yeah i think this gets at the big problem that the focus of these programs is often really scattered esp when it’s trying to balance general arts education with providing tools for employability and hard to get teachers who can really teach specific skills well or have the time to really explore stuff with any kind of depth. and then there are a lot of kids who act like if they’re not using UE they’re basically being shafted and they don’t want to hear anything else even if the way tools operate could change drastically in a handful of years and the tools are one thing but you sort of have to know how to make games to make games in the first place which - it turns out! - a lot of programs don’t even really teach.
5 Likes
Teaching in a games school, yeah that’s pretty much the doctrine that whatever you want to do HAS to be PBR, has to make a Riot boss’s portfolio review happy, and anything interesting has to fit in the margins of that. A lot of fear around portfolios right now. My students aren’t rich kids, they are universally in poverty, but they are competing in those terms. I teach a four year games degree at a community/technical college, so the state’s mandate is that we have to have an Advisory Committee of mid-level bosses from local studios like Monolith, Blizzard, etc, and they set the direction of the curriculum that allows us to stay accredited.
11 Likes
A degree I taught, which I did not make, had ‘game design’ in the title. There were no dedicated modules/courses/units that would cover what I’d call game design (mostly programming, art, and production). I had to Trojan horse design briefs into a larger more general module and even those were optional. By 3rd year we had a big lack of ‘game design’ skills despite the degree’s title. It’s mad but also quite common.
13 Likes
I know it started out as a sane reaction to systematically undervalued work, and being aware of labour issues is always good, but now I rrreally wish people in and around the « creative industry » would stop acting like they’re the poorest most exploited people on the face of the Earth.
11 Likes
Heavenly Bodies is one of those games where extremely granular and some what clumsy control over your character makes it challenging to navigate (think the same school as Getting Over It). You’re an astronaut tasked with doing various things in different space stations, like deploying solar panels, aligning antenna arrays, etc. You have to kick yourself off of walls, pull yourself around, and clumsily drift toward your objectives. I like it in principle, in practice I don’t have the patience. I finished one mission and a little way into mission 2 I decided to call it. Chalk it up as another game that I think is cool but don’t actually want to play.
I also played a bunch of other stuff in my PS4 backlog but none of it really inspired much desire to write about it ITT.
7 Likes
Is the movement kinda intricate and interesting or more mushy and physics-y? I do love an unusual movement scheme but a lot of these games can also feel quite samey…
1 Like
you have seperate left/right hand/leg controls mapped to the shoulder buttons. Extra Vehicular Activity is terrifying as you bump loose your tether/attach both ends to a tether point mistakenly and slowly drift out of view of the station cameras
most of the challenge is keeping left/right straight & internalising zero G inertia and reaction forces. opening hatches is a pain if you grab it from the wrong edge and didn’t consider the forces
“Ok I got the handle, now to contract the correct arm” bonk “why did I headbutt the hatch”
6 Likes
I mean yeah.
Video games aren’t unique, though. Only rich or specifically non-needy people can do wacky things that don’t make money. Everyone else has to make money or suffer. Or just cease to exist. So… art in capitalism.
1 Like
Yeah that’s not true though.
1 Like
Sorry I don’t want to be so mean about this, it’s just it does tend to get on my nerves when the extremely normal human activity of making stuff for fun, that people have been doing for tens of thousands of years while living lives far more wretched than any of ours, is reduced to this sort of monocultural consumer product frame.
It’s just bizarre to me, like do you not know any children who make games or movies for fun?
5 Likes
there are at least like three people who post on this very forum that very visibly make wacky things and are also extremely broke and definitely do not come from money??
11 Likes
Thanks to generative AI for the first time in history anyone can make music without having to rent studio time and hire session musicians.
5 Likes
the dialogue in the gem engine game “call to arms” is fucking insane. its like literally too low effort to effectively convince you its satirical but its also bizarre enough not to be sincere
also half the “hooyah” lines are actually something else in the VO and have been subtitled that way for mysterious purposes
9 Likes
There’s definitely greater likelihood to feel a downward pressure on ur free time & hobbies to make them profitable if ur broke but I don’t think that equates to inability. The only place where class is closer to an insurmountable barrier imo is production/“polish” but even then i think people who want to split the difference can, just end up sacrificing a significantly greater amount of time. Which does take a certain constitution or resolve in context of that pressure.
I also wouldn’t at all say that in my experience, wealthy people (as a group) are the ones interested in making wacky things that don’t make money. Obviously, this convo relies on some level of generalization about psychology, but in my eyes people who are financially comfortable are often raised or driven in a context that very much values prestige & profit as signs of success/accomplishment.
8 Likes
I think more often they like accidentally spilled coffee on Quincy Jones’ jacket and then he asked them to twiddle the knobs while he went to the bathroom to wash it off
2 Likes
Recording jobs in the 70s were almost entirely based on knowing somebody, on showing up to work even remotely on time, and your ability to effectively press-gang a group of people who almost certainly hated each other by this point and were on god knows how many drugs rather than your George Martin-esque demo reel. It was, from every war story I’ve heard, did the studio burn down? Well, keep showing up, idiot.
(Sources: I got to meet a bunch of old recording engineers as part of taking Electronic Music classes, it wasn’t all shooting the shit, I did learn how to mic a full band in the studio.)
12 Likes
Yeah! Stoked for the people that can exist being extremely broke if their art sustains them. I hope they make the cooolest stuff!
That said, being extremely broke is not something everyone is into or can do. Like, if you have need for health insurance in our current hellscape etc. etc. It sucks!
1 Like
you say that like it’s a choice people are making? which i don’t really think is fair at all tbh. i don’t think it’s that simple?? a lot of people end up there because their options for employment aren’t particularly great to begin with and it’s their one big creative outlet. i don’t want to argue further but i think you’re making some pretty serious presumptions here that just do not ring true at all from my experience. and i’m kind of sick of people making the assumption that like weird/experimental art is some kind of extreme bourgeois indulgence for the wealthy when it’s not true at all from my experience.
9 Likes
finally playing games i have long known i would love and guess what i was right
i gushed about it + shared screencaps in the furry thread but super lesbian animal rpg deserves a general nod as a very good game i played today, even if youre not a queer furry i can comfortably recommend it (tho you will certainly get more out of it if you are). The nicest thing i can say about it is that it reminds me of mother 3. not in weightiness of theme/tone (tho there’s still some very emotionally resonant shit… the main character (and writer/developer) is a trans woman with severe anxiety, it’s impossible for me to not relate) but very much in specific loving pixel art detail & butter-smooth pacing. Also your GF can summon her own theme song & you can give her a kiss and these are both combat buffs for her. i would like to make a game like this someday.
…
i have also finally started disco elysium and have played about an hour. it already has the best writing ive ever seen in a videogame lol. and i am playing Final Cut with full VO enabled even tho thats not normally my shit at all, and god the voice acting in this game is extremely good. the guy who narrates & reads your skill “dialogue” is particularly awesome, he has such fucking gravitas. Went with a ““build”” that reasonably approximated my own fuckup self: 1 INT/6 PSY/1 FYS/4 MOT eg. an overly sensitive dipshit weakling w/ good hand-eye coordination. (i also set Endurance as my signature skill so i wouldnt immediately die from a stiff breeze)
I already love Kim. and the way the game gives you 10-15 minutes at the start to stumble around being a total loser, then introduces you to this immediately charismatic man ( 
KIM’S VOICE) whos supernaturally patient with your bullshit in a way that like, inspires you to buck up & get your shit together. (but also to screw with him a little bit cuz he’s so buttoned up)
the hardest part about playing it so far is i have terrible secondhand anxiety thats not conducive to playing as a hot mess
(also like SLARPG its hella trans-resonant, though ofc in a markedly different way. wow imagine having such immense and deep-seeded self-loathing that you constantly dissociate & abuse drugs to cope. imagine waking up one day with no memory of your past self & the opportunity to completely reinvent your identity. crazy huh? couldnt be me) i would like to make a game like this someday.
8 Likes
finally someone is talking some sense around here
3 Likes