JDPoZ
@JDPoZ@lemmy.world
- Comment on Blizzard's Overwatch Team Just Unionized: 'What I Want To Protect Most Here Is The People' 4 days ago:
You don’t have to speculate, my dude.
I’m saying go look up ANY product made by co-ops or unions… whether it’s clothing like Thorogood Boots, or even fucking cheese and dairy makers like Tillamook, unions and employee-owned type outfits just literally make better products.
- Comment on Blizzard's Overwatch Team Just Unionized: 'What I Want To Protect Most Here Is The People' 4 days ago:
Actually, traditionally unions have pretty much universally resulted in better quality products. Union made products usually are crafted by well-paid artisans who apprentice under masters of said craft.
See publicly traded companies only care about short term gains and maximum profit margin. They squeeze from every angle until everything sucks. Fire expensive experts with experience, outsource everything to the cheapest places, lower the quality of the materials, increase the price, milk every IP.
On the other side, union workers want to keep their jobs, and the best way to do that is to make sure people like their products.
They are not “perfect,” but they care about more than profit margins and short term gains.
- Comment on Palworld confirms ‘disappointing’ game changes forced by Pokémon lawsuit 6 days ago:
Th same way Digimon, Monster Hunter monsters, and every other unique IP looks nothing like Pokemon. Make completely original designs that don’t look like fan art or knock offs of another artist’s specific trademark style.
- Comment on Palworld confirms ‘disappointing’ game changes forced by Pokémon lawsuit 6 days ago:
Let me be clear :
Copyright law as it stands right now is stupid, and should only benefit individuals from large companies looking to use their resources to steal from them without compensation.
I’m just talking about not letting junk companies pretend they made a game for your favorite IP in a way that lets them trick less-informed people.
It seems most of the actual copyright law benefits big companies as it is interpreted now… which is kind of the opposite of how it originally was intended.
- Comment on Palworld confirms ‘disappointing’ game changes forced by Pokémon lawsuit 6 days ago:
I think that’s a pretty generous interpretation.
It’s like you are trying to pretend that character does not look like a Pokemon because their appearance WAS technically different… even though it uses identical parts from several actual characters from the IP.
So it should be counted as non-infringing because they simply re-arranged / mixed and matched those character parts like they were a Mr. Potato-head-esque / ransom note magazine assembly / amalgamation of interchangeable similar puzzle pieces?
And I just grabbed one of the first results from when you search Pokemon Palworld similarities… I’m not familiar enough with every single one to find a more egregious example, but again - let’s be honest. This is the IP equivalent of saying “I’m not touching you” while a sibling holds their finger right next to your eye as if to poke it.
- Comment on Palworld confirms ‘disappointing’ game changes forced by Pokémon lawsuit 6 days ago:
I’m a little torn on this.
On the one hand, let’s be real - clearly PalWorld takes more than a little “inspiration” on a bunch of different Pokemon IP. The illustrations, modeling, and just visual style overall matches in many ways almost perfectly for many of the creatures. They are like off-brand versions of Pokemon with the exact same eyes, mouth types, etc. in many cases as if they were illustrated by Ken Sugimori himselfImage.
Additionally, the game involves using handheld ball devices thrown at wild world-roaming creatures you capture after cutting down their health by some amount to increase the catch percentage and different “grade” balls have increased chance for capture.
There is also a nefarious organization competing with you for capturing these wild creatures like Team Rocket.
But on the OTHER hand, the leveling up, breeding, base-building, the various ability tech-trees, item crafting, and just overall engine complexity is VASTLY superior to what appears to now be an almost EMBARRASSINGLY behind set of game design mechanics in the actual Pokemon games… it’s sort of a Saints Row vs GTA IV situation here where they were an obvious copy off, but improved in enough ways that ended up being a fun game in itself.
Copying off exact art asset styles is one thing you shouldn’t do… but taking Nintendo’s gameplay ideas and expanding upon them vastly and being told to remove said mechanics as if they stole code is asinine and sets a bad precedent.
Every time there’s been a popular game, there are a thousand copies off them that twist and evolve those mechanics until something else comes along.
Nintendo came along with platformers after Pitfall on Atari. Sonic copied 2D platforming basics from Mario like running to the right and jumping on enemies but changed so much. Final Fantasy copied off Dragon Quest, which itself was a digital idea based off of Dungeons & Dragons. Doom to games like GoldenEye to Halo to Call of Duty to PUBG to Fortnite to APEX Legends…
This feels like taking advantage of grey area in the realm of visual IP similarity to shut down someone making their gameplay design mechanics look antiquated by comparison.
Really embarrassing for Nintendo to be doing this, when clearly what Nintendo should be doing is doing like what Fortnite did when APEX came along and added location / enemy / weapon call outs and just STEALING the mechanics they weren’t clever enough to think of on their own and implement better versions in their own games… but clearly they’d just rather have a monopoly and continue lackluster work.
- Comment on Anon pitches the next big movie adaptation of a video game 2 weeks ago:
I wish “The Studio” was ballsy enough to do an episode about this exactly.
- Comment on Anon is smarter than a genius 2 months ago:
Jesus Christ. That is fucking poetry.
- Comment on The Simple Act of Buying a Graphics Card Is the Defining Misery of PC Gaming in 2025 2 months ago:
I just kept an eye on Micro Center’s refurbished cards for a few weeks and was able to snag a 3090Ti late last year with a 3-yr warranty for the same price I paid for a 980Ti in 2015.
- Comment on Anon watches The Terminator 3 months ago:
There was a ban on selling machine guns to civilians that was passed in 1986.
The original Terminator film came out in 1984. So now? Yes, but then?
Probably accurate.
- Comment on Steam has the best UI 3 months ago:
Wanted to better illustrate my point about asset modernization, here’s an example of what I’m talking about : This is a 7.45MB animated GIF embedded among several others on the page for Helldivers 2 store page on Steam : Image
Here’s that same animation converted into an animated WEBP at 789KB… (I did an AVIF at 215KB with default settings from some random online conversion tool, but apparently Lemmy won’t allow those to be embedded / shown directly) : Image
It is literally ~10% the size, looks identical (could make better with less compression for just a few KB more), loads faster, and will play back in everything except e-machines from the late 1990s.
Additionally, modern formats support things like wider color gamut - which means you can create HDR assets.
- Comment on Steam has the best UI 3 months ago:
It’s not flat out “bad,” but it IS visually inconsistent when it comes to their overall design system element library… but their visual hierarchy, their arrangement of said elements, and layout - is overall pretty well done.
My personal biggest gripe is less about element appearance, but more on how inconsistent their tab layout ends up being from page to page.
When browsing, I always struggle to find a couple of elements - usually something from the specific set of tabs I want to navigate to like the “community” home, my wishlist items, or the shopping cart.
…But really my very biggest gripe is on my Steam Deck. I have the mod for allowing customized animated grid images… and when I go to the Collections section, the loading of those images grinds browsing to a nearly unusable halt.
- Comment on Anon expects more 4 months ago:
Former game studio guy who got out and into general software dev and doubled his pay back in like 2012 and haven’t looked back…
This is correct… that plus a couple other things :
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Western game studios have ZERO qualms burning through people because they believe an endless fresh crop of 20-somethings can be brought in to burn out by forcing 96-hr work weeks for garbage pay
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They got rid of the bonuses / profit-sharing you used to get when a game was successful and just fire people after the games ship… which means if you ever want to be a home owner, or have time to set aside for a family, you’re kinda screwed.
So what this means you’ve got a bunch of people who largely have ZERO experience on each project, and are in survival mode and learning as they go, making usually games that are worse than their previous entries as far as tech goes (see Far Cry series where they show the tech used in FC1 vs newer entries), and when it’s done, they are fired and have to struggle to find another job somewhere else… or they bounce… like I did.
The only outliers are game companies outside the U.S. and a handful of ones in the U.S. (whose games I guarantee you love) and - surprise surprise - when you look at their teams… they’re a bunch of guys in their 50s and up who’ve been making games since the 90s and aren’t being fired after each thing ships or being asked to stay at the office and work over the weekend until Sunday at 3am for the entire 4th quarter of the year.
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- Comment on SteamOS expands beyond Steam Deck 4 months ago:
I really want to switch my main desktop to Linux, but use it for remote work too, so I have MS Teams… is there a way to reliably virtualize it?
- Comment on Assassin's Creed Shadows Will Feature Denuvo & Account Linking + EULA also requires you to allow Ubisoft to "monitor" your RAM 5 months ago:
Already lost interest in Assassin’s Creed after they abandoned the Desmond timeline…
Played a tiny bit of the Black Flag one for the fun shanty stuff but that’s been it for me now for probably a decade… so all this has done has lowered my already completely evaporated interest of “apathy” down now to “actively avoid as if it were a virus.”
- Comment on It was rigged? 5 months ago:
Excellent summary, but I think folks were sad because a bunch of us had tuned in hoping to see :
- Comment on A Netflix exclusive 5 months ago:
That first punch that landed on Paul’s face made him stop dancing around like an idiot… but yeah after 2 rounds it became just a war of attrition, where Tyson’s knees (which apparently were in a brace outside of the fight itself) just couldn’t hold up and let him close the gap and deliver any of his admittedly still-fierce punches.
- Comment on Steven Spielberg is ‘a big PC Gamer’ — loves shooters, and insists on keyboard and mouse 7 months ago:
There used to be stories (not sure how true) of him going to events like E3, Tokyo Game Show, Gamescom, and other developer-centric game conventions.
He also was a key figure / contributor in some old school PC adventure games like Indiana Jones from waaaaay back in the day.
- Comment on What's your favorite controller? 8 months ago:
If it had all those features and was made with some real quality parts, I would gladly pay 500 bucks for it.
- Comment on What's your favorite controller? 8 months ago:
There is no perfect controller…
…But I do have a list of features I would want my perfect controller to have based off all the controllers that have ever been made :
- TMR joystick modules (successor to Hall effect sticks)
- adjustable tension springs and locking mechanism for varied stick cap types
- 6 DOF / gyro sensors + infrared camera (Wii Motion Plus)
- Adaptive haptic triggers (PS5) which can be toggled to hair trigger mode via switches (Xbox Elite series 2)
- multi-touchpad on face (PS5)
- analog face buttons (DualShock 2 controller used this for the Metal Gear games) with customizable “per-button” color assignment / micro OLED or e-ink screens so button graphics can be swapped
- USB-C / 4 wired connectivity + charging
- baseplate contact-charging (PS5 controller has these so you can set them on charging docks)
- hot swappable battery pack + AA battery holder pack or ability to not have a battery on at all when connected via USB-C (Xbox 360 controller had this)
- swappable non-magnetic Zinc-alloy faceplates (PBTails new controller has these)
- removable back triggers with dedicated button assignments (like the Steam Deck’s L4/5 and R4/5 buttons; not just cloned face buttons like Sony and XBox do)
- integrated microphone with hardware toggle (PS5)
- proper “separate keys” d-pad… not the mushy type
- touch-sensitive surfaces for every button and stick (Meta / Oculus Quest controllers do this)
- per-finger-joint touch sensitive grips for each finger segment (Valve’s VR controllers did this)
- the ability to separate the halves of the controller so that each hand could hold one half independently and have them track similar to most standard VR controllers (think combining the switch controllers and Quest controllers)
- NFC communication (Amiibo-stuff for example)
If any single controller did even half of this, they’d easily be the GOAT.
- Comment on Failing Manufacturers Are Pushing the Narrative That Consoles Are Dying, Says Ex-Xbox Exec 8 months ago:
As long as there are killer 1st party titles exclusive to a console platform, there’s a reason to buy one.
Personally, I love Zelda, Mario, and most recently I’ve been excited about the new Astro Bot game about to come out.
Outside of Steam Deck emulation, you need a console to play those, and I do enjoy the convenience.
The last Xbox worth buying was the 360, because all Xbox titles are released on other platforms now - eliminating the need for an Xbox console.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 - Official Teaser Trailer 8 months ago:
For those who don’t know…
- Comment on Deadlock (Valve's Unannounced Title) Passes 12k Peak Players in Closed Alpha 8 months ago:
Doesn’t seem to be working - I presume because Steam says those chat links are single-use, so once anyone here clicked it, it becomes invalid.
I think a private message with that same kind of link would work though. Messaging you now. 😅
- Comment on Deadlock (Valve's Unannounced Title) Passes 12k Peak Players in Closed Alpha 8 months ago:
Hello fellow gamers! Can I trouble any of you for an invite??? 😁😁😁
- Comment on Nintendo Direct song 10 months ago:
Oh, right. 🤣
- Submitted 10 months ago to games@lemmy.world | 7 comments
- Comment on Arrowhead initially planned to make Helldivers 2 in 3 years—instead it took 7 years, 11 months, and 26 days 11 months ago:
Here’s a video showing everything iD worked on related to what was referred to as “DOOM 4” from like 2007 to 2013 before scrapping a huge part of (if not all of) it and coming out with the critically acclaimed 2016 version (which was only shown starting around 2015 at QuakeCon and E3).
- Comment on Arrowhead initially planned to make Helldivers 2 in 3 years—instead it took 7 years, 11 months, and 26 days 11 months ago:
I’m guessing they went back to the drawing board several times - probably because they felt their sequel wasn’t really as evolved or as fun as what they had hoped it would be, so they shifted I’m guessing from their overhead view to the behind the player 3rd person style game we know now at some point after churning at it for a couple years at least…
Like you know that Doom 2016 was the 3rd complete from scratch redo from what they originally started working on after Doom 3, right?
This sort of thing sometimes happens in creative projects; like when you hear a movie took like 7 years to make, it’s not necessarily that they literally shot scenes every week for the same film that whole time. It’s that the project was shelved, or they changed directors, or the studio lost interest for a while or they got a new script or something.
- Comment on Perfect Dark Reboot Is Allegedly In Bad Shape 1 year ago:
“Newer” does not necessarily equal “better.”
The real problem is how basically game dev is an untenable long-term career from a AAA standpoint… or at least it is outside of Japan.
Almost every major dev is not being run by anyone with more than 10-ish years of dev experience.
Why? Because studios shut down and fire everyone, or they get bought… and fire everyone… or the grizzled vets get burnt out, or find out that work-life balance shifts when they get old enough to want to start a family, or discover (like I did) that general software pays better, has less turnover, and doesn’t shut down as often.
Look at all the major players in the FPS game for example from the past 15 years… The guys who made Perfect Dark, the original GoldenEye, Killer Instinct, Banjo Kazooie, and Conker’s Bad Fur Day? Mostly not in the industry anymore or struggling while working on small indie projects. Some of the companies still exist, but the guys who’d be in their 60s with 30 years of game dev and design mastery under their belts? Gone.
Cliff Blezinski isn’t working on games anymore. John Carmack isn’t at id. Half of Bungie’s OG staff has moved on to other stuff or switched to 343 or some other smaller studio.
I said “outside of Japan” earlier btw because meanwhile Shigeru Miyamoto is still at Nintendo. Dude’s an absolute elder god of game design, and all he’s been doing is working on them for more than 4 decades at this point.
Kojima’s been making games since the 80s, so has most of the folks at Capcom, and the From Software guys have been doing the same thing for 15+ years at this point.
And then there’s the rare tiny studio or re-org of a once awesome team like Respawn after all the Activision / Call of Duty stuff or indie effort like the guy behind Stardew Valley… but other than those handful of exceptions, there’s no one but 20-something recent grads that pad out the teams at these giant game companies like Ubisoft, Activision, EA, etc. Even Blizzard is a pale shadow of what it once was. And Valve doesn’t really make games anymore b/c they don’t have to…
And every year some $10 million / year bonus paid suit shuts down an Ensemble Studios, or a Telltale Games, or fires half of the team at Square Enix b/c the new Tomb Raider 6-year project didn’t make a bajillion dollars after some exec decided that should be their target since “Clash Royale” only took 1 year to pump out and just basically prints piles of money.
- Comment on "PSN isn't supported in my country. What do I do?" Arrowhead CEO: "I don't know" 1 year ago:
This is like saying to any sort of person involved in commercial agriculture “don’t buy a John Deere tractor if you don’t like their draconic business practices.”
Like… there’s not really many other choices if you want to make a game that can do simultaneous cross-platform networked multiplayer and want to be able to launch on any console.
I mean, unless you want them making something that has massive difficulty coming to console… like maybe Lethal Company is the only recent example I can think of that’s a small non-major publisher-backed title that has networked 4-player multiplayer… and even then i’m not sure what sort of challenges that dev had when trying to implement any sort of netcode for gameplay.
