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I know that the games I played have effected my intrests. My first adventure game was Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis and now I have a lifelong obsession with Atlantis. Games with factual content are so great.

hehe, FoA is the last place you want to look for factual content on the Atlantis myth.

To answer the question:

"...the biggest influence that adventure games had on me was the ability to see games as a viable medium to tell a complex story and to engage the player on not just a physical level, but also a mental and, probably most importantly, emotional level."

I agree a lot with what LimpingFish wrote. Except for the emotional bit because even though adventure games have some nice stories, they're not more complex than "you good guy, he bad guy, find way to get to bad guy only without guns." In my opinion.

Not that I had much bias in the other direction, that games aren't a viable way to tell stories, when I was growing up... But playing adventure games through the years exposed me to a wide variety of puzzle design and then making adventure games I've tried to take what I learned and cut out the crap and only keep the best. I also learned that I am more interested in exploring an artistic vision of a world than I am in solving random puzzles stuck in that world.

People without faith can do bad things just as well. Eric, for example the Nazis (do I win this internet argument now?!) killed millions of gupsies, jews, communists, homosexuals, whatevers based on philosophical grounds, not religious. In fact, I'd say all the bad things you attribute to faith-based beliefs are actually using faith to justify their atavistic (that is purely instinctual, animalistic) ignorance, fear, need for control and domination.

I can't accept that every bad thing that was attributed to faith was actually just a knowing or unknowing cover for something else. Unless you can accept that faith is animalistic and instinctual and leads people to do animalist and instinctual deeds.

"Gay people should not be allowed to marry/make love/adopt/exist because God says it is an abomination." I would say that is a direct link to faith. If someone searched out faith with the purpose of justifying their hate of gay people then sure, but I highly doubt that's the norm among religious people.

And if people create religions and beliefs then they are creating them to justify certain things they want or don't want. So faith is based on human fears/desires/ignorance?

biothlebop:

I think I understand what you mean but I don't know how it applies to my quote really.

I was talking about unknows, mostly. Not about every choice in life. "What do you want for dinner?" "I don't have enough input to offer a proper answer!" "Well then, you're getting hotdogs." "I am having hotdogs for dinner." Not like that at all.

Again, "I don't know, yet." isn't a dismissive "Put it on the back burner" statement to me.

I don't expect people to make decisions only when they have 100% of all the evidence needed to make one. I make decisions all the time not knowing what I'm doing 100% [like getting involved in internet debates!] but I don't have to resort to faith in something to make a decision. If one were to over stretch the definition of faith and say "But you have FAITH that your car will start each morning or FAITH that the sun will come up!" sure, but that's silly. I have a pretty good idea how cars work and a pretty good idea of why the sun does what it does but for things like the afterlife... I don't know. There is only one path of least reistance that would force me to make up my mind about the afterlife. Then again, taking all the evidence we currently have about religions, various beliefs about the afterlife, the human body, how the body dies and what happens to the brain when we die... It is, in my opinion, very safe to assume that when you die you cease to exist as a concious thing and stop existing out-right. However, I'm still accepting evidence.

But anyway, excuse me if I was confusing, I tend to get confusing if I write more than a paragraph.

lo_res_man:

"What I find flawed about the 'soul' concept, is that people explain human conciseness, an almost irreducibly complex concept, with somethingÃ,  simpleas a vaporÃ,  or a liquid. or ectoplasmic goo. an infinitly branching tree would be more likely."

Be more likely? How? If you have evidence of the sort I'd like to hear it! Also, how conciousness is irreducable.

Raggit:

If only string theory ment anything...

Again, I didn't say people without faith can't do bad things.

I can't get into the rest of your post now because it would take more time than I can spare at work. Games only take so long to build!

I don't understand the question.

Alright, thanks for clarifying.

To reiterate: as I said, I was in no way trying to attack Sektor.

But I don't think someone has to eventually have faith or faith-like views the more and more one gets into the unknown.

One just has to stop and say "I don't know yet." and that's hard to do sometimes and yet it should be the easiest thing ever. "I don't know" usually means to some people "I haven't thought about it" when it could very well be "I have given a lot of thought to it, weighed all the evidence and there is too little evidence for me to make a proper conclusion at this time, so I don't know yet.". In my opinion at least.

I wasn't even really speaking on what Sektor said, I was answering a question that also wasn't really about Sektor.

I don't quite understand the last few sentences you wrote. If by saying "You need to believe something" you mean "you need to have faith in something" then I disagree.

"The idea is that yyou don't base your opinion on the unknown, on logic, but on something else... "

Also, that confuses me a little. Do you mean me specifically?

But the question wasn't "If faith motivates somone in this life, I don't see it as a neccesarily negative thing. Also, are there other factors that could lead to negative things?"

There's no reason for me to talk on the possible other contributing factors.

One doesn't need faith to have an opinion on the unknown.

There is not a single instance you can think of when someone's faith in a certain religion has lead to a negative outcome? Not a single solitary instance? It's always something else?

Why?
If faith motivates somone in this life, I don't see it as a neccesarily negative thing.

terrorism, suicide bombings, inquisitions, crusades, honor killings, slavery, the caste system, witch trials, gay marriage bans, faith based initiatives, faith tampering with science, etcetera...

granted "I believe in reincarnation" is different than "I believe I should kill these people..." but in my opinion, even seemingly innocuous personal faith can lead to hate or ignorance or both.

I am in no way saying Sektor is any of these things, just answering a question. Maybe as an American surrounded by faith based idiocy in the government and sciences I'm more sensitive than the rest of the rational world?

But than again, I think a lot of things would be far more clearer if we could use whole 100 percent of the brains.

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percnt.htm

Man, I am SO boring!

dollard, dollard, dollard, dollard

A new keyboard - 15 dollard

Gone in a milisecond, no time for my brain to remind me of what a jerk I was.

That's what we're here for.

Also, I recommend you set up a team of people to randomly force you into life or death situations so you can eventually flash back to all events in your life and reach the present. Then when you do finally die [finally!] your brain will have nothing to do.

http://www.skepdic.com/nde.html

I think people who have near death experiences are just experiencing normal brain behavior brought about by extreme circumstances or induced in a lab setting.

So I guess Becky and I are boring to the core.

BOREDCORE!

Maybe you went to Elevator Action heaven?

The Wishbringer stone... For some reason I want it. I love things included in games so hard. Even down to metal weapons in Clue.

I have everything I want really, the Zak paper, the diary from Indy, all the lucas arts stuff... Just not the Wishbringer stone.

I wrote this post in notepad and then pasted it into the subject field not using short cut keys! AMAZING!

I read statements of people who 'went crazy' who reportedly thought they were playing Postal 2 and drove around clubbing people to get points. These people go on a rampage and kill... they're loony.

Do you have any sources for this?

Sounds highly suspect.

There was a game for the Phillips CD-I I believe called PO'd where you killed a bunch of... things... and when you used a violent weapon it left blood on the screen that a hand wiped off.

Just throwing that out there because someone has to mention the CD-I at least once a year. Or it will come back and kill us all...

I recommend making your first game before thinking of future games.

A school asking you to apply? How silly! You're supposed  to feel greatful if they even acknowledge your existance!

The only other school I've heard of where they ask you to join was Hogwarts... So maybe you should try and get in there! I hear it's fun!

not trying to be an ass either, just making a joke.

TEH JOKEZ!