#(can you call it gamedev?)

[rawliverandgoronspice]

re: sympathetic ganondorf vs evil for evil’s sake ganondorf, i think this is misrepresenting and underselling what’s actually offputting to people

“i’m evil because i’m evil” or “i’m evil because demise is evil” and the associated lust for power simply for its own sake has always been lame and low effort. there’s a reason it’s “shit tier” on the classic “villain motive tiers” thing

“i’m evil but there’s enough nuance to make the player at least somewhat sympathetic to me even if i’m still ultimately a bad guy” is a good thing that people like? i’ve never personally interacted with a zelda player who thinks windwaker ganondorf ruined the character or anything - he’s generally regarded as the gold standard of villain writing both in and out of zelda. this is roughly “high tier” on the tier chart

“actually TWIST i’m not evil at all, it’s the good guys who were evil all along, i’ve done nothing wrong and i’m completely justified in my righteous quest against the status quo, you’re the real secret true villain for being complicit in preserving it” is technically regarded as “elder god tier” on the motive tier chart but i would personally label it as “oscar bait tier”. these things *can* be compelling in conversation with the existing landscape, but often it comes across as a deliberate effort to subvert the audience’s expectations for the sake of being unpredictable (or worse, for the sake of proving you’re the smartest one in the room). in separate works where this conversation/critique is the entire point (eg. Watchmen or The Boys), that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and the audience sets their expectations accordingly. in an established, long-running franchise, however, this almost always reads as dripping with contempt for the audience, like walking into a room and going “you morons like this shit? let me, a person much smarter than you, explain what it’s Actually about, because you’re an idiot if you’ve been a fan of this series before now”

on top of that, in the context of a series like zelda, this type of story feels myopic and disrespectful to the future of the series. “welp i burned down the 20+ years of lore behind this character so i could do a deconstruction, good luck using them in any capacity in the future, sounds like a you problem”

all this is to say, i think it’s a bit disingenuous/strawman-y to suggest that people put off by this want ganondorf to have 0 depth at all. there’s a lot of room for different kinds of depth, it’s just that the trend of the last decade has been for “depth” to mean “condescending deconstruction”

Hey!

Thanks for taking the time to write this ask, I think it warrants an interesting conversation. To me, there's like, a lot of things about what you're saying, and tbh I do see where you're coming from --in part.

First thing first... No yeah unfortunately some people Are hostile to even WW Ganondorf. It's been a rising trend in the fandom since TotK was released --people being very against the concept of any additional complexity to the character, either not getting it or considering anything he says pure manipulation that doesn't even warrant a conversation, literally making fun of people who were intrigued by this and wanting more out of this particular thread. This position not only absolutely exists within the fandom --less so on tumblr, I'll agree there-- but it's not even hard to stumble upon as a pretty regular opinion that gets tossed around. I had some interesting asks thrown my way, let's say. The idea that Ganondorf is a remotely interesting character that deserves more thought than what he gets is very much Extremely not the norm, and the very fact that you, as a fan, likes him as a guy is perceived as weird and missing the point by a lot of people. Like a lot a lot of people.

So I'll just... I guess I haven't clarified my position in a while, so I will reclarify my position on our favorite evil dude: I do like him perfectly fine as a villain, I do not want him to be "redeemed" by the narrative, I think he works fantastically as an ongoing threat, I think they could make him even scarier and more offputting and that would be super fun and thrilling... and I also think he already is complex. Like, inherently. Everything Nintendo has been putting into him since his first appearance is complicated --even their attempts at flattening him back in TotK do not fully work because they can't scrub him of the extremely loaded ideas they injected into him from the get-go. Nobody forced Nintendo to do a Mega Orientalism when inventing him, nobody made them write the NPCs to have this super weird antagonistic relationship to the gerudos in OoT, nobody made them have all this lore of the one man born every hundred years, raised by twin witches --and then nobody made them press on that tension point in Wind Waker explicitely, and then, in a more subtle fashion, in TP too. Nobody forced their hand when it came to having the strange "round ear" situation, suggesting (confirmed even, in additional canon) gerudos are born unblessed. The fact of the matter is: everything to make the relationship between Hyrule and the gerudos complicated has been there since 1998. There's no need for a Switcharoo to prove that anyone is smarter than the audience: everything messy has always been baked within the worldbuilding itself. It's in the cartridges already!!

Perspective on it is what could change, though --because, except in Wind Waker, we never get even a hint of a sense that we should think, as an audience, that Hyrule's super weird relationship to the gerudos is maybe questionable. Worth thinking about at least. Which, given the optics, is wild to me that to bring this particular can of worms up is still very largely considered crazy talk within the fandom (that, or the Sheikah situation across the series, also insane in many ways). And yes, it would perhaps lead to themes that are a bit heavier than what Zelda has been overtly dealing with (though, again, Majora's Mask exists --and I do find a lot of unpacked ideas in the Wild Era, like the very unquestionned gerudo bridal pipeline, very uhhh unfortunate already if I'm being honest --even moreso because it is unquestioned). But Zelda, when well handled narratively, can do wonderful things with evocative subtext, open doors never fully crossed, a lynchian pressure on what should feel offputting. We don't even need a sad monologue about it. It doesn't even need to be handled explicitely. But I think the pressure point is just better when understood and incorporated in some form, instead of being denied so hard the world itself start to feel incomplete and unlived.

I do want to say... I get what you mean with the whole "oscar bait" thing. There has been, historically and in recent years, a tendency to be driven by an external, almost panicked sense of morality rather than by the internal drive of a story, its internal thematic logic. I also do think it can feel very corporate, very "Disney looking back at its own movies and scrubbing off everything Buzzfeed deemed problematic in 2014 while making everything glossy and lifeless and awful" and it's not that great!!! and tbh I can't say I would trust Nintendo to handle any appreciation for the fact that the story of an eternal golden kingdom cheering on beating the evil outsiders who want to corrupt everything good and pure and blonde about that perfect inherently good place, is like, extremely not neutral. It absolutely is a delicate thread to weave, and I agree that putting a definitive end to Hyrule is probably not the smartest IP move to do. But, Hyrule doesn't have to be condemned as Bad, it can be merely complicated. And ongoing, regardless. To keep on with the Disney parallel: The Lion King would feel weird if we started to peel off the internal politics of the hyenas, it's just not the right place for it, when everything about this story revolves around the Righteousness of the Divine Right to Rule. But if the Lion King was an ongoing series that had been looping on itself for a while... wouldn't it make sense to figure out how to achieve majesty by studying other angles too, eventually? Is it that strange to suggest the exercise is like, possible? That it can be handled with artistry and soul?

I feel like... Yes, to acknowledge Ganondorf's humanity --not even to coddle it, just to acknowledge it-- implies taking in everything that makes him who he is, and that might rattle some foundational ideas about why this ancestral fight is even happening in the first place. I also do not think it means that he must be Good now. He can still punch a child and cackle maniacally, he can still be unredeemable --he can still destroy himself and others out of the most unconstructive spite ever, and we can still see the purpose in defeating him while basking in the "yea....." left in his wake (Wind Waker did that!!! Wind Waker did that and then we had more Zelda games!! crazy how that happened). This is hardly undoable. It does take some narrative skill, and some commitment to taking a bit of a risk, but Ganondorf is genuinely unmanageable as a character if you insist on your refusal to acknowledge his foundations --and I think it's partially why TotK's story is such a mess. He sells a TON, but you can't have him breathe slightly too loud without risking the entire world falling apart. They did try in TotK, so very hard, and to me they still failed--as insane as he behaves, Hyrule still doesn't come out of this looking good or particularly justified, because the very central core of Ganondorf's character is to be subjugated, and then rebelling in a destructive and brutally selfish, uncompromising manner that ends up robbing him of humanity --and the discomfort of that premise will therefore always haunt the conversation. Nintendo dug themselves into that mess. I feel like a lot of the Ganondorf fans I know merely... point at that. At the mess. And I feel like the longer the games avoid this mess, the more coats of spinach green they slather ontop of his skin, and the more nonsensical characterization they pile up, and the more Ganondorf will become a parody of who he once was, and what made him compelling to begin with.

And to top it all off, as if he wasn't contentious and complicated enough to handle already, they leaned into the internet turning him into a sex symbol for some fucking reason??? Yeah I genuinely have no idea how Nintendo will manage this dude moving forward, because to me, he is, at best, an endless source of (very lucrative) headaches, and at worst a ticking time bomb. I'm not sure how long they can get away with that TotKification strategy, is what I mean.

(Also: I tried to not overdwell on all the incredibly complicated conversation re: race and orientalism, but it's borderline impossible to have this conversation without acknowledging that I have never seen a major pop culture villain receive more pushback against "woobification" than him, and I don't think it's a complete coincidence let's say :) )

[sampersonsworld]

i didnt know what to do for the mac version's trailer so i just walked into an apple store and put it on all their computers

[ganondoodle]

i am still trying to fight this weird art low i have been having for so long, everything takes so much effort, it didnt use to take so much effort i swear, why does it ... take so much .... so .. so much effort now

[slide-into-the-void]

Realized I never properly posted this chap, pity the poor kid, pulled into games of death

[thirdreverie]

"No man is a hero to his valet---no man is a supervillain to his own henchperson."

CALLING CARD is a Kinetic Novel made for the O2A2 VN Jam in which you play as a henchperson tasked with helping out their boss. Listen closely and read between the lines, and you might just find out something new about him.

CHECK OUT THE ITCH.IO PAGE HERE!!!

[foone]

AAA games? Pfft. Indie games? Double pfft.

I only play games from the alternate history where Hillary Clinton was elected in 2008 and banned all video games. You can only imagine how weird their underground gaming scene is. People like to call unlicensed games "bootlegs" but they've got actual bootlegged games! I've played games about helping your grandmother in hospice care realize she's a lesbian by reading Sappho to her, at 2am in a speakeasy in Baltimore. The cops raided it the next night, hundreds of Gamers were arrested. They posted pictures all over Friendster of the Baltimore PD destroying the arcades with axes.

I nearly got busted once because I was imaging old disks from a 386 and someone tipped off the gaming cops that there was a copy of Commander Keen in there. I had to prove that I didn't know it, I was imaging the disks blind and then indexing them later, and I would of course turn over any contraband to the proper authorities.

I was already on a watch list because I'd been known to have some gamedev-related activities pre-ban. They can't arrest me for making games back in 2007 when it was still legal, but they do want to keep an eye on me since I have the skills to break the law.

Anyway that universe's bootlegs are mainly PC games. Can't really have console games if there hasn't been a console release since the Wii/PS3/360 era. At one point Nintendo threatened to release the Wii SDK so game devs in the US could make unlicensed games, but that didn't happen as there were quickly no functional Wiis left in the US, except for very rare holdouts that never move. PC games are easy to distribute samizdat and hide on a USB stick or CD-R labeled "nickelback".

Japan's games industry is still going, so the later Nintendo and Sony consoles still exist, but Microsoft got out of the business of course. They sold the franchise to Sega who were hoping to release the 360 successor (the Xbox One in our universe) as the Sega Phoenix but it never materialized, either through their own financial incompetence or because of pressure from the US. There's a lot of international treaties that the US has pushed "and this aid only goes through if you ban games" clauses into. That would have been an official UN resolution if the USSR hadn't vetoed it. For once, thank God for the security council, eh?

I mainly get my gaming news through Japanese gaming sites (through a set of VPNs, since they're blocked at the border firewall), and some tor onion site run by a weird guy in Minnesota who is obsessed with documenting all the underground US games.

There's a lot being worked on, but it's always a tricky trade off. Too much attention and the police might be able to track down the creators, and it's basically impossible to fund underground games, as the VISA/PayPal etc funds get seized immediately. There's a whole task force for that.

Anyway one of the weirdest differences between our two time lines is that they've gone back and edited out gaming from a bunch of movies. Those that they can, of course. War games was just banned because they couldn't remove the tic tac toe ending. The Net just removed the scene at the beginning where she's playing Wolfenstein 3D, by recording some new screen footage and a new voice over. She's fixing a spreadsheet in the new edition.

(Yes, I've seen The Net from this alternate timeline. On Laserdisc, of course. I'm just that kind of person!)

They even edited Star Wars. You know that scene where R2-D2 is playing holochess with Chewie? They edited it to be a board game instead of holograms, because that made it too "video gamey".

Technically it's not illegal to show gaming in a movie, but it needs to be an 18+ film and you have to show the deleterious effects of gaming and/or the gamesters coming to a bad end.

This has affected films less than you'd think, to be honest. They were never great about showing video games even before they banned them.

Anyway, go have fun playing your AAA games with hundred-million-dollar budgets. I only play indie games made by people under a constant threat of arrest for their art.

[dokidokitsuna]

GameSwap!AU

Just a random idea I had: what if Magolor and Hyness traded games with each other? Like, their character/personality remains the same, only now they each have the other’s roles and goals. I thought it would be fun~

-So making Magolor the main antagonist of Star Allies would be a trip; I feel it would change the whole ambiance of the game…probably in a detrimental way, from a gamedev point of view. You don’t really wanna put the super cute and charming new character with the most memorable heel-turn in the series…at the center of the “nostalgia” game. ^^; With the return of the Helpers and a dozen familiar faces cameoing as Dream Friends, Magolor’s theatrics would be too much of a distraction.

But whatever, let’s say we put him in anyway: now Magolor is the leader of Jambastion, trying to resurrect a god of emptiness and despair. I predict he snaps immediately. XD

I just think handing that kind of leadership role to an obviously power-hungry character like Mago would grow worms in his brain incredibly quickly. ^^; That isn’t to say that he’d do the cuckoo-4-coco-puffs schtick that Hyness does– I think instead he would be a sort of annoying “chuunibyou” character; constantly popping up to ramble about being Void Termina’s chosen one, destined to succeed because he’s the specialest and bestest ever, so you might as well give up now.

And he’d give off this completely unserious vibe like, “...Are you just making this up? Is this god you’re trying to resurrect actually real; or are you just a very lonely, understimulated, disturbed little egg…?”

And then by the end of the game we realize that he *wasn’t* making it up, and as he starts abusing the Mage Sisters (who probably hate working for him to begin with...) and rapidly becomes a real threat, suddenly we’re forced to take him seriously. ^^; We’ll rescue him from Void Termina’s innards anyway, though, because we’re nice, and similarly to his true character arc; he’ll probably realize that he got in over his head and beg to be saved.

-Hyness in Return to Dreamland would be interesting…primarily because he doesn’t seem like the ‘manipulator’ type to me. I think he’d be more of an ‘absentminded professor’ type: enthusiastic and silly but in an awkward, understated way. He’d just come right out and tell us he wants help to find the Master Crown, but he’d present it as a mysterious object of limitless possibilities that we should ALSO be interested in…y’know, just for curiosity’s sake. Conveniently leaving out the fact that he’s taking it for himself, and he’s more than just curious– he already knows exactly what he wants to do with it. ^^;

And similarly to *his* true character arc…I think Hyness would go all in. ‘_’ No hesitation, no regrets; he’d dive right into Mistilteinn’s clutches and become its twisted avatar, forcing us to literally carve him out of there if we want to stop him. This would probably call for a much tougher boss fight, with a more serious ambiance– none of Magolor Soul’s cutesy juggling; let’s aim for something more like Zero’s eyeball exploding out of his face, but in 3D~. Or all the horrific stuff Fecto Elfilis had going on, since we have the benefit of hindsight. XD

As for the end…this may hurt some folks, but I think it would make sense for Hyness to die, like the devs originally planned for Magolor before they decided to have mercy on him. The thing is, without the Mage-Sisters to highlight Hyness’ changes in behavior, there’s not as much to gain from redeeming him…maybe that’ll be part of his character arc too; seeking to become the instrument of the Master Crown because he has nothing and no one else. This version of Hyness still has his empty heart, devoid of care, but without Void Termina to pledge himself to, the tree-demon is the best he can do. ^^; And with a little fleshing-out of his backstory before he goes (perhaps a chance to learn more about the magic vs. science users…?) he could make a good tragic antagonist, the first of his kind in the series.

-...Seeing as RtDL was supposed to be like a fresh start for the Kirby series, though, all this lore and sadness would be a little heavy for that concept…from a gamedev point of view, I would reject the idea. But if we did go with it, I shudder to think how it would influence the rest of the games to follow…perhaps the franchise would actually have taken the grimdark turn that people like to think it has. ^^ Which would be cool to see, admittedly.

[alleesaur]

checked your gamedev tag after that last anon and it looks really cool! can i get the name of the typewriter-y font you were using in those?

The font I've been using for those is called Type Right!

[Link]

[punkitt-is-here]

Read These Frequently Asked Questions Before You Send An Ask!

Patreon | Ko-Fi | Youtube

IF YOU ARE A FUNDRAISER PLEASE BE AWARE I AM ALREADY HELPING WITH CAMPAIGNS AND CANNOT REASONABLY HANDLE ANY MORE. PLEASE DO NOT EXPECT A RESPONSE. MY APOLOGIES!

Heyo! I get a TON of asks each day, so I'm making this post so that folks know what's already been asked so my followers don't have to see the same stuff over and over, haha.

Hi! I'm Punkitt! I'm a game developer, artist, editor, director, and a bunch of other stuff! I'm working on an RPG called Astral Guard, a platformer called Susan Taxpayer, and I have a couple more fun projects in my pocket like Happup and Super Mario Death Row.

Did you know you look like weird al?

YES jesus fucking christ i get told this every day. if u send me a message in my inbox saying i look like weird al im killing you with like wizard spells and shit.

Why do you have so many hats? Do you know you have that many hats?

ye i like hats. :) free tumblr badges for one pea i like one piece and took as many as i could. free.

Where can I find your art/game development/horsecomix?

Great question! Everything I make that's my own and not a reblog is under "my posts", every bit of art I do is under "my art", any game development I do is under "gamedev", you can find all my MLP art under "mlp, my art" or "horsecomix" for the best stuff. I also have an "animations" tag and a "shitposts" tab. I also properly tag all my asks to be asks and write out the asker's name, so if you don't wanna see those just mute the ask tag.

Do you have a Patreon or a Ko-Fi?

I do have a ko-fi here! I also JUST launched a Patreon, which you can find here :)

What do you use for your art?

I use FireAlpaca and Paint.net for misc. effects!

What are you using to make your games?

I use FireAlpaca do make my assets! Astral Guard, Happup, and any other top-down RPG games I make are all made in RPGMaker 2003. Susan Taxpayer is made in SMBX2 Beta 4, a Mario fangame engine with lua support!

Why are you using a 2-decade-plus engine to make games?

It's fun!

Do you have a sideblog or something for your art?

Not right now! What you see is what you get. I do have a sideblog for Astral Guard though, if you want to follow that game specifically! @astral-guard

Can I make an OC based on your work?

ABSOLUTELY!!!!!!! THATS THE COOLEST THING EVER!!!! LET ME KNOW IF YOU DO!!!! I WANNA SEE!!!!

Can I do dubs/redraws of your comics?

As long as you credit me! I get a ton of notifs each day, so if you wanna show me (and PLEASE i so do wanna see fun dubs and redraws!!!) tag me or DM me!

Are you the one who trapped her coworkers in a room and made them listen to TF2 lore?

Can I use your art as a PFP?

Sure! Just credit me somewhere. :D

Yep! Everyone had a blast actually. :]

Did you make that comic where Fluttershy eats the weed brownie/Rainbow Dash has a male living space/someone has a cutie mark that says they'll kill Ronald Reagan?

Yep! That's me.

Where are you in MLP right now?

Currently just finished Season 7! Haven't watched the movie yet.

Have you watched Equestria Girls?

Yep! Thought it was super cute. I watched up to Rainbow Rocks and plan on watching more.

What's your opinion on MLP so far?

I love it! I think it's cute. I really don't agree that there was some sort of huge quality drop after season 2 or whatever.

What do you think of G5?

Not my style! I don't really like either animation types and it just seems like I'm not in the audience anymore. That's totally chill, but it just doesn't grab me!

Have you watched any other MLP stuff from previous generations?

Nope! But I did see a compilation called Minty Being Autistic for Six Minutes Straight that I loved. she's perfect.

Favorite pony?

Don't got one, I love all the Mane Six a LOT, but I'm particularly fond of Fluttershy, Applejack, and Rarity!

Favorite episode/season?

I'm so bad at picking favorites! But any season past Season 1 I have a blast with because I feel like it's just more my style. I don't have a favorite episode, but the most recent one I can remember LOVING is the one where Starlight bottles up her emotions because it was REALLY funny.

Do you like Pony.mov?

Nope! And stop saying my stuff reminds you of it, it's a lil annoying!

Have you watched the Mentally Advanced Series/Friendship is Witchcraft/Other fandom vids?

Probably not! My interaction with the MLP fandom prior to last year was pretty minimal, so I'm making my way through the show first!

What do you think of Fallout: Equestria?

I think it's super weird but really fun because of that. I've never properly read any of it but it's very fascinating to me.

Are you transgender?

Yep! I go by she/her, I'm a trans woman. Have been for many years, but I only recently came out online!

Are you a lesbian?

Nah, I'm bisexual!

Can I commission you?

Yeah! I only have my commissions available on my Ko-Fi at certain times though, so keep an eye out! I usually announce slots being open at least 12 hours beforehand. Slots are usually first come first serve, but we'll see.

Can I use your art as a Discord emote?

Yeah man i'm not scouring every discord on the planet to find stickers of my work. i think it owns if people take my stuff and make it stupid injoke emotes between friends that makes me very happy.

Can I send you an ask inquiring about gender dysphoria?

I feel like this is beyond my capabilities of advice! I'm actually very comfortable with my body and I have been for many years, so I don't know if I can give any good or helpful advice on that front. Apologies, but there are many resources out there where you can ask about those things if you look for them, like Discord channels!

Favorite Color?

I'm a sucker for blue!

Favorite coffee?

Can't drink coffee, my stomach is cringe.

Favorite tea?

I'm lame and can't drink most tea but I love this one orange-flavored tea a lot. I also LOVE ice tea.

Can I say you're horsegender/punkittgender/a little gender goblin void thing?

Well, I can't stop you, but I'm kind of beyond that phase now! I really am a boring ol' plain she/her girl, and I like it that way. It's not much, but it's honest gender.

What's your favorite game series?

Mother, Kingdom Hearts, Mario, and I USED to say Fallout, but I found out I'm really only a big Fallout New Vegas fan.

Favorite game from those?

Mother 3 is one of my fave games of all time! I love KHII, and I'm tied for SMB3 and SMW. Also Fallout New Vegas fucks hard.

Any other favs?

Bug Fables, SLARPG, and TF2!

Favorite Movie?

Everything Everywhere All At Once, no question.

Oh, are you going to college?

Yep! I'm a film/theater major.

Do you have a YouTube channel?

Yeah! Click right here for it, I stream there and upload footage of my games/animations/my film projects + other stuff.

What is that little orange creature I see?

That's bweenop, my little persona that I use when I'm feeling a little scrunkly.

Do you have a ponysona?

Yep! Her name is Star Magnolia, you can search her on the blog to see art of her.

When will Susan Taxpayer/Astral Guard/etc. be out?

No clue! I take things slow, that's just how I am.

How do you work on so many things at once?

I make small, satisfying amounts of progress! I never try to complete one giant thing all at once, I just like doing small bursts of fun stuff. I got ADHD, so I learn to work with it.

Did you know you look like Weird Al?

Im going to run you over with a clown car watch out

WHY do you work on so many things at once?

Fun! I like learning, I like making cool stuff, and I like showing it to people :)

Do you need any help with your projects?

Potentially! I'll probably put out a post asking for help if I need it.

If you could be a horse, would you?

You kidding me? Several ton beasts with the frailty of a sickly Victorian boy; my clumsy ass would never survive.

Are you some sort of...furry?

yeag

Why do you reblog so much?

Brother I LOVE posting. that's just how it is.

Fav music artists?

It changes literally ALL the time but I will recommend ANYTHING by Vylet Pony, its music is incredible and probably the reason I'm a weird niche microcelebrity now.

Why are you like this?

theater kid + having a lot of fun on the internet makes you a bit silly hehe hoo

SUSAN TAXPAYER QUESTIONS

Is it out?

Not yet! But hopefully sometime in the next year. I dunno! I take things at my own pace and keep stuff fun. :)

What are you using to make it?

SMBX2! It's a free fangame engine for Mario episodes, but it's incredibly versatile and has a wonderful community, so I decided to make Susan Taxpayer in it.

Is there a demo?

You betcha! You can find it right here. I'll also probably put it up on my itch.io.

How do I install it?

I made a post here about how to run the SAGE '23 demo!

[felassan]

Some snippets (compilation) from the comments section of [this recent video] by Mark Darrah on YouTube titled ’How 2017 Changed BioWare 1000 Ways’.

rest of post under cut due to length.

Mark Darrah: "BioWare seems to be rebuilding now. I guess we'll have to keep watching"

Mark Darrah: "BioWare and EA seem to be fully behind the next Mass Effect"

User: "I hope the next Mass Effect brings the studio back on track, I doubt they will have many chances left if that game fails. Judging by the people that are involved, they are definitely trying." Mark Darrah: "Seems like"

Mark Darrah: "I don’t know what is next for DA"

Mark Darrah: "A super rushed Joplin likely would have been deeply flawed"

User: "I often learn more about what was going on at Bioware from this channel than I did in 10 years working at Bioware 🙃" Mark Darrah: "oof" Aaryn Flynn: "I learned some things too!" Mark Darrah: "@ blind men touching an elephant"

Bryan Johnson: "Very interesting to hear your perspective since I definitely was not a high level person. Crazy how much they kept the Casey return, as a few of us knew about it a bit earlier because we wrote something to scrape the employee staff data as we were getting tired of not hearing about people leaving the company." Mark Darrah: "wow"

User: "The shenanigans you just described, combined with David Gaider's recent posts about his own treatment at this company solves the mystery as to why DA has ended up in the state it's in. Thank you for clarifying." Mark Darrah: "I wouldn’t put it all on 2017"

User: "As someone who adores Dragon Age, it seems EA doesn't understand RPG fantasy games and doesn't understand what they have with Dragon Age and probably never will." Mark Darrah: "Likely"

User: "I can tell you as strictly a fan that I FELT the 'pivot' as you called it, in 2017. Andromeda felt half old BioWare and half something I didn't recognize as the same language. Anthem was a completely different dialect. SOMETHING was obviously changing at BioWare..." Mark Darrah: "That said, Anthem had been in development a WHILE by 2017"

User: "The level of organizational disfunction at such a big company is astounding." Mark Darrah: "Very common"

User: "I truly wish EA cared more for fsntasy, because it definitely seems like sci-fi and sports is what the higher-ups drool over." Mark Darrah: "We'll see what the future has to bring but..."

User: "And in all that time, Star Wars the Old Republic was keeping up Bioware's slack. Now they don't have that option anymore." Mark Darrah: "It was. Though I'm not sure EA saw it that way"

User: "The infuriating part of all this is that nobody even got what they wanted. Especially EA. The behaviour of these execs would at least be explicable if it had led to commercial success, but it didn't. Why are business execs so uniquely bad at doing business? It's their only job." Mark Darrah: "Successful Live services make so much that the risk was seen as worth it"

Mark Darrah: "Montreal didn't work on Anthem, they were moved to a different EA studio"

Mark Darrah: "Quarter based isn’t great planning for gamedev"

User: "It was a big surprise that BioWare didn't crumble immediately like so many before (Westwood, Origin, Bullfrog, Mythic). It's fascinating to learn that it was because BioWare was put under EA Sports management who were in no position to meddle with the development of RPGs." Mark Darrah: "The EA sports thing happened a bit later... I want to say 2013 or something."

User: "I am still hopeful, despite everything that's happened, that we'll still see more Dragon Age at some point" Mark Darrah: "You never know. EA owns a LOT of IPs"

Mark Darrah: "It’s the nature of most corporations to focus on costs longer term than revenue. Which is an issue for things that take many years to do"

Mark Darrah: "Every game that ships is a miracle"

User: "I am an optimistic. I hope that DA will be back and that EA and Bioware ups realise what a gem Dragon age truly is." Mark Darrah: "Hopefully"

Mark Darrah: "There was a story about Andromeda threading the needle between colonialism and a refugee story and telling neither story fully but that never got discussed"

Mark Darrah: "I do think MEA could have repaired its rep if given more post launch time"

User: "This is so sad. I really hope these videos bring some kinda change, whether it be with EA or teach other developers/publishers about what not to do." Mark Darrah: "..."

User: "Veigulard is like a product of this turbulent development process and continuos change of scope without respect to the development team." Mark Darrah: "Veilguard is a story for another day... hopefully"

Mark Darrah: "SWTOR was always a mystery to me too. It seemed like they had a pretty clear "If we sped 1$ we get more than 1$ back" repeatable model but it wasn't valued."

User: "I guess my only question is, did Casey Hudson ever actually fought for the Joplin vision/to keep DA Singleplayer at all? It seems odd to me that EA allowed DA to go back to Singleplayer in early 2021, shortly after Hudson left. I mean, Anthem was his idea and it flopped. The Jason Schreier articles stated devs were calling the live service Morrison "Anthem with dragons", so I wonder if Hudson was actually in support of turning DA into an MMO. Not trying to find someone to blame for everything, but I'll just forever wonder if things would've been different with someone else at the top." Mark Darrah: "I don’t think he was. Simply living in the same environment we all were"

User: "What was your relationship with the higher-ups and your team like for the remainder of your time at Bioware?" Mark Darrah: ""Doing a job" probably describes my last 2-3 years"

User: "I hope there is smooth sailing for ME5 and the story will knock our socks off." Mark Darrah: "I am following Mass Effect for sure"

Mark Darrah: "Origin [Systems] was actually under the BioWare umbrella at one point if you can believe it"

Mark Darrah: "Ray [one of the BioWare co-founders] spent a lot of his capital resisting EA until he left."

User: "If Joplin and the DA team had gotten the manpower from the Montreal team and resources they required do you think Joplin could have avoided EA’s push toward live service? (Sorry for the double comment, issue with my connection for a second there)" Mark Darrah: "... Its hard to say. Those 2 things are honestly pretty tightly coupled"

User: "Did you talk to Casey about the Anthem situation? It seems like he just pushed Anthem without discussing it internally which is so strange to do" Mark Darrah: "There were conversations. Casey can be very convincing"

User: "I think they damaged the relationship with their consumers as well" Mark Darrah: "In 2017? Definitely stopping the MEA dlc didn’t help"

User: "Have you considered writing an unauthorized history of Bioware, Mark?" Mark Darrah: "I’ve thought about a book. Not sure if there is one in there…"

User: "my trust in Nexteffect is very low just like it's for Bioware overall nowadays, but I won't judge before the game is out." Mark Darrah: "Keep following the game. Hopefully it will be great"

Mark Darrah: "EA doesn't sell IP"

User: "It's always so weird to hear the two teams at BW were kinda against each other" Mark Darrah: "Its weird how much the teams saw the differences as opposed to the similarities"

Mark Darrah: "I’m not sure that a large corporation can NOT assimilate an acquisition. Even if it tries"

User: "I have zero expectations for the next Mass Effect game" Mark Darrah: "There is still blood left in that stone"

Mark Darrah: "DA2’s budget is pretty small"

Mark Darrah: "We are starting to see a pivot back but basically the math is: 1. A successful live service makes WAY more than a successful SP game. 2. So much more that even if only 30% of our bets work we are still better off. BUT. 30% of their bets have NOT worked. Its way lower than that"

User: "The year BioWare started being finally digested by EA." Mark Darrah: "Finished I'd say"

User: "Do you feel like the "little to gain, little to lose" attitude from EA happened with The Veilguard as well?" Mark Darrah: "It isn't the same situation I don't think"

User: "How close were we to just getting any Dragon Age release, ever? Do you think the 10 year wait between releases damaged marketability?" Mark Darrah: "Do you mean how close was Joplin to happening? Not very close. It never even entered true pre-production" User: "regarding Anthem’s live service status… were people moved from Austin (The Old Republic) to help with that? Because it would greatly explain the content drought in the game at the time." Mark Darrah: "A ton of Austin people were on Anthem and Anthem Live. Not sure if they were pulled off of SWTOR though"

User: "I don't think EA understand video game development..." Mark Darrah: "They understand very specific kinds of development"

User: "if I were at BioWare, I would have had no trust in EA to keep their word after they agreed to let Dragon Age become single player again in 2021." Mark Darrah: "different people in different chairs but yeah"

Mark Darrah: "Yeah I don’t think anyone was malicious"

User: "do I understand correctly then that actual work on what eventually became The Veilguard started in 2019, after Anthem?" Mark Darrah: "There are very thin threads that trail all the way back to 2015 but most work happened after 2019. REALLY most happened after 2021 when it went back to SP."

User: "It seems like the Dragon Age team and Mass Effect teams have resentment towards each other, but I rarely hear from Hudson discussing this. It’s mostly the Dragon Age team." Mark Darrah: "I think we all have different stances for sure"

User: "I'm sure they don't appreciate you telling the full truth." Mark Darrah: "There’s much more to it then this"

Mark Darrah: "That Anthem pitch was so good it lasted 7 years of Casey being gone"

User: "Execs lying to you numerous times, then lying to the Dragon Age staff about the nature of their relocation, only to have them crunch on Anthem, is horrendous." Mark Darrah: "I don’t think they were lying to me at the time. It just became untrue"

[source]

[nihilnovisubsole]

hello! i'm asking on hehalf of a friend who wants to get into narrative design (specifically a position at IOI) but has no clue where to start, how to apply, what to include in his portfolio and CV (as he hasn't worked for someone before in that field) and i was wondering if you had any advice? pointers or what he could include to get potentially under their radar. thank you in advance!

hey! thanks for writing in!

it brings me no pleasure to say this, but if your friend has never had a gamedev job before, i'd tell him not to apply to that IOI opening. spare himself the heartache and save the effort for getting experience elsewhere. believe me, i used to hear the kind of advice i'm relaying now, and it made me furious. i hoped i'd never have to be the one giving it.

it may help to have context. any big-deal studio who posts a narrative job is going to get a minimum of several hundred applicants. if they have a reputation for being good at narrative, it could be as high as a thousand. larian (the bg3 people) probably did numbers like that with their recent opening. they tend to ask for three to five years of relevant gamedev experience, unless it's for a senior job. then it could be seven or more. wherever your friend applies, he'll be competing with hungry aspirants like him, veterans whose game got canceled, veterans who want a change of pace, devs who already live in that country and don't need a work visa, devs who are friends with the team because they worked together eight years ago, and, unfortunately, the way the industry's been these days, people who worked on Mega Unicorn All The Awards and got laid off. gross.

should studios take more chances on promising juniors? yeah, they should, but they often don't, and the reasons can be more complicated than "we're evil for the sake of it." sometimes they ask for a lot of experience because a project has hit the skids, so they need someone who can run in and put out fires with no training. sometimes they would love to promote someone internally, but some corporate who-knows-what is preventing them from doing it. (standard disclaimer that i'm not subtweeting anything. these are stories i've heard tons of times from many different devs.) the court intrigue matters, but it doesn't feel like it on the other side, where a rejection is a rejection and no job is no job. it's a shame.

i'm not saying any of that because i want your friend to give up. i'm saying it because i want him to succeed eventually. if he's really starting from nothing, punching in IOI's weight class could take a while, so i encourage him to dig in and get comfortable. he could start by looking into a narrative mentorship or groups that run workshops. i did a pixelles portfolio workshop, and it was great. it couldn't hurt to learn some tools. twine is the standard rec, though i've heard unreal looks great on a resume because many studios use it and writers who can wrestle with it are rare. but in the end, even if your friend snags a rec on the inside, it'll hinge on that portfolio. that means projects, projects, and more projects, and smaller gigs until something clicks.

i applied to obsidian in 2021, so i can't promise any of my portfolio advice is still relevant. the goalposts move from year to year and studio to studio. samples that are crucial for call of duty would be irrelevant to a dating sim. this is why i'm pointing your friend toward workshops and mentorship: they stay up-to-date on this stuff and can give more tailored help. in the meantime, a good friend of mine made a video about how to make a game writing portfolio if he'd like to check it out.

as a parting shot, i'll also link this bluesky thread where my other friend addresses a lot of the anxieties i've brought up here. she's not afraid to be frank, but remains optimistic that your friend should keep his options open and keep trying. i hope he smashes through that ceiling one day!

[sadagios]

Hi! Uh so I don't know if you've watched gravity falls but there's an episode that makes me think of your au (Scarian Death Game :D).

Basically (if the episode and au were combined) this is the plot:

Gria buys a Scar dating sim. When he attempts to go on a real date (with BigB) the scarbot follows him around on every screen he's near. the obsessed becomes the obsession...... yeah I am a bit of a spanner when it comes to explanations lol

Anyway yeah love the au keep up the good work

(⁠•⁠‿⁠•⁠)--👍

ohoh! the GIFfanny episode! i didnt watch much gravity falls but that episode along with DDLC were huge inspirations for a personal project i had years ago.

also, an au within an au! lol a sdgau au where gria picked up a cheap, old dating sim, still burned on a dvd, and it's super boring. the storyline is generic, the ui is janky, and the dialogue is kinda cringey, but lo and behold... a really hot guy is romanceable? in my cringy 90s harem game?

and maybe there's an afterending section like with monika's ending where you can just choose mundane dialogue options to "talk" to characters you romanced. eventually, the dialogue becomes more elaborate, but gria is too enamored with scar to notice (or care)

without gria and the gang getting stuck in a game, im thinking maybe in this scenario, scar haunts every game they play in? and with them still being gamedevs, maybe scar becomes this virus that tries to "help" gria to quit his tiring job, but ends up destroying so many computers, servers, or whatnot. maybe he becomes this analog horror being to player bases, especially those players who diss on the games and call devs lazy or stupid just because they can't beat one level. idk.

my memory of the episode is janky but this frame below? oh god. i want to draw gria and scar with this.

i think i might think about this more... im rewatching clips and more ideas pop up as i go on. thanks for this idea, anon! <3 you've given me new au brainrot....

[ganondoodle]

(putting these doodles into separate posts now bc it would get wayy too long if i didnt)

for the random suggestions post;

fleurie1 replied: "maybe some plants? worldbuilding always cheers me up :)"

tree and its fruit, maybe .... Königsbeere (kingsberry) ? thought about a name for half an hour and still couldnt find a good one xD

i like the design tho so im probably gonna use it in some of my projects (mostly my game project .. if that ever bears fruit)

[slide-into-the-void]

Another Strife survivor, made from digital this time so no accociated card. Hope you like it!

[thewakingcloak]

Trying Some Stuff

So I said I would Try Some Stuff last time, and the most valuable thing I've been trying is talking with friends about all this stuff. Who knew?

In review: I need some kind of sustainable, healthy way to communicate online about the stuff I'm making. That is how I want to connect with people, via my games.

But in talking with my friends, I realized it had to be more than just "sustainable," it has to actually drive the engine forward. It has to be fun. Whatever this ends up being, I have to look forward to working on it, and working on it has to push forward the game development, which will fuel the devlog, which will fuel the game development.

So if you caught that, I'm just going with calling this future strategy thing a "devlog". Not "marketing," not "engaging on social media," not "feeding the algorithm beast." I don't know what form a devlog will take. I mean it could just be this, what I’m doing right now (and this will certainly continue). One friend suggested doing devlog videos. A long time ago I did gamedev streams, and that was fun, and I also cut together little highlight reels, and that was fun. So that may be A Thing. It may not, too, because I don't know if I can actually consistently do something like that. Editing videos is a lot of work. Streaming is, too, especially with our baby's feeding/sleeping schedule. But I'm enjoying thinking about it.

And that's really good, because every time I've thought about online presence recently, I've just wanted to shrivel up and die. Maintaining social media, to me, is misery, is bowing before an algorithm, sacrificing my wellbeing to a human-made god that doesn't care. "If you're Really Lucky, I might show your sacrifice to the other sacrifices, and if you're Astronomically Lucky, a few might like it. Now let me drink your blood and fill your veins with toxic liquid instead via my evil ritual. Also, you have to post all your stuff in gifs, the worst image format known to humankind, but not that way, this way. No not like that, like this."

I'm over that.

If a social media platform doesn't fit what I want to do, I'm going to cut it.

(wow that gif is old… nice to see Tav though, right?)

I'm starting with Twitter (I'm not going to call it X). Twitter is not fun for me and never has been. So I'm actually, 100% for real, deprecating my Twitter account. Do you know how much pleasure I get from this idea? Do you have any idea how much lighter I feel, having decided to get rid of it? Twitter has given me a few dear friends (whom I now talk to via routes other than Twitter anyway), but also nearly ten years of grief, and this platform is not getting better. Oh, the algorithm actively suppresses my posts now? Fine. Let it die. I'm not carrying that burden anymore.

(just constantly bashing my head against social media)

And I don't want a Twitter-like. If that format works for y'all, great, please keep doing what you like to do, but I'm not going to spend my time trying to recreate the evil rituals somewhere else (I've never enjoyed evil rituals). (To be clear, I'm not calling you evil if you engage on social media. I am calling social media algorithms evil.) My time on any remaining microblogging sites, if I even continue those, will now be devoted to simply directing people to the devlog, the thing I actually like and want to do. Does that mean just like a static post on each of them that has a few (shudder) gifs and some links? Maybe! Maybe!!

I'm not going to make any sweeping declarations of The Plan, partly because there isn't a firm one yet, and partly because I've done that before to little success or consistency. However, I know I want to do stuff that makes me want to make stuff, and I'm excited for that. I think it's gonna be fun. I think it may also be sort of a return to form, at least in ways that I can now that I've got my family. So stay tuned…

Oh! Don't forget to wishlist ProtoDungeon: Episode I and ProtoDungeon: Episode III on Steam! (II is in progress!)

[lordsovorn]

Time for a pinned post update!

Hi there!

🌕 I'm a non-binary Ukrainian pixelartist, fascinated by the darkness, the beauty in the horrible, and the contrasts of life ✨

More info under the cut:

(commissions, hashtags, etc.)

Links:

🕯️ All my art is first posted on Patreon (as well as bonus content like timelapses and workflow comments) ✨

💙 You can also find me on Bluesky and Cara at @/lordsovorn, same as here

Commissions:

🎨 I might not be immediately available (that is, I may put your request in queue for a week or two), but I'm long-term open for personal and commercial pixelart commissions. You can contact me here, on other social media or via email: ourclaritythemoon@gmail.com

More info in this commission info post, with payments methods and additional details. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Things I make:

💀 A good chunk of my drawings have lore to them, and in particular I'm illustrating (and writing) a lot about a setting of my own called Under - a sprawling mysterious underworld, shrouded in darkness and superstition, where the last remnants of humanity are slowly being digested into nothingness.

You can look through it all at #secrets of the under

🎴 Over the years I've also been illustrating a custom deck of tarot-like cards - and here are some of my favorites:

About halfway finished at the time of writing :)

Usually tagged #tarot like cards

For the last two years I would do a free new-year-fortune-reading with them - we'll see about this one, it's getting more energy-intensive with each new suit added.

🕯️ I'd hesitate to call myself a gamedev, but I've been playing around with various projects for a while, and you can sure expect that there will be gamedev stuff in the future :)

On my Patreon you can see archived updates and concept art for a Game With A Lot Of Candles In It (on hiatus at the moment)

I reblog a lot, so be warned :)

My taste in art and cool science facts is immaculate though. I like horror, dissecting the stories I love (whether in games, shows, books or comics), history and bugs 🐙

There's a hashtag specifically for my art - #Lord Diana art

If I'm posting something related to a fandom, it's usually tagged - here's a reminder that you can mute tags.

Reblogs of my own things are tagged #reblog or #night reblog. If there's any tag you'd like me to use, feel free to respectfully let me know :)

What else?

🚫 r*ssians are not welcome here, as well all the varieties of bigots I won't even bother recounting. Fuck AI, fuck NFT, fuck m*sk ✌️

I hope this to be a friendly and accepting space 💜🤍🖤

And a serious one at that too - all life is political, after all.

///

With that said, I hope you enjoy your stay in my corner of the internet ✨🖤✨

P. S. My asks are open, and questions about lore are ALWAYS welcome