#personal soapbox

[askagamedev]

Triggered by the current steam sale: how do devs feel about years of their hard work being sold for 50, 70, 90% off? Is there some bitterness about it, or just 'eh, part of the industry'

I don't think the emotion we feel is bitterness so much as it is a bit of sadness. Prices falling is normal and unavoidable. It is unlikely the games I worked on early in my career could be sold for anything today. I have mixed feelings about Steam sales in general.

I think there is a valid and growing concern among game developers that Steam sales are devaluing games as a whole. Instead of finding a great game at a bargain and appreciating it when playing it, Steam Sales have become this seasonal event where players buy a large number of games that they rarely play. The games we buy are just text lines in the library. There's even a pile-of-shame tracker that tells people how many unplayed games they have in their Steam libraries.

What I care about as a game dev is that players enjoy playing the games I worked on. I feel sad when I think about players who may boot the game up for a few minutes, give up, and throw the game away, never getting to see the work I put into it. I feel sad when I think about the amazing games I got to play that were so formative for my career, and how many players today would ignore them since they're old and cheap. I think that's the real tragedy of Steam sales and the like - if it doesn't cost you anything for a game, there's very little reason to invest yourself into it. We ultimately build games for players to enjoy. Steam sales perversely make it both easier for players to see my work and harder for them to actually enjoy it.

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[virtualtyrant69]

If you believe hard enough, every character can be aroallo

[sergeifyodorov]

My most problematic exclusionary unclebrained sports fan take is that you should have a Main. You can love everyone else according to a precise list or hate them all in equal measure, or have an inner circle you would die for, or only like your Team because one player is on it or whatever, but there should be one group of guys that, in every one of those thirty-one possible matchups you have, you want to win.

[blackkatmagic]

Always funny to me when Mandalorians go "The Darksaber is Our Special Mandalorian relic" to a jedi cause like:

- it's a lightsaber, a jedi lightsaber

- Tarre internationally had it left in the temple and they stole it

- the mental gymnastics needed to ignore that Tarre was also a jedi

Come on guys. Also Jaster you're the history nerd you should know enough to have Some shame.

I wonder how long he was geeking out to Myles about A'den after that encounter

While I very much do believe that the Jedi have the only real claim to the Darksaber, given that Tarre left it to them (and also, if you want to take a more recent view of things, Mace technically defeated Jango who defeated Tor and therefor the rightful Mand'alor is Mace Windu, but that's a whole separate rant), I think it's technically understandable, given Mandalorian culture, for them to believe that the Darksaber is theirs.

It's something that's going to come up in more detail in future chapters, but like. The Darksaber is fairly meaningful to them as a people, and Tarre clearly was as well, so it's not weird for them, especially coming from a culture that's built on a foundation of conquest and absorption of other peoples, to just...assume that their claim over the Darksaber usurps the Jedi's.

Also, re: the "Jaster should know better" part, I feel like fandom as a whole greatly underestimates his ruthlessness, and sort of...stamps their own version of "honorable" over him, if that makes sense? Like, the honor code that Jaster based his reforms on was from the Crusades. It's not exactly the Geneva convention, even if it is a step up from the complete lawlessness the Mandalorians had before him. It was also mainly to keep Mandalorians from fighting each other when hired by opposite sides in a conflict, and much less about what a non-Mandalorian would have considered honorable.

This isn't meant as criticism, to be clear! It's just me being salty in general about how fandom makes Jaster so much less interesting because they want him to be some sort of paragon of virtue, when he's basically a mercenary king and a literal cold-blooded murderer who uses child soldiers when he thinks it would benefit him. The dude is fascinating, but he's not automatically going to respect the Jedi's claim to a meaningful historical artifact just because. He's a product of his culture, just as much as Feemor is a product of his.

[bookinit02]

genuinely i am going to say this once only because it’s the middle of the night but the level of tiktok hating i’ve seen on this app pisses me off so so so badly. you are not better than anyone else for not having tiktok downloaded, you are not smarter, you are not “more evolved.” tiktok is used by such a wide variety of people and of course there is low intelligence and empathy present on there, there is low intelligence and empathy EVERYWHERE. including here. there are also some of the kindest, most intelligent, most hopeful people i’ve ever seen. i do experience extremely low lows and high highs while scrolling tiktok because it is an insane range of content—it shows you pretty much everything you could ever imagine out of the range of human experience. i’ve seen a man who spent his life savings to buy out land and provide free housing for people. i’ve seen a woman document her journey to learn english and receive nothing but unconditional support and positivity. i’ve seen dogs learn how to “speak” and new mothers speaking openly about their depression and women encouraging each other to leave their abusive spouses. i have learned SO much in the last few years that i never learned in school. i guess really what i’m saying is that i don’t love the app itself so much as the power of human community, and it’s genuinely really upsetting and disheartening to see people continually shit on a platform that has done so much good for so many. it really does connect a lot of us to the world in a way that’s not comparably possible on any other app (yes, including this one), and i personally will be extremely upset if it really does get banned. not to mention how nobody should be championing government banning of any app, regardless of if you like it or not. just genuinely. can we cool it with the pretentiousness for a day or two. that is all i fucking want

[studywithisabel]

i’m gonna be negative for a second so fair warning

the STEM obsession is literally a plague on the current academic world, especially the recent “women in stem” shit. of course people who are typically discouraged from male-dominated fields should receive encouragement from schools, recruiters, etc, but i am really sick of this being turned into “STEM is the only valuable career path and you are betraying your intelligence as a woman/poc/whatever by doing literally anything else.”

there are SO many non stem jobs that are essential to the proper functioning of society and are definitely NOT worth any less than being a doctor or engineer. i’m tired of there being zero scholarships, internships, encouragement in general for literally any other career path. it’s just disrespectful and honestly dangerous. we can’t let humanities-focused subjects and careers die because STEM is the current hot topic. and i just hate most of all the appropriation of feminism to do it.

[cartoonjessie]

Matangi's tone is taunting, but Maui's confidence hasn't been broken - yet. "And you'll finish it?" she asks, hiding in the shadows. "Team up with your precious..." Suddenly she's in his ear. "...human again?" Realizing Matangi can see right through him, Maui tries to strike at her with a grunt, but she's already gone. Her laughter fills the cavern, and Maui realizes he's made a mistake by showing her he cares. Trying to bluff his way out of this situation, he replies: "Team? You mean that girl with the canoe and that goofy little chicken? We weren't a team. I just used her to get my hook." Mini Maui, not bright enough to see what Maui is doing, gets insulted on Moana's behalf, slapping him painfully in the chest, to which Maui eyes him in frustration. If only his tattoo could play along, maybe they could stop painting a larger target on Moana's back.

[mamawasatesttube]

perry with some words of wisdom in superman: lex 2000 ("just because this country is about to go to hell in a handbasket doesn't mean this newspaper does, too!") (and we are all the newspaper, really.)

[yakkety-yak-art]

for some reason I woke up a couple weeks ago and, after not really thinking much about the mcu at all for years, the flame of righteous indignation on behalf of civil war team cap and at the implications of the accords on all enhanced people in the mcu which I had starved as a fourteen year old in 2016 who was terrified of getting into arguments and of disagreeing with people to the point that I was a literal cacw centrist when asked about it suddenly rose up within me as an inferno, and I suddenly remembered how much I do Not Like tony stark.

[askagamedev]

G’day GameDev. I am in my late 30’s and considering returning to school to study Game Design. I currently have no applicable/transferable knowledge, skills or experience and I will be 40 years old when I have finished my studies and looking to find my first job in the industry. Am I too late? Will I be wasting my time (and money) trying to enter the industry at that age?

There's some major questions that you need to answer for yourself.

First and foremost, I think it really depends on what your own goals and responsibilities are. What is it you want to do with your life? Do you have any other major goals outside of your career? Is doing game design professionally what you really want, or would doing game design as an amateur hobbyist be enough? You need to be sure that this is something you want to commit to for years, not just the studying and learning, but also the doing. Remember, getting an entry-level job in the game industry isn't the end of the road but the beginning. Once you get hired, you don't just ride off into the sunset while the credits roll. There's a whole career after that first offer letter, and that kind of career really isn't for everyone.

The second major question you need to ask yourself is "Do I really need to go to school to study game design?" I'll tell you now that I never went to school for game design. The majority of designers I work with didn't go to school for game design. Game design is a field where being self-taught still works just fine, especially if you engage with the game dev community. You can build a game or mod yourself, get it out in front of people, learn from it, iterate on it, and use that as experience to get yourself a job doing it. It is fully possible to learn game design without significant school debt (which will have a large effect on your life as well).

I could go on, but I think this should be enough food for thought to chew on for a bit. Take some time to consider your answer to these questions and about your life. Consider the tradeoffs from making these choices - what you are giving up to move forward with this, especially if you have to take on several thousands of dollars in school debt. If you have further questions, my inbox is always open. I wish you good fortune.

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[canisthelupus]

STOP WOOBIFYING LDPDL PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE THAT IS A GROWN MAN!!!!!!!

[thetriggeredhappy]

before pride month ends im gonna take this opportunity to say. if a transfem corrects you for using ‘dude’ or ‘man’ to refer to her, and you reply that ‘actually dude and man are gender neutral’, consider that she knows this. and she’s correcting you because she doesn’t want to be referred to as gender neutral. she wants to be referred to as a woman. and perhaps - really stew on this one - your reluctance to refer to her with traditionally feminine language, and even to incorporate and co-opt traditionally feminine language into your casual gender-neutral usages in everyday life, are indicative of an internal sexist bias. this is not necessarily in itself a condemnation of your character - but if you feel perfectly comfortable calling someone (regardless of gender) ‘bro’ but not ‘sis’, that’s worth a smidge of introspection.

[codypunk]

idk if there's even an audience for this besides like 2 mutuals but also I feel like I should actually put this down instead of vaguely alluding to it all the time. the movementverse is my au where it's basically just what if the messiah gimmick actually worked and I changed murph and the aop for people I actually care about (sorry).

nathan (frazer) also made a tweet back in 2021 about how if seth ever needed an actually loyal disciple instead of murphy, he was available so that was what made my gay little gears turn

its essentially a seth and roman role swap with roman being a far more mentally stable version of himself and seth as a tyrannical leader of a faction bc it's kind of funny to think about. also seth loses his eye at extreme rules instead of rey which to me is what would have been the last proverbial straw that would put him full force into that persona, since in canon he seemingly has some kind of remorse (or he just thinks it's gross, either way he throws up)

its also in canon already very heavy handed on the authority callbacks, seth word for word parrots things hunter once said to him back to murph so I always really kind of wished they did more with that because it does a lot for seths character that his idea of a villain is using hunters words and tactics and using his sledgehammer

[isfjmel-phleg]

Do I really want to get into fights with Wikipedia about why Colin Craven, at least as portrayed in the book, does not belong on the list of fictional victims of Munchausen by proxy?

No. But also yes.

What is it with the internet and diagnosing this child with the weirdest, most sensationalized things.

[theneighborhoodwatch]

i would be a fool to deny that wally has, as the kids like to say, a touch of the ‘tism, or that i find him an ultimately sympathetic character, but i must admit i dislike the implication i’ve seen from a few folks that either:

A) because wally is autistic, he cannot possibly be doing anything morally dubious

or

B) if he Is doing anything morally dubious, then we can no longer count him as an example of Good Representation™, and must instead rely on the other characters to pick up the slack

maybe i’m jumping to conclusions here, but like, i dunno, aside from the obvious fact that disability rep shouldn’t be treated like a competition between characters - i like wally in part because he’s given a level and a Type of moral complexity/ambiguity that i rarely see in visibly autistic characters, even in indie productions. i have a hard time imagining the kind of person for whom that’s a bug and not a feature.

[mamawasatesttube]

maybe its just my pedantic streak rearing its head again but really, truly. can i be honest? i dont get why people call yj/core four codependent. thats not what that word means. tim and cassie having a Bad Time with grief does not mean their relationships with kon and bart were unhealthy. grief is a whole other beast here. like do you guys know what the word "codependency" means because im getting the feeling that thats a no