous cardboard box. Otherwise, the game wouldn’t be fun. A truly intelligent enemy NPC is not what we want. We don’t even want artificial intelligence. We want scripted behaviors based on shortcut heuristics with game balance--not realism--being the end goal.

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