#devs i know what you're doing

[ghoulspaw]

the guy who says is a good cameraman is now the one posing for the camera

[blueskittlesart]

*sigh* thoughts on Nintendo's botw/totk timeline shenanigans and tomfoolery?

tbh. my maybe-unpopular opinion is that the timeline is only important when a game's place on the timeline seriously informs the way their narrative progresses. the problem is that before botw we almost NEVER got games where it didn't matter. it matters for skyward sword because it's the beginning, and it matters for tp/ww/alttp (and their respective sequels) because the choices the hero of time makes explicitly inform the narrative of those games in one way or another. it matters which timeline we're in for those games because these cycles we're seeing are close enough to oot's cycle that they're still feeling the effects of his choices. botw, however, takes place at minimum 10 thousand years after oot, so its place on the timeline actually functionally means nothing. botw is completely divorced from the hero of time & his story, so what he does is a nonissue in the context of botw link and zelda's story. thus, which timeline botw happens in is a nonissue. honestly I kind of liked the idea that it happened in all of them. i think there's a cool idea of inevitability that can be played with there. but the point is that the timeline exists to enhance and fill in the lore of games that need it, and botw/totk don't really need it because the devs finally realized they could make a game without the hero of time in it.

[theskymother]

animal jam is a lot more fun when you're rich

[fisheito]

Started playing NuCarni 2 weeks ago it's so fun i love everything. But I wanna know is there any way to access past event stories??? I wanna read them and learn more abt the characters but obviously bc I wasn't there for them they're. Locked. And I can't read em. Idk man I've been an enstarrie for 4 yrs and counting so I'm used to every event or scout story being available somewhere on the internet so I can binge read to my hearts content so maybe I'm just being silly rn but I can't find anything so I'm asking u (bc ur blog makes u seem like a nucarnival god tbh praise be)

2 weeks ago!!! wow!! welcome to this pit of eternal suffering!!!!!! (i'm actually having quite a nice time don't tell anybody)

i bet my followers know more about nucarni than i do AHAHA (pls chime in if yall want!!)

i have no helpful advice... because any events i DID miss when i started playing (White Storm/Zest of Life)? i was still playing when the reruns happened the following year so ...i got em... thru accidental waiting......yeah.... sorryy..........

[girlbob-boypants]

Anyway the reason why you shouldn't pre order Veilguard isn't because of some moral protest about the layoffs. It's because deceptive marketing and releasing unfinished products are the current standard in the AAA space and a few pieces of mediocre fashion do NOT warrant spending 60+ usd now for a game that might not even run later.

[acerikus]

Someone being extremely annoying in the replies of my flowey and clover gif and I'm running out of patience 😭

[numberoneanika]

Honestly the roleplay blogs are stronger than I am because if I saw a post where people were saying my blog was annoying and calling me corny I would jump in a large pit and rot away

[paimt]

woag. vibeo game?

(very rough still)

(but now theres more colours)

[ttngummybear]

The next time I go to try and ask for tech support from the revanced team, someone PLEASE just slap me so I don't do it.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

today on my When All You Have is a D10 project: Rolling a 6 with a D100.

-

1-16: Option 1

17-32: Option 2

33-48: Option 3

49-64: Option 4

65-80: Option 5

81-96: Option 6

97-100: Reroll

-

if you get that last one you can reroll the ones column, tens column, or both, up to you. tune in next time for so fucking help me i WILL find an efficient way to substitute dice for a deck of playing cards

[sapphire-weapon]

But sapphire didn't you hear that the devs didn't want them holding hands????

LMAO STOP

you guys are so fucking stupid fdjsklfhlkhf

[grollow]

Here's some Ashe deep lore. CW sexism, misogyny, some trauma, depression and over-all a stressful time. Read at your own convenience.

I used to work in the gaming industry for an indie company. Watching some of you react to no Silksong news brings back some horrors.

To preface: The company that I worked for was a very small independent gaming company based out of the Netherlands -- so it was a remote position. We made a few different titles, none of which were wildly successful, in large because of major design flaws (examples include: story not mattering, too much emphasis on PVP in poorly balanced titles [and making the game COMPLETELY DEPENDENT on pvp in some cases] and most egregiously, no real direction beyond 'it should be fun.')

I was hired as a Community Manager initially. My responsibilities for this job largely involved managing the forums, doing news updates, sending out (Not writing) press releases, hanging out in the chats of our games / playing the games sometimes with players, and coming up with fun events. My colleague/boss was senior community manager, and she ran a very successful gaming blog (more successful than most of our games initially -- until she closed it). Both of us were/are heavily involved in games. I am more of an RPG and horror title enthusiast and she was a big fan of RPGs as well as FPS games. We both have a pretty wide repertoire of experience combined. She was a world's top 50 raider in World of Warcraft at the time of this all going down.

I should preface: I am AFAB. I, unfortunately for me, have a very feminine voice. At the time of this all happening, I was also still using she/her pronouns. So was my colleague.

During our experience as Community Managers, we were forced to do marketing despite neither of us knowing how to do that (examples include understanding metrics, learning how Google algorithms worked, composing and distributing Press Releases as well as finding the sites to send those TO).

Here's some examples of the awful things that she and I endured under this company:

80+ hour work weeks, where we were required to detail out with time sheets daily everything we did and what the reasons were. I think I clocked in 16 hour days most days and I was required to work weekends.

On Christmas, our boss called and screamed at my colleague because she and I dared to want the day off to spend with our families (we were not allowed any holidays).

My colleague was forced to work -from the hospital- while her mom underwent life-saving surgery, under threat of being fired.

"You look like a crayon eating [r slur]" is an actual phrase that was used to describe her because of a picture she was using of herself.

We both got told, numerous times, that "girls can't make strategy games."

We were blamed for them releasing an RTS/Tower Defense title the same day as Left4Dead despite my colleague telling them numerous times that that was a mistake.

I later got promoted to Project Manager, but I was still making over $1000 a month less than my male colleague who I hired. In order to get me a raise, he had to take a pay cut. I put in more hours than he did, by his own admission, and worked twice as hard. He was questioned far less on whether or not his work was "efficient."

There are more stories but in truth, I have blocked a lot of it out of my mind. She and I both ran screaming from the gaming industry and have nothing to do with it now in our professions for a reason.

The worst part of all of this is that this is not at all uncommon. This is unfortunately very typical of the industry -- there are good companies, but you hear about these horrors lot less often than they actually occur.

Why do I share this? Because when I see you all screaming about wanting Silksong news, I want you to remember what indie developers go through. And maybe have a little empathy. Good things take time.

(No, I am not saying this is happening at a little 3man studio. I am just telling you, as someone who has worked in the gaming industry, that you should try to be a little more understanding of how hard it can be for some of us.)

[sygneth]

that tag on that jv post is so so right. I feel like we as a fando, whether ppl like him or not, gotta admit that harrys squad abandoning him twice was just poor/rushed writing and not actually some kind of a character trait. just like many many things that were most likely a developer's issue rather than the writer's

those were actually op's (@cryptiduni) tags (i believe i maked them as prev tags?), but yes! I absolutely agree with them and with what you're saying here anon. It's a game, made by people. And as with every big project, it has its issues because nothing ever is perfect. Taking everything there too literally is...

Well, let me say it that way: Harry carries a tone of clothing, a rifle and a big ass multitool... where exactly? Nobody questions that.

A group of NPCs has to disappear for narrative purposes? Real shit.

[lovewoodvn]

So I just realized it's been exactly 2 years since I created the first character sketches for the beloved (or rather beloathed?) villain of Invisible Seams. Happy bday you snobby little creature!!

[celepeace]

Genuinely with the death of nintendo handheld low-cost games that came with the switch, as every continuing handheld series became a switch series and thus had a price increase, a lot of their most kid-friendly franchises have become more and more inaccessible to children, especially now that nintendo has decided to follow every other major console and has started pricing new games even higher.

And now that a lot of these series are so old and thus a lot of their fanbase has aged into adulthood, a lot of these series would benefit greatly from making some of the new entries more adult-oriented. But nintendo very stubbornly wants to keep their main franchises as kid-friendly as possible, sometimes severely restricting the potential of these series by not allowing them to explore things like more complex mechanics, higher difficulty, or darker topics that past entries have brushed over in favor of keeping the age rating low. Pokemon's core battle engine has been in want of an overhaul for years now, and Legends Arceus kind of did that but not wholly, for example.

This would be pretty understandable in the interest of keeping every entry of these series accessible to all age groups, but with inflating prices, who are these games even for anymore? A normal kid with your average allowance from their parents isn't going to be able to afford tears of the kingdom or even $60 pokemon games more often than not. Back when these games were $30-$40, sure, if they saved up, but now many families have even tighter budgets than ever due to the rising cost of living. Nintendo is pricing themselves out of their target audience while simultaneously leaving their adult fans who have been with them since childhood to feel neglected in favor of exclusively making games for today's children.

Obviously nintendo will always make sales because even though they make children's games, they're still fun as hell for a person of any age, and many kids will be able to afford their games once in a while, but it does feel like they're kind of... making their games for an audience that barely exists.

[drhu0806]

I have... very mixed feelings about the criticisms aimed towards game devs right now regarding Baldur's Gate 3 setting a new standard for RPGs, and frankly I'm a little disappointed if only because it doesn't sound all that different from those really annoying players who obviously have absolutely no experience in game dev and what it's like but they keep talking shit like they do. Game dev is hard. I'm not a game dev, but I am in software and that's hard enough, and I can only imagine what people who make games go through. I am not going to pretend I know what their job is like.

That's not to say I completely disagree with people wanting to put BG3 on that pedestal: I absolutely want AAA studio execs to fear for their lives with the release of this game because it's going to prove so many things to them, and I do want it to set some kind of standard in some things. But I also genuinely don't think it's even possible for games to consistently reach BG3 as a standard even if they tried. So I see it less as attainable and more as something to consistently worth striving for, mainly because of just why BG3 is almost for certain going to rock our worlds, because it's a result of a perfect combination of factors that I genuinely think even AAA studios will have hard time getting:

Backing of Wizards of the Coast - this is one of the biggest ones I think, but this gives BG3 relatively lower risk when it comes to turning profits. I'm pretty sure I don't need to tell anyone that D&D is hot right now, so Larian already has a near guaranteed huge batch of consumers coming in.

Highly successful early access - this is less of a super important point since AAA studios def have the resources for QA on this level but we do need to factor in the steady cash flow and how for a part of playtesting players are paying them rather than the other way around. Also of note is that part of what made their EA so successful is because the studio has had previous EAs that proved their worth, which ties into the next point...

Proven track record - Larian is one of the most perfect companies to have taken on this role--though yeah they did get rejected before when they tried convincing WotC--mainly because they've had at least two very successful and genuinely good games in the past, and they've brought on a lot of those devs from those games to work on BG3. This is the really important point because I do want to emphasize that Larian had to build up to BG3; the two Original Sin games were good but they aren't as big. Part of why I don't think games regularly being the same caliber of the game is feasible because studios need the experience, and they absolutely cannot make games as high functioning as BG3 every single time.

You need at least both points 1 and 3 to get something like BG3 and while there are some franchises + studios that can achieve this (I def have one in mind but they THREW THEIR POTENTIAL AWAY--) I'd be very hard pressed to find this combination with any level of consistency. I'm sure we'll get games of this caliber every once in a while but I feel like so much of getting there is having games in between that may or may not be great.

I feel like there's a disconnect in the way people are expressing and interpreting these opinions. I personally think game devs--at least the reasonable ones--are saying BG3 shouldn't be the standard because they're saying it's really not possible to make games of that level of scope all the time, which I think is pretty reasonable. But maybe the way some of them are saying it, players are interpreting it as a refusal to put in the time and effort to make decent games that don't break the backs of their producers. I think BG3's general work flow is definitely something any company could achieve, and I think that's what good fans want, I just sympathize with devs in that I don't want players to hold games to such a high standard on a technical level when Larian was just about the perfect company to take on this job and you can't get that all the time.