David Gaider

It would have required something like the Keep. Even so, with THAT long between games, I imagine the payoff would be perceived as minimal.

Still, if you're bringing in characters from the previous games, seems problematic not to.

Not really. It was the style we opted for, and I liked it. I wasn't initially a fan of giving the player a voice after DA2, but that did offer some benefits.

Dragon Age Lead Says Including World State Reactivity Either Felt Like It Was "Irrelevant Or Not Enough" Dragon Age 2 set the precedent that the series would always carry our choices over, but was it worth it?

Great write-up. One thing I'll say: no matter what I think of reactivity between games in general, it's not a promise that I think can be abandoned lightly once established as a feature of a series, painful or no.

www.thegamer.com/dragon-age-l...

David Gaider Reflects On 15 Years Of Dragon Age 2 - A Fan-Favorite Story That Was The Team's First Draft David Gaider talks us through a story that had to be written so quickly that his team had no time to doubt themselves.

It's here! This has been an utter joy to work on for Dragon Age 2's 15th anniversary. Huge thank you to David Gaider for taking me through how he and all of the writers managed to get this fan favourite story finished, with no time for redrafts www.thegamer.com/dragon-age-2...

And the switch up at the end! Where you now race around the facility using all those environmental controls and such that you saw between missions but thought were irrelevant to incapacitate the government baddies - *chef's kiss*.

Or maybe I was young and easily impressed, I dunno.

Every now and again I try to explain to someone what AMFV was, and why it's *still* my favorite, and they stare at me like I'm describing my manned mission to the Moon.

My theory has always been that Firefly benefited from not having time to run out of steam and suck, leaving viewers with that starry "what might have been" rather than what would have inevitably been the result.

That said, I'd make a Firefly game in a heartbeat. 😉

Every now and again some child will wander into my atom smasher and begin playing with his toy boat while the room fills with miasma from the corpses... and I'll be like "whelp I guess somebody's going missing!"

"C'mon, just throw it out! I can sell that shit."

"Never! Whether it's in the dresser or it's in the middle of the tavern where I threw it the moment I decided I despised it, it's MINE and MINE FOREVER!"

Personally, I'd say it's about wrangling two hundred dipshits who are determined to pack every bedroom with old clothing they refuse to wear until they all burst at the seams.

I was finally forced to switch to Windows 11 after getting a new computer, this after increasing threats by MS to all but disable Windows 10. I can just imagine the lengths they'll go to in order to try and strong-arm every user to switch to their new AI platform. 😔

Less than legal minimum wage, in fact. They have a separate minimum wage for service industry folks, and it's always far lower.

If someone *truly* goes above and beyond, I'd still be tempted to tip - here and in Europe, honestly. That's what it's supposed to be for and what North Americans pretend it actually is.

I've been heads down all weekend and I finally looked at the news this morning and... gosh. 😬

Guess they should have given him that Nobel Peace Prize after all, huh?

"Aren't prices higher at restaurants there?" Yes, they are. Yet, magically, restaurants still exist and people still go to them and pay. And when you look at the prices back home and factor in tax and tip (now up to, what? 30% as the "expected" amount?), it's not THAT much higher at all.

When I first moved to Australia, I felt weird about the "no tipping" culture here. Now, after 4 years, I've done a full 180. It feels weird when I go home and am asked to "optionally" subsidize low wages and pretend it's a form of enticement for better service (even if there isn't any service).

Gaming my ADHD: starting a side project that I know I'm not truly invested in. BOOM. So much housework done.

Side risk: I encounter an issue in that side project and fixing it becomes my hyper-fixation. 😑

There's a way of saying it so it doesn't sound *quite* so brutal -- I just don't think that way is "this is a good thing, actually".

I really don't think the shareholders are fooled, either. We all get that layoffs are done - especially recently - to benefit the bottom line.

OK, that's way too much discourse. I came here to get *away* from discourse, not post about it myself! Aarrgh. The outrage algorithm clearly has my number. 😔

Skate studio Full Circle is laying off employees, says having fewer people working there will enable it to 'move faster, listen more closely, and deliver consistently for all of you,' somehow Five months after launching into early access, Skate's player numbers on Steam have declined precipitously.

Layoffs are unfortunate for everyone involved. Full stop. This mealy-mouthed thing where it'll help a company "move faster, listen more closely, and deliver consistently" - like they're metamorphosing into a higher state of being - who are they fooling, exactly?
www.pcgamer.com/games/sports...

I do have a whole thread that follows the first post. It's not an open-ended question. 😉

For context: I really enjoyed Heated Rivalry. It, at least, didn't shy away from the idea that gay men enjoy gay sex, and that fact alone makes it crazy that it was embraced by so many straight audiences. As for its authenticity... meh. It's hardly a documentary.

That said, it does make me blink to see so many people espouse the op's attitude when I can't help but wonder, in any other context, what "material harm" they might ascribe to a piece of fiction with what they deem improper representation of a group they *are* a part of. 😉

For me, no. For other gay men... well, I'm not going to tell them how to feel, but I've always thought we won't reach true equality until grandmas switch from "finding a nice girl" to "finding a nice boy" for their grandkids without skipping a beat. Normalizing romance as just romance is a big step.

A screen capture of an exchange on X/Twitter, where someone defends MLM romance (referring to Heated Rivalry, here) as "harmless fiction with no material harm", calling the other user (who says gay men shouldn't be told what they can and cannot be offended by) a tourist, since MLM romance is by women and for women.

This came across my feed, and while it's the kind of discourse that's par for X/Twitter, I've seen variants here as well.

As a gay man myself, I'll say this: I do kinda cringe at some depictions of mlm romance (like the oddly sexless teens on Heartstopper), but is it something to get *offended* at?

I wonder what the crossover is between the dudes who’ll criticize the slightest continuity error or suboptimal lighting or technical glitch in a released movie and the dudes who rave about those obviously sloppy AI clips as if they’re God’s gift to cinema based purely on their apparent potential? 🤔

The bewildering part, to me, is that my impression was always that it wasn't that the execs were too dumb to realize they'd lose the current audience with such a massive change... it's that they just didn't consider sales of 8.5 million worth bothering.

Look, modding is a different world. I'm well-acquainted with it. If you think modders who use AI assets will transform into solo devs at the push of a button and they'll suddenly start putting out "David Gaider-quality" games en masse and it'll then be OK... well, be my guest. I beg to differ.

...what?