aftermath.site

mrfriki, do gaming w Kotaku EIC Resigns Over New Editorial Edict

I stopped following Kotaku years ago. It was the best news site by a large stretch. At some point it quickly became trash in the lapse of a few months.

Regarding the writing guides galore, the same has just happened to Destructoid during this very week, suddenly my feed was flooded with dozens of clickbait “how to de X in [trendy game name]”. I just stopped following them right away.

Now I only have Gemstsu to check news and it is not particularly good, guess sooner than later my only source of new game releases will be the from page of Steam:(

altima_neo, (edited )
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

It became trash when they had a site redesign that made it more blog post looking than news site. At the same time, they doubled down on filler articles.

After reading the article, it sounds like they’re at it again with a redesign.

Jaysyn, do gaming w Kotaku EIC Resigns Over New Editorial Edict
@Jaysyn@kbin.social avatar

Kotaku is still a thing?

altima_neo,
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

Yeah I stopped browsing there after they had their digg moment when they did a site redesign that no one liked, and focused on clickbaity non-articles as filler. Oh and their moderation on their community became really bullshit. Banning anyone who disagreed with their takes.

Nakoichi, do gaming w Kotaku EIC Resigns Over New Editorial Edict
@Nakoichi@hexbear.net avatar

Damn that sucks. They were one of the few decent games journalism outlets.

Looks like pressure from the gamer-gate and reactionary crowd got to them.

This could only result in a shift to more puff pieces and less criticism as an extremely fucked up industry rife with harassment and assault.

beaxingu,
@beaxingu@kbin.run avatar

very funny dude i almost took you seriously but nobody could be serious about saying something so mindbogglingly stupid.

rustyfish, (edited ) do gaming w Kotaku EIC Resigns Over New Editorial Edict
@rustyfish@lemmy.world avatar

Hold on? Do I get this right?

By guides they mean actual guides for games? Like that stuff that I and literally any other person look up on YouTube and go for the shortest video available? Or, in more complex cases, go straight to the Wiki ignoring any other site that is just there to waste my time? Please tell me I am wrong.

“I’ve resigned from Kotaku and Jim Spanfeller is an herb.”

Someone give this woman a medal. Fantastic.

Edit: Forget what I said. They actually mean THAT by guides. It says it in the article, my brain just jumped a paragraph. Derp.

Oh boy! Let’s see how this will turn out for Kotaku!

Lojcs,

Ign or strategy wiki are my first go when I’m stuck at a game. I can’t skim videos and game wikis usually have more information than what I want at that moment (spoilers and such).

rustyfish,
@rustyfish@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, I get you. Maybe it’s more of a personal preference. As someone who, in most cases, is relatively indifferent to spoilers, I prefer other sources.

I still think Kotaku is fucking up right now, tho.

Silentiea, do games w How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory - Aftermath

I’m not sure I understand what’s happening here, but I’m looking forward to the five hour hbomberguy video explaining the whole thing in about 8 years.

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

It’s gamergate 2.0: electric boogaloo

Silentiea,

It definitely smells like that, except maybe just anti-“woke” or anti-minorities instead of just anti-women?

Hovenko, do games w How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory - Aftermath
@Hovenko@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

Some ordinary gamers had a nice video about those racists.

Lurra,
@Lurra@lemm.ee avatar

Yeh I saw the same video. Right now there are tons of youtube videos made by different gamers (this past week) that have been expressing their dislike over how SBI have been terrorizing companies to hired them. Good this is coming back to the surface again so we are aware of these business practices.

beaxingu, do games w How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory - Aftermath
@beaxingu@kbin.run avatar

shows how game journalism is shit and there as useless as sweet baby they deserve each other.

barooboodoo,

I guarantee your illiterate ass didn’t read a word of this article.

beaxingu, (edited )
@beaxingu@kbin.run avatar

hey now that's not very nice. if you want to suck off Nathan Grayson that's your problem not mine. I guarantee you it being a Nathan Grayson article makes it even worse.

Dremor,
@Dremor@lemmy.world avatar

Keep it civil, thank you.

Dremor,
@Dremor@lemmy.world avatar

Keep it civil, thank you.

SmilingSolaris,

Civility is for the case of people trying to have genuine conversations. There is no civility in people blatantly saying something untrue. There is no conversation. He has stood up on his soap box and declared a lie in the hopes that he could trick unsuspecting people. He deserves no civility because he has none of his own.

Dremor,
@Dremor@lemmy.world avatar

Then he deserves his downvotes, not your insults.

SmilingSolaris,

Por que no los dos? It’s free

Dremor,
@Dremor@lemmy.world avatar

The rules are the rules.
They were collectively written to keep conversation as non-toxic as possible. If you wish to change them, feel free to create a topic on the matter.
In the meantime, my work is to upheld them.

Alimentar, do games w How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory - Aftermath

Who actually cares? A niche group of people want to curate their games based on a personal preference. Nobody has the moral authority to tell them what they should or shouldn’t spend their money on.

brsrklf,

Except they’re not just saying “we don’t like this” and moving on. They’re using dogwhistles (“woke” is only the first one) and 4-chan level type of slurs in their cries of conspiracy. It’s a thinly disguised hate club, games are only an excuse.

They tried to progressively hide it from their group’s front page, editing its language several times, but it was still there in the discussions in and around the group.

beaxingu,
@beaxingu@kbin.run avatar

why are you just totally ignoring how this whole thing started in the first place with a sweet baby employ trying to take the group down and the account of the creator. yes editing it for people exactly like you that cant handle words on the internet and that needs to call everything hate so that you can get your way but that's not going to work anymore now like how it always should have been you are just very very funny.

Rhynoplaz,

Oh, bless your heart.

thesilverpig,

I don’t really know much about the sweat baby controversy, but whenever I see “bless your heart” it just comes of as weak tea as it avoids engaging with premises or arguments and condescends and I think it generally loses the argument from a third party perspective. At least I’ve never read it and thought, wow they really got them.

It might be trite but I always preferred agree to disagree as a disengage tactic. That’s just my two cents on internet discourse though.

beaxingu,
@beaxingu@kbin.run avatar

bless you in the year of our lord 2024

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

I think I'd have a problem with it if bad internet super sleuths came up with some nonsense reasons to try to destroy my reputation.

Eyck_of_denesle, (edited )

That’s no excuse to try to get a user’s account banned. You might want to read up on some of their tweets. The ceo is also a sexist and a racist. The steam group had like 1000 people now it has almost 200,000 after the whole debacle. Reputation is earned not given. SomeOrdinaryGamer made a good video highlighting stupidity from both sides.

If they are proud of their work, why try to hide it.

Dremor,
@Dremor@lemmy.world avatar

In an ideal world, yes.
But unfortunately these days people prefer to follow blindly their bias and people validating said bias instead of investing the time required to investigate by their own mean, with least biased sources.
I’d blame social medias that make everything quasi instantaneous, but it is just a component of a whole, not the only cause.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

That’s no excuse to try to get a user’s account banned.

I'd say it is. They highlight the part of Steam's rules against harassment, and while that's always subject to interpretation, they feel that this counts, and I'm inclined to agree.

The steam group had like 1000 people now it has almost 200,000 after the whole debacle.

Before this group blew up, YouTube channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers were already making their bullshit conspiracy theories. People try to paint this as Streisand, but that's ridiculous. The Streisand effect is trying to hide something, which you still seem convinced they're trying to do despite highlighting their clients on their web page and getting listings in the credits of the games they work on. What it looks like to me instead is that:

  1. sensationalist YouTubers paint this company as the devil
  2. this curator is made in response
  3. it gets a natural, human reaction from the people targeted by this group
  4. the YouTubers from step 1 use that reaction to mean whatever they want it to mean

In no way did I foresee a way that this group didn't continue on the same trajectory with or without Sweet Baby responding to its existence.

SomeOrdinaryGamer made a good video highlighting stupidity from both sides.

I've seen one video from SomeOrdinaryGamers, and it was too many, but he's cited in this article as perpetuating the bullshit conspiracy theories, so I'm good.

Bruncvik, do games w How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory - Aftermath
@Bruncvik@lemmy.world avatar

When I was still buying new games, I’ve had development studios I preferred, and others I avoided. Those were simpler times (and simpler games), when one small studio did everything.

Later, additional external companies got involved, and some tried to hide their presence. I remember when The Adventure Company started using a very customer unfriendly sort of copy protection, and I started using a list of affectted games, so that I could avoid them.

These days, multiple companies are involved with game design. As a consumer, it’s only normal that I’d like to know who had their hands on developing a game I’d be interested in. I haven’t played any games Sweet Baby was involved with, but if I did and had a strong opinion (negative or positive) about their work, I’d appreciate a list of games they worked on, to make a purchase choice that would suit me best.

drislands, do games w How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory - Aftermath

Awesome writeup. I had heard that some very special individuals were trying to paint this company as “pro-woke”, and therefore any game they touched should be avoided – and that’s obviously going to be nonsense, but it’s good to see the full story.

Carrolade, do games w How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory - Aftermath

Small, weak people need an excuse for why they feel so small. One that deflects the blame from where it truly belongs–on them, for lacking the strength and courage to be better than they are. For lacking the spine to take a more difficult, more noble road.

So just believe it’s not your fault, it’s some mighty shadowy conspiracy thing of great darkness. Not just you being a coward and weakling. Much more preferable.

beaxingu,
@beaxingu@kbin.run avatar

thank you

toxicbubble, do games w How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory - Aftermath

that’s why i play indie games, but mostly cuz im poor

DarkMessiah, do games w How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory - Aftermath

What was the saying? Don’t assume malice when it could be incompetence? Especially when malice requires a John Wick level of shadow organisation?

morphballganon,

I think it’s

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence

earmuff, do gaming w I Just Wanted To Save My Game - Aftermath

I understand both sides. Busy people love to save their game at any point in time, as they might get interrupted. But I also understand the point from the devs and I also like it sometimes when I cannot save constantly. Obviously both sides could now be less stubborn. Busy people can just pause the game and resume later to just exit the junction and the devs could implement a quick save feature.

Dear game designers, how about you let the user decide what they like most, a very easy or hard game? Usually with difficulty settings, only damage/health numbers get modified. But you could also enable quick save in easy mode, and disable it in hard mode. Take a look at the difficulty settings of Grounded. Easy to implement and you automatically reach a bigger user base. And while we are at it, busy people sometimes cannot play games for a longer time, let’s say 4 weeks. After 4 weeks I have forgotten all the controls and game mechanics again. TV shows play a recap if a new season comes out. You should do the same. A super short introduction of what happened story wise and how the controls and game mechanics are working.

loobkoob,

There are definitely technical reasons why saving mid-run is a lot more complicated. With Pacific Drive, right now when you save, it'll save:

  • the state of your car - this will likely be done by looking each individual "equipment slot" the car has, assigning them a number, assigning each possible upgrade for that "slot" a number/letter, and storing its damage state (which is probably just a scale of 1-5 or whatever). So the game will store everything about your car in the format off "slot x, upgrade type y, damage z", which can just be three values.
  • your quest state. The game won't remember what quests you've done or how you've done them in the way that you remember it - it'll just store that you've completed quest step 14a and that 14b is your active objective.

It makes for a fairly simple, small save file. Being able to save mid-run would add a lot of complexity because it'd need to save a complete map state, including:

  • the map layout
  • your position in the map
  • the enemies and hazards in the map - their positions, states, etc.
  • what's happened already in the map
  • the loot in the map, and whether you've collected it or not

And so on. Not only does it massively increase the complexity, it would also increase the size of save files a lot and make saving and loading a lot more cumbersome. And that's just a simplified breakdown; there are definitely other factors that can make it much, much more complicated.


There are definitely some games where "easy mode" save systems could be implemented without much changing on a technical level, but I don't think Pacific Drive is one of them.

all-knight-party,
@all-knight-party@kbin.run avatar

Makes a lot of sense, though I'd say that implementing a "save on exit, delete upon resuming" should be a higher priority than it usually is in games that like to restrict saving. Having to stop and do something else might mean a lot of wasted time, and I think that not being able to drop an anchor point to come back to would be a possible dealbreaker for some and really hamper enjoyment of the game for others.

There have been a good few games where I wanted to play them, but didn't because I wasn't sure I had the time to make real progress, or that I'd make real progress, but have to stop just before a save point, and lose it all. It can mean that an otherwise great game gets left on the shelf in favor or something that better respects my time.

Amaltheamannen,

Difficult but very doable. I mean this is a solved problem and there are many solutions, very much a huge blunder to not do that from the start.

WalnutLum, do gaming w I Just Wanted To Save My Game - Aftermath

The steam deck’s pause-on-power-off has been very convenient for games like this

moreeni,

I’ve seen people do this thing with window managers for Linux

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