ethanclark.bsky.social
Game Developer/Programmer. N Step Steve, Tauriel Teaches Typing, Bee Magic, and more. (they/them)
78 posts
253 followers
83 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
comment in response to
post
So, TL;DR: My stance is that "The game exists inside *and outside* of the player's head."
My "practical advice" is that fudging systems works well in some genres (like "cinematic" games) but not in others (like thinky puzzle games, where clearly communicating your systems is necessary.)
comment in response to
post
And perhaps this is the true core of how I feel about the matter: saying that it's almost always better to fudge your systems devalues the artistic merits of the systems themselves. If there's "truth and beauty" in systemic design, why not articulate that clearly to our players?
comment in response to
post
I promise I'm not trying to be pedantic here; I think we need to give more consideration to the "byproducts" of games, i.e. every aspect of video games that isn't the direct experience of play. Because direct gameplay isn't the only method of interaction. Gameplay in general isn't, either.
comment in response to
post
Designers often share examples of how their games "lie to their players", e.g. saying an event has a 95% chance of occurring when it actually has a 99% chance.
Those anecdotes are interesting! They're also *objective facts* about games that exist *outside of the players' mind*.
comment in response to
post
Like, you could argue that the purpose of games is to be an experience, so it follows that the experience is all that matters, but IMO that is A) a nuance-destroying view of games, and B) an idea that, when pressed for evidence, *is not completely consistent with itself*
comment in response to
post
And even ***IF*** ChatGPT happens to be "alive," modern day OpenAI wouldn't be my first choice for its caretaker.
comment in response to
post
The ESRB is primarily for devs who want to put physical copies of their games in retail stores. This used to be almost all of the industry, now it’s not. Many digital storefronts have no hard requirements for ESRB ratings, so many devs don’t bother.
comment in response to
post
Good communication is key here. Saying “we CAN’T add this variable” is less useful than saying “adding this variable would cause these negative effects,” since the latter gives everyone the info they need to make informed decisions about the project.
comment in response to
post
The CRM team originally had dinosaurs in the game, but at the last minute, the publisher decided they didn’t want to pay for expensive mapper chips. They had to remove the dinos as a result.
comment in response to
post
If your problem doesn't show up in the debugger, my first piece of advice is to liter a bunch of print statements at various points throughout your project as a way of roughly tracing where the program crashes. Narrow down the crash location, add more, and re-export until you find the issue.
comment in response to
post
Actually, it also “helps” that the web game industry is much less profitable than it used to be, so there’s less incentive to steal games.
comment in response to
post
> "Also every year it unlikes ALL of the comments on my end."
Who does this benefit? Are they bean-counting storage so much that they decide to remove likes as a storage-saving measure (Saving the storage equivalent of pennies)? Is this some weird data regulation thing?
comment in response to
post
Have you played RAM? There's a lot of strategy in bot selection/swapping, and it has a very tasteful approach to meta scaling. store.steampowered.com/app/2256450
comment in response to
post
Wait, there are publishers who don't give you any money but instead pay other people to do work for you? Is this common? Aren't they just co-developers at that point???
comment in response to
post
Seems so: alan.draknek.org/games/puzzle...
comment in response to
post
comment in response to
post
Monstrous Turnabout is a case from the game Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies. Schaffrillas’ joke is that he’s going to prank it “when it gets interesting”, but in his opinion, it never gets interesting.
comment in response to
post
As I'm sure you know, game narrative isn't (necessarily) just a novel chopped up into cut scenes. DD uses every tool at its disposal to make a story that takes place *within* its gameplay, not around it. (Maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but still.)
comment in response to
post
Have you played Dicey Dungeons? IMO, it does a really good job of embedding a narrative into a systems game.
comment in response to
post
My trusted news source for tech news is arstechnica.com, and they cover a lot of global policy and the like. (Not enough to qualify as "general", unfortunately; I don't know about that one.)
comment in response to
post
(And if you don't mind a little selfish self promotion... thinkygames.com/games/bee-ma...)
comment in response to
post
Bonus category of "games that I played for a little bit but probably should get around to playing more:" Entwined Time, Tactical Breach Wizards, Star Stuff.
Go check out all the other nominees too!
comment in response to
post
This is a bit of an odd one out, but: they have a category for content creators, and the Eggplant podcast is one of them! I've been a long time listener, go check them out: eggplant.show
comment in response to
post
Similarly, Croquet Conundrum was a simple yet charming game. I liked its approach to connecting puzzles together. thinkygames.com/games/croque...
comment in response to
post
Leap Year reminds me of the golden era of Flash games; It's a short game that takes a unique concept and executes it perfectly. Check this out if you love "mechanical twists."
thinkygames.com/games/leap-y...
comment in response to
post
Balatro also needs no introduction. It's a fun roguelike about numbers going up, and going up a *lot*. thinkygames.com/games/balatro/
comment in response to
post
You've probably heard of Animal Well already, and I can vouch for it. It's a deep metroidvania game dripping with atmosphere and well worth your time.
thinkygames.com/games/animal...
comment in response to
post
YouTube is a good place to put it IMO, nothing else really competes for uploading long form videos.