I read the reply chain, they definitely mean Jim, and are thus definitely wrong. Thank God For Jim Fucking Sterling, Son.
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It sounds like the old Edge scoring system
Only 19 games have got 10/10 from them in the last 14 years. They also weren’t afraid of giving scores in the 1-5/10 range.
It actually makes more sense to me to make 5 average, it gives more space to tell the great games from the masterpieces.
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I can only imagine how tense and agonizing it must be as a game developer after a game is released, waiting not only for reviews, but for the inevitable backlash from some publication that decides to mobilize its readers against your game for one reason or another in the service of traffic and clicks.
It seems like every indie game, no matter how well supported by fans, eventually has some wave of toxic gamer crap that hits it and, at least temporarily, mars its release. Undertale had it. Night in the Woods. Cripes, No Man’s Sky. Game dev is becoming a thankless job, thanks to gamers mobilizing against things.
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Some of this toxicity seems to bleed into the gear on the store shelves as well. There are a lot of wireless routers and access points that look downright weird instead of just quietly doing their job. Contrast this:
With this:
I’ll take the first one any day.
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They’re also greedy and anti-labour in terms of their operations approach, more so than the larger coding industry. This also contributes to a toxic culture that only values the voices white (or occasionally Asian) male cisgender chest-beating bros. I can see an indie developer who did time in one of those shops falling back on that kind of response when criticised.
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I hope to have the opportunity (and skill and patience) to produce a game someday and while I can’t seem to decide on what technology to use I’m dead certain I won’t be blogging about it or connecting my real life self to it in any way. Mainly because of the concerns mentioned in this article.
I suppose I would have to consider myself lucky if something I created was popular enough to attract the attention of the dirtbags of the internet but why risk the chance of spoiling even a remote chance of success by opening myself to them?
Boob and dead Spider?
What happened that we got from the below to the aforementioned specimen?
Unemployed Apple and Black&Decker designers?
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I think the reasoning behind multiple antennas is sound (as long as they’re angled differently) but I don’t know what to make of spider router other than antenna envy.
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With the whole GG fiasco and still finding pathetic insistence in some places to “keep politics out of geek culture”, I am slightly tempted to make video game reviews which are completely objective - meaning it will be 20 minutes of rattling off statistical technical minutiae of pretty much no interest to anyone. “It installs a hierarchy of 41 folders for the map textures! That is so frickin sick!”
Maybe some movie reviews which count average time between edits, histograms of the visuals, etc.
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There were two lines of WAP form factor design evolution… the one you mentioned and the Apple route:
1999
2005
2007-2013
Easy to see where the Ubiquiti’s design is derived from (major improvement is that it ships with its own mounting bracket):
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What I meant was reviews so objective, that they don’t even discuss gameplay, themes, visuals, etc at all - apart from as code. Like, the game as it appears to the computer rather than the player. Which would then draw contempt from those who dismiss that stuff as irrelevant, because they are simply looking to be convinced whether or not to buy it.
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Ah, to the Nth degree. I dunno, I’d find it amusing.
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I’ve been a professional software developer for almost 15 years. Mostly Enterprise stuff, worked at a startup, worked for the DOD. I wrote my first code in the 80’s on a trash-80. I knew I wanted to write software from an early age. Creating games was always big on my list of wants. After seeing the way the companies that create treat game developers I said no way. I don’t play games as often as I used to but I’ve seen enough toxic bullshit from people who call themselves “gamers”. Now you’re saying the audience treats the developers like shit? Thank fucking gawd I never got involved in that shit show.
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No ethernet ports and saturated wifi in my local area means that I would be stuck with the second one.
I want the second one so that I can make stop motion animation of it walking around like a crab using the antennae.
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Undertale and Night in the Woods were absolutely targeted based on political sentiments, so are Life is Strange and many others. No Man’s Sky completely fabricated their capability and maintained their impossible scope right up to release.
There’s a big gap between those indie efforts and why they are criticized, and like many I am critical of No Man’s Sky and the “anti SJW” “gamers” systematic harassment of “Tumblr tier” devs and games. The problem is that the group of GG supporting gamers will align with every anti-developer criticism and also use the same methods of harassment as well. Anyone not willing to call out that behavior is (IMO) is worse than any shady thing a developer does, even WB Interactive literally profiting off of a developer dying to cancer.
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I know I’m way ahead of my time, but I can’t wait for the day that someone invents some kind of “Internet Technology” to allow people to post short essays in paragraphs longer than 140 characters.
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I beliwve the games themselves tend to make angry teenagers feel like they are serious grownups. Playing Halo and Mass Effect, I was consistantly struck by the adult themed material, and I had to wonder what it would do to a kid to immerse themselves in this kind of constructed reality, without any realistic feedback, no real consequences for being a dick?
This is no to say that violent videogames make kids violent, but rather adult videogames fail to make kids adult - while feeding their sense of entitlement.
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I do fault the developer of No Man’s Sky for over-promising. I’m currently replaying the game actually, and thinking back on their trailers there’s definitely some shenanigans. Trailers were supposed to be randomly procedurally created worlds, non-scripted, etc. but in me replaying the game i very rarely see planets that are lush, very rarely see giant ambling creatures, etc, etc.
That being said i was interested in the game from the get-go and i was not expecting what they were promising. I was expecting a chill space exploration game, and that’s exactly what i got at launch and i was reasonably happy with it. Since its last few updates i think the game has changed for the better but the core game plays the same and i still enjoy it. And if they were to do a follow i think there’s a lot of possible changes they can do to make the game much more enjoyable. I have doubts a follow up will happen but i really would like to see one.
TL:DR: I think the BS the developer for No Man’s Sky is justified but the game they made is still damn good.
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