scrubbles
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
Little bit of everything!
Avid Swiftie (come join us at !taylorswift@poptalk.scrubbles.tech )
Gaming (Mass Effect, Witcher, and too much Satisfactory)
Sci-fi
I live for 90s TV sitcoms
- Comment on sometimes nature is a tattle tale 4 hours ago:
I don’t know, I’m sure it’s a very civilized conversation
- Comment on A Finnish town is heating itself with 2,000 tonnes of crushed rock: its giant “sand battery” can cover almost a month of heating demand and has cut district heating emissions by 70% 5 hours ago:
I bet it could, same principal and application. Take heat from homes during the day and apply at night. Problem only swaps from “do we have enough to make it through the night” to “do we have enough capacity to make it through the day”
- Comment on First test flight of largest all-electric aircraft used just $5 of electricity 2 days ago:
I hopeful but realistic. The investments have been greenwashing by airlines for a while so you wouldn’t feel bad for flying, so I’m both happy it’s working while remaining skeptical.
Still, if they could replace regional flights that would be a huge boon. Regional flights are some of the worst polluters.
- Comment on Supporters of famous influencer Andrew Tate rally in Miami 4 days ago:
Its hard to be mad at them when they haven’t even figured out their own personality so they just copied what they’re told.
- Comment on Karoline Leavitt. She says she wear a cross because she is a good christian. 4 days ago:
Oh sorry, no thank you, I’ve been shaking too many hands lately, you know how it is fellow world leader
- Comment on Netflix to shut down two game studios: Night School and Moonloot 5 days ago:
Just six weeks ago, Night School had released Unhinged, a novel 30-minute first-person horror game, streamable on TVs to Netflix users.
Prior to its Netflix tenure, Night School had developed the award-winning supernatural thriller Oxenfree.
Netflix attributed the studio closures to a prioritization around kids gaming, party games, story-driven fare and games with mainstream hooks, such as a recently released FIFA game.
Ah yes from their history I can see how it would be impossible for them to pivot from story based ges to party, fits, and uh, story based games.
- Comment on Laura Fryer - HR needs to stay in their lane (and out of Game Development) 6 days ago:
You have a whole agenda that is unrelated to what I am talking about. I’m not playing into it. you’ve left 3 comments pushing your agenda and this will be my only response. Make your own post about this if you believe so and deeply care about it.
- Comment on Laura Fryer - HR needs to stay in their lane (and out of Game Development) 6 days ago:
I think it’s both. I do think they’re in the room, they have elbowed in a spot at the table and I’ve seen it first hand, however I don’t think like in the video they are the only say. I think you’re spot on in saying that bit, “If a product is appealing to everyone, it appeals to no one.”
I think HR in the room is another symptom, I think it’s executives trying to make sure no one feels put off by a game so that everyone plays it and they have the biggest audience. Then you have Legal come in and neutralize more dialogue because it could be considered rude or offensive. Then marketing comes in and says that they don’t know how to market this to this group, and then at the end you get a very boring game that is perfectly safe for everyone to play, but that no one wants to play.
It’s simply that corporations don’t understand creative work. Creative work and art are subjective, and they are meant to heighten emotions and make people think about it. They are meant quite literally to go counter to everything a corporate environment pushes for.
I also agree that I have been going Indie more because you can tell they aren’t as over-encumbered by corporate pressure. They have something they want to make or say, they are passionate and they get it done. I guess my thesis, seperate from Laura’s, is that HR and these other teams need to let creatives be creatives. Step in when you need to for sure, but stop at that line and go no further. HR should be there for HR reasons, Legal should protect the company from liability, and marketers should market the product, but none of them (or the executives) should be swaying the creative process to make their jobs easier. It’s their jobs to protect the creative process, not the other way around.
- Comment on Laura Fryer - HR needs to stay in their lane (and out of Game Development) 6 days ago:
Then have a conversation instead of making accusatory statements about what I must believe like calling me a gamer gater and saying “I’d like to see some sources on this proving that the rampant sexism and toxic work environments have been done away with in the last 5 years before being this confident about it.”
Of course things aren’t great still, of course there are still bad toxic places to work. I’ve worked at both pure toxic and toxic positivity and they both suck and both should be removed. I’ve had places where I myself went to HR and watched them do an investigation which then ended up with me terminated after I reported people for being godawful. I have also had the opposite happen, where simply disagreeing with an approach means that I’m an agitator and the dreaded “Can we have a few minutes to speak”. They went from doing nothing to protect the employees to now overprotecting everything.
I’ll agree that she should have talked about why the bell swung in this direction, and she has previously mentioned about her own sexual harassment in the past and that would have been a good time to bring up how she told us how she felt ignored by it. It’s important to understand context to understand why it’s swinging the other way, but now it’s become where everything is so coated in foam that there’s only the “approved” way to do things, which means covering the user in bubble wrap before sending them through the feel-good forests, and it’s making things very boring to play.
- Comment on Laura Fryer - HR needs to stay in their lane (and out of Game Development) 6 days ago:
Who said they’re done with? You’re pulling out just as many extreme examples as you say the video is. God forbid I talk about a nuanced subject where the answer can lie in the middle somewhere. Why must everything here be that there are two polar opposite views and nothing can ever exist beyond those two? I’m not interested in having a conversation with you are going to keep arguing that if I have this position that I must have the most extreme version of the position.
- Comment on Laura Fryer - HR needs to stay in their lane (and out of Game Development) 6 days ago:
Honestly I have worked at companies where the head of people and culture is in the room with executives, they are at the top levels and involved in PR/marketing. I think Laura here has a point, HR was needed for exactly what you said with the Blizzard type situations. Obviously horrible, and should be stopped. However, the bell has swung the in the other direction now, to the point that nothing can be done without sixteen layers of approval. I think that’s very bad for a creative medium, and needs to come back to somewhere in the middle.
- Comment on Laura Fryer - HR needs to stay in their lane (and out of Game Development) 6 days ago:
Christ do you need some Bengay for that overreach?
- Comment on Laura Fryer - HR needs to stay in their lane (and out of Game Development) 6 days ago:
This has been a personal pet peeve for a while, but man did it hit for Dragon Age: Veilguard.
Dragon Age was always personal choice matters. If you choose something seemingly benign it could cause massive ripples. You could have teammates leave. You could have entire factions turn their backs on you. You could have people who were once friends try to ambush you in a back alley! It had real stakes and made you pay attention.
The 4th installment, Veilguard, was so obviously written with HR (People & Culture) in the room. No one was ever angry! There were decisions, but they were so low stakes because no one would ever get angry at you. You could literally destroy someone’s home and they’d say “It’s okay, I understand why you had to”. WHAT? They should be threatening me - OR WORSE. No one truly died, no one ever got mad, the game literally has “team meetings” where all you do is talk about how great everyone is.
Then each character was whittled down to one specific trauma that you had to help them through. Multifaceted characters with actual emotions? No, that might make someone feel things. This one has a hard time talking to people. This one had a mean dad. This one is trans and can’t come out to her mom. Each thing individually is fine, but that’s literally their only character trait. Friendship with every person was immediate and permanent. If you talked to them it would only be about their exact trauma, maybe one sentence about the last mission and how we all tried our best. It was so fucking annoying.
You could just tell that HR had the only vote on every single line of dialog. No one ever gets their feelings hurt, no one ever is mad, the player might feel something and that could be bad. By trying to make everything so “positive” they’ve carved out the very humanity from these games.
Anyway, thanks for letting me rant, the video does a great job at summing up my feelings. These people should have no say in the creative process or work culture. They are toxic to anything art related.
Please feel free to share if you have other games like this where you can feel the palpable taint of HR.
- Submitted 6 days ago to games@lemmy.world | 42 comments
- Comment on 1 week ago:
Fair, I do the same
- Comment on 1 week ago:
That’s very good wording from them. I was worried they were going to try and throw ublock under the bus, when really ublock has had a boot on it’s neck from these big tech giants.
I’m very mixed. It’s a small team, they do great work and keep the internet functional for a huge chunk of us, and they’re burned out. It’s a defeat. However no one who uses adblock should be using Facebook either, it’s a garbage platform that is literally 97% ads. (I think I saw someone flipping through posts and only got to a “friend” post after going through like 30+ other garbage)
Sad and frustrating news.
- Submitted 1 week ago to videos@lemmy.world | 1 comment
- Comment on A slain officer who acted heroically gets booed. He was a Marine veteran. Really great culture. 1 week ago:
Luckily they have these people to help confirm who they hate that day
- Comment on Mass layoffs expected at EA as the now-private publisher reportedly tells its new debt masters that it's going to cut $700 million in annual costs 1 week ago:
Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe the last thing they would do is sell off the up to better firms.
- Comment on Misleading Surveillance Pricing AIs to Get Lower Prices 2 weeks ago:
I just don’t use my phone. I have a card that I use only after I pay. The store I go to does not have dynamic pricing. That’s the most they’ll get from me.
- Comment on At colleges, the AI boom means everyone wants to dabble in computer science 2 weeks ago:
AI enables the hubris that you can be an expert in any field. I use it daily, it gives you just enough info and knowledge that you feel that, right before it makes a huge fucking mistake.
That’s all this is, these people gain the arrogance that they can simply pick up another field. Same as management and executives. Anyone working with AI daily knows that’s all it is.
Does it help? Sure. In the hands of a capable engineer who knows what the hell it’s doing. In the hands of some entry-level or non tech person? Horrifying results and pure arrogance.
- Comment on US water facilities targeted by ‘malicious cyber actors’ – who’s to blame? 2 weeks ago:
This is one of those things where we should be saying… “WHY THE HELL DOES OUR WATER INFRASTRUCTURE NEED TO BE ON THE INTERNET”
- Comment on Reddit Stock Collapses 23% as AI Eats Away at User Growth 2 weeks ago:
I didn’t believe it until I started my own community. Now I’m ecstatic that I have about 3 posters.
- Comment on The hill I will die on: Games are the opposite of fun, and I’d ban them for anyone over 12 | Emily Watkins 2 weeks ago:
Agreed. Disappointed with how many people just fell for it.
Shed paid to make this shit up folks. We’ll read it, which means she succeeded.
- Comment on The hill I will die on: Games are the opposite of fun, and I’d ban them for anyone over 12 | Emily Watkins 2 weeks ago:
Absolute rage bait article. Guaranteed none of these stories of her happened, and this is just to lure readers. The more readers and ad revenue, the more options she gets.
- Comment on Reddit Stock Collapses 23% as AI Eats Away at User Growth 2 weeks ago:
On paper, logged-out users look like a bright spot after growing 27%. In reality, they’re much less valuable. Logged-in users create posts, comment, subscribe to communities, and develop habits that advertisers value. Logged-out visitors often arrive through search, consume a single page, and leave.
Yeah, what did we fucking say. I had some millions of karma on reddit. Then they shut down my app, and I up and left. A good chunk of other members of posters and commenters left as well. They shrugged us off. We’re only a few percent.
Except for the 90-9-1 rule. Of a user base on average 90% will lurk/vote only, 9% will comment, and 1% will post. So it doesn’t matter if it’s a small percentage of your total users, if it’s a good chunk of the people who post and comment you’re fucking yourself.
Just checked and I have crossed over 1000 posts here and have tens of thousands of comments. All unmonitized, all useless to reddit. Enjoy your AI comments, reddit.
- Comment on Reddit Stock Collapses 23% as AI Eats Away at User Growth 2 weeks ago:
Don’t worry bud, we’ll be here for you
- Comment on Tried to login to the arch wiki but was given a 3 minute crypto challenge. 2 weeks ago:
I’m a server asking with it.
I went from thousands of requests per minute down to 5. Five. Database was pegged constantly at 100% serving requests down to ~50% now. Huge difference.
- Comment on Everytime I click this I'm called to the Dark Side 2 weeks ago:
Yes but that doesn’t make the joke very funny. I also made this before that setting existed.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to games@lemmy.world | 4 comments