syntheticgerbil

I don't usually get scared by games, only tense in the way that I'm in a really hard section where if I die I have to replay a bunch of shit. Fear sets in there. The last time I remember getting somewhat scared was the first Uncharted when you go to that underground area with all of the mutated guys. Dark areas where nasty things fly out at you when you turn the corner doesn't set well with me, so I found myself being really careful. It didn't help that they jump on you sometimes if you aren't fast enough, Normally though I just do jump scares that fade quickly, but I don't know if that constitutes a scary game. I often tend to jump in my seat while playing Metal Gear Solid games when I hear the siren noise when someone spots you. But for that to work, I have to be in a very tight spot in the game, quietly moving slowly and having high concentration on my actions. It's always good for a laugh with my girlfriend even though I feel dumb. Also this shit scared me so much as a child: What a piece of garbage that game was.

Hey guys, guess what thread I'm reading when I should be in bed?

I love you.

I think I have about 100 games to finish including digital and physical copies. I tend to buy games used for older ones I missed still in box copies instead of running to abandonware sites or GOG. I guess that kind of creates a sense of urgency as the older a game is physical wise, the price goes up. Better buy now. New games, I never buy until I know I have the time and even then I wait until an Amazon sale (funny enough most games have a $10 discount at some point on Amazon if I wait around and check for a couple of months while sniping something I want to play).

This is a big thing on my mind right now, especially after seeing all of those quotes the other day. I work at a company that will only exclusively develop games on a F2P model because despite what anyone pleas the owner says, "We just don't have anyone here experienced with regular games, free to play is all we know." One of our games is exclusively held up by about 20 nutcases (the whales) that give 60% of it's perpetually dying revenue every month. All other games so far failed to bait anyone to spend more than a few bucks. Ideally you'd want almost all of your players to spend a few bucks, but the free to play model seems to be built only on a select amount of people supporting every month. Maybe there are companies that aren't like this, but I would be most Zynga games work the same. Once you get into this dangerous territory of seeing what your company needs to do to survive, I think that's when you just release strings of content that cost way too much to keep those that are hooked paying, which I find unethically. One of the most disgusting things our director of design said in a meeting once was, "I read in an article about free to play companies and how they compare marijuana dealers to crack dealers. Marijuana dealers smoke their own drug, while crack dealers never touch the stuff. We are the crack dealers." That was just one of the most depressing things about it. Here I am, still at the same company, six months later. Can't wait to figure a way comfortable way out soon. My personal thoughts initially when joining the company and contesting with the designers of certain games was that you shouldn't have content that reaches far beyond what you'd spend on a $60 AAA title. Besides the energy model just being a broken mess to wait or pay, a lot of F2P games have at least a $30 or upwards buy in rate just to get exclusive items or levels. Almost none of these "social games" tend to be worth that much. I wouldn't even say any of our games were worth beyond $5 if even, as we have a great habit of releasing unpolished buggy stuff early and then waiting for money to roll in while we fix known bugs and finish our base content and UI. So many other companies are just as guilty as taking advantage of that. There's no incentive to polish everything as great as you can have it up front when there's the possibility of making money right out of the gate. Of course explaining an abstract concept of broken unfinished games turning early adopters away plus their word of mouth and how this is bad for business in the long run is futile. So assuming a lot of companies are just as naive and greedy as my own, why would any customer in their right mind spend $25 and upwards on exclusive base content (weapons, part members, crops, or accounts with faster replenishing energy and health, all before time savers) for a game that is more fucked up, broken, and unoptimized than a neato game with higher production values that costs $5 on your iPad, Steam, or PSN/XBLA alike? You would carry less stress from dealing with customer support because of errors and not feel pressured while playing the whole time. It makes me think that anyone playing a F2P game has slipped through the cracks or are just unaware of other games out there, only starting because this garbage originated on Facebook. And if people are catching on to other games because of it, perhaps that has more to do Zynga's failures this year than anything else at hand? I mean, the other part I can't speak of on the free to play model is the way League of Legends operates. It seems safe enough to just buy more characters if you want, but does it run into that harmful area? I haven't played well enough to own, but it seems to be the only F2P game with the halo on it's head. How dangerous can F2P stuff with League of Legends? The other facet to all of my thoughts and misgivings on working with a company with this kind of model is that I know I could never seriously tackle any Free to Play game because of my OCD tendencies that spill over in games. I feel very stressed and unnerved when I can't finish a game or get 100% of everything. It's a very shitty situation when I know I've gotten into a game that I have no way of completing anything, to the point where I will quit for that sole reason. Ideally I suppose I'd be the exact kind of customer for forking over tons of money for a F2P game as I do in everything else I collect in life (books, movies, music, etc.), but I know better as I've played games all my life and know what to look for in experiences that end and designers that don't make a living off of jerking you around.

Those Pikachu nipples...

Wasn't feeling confident enough to make a new thread for the Oddworld oriented talk by Lorne Lanning and Steward Gilray from Just Add Water, but I like a lot of the things said here concerning digital distribution continued rise and how smaller developers can better reap profits directly from their fans. I know it's preaching to the choir at Idleforums, but it kept my interest.

This is generally how I see difficulty modes, time wasters more often than not. If a difficulty mode is not introducing anything new to the game or is just padding it out with frustration, I see no point. Unfortunately that's too often what happens. I often do exactly what Toblix is doing here and watch the clock to break down how much of my life I'm wasting every time I don't achieve something in the game. I have so many games to play and so little time and eagerness to play any games these days that I just get more upset when playing when I can't finish one game and get to the next. But many times hard difficulty can be fulfilling, especially when it's apparent you are mastering the game along with the difficulty ramp up as opposed to grindy tasks like having to shoot a dude 10x what you did in normal. I always like the hard difficulty on MGS games (not extreme) because the game becomes more tense and every section you get past feels more rewarding because you did it right. When they spoke about this on the recent Idlethumbs podcast where Metal Gear games usually have players doing the same thing to get to the end, I feel like starting with MGS2 I gained more options and could do things more comfortable for me. Hard mode on MGS games encourages me to try out new techniques I probably wouldn't have otherwise. The crazy MGS2 VR Missions has really taken to the extreme of exhausting every way to play that type of stealth game to get to the end of each mission.

That was the worst to just introduce that mechanic like that. First time I gave up and quit, as I was playing it at my Daycare. Second time I remember I had done it by thinking jumping enough was the method as I must have accidentally hit up and down just enough to make it, so attempting to repeat the level the time after that caused me to give up and quit. I think I finally understood once I actually got a Genesis and owned the damned game, which was years later (I was only allowed consoles at the $80 or less level for Christmas).

So on Breaking Bad, are we to assume

I lost faith in Revolution the second I heard the song for the Broken Sword 3 credits. On the other hand, all of those locked doors and box puzzles were not a problem.

Watched Panty and Stocking recently. It was stylish, juvenile fun with the worst jokes. I think I'm giving it leeway because of the amount of referential stuff to animation tropes from all regions but I found myself laughing at many of the digs and homages just for existing. The show didn't have much of a plot and the humor could get insanely crude, but the show is ridiculously well animated and thought out with great use of all tools available. I had way too much fun for a show named "Panty & Stocking & Garterbelt."

Hmm, I've sent my resume and portfolio to those guys twice before, but that was last year. I didn't get a response and I haven't met anyone at that company, but if they are still alive as you seem to say, then they would definitely be a great choice. I was actually really hoping for some response from them if I remember. I know some people at Twisted Pixel now, but I don't have enough of the 3D skills to get around. They hired an amazing character artists and painter about 2 or so years ago that is very skilled and doesn't really need the help, so any niche I ever dreamed of at that company in terms of concept is kind of out the window unless that guy quits. Yeah I've been meaning to do Dr. Sketchy here. They had a few in Houston going a few years back that were helpful, but they stopped holding them there and I think the Austin one just recently started up again. I do go to a sketch night place every week here with a group of people who mostly seem to work at King's Isle and one or two Vigil guys sometimes, but I decided to stop going last week because it was just kind of place to hang out with other artists and shoot the shit rather than seriously improve your art. Drink 'n' Draw is new to me, I'll check it out. Weird I haven't heard of it since I'm already at Mister Tramps every other week for the networking stuff for video game companies. I know they also how a 3D tutorial and get together thing at the same bar one night a week. It's also a balance to figure out how much I need to actually refine in 3D that's of any use to me. Thanks guys

When Lee Petty was going over whether or not the 3D bones for the 2D drawings was going to entail more work, that actually dawned upon me that maybe it's never that obvious when people suggest the 2.5D stuff. I know Unity (they aren't using Unity though right?) is not very friendly to sprite animations or large scale graphics unless you are on certain newer devices, which makes the talk about the monster scaling up at one huge size and having way too many bones very painful to think about. It's kind of an older limit that has crept back that a lot of modern players don't tend to consider, myself included, so I completely understand the situation when Tim is thrown off by the solutions presented.

I wish I could work at a different game studio. I can't leave cities, I'm not excited about any studio or their output in Austin and I generally don't care. I kind of hate this career as an artist and the pressure that goes along to get better. It's really difficult to get good plus there's overtime at the job that kind of prevents the stuff you can do to grow, plus balancing social life. Now outsourcing all art to China in games is also a big thing so entry level stuff is drying up more since it's always way cheaper to get subpar art from them. I feel trapped because there's not a ton of stuff that I can move laterally at in terms of art, at least in this city. Or I've just forgotten what else an artist can do and still get paid. I have no web chops and that's the first thing that comes to mind. Freelancing sucks, you have to be really good and be a business man. I feel like it's too late to change careers in life, not unless I ran into a bunch of money and was able to just not work for a few years and go to college. Even then I'd probably use all of that money to go through rigorous art training at some local continuing education type schools.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH :(

From my experience working on an ARG once, it took about a month for the programmer to get it going by himself. He was pretty good in general, if that's any gauge. We also only worked like 40 hours a week and I just spent maybe a week and a half on everything total. But I think no matter what your object is going to follow the card no matter what. I think... I think the issue becomes when it is integrated into a game, which we never got to and I quit before then, and we had a lot of problems depending on the video cards of a certain computer and webcam resolution (if it couldn't get a high enough resolution on your card, the model would flash on and off). I imagine with mobile devices the camera is easier to judge what the resolution will be based on modern phones or tablets, but might be harder to integrate. No idea, but it definitely was not the easiest of tasks, although it was pretty easy on the art side. I didn't even get to the part of setting up multiple animations among multiple characters, but there was a lot of tweaking involved in terms of finding a good median of polycount and texture resolution. You can probably just buy plug ins for whatever engine for this tech now though, as Ben said. Also if it weren't already obvious, I don't speak with complete authority as my skill level could be much higher and anyone who has done augmented reality multiple times to a finished part of a game might be able to chime in.

I might have some ideas actually. PMing.

Well I was including the ARG stuff in that, not sure how you got the the idea I was not. Plus it seems like it would be from a studio that doesn't make games (?). Outsource management can take a lot of work, time, and revisions, it seems like it tends to be a misstep in games if you are doing it for design and programming. However you can outsource the fuck out of artists to China. It sucks.

Oh hahah, that explains it. I thought that the hand was the hand of the yellow logo man but somehow after death he became all fat and bloated, sort of poking fun at Lucasarts today. But that really makes no sense.

I don't mean to be a downer, but all of that ready in 180 days even if you outsource almost all of the work sounds impossible. If not impossible, tons of late nights for all 180 days. However when I was making some game/web stuff for the USDA at my last job, it seems like deadlines meant nothing as the government contacts would linger on a project with tons of changes, almost as if they needed to keep the project going indefinitely to keep getting paid. This is just my theory, but either way, things would constantly get pushed back. Maybe you could wishfully rely on that happening?

But by that order Purple Tentacle needs to be behind Guybrush.

Haha, well... I probably should have made the effort to also say I find the animation and backgrounds to be amazingly well crafted and charming.

Your blog of these things is the best. Nice to see a new one!

Don't ever show anyone these forums.