#devs are absolutely insane for what they did

[fantomette22]

Omg chap 12 of FF7 rebirth (gold saucer theatre piece + date etc) is absolutely incredble!!! I can't this game!!!!

I could post one more lol but big spoilers so no no

Bit i am not ok (in a good way)

[emdotcom]

*remembers what they did to Vanny* 500 FUCKING PIPEBOMB ATTACK.

[hassianlovebot]

i wanted to say thank you for your nice comment on my tamala gifset.. i was legit scared i'd get nothing but negative comments since the majority of fans seem to hate her

oh no problem! your set was beautiful!!

and yeah i get what you mean. i mean,, i guess i kind of understand the hate but some of it seems so,, weird too? like hassian is my favorite character my special little blorbo even, and tamala leading him on and breaking his heart like that sucks no doubt!! but also like,,, i support women's rights and women's wrongs!!! she's hot!!!!!

ajkdhg but seriously even beyond her being really attractive, i think she's also really interesting and i'm hoping that the devs have more planned for her! her using magic is SO interesting and i can't believe some people are ignoring that just because of what happened between her and hassian! i mean don't get me wrong, people are allowed to dislike characters, it's all fiction it's whatever yknow? but i also kind of thought people got past that whole "if a character is evil or morally not the best, that means you can't like them or you're fucked up" like,,, what happened to liking hot lady villains 🤨

[chaosroid]

Trying to explain Warframe to new people is impossible without sounding absolutely insane. It's like, if a game had an identity crisis...but in a good way. An identity buffet, if you will. There's so much in this game it's sensory overload.

You like space dogfights? Rogue-lites? Fishing, mining, player housing? How about Guitar Hero, space shanties, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater? Let's not forget the dating sim. Oh yeah, you can add a birthing QTE rhythm minigame too, because why not. I'm waiting for the inevitable sex update, cause y'know, we've gotten this far without imploding, so it might as well happen. Like what the fuck even is this game anymore. Nobody knows! Not even the devs themselves. It's all held together by dreams, duct tape and vibes at this point, but somehow it works.

Hop on Warframe, we have:

Bionicle meets Neon Genesis Evangelion

12 yr olds turning the geneva conventions into a checklist

your trans robot mom who has DID

old man yaoi

a traumatized group of bisexuals fighting the Y2K bug

an autistic child and his fidget spinner solos god

a fish voiced by Astarion

workers' union committing terrorism against capitalists

incel who tries to destroy the sun because he fumbled a bad bitch (she took the kids)

a boyband that you have to slay for weapons

and an eldritch entity beyond human comprehension that can only be defeated by the power of love

And if you think all that sounds unhinged out of context, don't worry, It's just as unhinged with context.

[great-axepectations]

What must it be like to be on a server with Doc? Every time he posts in the Hermitcraft Discord server must be absolutely insane.

Is anyone available to help me kill 3 wardens that got loose on the nether roof? Sorry actually it might be more like 20

Hey if it's not too much trouble, could no one log on for the next 30 minutes? I'm trying to transport an ender dragon I pulled into the overworld and loading chunks could mess it up

Anyone want to play a children's card game? I outsourced my deck building to a think tank made of hundreds of people and I want to absolutely destroy someone in a match

Does someone know a good rap artist to collab with? I want to make an anthem for the nation I founded in my massive hole of a base and Snoop Dog never got back to me

So we're not having a team meeting, just an informal brainstorming session? Cool, can I invite Christopher Paolini? Yeah the guy who wrote the Eragon books

If you see any ghasts flying over spawn town, I released like 30 of them as a prank. There should be like 2 left so don't kill them, they're an endangered species

I left that shulker at spawn FOR A REASON. Whoever took it, YOU KNOW WHAT I'M CAPABLE OF. RETURN IT OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES

Just a heads up guys, I'm inviting some Mojang devs on to the server so I can show them the cannon I made that can shoot an arrow through 3000 solid blocks in one tick and immediately destroys a full set of netherite armor

Grian was annoying me so I built a cannon that shoots charged creepers at his base with startling accuracy. Then he used it for his own gain so I build a goat mech that poops explosives to guard my base. What do you mean that's not how normal people handle disputes? He's clearly the unhinged one!

Be careful going into my base, I have a pet warden at the bottom of the perimeter. No, a PET. Yes it's there on purpose, his name is King

No one touch the chunk loader at spawn, I'm using it to transport items thousands of blocks instantly. No, of course it's not an intended feature but I still managed to pull it off in vanilla, didn't I?

How did the world eater go? Well I needed to use 3 minecraft accounts so it would run properly and at one point it was disrupted by solar flares, which I think might have been God trying to strike me down for my hubris. But other than that, yeah it went well!

Please note that these examples are ONLY FROM SEASON 9

[bixels]

Splatoon 3: Side Order is good, but not great. I still highly recommend it, but if you care about the story, you're going to be disappointed. Quick review: spoilers ahead.

Side Order was the devs experimenting with Splatoon's gameplay loop. The campaign is a rogue-like, and it works amazingly well. Super fun, super challenging, building my deck and fighting through challenges with the stakes of resetting really scratched an itch in my brain. They did a great job with it.

Unfortunately, I feel like priority went to game design rather than story. Much of the mysterious artwork we saw in the first teaser trailer was completely unused; turns out, all of that was just concept art that never made it into the final product. Side Order failed to make me care about what was happening. I don't know why the protagonist had to be Agent 8; it could've been anyone else and the story would've worked the same.

Octo Expansion was the absolute peak of meshing story and gameplay. The campaign's hook is insanely strong; we immediately empathize with Agent 8 because we know from previous lore that octolings like her have been trapped underground for all their lives. We care about her fight to the surface because it's a fundamentally ideological fight for freedom. The plot stuff about Tartar and the Thangs is just nice set dressing; 8's fight for freedom is the real story.

There's none of that in Side Order. I don't particularly care about Marina's metaverse, even if it's tied to Octo Expansion's story. I don't know why Acht is there other than backstory stuff. It really feels like 8 is just told to do something and she does it because she's the protagonist; she has zero personal stakes or motivations in the conflict. This is a story blunder the devs did in Splatoon 3's default campaign––forgetting to give the protagonist a personal reason to fight––that I hoped would be fixed here, but alas.

What makes it worse is that the gameplay and story progression are completely out of sync. I beat the entire game on my third run in 4 hours. With each run, you get up to two keys to potentially unlock bits of story. That means you'll get about one piece of the story every two runs. There are twelve pieces of the story; I got the first and then beat the whole damn game. Now I have to go back and grind to see the remaining story when I've already beaten the final boss and resolved the conflict. I missed the entire story because I never had to reset because I blazed through the gameplay! It's just a real shame that I experienced everything without knowing... why it's happening. The final boss had me asking myself what the hell is going on because I don't know the backstory at all.

Again, I still really recommend. The devs did a great job, but Side Order remains in the shadow of Octo Expansion's incredible success. Like the default singleplayer campaign, there's just a lot of lost story potential here that, while not necessary, would have really elevated this DLC into something amazing.

[felassan]

Snippets. 🐺💜

Nathan: "This team has done some amazing work 😍" [source]

devs Mack Carruthers and Greg Towner worked on Morrigan's transformation in the new trailer [source]

Violet: "🥰 can't wait to share more with you guys 👀" [source]

Violet: "Happy to finally have my first authored blog (with help from my AMAZING TEAM of course!) to share with you guys!!! Check it out and pre-order DATV now! 🥰🥰🥰" [source] [bloglink]

In this thread, Derek highlights a compilation of shots from the trailer that he made, worked on in-tandem with others, or polished

Derek: "And that’s all the stuff from me in the trailer! I feel so incredibly lucky that so much of my work made it into this AMAZING trailer. Can’t wait for you guys to see more. 🧡 I wanna add: it takes an army to make these scenes. While I did character layout, camera animations, animation polish, bug fixing and technical stuff, there’s still a plethora of folks who touched these scenes. Matter of fact, our work still isn’t done. So I gotta thank: writing, level art, VFX, lighting, sound, character art, performance capture, actors, production, and my fellow Cine folks who I worked on these scenes in tandem with. It all came together into one incredible package. 🧡 For anyone who’s curious, here’s a breakdown of what I do: - mocap assembly - scene layout (characters, props, cameras, mocap) - camera work (animations, framing, polish, etc.) - scene polish (character and camera animation polish, bug fixes) - integration - bug fixing" [source, two, three, four] Derek added: "PS: I count these as Cine folks, but to clarify - also huge thank you our incredible Creature and Character animators. They did some really insanely mind blowing shit. Dunno how they do it." [source]

User: "Okay, but is it on purpose that the drink/flask thingie is positioned almost like the stomach in Manfred It's like kinda in the correct area too if I'm not mistaken [image of Manfred]" / Derek: "Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what character art was going for here 😂" [source]

Dev Tony: "Been hard at work bringing these scenes to life with an amazing team of cinematic artists and designers. Enjoy a small teaser of our work." [source]

Derek: "I worked on a few of [Lucanis'] best scenes. HE OWES ME." [source] / User: "Very much looking forward to seeing where his story goes. I have a feeling it'll be spicy." / Derek: "Oh it’s a doozy." [source]

Derek: "The hair in our game is ASTOUNDING." [source]

Derek: "Our lighting team are absolute MASTERS at this, every bit of work they did was incredible!!" [source]

Derek: "I can absolutely tell you that there are a PLETHORA of dialogue options, major choices, and a huge amount of variability. Trust me - it’s been challenging to work with all the variability LOL" [source]

Carly: "game dev is so collaborative, a lot of stuff in the trailer i've helped out on! most of the work id say i "own" isn't gonna be in flashy trailers, but hope we get to see some of it over the next two months ! :)" [source]

Crystal: "Some really beautiful cinematics shown off in this one. So proud of our team!" [source]

Carly: "ive worked on at least one romance scene for each follower and i still squeak when they flirt with me im With y'all" [source]

Dev Matthew: "👀 This is so hype! Might be a tad of my work in there as well. 😉" [source]

Siggi: "It's so exciting to see the some of the shots I worked on and worked along-side come to life! I was afraid that my work would never see the life of day. I can't wait for October!" [source]

Siggi: "My biggest contribution was the assan work I think. I got to do a lot of look and movement development on him. I even animated his whole intro scene." [source]

Siggi: "Look at my babies! LOOK AT THEM! They're smiling!" [context: Assan and the dragon that rises from the water, and having worked on them] [source]

Carly: "forever grateful to siggi for helping me onboard but okkkk their animation work is sooooo killer, set an amazing standard for the cines !!!!! 🙏🙏🙏 so excited for y'all to see" [source]

Dev Zara: "October 31st!! So excited for folks to enjoy it. And to finally be able to publicly share my animation work." [source]

Camille: "Time for you to meet some of them dragons ! And I don’t think you’ll be able to slay them so easily hehe" [source]

Varric's Bianca: "That’s us!! That’s our game!! 😭❤️ never in my wildest dreams would I have predicted that I’d end up where I am, working on my dream project. I’m so immensely grateful to this amazing team!" [source]

ikhandle: "Congratulations team! This has been an honour to work on! Amazing job all around." [source]

Michael: "the team really, really cares about PC." [source] / User: "The trailer was awesome! How soon do you think we'll hear about PC specific features? 👀" / Michael: "pretty soon! i know its in the works." [source]

For a while there was an error on the Steam listing of the game's PC specs. it said the recommended PC spec is the same as the minspec. the recommended PC spec is PC spec is i9-9900K. it looks like this has now been fixed [source]

ikhandle: "One of my dragon shots just made the trailer! 🐉🐉 Huge shoutout to the Cinematic team for absolutely crushing it—these are some of the best cinematics I've seen in years. Truly an honor to have the privilege to work on Dragon Age. Congrats to the whole team on their outstanding work!" [source] (context: dragon shot at the end of the trailer when the red one pulls a pike out its body)

ikhandle: "Had a lot of fun animating this big boi. Y’all not ready for him 🦴☠️🪓" [source] (context: the giant skeleton) / User: "Does he have a name? 👀" / ikhandle: "I’ll ask 😂. I’ve named him SeñorBones for now." [source]

The cinematics in the trailer are running REAL time in engine [source]

ikhandle: "Everyone has done such an amazing job… a lot of hard work to get these out. Shout out to the whole team!!’" [source]

Jess: "😎 I'm uncontrollably hype and I work on this….." [source]

Dev Yanni: "Dragons go roar! *internal screaming in excitement*" [source]

Nick: "Nuts to see how far this has come. Way to go to the BioWare team." [source]

[celestial-letters]

and the crowd went mild 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 also no chara dividers im lazy rn

these r so short id add more but im rushing rn sorry lmfao 😭😭😭

intended lowercase!

misc. obm hcs

LUCIFER

wakes up at the ass crack of dawn every single morning.

wears those old man pjs. with the long hat and fuzzy slippers and gown. you know the one.

most bitter coffee you've ever had in your life how he can drink it is astonishing.

his bed, his mattress, his pillows are all as hard as rock how does this man SLEEP.

sleeps like hes the corpse at the funeral hes that one image

MAMMON

will pull you into a headlock and call it a hug.

LEVIATHAN

guy who had mountain dew and cheeto dust in his veins instead of blood. guy who marinates in his room for two months straight. guy who- (i am immediately shot dead).

did a collab with the anti-lucifer league to create a 100k words dialuci fic to piss off lucifer (dont worry about him he got paid in anime and tsl merch).

TRULY believes he is the #1 tsl fan. and also #1 ruri fan.

wimp who VOLUNTARILY makes you cosplays if you are a cosplayer or even if you aren't. it will happen.

vtuber fan. he was like "hey i wanna be a streamer but i dont wanna show my face but i also want to be an anime boy! wait-" and now hes a vtuber.

has accidentally referred to all of his brothers as "chat" at least once. hes never recovering from that btw.

SATAN

cannot stop annotating books he reads for the life of him.

all of his books are just filled to the brim with sticky notes because all he does is annotate.

once he has a crush he will start imagining him and them in the same scenarios as the characters in romance novels he read. (loser alert!!)

sneaking a new cat into hol like once a week (he never succeeds btw).

ASMODEUS

oh boy his room REEKS of perfume and body spray.

"i sprayed my new perfume in every nook and cranny! smells so floral and elegant, don't you think?" (it smells like a bath and body works threw up.)

surprisingly plays the trumpet and BOY is he loud. bro is absolutely blasting those notes.

worst driver ever btw.

BEELZEBUB

freckles all over!! like a lot. *im not beating the insane allegations*

ate like 27 family size dorito bags, 30 dollars worth of taco bell, and four sprites in one sitting and he still hasnt recovered.

sleeps. like a lot. not as much as belphie but enough to be considered an eepy guy.

BELPHEGOR

will randomly grab every blanket and pillow he can get his hands on and make a nest in the common room if he's up to it. and then have everyone make a dog pile in it just so they can hang out and be silly.

will NOT clean it up afterwards. lucifer will tell him to and his only response will be "im tired..."

freckles like beel too i think theyre silly.

9829364 cow plushies. (theyre all from lucifer)

SOLOMON

will randomly gaslight people for no reason

"hey did you do the homework"

homework? what homework? there was homework? my, what even is homework? never heard of that.

"hey, i heard of this animal from the human world called a giraffe! can i see a picture?"

what? what's a giraffe? oh, those!! yeah, they're just myths. they're not real. purely fiction!!

yk that one post about tumblr funnyman solomon. he is a tumblr funnyman to me. he confidently posts his exploded spaghetti and gets 10k notes i think.

SIMEON

has a book club with satan and solomon. :)

probably writes oneshots of the brothers on tumblr idfk man (sorry to the simeon fans i write like nothing on this guy bro).

LUKE

bodily six ("but didnt the devs say hes ten?" shut up. /j)

along with that, also shorter than in canon. (since hes. yk. a first grader. that BOY is not five foot hes one sauce packet long dude.)

favorite store in the human world is walmart. i like to think his human world outfit is all exclusively from walmart bc thats funny i think.

DIAVOLO

hands of STEEL. he tries to grab your wrist and he nearly crushes it by accident.

ice cream!! he loves it :) his favorite is strawberry btw.

also this boy is NOT a himbo hes a smart man.

needs like a hug and some sleep and also a friend this boy works too much!!

BARBATOS

short. like really short. especially according to devildom standards since most demons are super tall.

"but isn't he six feet?" not in my heart.

somehow always making tea for some reason?? if he's not making tea then he's making pastries.

my boy does not SLEEP. hasn't slept since the sun has been birthed and doesn't plan on ever doing it.

[deep-space-lines]

Literally I don't understand how the Ultrakill devs managed to make a game with a pretty bare minimum in plot/dialogue/characters and have it be the queerest-feeling piece of mainstream media I've consumed in what feels like forever

Like my other favorite video game ever is Mass Effect, and when I play the Mass Effect trilogy, games with plenty of gay romance and gay sex in it if you seek it out (don't get me wrong, it has its ups and downs with queer rep overall but overall I would consider it Pretty Good in the gay/lesbian/bi rep category) I'm like 'yaaay gay people :)))' and it makes me happy. None of the wlw romance options really appeal to me personally (though Garrus is a queer romance option to me bc you're banging an alien, no I will not elaborate) but it's like, a nice view of the future where homophobia doesn't exist and you can just be in lesbians with a blue not-really-woman and it's not a big deal. And I really love that! Makes me happy!

But then I play Ultrakill, which technically has 0 gay sex or romance in it (that we see. and even that could be argued but that's not the point here), and start emotionally foaming at the fucking mouth throwing up. Like both are Really Good but Something about Ultrakill just resonates so viscerally with me I think it altered my brain chemistry. I don't know what they put in this game that made it hit the exact resonant frequency of some queer freak part of my brain but it fuckin' did something. It just blows my mind how much Ultrakill managed to make me feel with (comparatively) so little compared to other media I enjoy (Mass Effect, Star Trek, etc). I got this game like 3 weeks ago thinking it would just be a fun shooter game where I play as a silly little robot guy, and instead since then I've made more art inspired by it in a shorter time than like? Anything I've ever played/watched/read before?? Did they put gay cocaine in here??????????

(I don't say this in an attempt to pit them against each other or even really compare them btw Mass Effect is still one of my absolute favorite games of all time and they're completely different genres with a completely different ethos behind their worldbuilding and character development)

But like. What the fuck. I don't know how I would explain to someone like my mother that whatever Ultrakill has going on feels gayer to me than like actual gay porn bc I feel like it makes me sound insane but also I'm right

[gacha-incels]

My current theory is that ( Puts tinfoil hat )  The ongoing gender war stuff in both CN and KR have definitely shifted how some 'waifu-collectors' see the female player base and therefore male characters in gacha games. There's definitely an ongoing narrative that women are the root of toxicity and more devs should adopt the waifu-only policy to appeal to as few women as possible and gatekeep their safe havens. The irony is that most of these people advocating to exclude women are using the vocal minority for their examples as to why, which is exactly what they don't want done to themselves. Basically, women should only play Love and Deepspace and men can play GFL2/AL/Snowbreak/Nikke etc. As long as women 'stay in their lane' they are satisfied, even though it's been shown that both men and women will pull for characters of the opposite gender and vice versa. Mixed cast games are trying to err on the side of caution because if they don't appeal to this crowd enough (by skewing the gender ratio harder, or by making more fanservice designs) then they will be brigaded on social media for appealing too much towards women or radical feminists.

omg yeah I feel like “gamer” men say this outright around the world from east to west. “women are coming into our games and making the women less sexy and everything more toxic” etc. attitude has ramped up. though it was always bad if you remember, in the west at least, the absolute insane violent tantrum reaction to Anita Sarkeesian for making like I cannot stress this enough just pretty basic feminist videos about video games. It was like seeing grown adult men have the same type of screaming tantrum a toddler would have when you tell him he can’t have an expensive toy at the store. except instead of one kid sitting on the floor screaming it was an unbelievable amount of men worldwide sitting in their computer chairs screaming and writing graphic rape threats and making full video games where you violently beat her. For the crime of just one woman talking about fucking Mario or whatever. THIS is how these men react when you do something as benign as that. I posted some more about this here.

you have no idea the insane shit that gets blamed on female fans or female employees of mixed sex gachas. A lot of that has been already posted here obviously so I’ll post something new I saw just so we can archive some more examples. Recently one of my friends from the infrared blog I sometimes repost here showed me this strange phenomenon happening on the Genshin impact leaks subreddit where a good amount of guys were accusing the developers of the game of being fujoshis because they thought a new female water character was being nerfed so that a previously released male water character would be the strongest water character. I thought this was a joke (my mistake) but it spanned a LOT of comments and got extremely heated. Later I found these comments in another thread there

Like this is the thought process. This sucked -> ok so probably a woman wrote it -> well most writers graduated from liberal arts schools, and most liberal arts students are women, so it was definitely a female writer. This is how easy it is for this type of “gamer” male to blame anything they hate on women. They did this for one of the stories in HSR that was disliked as well. If you look up “有男不玩” there are videos on bilibili but also some on YouTube where you can get snippets of how these guys are thinking about female gacha players. They share some similarities with all gamer men who think women are more frivolous, unskilled and don’t like action games. there were particular comments that reminded me of how Korean incels wrote about women, in that games should stop pandering to us altogether because we don’t have enough money, or if we do have money it’s because it’s coming from a boyfriend or male relative, or we’re all just playing f2p. ironically a huge amount of merch sales, IRL events and fan-PR like fanart comes from female players and they are usually the ones to stick around the longest I believe, but these guys only understand the money aspect of these games.

There are a lot of ones that were interesting but I don’t want to use too many since I was working with MTL, and then looking up individual phrases, and then retranslating some, and then looking up context, etc. lol. so when I have a better grasp on this I can make a better post.

in regards to how they find it ok if the games are sex segregated yes exactly,I posted about this earlier and probably a couple months ago too but this was most recent so it’s easiest to just copy here

[rottenbrainstuff]

A whole lotta thoughts here! We've been spoiled with so many big updates! And I'm going to be blunt about some stuff that is going to make everyone mad, so. Cue the angry anon hate maybe I guess.

I started playing this game in the fall and you know... I've been having a lot of fun, actually. I like the stories, I like the events, I like the characters, I like the marketing. It feels exciting to be involved. I have my one friend who recommended the game to me and we talk about it together and it's been fun. Compared to other otome games I've played, this is amazing, like, my gosh. They took the standard, overdone, cookiecutter character tropes and really expanded on it in a way that surprises me, even for the characters that are not my personal favs.

So......... because I'm enjoying the game so much, and I'm able to recognize where it stands compared to other otome games and other gacha games, it's irritating to me to see the fans start this entitled and absolute nonsense complaining about Sylus needing more content. Friendos, he was added six months after everyone else. Since I have started playing, it has been a balanced and equal release of content between everyone. Infold never told you (I mean, if they did, I missed it) that they were going to retroactively release extra content for him so that he would catch up volume-wise with the other characters. That doesn't even make any SENSE to me. Yes, it means he has less cards in the pool and statistically you have a lower chance of pulling his stuff. Yes, I wish they would hurry up and add more anecdotes and deepspace trial levels and whatnot. But I actually saw with my own two eyes people want to file a CONSUMER FRAUD COMPLAINT? Fraud??? What exactly was the promise Infold made that they are failing to keep? Having a rarer character that is harder to level up does not constitute fraud. You know what? Even if he was a special character that was never included in the group banners ever and only got special content released like once every two months and you always had to pay cash money for it, that would not be fraud. It would suck but it would still not be fraud. Sorry to be blunt, but you are entitled and insane. This is absolutely deplorable fan behaviour. I really do hope this is just a small pocket of vocal fans, because if Infold starts getting harassed en masse they will just pull the fucking game. Why would they not?

I totally understand not liking the way gacha games work, I totally understand not having the money to spend on gacha games, I totally understand wishing you could enjoy an experience that other fans get but you don't, I totally understand being frustrated because your favourite character is the one with the least content, I totally understand disliking it enough to refuse giving the game any money or to stop playing it entirely, but this entitled "I need to speak to the manager" Karen bullshit is absolutely embarassing. This is no different to me than toxic gamerbros complaining about things in their FPSs. Knock it off.

This makes me so annoyed that I'm also going to bluntly tell you something I've only said vaguely before: the english audio is AI. It's AI. This is apparently a very controversial thing to say, because when I went googling to try and find definitive answers, I saw everyone who brings this up get shouted down. I don't care if you don't like it, it's the truth.

You guys seem to think that AI all sounds like Siri or something, and you would be able to easily recognize that it's AI. You hear video clips that other fans have made using free-to-use AI apps that sound very obvious, and it doesn't occur to you that the big devs have access to much better professional-quality resources. You haven't heard, I guess, that even big North American devs are starting to replace humans with AI, and the AI is getting very sophisticated, truly next-level. (I recently watched a video talking about Activision and Call of Duty, for example.)

The AI in this game is very good. I did not actually notice it myself until I had played for a couple hours. And I think the only reason I started to suspect it at all in the first place is that the company that I work for has all these training modules that I take, that include sample characters speaking with AI voices, and after a couple years of this, I am really used to how it sounds. (and even then, it took me two hours of playtime to catch on!) It's hard to tell with just a casual listen, it honestly is, but there are some tells.

First of all, after you listen for a while, you notice an odd consistency. Surprised lines are always said with the same rise in pitch. Whispered lines are always said with the same drop in pitch. It's the same every time. There's an odd clarity to the words as well. English naturally has a lot of slurring inbetween words, but AI always sounds like it's being pronounced by a VA enunciating carefully like they're reading the evening news. That is a red flag.

But, you say, maybe the VAs were just given this direction, or maybe they're just such good VAs that their delivery is so consistent and the words are so clear.

Well, second of all: AI will make mistakes sometimes and emphasize the wrong word in a sentence. I have noticed this happening in the game, it sticks out like a waving red flag. It's been so long since I played the english audio that I can't think of an example actually straight from the game, but this is made up just so I can explain what I mean: let's take the sentence, "I hate wasting my time on busy work." Busy work is a phrase that specifically means tasks that keep you busy but are pointless, tasks that were assigned to you just to give you something to do. It is pronounced with an emphasis on BUSY and the "work" is dropped in pitch. (or, sometimes "busy" and "work" have equal emphasis) A human being saying that sentence would most probably put the emphasis on these syllables: "I HATE wasting my TIME on BUSY work." An AI might not understand that "busy work" is not just the words "busy" and "work", but a specific figure of speech, and might pronounce it like this: I HATE wasting my TIME on busy WORK." (and I think I did hear the phrase busy work in the game actually, which was why I chose it for this example) Any time you hear a weird sylable emphasis that doesn't make logical sense, that is a red flag.

But, you say, maybe these are just an honest mistake by the VAs that wasn't caught by chinese devs, or maybe once again maybe it was weird direction.

OK look. Then let's talk about the most important thing of all: an uncredited actor means it's AI. Period. Period. You guys are driving me insane talking about maybe the VAs want to remain anonymous, maybe they're embarassed doing a romance game, maybe Infold doesn't want to release their info because of political issues they had in the past with english VAs:

No! That's not how acting works. That's not how actor unions work. That's not how credits work. That's not how any of this works.

Actors do not get embarassed doing roles like this. I know you guys titter with every single update, but you do realize there's steamier stuff aired on regular tv, right? This game is not embarassing. Actors want to be credited for their roles so that they can have a resume of projects. Union rules REQUIRE them to get a credit. Do you know how many rules there are about even a simple thing like movie credits, and where and when and how large a font an actor's name can appear in the credits? A company like Infold can not just choose to not credit their actors. An actor does not want to not receive a credit for work they did. One uncredited main actor would be weird enough, but when they will not release the info for a single main character: that is a huge, enormous, and unignorable red flag. This rule is very important: No human credit, no human actor. Period. And you need to learn this rule, because like I said, even large NA companies like Activision are adding AI to their games now and are not apologetic about it.

I'm sorry if that upsets you to hear, but it is driving me absolutely batty to see you guys talk about these mysterious english VAs and you hope they're getting paid well and you don't understand why Infold won't release their info and you say things like "haha it's probably because they're all 50 year old men" as if that somehow makes it this embarassing secret that cannot ever be revealed (the japanese VA for Sylus is 51 and no one gives a shit) sigh. Look. Enjoy the english audio if that's what you like. I get some people prefer english, I get some people prefer no subtitles, I get that it makes it so you can listen to the audios with your eyes closed, like, I don't actually care if you want to stick to the english. But be honest about it, and don't repeat this nonsense about mysterious anonymous VAs that are all too embarassed to be credited. (my god, the japanese Zayne VA has hentai credits, you guys.)

I dunno. Maybe it's because back in the day I used to be a part of actor circles, I guess I find it a bit insulting to see everyone making up these weird excuses that don't make any sense with how the industry actually works. I've seen people asking about AI get shouted down that they're being offensive to the mysterious anon VAs: Well, you guys are being offensive to actual, real, professional actors by suggesting that a professional would be too embarassed for a credit, or suggesting that Infold has somehow gone around union rules and you're ok with that. I'm sorry, but this has to stop.

Well. There we go. If there's anyone left still reading who hasn't gone away clutching their pearls to send me a nasty message, I will say some nice things now: all these end of year updates have been really fun, and now we have Caleb's big trailer. There's been some fans who seem to be surprised he is positioned as an antagonist, or even just surprised in general that it was Caleb and not someone else... ??? Whatevs. Some people are comparing Caleb to Zayne, but to me the only thing they have in common is the fact they were both childhood friends of the MC. To me he's more comparable to Sylus. Sylus was introduced like he was going to be the bad guy love interest who acts way too familiar with the MC and is always pushing her boundaries, a standard otome game trope that I don't like very much, but surprisingly that's not what he ended up being at all - it seems like Caleb might get that role in the end. I'm kind of interested to see what they do with him (cyborg parts is a fun start) but the truth is I kind of only have enough money to invest in things for one character and I don't know if he can win me away, lol. I do love me a good evil dude in a sexy uniform though. We'll see.

Hey wait.... important PSA... I know you are all excited (???) about a period tracker........... look... if you think that's cute and want to see the content that comes with that... can you at the very very least not enter in your actual period dates? I dunno, it's hardwired into my brain to NOT use ANY app-based period tracking. You do not want anyone having that data. No playing around, guys. If you want the content, enter in fake dates. DO NOT enter in your actual accurate info. Stay safe.

Perhaps an unpopular opinion: 3.0 update is cute but I prefered the 2D mini games to the 3D stuff and I find the chibi characters a bit weird and unappealing. However, what I DO like is that two nights ago the game said hey we notice you have some duplicate files, can we run a clean up? And it did, and somehow freed up 6 goddamned gigs on my phone. Very happy about that.

I recently got a brand new phone, and now my old phone is a dedicated Love and Deepspace device, so I'm not so stressed anymore about it getting literally too large for me to play anymore. Super enjoying my fake digital boyfriend. This is just a silly otome game, but I continue to be legit impressed by the quality of it, the amount of content they put into it, and the way the characters are much more interesting and in-depth than other otome games I've played. I'm sorry to be cranky about some things today, but some of you really are behaving quite badly and this online echochamber amplifies the nonsense, and I don't like to see that.

Who cares what I think anyways, I am ridiculously outside of the target age range here.

[katyspersonal]

*voice of a guy who fails to be on hiatus even if he needs one* Hey, actually recently a topic of difficulty in Soulsborne games came up for me o: And I even had the pleasure of disagreeing with a person who was mature about their point of view! I just thought I'd make my own post, and for starters I want to link a video that lines up with my opinion on the matter very well too!

Despite what it might look like, I do not dwell on this guy's channel, but exclusively see his videos on Fromsoft's games x)

But personally, I agree with the notion that character's difficulty IS part of their lore too! That epiphany mostly came when I took over 70 attempts to defeat Malenia, who, I remind, "has never known defeat", so her being so hard at her lowest as she is falling apart was... very telling. There is a difference between just hearing the person is strong and feeling it yourself when they beat your ass, and I think this experience is a good thing to have!

There is also a selfish and possibly petty reason I have that is better described as "gatekeeping the normies". From my experience, most people who are upset at how hard these games are not genuinely invested fans that just don't vibe with having to die 600 times to learn more interesting lore but casual people who want to, as they call it, "consume currently popular media" to be able to create "relevant content" 🤦‍♂️ Wanting to be in the loop is just not what genuine investment and caring is about.

Miyazaki stated they were not adding difficulty levels because they wanted to present the challenge everyone would overcome in the style that fit them individually as a player! It feels like he is an indie dev without being an indie dev for me; caring not about attracting more players, but about giving experience he WANTS to give! Personally, it is exactly what I want from any creator - to be unapologetically themselves rather than trying to be convenient for more people! Some games are just not for everyone, and it is okay! Thing for everyone is a thing for no one, in the long run. Heck, I am so horrible at playing From's games that even my friends would laugh at me if they saw me streaming :/ What fits me as a player is to show resolve grinding stats (I listen to podcasts meanwhile xD), or coming up with absolutely insane strategies no normal person would come up with fshfhsd

At the same time, there is a large community of gamer dudes who not only defends absence of easy mode in these games more than I do, but also insist on creating artificial difficulty and will mock a fellow gamer for like using Mimic Tear or Comet Azur ffs. I do not go there, but people who built their self-worth on overcoming this challenge and thus feel personally attacked if someone plays the game with "imbalanced" weapons/builds, or, heck, creates and uses photo and deaggro mods. You can probably see from my posts that for me this sort of people is nearly like just a scary legend, when for others it is the reality they delve into and that ruins THEIR fandom experience.. so I suppose I don't miss much not touching Reddit and Youtube in 99% of the time 🤦‍♂️ But I think that gamer bros would ALWAYS find a way to be toxic. Had Fromsoft's games HAD an easy mode, they'd still play them and find another stupid way to gatekeep, difficulty is just currently available tool for it! As usual I think the problem is not on the developer, but on the community that twists what this developer did into something awful

I guess my stance basically goes 'creators should not change their philosophy because that's what creating should be, but the community that thrives on artificial difficulty and "correct" ways to play is bad and should be discouraged from this behaviour'

[journalsouppe]

Here's one of my favorite spreads-- Professor Layton and the Curious Village!! I absolutely love this game and cannot wait to play the sequels!

Writing typed below!

Rating: 8.5/10 Played: Spring 2023 Port: HD mobile (iPad) Favorite? Y Replayable? Y Recommend? Y Series: Professor Layton

Comments:

That tower is insane

Omg I love the memopad, I feel like I'm on Blues Clues

I love the mystery surrounding the tower

omg are we building a robot dog?? -> yes <3 Hot Dog

Omg crash box match puzzle!! ... WHAT THE FUCK

Layton: ew this bottle is so gross. Luke stick your hand in there

What if we were germs in a glass jar and we held hands

Layton you better have Luke on a leash or smth he better not get kidnapped oh my god I am so stressed

Luke is softie for animals T^T <3

A WORM'S DREAM

STACHENSCARFEN omfg not the ace attorney name

veil of night my beloved <3

that old man is BOOKING IT

matthew is the only real one

love the chess puzzles

gorgeous grave statue

these inn items??? T-T

sewer time

Luke: don't worry professor! No one would ever dream of stealing the Layton mobile

Layton: .... Just what do you mean by that Luke

THE FERRIS WHEEL???

Omg layton in a crown

I like how all the tower puzzles are difficult

don't like the creepy lady

is everyone a robot??

YEA A LOGIC PUZZLE

the flying spike ball is insane

He just built the sail??

The ending was SO SWEET T^T

Game Dev Notes:

Beautiful animated scenes

iconic and calming music

stunning 2d art (character and environment)

great range of puzzle difficulty

interactive background and collectibles

different rewards for finishing puzzles

recap questions to see if you were paying attention to the details

great interweaving of puzzles into the story

interesting overall mystery

ability to explore both before the end and after (& gold layton if you solve everything)

Summary:

I absolutely love this game. It's so charming and sweet with a fun story surrounding puzzles. I love the characters and I love their little quips. I love the range of puzzles and how some of them have historical context. It's such a simple concept that was executed very well. Although the story isn't ground breaking, it was still really fun and shocking. It reminds me a lot of an ACD Sherlock story as it's just another one of Layton and Luke's wacky adventures. It is also set up in the perfect way to allow both sequels and prequels (which is what did happen lol). There's a ton of added replayability such as bonus puzzles, finding every furniture piece and arrangements, finding the charms, etc. It's so interactive and doesn't punish the player at all. This is an amazing puzzle game and there's no shame to not knowing the puzzle answers. You don't get full points if you mess up but that's fine as the picarats don't affect main story gameplay. I am so exccited to see how the sequels expand on the characters, especially Flora! She seems like a very unique character and I am so excited to see more of her. I am also just so happy to finally experience the beautiful music I have been listening to for years in the game. The music is so incredible and charming, it makes me want to find a nice, small European town to explore. What a great game and I am excited for what's next! Hopefully in time for the New World of Steam!

All of the stickers I got from Daiso. If you are interested in the materials I use you can check out my pinned post in my blog!

[spectator-moon]

Thoughts about Martyn Lore stream (Eyes and Ears AU)

-Council as maybe overseers? Managers realistically

-The players dream of other worlds? Noooooo :( sad

-the urge to punch the Watchers grows every day

-yay watchers losing power from emotions carrying over

-headcanon that players leak emotions like a cracked water bottle and the Watchers are not pleased because it's all happy

-headcanon that Martyn, although an excellent source of negative emotions, is like alcohol, where if the Watchers take too much from him, it impacts them negatively, so he's allowed some happy moments because otherwise he would just become like, spoiled food for the Watchers

-fragmented players who are out of more series have their cracks grow while in the void, because that void is also just them being exposed to lots of fear over time. So players who sit in the void are just as in danger of "shattering" as players who play

-love that Villain Scar is just explained as "watchers be watchers"

-Bigb is going insane and I love the gaslighting

-Pearl fell from the sky? PearlescentMOON? Pearl is piece of moon confirmed???? /Silly

-paw patrol is task force, Martyn is absolutely Rocky and I will stand on this hill until I die

-love the idea that Players are also sort of desperate to get back to the games, because negative emotions suck. And when they finish, the Watchers will take those negative emotions away. So it's sort of a relief, in a sense

-about the Google doc; can we have that for references?

-"scar is stuck there until they hit lights out on him" so did they just. Brain him over the head??? Cause that's hilarious

-why two Watchers specifically? Is there a numerical significance?

-Grain cannot visit pocket void sad

-Grian is inexperienced tech noob who doesn't know about coding and is constantly patch jobbing his work, much to the annoyance of his superiors, but to the delight of the devs playing his game who can slip through the cracks and hide stuff

-so the players are picked BECAUSE they know another player? Mmmm

-players going about their work, unknowing of the Watchers looming behind them with a baseball bat and their void spot ready

-name for watcher/listener/council race being Revae (Ruh-VAY or REE-vuh) (weaver reversed with w taken off, reference to their control over the players, also alludes to the word revere), or leave them without a name and just call them the Others as a catch-all? Maybe name could be some sort of play on the word Command (Dnammoc, Namdmoc, etc) (for again, control over players)

-fortnite lore....what????

-HEADCANON THAT THEY GET THE EMOTIONS FROM OTHER SERIES WHEN THEY WIN TO MAKE A BLEEDING CESSPIT OF BAD EMOTIONS

-sonder: the profound feeling that everybody, even strangers passing in the street, has as complex as life as one's own which they are constantly living, despite ones personal lack of awareness of it (I love this wordddd)

-plane void thing should be called the Plane or the Path (reference to the multiple and intricateness of everyone on it) or the Inbetween because thats just a good name for it

-theres no favourites (meat is meat) (if you know you know)

-"no thoughts only murder" says life series players

-i am an author and life series is very good for what could be a real story that is planned, even though it isn't

-the idea of what players are capable as being a stacking effect would be so good as a murder mystery

-HEADCANON THAT BECAUSE MUMBO AND GRIAN SHARE A SOUL, MUMBO GETTING MURDERED BY HIS FRIEND AND PART OF HIS SOUL WAS PART OF THE REASON MUMBO HAD TO NOT BE IN LIMITED LIFE AND GRIAN GOT STUCK (BC time is silly and life series may not have happened as we view them)

Anyways, very good lore

[halfetirosie]

😂❤️🏝️ Pure Dumb Fun and Romcom Nonsense 🏝️❤️😂

(Exercise 07 - 09 React-os!)

1) I truly adore the running joke about Eiden's infamous naming skills 😂

Like, the second they hear an unnecessarily long, cringey name, they just know who is to blame.

2) PFFFFT! 🤣🤣🤣

Eiden over here being so horny that he forgot that Quincy built like a goddam brick wall---

3) THE EMOTION MUSIC OVER THIS PART IS SENDING MEEEEE 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

"Trouble-averse ass...."

Eiden, babes. This might be an intense sports competition, but it really isn't that serious...

4) QUINCY USING THE POWER OF HUGS!!!

I'm so fuckin jealous!!!

As long as you're not barreling towards him top-speed, I bet Quincy Hugs™ are top tier. I've said it many times, and I'll say it again---I WANT TO GIVE QUINCY A HUG, I JUST KNOW HE GIVE THE BEST HUGS EVER---so Eiden better be fully appreciative!

Lucky bastard!!! 😤😤😤

5) I'm convinced the Devs are trying to kill us all with these visual gags---

(Side note---On a scale of one to ten, how likely is it that they only made Quincy's SSR holding a bottle in order to include this particular visual gag during the story event? :D)

6) S....STINKY FIEND....

GET DUNKED ON, DANTE!!!! 😂😈

I love it when Eiden responds to Dante's Tsundere Bullshit™ with an Uno Reverse card and they just end up arguing in the dumbest way possible! ♡♡♡

And my boi Dante is always getting stuck with the absolute worst nicknames---ala Lord Jackass---and it's just so beautiful!!! 🤣🤣🤣

It's like everyone silent agree that this guy, this lil' fucker right here, shall forever be the #1 target for teasing!!!

7) PFFFFFT!!!!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

♡♡♡ CRINGEFAIL DORITOMAN, MY BELOVED!!! ♡♡♡

Leave it to Dante to grab Eiden's ass completely by accident!

The sudden realization tho..... It's a work of art.....

This is the most Aggressively Anime-Tropey thing I have ever seen....

(It's like that part where I guy trips and ends up grabbing a girl's boobs... Except, you know, gayer.)

8) Morvay, sweetie, you're not helping the situation....

Okay but, it's safe to assume that there's some children in the audience of this event, right? Is it okay for him to be calling attention to this "licentious" situation??? (I know that kids probably wouldn't even know what that word means, but some of the older ones could figure it out by context clues....)

9) Danteeeee, my Touch-Starved King!!!!!

He's basically an overgrown kid experiencing his first crush, not sure how to even function, and it's SO FUCKIN CUTE!!!

LOOK AT HIM!!!!

Babes is so flustered that he's pulling An Edmond and blaming his feelings on Eiden.... IT'S SO ENDEARING I, I CAN'T HANDLE IT...

10) This is not important at all, but somehow I can vividly picture Eiden absolutely dominating at high school dodgeball 😎

He's just got that scrappy energy to him---I picture him as a well-liked social butterfly that everyone knew, and had insane skills at the most random things like dodgeball....Is that too specific? Just me? Bah, whatever. It's just fun to imagine.

( ˶ˆᗜˆ˵ )

11) I suspect that if we made a drinking game after every time some pulled A Father during this event (suddenly attempting to block someone's nudity/compromising pose), we'd all get severe alcohol poisoning..... 😅

Nah but, didn't Eiden create this swimsuits/outfits? Why the fuck did he choose a material that gets see-through when wet??? When they would be competing in front of a huge crowd?????

Seems like a severe oversight...

12) OHHHHH, okay, that makes more sense!

I'm sorry for doubting your honor, Eiden!

I guess they loaded the water balloons with a special potion that causes the transparency.

Still unsure if that was a good idea, but okay bubs.... 🤷‍♀️

13) Eiden's heroic sacrifice! 😂😂😂

Bless Garu's little heart, he's such an angel!!!! 😂😂😂 Whole-heartedly reassured Eiden over something so dumb and sillyyyy!!!!

14) Yeah.... I was rooting for my boi Dante, but I could see this coming 😅

I mean, our dude basically flashed his butt to everyone, so I suppose he deserves a win for all of that trouble 😅😅😅

15) EIDEN, YOU'RE SUCH A CHAMP!!! AN ABSOLUTE TROOPER!!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

If I had a nickel for every time Eiden exposed himself to a group of people in order to spare a clan member's dignity, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

(First during Fanciful Capriccio--sparing Dante in the story of The Emperor's New Clothes--and then now. Expect, During Fanciful Caprissio they were stuck in an illusion, so technically the crowd wasn't real, but I think it still counts.)

🏝️ End of report! 🏝️

[hummingbird-games]

Dev Diaries

December 28th, 2024

And just like that, I'm writing and posting the very last devlog of the year! I wasn't sure what 2024 would bring, and yeah I did get sucker punched more than once, but I also had some nice and welcomed surprises.

So! What now?

HSD:JY 2

...I'm not playing. I really need a devlog dedicated to solely High School Daze stuff. 🤡 Just need to decide what's not spoilery and what's not (too) ranty.

KO-FI RESUMES! AGAIN!!

Given that I wasn't producing anything of note, free or worthy of money, I paused billing again LOL! Fun stuff going up again in the new year! 2025 will be me figuring out how to continue to be consistent *and* decide what kind of content I want to post there versus elsewhere.

LOVED VN

T'was not meant for this game to release this year buuuuut I'm really hype for Summer 2025 now! #LovedVN is a summer tale, and I find myself thinking about these characters a lot. Depending on where I am, you might get a sneak preview during the Amare Fest, but I promise I'm making this project worth the wait for all of us.

OH, BOY

Yeah, no, I really wrote this game for me AND IT WILL SHOW BUT I DON'T CAREEEEEEE!!

My teammates for this project are amazing??? Absolutely fantastic humans??? The best of the best???? And they too are in love with this story (and the main characters) as much as I am??

"Gemini, you keep talking about this game like we know what you're talking about." Okay. Fair. Oops.

Oh, Boy is a bite sized, romance flavored game with multiple endings about college sophomore Janella who's Going Through Things™️ with her friends and decides to go to a concert on campus. There, she sees the guy she loves to hate (...or is it hates to lo-- *BANG*) Kendrick, and you, dear player, determine how the night ends!

(BTW it's SFW game so like...yeah. But! There will be bonus content shaped something of the 18+ variety so stay tuned if you're freaky like that???? 🤣)

Aaaaaand there will be partial voice acting!!! I casted both roles and my GOD they are Janella and Kendrick??????? It's insane how much giggling I've done going over the script and realizing their voices will be saying the lines. Like......this is probably my fave project idea to date because of the trope involved (bickering to lovers, yes that's totally a legit trope, leave me beeeeee.)

Mmmm what else can I share with y'all...

The new tunes!!!! Have a sneak peek of one of them:

I want to get permission from my artists to share art tingz first, so maybe that'll be a next month task! (Janella is so cute and Kendrick is definitely the star of homegirl's dreams! Also we're getting CGs which is SO!! EXCITING!!)

A fun development fact: when testing this game before I rejoiced that I'd have a designated programmer, I wanted to ensure all the endings were achievable. But I had to make a whole ass GUIDE because I kept getting the same two endings 🤡 I'm still in awe at how much I struggled.

ENDING NOTE

I have no idea the posting order of things, so if my yearly game review post is live, check that out! If not, I have 3 more days left in the month to post it!

Thank y'all so, so much for another year of sillies and games and blogging and creation. 💛 Hummingbird Games turned 4 this year and I'm a little sad that I can't call myself a toddler dev anymore. I'm a whole kid now, and ehhhh, "kid dev" just doesn't sound all that good to me 🤣

I'll workshop it!

Happy New Year from yours truly,

Gemini 😊