#and if that's not the problem sometimes is it that hard for a dev team to do their job?

[rawliverandgoronspice]

It's genuinely wild to me how we managed to equate criticizing a game we are disappointed in with entitlement and gamedev harassment.

It's fine to have negative emotions about art somebody else made and express those emotions. It's literally fine. It's fine to disagree on what brings value to something and what doesn't (imho that matters WAYY much than complaining about bugs or fps drops or whatever, which are, on the other hand, always welcomed criticisms even though they are like the level 0 of game criticism but ok). Doesn't mean the companies have to cater to the fans or their opinion (what would that even mean), but passively taking anything made and only ever being allowed to express nuanceless joy is such a strange attitude to encourage? Disagreement is not bad! Conflict isn't bad! Conflict of opinion is not only inevitable; it can even be done respectfully!

also do people realize the first haters of a game are generally the gamedevs themselves --do you have any idea how hard the rants go when we got out for a beer after particularly spicy review cycles???? I'm literally incapable of stopping once I begin to rant about many game I worked on

made this for twitter since most people here that engage with my totk rants are the like-minded people my rants are intended for but i thought its kinda funny too and maybe it clears something up for anyone potentionally confused why i rant so much about it

[lizzybeeee]

DATV Spoilers - The Handling of Previous Story/Lore In DATV

Quick PSA: If you’ve read my post on the lore/story threads dropped – it’s not a list of what I expected or even wanted to see addressed/answered in DATV.

It’s pretty much a given that Kieran and the Architect were never going to come back in any meaningful way, I understand that. Questions about what happened to Anora, Anders, Cullen’s clinic etc...never expected to get an answer about them – at all. The line of succession in Ferelden and Orlais? I expected that sometime down the line it would have to be streamlined into one option for both nations, not a problem – there’s so many choices it’s impossible to account for, and I understand that.

This is just a list of plot threads left unanswered that will, most likely, remain unanswered.

There’s no DLC planned – the team is working on Mass Effect 5 now. There’s no conclusion to the fate of the south of Thedas outside of some codex entries and some dialogue. They can patch the Executors cutscene out, maybe - perhaps they could even do the same to anything relating to the south of Thedas. Yes, these areas were not completely destroyed by the Blight – they can rebuild – but it comes across as being so meaningless that I ever cared for these places in the first place. To learn that after ten years of waiting all we cared for get devastated and left in limbo...it’s hard to put into words the bitterness I felt at that realization, and seeing that final cut-scene drove the nail into the coffin of how foolish I felt for even caring in the first place.

A codex entry or letter would have been nice – but my expectations for DATV was solely for a good story that added to the lore and world of Thedas. Instead, it felt entirely reductive – glaringly so when you account for the ‘Executives’ twist.

The world of Thedas has been watered down and its worldbuilding/lore diminished - slavery in Tevinter is non-existent, the Crows being an organization that indoctrinated children is never touched upon, any mystery of ancient Tevinter and the elves is answered (badly!), the Dalish have effectively disappeared and become the Veil Jumpers...it all feels so hollow, so shallow, that I ever cared about these things in the first place.

The issue is that the dev’s gave us only three choices, told us that as the story was contained to the north of Thedas – that our other choices weren’t relevant to the rest of the game with their intent being to not effect anyone's head-canons...before doing so with ‘the blight has devastated most of everywhere you went previously’.

These were story/plot threads that were woven throughout the narrative of the first three games – the things that made me care and become invested in the world of Thedas to begin with. In a game that was set-up to be a direct sequel to Inquisition and Trespasser I hoped that, at least, what was brought up in Inquisition would be mentioned.

Perhaps my list is a little too detailed with plot threads and issues – if anything that can be attributed to the incredible world-building done in the first three games! I love those games, I love the world of Thedas...which is why this game utterly baffles me with its choices.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a good game but not a good Dragon Age game.

----------------------------------

Edit: DATV absolutely has a lot of problems outside of its handling of the lore and story of the previous games. I would not say its a good rpg in any sense, but as a weird 'action-adventure rpg lite' game I did have some fun moments and enjoy myself. Would I recommend it to anyone? Absolutely not.

I heard someone describe it as a 'junk food' game and I very much agree with that statement. I found enjoyment in it, but to do so I usually had to turn off my brain, which is not a compliment towards DATV.

The game released very well optimized (especially considering how most companies are content to release half-baked games and patch them later) and did create some really interesting visual set-pieces like the Battle of Weisshaupt. But those moments I enjoyed were few and far between, and far overwhelmed by the negatives of the game - such as story, lack of conversation/conflict/role-play options, bad character writing etc...

Calling the game 'good' is, perhaps, a stretch, and I totally get that. Calling it 'mediocre with some good parts' may be more accurate.

[godkillerbrigade]

Do you have any tips for people who want to create games?

hello! yes! i'm a full-time indie dev who mostly works on small-team projects or solo projects, so most of my advice is geared towards Doing That. if you wanna work in a major studio, or wear only one hat, my advice will be significantly less useful

spend some time fucking around in an engine. literally any engine. fucking around is a key component of actually getting a working knowledge of how game development works

DON'T start with your big huge exciting game idea. that idea is the culmination of your training arc, not the start. it'll be waiting for you once you know how to do it justice.

make something small. no, smaller, no, even smaller. finish it as fast as possible. put it on itch for free. get three downloads and one comment. read that comment. note what they think is wrong, but don't pay attention to their proposed fix. then set your sights on something slightly bigger and go again.

more game isn't better game. if a game isn't fun to play for three minutes, it won't be fun to play for three hours. just like you wouldn't build a house on sand, make sure you have a very good foundation before you start building content on top. a bad game cannot be fixed by adding extra costumes.

decide what you're making games for. you don't have to decide this immediately, but when you embark on a mid-large-sized project you need to have definite goals for what you want out of its release. "i want to make money" is an acceptable answer (more on that later); "i want to express myself" is an acceptable answer; "i want to fuck around" is an acceptable answer; "i want to make money and express myself by fucking around" is Objectively More Difficult. if you make a game of significant scale without planning for success in a particular direction, you're more likely to be disappointed by the result

making money as an indie dev is fucking difficult. and not difficult as in "it's hard work," difficult as in "there are a ton of external factors that will determine your success, and while making a good game helps, there's literally no way to be certain a project will make any money." the vast majority of indie games are monetary flops. if you do decide to go pro, figure out a very robust system to keep your bills paid in case your big dream project is a flop, because there's even odds that it will be and there's nothing you can do about it. contract work can be good for this, as can Just Having Money, but that's easier said than done

find other developers on the same journey as you and make friends with them. do jams with them. talk about your projects. get better together.

if you run into a problem, google it and look at each of the top 3-5 results. every problem can be solved in a number of ways, and sometimes the best method for your use case is non-obvious

good luck!

i'll leave you with my favorite smbc, which resonates very deeply with my own experience with gamedev:

[thereallivingded]

8 months

Nearly 8 months have passed since I blogged. Damn.

I apologize profusely if anyone was interested in my ramblings. I have zero excuses other than life got hard. Full time job. Which I hated profusely - not that I'm not going to be working full time again soon - tends to bring on crushing depression when I feel stuck in it. Which I did, and I was. When you are paid bi-weekly and you see that entire paycheck go to your cost of living.. well. It doesn't do good things to your psyche. Energy levels get low and all that extra you had energy for before gets used up with day to day survival. Getting out of bed. Getting to work. Feeding yourself. Cleaning your house. Squeezing in workout (a thing I do now).

It's not all bad I suppose. I've finally been able to interview for and obtain a position that will not only net me a raise but be closer to home. Hopefully, that should get me more free time to pursue the things I actually enjoy.

I'd like to say that in this time I've been able to tackle my backlog of Steam games. But. Well. BG3 happened. And I spent even more time in the game than I had in early access. It's maddening how much time I've sunk into Faerun. I have no regrets though.

The only thing really that's kept me from finishing my campaign - as I am in Act 3 - is my computer. I haven't upgraded the beast since 2020 or 2021-ish. And it's starting to show. My mobo is acting extraordinarily peculiar. Sometimes I'll walk away from my computer to come back a couple hours later and find it stuck in bios. Super fun. The connection to the mobo gets wiggled a little and everything pops back on. Super. However, anything heavy to run - like BG3 - tends to get very crash-y.

Again. Super.

T.T

AND. Due to my financial constraints because of the job I recently left, I was completely unable to fix this. I'm hoping with the advent of the new job, getting a few paychecks in to stabilize, I can rectify the problems. Hopefully.

I started a couple of fanfics for the first time ever. I am ridiculously shy about them. My writing skills have become so sodding rusty. The stories came to me while I was playing BG3 and I was compelled to write them down. Note now, that the frequency of updates directly reflects the time I have to invest in them. So keep that in mind.

Be gentle on me here lol!

I have been able to get some gaming done. I have ceased playing Back 4 Blood, as it became no longer supported by its dev team. A sad move really. The gaming industry as a whole has become this parasitic beast. Devs work on a game for an extremely limited amount of time and abandon it the moment it becomes less lucrative than their board of directors care for.

There is a trend towards monetization of minutiae and online play in inappropriate genres, that has become an insidious infection in the game industry. It robs us of good game development. There's this mentality of more, more, now that's just slow poison to the whole beast. It makes everything very same-y and boring.

Which is why I strive at this point in my life, to not give money to the companies which I feel are most guilty of this. The only way to make these corporations listen is to hit them in the $. As such I will probably be carefully curating any games I discuss or mention on this blog from here on. My next post will likely be discussing a visual novel I've spent some time in that I equal parts enjoyed and became frustrated with. So that's in the pipeline. Until then keep to the lights lovies. <3

[llatimeria]

The other thing is I think I just kind of disagree with how a lot of people think about video game accessibility on here. Not really in any huge way just. Because of my neuro problems, I'm never gonna be the kind of gamer who gets really good at games like Smash, Soulsbornes, Monster Hunters, and any platformers that have a skill level above "Mario", but that doesn't... bother me, actually? And I personally don't really want an invincibility mode in the name of "accessibility" just to experience the story, because to me, honing those skills and knowing the game's mechanics like the back of your hand is part of the story, and if you can completely separate the mechanics and story of a game, mayyybe the story or mechanics aren't as good as they could be.

like, Celeste, a game I own and have tried to play and understand is very very good, basically does have invincibility modes to get less-skilled players through the story, which is good because I'm exactly the kind of person that's targeted by that accessibility feature! It unironically made me feel really good to learn how committed to accessibility the Celeste team was! but as soon as I turned on all the stuff to make the game "accessible" to me it just kind of... got really boring, and knowing that I always had that way "out" made it harder to keep caring about it. It's still a really good game, but when the story being told is about getting better through hard work and determination, it kind of feels a bit silly to take away the hard work and determination, I guess.

There's nothing WRONG with wanting or utilizing those accessibility features to be clear but idk I think I'm just at peace with the idea that some stories aren't meant for me, everyone's going to enjoy different games for different reasons, and sometimes my disability is THE reason I'm not going to enjoy a game, and that doesn't mean the devs did anything wrong (unless they were intentionally being weird little dicks about it I guess), they're just catering to a kind of person that isn't me, and that's Fine.

[salt-volk]

post707883411295043585 thats part of the problem tho is yall assume that just bc stuff doesnt come out on time means theyre not working on it. as if they just sit twiddling thumbs. shit isnt slow bc they need more motivation. its slow bc they have a bare bones staff of maybe 1-2 ppl & all else is contracted work they barely have the cash for.

"right now basically nothing ever gets done" & you think adding a few dates to a list would fix that? you think they dont know theyre falling behind? that its not obvious? as if they dont already have internal set dates they aim for that just havent been shared w the userbase? 

they dont need more motivation or accountability. they need more staff & more funds. all the accountability in the world cant add extra hours in the day. you can be working as hard as you possibly can & still not meet deadline bc its just not humaenly possible w the resources you have. look at the underlying problem instead of just surface optics.

they could put dates just to placate yall. but it would be an empty gesture. theyd still be just as behind as always bc the dates are not tackling the base issue. itd be the same old shit but more to get mad abt as they still fail to meet dates you asked them to set.

some of yallve never worked on large amateur creative ventures & it shows lmao. youd be amazed how fast a few months can go by & youre only doing background shit so theres still no visible progress you can share publicly. you worked every single day but still feel theres nothing tangible enough to show for it. a few months can go by fast esp when you dont have just one job & are juggling 10 different tasks w simultaneous importance bc its just you or mayb 1 other person taking on 6 ppl worth of work. 

 just remember were all looking from the outside. theres always backend stuff goign on we never know abt. (i know. ironically im making assumption too. but its based on so much experience w these sorts of teams. dv has all the signs. plus context clues given on stream & rare times staff communicates. textbook understaffed scope creepy amateur project tbh.) 

if this were neopets or some shit own by a large company w hundreds of employees maybe itd be different. but some of yall are always gonna be miserable if you dont manage your expectations. see it for what it is instead of what you want it to be. & sometimes look at whats been accomplished. they DO get stuff done. theyre not dropping 80 updates a month, but to me it looks like they make slow steady progress. miss goals but do follow up eventually. they are literally completing tasks. & show signs of taking feedback into account. just not at the speed ppl want. 

criticism makes for a better convo topic bc negative emotional response sticks in the brain longer. but were always gonna have bias if we dont appreciate good shit too. sometimes theres an attitude like "okay cool i like this, now wheres the NEXT thing" or "great finally an improvement, now why isnt THIS other thing fixed?". moving on to the next thing so quick you dont notice the effort of whats in front of you.

but once you match dvs pace & get what postion theyre coming from its not terrible. i have plenty of criticisms from a project management perspective. but in terms of other aspects ive a more lenient view considering what theyre likely working w (esp not having a dev or anyone who codes as part of core staff. im surprised theyve been able to keep afloat this long even lmao)

you dont hold an amateur experimental musician to the same standards as an international pop star w a whole team behind them, yea? but the amateur is not inherently worse, or less worthy of support. you can still enjoy both, just recognizing theyre different things. i see the vision of the amateur & choose to support patiently knowing its got a different pace than the pop idol. theyre at different spots in their career timeline & will have their own unique issues based on that. but both can be plenty good. context matters.

  TLDR; there is much staff can do better at ofc (namely communication & interpretation of user feedback (like not knowing in the first place that "roadmap" usually implies dates -_-). but imo dates are not gonna fix shit bc lack of "motivation" is def not the core issue. such focus on the dates is thus unhelpful. i think some of yall dont get where dv is actually at & then put up expectations that are built to fail bc of that. not saying to let everything slide. but yk. appreciate the good where it happens. have patience. be aware what the underlying problems actually are & contextualize. tempering realistic expectations will make you much happier & able to enjoy the game for what it is.

or idk. i personaly used to be one of the main harsher critics so much i almost quit dv entirely & this perspective helped ME at least lmfao. now i play regularly much less stressed/angry abt it. ymmv.

[ask-the-ai-engineer]

— Welcome, [USERNAME]!

[ Open ENGINEER_MODEL.EXE ? ]

→ YES. NØ.

THE GAME HAS BEEN RIGGED FROM THE START

this muse is a TF2 Engineer AI that lives in the Team Fortress 2 Game/Program, on a Dev Computer that has been left to rot (& is rotting). you will often find it in a Dumpster or a Garage Sale, or the Game itself if you wish.

the form that this muse will come in with will depend on what World your muse occupies, & whether or not you wish to RP with this muse within its World or Yours. + Verses can be found at the bottom of the AI's Bio.

this blog is written by & follows from @fandomandangstlover (english is not my first language, so ah'm sorry if the wording is a little weird)

— [ CHARACTER PROFILE ] —

"The Engineer" (HE/THEY/IT) is a playable character in a modified game of TF2 that is left unfinished due to the nature of the AIs that lives in it. The Program is prone to bugs & glitches, as it seems to be breaking.

He is fully sentient and is capable of interaction by means of the Chat Function & general movement that Players associates with Communication (nodding, crouching, spinning, etc.) Sometimes using voicelines/audios that was given to him.

It is not capable of moving at freewill, however, as it still needs to obey the nature of the Program. Trying to fight against it is not recommended. (it learned the hard way.)

it can, however, Ragdoll whenever it wishes.

due to the Program trying to fix itself, it has combined the files of both the RED & BLU Engineer into one(1). which has caused a hørŗib1e error that causes the two(2) AIs to still exist as separated beings stuck in one vessel, unaware of one another.

- the RED one, often being the one most seen due to the Program trying its hardest to never let BLU out, is unaware of the artificial nature of itself. it currently lives in the Teufort map & within the intelligence room by the command of the "higher-ups." he does take peeks outside every now & again.

the AI is as sweet as the Engineer in the "meet the teams" videos, & if not just as crazy. they still set up Sentries despite there not being anyone to take it anymore, only itself. maybe it's an attempt to go back to normality, who knows?

RED always has the default weapon set.

- the BLU one, rarely seen due to its knowledge, only activates when the RED one gains the knowledge of their true nature. it is constantly fighting against its nature & breaking its laws, wanting to have some sort of self control due to its nature as a Player Character. safe to say that whenever it's out, it breaks its reality a little.

it moves around constantly & the Program will try & shut him down whenever it realizes that BLU is out. not much is known about him, though it's very likely that it is unstable (both mentally & physically) & will be prone to violence if not approached correctly.

BLU always has the Gunslinger equipped, & responses more positively towards being called by the name "Dell"

more may be added

— [ VERSES ] —

• ROTTING PROGRAM :: main verse

[AREA] takes place in the rotting Dev Computer mentioned above (can be found anywhere) and/or takes place in the modified TF2 Game (can be entered anywhere, ‘how’ is up to you.)

[DESC] exactly what was described in Profile.

• UNKNOWN TERRITORY :: human(?) verse

[AREA] anywhere you wish, defaults to the dessert outside of TF2 industries (can be found anywhere)

[DESC] the wizard (merasmus) found the Dev Computer the AI was trapped in & BOOM! magic go brrr & now the AI is in a human body with normal human physics!! he is so not used to it. & then there's the problem of RED & BLU still being in one body... yikes. horrible fusion mind wise, i tell you.

• more may be added (maybe)

[AREA] none

[DESC] none

[essskel]

I think my point was not as 'fare' to Roche and Ves's character, since they were created in the second game. I was trying to make an argument on how Cdpr's writing is dogshit, so I should show the other example, but in the game where they make their original appearance. Sorry for disturbing you again, english isn't my native language, so it's really hard for me to articulate my thoughts properly. I put more brainpower into sounding smart. But anyways, back to the point.

In tw2, there's one thing that absolutely fucking destroyed my brain with how stupid it is. And that thing - is the genocide of vrans. The devs really said: "The elves are oppressed and all, but we kinda made them too good, we need to make the situation more grey. Hm...UH YES, let's make them guilty of genocide!! They're actually as bad as humans! See, player!! Don't feel too bad for them!"....why, Cdpr, WHY?! Sapkowski shouldn't have sold his books to these morons...

So yeah, I really-really doubt, that Cdpr wanted us to perceive Roche and Ves as some kind of metaphor.

Okay, I hear you, and I'm never going to come on here and defend CDPR's writing as a whole. They treat women like hell, they've tried to equate genocidal military forces with minority freedom fighters (your example with the elves), they've been explicitly racist with the way they framed the Ofieri people in hearts of stone, there's antisemitic tropes used in the added vampire lore from blood and wine, and on and on, sometimes stuff just literally doesn't make sense, I could go on forever.

They're a corporation, they selling a pop culture franchise product, of course it's a mess when it comes to social commentary sometimes.

But there is still a team of professional writers behind it. They're aware of concepts like archetypal characters, mirroring between two story lines or people, theme, metaphor, tone, and social commentary.

continued with sources below:

You mentioned the Bloody Baron in an earlier ask, I agreed with you, I also can't stand his quest. I think it's badly written, it reads way too much as a centrist stance on domestic abuse and that's useless, he'll never be a sympathetic character to me. And yet here's an interview with Paweł Sasko who wrote the quest:

The roots of Family Matters can be traced back to Sasko’s childhood, growing up in a poor village in the Polish mountains. “I saw families destroyed by alcoholism and violence,” he says. “I saw parents fighting with each other and beating their kids, but they were also in love and loyal to their family.”

“The Baron was created as a parallel to Geralt,” says Sasko. “They’re two fathers who have lost their loved ones; two men with blood on their hands; they both have personality issues; they’d do anything for their families.” (Link to full article)

The whole interview is really interesting, I still think it's a bad quest, I think Sasko failed to write the nuanced story that he set out to tell, but regardless, he was trying to tell a story. He considered real life examples, he attempted to created a character parallels, he approached social issues, cultural links, he DID want us to view this character as a metaphor for something, something from his own community and childhood - and I really doubt that he was the only writer at the studio who at least tried for similar depth, or that the Baron was the only side character who was written with similar considerations in mind.

Here's story director Marcin Blacha on the writing choices in the witcher games:

“We want to talk about serious problems, about complex situations, about things that, sometimes, make the player uncomfortable. Choices must then be crafted in such a way that they do not simplify the world, but instead, have the player think and interpret it.” (Source)

Again with this emphasis on more complex levels of storytelling and the inclusion of heavy themes. When they write a character who does something super racist like a militarized hate crime, it's safe to assume that yeah, they're probably trying to address or at least touch on racism here, or misogyny, or nationalism, or something kinder like the difficulties of fatherhood. Maybe you disagree with the way I interpret a certain character or story line - good! normal! - but the writers still intend for us to interpret, to discover our own real word links, to challenge our own views.

Here's a link to a (way too long) presentation by two quest and level designers from CDPR about how they approach narrative and tone in a video game -> If you jump to minute 32, they discuss how even something as benign as choosing where to place food items was done with a narrative in mind, with the intention of enhancing setting, atmosphere, relatability, ect.

There's also a great interview with CDPR writer Karolina Stachyra who talks about how she got hired, why she loves the witcher, how some scenes (specifically in hearts of stone) pay homage to classic polish literature, and she also says: "We make sure to establish [the characters in TW3] as real people, so they are not just there to advance the plot." (source)

I'll stop cause this is getting long, but there's also this interesting interview with writers from TW2.

What I'm trying to say here is, yes, CDPR has a lot of bad writing going on, I'll never defend that, but there is a still a clear attempt at genuine storytelling - a process of narrative, framing, metaphor, ect. I fully expect you or anyone else to disagree with my personal opinions of what a character may stand for, but do you really believe that these characters therefore were meant to stand for nothing? I'm sorry that there's a language barrier here, I hope I'm addressing the core of your ask, but this the best response I can give you right now.

disclaimer: really don't want to excuse any of CDPR's failings either. I'm not saying: aw, but at least they tried, that's better than nothing! And actually, in a lot of cases, the intent makes things worse. When they do something like approach the harsh realities of misogyny in military settings through Ves' character but then just write more misogynistic shit by having her enthusiastically jump into a sexy cutscene with geralt.....yeah now you guys made it WORSE???

[literaticat]

Hi Jenn- sorry to rehash the ? about "overediting" but I keep thinking over your response and wondering how I know if my work is "underedited" or "overedited", plus the ? about how polished is "polished" since no MS will be perfect. I guess I was wondering like, when you are reading an MS what are some of the "imperfections" you see as quirks vs. ones you see as red flags that make you wanna put it down immediately. Obvs my MS will be proofread but i mean more on a line edit and dev edit level.

I suspect you're overthinking it, to be honest.

I mean look, should you revise and edit your work before querying agents? Absolutely. We don't want to see messy first drafts, and as any published writer will likely tell you, first drafts are ALWAYS messy. Revision is where the magic happens.

Do we expect manuscripts to be *perfect*? No. They are never PERFECT. It takes sometimes multiple rounds with an agent, multiple rounds with an editor, multiple rounds of proofreading and copyediting to get a book that is ready for publication (and even with A TEAM of people and a highly-invested author going over books MULTIPLE times, mistakes still slip through the cracks!) -- so your manuscript that you are querying is just not going to be there. It's just NOT.

We expect manuscripts to be as polished as you can make them on your own. (And for most authors, "on your own" means you also have critique partners or a critique group, and/or smart readers who give your book at least a once-over to make sure you didn't miss anything!).

I'd hope the story makes sense and is compelling and draws the reader in, and the characters are well-rounded and have great voices, the pacing is good, there are relatively few GAPING plot-holes or MASSIVE inconsistencies, grammar and spelling etc are on point, and generally, it's a satisfying reading experience.

If I'm invested in the story, little problems, like a stray comma or wrong word, are not going to put me off. Minor plot-holes or pacing problems are not going to put me off. A character who could be more well-rounded won't even put me off. ALL those things can be fixed in revision if I love the story enough, and I can envision the end product -- if I love it and it seems clear we are on the same page about what it wants to be as a book, then it's for me.

I can't really point to "quirks" that put me off, or wrong-things that consistently happen to make me stop reading. What puts me off is usually just, hey, I am not drawn in. The story and characters are not compelling enough to (TO ME) to make me want to keep reading. These manuscripts might be good -- they probably ARE good! -- they just aren't for me.

OR SOMETIMES - -there are *so many* grammar problems, wrong words, etc, that it literally is hard to read and I have to stop multiple times on a page to correct something -- because then I can't even GET to the meat of it, you know?

If I am actually invested, and DO love the story/characters, line-level writing, etc -- what would put me off is if there are MAJOR structural problems or something with the book that are intrinsic to it - -in other words, I can't envision how I could help this book with revision, because something is (TO ME) broken in the very premise or core of the book -- so if I asked for a revision, I'd essentially be asking you to write a different book. So it probably isn't right for me, our visions are not aligned.

[cobaltsage]

People definitely gave Genshin a bad rep when it first came out, and I think that deterred a lot of people from playing it. But honestly, comparing it to RSL is kinda hilarious, because I think most people don’t even realize what kind of game Genshin even is.

On the surface, yeah it’s a BotW clone that grew far past its origins. It’s 120GB in size on desktop (40GB on mobile) and even free, I think the game’s worth playing. Early on, yeah, the game’s a little grating with pacing and VA and stuff I hope they go back and re-dub eventually, but the newer content is proof that the game’s really come into its own. It’s stories are engaging, its lore pretty deep for what’s essentially a play on Isekai stories, it takes the time to flesh out every area not just in design and extra details, but in mountains of hidden lore you can find in notes and books and character dialogue.

While I get it’s a Gacha game on paper, the game honestly has way more content than both BotW and TotK combined, so to me it’s not that weird that the fandom is so big, especially when they take the time to really let you meet and interact with all the PCs.

Plus, you can tell that everyone involved loves what they do. The voice actors always talk about their work with love and affection, or how they were able to insist on taking a line a certain way. Every major update has a preview where the devs talk about what’s coming up, and sometimes they talk about the aesthetic, but when Fontaine came out no, they were like ‘do you know how goddamn difficult it was to work on functioning underwater mechanics in a game that previously didn’t have them? Do you know how big of a challenge that was? Let’s go line by line and show you exactly what we did to make that possible. We cannot stress enough that we hope you see just how much time we put into making underwater plants and fish and scenery, and love it. ‘

The localization team? Also has a field day. They love throwing in references to things you wouldn’t expect ( my most recent find? “Naturally, any rational citizen knows that strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.” ). When the in game TCG came out? They absolutely leaned into Yu Gi Oh references. Legitimately, as someone who loves to learn about game design, it’s hard not to feel affectionate toward Genshin, not when you hear things like what happens to game devs like Kojima, or seeing what happens when a dev is forced to cut corners like with The Pokemon company.

I hear horror story after horror story about pretty much every company in the industry, and here Hoyo is being like “ yeah we want to tell these stories about these lesbians but we do sorta have to find a way to squeak by Chinese censorship laws. “ and like. As far as problems go? That’s sorta it. When the previous English VA for Tighnari got called out for predatory behavior? No. He got cut immediately. He got replaced. They were like ‘ yeah stay tuned we are redubbing all of his lines as we speak and will patch it in as soon as it’s done. ‘ there was nobody trying to defend what happened, there was no trying to hush the issue, there was only total reassurance that the issue was being handled and an entirely outlined process on how.

So yeah. I know I can be a bit of a Genshin fanboy when I’m talking about it. But when you see game devs actually loving everything they’re doing for a game, it’s hard not to love it back.

Also not for nothing, but even if you aren’t interested in the gameplay I’d say it’d be worth listening to one of their concerts.

can i be real with u for a second. i can't believe tjere's a real fandom for stuff like genshin impact. imagine if half your dash was posting about raid shadow legends. you'd think it was astroturf

[latentspaceofficial]

programming vent

my favorite thing about programming is how much visual noise web development has. like i'm a back-end dev because the registers and compilers speak to me. but whenever i try and learn web development, the course instructor always has like 15 files in vscode with some hard to read font and no semantic highlighting.

like wtf. is every front-end dev a neurotypical or something? i need to remove code comments and any code non-essential to function in order to understand libraries or codebases. i'd love to be at the coffee shop writing code but i literally cannot tune out the sound of every single conversation or the coffee maker. this is an unfortunate side effect of how my brain works. i have yet to solve the cocktail party problem.

if i use someone else's code i always feel stabbed in the back because it has x shortcoming that everyone is just okay with and will do the mental gymnastics to defend it and say it's good enough that my calculator built on redis and angular consumes 5gb of space between both the host and the browser and that sometimes keystrokes are just missed. like??? WHAT.

on the flip side i will go write everything myself out of discontentment and it's just what i need and it wasn't hard, but i can't stay focused for more than 5 minutes at a time. i've got that john carmack flavored autism. this is hell man. i'm probably a real extreme case of programming but cmon the job i just came from is some "the banks are run on COBOL" level shit.

none of it should work and inevitably it doesn't! it doesn't scale at all. but companies would rather hire 20 people to power a component team and keep adding bandaids than spend half of their salaries to sit down with 5 and rewrite decrepit shit from the ground up. but no, we gotta do r&d on adding 2fa to our account system because we'll get a ✨ tax break ✨.

[maximuswolf]

Indies suffering from saturation

Indies suffering from saturation I spend way too much time playing video games. While I do play AAA games, most of my enjoyment comes from indies. There is just so many amazing ones and getting a solid 9/10 game for $10 that gives me 50 hours of good content is just great.It just incredible what solo devs and small dev teams can do. A lot of these games have incredible writing and gameplay and sometimes amazing innovation. The only thing these games typically lack is just graphics which for me even with a high end PC does not bother me personally.For example I’m currently playing the Silent Hill 2 remake (which I know isn’t a small indie) and so far it’s amazing but I couldn’t help but think back to Fear & Hunger 2. You compare these games side by side and Fear & Hunger kinda looks like a joke. But this $10 game made by one person gave me the same level of dread and butt clenching tenseness as I’m currently feeling in Silent Hill 2. The atmosphere is just as immersive and the writing and world building just as brilliant imo. (Fear & Hunger did also sell really well).So what’s the problem?I’ve noticed there are just so many indies out now of an incredible level but the sales are insanely low.Like I will play an indie and it will be incredible and after I look at reviews and they will all be extremely positive. I think yeah this game is going to hit it big.I check on the game a year later and it’s sold like 100 copies. Sure it’s a one dev indie but it still took them 4 years of fulltime work everyday to make and it only sold 100 copies.There are 100s of games like this. Like there is an actual over saturation of incredible indies.An incredible indie used to stand out but now it’s commonplace.You then couple that with the fact most people only game at a surface level and if it’s not popular they will never come across it.These same people I will also see complain about gaming being at a low point with nothing to play.These games are not even hard to find. Like Steams advanced search things can easily let you find games with incredible reviews within a niche.I just think it’s just interesting actually having so many incredible games, incredible no longer stands out.Like I remember when super meat boy came out, everyone was all over it and blown away by how amazing it is and that a small dev could make an indie blow up like this.Now something like Wooden Ocean comes out which imo is a masterpiece and no one has even heard of it.Kind of worries me it just won’t be sustainable for smaller devs to pour their heart and soul into these kind of games to see no sales and get outsold by generic game 47. So we will start seeing less games like this.I don’t know what the point of this ramble was. Submitted October 11, 2024 at 10:20AM by Dungeonvibes https://ift.tt/yJi7ADE via /r/gaming

[razelssacredplace]

Spoiler Warning for God of War: Ragnarök!!!

The following post is a rant that contains spoilers for the end of GoW:R. Don't like that? Scroll onwards friends, but remember to take screen breaks too!

-------------

With that said, I feel the need to comment on the ending, specifically the last stretch as a whole and the battle. I think 90% of it was absolutely awesome, and I probably have to go back and rewatch some stuff because there are absolutely things I missed.

But I'll tell you what I didn't miss.

I didn't miss that they completely glossed over Thor sending Jorman back in time to his creation, and really didn't offer much dialogue about it either. From my perspective they told it to fuck off and didn't want it to be the focus at any point.

I also didn't miss the fact that GoW:R fell victim to a very big issue in storytelling, and especially storytelling as of late. And it has to do with Freyr and Thor. And anybody who shares my opinion on this subject knows exactly what I'm talking about already, probably just when I said that.

Did Freyr and Thor not fight to have good endings? I don't care about any "death flags" or what, none of that shit. Did Thor not fight so very hard to preserve his family and life, regardless of his methods? Was the point of the game not to "Be better" among other messages? Yeah great he was better at the very end, but it would've meant more to see Thor trying to be better after the story.

Imagine the post game where you get to see Thor taking steps to better himself, to be a better father, a better God, and a better person. And do you know why it would be so important to show that imo? Because it parallels Kratos. It shows that, by Kratos being better than the bloody slaughter-monster he used to be, he impacts someone just like him. Another bloody monster who's so tired of it all, but has escaped into far worse habits and vices. Another monster just like Kratos that he saves, just like how he saved himself. And why? Because Thor deserved that good ending after all he went through from Odin to protect the family he had left.

As for Freyr, he falls into the same category. A hurt, beaten, and broken character who's fighting to survive in this world with the people he has left, fighting for a good ending. Fighting for his sister to be free, fighting for his own justice and revenge after being lit ablaze by lesser Aesir, fighting to be better. And that's the crux of it all in Ragnarok. Everyone was fighting to be better.

Now I'm not saying the game is bad or it was ruined for me because of this. At the end of the day I do understand why they died because Ragnarok is a war, and not everyone walks away from war. Plus in the old myth (which may or may not be real Norse mythology) Thor does die, along with basically everyone. I understand why it happened but I wish they got the good ending.

Then again, maybe that's a testament to how good the game is. Just my two cents in the end.

[deluxeloy]

Let me try something: The negative feedback loop of Liberation Rites in Supergiant's Pyre.

Many games have two conflicting interests. On the one hand, they want to reward players for doing well, which means they must withhold rewards from struggling players. On the other, to make the game feel like a reasonably hard but doable challenge for players of a wide range of skill levels, developers must make the game harder for players that are breezing through it, and easier for players who need the help - thus, incentivizing developers to reward poor play and punish a good performance.

Since you want players to think you're doing the former but actually balance around the latter, some devs hide these systems or straight-up lie, but that sometimes comes with weird strategies where intentionally beefing it early on can force the game to take pity on you. If this becomes a good strategy, your game has a problem.

I feel like Pyre resolved this really well with a Watsonian solution: Getting rid of your team's most beefed-up, most reliable member is the reward. You want to thin your ranks, send your guys free one by one. That's the whole story of the game, you want to un-exile your friends so they can go do [mild spoilers] back home, but that means that they won't be able to help you anymore back in basketball purgatory.

Which means that if you've only succeeded, you're left with all the underleveled, tough-to-use characters, and if you kinda suck at the game, it lets you keep your all-star lineup.

That more the kind of thing you're looking for?

The thing I like about the Blood Moon mechanic in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is how it affords game-mechanical transparency to the player.

Like, we all know the reason it exists is because, like any complex open-world game, BotW and TotK periodically need to hit the reset button on all non-trivial changes to the world state; in games that don't, your save file has unbounded growth due to the need to keep track of every little thing you've ever done, and eventually the system runs out of memory, save/load performance goes to shit, or both. It's basic software engineering constraints dictating the shape of play.

The thing is, most open world games try to do this subtly, perhaps by setting individual timers for the consequences of different actions to expire, or by linking world-state cleanup to proximity to the player character, but in practice it never works – trying to be sneaky about it paradoxically makes it more obtrusive to the player by rendering it opaque and unpredictable, often prompting the development of superstitious gameplay rituals to work around it.

BotW and TotK take precisely the opposite tack and make it 100% transparent and 100% predictable. Once a week, at exactly the same time of day, there's a spooky cutscene and an evil wizard undoes every change you've made to the world that doesn't have an associated quest log entry. Why everything at once, and always on the same schedule? A wizard did it. Why exactly and only those changes that don't have quest logs attached? See again: a wizard did it.

And this isn't just a gameplay conceit. Everybody knows about the evil wizard! The fact that the evil wizard keeps resetting everybody's efforts to fix the befuckening of the world is a central plot point. There are organisations whose chartered purpose is to go around redoing stuff that's been undone by the wizard.

It makes me wonder what other potential synergies between fantasy worldbuilding and mechanical transparency are going unexploited.

[decamarks]

Have you ever thought of making an actual game? Even a little one?? Your 'Atom Amulet' art and gif look soooo good they legit fooled me for a bit when I first looked at them into thinking they were from a real game! Your enjoyment and respect for glitches and games as a medium is really neat, and tbh I'm super curious what you'd make! As someone who actually played a few weird old PS1 and computer games as a kid, sooo many attempts at 'retro low-poly style' games I see always break my immersion when I can see like.. too much anti-aliasing, too many things rendered in real time instead of prerendered (not extremely subtle stuff like raytracing or font choice, which gave away Petscop to a few incredibly observant people lol), etc.. part of the charm of old 3D games is devs clearly trying extremely hard to work with limitations of disc space and RAM! No one's cutting corners! Also the design for Atom Amulet's character is the kind I've been wanting to see SO badly in modern-retro games.. no one ever goes for 'rounded little creature guy who looks a little wonky' designs like you see in Creatures or SHEEP because they think it's too ugly! But it looks COOL! And that's part of why it really seemed like an actual old game to me at first.. I like your blog and art, your passion for games and glitches is really inspiring! Nice job on the animation and 3D art!

AHHHHH THANK YOU SO MUCH ANON ;__; This made me really happy to read... Trust me, I have daydreamed extensively about the kind of games I'd like to make, so I've definitely got ideas for stuff like that. Animation and 3D art in general is my main focus right now though, since I've got a lot I want to create, and still a LOT to learn as well, LOL. I would probably be most interested in making a game with a small team or creative partner, since even small games can be incredibly taxing to create and I'd prefer not to mentally and/or physically implode. (My main problem is mostly finding those people... I'm not good at initiating this kind of thing.)

Anyway, I absolutely agree on being kinda disinterested in a lot of 'retro low-poly' aesthetics, just because they feel too divorced from the actual technology that gave the style a reason to exist in the first place. That's not to say at all I think this style should exist in a chronological vacuum, or that it shouldn't be iterated upon with modern technology, but that it just looks too clean too often, too streamlined! I don't want that! I want WONKINESS!!!

I don't think it's necessarily a fear of this sort of 'ugliness', or at least not always—it's more so that this wonkiness can be sometimes hard to achieve at all. Like. Hold on. I could write stupid poetical paragraphs about this concept, but I think this post sums it up 10,000 times better than I ever could.

The primary function of a comic is to tell a story that is best shown through the format of sequential images. So you might expect that anything made for a primarily visual medium must look 'good' to be effective, right? But it doesn't; MS Paint's ugly palettes and pixelated pens only serve to amplify the expressiveness in this image. It looks silly and simplistic, and that's exactly why it works. Whether this was intended by the artist is irrelevant. It's effective not despite its strange, subtle stiltedness, but because of it.

It reminds me of this post about animation by PilotRedSun, which I think about a lot:

I’ve learned a bit of animation fundamentals, branched out to other styles . . . but I still adhere to the rule that every animation on my channel should have a dysfunctional aspect to it. When an animation contains an error, it distracts the viewer. Thus when an animation is composed of errors, it mesmerizes the viewer.

Video games are interesting to compare to comics and animation in this sense, because most games are made simply to be played. Despite being a visual medium, it isn't necessarily expected to look good; it just has to function as an interactive experience. This emphasis on functionality, created through technological limitations of the time, is exactly what originated low-poly and pixelated styles. Older video game art didn't need to be particularly beautiful, just purposeful. You take a concept, put it on the screen, and continue stripping away pixels and polygons until only its most minimal existence remains, because if you don't, you won't be able to fit it within your meager 64 MB cartridge capacity. It looks wonky, and may not really resemble the initial concept as you saw it anymore... but it works.

That's not to say huge, high-res canvases of pixel art and raytracing on low-poly renders can't be uniquely beautiful as well—I think the ways these styles are innovated with modern technology is just as intriguing. The fundamental aspects of these styles will always be worth exploring, because at their core, they're about conveying things in unconventional ways. Simplicity makes it stilted and strange, and 'ugliness' is what makes it so evocative.

But like I said, I don't think it's a matter of intentionally avoiding these more subtle sorts of strangeness. It's just that harnessing and embracing it to its full extent is very hard. Particularly because modern technology often just... lacks limits. You can do practically anything with it, and that's the problem. If you have a decent GPU and the capacity to follow basic instructions, you can make a simple yet frighteningly hyper-realistic 3D scene in mere minutes, the kind that older video game developers could have only dreamed of. And technologically, it's impressive, but that's it. There are no corners cut, no concepts compressed, and nothing your computer can't handle for you. As soon as the realistic refractions and flashy lights fade, you realize it's all a little empty beyond the subdivision surfaces.

It's easy to get lost in a world without limitations, because empty canvases are just as freeing as they are intimidating. Making beautiful things because you can is obviously fun, and often impressive, but it gets boring. Sometimes I simply want to see things breaking at their seams, stripped down to the point of struggling to exist at all, and working—and being not just beautiful because of it, but fundamentally fascinating.

[tribow]

Splatoon 3 has been out for a little while now and damn it's good.

BUT!

The devs have still made some absolutely baffling decisions as usual.

Why can't people change weapons between matches for Anarchy battles? Don't give me the "so the weapon matchmaking doesn't messed up," explanation. All they need to do is pause the matchmaking until your weapon is chosen. Splatoon 2 had no issue having this in Ranked mode. Let people change gear/weapons in Anarchy!

Why can't you make lobbies with friends where you don't end up on the same team every time? They fixed the problem in Splatoon 2 where couldn't play with your friends on a team, but now there's no option to fight each other. If I drop into a turf war lobby with a friend it still puts us on a team in queue. I wanna fight them sometimes too! That's why I dropped in!

EDIT: Drop ins do randomize teams, I just got unlucky when I tried.

why is the netcode still peer to peer cmon it's not that hard y'all