Damion Schubert - @ZenOfDesign.com on bsky
@ZenOfDesign
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Creative Director at Boss Fight (a Netflix game studio). Focused on MMOs, RPGS, social systems, monetization. Advocate for putting treasure behind waterfalls
Austin, TX
Joined March 2009
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@Frosty_mage
@StebMcDreb
How dare you counter my lazy shitpost with information.
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BREAKING: Joe Biden signs an executive order mandating all waterfalls in video games have something hidden behind them.
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If I know game devs, then right now there are a couple hundred devs at Sony going 'shit, it's the fucking cube thing' right now.
I present to you all the strangest bug I've ever experienced in all my years of gaming:
Playing Spider-Man 2 as a cube.
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AI-enhanced camera technology helps solve murder in Missouri
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Love hearing about ‘the sanctity of life’ from the same people who have spent the last two years arguing that killing grandma is a small price to pay for being able to sit in an Applebee’s.
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Movie: .. and then Rey takes Luke and Leia’s sabers to Tattooine.
Me: Why?
Movie: So their spirits will be home. You know, closure.
Me: Leia wasn’t from Tattooine.
Movie: ....
Me: Leia primarily remembered Tattooine as the place where she was a giant slug’s sex slave.
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A lot of game devs are dunking on this, but if you're not a game dev it's probably not actually obvious why. So I thought I'd take a moment to answer a little more thoughtfully in hopes of giving gamers a little more insight on what we do.
the yellow paint is so unnecessary obviously a ladder is climbable obviously a crate is breakable why did they do this
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The last week on Twitter has been really an amazing string of WTF, even by the impressive standards of Elon. It's really funny when you put all the pieces together.
it's important to start at the beginning. Twitter's pretty broke.
(amusing thread)
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It's brilliant but it's brilliant because the banter FEELS like modern-day table banter of a fun, silly TTRPG group and also I firmly choose to believe the 'friend who plays a paladin who can only show up for one session a month' was an intentional vibe they chased.
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Me, reading a
@dieworkwear
thread while wiping cheetoh dust off on my t-shirt and pajamas with holes in it: "Fuck him up, Derek."
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But one thing we do a lot is focus group testing, where we watch players play our games. Nothing like standing behind glass watching someone take 45 minutes to try to open a door that you think is pretty obvious.
Thread of game design decisions I had to make on things that seemed obvious to me but werent during playtests.
🧵
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You know how ‘remasters’ are all the rage? A very non-zero amount of them start off with the publisher/rights owner realizing they don’t have the source code and assets anymore, and inquiring awkwardly whether any former devs have (illegally) a personal copy they shouldn’t.
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Toxic Fanboys: The thing about TLJ is that it cheapens everything about Luke’s journey in the original arcs.
Me: I disagree, but okay.
Movie: We’re resurrecting Palpatine!
Toxic Fanboys: Yay!
Me: Doesn’t that cheapen Luke’s...
Movie: It happens offscreen. In a game of Fortnite.
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What are the load-bearing posts of our time? Obviously 'facing god and walking backwards into hell' and 'miette' are up there. Does Ed Balls still count? PS if you can parse this you should probably log off
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This is one of those counterintuitive cases where REALISM IS LESS IMMERSIVE. Immersion is not a measure of how realistic the grass looks, it's a measure of how much you are into flow of the experience. And while hot shit art can be a factor, game readability trumps it.
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Let's just start with the obvious: art directors all wish this guy was correct. And some art directors stick to their guns and either have no cues, or cues that only appear if you enter 'scan mode' or turn on 'spidey sense' or something. What in this screenshot is interactable?
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@RammJaeger
"I felt it was important to go on the record as someone who hates women, doesn't understand science, and thinks that it's supercool that a rapist can make 10 Gs if his victim tries to get rid of the baby."
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The push towards more realistic art increases the need for more unrealistic visual cues. Most obvious example is that if you have a level in a hospital, you might have a hallway full of doors but only one works.
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So what you’re saying is that Crowder was unhappy with how his body’s natural gender cues clashed with his sense of identity and sought out expensive but elective surgery to correct it.
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Movie: Lando sent out the call for help, and everyone came!
Me: But wait. Why did they come this time and not in TLJ? No one came in TLJ!
Movie: Because Lando! He’s a war hero!
Me: But last time, the call came from General Leia!
Movie: Uh...
Lando: On your left!
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Movie: “This place is IMPOSSIBLE to get to!”
Me: “Okay.”
Movie: “You need a special doohickey to find a thingamabob and there are ONLY TWO. SUPER SECRET.”
Me: “Okay.”
Movie: “Enough people do find their way here, though, to staff an Armada and fill a very emo soccer stadium.”
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Movie: We’re killing Threepio!
Me: No you’re not.
Movie: Look, he’s giving a big poignant goodbye speech!
Me: Uh huh.
Movie: He never even got to see R2 again!
Me: Uh huh.
Movie: We’re going to play the whole thing for laughs!
Me: Uh huh.
Movie: Psych! He’s fine.
Me: Uh huh.
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Movie: Hey, remember Hux?
Me: You mean, the head nazi? The fanatic true believer? Like, top guy for the First Order?
Movie: Yeah, he’s a spy.
Me: This is nonsense yet somehow predictable.
Movie: We’re playing it for laughs.
Me: Uh huh.
Movie: Whoops, you blinked, he’s dead.
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Movie: Chewbacca’s dead!
Me: Chewbacca’s not dead.
Movie: Totally dead! Off screen, but dead all the same.
Me: Chewbacca’s not dead.
Movie: And worst of all, Rey thinks it’s ALL HER FAULT!
Me: Chewbacca’s not dead.
Movie: LOL j/k, he’s fine.
Me: I hate you.
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One hidden reason why games industry has a huge crunch culture is simple. At some point, you're going to throw away a huge chunk of your game, and you have no idea what that will be or how significant it's going to be.
1/thread
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If you think that both parties are identical after the last 15 years of politics, you may be so politically naive that it’s hopeless.
“this is the most important election of our lifetime” every time
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Why? Well aside from the obvious (it costs time and money to model every room), it also breaks the flow of the player experience. What's meant to be a short sequeway between fights ends up being a long room-to-room search where players aren't having any fun.
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Yes, absolutely. I've always said the worst part of movies is that they're shared experiences and cultural touchstones everyone can relate to, discuss and dissect.
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Movie: Hey, remember Rose Tico? First woman of color to have a leading role in a Star Wars movie?
Me: Yeah?
Movie: Well, we didn’t.
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Love to hear about ‘the sanctity of life’ from people who think a steady trickle of dead schoolchildren is a small price to pay for their fetish-like gun hobby.
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This morning
@unity
sent a powerful message to all mobile game developers, and that message is ‘switch to Unreal, and do it immediately’.
Unity introducing new fee attached to game installs
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This is also funny because a core promise of Twitter Blue is that you won't see very many ads! So Twitter Blue went from the feature that would make ads unnecessary to one where Blue users MUST be shown ads in order to succeed!
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A huge part of the problem is that advertising has declined massively. You've probably noticed that your ads are now less likely to be McDonald's and Acura and more likely to be Cheech & Chong's gummies and various level crap.
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*sigh*
Most video games are about violence because it’s the easiest thing to do. It is the ‘layup’ in terms of video game design. Let me explain
(Thread)
Game Devs can we discuss the movie Free Guy? Because the fact an above average Ryan Reynolds film can ask the question "Why are all modern AAA Videogames based around violence", yet we never mention it is... Unsettling.
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Movie: LIGHTSPEED SKIPPING!
Me: Hyperspace doesn't work like that. Han clearly laid out the dangers of--
Movie: TIE FIGHTERS ARE ALSO LIGHTSPEED SKIPPING!
Me: TIE fighters are short-ranged ships. In Ep4, they --
Movie: COMING SOON TO GALAXY'S EDGE: LIGHTSPEED SKIPPING THE RIDE!
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Film has a concept called 'shoe leather' which is a term for wasting the audience's time on inconsequential bullshit. Locking doors where there's nothing interesting happening is basically the same concept.
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Movie: Okay, fair enough. Maybe Finn ISN'T in love with Rey.
Me: Okay.
Movie: Maybe he just has something really important to tell her. Something that can't wait.
Me: We ever gonna clear up what that's all about.
Movie: LOL, no.
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Movie: Anyway, this gal gives Poe a doohickey that is the only way off the planet.
Me: Right.
Movie: Seriously, only way off this planet. She can't leave. She's stuck here.
Me: Right.
Movie: Then the empire blows up the planet.
Me: She's fine, right?
Movie: LOL yeah.
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Movie: Oh, hey, we also gave Poe! A love interest!
Me: Sure.
Movie: It's a WOMAN. Wanna stress that.
Me: Lame but okay.
Movie: The chemistry is PALPABLE. They have HISTORY. She SMOLDERS.
Me: Okay.
Movie: Of course, you can't tell because she always wears a motorcycle helmet.
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But if there's a hallway with 10 doors but only one opens, how do you telegraph that to the player? Well, one easy way to do that is to do something like put a green light over that door, while ensuring the other doors remain dark or have paint that fades into the background.
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Me: So what was Palp's plan?
Movie: To kill Rey!
Me: Got it.
Movie: No, to have Rey kill him. It will turn her to the dark side.
Me: Got it.
Movie: Nope, go google 'force dyad'.
Me: Uh
Movie: Anyway, Rey kills him.
Me: Does it turn her to the dark side?
Movie: LOL, of course not.
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Yes, how dare someone who has made 30+ trips to the Titanic, helped fund/engineer craft capable of doing so safely, and sent mail to OceanGate begging them to pay attention to safety protocols signed by himself and many other sub vets answer questions on this topic when asked.
James Cameron couldn’t even wait a news cycle to tell us how much smarter he is than these guys were
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Movie: And then Kylo Ren was REDEEMED.
Me: Why?
Movie: He helped DEFEAT THE EMPEROR.
Me: He didn't do shit. He showed up, got his life force sucked out, and fell down a hole for the rest of the fight.
Movie: REDEEMED.
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You could have players try every single door, but not only is it a waste of the player's time, it calls attention to the shortcomings of the situation. Sure, there are a lot of doors, but only one is openable? That's bullshit.
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Movie: Watch Finn ride on the outside of this Star Destroyer on horseback!
Me: Sure. Cool.
Movie: Watch Finn commandeer a Star Destroyer’s turret and shoot it at the Star Destroyer’s own bridge!
Me: Wait. You can control a SD turret from...outside? Space?
Movie: Uh.
Me: WHY?!?
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Twitter is 'we're being sued because we owe $500 million dollars of severance pay' level of broke.
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While realism can be a factor to a game's immersion, it's often not necessary. Think of immersion as 'the factor that makes you look up and realize it's 6AM and you have work or school in two hours'. Games I'd consider immersive include Tetris and Candy Crush.
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The best reply in here is one from a private account, so I'm resharing.
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Twitter got into this position largely by deciding that getting people to subscribe to Twitter Blue was the future, and would be enough to make Twitter less dependant on Advertising. Remember when they made the hard switch to get rid of old legacy checkmarks? No one converted.
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Movie: ... and the instructions to find this doohickey are on this ANCIENT DAGGER.
Me: The death star crashed there 40 years ago.
Movie: ... on this RELATIVELY RECENTLY MADE DAGGER.
Me: Nothing says sci-fi like a dagger that'd look at home in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
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Love hearing about the ‘sanctity of life’ from the same people who were passing laws encouraging you to ram your cars into protesters exhibiting their first amendment rights.
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Blue checkmarks were viewed so terribly that Elon Musk forced them on certain selected celebrities -- many of whom then felt obligated to stress to their followers that no, they would not pay for this garbage website.
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Also, if you think this sounds like a pyramid scheme or an MLM... yeah, kinda does! It's a transparent attempt to goose blue subscriptions with the promise that you, too, could be getting $25K checks instead of being one of the greater fools shelling out $8/month.
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Movie: You're very cynical. You realize Kylo saved his true love.
Me: That redeems an evil person? A good person would look past his passions & save everyone.
Movie: TRUE LOVE.
Me: You know the Jedi code forbids 'attachments', right?
Movie: HE'S WEARING A BOYFRIEND SWEATER NOW.
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Twitter is 'can't pay the rent' level of broke.
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Movie: And to USE this dagger, you have to stand in a SPECIFIC SPOT.
Me: Okay, how do you find that spot?
Movie: ... luck, mostly.
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The things that break immersion are the things that break your flow in a game, usually because you know what you need to do but can't figure out how to interact with the game to do it. Biggest breaker of immersion IMHO is usually bad UI. Fighting with the controls breaks flow.
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Movie: And we know you all have been waiting for it! Finally! The KNIGHTS OF REN ARE HERE!
Me: Awesome! What do they do?
Movie: ..... honestly, not much.
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Love hearing about the ‘sanctity of life’ from the people whose national health care plan is ‘fuck you got mine’.
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(As an aside, congratulations to the banks who loaned Elon money. You figured out a way to make Twitter profitable, at least for you! Good for you!)
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Movie: Hey, maaaaybe Finn is in love with Rey.
Me: So a love triangle sort of thing?
Movie: Maybe!
Me: Will Finn ever materially interact or interfere with Rey and Ben's romance story?
Movie:... no.
Me: So he's just going to kind of mope around in the friendzone the whole time?
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Media Matters (
@mmfa
) did a pretty good roundup. Surprise, it's all of the right-wing dumbosphere that specialize in racism and homophobia/transphobia that Elon likes to interact with on a regular basis!
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Well, the pandemic has taken a troubling turn.
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Movie: We have some Carrie Fisher footage!
Me: This makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable.
Movie: Here's more than you thought possible!
Me: Maybe I'm just squeamish because Rogue One kinda put me off with their plastic-faced CGI Leia.
Movie: We got some of that too!
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So who did Elon handpick for this program? Well, a high profile sex trafficker for starters.
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Movie: ... and then they give Chewbacca’s Leia’s medal for the Battle of Yavin! He finally got one!
Me: ... Leia didn’t HAVE a medal from the Battle of Yavin.
Movie: ...maybe it was Han’s
Me: What, did she somehow win Han’s medal in the divorce?
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Love hearing about the ‘sanctity of life’ from people who proudly defend a cop’s right to pump a magazine full of lead into a black teenager because they looked at him funny.
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The message is clear. If you want to make money from Twitter, be a right-wing influencer who regularly takes a shit on marginalized minorities.
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Movie: The Emperor has a MASSIVE, ANCIENT FLEET frozen in the ice.
Me: Why would you—
Movie: The Fleet is the MOST TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED in the galaxy! Each one is a mini Death Star.
Me: How did these ships—
Movie: This Fleet is FULLY MANNED.
Me: ...
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I’d like to thank Ben for summing up so succinctly how ‘debate’ with these pinheads is a bad faith exercise.
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All of this feels very much like a publicity stunt to try to keep their key influencers from leaving. But why would they feel the need to do that? Gee, that's a real puzzle.
/thread
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Movie: Hey, you know Ep 4 when they infiltrate the death star?
Me: Yeah?
Movie: We're gonna redo that.
Me: Cool.
Movie: Only this time they'll go in GUNS BLAZING.
Me: What.
Movie: JUST A HALF DOZEN DUDES RAIDING A STAR DESTROYER.
Me: That's suicide.
Movie: Oh, they'll be fine.
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Movie: Hey, you know how some people were really bothered they didn’t know where Snoke came from and why he was special?
Me: Yeah?
Movie: He was grown in a vat!
Me: That seems to raise more questions than answers.
Movie: Yeah. The Emperor even had, like, backup Snokes!
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Movie: And in a final act of sacrifice, Leia will reach out to her son.
Me: And kill him.
Movie: What?
Me: Leia’s final act will be to distract her son so he dies.
Movie: Lucky timing too!
Me: How is this not a dark side thing?
Movie: Look, it’s not like he stays dead.
Me: ....
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It's also worth noting the genre of the game matters a lot. If you're playing Starfield, you may be entirely into exploring every single rock and plant on the planet. But if you're playing Doom, you mostly just want to get to the next fight. Because that's the game.
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Advertisers are, of course, still pretty skeptical.
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Over on Bluesky,
@ParkerMolloy
noted that one certain blue check mark user with 1.8M users had not gotten a check -- and wasn't happy about it. Here are some screenshots she grabbed.
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So to go back to our door example, trying to open 30 doors to find one we can go through breaks immersion, because the tedium of the experience calls attention to the faults of the simulation.
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what-is-the-games-industry-like.jpg
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Despite being an unqualified garbage person, the esteemed Mr. Turd2 is an endless source of amusement to me, given that he constantly complains about being treated unfairly by Elon's twitter DESPITE BEING ARTIFICIALLY ALGORITHMICALLY BOOSTED.
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Love hearing about the ‘sanctity of life’ from people who think that the second amendment is the proper response to feeling road rage, seeing a strange (black) guy jog in your subdivision or being angry because a (black, of course) kid has his stereo on too loud outside the 7-11.
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A subset of toxic fanboys: "This movie is bad and it's all The Last Jedi's fault!"
Me: LOL, fuck off.
@ZenOfDesign
Everyone thinks it totally negates Luke's and Anakin's sacrifice. Are you being disingenuous?
TLJ painted the sequels into a corner by killing the big bad on the second chapter.
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Love hearing about the ‘sanctity of life’ from the same people who demand that we send war refugees, many of them children, back to their home countries where they’re almost certain to die, especially if they’re brown.
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One more thing: we are trained by the games we play, so as more games use cues to call attention to gameplay elements, more gamers look for those cues.
As an example, I'm now annoyed when games don't have some kind of 'spidey sense' mode to help find important things.
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In conclusion: player testing pushes things in the direction of "Immediate Scene Readability" being the trump card, and experienced teams try to design with that in mind from the outset. If we fail, players end up fighting the game instead of playing it.
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Love hearing about the ‘sanctity of life’ from the governors of Red States who have infant mortality rates that approach those of third world countries.
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You cannot possibly imagine how frustrating it is to watch a player playtest, especially in person. Imagine a room full of devs screaming "CLICK THE SWITCH! IT'S RIGHT THERE! THERE'S AN ARROW POINTING AT IT! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?"
@ZenOfDesign
Yall need me for this focus group. I can get lost in a room with one door and one window.
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Movie: Poe had to crash-land the Falcon because the Falcon's landing gear wouldn't go down.
Me: Wait. The Falcon uses repulsor blasts of some sort to land, doesn't it? Were those broken too?
Movie: Yep, spun the falcon like a frisbee to stop it.
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Another person in Catturd's circle of MAGA doofuses did a little research and discovered that, no, it wasn't a systematic thing, just checks sent out to a handful of handpicked posters -- mysteriously, posters that interact with Elon a lot.
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Love hearing about the ‘sanctity of life’ from the party fighting like hell to allow corporations to poison the land we till, the water we drink and the air we breathe.
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Now more than ever, we have tons of games to play and not enough time to do so. As a result, more and more gamers are unwilling to devote a ton of time to games that waste their time on unfun bullshit like spending 15 minutes to find the ladder.
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And now, Elon has announced he plans to double these payouts. But as you keep these promises in mind, remember.... Twitter doesn't have any money, and has no interesting new revenue pipelines coming.
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A crate that is perfectly visible and obvious if the player is in a dark room with his settings correct can be lost in a scene if it's bright and he has screen glare. A cliff wall that looks completely jumpable from the default camera may look impassible if the player shifts it.
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But this shouldn't be a surprise as Twitter was basically treading water before Elon acquired it -- and immediately saddled the company with $13 billion dollars of debt, which require constant debt servicing (you know, interest payments).
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Movie: .... and by the way, clearly the Emperor fucks.
Me: Yeah
Movie: *ba chunka bow bow*
Me: Ew. EW.
Movie: You’re doing the math aren’t you
Me: I’M DOING THE MATH
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Which made it all the more surprising when last week a bunch of blue checkmarked Tweeters reported getting informed they were getting big payouts from Twitter, in the $20K range.
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This problem also gets worse as room sizes get larger and rooms get more densely decorated. Most people don't typically play these games hoping to pixel hunt rooms the size of an airport hanger for the ladders and crates they need to progress.
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Movie: Also, one of the best parts of Solo was suggesting that Lando was... sexually adventurous. Free spirited.
Me: That’s true.
Movie: So we thought we’d close this movie with Lando being kind of creepy to a woman a third of his age.
Me: Thanks for that. Ew.
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