Jordan Groves

Frame #65700 from S02 -E10 - Porcini-627709

Suffice to say, it would not surprise me if this is extremely common. Specificity to the image in their head is more important than creating a common language to collaborate within for some—in any discipline, not just art.

The best I had seen before was a smorgasbord of different film stills from different directors, production designers, DPs, styles, eras, etc with little to no discernible through line. One project had the goal of looking like Mission Impossible and the question of “which one?” met with blank stares.

Can’t say for certain it’s common place everywhere in the industry, but most art directors that I’ve worked with relied so much on Google image search. My previous studio was the first using reference books and pinpointing specific artists—it was such a breath of fresh air! Felt like theatre again!

Ezra Klein: [Slaps the forehead of Andrew Cuomo] This baby’s never gonna run again thanks to some frankly humiliating failures, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t the perfect candidate for a big ol’ tent!

Looking forward to the absolute worst opinion pieces by establishment Dems about the NYC mayoral race in defence of Cuomo’s campaign pointing to the number of Republicans that voted for him—ignoring how that would be the most impossible thing to replicate anywhere else…and that Trump endorsed him.

Me, thinking about the good things that happened last night:

Oh, most definitely! And I suspect this will lead to more and more IP consolidation/ homogenization as the budgets ballon.

But, I’ve also seen this when your creative team doesn’t really have a vision to drive towards outside of a list of back of the box features.

There is a big difference between my frustration at UE5 lacking keyboard shortcuts for their new level workflows after 6 major releases and how I feel when I die running back to collected my dropped Runes in Elden Ring.

One is a failure of design, while the other is successfully creating a fantasy.

However, the design of something intended to be a tool is failing when it is not as effortless of an extension of the human using it as possible. Whereas art is a conversation with the audience, thus extending its own vision back to the user as much as it is meant to be an extension of them.

The relevant takeaway that I had while reading it is how folks seem to confuse designing software as a tool versus designing software for art and/or entertainment.

Elements crucial to the former—HCD, mental models, cognitive load, etc.—are valuable to the latter.

I finally got around reading The Design of Everyday Things recently to see how it compared to the foundational book in my design education, Understanding Comics, and fill in the context missing from just hearing folks reference elements from it over the years.

Too often, you get told to sand off all the edges in the hopes that it will appeal to all players, which all too often alienates the audience you were targeting.

It’s a balancing act for sure, but, in these instances, there is little room for nuance in the discussion around how much would need to change improve the user experience without sacrificing the fantasy we are crafting for players.

I find this is particularly difficult with discussions around “friction” in the player experience. For AAA games, in particular. Executives or directors basing huge changes on negative or lukewarm feedback when some level of that response is expected in the designated player fantasy.

Mind boggling considering the interview is 90% buzzwords that a marketing department would tell a studio is the perfect game for the moment based on the research of the highest revenue games out 5+ years ago.

I thought with the Canadian election settled that my anxieties on the home front would ease a little in this tumultuous world.

But, every time I look out my window, I see a crow nesting in the tree across the street, forewarning me of the Hitchcockian nightmares brewing beneath the floorboards.

I’m so tired of Star Wars sequels.

A still from the GI Joe PSAs with quoted dialogue from the parody version saying, “Hey kid, I’m a computer!!”

Every imported item at checkout on a website:

Tommy Wiseau from The Room screams, “You’re tariffing me apart, U-SA!”

Just really needed to get this out of my brain…

I really hope that each part has scent notes comparable to the ingredient, so you know it’s about time to buy a new one when you are getting nothing but bun.

It’s super unfortunate that UE hasn’t updated the move component on the base pawn to reflect how complex the collision on all these megascan and more detailed terrain sculpting can be. You end up with scenes that look pretty, but the player and AI get hung up on a weird facet of geo.

It’s the biggest mistake that I’ve seen from the AAA studios that big publishers started in the last decade: they hire for a fully realized studio instead of laying the ground work with a core team and ramping up once you’re ready. So you get demos that look flashy but have zero substance.

The addition of real-time cinematics with pcap made this even more likely, as the lead times on those are long and create fixed points in the game when you create all of them as full scenes rather than also having a systemic scene builder for more run of the mill moments.

Never fun to have an arted up level built before the gameplay loop is even roughly proved out and based on the first draft of a plot outline. Not the worst thing if it’s only a VS and not multiple levels, but even one level that heavy is extremely time consuming to rework 🫠

As an LD, this has been an even shorter timeline. With internal artists ramping up and the need to keep feeding assets to established outsourcing partners lest you lose your foothold, we often get tossed directly into production—rushing through a block out phase to start art phases.

I wish this had been the team trajectory for most of projects that I worked on. With the shift away from story DLC / multi-project studios and the increase in highly specialized roles to meet visual fidelity, the timeframe for that skeleton crew has never been longer than 5-10% of the project for me

YouTube video by GnØ βØdι Eagles Fly on IYI

Since Eagles are on everybody’s mind today, I’m sitting over here thinking about this classic video from early YouTube.

All chained to this mortal coil by the contracts that you made them sign with Tom Nook.