The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer • Hacker News Board

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#181

Post by brownbat » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 11:35 PM UTC

tragic wrote: post #138

brownbat wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a huge sense of entitlement with respect to iOS and Android apps. People want the world for free... Available substitutes affect the price of goods, and the internet has brought us endless hours of free distraction. (Also, prices can trend towards the marginal cost of production over time.) Supply and demand determine pricing, not the amount of labor that goes into production. The labor theory of value is t…

Pedantry Corner: The labour theory of value[0] does not claim anything of the sort. It is not about the amount of labour time actually invested, in reality, in creating a commodity ("concrete labour") but the amount of labour necessary to expend, given the level of technical development in the given society, to create that commodity ("socially necessary labour time", "abstract labour"). Price, of course, is a differe…

That's a valuable refinement, thanks.

So when someone claims "These people should get paid more because they worked hard," they're making claims that not even Marx would endorse.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#182

Post by tragic » Fri, Jan 16, 2015, 9:06 AM UTC

brownbat wrote: post #181

tragic wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedantry Corner: The labour theory of value[0] does not claim anything of the sort. It is not about the amount of labour time actually invested, in reality, in creating a commodity ("concrete labour") but the amount of labour necessary to expend, given the level of technical development in the given society, to create that commodity ("socially necessary labour time", "abstract labour"). Price, of course, is a differe…

That's a valuable refinement, thanks. So when someone claims "These people should get paid more because they worked hard," they're making claims that not even Marx would endorse.

Depends on the meaning of "should" there - if you mean according to the laws of capitalist society, then no, they shouldn't: they should be paid what it costs to feed and clothe them in all cases, and the rest (surplus value) should be used to expand production through capital investment (including productivity-enhancing machinery etc) or hiring on more people. (Skills and so on complicate the picture.)

If "should" means "in an ideal world", however, Marx and his followers would argue that the whole point is to enable people not to work so bloody hard anyway, so the question does not arise.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#183

Post by archagon » Fri, Jan 16, 2015, 7:36 PM UTC

emsy wrote: post #179

munificent wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was super excited about Fez because I loved the art style. But after twenty minutes of playing, I gave up, totally disoriented. I have a terrible sense of direction in general and that game was just me wandering around lost and miserable. :(

For me it was the first puzzle. The mechanics weren't clear and I had several glitches. The rest of the game was alright, but quite overhyped. I liked The Floor is Jelly a lot more, but it didn't get as much attention. Sometimes it pays to be a drama queen.

You can't reasonably make the claim that Fez became popular because Fish was a drama queen! It got excellent reviews and won many awards and contests. Personally, I think the attention was warranted.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#184

Post by emsy » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 7:42 AM UTC

archagon wrote: post #183

emsy wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it was the first puzzle. The mechanics weren't clear and I had several glitches. The rest of the game was alright, but quite overhyped. I liked The Floor is Jelly a lot more, but it didn't get as much attention. Sometimes it pays to be a drama queen.

You can't reasonably make the claim that Fez became popular because Fish was a drama queen! It got excellent reviews and won many awards and contests. Personally, I think the attention was warranted.

I was probably not completely fair. But I really don't think Fez would've gotten the attention it got without Fish, and a bug ridden game like Fez makes me question the reviews. The gap between press reviews and user reviews on Metacritic seems to confirm my point.