SnotFlickerman

SnotFlickerman, 9 dni temu

You know what they call bad writers?

Hacks.

So… this tracks.

Seriously, good writing doesn’t happen with “lifehacks,” that’s how you get worthless shit like Max Landis writing Bright. (Don’t you love white people trying to write about racism… without writing about racism? Just plop in any old fantasy race and it works, right? Right!?)

I recall almost two decades ago I got into it with a woman who was going to school at Digipen, and she told me what Digipen taught students about writing a game.

She said the point was to create the most everyman main character, so you could have the most customers identify with them, and be able to sell more units.

Which I basically said “They’re teaching you the worst writing techniques possible. Literature students would faint at this idea.”

She didn’t care, she claimed this was “good writing.”

No wonder so many games have such dogshit writing if this is how we’re teaching game writers to write for fucks sake. Pick up a god damned book and get thoughtful, people.

Like seriously, let’s get game adaptations of weird, interesting books like Steppenwolf or Naked Lunch.

SnotFlickerman, 13 dni temu

Also, the trailer refers to Hobbits as “creatures” instead of “people.”

What’s with a little fantasy dehumanization, eh, eh?

SnotFlickerman, 21 dni temu (edited 21 dni temu)

Mass Effect Andromeda is mostly hated, but hot damn, it’s disappointing that it was, because it brought back all the best aspects of the original Mass Effect and iterated upon them greatly. Open world planets to explore with a big, fun to drive vehicle.

I would say it’s main failing was the story and the companions, which was generally forgettable, but the world building was quite good and the environments were beautiful.

For all the failures of the facial animations and dead eyes upon release, the actual game itself is really beautiful when it comes to scenic vistas and so on. Part of the trouble is you spend a large mount of the early game stuck inside samey indoor environments with these dead eyed NPCs, so when it came out, the opening of the game gave people a bad view by focusing you on the games worst offenses right out of the gate. That’s a hard hill for a lot of people to climb over, understandably so.

I just think it was incredibly disappointing because it was in many ways a way stronger game (gameplay-wise and environment-wise) than Mass Effect 2/3. It was a huge step up in quality for the franchise, but because of a botched story and facial animations, it nearly killed the franchise entirely.

It was also one of those games that suffered from Gamergate bullshit. Complaints of Sarah Ryder not being attractive enough and complaints too many LGBT characters. I remember when I used to think EA was lying that they thought they won Worst Company from The Consumerist because they had anti-LGBT people doing write-in campaigns against them. I believe them now, even though it felt like they were hiding behind that at the time. Because those are bullshit complaints.

---

Also, is it just me or did Baldur’s Gate 3 prove you could do a modern version of one of these games in the classic isometric overhead view style?

I’d love to see a Mass Effect style game in a modern isometric overhead view turn-based tactical combat type situation, like X-COM but more like an RPG than a tactical combat game with minor RPG elements.

SnotFlickerman, miesiąc temu

This just in: Shitty and unethical company known for shitty, unethical practices and absolutely bonkers PR statements like “AAAA games” unsurprisingly continues to be shitty and unethical company. There’s not more at 11 because that’s all there is to it.

SnotFlickerman, miesiąc temu

It’s impossible to hear this song and not see a punked the fuck out Johnny 5 saving the day.

SnotFlickerman, miesiąc temu

Steam suspicously absent from this conversation, but I’m willing to be patient and see.

It’s a positive attitude for Spencer to take, but would have to see it in practice to be able to make judgment on if he really stands behind those words or if he is simply making a strategic business decision whose real motives are simply masked by these words.

The latter is par for the course for corporations, so we don’t have a lot to lean on in favor of him truly holding these values, sadly. One can hope, however, that miracles can and do happen.

SnotFlickerman, miesiąc temu

Literally nobody asked for this.

It will likely bomb, especially if it’s as crammed with microtransactions as I fully expect it will be.

SnotFlickerman, 2 miesiące temu

Excellent breakdown. This almost definitely only applies to the Deluxe Edition that is a physical copy.

Steam explicitly doesn’t let you give your account away or sell it, likely because they service so many different companies, that it would be impossible to handle the licensing changeover for all your games. It’s still frustrating, but it also makes a little sense, considering each game is often owned by a series of different companies.

SnotFlickerman, 2 miesiące temu

Now Nintendo is going to start going after the smaller guys, who definitely can’t afford to fight.

The plus side is Ryujinx is Free Open Source Software so a million forks can begun being made right now. Yuzu had closed source aspects, which was its downfall in replication from this point forward. Ryujinx will likely have thousands of clone repositories made after today alone.

SnotFlickerman, 2 miesiące temu

I’m interested in them mostly because my NES, SNES, Genesis and OG GameBoy all still work, and it would be nice to be able to still use my cartridges once they finally bite the dust. I got real lucky with the NES getting refurbished by Nintendo of America in the early 2000’s before they released the Wii and were still servicing all their old consoles.

So yeah, I’m curious about how functional they are, for sure.

SnotFlickerman, 2 miesiące temu

SimCopter has a very special place in my heart as possibly the prank that led to the formation of the Yes Men.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCopter#Easter_egg

The game gained controversy when it was discovered that designer Jacques Servin inserted an Easter egg that generated shirtless men in Speedo trunks who hugged and kissed each other and appear in great numbers on certain dates, such as Friday the 13th. The egg was caught shortly after release and removed from future copies of the game. He cited his actions as a response to the intolerable working conditions he allegedly suffered at Maxis, particularly working 60-hour weeks and being denied time off. He also reported that he added the “studs”, as he called them, after a heterosexual programmer programmed “bimbo” female characters into the game, and that he wanted to highlight the “implicit heterosexuality” of many games.

Based “Andy Bichlbaum.”

SnotFlickerman, 2 miesiące temu

These kind of protests are almost exclusively what the Yes Men do! They got their start when they were making a parody website of the WTO (Then GATT) and suddenly had a bunch of serious industry people mistaking their parody site for the real one and sending them emails inviting them to conferences. Thus Andy Bichlbaum and the Yes Men were born! They always go way beyond absurd to try to capture people’s attention, but most often with groups of “experts” everyone takes them all to seriously.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

The rising costs of developing blockbuster games has also raised the stakes. “When you’re talking about a budget that’s $100mn plus, even for a big company, if you miss with two or three of those then commercially you’re on the ropes,” Harding-Rolls said.

Oh boo hoo, is the only type of game you can think of to release is a"blockbuster" type game?

Because last I checked, small titles regularly do quite well, like Hi-Fi Rush did so well compared to the fucking bomb that is Starfield. Same company, small game vs. big game. Small game did well, big game tanked.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

trust thermocline

Quality reference. Also, in reverse, companies such as Larian prove that trust works.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the buggiest messes I’ve ever played. In that, it gives me warm fuzzy memories of the originals, which were similarly buggy monstrosities.

Despite the bugginess, the deep involvement of Larian with the community at every step of the games development and release proves that trust can get you nothing but accolades, even when your game is a buggy mess for six months post-release.

I’m okay with the post-release bugginess because I can trust that Larian actually cares about resolving those things.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

Maybe they spent too much time with the Encyclopedia of Numbers?

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

Is Foamstars fun?

If you have to ask this question about a video game, a meduim that lives or dies based on how “fun” it is, the answer is probably no.

Fun games don’t have people asking if its fun or not.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

I have yet to see anyone ask “But is it actually fun?” about, say, Baldur’s Gate 3.

Maybe part of the reason why is because games like Hogwarts Legacy don’t respect player agency and spend their time forcing you to play the game the way the developers wanted, while Baldur’s Gate 3 allows you to experiment and try to break guardrails.

Hogwarts Legacy literally won’t let you jump over a fence that your legs are visibly taller than. I only finished that game because I wanted to be able to write correctly about how deeply that game disrespects player choice and is all-in on “you play our game the way we intended, or you don’t play.”

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

The 21st century has been repeated instances of “the man behind the curtain” getting completely caught in the curtain, yanking it down, causing a small fire, pissing himself a little bit, and then standing up, waving his hands and yelling at the gathering crowd “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” while the fire begins to grow.

The world wouldn’t be so frustrating if it wasn’t so clear that so much of leadership (corporate, especially so) has no fucking clue what they’re doing, certainly no more in depth clue than their own workforce, and they’ve been coasting on things like stock buybacks for the better part of three decades. They continuously fail but they use their absolutely massive wealth to constantly shield themselves from liability, or any responsibility really, from their near-constant fuck-ups that piss off consumers, poison the environment, and harm workers.

Anyway, much like with their constant fucking-with-the-consumer on Windows 11, they’re just barrelling down the “fuck the people who invested in our hardware ecosystem” path because “fuck consumers, amirite?” They mostly cater to other businesses now, which is part of why it’s a lot easier/cheaper to get a Windows license than it used to be (although that’s been changing). This is the same with so many businesses now, they mostly just serve… other businesses, that’s where the real money is… because they’ve bled the US consumer dry and so they’re prioritizing corporate clients, who have deep coffers.

It’s much like what’s going on at Warner Bros, where shitcanning a movie and deleting it entirely is more “cost-effective” to a movie studio than releasing it. They don’t give one flying fuck how much it pisses of consumers or the people who made it, all they’re worried about is the numbers in WB’s and their own bank accounts. They couldn’t give less of a fuck about what’s in consumers bank accounts or the laborers and artists who made the films bank accounts.

They’ve fully insulated themselves, the aristocracy never left. They just use the power of money to control and influence the power of the State instead of being a King themselves. They’re simply dictators of their own little feifdoms.

The worst part is how many of The Aristocrats live up to the worst versions of the joke.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

And just wait until they pull a Nintendo and just stop having stuff in their catalogue…

Oh that game you remember from your childhood? Lost to time, go fuck yourself, corporate profits come before nostalgia or even accurate human history.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

And everyone else just realizes how bad this means things are going for the gaming industry as a whole.

This isn’t good news for anyone who likes actually owning their games instead of just having a license, if they own a console.

That ship sailed in PC gaming forever ago, which is honestly fine considering storefronts like GOG exist, but it’s still going to be a gut-punch to people who have invested financially heavily in the Xbox ecosystem.

It’s going to mean smaller selections of games, more gambling/gacha bullshit, and “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” will dominate the industry. When licensing runs out for music, they’ll just pull a game instead of trying to “fix” it, if it’s not profitable enough. We’re entering an era where there will be a dead-zone of lost media and history because so much of it is increasingly locked up behind corporate barriers.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

And the voices of millions of anti-social-justice-warriors cried out in agony.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

Next Month: CAPCOM’s Guide to Over-saturating an Already Over-saturated Zombie-Game Market.

Next Year: CAPCOM cancels five Resident Evil games in development.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

They are, but five of them? It seems like they’re ready and willing to kill current goodwill in respect to their games by stepping on the gas instead of realizing why people suddenly liked the games again.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu (edited 3 miesiące temu)

It really depends.

Some games are so old that the technology needs to be sorely updated for modern gamers to be able to understand the controls, and “upating (the controls) for modern audiences” can be good.

Further, older games often have some pretty awful stereotypes in them that don’t need to be preserved so we can remember them.

I know Disney’s Bambi isn’t a video game, but I’ll use it as an example that’s being re-made. Bambi was made in 1942, and a massive amount of cultural references and ideas just don’t make as much sense in the modern era. There are literally things young people today would be like “what now?” in films that old. Sometimes “updating for modern audiences” is removing stuff that just doesn’t make sense anymore, or people don’t recognize or understand.

Even further, it used to be that “getting updated for modern audiences” was the norm. Anyone remember that hokey fucking Romeo & Juliet with Leonoard DiCaprio in the 90’s? Yeah, that was “updated for modern audiences” and it was a smash fucking hit. Back then, updating for modern audiences meant setting it in Verona instead of Venice and swapping swords for guns.

Like if you’re dealing with games that were always meant to frustrate and offend like Postal 2 or Conker’s Bad Fur Day or Redneck Rampage, you’re probably not gonna have a lot of people happy to “update for modern audiences” but there’s not much to update about campy schlock humor anyway.

So yeah, sometimes its not great, but I think the worries about it are overblown.

In movies there used to be a joke about how “the black guy always dies first” in action/horror movies because it held true for a long time. Black characters were given bit-roles that were quickly written out of movies. That is no longer the case, but you don’t see movies that don’t kill off black characters right away as being advertised as “updated for modern audiences” because that’s just silly.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

But something like the first 2 Fallouts on the other hand can really use a controls overhaul.

Those were literally on my mind! I know Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II got some updated control schemes more recently, including gamepad support, but it seems my favorite Fallouts are still stuck in the past.

God damn it what I would give for a modern Fallout in the style of Baldur’s Gate 3. It breaks me how Bethesda has ruined that series.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

I agree with this sentiment in respect to the idea that you’re actually trying to learn something from what you’re looking at. I agree, because I felt the same way when I watched censored WWII cartoons. If you’re willing to learn from them, that’s great, but here’s the thing.

Not everybody is taking away the same things.

What you take away from it isn’t what everyone takes from it. While you might rightfully not be a giant piece of shit yourself, there’s a lot of people who are.

My personal example is growing up with the Grand Theft Auto series. As a youth, I thought concerns with it were more or less overblown, and I was more or less right, for the most part.

However, after the torture scene in GTA 5 and talking to a wider community about it, I started to realize a lot of people weren’t learning anything good from that scene other than how to torture people, and a perverted glee in being able to do so.

And that’s where I begin to worry, because while like, I’m in the middle of an Evil playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3, like… It’s hard to feel real “glee” at being evil. Many of the decisions I make tend to make me go “awwww” inside, but I tell myself “I can’t get caught up in that if it’s an evil playthrough.” And in that sense is where I agree, because like, yeah, I should be allowed to play evil if I want.

But the reality also is that a lot of people don’t care about the nuance and are looking for reasons to be pieces of shit, looking for dark things to make fun of, and are generally going to take horrible justifications from what they do learn, and yes, that does worry me a bit.

while everyone else only gets the PC mush of the moment.

You realize that while there might be some hamfisted attempts at this, that not all of them are so hamfisted, right? This statement doesn’t inspire confidence that you see that.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

When driven by the studio though, I’m a bit more skeptical.

This is a really good point. When it’s in the hands of the creators, you’re still dealing with people who know what they were creating.

A lot of the stuff that people complain about are hamfisted attempts by corporate flunkies to make the game “appeal to a wider audience” as opposed to actually caring about removing unnecessary or offensive material in a constructive way that doesn’t lessen the original impact of the piece of media.

Corporations never decided that women, black people, latinos, and LGBT were humans with inherent value to them simply from existing, but rather, they decided that “Oh shit, we’re leaving money on the table by not marketing to these groups or hiring them.” It’s all about dollar-signs. It’s why corporations will fly the Pride Flag in June on Twitter… Just not on their Saudi Arabia Twitter corporate account. The corporates don’t care about the issues, they just care about getting your labor and your money, in other words, extracting value from you.

And attempts to extract value from you are where hamfisted attempts at making pieces of media “more appealing to everyone” by trying to shove as much strained “diversity” (the corporate kind, not the real kind) in there as possible in hopes to increase sales.

…on the other hand though, some of the original creators simply never grew up and are just obstinately wanting to continue to offend people for no good reason other than getting off on triggering other people. Like I’d have more hope from a remake from Neil Druckmann over John Romero, for example.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

I like the Wasteland games, but something about being alone in the wasteland felt so much more dangerous…

Part of why I liked Fallout is that it (for the most part) dispensed with the party and had you running on your own.

They had a handful of companions you could pick up in 1 & 2, but it was mostly lone gunning.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

Balmer needs them dividends, bruh! /s

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

…businessinsider.com/…/steve-ballmer-annual-micro…

You don’t gotta be working there to own stock and get dividends.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

You know, these companies share mountains of data with each other before mergers or buyouts.

The idea that they don’t know these “areas of overlap” as they call them before the deal is done is a joke.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

Of course they know them.

I know, that’s why I called it a joke. They always post these bullshit PR statements after the fact as if everyone didn’t know this was coming.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

No problem I’m not upset, I was just clarifying. We’re obviously both on the same page with this haha.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

copro euphemisms going around trying to hide that they’re firing people.

Like Return to Office? Never has the corporate C-Suite ever had an easier excuse to shitcan people for no good fucking reason.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

Makes me wonder if Valve has actual plans for TF2

Don’t break the community’s heart anymore, I don’t think they can take it.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu (edited 3 miesiące temu)

Riot is a trash company.

I feel for the employees who lost their jobs.

Its always grating when CEOs say they “take responsibility” but they’re not taking a demotion and paycut. No, somehow, the idiots who made the shitty decisions get to keep making them. Apparently that’s “responsibility.”

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-g…

washingtonpost.com/…/riot-discrimination-100-mill…

When your culture of sexism results in a class action lawsuit from former and current employees, and you pay out to the tune of 100 million and keep all the same executives who were accused of harassment and discrimination, and you have to have a third party watch over your company for years to make sure you’re not still doing this stuff: you’re a trash company.

so it’s good pr at least .

I couldn’t roll my eyes any harder. That’s literally all it is.

SnotFlickerman, 3 miesiące temu

I’m not your Buddy, Pal!

SnotFlickerman, 4 miesiące temu

Starship Titanic is similarly incredibly under-rated, as is the companion novel written by Monty Python’s Terry Jones.

SnotFlickerman, 4 miesiące temu (edited 4 miesiące temu)

1. It was announced way way way too early.
2. Announced “It will be finished when it’s finished” on that way too early reveal.
3. Years later, it’s not finished, but tough shit, the studio is out of money and the shareholders are pushing for release.
4. It was released unfinished. Oops.
5. Years later, it is now closer to the original expectations.
6. Still no wall-running, so a lot of things they hyped and were expected are still unmet.
7. The Flathead was supposed to be a thing you kept throughout the game, but they never got the AI pathing right with it, so they dropped it.

SnotFlickerman, 4 miesiące temu (edited 4 miesiące temu)

Well you’re mostly right in your original post, game was a solid 7/10 on release, but the studio just did so much disservice to themselves by hyping it up for nearly a decade before release, and especially hyping a bunch of stuff that never made it into the final product, and on top of all that breaking their own promise to not release until it’s finished.

The whole reason people liked The Witcher 3 was people were convinced the multiple delays to release “made it a better game.” It was at that moment that CDPR built the image that they won’t release a game “until it’s done.” They now had their own studio history working against them when they made the promise of “It’s finished when it’s finished” and people were expecting that. People loved that CDPR was so dedicated to the gamers that they wouldn’t let pesky things like money-men push a game out too early when it’s half-baked. Oops, they did exactly that with their next game, which absolutely shot all that goodwill from the players right through the heart, especially after already waiting nearly a decade for it.

In the end, are the expectations really unreasonable if the studio themselves were the people who built the hype those expectations were based on?

SnotFlickerman, 4 miesiące temu

I’m not really pissed off, I’m just listing off things that were unmet based on the studios own desires and their own promotional materials leading up to release.

There’s still videos out there from when they were hyping wall-running and the Ghostrunner class. *shrugs

I really don’t think it’s unfairly maligned when those expectations were set by the studios themselves.

SnotFlickerman, 4 miesiące temu

Maybe they need to listen to the name and fucking end it already.

Try something new.

SnotFlickerman, 4 miesiące temu

I mean “new” as in “Not Final Fantasy.”

Not something “new” as in “New Stuff in Final Fantasy.”

No, scrap the fucker. It’s well past done.

SnotFlickerman, 4 miesiące temu

Next you’ll tell me Game Genie is still around!

SnotFlickerman, 4 miesiące temu

Company with market cap of $2.75 trillion can’t even plan a fucking feature properly and then blames the gamers for their own fucking stupidity.

Also, I’ll honestly be shocked if MS views this as “bad press” since it was only a few years ago that they ignored all the bad press when it come to banning Minecraft players for things they said in their own private servers.

arstechnica.com/…/microsoft-will-start-banning-pl…

That still happens, the bad press stopped happening, but people still lose access to Minecraft for what they do in private worlds that are “friends only.”

I think people wanting to say horrible stuff on their own server is disgusting, but what’s more disgusting is the weird Microsoft Nanny State that says you can be banned permanently for that…

I expect Microsoft to stand firm that they don’t give a shit about bad press.

SnotFlickerman, 4 miesiące temu

“Star Wars Outlaws, the open world Star Wars game, is set to release late this year,” the post reads (thanks, IGN). "The game lets you explore distinct planets across the galaxy,

Desperately not trying to fall prey to the Starfield curse of too many fucking loading screens.

SnotFlickerman, 4 miesiące temu

I honestly don’t think they’ll even quietly go back. It’s clear “customer service” is becoming something that isn’t considered a return on value, so they’re shutting them down all over. Customer service will be the number one thing replaced with AI and they won’t go back on that.

Customer service for the last 20-30 years has absolutely been nothing but a shield for corporations to hide behind while screwing their customers. Low paid phone jockeys have to deal with people furious at being fucked over by conglomerates like Comcast. There is no way to contact anyone further up the chain, and that is deeply purposeful.

They record all the phone calls, but they refuse to learn anything that benefits the customer from them. All they do is deploy psychological tricks to try to get the customer to be happy while not actually rectifying the problem. It’s always a purposeful half-measure that has been deeply researched to calm people down and accept the big unlubed dildo in their ass like they should.

So yeah, the “customer service voice” will be long gone to be replaced with increasing shitty “customer service AI” with no human to talk to, and if you get lost in the shuffle and put in a digital black hole, well, “go fuck yourself” is clearly what they’ll be telling you. They already pretty much do this (especially Google) but it will become increasingly pronounced and difficult.

Clawing back anything that corporations have stolen from you will increasingly become an exercise in total futility as you’re stuck in an endless AI loop that refuses to give you options that actually address your issue.