EightBitBlood
@EightBitBlood@lemmy.world
- Comment on Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says 'employers will see a stream of resumes of once-in-a-lifetime quality' after the company laid off more than 1,000 people 1 week ago:
And not a single one of those resumes will be from someone that has any loyalty to EPIC. Those employees won’t give a shit about the company that pays them, just that they get paid.
So EPIC will continue to lose money by paying top dollar for the most unmotivated of employees. The ones who will collect a check to let management make all the creative decisions, and then leave once that inevitably leads to a dumpster fire. Rinse & repeat with the next place that’ll pay more.
Jokes on the EPIC CEO for being so myopic he doesn’t seem to understand the reality of this situation. That he’s about to pay top dollar for the worst employees imaginable: they ones who won’t shake the boat when its clearly already on its way to being capsized.
- Comment on We Spoke To Game Devs And All Of Them Hate DLSS 5: 'What The F***, Nvidia?' 2 weeks ago:
No sane person is going to spend that massive amount of money just to see what AI thinks their games could look like. The people who buy games want to see what the devs made them look like. Not what an AI thinks the devs made. Absolutley no one wants a middleman between the art and artist. As that’s supposed to be you. We don’t need AI there. That’s dumb as shit, and expensive as shit to boot.
- Comment on Is Flappy Bird a good game? 2 weeks ago:
Hey! I think this is a FANTASTIC question, because the answers reveal the diverse ways we all categorize what a “good” game is.
The straightforward simple nature of it like TicTacToe makes it good.
The easy on boarding to new players makes it good.
The simple task and challenge while not deep, is competitive enough to make it good.
Even bad games can become good under the right circumstances or perspectives. Sonic 06 is generally considered to be one of the worst games in the franchise, and an overall bad game. But it’s great to watch others play it because of how bad it is. It’s great to watch speed runs, or the odd glitch hunting videos. Playing it JUST to experience how bad it is can even be enjoyable and “good” to anyone that likes playing bad games.
My point is, what makes a game truly “good” isn’t just a single thing about it that someone might like, but rather, a combination of all those “good” things about it that work together in a way to create a better experience than the sum of its parts. Multiple “good” things all working together to make an experience that is uniquely “good” to that game.
So what’s interesting, is that all the different perspectives in this thread prove fairly well that Flappy Bird was indeed a good game.
However, the one part about it that people haven’t mentioned yet that I appreciated about it most:
Was the fact that the bird had some of the worst physics ever.
Having a linear jump up, but an accelerating decent down that despite its description, felt like juggling a rock in high gravity more than making a bird flap it’s wings.
It was SO UNINTUITIVE, that even with the quick onboarding it felt like playing a carnival game that was rigged for you to lose. And just like those games, there was a trick to getting good at it. And that trick created a learning curve needed to actually get gud at Flappy Bird. One that in combination with its easy and simple concept, quick onbaording, and competitive design (leader boards) made it honestly a great experience at the time that I feel hasn’t quite been captured since.
(With the closest being maybe Baby Steps or Getting Over It, but neither have such a simple design. Rather a simple mechanic pushed to its limit.)
Anyway, thanks for asking this! Imo, Flappy Bird was definitley a good game worth talking about.
- Comment on German man says american are savages 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, but your kids don’t which is my point.
- Comment on German man says american are savages 3 weeks ago:
Kids invent new words for their current culture. They in no way organically invent words that are friendly to advertisers. You should be disgusted that corporations are now such an invasive species they are affecting the language our youth is inventing. This is poison. It is not at all normal.
Dude. Bro. Radical. Excellent. Tubular. Fleek. Ratchet.
Are not at all the same as:
Sewerslide. Unalive. Junocide.
Oligarchs are forcing kids to learn a new language that downplays the very suffering they are causing worldwide.
You should be furious, not apathetic. Or your kids will never learn the meaning of those words as they aren’t productive to the oligarchy.
- Comment on Video games are losing the "attention war" to gambling, porn, and crypto, according to industry report 1 month ago:
PREACH!
- Comment on Price gouging 1 month ago:
Good point between the two! I’d prefer being in neither if there was engine failure over mountainous terrain haha.
Imo, the biggest difference between the two is that fixed wing aircraft have a lot more time available to them to correct for a case of complete engine failure. While it would still be an issue over mountainous areas, the plane would certainly have more time to glide and find a place to land imo. (Assuming it’s at a higher altitude than a helo would normally travel). Not that this would make it easier or anything. Just that the total amount of time you have to correct for an engine failure is far greater in a fixed wing craft then a helo, generally speaking.
That being said, the training you’re mentioning is excellent, and I have nothing but respect for Helo pilots. If anything, they have to be more dialed in than fixed wing pilots as there’s a lot more that can go wrong quickly. So likewise, the training needed to be a good Helo pilot far exceeds the training needed to be a good fixed wing pilot. (At least imo). To that end, I would 100% rather be in a Helo with engine failure as it’s far more likely the pilot actually knows what to do, and is trained for it too 😉
- Comment on Price gouging 1 month ago:
100% well said. However, imo the biggest problem is doing this when failure actually happens over any terrain that isn’t flat for several hundred yards.
Engine failure while flying through mountains doesn’t provide enough room to descend and pull back up.
So recovering from critical failure is very dependant on the enviroment the pilot is flying in. Just wanted to add that on, as Helos are imo, basically designed to enter and exit the worst environments out there, making it difficult to counter mechanical issues even with proper training.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Of course he did. But he’s insisting, quite publically, that he didn’t. That it was only HIM that played said game for 10 hours a day.
Which means he’s an even bigger idiot than if he just told the truth. This guy WANTS you to believe he’s a loser that plays games as long as the people he pays. Believe him.
Because in reality he’s even more of a loser. Someone who needs to pretend to play video games with their money, rather than simply gaining the skill to do so themself.
And the fact he’s made this lie public, means he wants all of his investors to believe he’s the video game boy as well.
There’s literally no possible way for this behaviour to be stupider than it is. Because not admitting to this lie makes his actions stupid whether it’s a lie or not.
He either plays games 10 hours a day, or desperately wants you to believe he does. Both of these are stupid. And make him seems like a poor CEO to invest in.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Completely agree. To be clear, I very much respect Rednecks. I do not respect Elon. He is a genuinely worse person than the most exagerated and derogatory punchlines of those jokes.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Here’s the basic Google search 100% proving this is fact because his tweets are public and easily countable:
statswithsasa.com/…/elon-musk-definitely-tweets-t…
it took fewer than 50 days for Elon Musk to post ~3,200 tweets
Elon is averaging 67.8 tweets/day, and there have been weekdays (read: workdays) where he has tweeted over 150 times in one day.
Yes, that’s right. Using my method, I estimate that Elon spends ~2.7 hours per day on Twitter… there have been workdays where Elon Musk has spent over 5 hours on Twitter in a single day.
I even rounded that number down to make it easier to swallow.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
So here’s the thing. Elon is an idiot. He wants you to desperately believe he is a genius while also holding true that he plays games 10 hours a day, tweets 2 hours a day, which he prioritizes over for his 14 kids. That’s several punlines worth of Jeff Foxworthy “You know you’re a redneck when” material in one sentence of his public behavior. Articles like this are beautiful. But his stupidity should not be a surprise here, more of an expectation. (And a hilarious one at that)
- Comment on 4 months ago:
At any given time, there’s about 400 million people playing game on the planet. Of those people, only 14% play NEW games released within 12 months.
It used to be 30% 10 years ago. Now it’s less for a variety of factors, but one of them is less people have the income and budget they used to.
You are in that 14%.
Which is great - but the games you buy as part of that 14% are based on your taste. Not if they are exceptionally good, only if they are exceptionally good to you.
So making games that are “exceptionally good” for an audience isn’t easy because your audience doesn’t even know what they want beyond a genre. I’m sure you could tell me about the games you like and prefer to play, possibly even a genre of games you love.
But if I asked you to tell me what game COULD be exceptionally good in that genre, you might not have an answer. Just other games to compare it to. And if you do have an answer, there’s no telling if it would actually be popular with a bigger audience that genre enjoys.
Making “exceptional games” isn’t a bar to be crossed that makes a game money. Rather a game is “exceptional” once it finds an audience that feels that way about it. Games that have broad appeal have broad audiences like Call of Duty who all feel that game is exceptional too. Many who play it would argue which one in the series was the most “exceptional” and wouldn’t have a great answer for what to make as a better version of that game.
People like what they play, and exceptional games are only exceptional to the audience that plays them. So it’s not so much about making something exceptional, but making something that has an audience that thinks it’s exceptional.
And finding that audience is the hard part. Especially when only 14% of people who plays games are even looking at what you’ve made.
But it’s not impossible. Just difficult these days.
- Comment on 4 months ago:
Based on what? Your opinion? Or is there a profit analysis and breakdown you want to pair with that to make a point?
- Comment on 4 months ago:
My dude, I’m very familiar with the 14% of videogame players new game devs are vying for. And every one of the games you mentioned launched at that price because they were developed by a single dev (two at most) who could profit off of the $10 - $15 dollar space that was below the smaller studios putting out games like Shadow Complex, or Mercenary Kings, or Shank 1+2 for $20.
Now all of those spaces are being crushed together. Mostly due to economic factors. Thats where the biggest problem really lies, in the fact that people just have less money to spend on all that entertainment. Just pointing out that it’s competitive at all is obvious my dude, but the direction its going in is one in where there’s less anything being made (including games) because not as many people have money to spend on anything but necessities.
That’s why AAA is now scavenging at the bottom of the totem pole, and pricing their older games at $10 or less on sale, it’s because the few people that have money find that price point appealing. So it’s now one that not just the people who made Terraria, Braid, etc compete in. The money those devs made previously in that space is now up for grabs to AAA companies that never had anything to sell at that price before.
Theres a very tried and true formula for any business, including making games, and in the last 2 years it has completely broken apart. Mostly due to the Embracer group merger failing, combined with AI, combined with economic uncertainty, combined with AAA companies stabbing indie creators in the back (Subnautica, Disco Elysium). Your game doesn’t have to be a massive hit to be successful, it just needs to have a big enough audience to be profitable. But that audience has shrunk over the years as economies have tightened, and the companies getting squeezed have been invading markets they never had a presence in before.
So it’s just desperate times more than anything. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a living off of making games. I know dozens of small teams funded by government grants making small games you’ve never heard of to help kids in hospitals learn about their cancer. Or teach kids in underprivileged schools about resource scarcity. Making games as a business goes far beyond entertainment and the hopes of narcissists. It’s an artistic medium like any other, and as such benefits society by making the toughest parts of it more accessible.
There’s plenty of ways to run a company doing just that - and just because the world economy is in free fall doesn’t mean the entire business of making games is something for the lucky few. It’s just for anyone that wants to learn how to run a game company. Which isn’t easy, but extends far beyond the simplistic view you are portraying.
- Comment on 4 months ago:
Thanks! 🙂 Appreciate you confirming that. We actually changed the price of our latest game to $10 (from $20) because we launched last December and got buried by AAA selling for $15.
Almost every dev team we talked to this year felt the same about the $20 price. That is, it’s much better to go out at $15 or $10 as a LOT of people see indie games at that price as better than modern AAA. (All while still holding out for classic AAA that go on sale for $20.)
And that being said, I’m totally cool with losing a sale to MGSV or Witcher 3 😁 Just wish the $20 space wasn’t getting so crowded. It’s making it rough for the smaller teams to compete at that price too now.
- Comment on 4 months ago:
As an indie dev, this article is fucking stupid.
Want to know why indie games are priced at $10 to $15? Becaue AAA has been putting everything they’ve made in the last decade on Steam and it’s all going for $20 - $25.
Indies can’t launch at that price point anymore because they’re competing with AAA games from 10 years ago that have been discounted to death.
The Steam winter sale is the best example of this, where most people will buy RDR2 for $19 instead of the new mega hit indie that’s $20. So indies have been lowering their price to actually get sales. That’s why team cherry priced Silk Song at $20.
Basically, AAA is now just competing with the bottom part of the market they spent that last decade flooding.
They’re complaining about people actually choosing where to spend their money wisely because that means they might actually have to make a good product if they want to sell a game for $70.
- Comment on Alberto Mielgo defends the Marathon cinematic as "not AI," denies his team touched Bungie’s plagiarized material and calls the art theft incident a genuine mistake that was "blown out of proportion" 4 months ago:
The real question is how a company accidentally steals something like that for a 4th time. (This was the 4th time they’ve been caught doing this).
- Comment on Paul Krugman. Former Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 4 months ago:
Agreed.
Here’s a way to use crypto to buy from pretty much any major online merchant anonymously without them tracking your user data:
Its a card that acts as an intermediary for crypto.
It let’s you buy from these merchants without giving away your private data or buying habits.
This is a valuable use for crypto for many people. This is a site that let’s them use their crypto basically anywhere without getting spied on.
This fundamentally disproves his first core statments about crypto not having a use case and not being usable at most merchants.
Basically, he immediately reveals he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
- Comment on They Wylin' 4 months ago:
The Ken Starr report that lead to Clinton’s impeachment begs to differ.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starr_Report
Many of the details reveal highly personal information; many are sexually explicit…Because Starr’s office allegedly leaked portions to press about sexual details that were mentioned in his report, he was criticized for using the scandal as a political maneuver and was charged for violating legal ethics by presenting information irrelevant to an investigation as evidence of legal wrongdoing.
That report is ten times the size of the 9-11 report btw.
Reading the charges now is hilarious considering Trump is guilty of the same hundreds, possibly thousands of times over.
- Comment on eco-vengeance iconoclast 5 months ago:
As someone that’s still in AZ, you are correct on all counts. But forgot:
- They have the cutest babies who follow their parents marching in straight lines.
- STAY FAR FAR AWAY IF THEY HAVE THOSE CUTE BABIES
- Comment on Xbox consoles and games will no longer be sold at Walmart and Target, according to employees 5 months ago:
Very true. They are still acting identically as if they were shutting down console production. The only difference between Dreamcast and Xbox is that Xbox is willing to lie to keep their shareholders oblivious.
Sega at least put their units on sale with honesty, yet Microsoft is acting like their Xboxes selling for 279 at Sam’s club is just a temporary thing.
- Comment on Xbox consoles and games will no longer be sold at Walmart and Target, according to employees 5 months ago:
Actually. It happened with Sega after the Dreamcast. Almost beat for beat:
Sega: We’re so going to make a cooler next Gen console. Sega: Yeah our games are leaving stores, but just you wait until we announce what’s NEXT! SEGA: J/K no more new consoles, Sega just makes games now.
Microsoft is likely going to turn Xbox into a brand the same way Sega was forced to.
- Comment on Xbox consoles and games will no longer be sold at Walmart and Target, according to employees 5 months ago:
It’s a contradiction to them having a successful next console. This is Sega + Dreamcast vibes all over again.
- Comment on Who's your favorite female protagonist in a video game? (Add pic of character in response) 5 months ago:
- Comment on PhDebaters 6 months ago:
I dunno. Sounds like you like discussing things.
- Comment on Asus ROG Xbox Ally Gaming Handhelds Cost Up to $999.99, Preorders Open Now 6 months ago:
You know it’s going to be a great and memorable platform to play games on when it’s catchy & cool name is 3/4 corpo IP 1/4 name.
- Comment on THIS JUST IN: FBI suspects Kirk was likely targeted, more info to come 6 months ago:
Not in law school 😂
But as an American, how is money coming from a political donation legally protected free speech?
Since I’m not a lawyer, and I assume you are, please walk me through how that concept, legally, makes more sense than a bullet coming from a gun being considered free speech in a “Prove me Wrong” tour about gun violence.
Honestly, no antogonization intended, I would earnestly love to hear an actual lawyers take on the differences between these two concepts.
Because from my perspective: both are genuinely poorly reasoned when it comes to the first amendment and free speech, yet one is actually legal.
Would love to know why that is.
- Comment on THIS JUST IN: FBI suspects Kirk was likely targeted, more info to come 6 months ago:
Better still:
Mr Kirk was on his “Prove me Wrong” tour.
And the assassin chose to prove Mr Kirk wrong in a way words couldn’t.
But - If money can legally be protected as speech, what else should we consider protected under the first amendment?
If Mr Kirk was openly asking to be proven wrong, then couldn’t the assassins bullet be protected under free speech as a clear (but violent) answer to that question?
- Comment on THIS JUST IN: FBI suspects Kirk was likely targeted, more info to come 6 months ago:
The blood shooting from Mr. Kirks neck alone was not good enough evidence to determine if the shooter hit what he was targeting. Great work FBI. At this rate, you’ll soon be able to confirm the shooter used a gun.
