Sunsofold

@Sunsofold@lemmings.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hot Take: most modern games are designed to purely kill time⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  What you’re talking about is the movement toward live service games, loot box sales, and ‘friendslop’ in just the last several years, but you forgot about the cynically made sequals created purely to milk nostalgia for established IP. This is the result of the investor class trying to colonize the games space. Start taxing the fuck out of the unproductive rent seekers and I expect things would improve.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Technology Connections] The disappearing and unappreciated art of audible alerts [24:10]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Saw this yesterday and immediately thought of it when my phone dropped the volume of the music I was enjoying to not play my notification sound.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The 900 million dollar suit against Valve⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There is a grain of truth in their motivated framing. Steam has a clause saying developers cannot sell at a cheaper price on other platforms, though if I remember correctly, that’s specifically the ‘normal’ as in ‘not based on a discount’ price. There is an argument to be made that this prevents competitive pricing on other platforms. (same kind of thing Amazon does to mess with the merchants on there) Most other parts of the steam system are pretty good though. If they settle and get Valve to remove that clause, it’d be great, but I fully expect Steam to remain the dominant force due to their other practices.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is worried about AAA sales⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  (Aside: I also prefer Satisfactory to Factorio but it’s because it’s 1st person. I hate top-down view because alignment and legibility are almost always awful on top-down.)

  I won’t give examples because you are asking for examples that are contrary to the limitations of reality. You asked for an open world example when the only way to get something of that scale is to have big teams to crank out all those assets. You asked essentially for an example of a non-AAA AAA game. It’s self negation.

  But, at this point, I’m walking away from this. If you are still simultaneously demanding examples of a thing that cannot exist, to peg a scale that cannot exist, in pursuit of objectivity that cannot exist, you are clearly too deeply buried to reach without lots of shovel time. I don’t know you enough to care enough to fight past your hypocritical ideology.

  Happy gaming.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lady Parts is Bugs.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry, it seems your grant request fell through. You’ll have to fund the research out of your own pocket if you want to continue.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's in a name?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  He just want give hugs and kiss to mouse frend.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is worried about AAA sales⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That… Yeah, it does seem you are having trouble understanding.

  That line you quoted is not to say your opinion is invalid. It is to say that it is hypocritical to complain that I do not approach it from a disinterested perspective when you don’t either. If we were disinterested, we wouldn’t be here. We’d be into something other than games and wouldn’t think about these things, so it’s a bit absurd to expect disinterest.

  …tell me which open world…

  This also shows you aren’t understanding the point. The one thing these games have to offer is scale, bigness, lumpen sum size, so either you’re just trolling me at this point or you’re not getting that size isn’t the goal. There aren’t other games with that big open world because there can’t be. It’s the defining trait of AAA games because they are the only ones with $100000000 to burn hiring giant teams, so nothing else has it. The whole point, though, is big does not mean good. It doesn’t matter if your dinner is 3 ears of corn or 300. It’s still just corn. Not poison. Not shit. Might taste a bit better with some mods like salt and butter on it, but it’s still just bulk. There are far better options available, customized to your palate, what you find to define quality. Whatever you think of as ‘good’ in games is probably better served by something outside the AAA space by something specializing in that thing (Unless you really just like big more than anything. I suppose you could just be the ‘size queen’ of gamers.) and might even be elevated by the investement of some of the money that is currently being sucked in by the gravity well of the big companies, but because those big companies suck up so much of the light, air, and resources, lots of indie projects just wither.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lady Parts is Bugs.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Something something butterfly wings?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lady Parts is Bugs.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh there’s no more need for any more experimental data. All further sex is canceled.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is worried about AAA sales⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t misrepresent me and then pretend to have defeated my positions by defeating your own misrepresentations.

  I didn’t say they suck. I said they are designed by committee, mass market, crowd pleaser, middle of the road, and mechanically stagnant. They are the corn of gaming. They aren’t poison, or shit, but they are decidedly mediocre in their makeup, and there are so many options that are better on one metric or another, basically any metric other than scale, if the players weren’t locked in or tricked in, the AAAs aren’t going to get the kind of support they have. Saying ‘some of my happiest memories are eating my way through a big trough of corn,’ isn’t a demonstration that corn is better, or even good, but that you, specifically, anecdotally, really like your corn.

  And yes, there is something about them that bugs me on a deeper level, specifically their manipulative place in the industry/culture, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong to call them mediocre. Are all opinions invalidated by emotional entanglement? Then why should we trust your word as an avowed supporter of AAA game companies? You have an emotional reason to support them. Why should anyone listen to you about them if your views are emotionally tainted and your own standard requires detached judgement?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft BANNED WireGuard, VeraCrypt & Windscribe With Zero Warning⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Here’s an article for those who want to know a bit more but don’t want to click on that idiotic thumbnail.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UwU🥺👉👈⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I recognise this image from a ways back. Do guys still do the unsolicited dick pic thing? It’s practically a meme how stupid it is and how it doesn’t work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is worried about AAA sales⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Cool. Welcome to the world of options that exist outside of designed by committee, mass market, crowd pleaser, middle of the road, mechanically stagnant gaming.

  It’s telling that your prime examples of AAA are games that choke on their own development but ultimately only offer bigness as their value. Big maps… big, mostly empty maps. Big crowds of NPCs… that do the same three idle animations, duck and cover like a choreographed team at a gun shot and then go back about their day 30 seconds later. Big, powerful engines… with big piles of bugs that take a year of dev time after release to fix. Big texture files… that you probably don’t notice because you’re playing on less than top of the line hardware or just ignore if you aren’t. Big ‘storylines’… that ultimately end up being ‘choose path A or B and then shoot/stab a giant pile of mostly similar enemies,’ and 95% of your game time is the distraction of sidequests you wander into with no effect on the main story. Big collections of voice acted lines… saying generic things and repeating them so often they hit you like an arrow to the knee. Big teams… that get so big they have to have meetings about their meetings with the meetings team before scheduling a meeting with someone from art, marketing, sound, code, and three other people to decide whether its reasonable to have a meeting about adding a hair to the dog in side quest 37.

  So, yeah, welcome to the part if gaming where you experience the small, but meaningful. ‘To the Moon’ is never going to have an impressive trailer, but it might make you weep, if you have the heart for it. Disco Elysium doesn’t have square lightyears of map to wander, but its creators paid attention to everything you can see. Pacific Drive was made by a team of less than a dozen people, but was put together with incredible skill and artistry. Bullets Per Minute took an idea many have had and made it real, and even did a great job of it. Quality over quantity, every time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is worried about AAA sales⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Let them die. AAA games are games built to be marketed, not played.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Sounds of Silence⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The mental image of one if them dancing into the whitehouse like a Ghanaian palbearer just to flip everyone off and say ‘I don’t give a fuck what you creepy old paedos have to say. I went to the fucking moon,’ is immensely entertaining.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Sounds of Silence⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Bone apple tea moment.

  *toe the line

  As in stand with the toe of your boots along a line in the dirt with the other soldiers of your faction

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s kind of like asking ‘when did Rogue become a rogue-like?’

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don’t tech bros wear suits?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  An entire class of BS artists exists that specialize in the ability to sound competent, regardless of their lack of any real competence. Talking heads like news anchors, political pundits, podcast hosts, etc. base their success mostly on the ability to fake authority on subjects because most people can’t tell the difference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PPE w⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Clearly, the most reasonable explanation is ghosts. The only sensible thing to do is repeat the experiment after ingesting a spirit resonance enhancing substance, like peyote.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Starlink even good for online gaming?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Used a Starlink connection for a few months. Starlink is incredible… compared to the alternatives people a million miles from anything have. It can certainly be used for gaming, with <100 ping. It’s not terribly impressive by urban standards, though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whatever you feel about Bond Films, Do you think it wouldn't be best they just ended it with the last film.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s an IP. It doesn’t matter what would be most artful. The Hollywood system would turn it into an openly racist musical with the entire soundtrack being variations on ‘Happy Birthday to You’ if it meant they’d make an extra $5.

  As for what would be best? I’d rather they had kept the movies in the cheesy/campy space they used to have and then created a separate space to be ‘gritty/real’ in. The modern ‘Bond’ films don’t match the old ones.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pass me some⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Mlom

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Real talk⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Real talk? Missing the third group that groups the other two under the same heading for political expediency. The bottom group is essentially never sincerely grouped with the top.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Biological Women⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Black Metal Ist Frau

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon has a bad dream⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A mean dream… That’s kind of an interesting phrase.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you trying to say earth life is a cheap knock off of alien life?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the deal with people liking old devices?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Why ask strangers on the internet with no context why your friends like something? Wouldn’t your friends be both far more able to explain, because it’s their thing and we don’t know them, and far more interested in explaining, because it’s their thing and people love talking about their passions?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Jason Schreier] AAA game budgets estimated around $300 million. These budgets are almost entirely dev salaries + overheard and have nothing to do with executive compensation (which is mostly stock)⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It feels like so much of the games industry is a weird circle jerk. Big game companies feel this weird pressure to make giant games that have 3TB of textures because they’re building everything to be cut into a trailer that looks as flashy as a big blockbuster film, requiring hardware no one can afford. Meanwhile, they add 13 layers of organizational overhead, so no one can do anything on their own because the writing team have to have a meeting with the texture art team and the modelling team and the voice acting and SFX team just so they can even ask the question of ‘How much time will it take to add this NPC in this area and will it justify that much extra artist time/pay by selling another X units?’ much less actually make a good estimate as to the answer. Then you have players, a bunch of whom somehow still get suckered in by those trailers but then spend the next year complaining how much the AAA game sucks but unable to play anything else because of network effect lock in, only to do it all again the next time they see another flashy trailer. Nobody learns the lesson. Everything just repeats until it breaks down as is replaced with the next generation of misery.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Precognition proven! Parapsychology vindicated!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Why did you draw dickbutt on the back of your business card?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon makes some changes⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Still using 4chan so there’s definite room for improvement.