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“The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

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Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#221

Post by xg15 »

barrysteve wrote: post #174
munificent wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the main reasons I was happy to leave the game industry after eight years of doing it. Working incredibly hard to build a product served to a group of people that are often hurtful emotionally stunted man-children is just a deeply demoralizing experience. Obviously, many gamers aren't like that. But a fucking whole lot of them are, and they are extremely vocal, and it doesn't take many of them to suck…

He refers to open world games that don't push back against the player, as feeding a colonialist desire to conquer and complete. He posits that the player never learns that he can't have it all and thus learns to be entitled. Not sure if entitled is the right word as a lot were power fantasies that focused on rising stats and increasing combat abilities, rather than strictly speaking titles. The pursuit of more flowin…

Just wanting to note that a lot of the hate is coming from gamers who complain about games being "too easy", "too dumbed down" or "too casual".

Chalking this up to modern games not having enough grinding honestly feels like exactly that kind of crab mentality itself.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#222

Post by jjav »

corrral wrote: post #202
jjav wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm convinced that junior high and high school, at least in the US, amount to mass child abuse. Like, structurally, that's just what they are, almost unavoidably without totally changing how they work. > Even decent school experiences are, by the standards of the adult world, crazy-bad. Why is that? What is different about US schools? I (nor my spouse) have any experience with US mid & high school but I hear things…

- ~8 hours in school per day, often in buildings with minimal natural lighting. During the Winter, this may mean almost no sunlight all day (no recess, like in elementary school). Wanna make people depressed and give them SAD that'll stick with them long after they're adults? Just do this to them for a few years. - Intense workload. We consider it bad when a job takes more than 8 hours a day from you. Schools routine…

Interesting response. Most of the above points sound to me like saying school was bad because there were classes and one had to study and do projects. I mean, sure, kids would rather play all day but there's nothing bad about having classes and having to study.

My school days were shorter at 6 hours, although if one wanted to do any of the extracurricular clubs you'd end up hanging out at school 1-3 hours afterwards. Most kids did, but it was optional.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#223

Post by gorgoiler »

It’s funny because for all the focus on the graphics, for me, the most exciting thing was to hear the old comedy style again.

Guybrush mannishly claiming his veins are flowing with stale grog? Yeah right, who are ya tryna kid, kid. No wonder Murray was cackling.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#224

Post by bena »

adamrezich wrote: post #218
bena wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't recall any real backlash about any of the other games though. That's the issue. Just about every game looks different, but not until this one do people "care". It literally has no real basis to base its look off of. > however, it should be obvious to anyone that the art style is both a departure from the original games, and their later sequels, and that it's such a stylistic departure that backlash should be…

I never played the old Monkey Island games in their day because for some reason my dad had pretty much the rest of the SCUMM catalog except for Monkey Island and LOOM. but if I understand correctly, the transition to 3D wasn't as criticized because everyone was trying to figure out how to make games look good in 3D at that point, plus Ron Gilbert had left LucasArts at that point in time, so those games weren't as app…

It really feels like you're defending the backlash though. As if it was a foregone conclusion.

But why? They've done this exact thing N times before, this is just the N+1 iteration of it.

You also keep positing alternatives they could have done and claiming that those alternatives would have been better. But it's all based off of your conjecture. You claim it's self-evident, but it's only self-evident in the way that is evident to yourself.

The backlash seems out of proportion to what was done.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#225

Post by barrysteve »

xg15 wrote: post #221
barrysteve wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He refers to open world games that don't push back against the player, as feeding a colonialist desire to conquer and complete. He posits that the player never learns that he can't have it all and thus learns to be entitled. Not sure if entitled is the right word as a lot were power fantasies that focused on rising stats and increasing combat abilities, rather than strictly speaking titles. The pursuit of more flowin…

Just wanting to note that a lot of the hate is coming from gamers who complain about games being "too easy", "too dumbed down" or "too casual". Chalking this up to modern games not having enough grinding honestly feels like exactly that kind of crab mentality itself.

>Chalking this up to modern games not having enough grinding honestly feels like exactly that kind of crab mentality itself.

Hope my post didn't come across that way. Morrowind's storyline and side-quests didn't feel grindy and learning how to break the system and level up quicker was part of the fun back then, before internet guides were a normal way to break the meta.

Skill has gotten really 'unpleasant', there's a lot of first person shooters that have features that require a lot of unnecessary discernment. Recoil that doesn't act the way it should, wikis full of extra item knowledge needed, dual monitor just for maps, hyper-precise timing and firing. A whole raft of "unfixed bugs" left in the game that you have to know. It's not so fun to be skillful at a game.

Getting through Prince of Persia in one go without resetting feels heroic. Killing some random guy in an fps because he didn't understand the recoil mechanics and getting a bunch of loot is just abusive.

I can understand people wanting skill and difficulty that feels good and willfully accomplished against the odds.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#226

Post by munificent »

jpe90 wrote: post #197
munificent wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the main reasons I was happy to leave the game industry after eight years of doing it. Working incredibly hard to build a product served to a group of people that are often hurtful emotionally stunted man-children is just a deeply demoralizing experience. Obviously, many gamers aren't like that. But a fucking whole lot of them are, and they are extremely vocal, and it doesn't take many of them to suck…

I’m glad you’re in a better industry now, and I’m extremely grateful that you wrote up your blog posts and books while dealing with that. They’ve been instrumental to my journey in programming.

Thanks, I'm glad I'm not in games now too, though I'm not bitter about the time I spent doing it. There are some downsides like infantile gamers and crunch, but a lot of upsides too. Making software designed purely to entertain and bring joy to people can be really gratifying. Getting to work with interdisciplinary teams with artists, designers, and audio people is a rare but very rewarding experience.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#227

Post by gverrilla »

JJMcJ wrote: post #216
corrral wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- ~8 hours in school per day, often in buildings with minimal natural lighting. During the Winter, this may mean almost no sunlight all day (no recess, like in elementary school). Wanna make people depressed and give them SAD that'll stick with them long after they're adults? Just do this to them for a few years. - Intense workload. We consider it bad when a job takes more than 8 hours a day from you. Schools routine…

Covid has made this even worse, as they are not poorly ventilated disease pits. I've met homeschooled kids. They are fine. A cousin was Waldorf schooled from K through 12. He's turned out great. And what you describe is the better schools. The bad schools are even worse. And the really really bad schools are even worse. People who live near them and can manage either move, or scrape the money to send the kids to Cath…

Children and catholics are a VERY dangerous combination. Please protect the infants. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44209971

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#228

Post by shaggie76 »

I've been a professional game developer for 22 years and have definitely seen the amount of toxicity towards developers increase sharply in the last decade. Interestingly, though, some have suggested that this is not a bad thing, per-se.

I believe it was a recent GDC talk where a Bungie dev who said something like "hate is only 2 degrees off from love." I think what he meant was, and I've heard this echoed from other developers, is that the fans are so emotionally invested and want you to succeed and fulfill their fantasies in the game that when you fail or things aren't quite right their love turns to hate in a blink of an eye. The theory is that you just have to listen to them and deal with their feedback no matter how rude it is and you can steer those 2 degrees back to love.

I think there's something to that, but also I think a huge factor is the Free To Play model and how it's encouraged massive time-sinks into games which can create cognitive dissonance when the player has finally exhausted their interest. If a player has invested 3000 hours of their life, which I suspect in many cases matters more than putting in $50 or $100, being bored might make them feel guilty for their behaviour which quickly turns to anger and rage at the developer for letting them down and failing to continue to entertain them. This cycle only gets worse the longer they play because it's increasingly difficult for one game to have enough to offer after such a long time and so they get more bored but simultaneously more bitter that they've wasted so much time on it.

Finally, burnout-rage is particularly bad for content creators which are serving a fan-base that's interested in a particular game. They might not even like the game that much but their add-revenue depends on an audience that wants to see content about it. I've seen numerous content creators go super-nova at the end when they finally break down and explode in bile (which, of course, includes performative outrage which is good for getting clicks too).

The joy of sharing has been driven from me too.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#229

Post by adamrezich »

bena wrote: post #224
adamrezich wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never played the old Monkey Island games in their day because for some reason my dad had pretty much the rest of the SCUMM catalog except for Monkey Island and LOOM. but if I understand correctly, the transition to 3D wasn't as criticized because everyone was trying to figure out how to make games look good in 3D at that point, plus Ron Gilbert had left LucasArts at that point in time, so those games weren't as app…

It really feels like you're defending the backlash though. As if it was a foregone conclusion. But why? They've done this exact thing N times before, this is just the N+1 iteration of it. You also keep positing alternatives they could have done and claiming that those alternatives would have been better. But it's all based off of your conjecture. You claim it's self-evident, but it's only self-evident in the way that…

> They've done this exact thing N times before, this is just the N+1 iteration of it.

I think what you might be missing is that "they" has been a different group of people each time since the original two games—this is the first Ron Gilbert Monkey Island game since LeChuck's Revenge. I believe Gilbert has also said that he's disregarding everything in Monkey Island "lore" that he wasn't around for the writing of. because of all of this, the franchise has a general identity problem, including a visual identity problem. most people who are excited to play Return to Monkey Island are not coming from a place of "well most of the rest of the games looked different from one another, let's see something new!" I think most people expected the franchise to either maintain its new "Remastered" look, or look closer to the original two games. personally I'm glad they chose neither!

the backlash only seems disproportionate due to reporting on it. "New Game In Franchise Looks Different From Old Games In Franchise, Many Anonymous Internet Users Vocally Upset About This, Like Everything Else, As Per Usual" doesn't really have the same emotional galvanization effect, see?

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#230

Post by musicale »

manmal wrote: post #150
WorldMaker wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That same economic analysis plays unfavorably the other direction: games right now are among the cheapest $/entertainment-hour value of any "modern" entertainment industry right now. Even if you only got 60 hours out of that $80 game, which is still the "entitled minimum" in many gamers' minds, that still $1.33 per entertainment-hour. You aren't going to find that at the movie theaters or on Blu-Ray. Maybe you can fi…

Many games for $80 only provide 6-10h of genuine entertainment. Playing them through multiple times often gets old quickly.

Many $20 movie tickets only provide 10-20 minutes of genuine entertainment.

see: comedies whose only funny scenes/jokes are included in the trailer

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