Dana Fried

One of the things I absolutely adore about #FFXIV is that you'll go to a seasonal event and random NPCs from side content are just... hanging out.

Sometimes you can chat with them; sometimes they're just having their own little conversation.

But the dev team have never discarded a character.

Finally, it's the year of Linux on the Desktop

(for real this time)

Every time I think I'm doing better my stomach reminds me that I'm one wrong gastronomical choice away from committing porcelain idolatry.

Whatever this is* it can't get through my system fast enough.

* I'm guessing (hoping?) mild norovirus.

If you wanna know how sick I am: today I called in at work, it's patch day, and I didn't even download the update until 1 or 2 in the afternoon.

Steam community requesting additional body types for added immersion.

A large block of sentient tofu

Steam community: “Can we play as a male character?”

Me (indie dev in this economy):
“Best I can do is sentient tofu.”

If they want me back they have to go fully Woke 2, sorry. Whole hog. I gotta be able to get an abortion there

ssh! don't give Hasbro any ideas!

We did the same thing when our old Volt got totaled.

That 70+ MPG* is looking even better right now.

* Average, we don't use gas at all driving around town.

I lived in Seattle for almost a decade and I cackled at this.

One of my besties from college married a dude from a town 45 minutes from anywhere that had 4000 people and one bar. They lost a close relative in a tractor accident.

I could not imagine living there.

(Which I suspect is the problem: neither can the people making these games.)

...just like how 75% of NaNoWriMo stories are set in a coffee shop.

There's a point to be made about the perception of race and culture in those different settings here but I'm not sophisticated enough to make it.

Anyway, I went into the playtest not knowing if the game was going to work, and came out believing that, with a bit of tweaking and polishing, it might be awesome.

Best possible outcome for a playtest.

Alternatively, I could find a way to make the numbers vary more so that some characters are just "attack each turn in the hope of rolling Big Number" and the fun (at least for that character) is maybe getting to roll a fistful of dice.

Things to improve:
- The resource economy
- Synergy between characters
- Avoiding repetitive play for certain character types

In some ways, this makes it even harder than JRPG fight design since in the video games it's okay to have a character who just attacks ever turn if number is big.

Things people really liked:
- The action economy
- The puzzle fights
- The overall flavor/genre emulation

That last bit was especially cool since about half the table had never played a JRPG or hadn't played one from the era the game is trying to evoke.

Alpha playtest of The World Is Ending and You've Got a Really Big Sword this past weekend went quite well.

There's a lot that didn't work exactly as I'd hoped, but the core innovation of the game was quite popular and the feedback was "lean even harder on that" which always feels good.

Back when I was fucking around with bodybuilding, it used to be lean chicken breast. Is that too expensive now too?

pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease

As someone who used to use that word and does not anymore (even in a tech context) I fucking hate it.

There's literally nothing that's trivial to do/implement. Everything takes time; everything has opportunity and maintenance cost.

My advice is: purge it from your vocabulary with fire.

Oh!

Oh.

Just kidding. In all seriousness, I'm so glad WoW is back even though I don't play; the genre needs all of the big boys and girls to be healthy.

With any luck the amazing new housing system will push Squenix to fix what we have in XIV.

Oh look, they're finally doing Endwalker!

Oh look, they're doing Endwalker!

I'm impressed. I honestly thought it wasn't possible in the Trump era, what with the extreme polarization of politics and the identification of people with parties as their "team".

Be he did it. The crazy motherfucker did it.

Ladies and gentlethems, the Crazification Factor has returned!

Okay now that I speak some French, does anyone else think it's weird that you sit on a couch but lay on a chaise?

Kitchener-Waterloo too (though it's only 15 minutes if you drive)

So much hard stuff is going on, please have a little joy too.

Important update.