Gamer culture is so toxic that "being candid in public is dangerous" for developers

http://fabiensanglard.net/ does this in a sense :slight_smile:

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I would take the second one.

Rather, take pictures of one to put on the cover of my post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel I am writing.

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clearly you are not a “real” gamer then

The other issues include demonstrating a fake co-operative ability and other things. I don’t doubt that No Man’s Sky is a unique low-key chill space exploration game system, and I think just the eternal exploration is something that many people would be excited for.

The game just suffered from a PR team that didn’t even try and communicate what the actual developers could do, which isn’t really a failure of the actual nuts and bolts team even if it’s a failure of the studio to communicate properly.

Sort of like We Happy Few, but they never said that their clever and interesting trailer was representative of the entire game experience - which is a survival game with a unique setting. And you don’t see the crazed backlash against that team.

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Besides Facebook, do you know of a social media outlet that lets people post paragraphs longer than 140 characters to millions of people at once in a format that lets them be repeated, re-posted, and replied to instantly? None have one percent of the popularity and reach that Twitter has. Working within its limitations doesn’t change the strength of thoughts posted there.

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Some of the things i’d like to see in the game or a potential sequel would be to be able to do more with one’s home base, being able to build bases on multiple systems, being able to keep one’s ship of choice and the upgrading it all the way through (i hate having to pick an arbitrary ship because it holds more cargo vs picking it because i like how it looks), being able to customize ships, make freighter fleets useful beyond just being a glorified garage/cargo hold, being able to plant trees and vegetation and permanently domesticate creatures, underwater vehicles/bases, and true co-op gameplay.

I’d also like to be able to play the game without having to resort to resource pillaging and murdering innocent planetary creatures. Not necessary but i like to have the choice.

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The antennas don’t need to be angled differently. They are being used as a phased array to steer high gain beams at the Wi-Fi devices, both to push more power at them and to be able to receive them from a greater distance

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This was its huge failure. The PR team had its own “let’s sell this game!” goals, and utterly failed to maintain communication with rightfully frustrated players. It’s been really interesting seeing people I know give it a shot despite all the screaming and find a wonderfully creative game full of exploration, space battles, and unique discoveries I haven’t seen in any other game. I give the studio tons of credit for continuing to improve and add to the game; it just keeps getting better.

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Isn’t that sort of what Tumblr is?

Having it played on release i think that the “getting better” part is mainly quality of life improvements. They’ve been tweaking the game to make things easier, or to add depth to certain portions of the game. The core game plays the same though i have no problem with it, if anything it speaks positively to the ability of the developer to make a new, creative IP.

I don’t think the game is for everyone but i highly recommend anyone to give it a try. I recently finished one of the big story arcs in the game and its fascinating, they’re doing some really great story telling in a unique way.

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In the corporate shops at least, this seems to be true. The whole spectacle of bright young people volunteering to be used up and discarded before they are even 30 is horrifying.

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The indies aren’t much better if stories of Blow’s piss bottle and watching the Indie Game (2012) documentary are any indicator.

(Yes, yes, I know the piss bottle may have been an oblique reference to the True ending of The Witness, but Poe’s law.)

Sort of, in theory. It’s a microblogging site but the reality is that the vast majority of its users mostly just post art, animated gifs, porn, memes, and more porn. You won’t find any journalists, celebrities, politicians, authors, or game devs posting much in the way of serious essays there. Or anything beyond Spongebob memes, really. Its user base is young and not very broad. That said, a lot of people use it as a sort of Twitter adjunct, because Twitter’s reach is so much broader, so they’ll post long-form essays on Tumblr and link it via Twitter.

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Any cultural “industry” tends to be cynical and opportunistic. There must be a way that we can destroy the music, movie, and games industries so that we can enjoy making and experiencing actual music, movies, and games without having them subverted by corporate feudalism.

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I think part of the problem is lack of real world consequences.
In the past kids came across desirable things like cars and motorbikes. If they wanted to work on them, they rapidly discovered it was difficult. Material is intractable.
Games require no real world skills. Anyone in the 70s or before who decarbonised an engine or tuned a carburettor had to learn a lot of stuff and therefore had respect for the people who worked on, designed or built engines. But someone can play a game without the faintest idea of what is involved. (Actually the same largely goes for driving cars nowadays). So everyone is an instant expert.

Whats wrong with writing a blog post on, say, Medium, and then Tweeting that?

I interviewed for a couple of game companies years ago, and at the time I suspected the industry as a whole had some fundamental asymmetries in which devs get screwed over. The salaries were very low and the work week was long – they told me I’d be doing 80 hours a week, but they provided cots and free espresso. One guy who interviewed me asked “Are you married?” and when I said “Yes”, he said “Well, if you work for Sierra, you won’t be for very long…”

Game houses at the time were nothing more than high tech sweatshops. I do not know if the culture has changed since then. This whole game playing consumer culture seems equally as cutthroat and awful.

There must be some aspect of how the internet is configured or utilized which guarantees assholes as an emergent phenomenon. It surely seems to exacerbate the very worst in human group dynamics, which by themselves outside of the internet are no walk in the park.

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In a word, “Yes.”

The Medium part?

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I think its more subjective than that, even.

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