Liam Thomas

the thing about valve is that they clearly have an actual vision for how the market should be. that vision frequently fucks over developers (30%, thanks gabe) but at least they have some kind of plan/stewardship of the space

stuff i've seen from VFX artists is that it's actually the other way around - they'll shoot a shot which requires heavy VFX without any idea of what the effect will actually look like then ship it off to a VFX studio and say "figure it out"

It's obviously really complex to determine whether an engine has the feature set and reliability to be appropriate for a given game project but also having used both I would rather eat a bag of nails than use Unity for one of my own projects ever again

i've become increasingly convinced that game design should not be viewed as a single discipline

art, like science, is a set of processes and techniques for understanding something, not a hard border of worthiness

2.1 Lenses, Not Boxes I wondered whether this section was necessary, but games discourse seems to repeatedly find itself adrift in questions of whether _ counts as a _. We have seen the question repeatedly: Do games count as art? Do games without goals count as games? Is The Sims a game? Are hypertexts interactive fiction? Are Twine pieces literature? In fairness to the researchers cited here, all of whom I respect immensely, many of these sources pose or imply the question rhetorically. Still, the necessity of such a framing frustrates me. "Is _ a _?" is, in my opinion, a fruitless question. The question can never be answered to anyone's satisfaction, and it often serves as either a provocation to espouse politics or as a cover to institute gatekeeping. Its agenda is usually opaque to onlookers and bewildering to those trying to advance the field from across disciplines. We should be thinking in lenses, not boxes. It is always more interesting to ask "If we think of _ through the lens of _, what do we learn?" We know it is more interesting to ask "What do we learn by considering Tom Stoppard through the lens of poststructuralism?" than to ask "Is Stoppard's work poststructuralist?" And while some works may be more or less fruitful when examined through different lenses, sometimes the most unlikely pairings of lenses and objects are the most rewarding. Certainly any of the questions above would be much better served by reframing them in this way.

Wow we’re having “games are art” discourse again! Just gonna leave this here.

From my dissertation:

yes yes yes yes

withholding judgement but it looks like lucy has some kind of "turn off your buttons" super

ayo, strive 2??????

i think the correct way to think about the lonely boy question is not "how do we reach out to incels?" but "how do we make sure that a teenage boy looking for romantic advice isn't flooded with right-wing propaganda?"

in order for it to work the creators need to know how fundamentally ridiculous the premise is but never acknowledge it

I increasingly feel like "pro-consumer" game movements are just an angry mob looking for an acceptable target to hurt, even if the underlying cause is noble

The woke college students were right but we can't acknowledge this because then we'll have to consider whether they're right about other things too. That I'm a big stupid moron for instance

A depressed man says "sometimes I feel like I've seen too much to ever feel like a normal person." Alex reassures him "hey man... despite everything... it's still you. The man tears up. He says "wow. that's great. Did you make that up?" Alex, confidently says "yes... yes I did..."

modern xcom is a fundamentally broken game made up of mechanics that never really come together and where the best strategies constantly feel like exploits rather than engaging with the systems and tactics.

it's also like a 9/10 must play

if xcom has taught me anything it's that 95% and 0% are basically the same

tbh the self-described kusoge has pretty good netcode nowadays

thumbnail of youtube video. Hermann Goring with "to hang" written over his eyes," red background

Fantasies of Nuremberg

On justice, punishment, and the Earth crying out for vengeance. youtu.be/n9Ay5tzHIBU

project m

We have not denied any payouts to creators as part of yesterday's review. If there are any creators in which we are unable to process a payout for then we'll contact them directly.

We do understand that the eligibility message is confusing given the context so we're updating the text on the notices

It's like, the mechanism they are using to punish this company is a mechanism that they have provided freely in a frankly astounding act of charity. Taking free money from the guy offering free money to punish him

setting payments to 0% on the only storefront which would ever let you set payments to 0%

getting mad at the people offering you free money and protesting their actions by taking the free money they are offering you

"I'm protesting itch by setting its revshare to zero!" you do realize that no other storefront would ever let you set your revshare

i have nothing but sympathy for those who had their livelihoods destroyed and are angrily lashing out at the nearest target but i need people to ask themselves if a storefront that allowed you to divert ALL revshare away from it is genuinely trying to be adversarial

if you're looking at what's going on and concluding that the enemy is the <10 employee marketplace and not the $1.2t payment processors then you are, at best, extremely credulous and should rethink your priorities

it wouldn't be gamer rage if it wasn't either totally disproportionate or directed at entirely the wrong target

gamer rage is a hell of a drug

you are a deeply unpleasant person

It very literally does not make any sense to be mad at the single-digit team of people who run Itch over this. They would very much like to be able to let people sell transgressive smut, as evidenced by the fact that they allowed people to sell transgressive smut until fascists tattled to Mastercard