Katana314
@Katana314@lemmy.world
- Comment on A Steam dev is deleting his own game after girlfriend made him realize AI is bad 3 hours ago:
I’m curious if a dev that carefully manages placeholders could at least garner interest from artists this way. Clair Obscur’s debacle with their Indie Award demonstrates how horrible this can turn out if they miss even one asset; but sadly, I empathize coming from a position where I devoted my studies into learning coding and writing techniques, not artistry.
My space game was cubes and cylinders colliding.
- Comment on My tender eyes and ears 18 hours ago:
The silliest ones I’ve seen now are ads for mobile games that put censor stickers over the “parts” of fully clothed women. (Yes, even in the game, they’re fully clothed)
- Comment on Pet Peeves with Games? 2 days ago:
Totally agree with this one. I just posted about Quake Brutalist Jam 3, but it still annoys me that any use of the multi-missile launcher cuts into my time with the grenade launcher, and so on.
Dead Space 3 gave me an aneurysm because they just have one resource: “aMmO”.
I don’t even mind the oft-irritating “Ammo full for Pufferfish Launcher” notification, because it’s at least a reminder I should use the Pufferfish Launcher more often.
- Submitted 2 days ago to games@lemmy.world | 0 comments
- Comment on Two former Polygon editors say they are launching Mothership, a new game publication, on January 26, to analyze games through the lens of gender and identity 2 days ago:
As long as people are able to stay civil, I’m definitely happy to dive into this subject, because it interests me a lot and I’m eager to see if anyone feels they learn something from it.
if the creator wants his characters to look a specific way then so what?
Valid sentiment, but it gets weird when “the creator” is not just one auteur, but a big network of interconnected developers. One may “really want a hot springs scene with detailed looks at the female lead’s boobs”, while much of the rest of the devs are uncomfortable with it, think it will hurt narrative pacing, or even think it could hurt sales.
I do think it’s hard to argue that sex un-sells, but there’s at least some slight data to suggest it. Two games come to mind. One is Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the other is Nier Automata. Both games sold well and had dedicated fans - but both also had a decently large number of players that saw what they viewed as “cringey anime hornbait” and decided to ignore it - even if the game would’ve readily contained other features they might have enjoyed - intricate JRPG mechanics and DMC combat. I don’t even view that audience as “prude” - they just generally held the sentiment that the sexiness was so out of place, it was distracting from the core themes of those games. In N:A’s case, it was a much smaller minority, but you could see in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 it kind of toned sexualization back.
if you’re upset that there’s an unrealistically attractive male or female in a game, respectfully, go fuck yourself. There’s millions of video games that you can also enjoy without your weird preconceived notions that video game characters need to be as attractive or less attractive than you personally are. Video games are a fantasy for a reason.
THIS, I think, is the biggest misconception. Although this is hard to cite with data, I feel reasonably confident in positing a theorem: Aside from an absolutely tiny, vanishingly small base, many of whom don’t even play games, I don’t think anyone * is upset at game characters being “too attractive”*. I watch quite a few female streamers, and by and large, they’re happy and eager to play games with gorgeous women in them. On many occasions, they don’t even care too much about sexualized outfits.
Where I think there’s the most silent sensitivity, and perhaps game publishers haven’t quite parsed this thought, is in objectification. captainlezbian kind of covered the thought - how sex should be humanizing and treat the sexy characters as people, with agency. When an attractive character is an “award”, or never speaks, or their decisions/actions have no effect on any story events, that can go from losing people’s attention to even making them feel uncomfortable - like their gender is “not allowed” in the medium.
Dead or Alive: Sexy, not always quite objectifying. The large-breasted characters range from master assassins on missions, to secret weapon projects, to girlboss CEOs bent on world control.
Bayonetta: Quite the opposite of objectifying. Bayonetta’s domineering personality, even when she’s stripping nude, evokes control over the characters and space around her.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2: VERY objectifying - would be even if Pyra had smaller breasts. Pyra is cute, but she’s incredibly subservient, and basically relies on Rex, the male lead, to take charge as leader and protect her. She’s constantly oblivious to the more pervy characters in the cast. A lot of classic anime at least skirted the latter issue by having female leads highly aware, and beat up the lechers near them (even if the viewer benefited from their exploits). I don’t mind saying this was too much for even me. Again: Agency.get some massive bodonhonkaroos in there, give that guy a massive bulge and a 18 pack, who fucking cares it’s a video game.
I think where this can get confusing is that, by and large, women aren’t quite seeking the same overtly excessive appearances in games as men. If you want some examples, search on Steam for what “Otome” games look like, and picture your male leads in a superhero game looking like that - complete with open button shirts and pensive, slightly-girly attitudes. Uncomfortable? Yeah - that shows what you said, about how not everything will appeal to everyone.
We’re lucky in that women generally are not sorely offended by women in games having breasts (Le Gasp!) but there’s neat ways of making them attractive for all players that don’t instantly produce an “ICK” from a sizable number of players.
The real silver bullet I’ve seen is customization, which is often a win-win. I often point to Stellar Blade as a good example; the default outfit for Eve fits the sci-fi fantasy very well. Then, you unlock a LOT of extremely sexualized, even objectifying, outfits, as well as other “cute, functional” outfits. I don’t mind saying I dived into the former, while many people less interested in sexualization enjoyed the latter. Generally, all parties involved appreciate Eve’s attractive figure and long hair.
- Comment on Pet Peeves with Games? 2 days ago:
This is why I’d almost rather linear games that teach one core mechanic rather than “Build your character the way you want them”.
- Comment on Pet Peeves with Games? 2 days ago:
I’d really like to see a set of publishers/creators that take a hard line stance on this, and reject contracts with, eg, Speedtree, if they insist on a dedicated startup video.
Kudos to Arc Raiders. When I boot it up, aside from an EAC launcher logo, it goes straight to Speranza.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 days ago:
Oh…sorry, I thought it was “bread”. I just love baguettes.
- Comment on Facial age checks are now required to chat with anyone on Roblox 2 days ago:
In a world with a bit more trust, I feel like this is what blockchain/certificates would be for. Basically someone would make a signed statement from a lawyer or witness that “This user with email address xyz is over the age of 18.” Contains no other data, and the notary would be trusted not to collect any more than needed. Then, websites could verify the signature against a public key from the firm.
Instead we get this Orwellian mess.
- Comment on Two former Polygon editors say they are launching Mothership, a new game publication, on January 26, to analyze games through the lens of gender and identity 2 days ago:
Something I’d really like a group to be brave enough to address is the fallacy that “DEI” or “Diversity” initiatives stand in direct opposition to games featuring “Adult” or “Sexy” content, or that they encourage censorship.
We’ve had a wave of pretty bad games from AAA spaces recently, many of which have been uninteresting to anyone. Some people sadly latch onto these themes, and the fact that some of these developers promoted diverse spaces, to suggest that it’s a deliberate worsening of the media space.
In fact, tons of indie devs, as well as LGBT game devs, specifically hope to make adult content. They can suggest new ways of making characters attractive in ways that can still be inclusive; those devs even get harmed by censorship actions. Yet so much of the male-isolated booby-go-boing crowd has been cowed into a simple understanding of battle lines, wherein everything related to diversity and fairness stands against their fetishized hobby.
- Comment on Hooded Horse ban AI-generated art in their games: "all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult" 2 days ago:
The example I gave was more around “context” than “model” - data related to the question, not their learning history. I would ask the AI to design a system that interacts with XYZ, and it would be thoroughly confused and have no idea what to do. Then I would ask again, linking it to the project’s documentation page, as well as granting it explicit access to fetch relevant webpages, and it would give a detailed response. That suggests to me it’s only working off of the documentation.
That said, AIs are not strictly honest, so I think you have a point that the original model training may have grabbed data like that at some point regardless. If most AI models don’t track/cite the details on each source used for generation, be it artwork on Deviantart or licensed Github repos, I think it’s fair to say any of those models should become legally liable; moreso if there’s ways of demonstrating “copying-like” actions from the original.
- Comment on Hooded Horse ban AI-generated art in their games: "all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult" 2 days ago:
If the models are in fact reading code that’s GPL licensed, I think that’s a fair concern. Lots of code on sites like Stack Overflow is shared with the default assumption that their rights are not protected (that varies for some coding sites). That’s helpful if the whole point is for people to copy paste those solutions into large enterprise apps, especially if there’s no feasible way to write it a different way.
The main reason I don’t pursue that issue is that with so much public documentation, it becomes very hard to prove what was generated from code theft. I’ve worked with AI models that were able to make very functioning apps just off a project’s documentation, without even seeing examples.
- Comment on Switch 2 Sales Reportedly Struggled Over The Christmas Period 3 days ago:
I doubt it’s a common cause, but my impetus for boycotting Nintendo was Garry’s Mod. They sent their lawyers after animators, who actually get people more interested in their games. Their litigious nonsense caught up with them that time.
- Comment on Hooded Horse ban AI-generated art in their games: "all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult" 3 days ago:
Many artists do starve, and many others succeed. Not sure what your point is, or why you want to shift the needle more in the former direction.
AI can’t compete with artists if they are not generating content to serve for the model. Even if the models could achieve consistent art, it would mean we get no new themes or ideas. People who would normally invent those new styles will start by repeating what’s existing, and will be paid for that.
Many nations provide grants for art, because they recognize it’s a world that doesn’t always generate immediate, quantifiable monetary return, but in the long run proves valuable. The base expectation is that companies recognize that value and uniqueness in fostered talent as well, rather than the immediacy of AI prompts giving them “good enough” visuals.
- Comment on Hooded Horse ban AI-generated art in their games: "all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult" 3 days ago:
I still haven’t seen anything neat from any models that were certified following only legally permitted content. That said, to my knowledge there’s very few of that variety.
Training off of the work of current artists serves to starve them by negating the chance companies hire them on, and results in circumstances where AI trains off of other AIs, creating terrible work and a complete lack of innovation.
People suggest a brilliant future where no one has to work and AI does everything, but current generations of executives are so cut-throat and greedy to maximize revenue at the top, that will never happen without extreme, rapid political and commercial reform.
- Comment on Hooded Horse ban AI-generated art in their games: "all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult" 3 days ago:
I need to admit that in the past day, I asked an AI to write unit tests for a feature I’d just added. I didn’t trust it to write the feature, and I had to fix the tests afterwards, but it did save time.
I really don’t see any usefulness or good intent in the art world though. Sooo much of those models has been put together through copyright theft of people’s work. Disney made a pretty good case against them, before deciding to team up for a shitty service feature.
It’s sad Clair Obscur lost that indie award, but hopefully the game dev world can take that as a bit of a lesson.
- Comment on PFP Evolution 3 days ago:
I have a particular term for certain kinds of edginess I just call “Shadow the Hedgehog writing”, where it’s more likely to come from a teenager trying to seem grown up/cool than an actual adult.
Plenty of anime/VNs have fallen in this category, giving early content warnings that the content will be dark; and then just having non sequitor turnouts like “And then the heroine stepped in a trap that severed her spine. She screamed for hours, praying for help, but none came.”
There’s a particular game whose name rhymes with “Tomato” that did this for me once. You bring some children to safety, and then go fight the attackers sending tanks after them. I came back to the kids, joking to myself “Sorry, hero, it’s too late; we already drowned in our own fear and sadness…!” And then I laughed out loud when my joke turned out right.
Worst part is, there is some grim and depressing stuff in the world, and yet so many grimdark writers don’t see any nuance in it.
- Comment on 'It can be unnecessary - and even too much': Are violent video games like Grand Theft Auto 6 becoming too realistic? 4 days ago:
The only thing I’d ever want analyzed in gaming is the messages that developers convey. And, there should be no “overbearing head agency” be it the government or publisher, that controls that message. Take it just as a suggestion between artists:
We should encourage good morals and themes in the messages our games convey. I know it’s typical for gamers to say they don’t care about story or premise in games, but even if one isn’t laden with cutscenes, they often communicate a concept even just with level and character design, providing objectives like rescuing hostages, collecting loot, or getting stronger.
I don’t necessarily think violence, on its own, makes a message. Showing scenes of World War 2 can convey a lot of things. It can tell you that war is horrible, or it can erroneously tell you it’s fun. I think if you’re expecting maturity from your audience, you can acknowledge that while the game is fun, it’s not trying to foster that feeling in players.
The main thing that leads to violence in the real world is anger. Media can teach us violence is a form of communication, a tool, but anyone using it has a message, one rooted in a lot of hatred. I might even argue there’s some cases where that anger is both deserved and needed, but potentially misdirected; and other cases where both the anger and the action - violence - is 100% needed. A Ukrainian soldier fighting Russian invaders that are trying to kill innocent people does not need to be taught that “violence is bad”.
- Comment on Xbox Developer_Direct Returns January 22: Fable, Forza Horizon 6, and Beast of Reincarnation to be shown 4 days ago:
We at Xbox can’t wait to show you all the fantastic games we have planned for cancellation.
- Comment on Github Banned a Ton of Adult Game Developers and Won’t Explain Why 4 days ago:
There’s a bit of merit to that. After a purchase, a lot of people are wary, and likely to magnify any changes that happen immediately. They need a period of stabilization to dissuade fears, and assure that “nothing will change in the long run”. Even this article is highlighting what happened around a month ago over a period of time, because it wasn’t apparent in the moment.
- Comment on Clues by Sam 5 days ago:
I’m pretty stuck on this one. cluesbysam.com/s/help/01c315cae125?state=bEzQ-AAA… The hint has me pointed towards C5, but only based on a hint about edges. There are 5 unknown people on the edges, not counting two in the left corner of which one is innocent and one is guilty. So I have no idea what its clues are trying to say matters here.
- Comment on Github Banned a Ton of Adult Game Developers and Won’t Explain Why 5 days ago:
The wording at the top level was “No one’s saying anything about any of it, which feels like that’s on advice from their legal counsel.” It seems like the main confusion was on the implication of the term “No one”. I inferred from the reference to legal counsel, they’re mainly talking about storefronts, not gamers, being silent. As such, I’m guessing you were eager to show how loud people (gamers) are on the issue; but that probably wasn’t the intended meaning.
In fact, I took the initial claim to mean the opposite; with Github taking action against Adult games in the same form as an attack that took place on Steam, it’s suggesting a common perpetrator. But I could safely assume most commenters here know Steam is not owned by Microsoft; hence that blame automatically goes outside of that domain.
Even if you didn’t take that implication, you can just look at the simple statements made; “Hey, this is like that other thing that happened. What’s in common here?”
- Comment on Github Banned a Ton of Adult Game Developers and Won’t Explain Why 5 days ago:
None of that negates anything I said. Everyone is aware of the context of that debacle, you were replying to someone that wasn’t even drawing a conclusion from it.
- Comment on Github Banned a Ton of Adult Game Developers and Won’t Explain Why 5 days ago:
You’re inventing further wording than what’s written. The game is hosted on Steam, and that’s the entity that sent the takedown notice - those are just the facts. Plenty of people blame Visa more than Valve for those actions.
- Comment on Github Banned a Ton of Adult Game Developers and Won’t Explain Why 5 days ago:
Sorry, let me try.
This smells suspiciously similar to the stuff affecting adult content on Visa, like Horses.
Oh. No, wait, you don’t sell games on Visa. Let’s try again.
Actually, what you call Linux is really GNU/Linux-
Dammit! Stupid pedantry setting!
- Comment on Rockstar still hasn't offered a convincing reason for firing over 30 GTA 6 developers 6 days ago:
Right, but if you try to follow a more strict definition that mostly follows 2D games developed by a single person, even their publishing framework ends up encompassing dozens if not hundreds of people. It’s become hard to make that definition strict. At the very least, very few notable games are made by the really big labels: Ubisoft, 2K, EA, etc.
- Comment on Rockstar still hasn't offered a convincing reason for firing over 30 GTA 6 developers 6 days ago:
I mean, when they work indie, they don’t need to unionize.
We probably won’t see unions; just a collapse of AAA. The Game Awards this year was a joke with only about 3 big contenders, and most were regarded as “indie”.
- Comment on New Year, New Games - Big Releases in January 2026. Here's What to Expect - GameSpace.com 1 week ago:
Code Violet looks so cool in concept and screenshots. I’m just sad I get a vague impression the studio is biting off more than they can chew, with things like floaty animations and descriptions of potential feature creep. I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
- Comment on Rainbow Six Siege Has Been Hacked Again, And Players Are Reportedly Getting 67-Day Bans 1 week ago:
Huh. Never thought I’d see a path of consequences that punishes companies disloyal to their employees.
Granted, these people are dooming their chances of working in the game industry again, but maybe at this point they’re okay with that burn.
- Comment on How Are You Guys Handling This? 1 week ago:
It might be an option that doesn’t come up much, but older/lower-spec consoles are an option: The Playstation 4 and Xbox Series S. They’re not available for recent big AAA games, but that’s less and less of the big trends. There have still been many games coming out this year for the PS4.
That’s, of course, if you’re really on a low budget for hardware. Otherwise, a PC is a great investment for games on Steam sales.