People playing full on action games using touchscreen controls. This is like the worst way to play a fucking game. Dragging your thumb across a screen for analog stick. Poking buttons that take up screen real estate. The phone getting incredibly hot in your hand. Phone designs converged into glass rectangles with no standardized controller interface. Like yeah, you can get controller thingies for your phone, but you have to design it to work without one. This is like all the worst compromises in usability because the iphone became the final form of the cellphone. And yet, more people play games like this than they do with regular controllers on an actual console, just because the smartphone market is so massive.
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I always think about overwrought phone fps setups
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I canât really lie that Iâm not all about that square keyboard
2 Likes
i dig it
1 Like
for definite
Once I watched a Detroit: Become Human playthrough done by a long running youtube group called Super Best Friends Play or something, and after the series concluded I was looking forward to more videos, but then they promptly broke up after an entire decade right after the last video was posted.
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My favorite letâs play group, I still rewatch some of their old playthroughs every now and then. Rewatched some of DMC4 last week just to remember what happened in that game.
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5 Likes
[Psychological Horror] [Child Friendly] [Simulation] [Text Adventure]
one of you sickos is going to find a matching game and recommend it
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How âmodernâ game design in striving/mastery oriented genres has converged on a common trick: require the player to spend 90% of their time on activities theyâre already comfortable with, and 10% on less-familiar activities critical to the outcome:
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Multi-phase bosses: 90% of time redoing the first phase over and over, 10% of the time getting quickly killed by the second phase
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Battle royale/extraction PvP: 90% of the time collecting resources and observing, 10% of the time in combat
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Roguelikes: 90% of the time retreading earlier areas or situations where the RNG is in your favor, 10% with unknown enemies/traps or threatening combinations
This can be satisfying for many reasons, particularly it creates a sense of skilled preparation for a high-stakes moment. But after I noticed the pattern I couldnât unsee it: I feel now like games have gotten really stingy on providing meaningful opportunities to practice.
20 Likes
Great way to create an artificial scarcity of new content in your game that makes players repeat the same content over and over just for a chance to see something new. Absolutely miserable design trick that makes you resent a whole lot of games once you see it for what it is⌠If developers could stop being so deathly afraid of their games not meeting this supposed value to time thing that so many âgamersâ seem obsessed with, theyâd maybe realise you could create a shorter experience with more interesting things happening moment to moment instead of this lifeless gruel they seem so devoted to serving up again and againâŚ
Sorry, this stuff makes me real grumpy 
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Anytime a gamer speaks approvingly about a âgameplay loopâ I immediately become suspicious
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becoming very normie âold manâ about this but imo âgameplay loopsâ are for people who for some reason do not have enough structure or routine in their normal lives. i already got a âgameplay loopâ itâs called having a job
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people talking about âgameplay loopsâ feels like they want to talk about how they know how games work in a very GameMakerâs Toolkit way but have never actually built a game so the intricacies and complexity behind systems are hidden from them. Itâs a way to sound smart.
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i feel like more people would know about making a videogame by trying to make their own anad understand how complex it is, and therefore build appreciation, but people are so scared by the idea of coding anything that they never start.
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To be fair, as someone who studied computer science for four years, Iâm still scared of coding! The complexities and intricacies of it tend to lead me down rabbit holes that distract from actually finishing my own games. Very much considering picking up an old copy of klik n play just to force some creative restrictions on my process. I do sympathise with anyone whoâs been frightened off by a modern game engineâŚ
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messing with klik n play and game maker really taught me how hard it is to even conceive of rules that make fun games, and itâs a real fun time. mario maker and, earlier, lunar magic also fill that lil niche for me. limitations are good!
7 Likes
went on today about how the humble text box as a medium for dialogue in videogames has expressive potential that is underappreciated, often sidelined for recorded acting that carries technical and logistical burdens and yet often seems less expressive than text boxes do (and how rare is it for acting in videogames to be even decent)
final fantasy narratives sometimes feel less emotionally impactful the more acting they have as the series progresses from the cartridge era to the bluray eraâŚ
itâs also always been the case that recording dialogue for movies is a huge technical and logistical burden that everyone expects every movie to take on 
18 Likes