MurrayL
@MurrayL@lemmy.world
- Comment on "Benefit of the doubt" is a very important aspect of a game's success 2 days ago:
We had to read manuals for tutorials, maps, and story exposition. Try releasing a game nowadays that does that and you’re going to get slapped with a 1/10 because people nowadays have less patience than a goldfish.
I kind of get where you’re coming from but it comes across as out of touch, ‘old man yells at clouds’ type stuff.
The shift has far less to do with patience and more to do with designers getting better at integrating tutorials into the games themselves. Games now are designed to teach you how to play through playing, so reading a manual became unnecessary. That’s not a flaw, that’s an improvement.
The only reasons this wasn’t done earlier was because the field of UX was still developing, and because cartridges limited how much text could be crammed into the games themselves.
That said, there are still well-received games that rely on manuals, but it’s now an explicit design or aesthetic choice rather than something everyone has to do to make up for limited tutorialisation. Check out Tunic, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, or TIS-100 as examples.
- Comment on Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase Announced for February 5 2 days ago:
Thanks for fixing!
- Comment on Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase Announced for February 5 2 days ago:
Please don’t post links that just tell me to download an app.
- Comment on One-Third of U.S. Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off Over the Last Two Years 1 week ago:
Here’s an article detailing the methodology.
- Comment on What should be emoji reaction for "me too" in the general sense 1 week ago:
Just don’t accidentally send 👉👌 instead
- Comment on What should be emoji reaction for "me too" in the general sense 1 week ago:
If you want to express agreement, it’s usually 👆or ➕
If there was an action and you want to confirm you’ve done it, ✅ (or 👍 but that’s ambiguous between ‘I’ve seen this’ vs ‘I’ve done this’)
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 1 week ago:
Do you say the same for Epic Games Store exclusives?
Yes, actually. If they funded a game, like with Alan Wake 2, then whether or not they make it an EGS exclusive is their prerogative.
there is no pro-consumer reason that the GOG fixes could not have been given to everyone that already owned the game on Steam as a free update
I disagree. GOG invested time and resources into patching the game. Tacking the word ‘pro-consumer’ in there means nothing. They’re a business. They shouldn’t be expected to give away their work for free to customers of a competing platform.
I don’t care if 2% or whatever goes to GOG for their fixes
That much is clear. You just want something for nothing. Pirate the GOG version if you’re so desperate to play without paying, but don’t frame it as some kind of pro-consumer protest.
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 1 week ago:
It’s as much as anyone outside of GOG can know, based on interviews like this one.
The exact contents of the deals is not public information and no doubt differs for each game, but the overall process has been reported on.
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 1 week ago:
Oh, well that’s the easier part to understand.
Before they even start on any technical work, the GOG legal team contacts the owners of the game they want to sell (e.g. SEGA, in the case of Alpha Protocol) and they negotiate a deal to update and distribute the game.
Things get complicated when a game has joint owners, or when it’s not clear who owns a game, but otherwise it’s as simple as that.
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 1 week ago:
If you’re interested in a specific example, here’s an interview with their technical producer on how they updated and rereleased Alpha Protocol in 2024.
Lots of insights!
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 1 week ago:
Why would GOG give the work they did to a competing storefront?
If you value the work, support the people who did it.
- Comment on Asbestos found in children’s play sand sold in UK 1 week ago:
“As a precaution, we have voluntarily removed the product from sale while we carry out independent testing … We will update customers as soon as we are in a position to do so.”
Sounds like they’re just waiting to confirm if there’s actually a problem, rather than issuing a full-scale product recall based on a single test result reported by a random member of the public.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
Written in 2020 but still an interesting read. I wonder what the author thinks of games that have released in the intervening years, like Manor Lords, Going Medieval, and Farthest Frontier?
- Comment on What's the best free version of word? 1 week ago:
OpenOffice isn’t as well known now because it was replaced, for all intents and purposes, by LibreOffice in ~2010.
- Comment on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | Opening Title Sequence 2 weeks ago:
Nothing? The whole thing is couched in a metaphor of new growth to represent the reopening of the academy and the importance of building a new generation. It says at least as much about the show as watching the Enterprise D zooming past a few random planets ever did.
- Comment on Is there a list of important/key episodes – but not just the good episodes? 2 weeks ago:
When I was going through TNG and DS9 for the first time with my wife, I built our watchlist based on a combination of Kethinov’s and Jammer’s reviews.
Kethinov is particularly of interest here because he gives a ‘filler rating’ for each episode, separate from its overall rating, which tells you if it’s important to the longer-term story.
- Comment on Ubisoft target audience when they play a good game 2 weeks ago:
I fucking love Highway 17 - it’s an atmospheric and enjoyable road trip and I will die on this hill.
- Comment on Where can I get sweet dish fish? 2 weeks ago:
Are you talking about Swedish fish?
- Comment on What do all the subgenres of music mean? How does anyone make sense of them? 2 weeks ago:
It sounds like you want a clear set of rules as to what defines every possible genre of music, which does not and cannot exist.
Genres are largely subjective and only exist for the purpose of subjective comparison. Anyone can create a new genre by taking some elements common to several pieces of music and labelling that as a genre - there’s no master list or governing body that decides exactly what constitutes ‘art rock’. It just is.
- Comment on Meta is closing down three VR studios as part of its metaverse cuts 3 weeks ago:
Fuck off, sincerely. It’s hard enough out there for game devs as it is without heartless idiots online celebrating the demise of their studios.
- 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 3 weeks ago:
Curious what about this new publication makes you label it a tabloid? Based on the description so far it doesn’t sound sensationalist at all.
You’ll find reviews, criticism, and opinion stories, as well as articles about how games are made and marketed. You’ll get investigative reporting on the people who make games in an era when “DEI” is on the wane. You’ll read historical deep dives on the games and creators that paved the way, especially those that didn’t get due credit way back then.
- Comment on Anon thinks about wheat 4 weeks ago:
I’ve got a pack of pearl barley in the cupboard right now; it’s delicious.
- Comment on The Titanic, Sinclair C5 and Brexit: the Museum of Failure is coming to the UK 1 month ago:
You’re confusing design failure with failure in the broader, catastrophic sense.
As Picard said, it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.
- Comment on Sony's Naughty Dog Studio Orders Employee Overtime on ‘Intergalactic’ 1 month ago:
I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad take, but it’s worth pointing out that lots of games miss internal deadlines and waste time ‘spinning their wheels’ but still turn out good or even great. The difference is that you don’t usually hear about it, whereas here some of the team are obviously pissed enough about the crunch that they went to the press.
Crunch is always bad and is an indication of poor project management, but issues with scope or major reworks aren’t always a death knell either.
- Comment on Sony's Naughty Dog Studio Orders Employee Overtime on ‘Intergalactic’ 1 month ago:
Demo in this context isn’t a consumer-playable ‘demo’ in the sense that most people understand; it means a playable internal build with specific targets for what must be included. Internal demo milestones are often linked to project funding and approval to move forwards, so there is a tangible risk if they fail to deliver.
Presumably the current state of the game is behind where it needed to be to deliver that demo, so they’re now crunching to finish it on time.
- Comment on “They burned millions but got nothing.” Japanese game font provider’s aggressive price hike could be result of parent company’s alleged AI failure and financial struggle 1 month ago:
Whenever they add new symbols to Unicode, I’d imagine. Probably other reasons too, on occasion.
- Comment on “They burned millions but got nothing.” Japanese game font provider’s aggressive price hike could be result of parent company’s alleged AI failure and financial struggle 1 month ago:
Except there won’t be much of a consumer market to come back to, due to the aforementioned economic devastation.
- Comment on Thank Goodness You're Here - most absurd & hilarious game what did I just play? 1 month ago:
I wouldn’t say it’s suitable for kids - there’s a lot of innuendo and crude visual gags. Mid/late teens probably fine, but it’ll depend on your tolerance.
- Comment on Why does everyone put celery in soup stock? 1 month ago:
I’m with you - celery is horrid. Right up there with coriander for me as something that completely overpowers and ruins anything it’s used in.
- Comment on Day 516 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing 1 month ago:
ShaderGlass should allow you to run with a CRT shader without interfering with anticheat.