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Chris

Idle Weekend April 24, 2017: Cull Your Frustums

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Idle Weekend April 24, 2017:

Idle Weekend April 24, 2017


Cull Your Frustums
How much do game players know? Do they know things? Let's find out! We wade into a minor kerfuffle online about how much devs like to disclose about tech, and then, we dip into some serious territory in the weekend correspondence and projects. Please note! There is some fairly heavy talk about sexual assault and rape in movies and TV in this episode. Discussed: Horizon Zero Dawn, Mass Effect: Andromeda, The Dialogue Box podcast, Idle Thumbs, Containers, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, Eminem, Roman Polanski, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Chapelle's Show, Remember the Night, The Thing, The Fall, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Say Anything, Notting Hill, Blade Runner, Billions, Colony, Occupied

 

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I always love a good discussion on the ethics of media-consumption. Y'all brought up a lot of the complications. I struggle with the various mixtures of abusive artists and the normalization of oppression through media frequently. My favorite show (Playful Kiss ) is a double offender. I find myself not wanting to like harmful things, but I do in some cases? Atleast it makes me feel better when discussions like this happen. Here's another example that slots right in to my personal interests:

http://beyondhallyu.com/film-tv/tv/drama/dangerous-men-domestic-abuse-in-korean-dramas/

It's an awkward realization that techniques that make story-telling compact and novel are teaching us how to behave towards each other; I often think of the Nascar driver who tried to bank against a wall because he was used to it working in video games.  https://www.google.com/amp/kotaku.com/5056328/video-games-arent-real-life-even-for-nascar-drivers/amp

 

Btw: I'd like to hear y'alls thoughts on the highschool setting in narratives (if you have anything to say about it). Danielle has been tweeting about it some and I'm curious about where those thoughts ended up going.

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Danielle and Rob's misread of the Kotaku/Polygon situation as "several" developers up in arms about frustum culling is unfortunate.  It was a couple small conversations held by 3 indie developers, nothing that could be described as a "kerfuffle" until Ben Kuchera tried to make it into one.  This attempt to create a controversy out of nothing is the reason for the ensuing drama, as described by Kotaku's Jason Schreier:

 

Let me clear. I am angry because this post created drama where there is none, making me look bad in the process. 


Thirty minutes ago, I had no idea that there was any sort of "kerfuffle" involving my Horizon article. Then I saw a Polygon article about how "developers are mocking" my work, based on four tweets by people I've never seen before. The tweets don't bother me that much, since, as I wrote in my original article (and comments), I was using Horizon's documentary as a springboard to talk about common graphical tricks and techniques, and I don't really care if those people didn't pick up on that. What bothers me is Polygon making it seem like this is some sort of widespread trend, when it's clearly not (considering I hadn't even known this was happening until I saw the Polygon article itself).

I've built a career around talking to lots of game developers about how games are made, to the point where I literally wrote a book about it. A Polygon article creating meaningless drama and making it seem as if "developers" are mocking me is shitty and infuriating. Even if the article does wind up trying to defend what I wrote, the premise -- that "developers" are making fun of what I wrote -- is baseless and makes me look bad. Hence me flipping out.

 

The reason for those developer's dismissive attitudes is no big mystery either.  It's because, to their eyes, the Kotaku article seemed to be trying to pass frustum culling off as something new and unique to Horizon: Zero Dawn.  Kuchera tries to make it look like the devs are making fun of you, the reader, for not knowing what frustum culling is, but their actual point of contention is a perceived display of credulity from Kotaku.

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I mean those comments are representative of a dismissive attitude common in lots of tech spaces though. It's not uncommon for technically trained people look down their noses at the uninitiated and to decide you're not a real fan/member of a community because you don't pass through the made up gate they're maintaining.

 

I don't particularly care for Kuchera, but I think his assessment of the situation, even if it is an over-generalization is fair. I think it's representative and indicative of overall trends of disdain for those less familiar with technical approaches to solving problems.

 

http://www.polygon.com/2017/4/18/15340296/horizon-zero-dawn-kotaku-developer-backlash

 

Here's the article for anyone who missed it.

 

It's super common to dump on the excitement or interest other people show in things, especially for interest in big name titles, and I wish it would stop. It's okay to like things and be interested in things and saying that no one at Kotaku knows how games are made is a bad look.

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Calling it an "over-generalization" is being incredibly generous.  Just look at this disingenuous garbage:

Quote

The humor is that a site with a gaming focus showed a small detail about how games actually work and readers were interested, and developers are greeting this with derision because it’s common knowledge to them.

It calls the entire premise of the article into question.  If this attitude is really as widespread as you say it is, shouldn't Kuchera be able to find an example of it without having to resort to blatantly misrepresenting what these devs were saying?

 

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Polygon manufactured a controversy out of some devs rolling their eyes on twitter at what they perceived to be (rightly or wrongly) a clickbait headline making a huge deal out of a common technique. At no point was anyone "mocking" the public for not knowing some technical process. Also, Polygon, real nice job calling out these developers by name and then only redacting their names *after* people are already attacking them for this perceived slight. Devs really need more angry gamers shouting at them for no reason.

 

Yes, (clearly) the development process is a mystery to most people, and yes, developers should encourage curiosity about how games are made and try to explain where possible, but don't put words in people's mouths.

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The podcast this week briefly touched on crunch time back in Ye Olden Day™. I was reminded of this interview with Howard Scott Warshaw who used to work for Atari. It appears that after Atari spent $21 million on the video game rights for ET, Warshaw got a grand total of five weeks to actually make the game: 

 

Quote

"It was the hardest I've ever worked on anything in my life," says Warshaw, who was the game's sole programmer. "I started working at the office but after a while I realised there was a problem; I still have to go home to sleep and eat occasionally.

"So we had another development system installed in my house so that I would never be more than two minutes away from working on the code except when I was driving.

"There was a manager who was assigned to make sure I was eating so that I'd be able to keep going."

 

So yeah, crunch has been part of the video game industry for a very long time.

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