This thing is so completely fragile and broken that I don’t think they can even fix it. When you try to fix one bug, up pops another bug because of unexpected dependencies. I’m sure that’s what happened with the new bugs, and it’s a classic strong code smell for terribly designed code.

Monotone:  Gee. What. A. Surprise.

Todd Howard: ‘OKAY, Bethesda Employees. This has been the worst series of fuckups in our entire history. We’ve burned through years worth of good will and we look like the stupidest, most incompetent clowns in the gaming planet right now. I don’t want to see any more of this staggering incompetence!’

Steam is such a massive juggernaut that it has to be someone with something gigantic as a lever. Better Epic with Fortnite than Activision or EA.

Yay! I fired this up again last night to see if the expansion had somehow come out at 9PM (no), but I was just kinda running around and looking at how pretty everything was, stabbing a few people and setting others on fire just to see if I still had it (I do) and thinking I want to be back in this game again - in…

Yeah, either that or maybe devs can cut prices a little since they’re getting a better cut (to start with). Some carrot.

This looks way better for devs, but how are you going to get users to use it?

Super cool video of the collisions here (simulated of course). I suggest pausing the video and moving one frame at a time with the , and . (comma and period) keys when it’s near the final merge point.

Sorry for going to SRS on this (gawd it’s cute), but...

*head scratch* I kinda feel you just supported this argument, even if you don’t understand it.

If you can’t do, teach.

I hope I’m wrong too, but nobody’s chimed in with any useful information yet. Just repeatedly asserting that it covers any device without a shred of supporting evidence (even though that might be true).

There are many games with good writing - he’s written several of them!  There are lots of other small indie games like Analogue: A Hate Story, Sunless Sea, or Stories: The Path of Destiny that have fantastic writing.

You’d think that the fact that this whole ‘Lean In’ bullshit came from Sheryl Sandberg, who is the Michael Cohen dirty enforcer for Facebook, an evil company that lies, lies, lies about everything while raping your soul and driving your soul to despair as a business model would be enough to tell you this is all just…

As someone who reads a crapload and plays a crapload of video games... it’s not cherry picking. Video game writing sucks in comparison. You can blah blah blah about interactivity or whatever excusing terrible writing, but in the end there are only a very few video games that can stand up against a Blade Runner or a…

The RDR2 thing isn’t a problem with the dialogue though - the game actually does a decent job of the whole subtext and making each line count. The problem is the entire structure of the game, where you’re trying to tell a story about Totally Evil Arthur and Fallen Saint Arthur at the same time.

I don’t think he’s saying you should make video games sound more like films, he just used a film because it’s got far better dialogue than your typical video game.

The talk shows you how to do this in an interactive medium. He takes the already good Blade Runner scene and adds interactivity without killing the flow or purpose of the scene.

Having seen the entire talk - his point is that most video game writing is completely bereft of subtext, meanders pointlessly, and provides no benefit. Then he shows you how to get the immersiveness while also providing subtext, constant forward movement, and usefulness.

Well that was amazing - I hardly ever watch long videos, but I watched all 49 minutes of that, even when it was taking away from my Spyro time.