ExKirby

link from popular video game franchise, the legend of zelda. this particular image is from super smash brothers ultimate.

here's the link in the reply

My art, digital. A werewolf mid transformation

It’s getting more and more difficult to keep shape these days.
My art, 2025

You are not unclean. You are not a vessel for sin. You are not the creation of others. You create yourself.

My main goal is to blow up

A screenshot of the post-finish screen of TrackMania 2020. The time, 47.850, is -0.720 faster than the previous time, -0.150 faster than the timer required for a Gold medal, +2.978 slower than the Author time. The time is 294th in the world.

finally beat borpaspin

Hurrah! Another Year, Surely This One Will Be Better Than the Last; The Inexorable March of Progress Will Lead Us All to Happiness

anyway thank you for reading my ted talk i'm now going to go to tesco which i should have done an hour ago :)

... that's not going to change how you feel about posting two characters next to each other followed by that one screenshot of a shen comic with that guy saying "they're dating", which is what true fandom is all about

the purist in me still says the answer to the original question should be "no" just because games still need a gameplay element to them, and the way you interact with that does change how you percieve everything else about the game, but i think practically, for most games...

((and ironically enough, i wouldn't go as far as to call myself a fan, but i have absolutely spent more time watching mortal kombat's story modes than i have actually playing the games. from memory, what i played wasn't particularly fun.))

in short, i am a fan of <sport>. other people are a fan of <televised sports league>. both are different from each other. both are good. good video games have both good gameplay and good narrative and i think it's fine to latch on to either of them.

and i think it then becomes important to draw distinctions as to what it means to be a fan of a video game. in video games, i like the minutae, the mechanics, the feeling of playing the game. other people like the characters, the worldbuilding, the narrative, the experience.

because if you _have_ watched the mortal kombat cutscenes, and you know the lore of the characters and everything that happens in the story, what are you if _not_ a mortal kombat fan?

so my answser then becomes "maybe for some games yes, but if you told me you were a fan of e.g. mortal kombat without the context of you watching a cutscene compilation i'd expect you to have _some_ opinions on the gameplay". however, i'm still not done being an idiot.

if you prefer your video games <televised sports league>, you want the narrative, the characters, the drama, and plenty of games have that even without requiring player interaction. cutscenes are an excellent narrative tool and also really good at ending up on youtube.

there's two problems with my first answer. first, i'm taking my very narrow view of video games, ones which provide immense value in the "what you're doing" portion of affairs with little to no attention to narrative. i, personally, like my video games <sport>, not <televised sports league>.

when i first saw the question i immediately went to my own personal preferences of video games (typically mobas or racing games) and thought to myself "could a person get a true feeling of what trackmania is about without having played it?" and the answer to _that_ question is "i dont think so, no."

the important distinction is in how you interact with the media; <sport> requires you to go and get your ass physically and mentally beat for years to get good; <televised sports league> requires you to watch the magic pixel box.

((to be clear, there's nothing wrong with being a fan of <televised sports league>, and some people who say they're a fan of <sport> are absolutely a fan of both <sport> and <televised sports league>, but i'm trying to generalise for the sake of a dumb metaphor))

the response given from a fair few people i've seen has been "yes, people are fans of <sport> without actually playing <sport>" which is... technically true? but it also belies the fact that most people aren't actually fans of <sport>, they're fans of <televised sports league>.

yes hello i'm a random person on the internet about to throw my meaningless opinion on this one as well

tl;dr: i think so and i wrote wayyyyyy too many subskeets about it. like way too many. like jesus why did i write all this. oh well lets click post and see what happens.

A screenshot of the Trackmania 2020 Fall 2024 seasonal campaign, with all 25 tracks having author medals.

in further who cares news: managed to get all the author times on the tm2020 fall '24 campaign with a few days to spare :) turns out trackmania is a fun game.

A screenshot of the track selection screen of Trackmania United Forever, showing the last category of tracks (Black), with all tracks having green Author medals next to their thumbnails. At the top, a textbox reads "Congratulations! Only 1 456 players out of 531 334 collected all the medals of this campaign!"

in who cares news: got all author medals in trackmania united forever's main campaign :)

this probably should have been one of the bruiser brothers but idk something about sandman gives me steiner vibes

YouTube video by The New Pornographers - Topic Champions Of Red Wine

youtu.be/mbSQY_QoOpA?...

game dev pro tip:

if you're struggling with motivation, try setting realistic goals

like "today i will open the project folder"
or maybe even "today i will look at one (1) line of code"

Shikari gets my vote purely because you get free reign to pull from an entire discography's worth of puns when he TPs

Nemesis just sounds cool

so i'm 10h in to rivals of aether 2 and... this is almost certainly rose-tinted goggles, but boy howdy does it make rivals of aether 1 seem like a better game

this is coming through the lens of a kragg main who is trying to figure out where the fuck all the hitboxes went

i just want birds to jump at me as i go through grass, is that too much to ask for