The Cost Of Doing Business (The Jimquisition) - General

The Cost Of Doing Business (The Jimquisition)

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[QUOTE=buu342;53112689]I think I missed a memo. What's wrong with Extra Credits? I always found their videos somewhat interesting, and supposedly their team consists of actual game developers, so I thought they'd have a lot more experience than what I'm getting a vibe from here. What makes them so different from Mark Brown or any other YouTuber that discusses game development or design? Also, isn't Game Theory is about generating theories about story Lore or applying said lore to real life. I don't think the two go hand in hand, so I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here?[/QUOTE] Extra credits doesn't do research on things properly, i watched them a bit when they were on escapist when i noticed them speak about games i actually play, and i started noticing inaccuracies about mechanics and aspects they were discussing. Looked into it, they often have misinformation where misinformation is the correct term, and where thats the wrong term there's a lot of stretches. They seem to start with their idea of how game design works and go gather/stretch/invent evidence for it, rather than looking at the evidence and coming to a conclusion later. also ages after i stopped watching them, they started acting like cunts to people over political bullshit they invented so they can fuck off.

[QUOTE=Mattk50;53112824]Extra credits doesn't do research on things properly, i watched them a bit when they were on escapist when i noticed them speak about games i actually play, and i started noticing inaccuracies about mechanics and aspects they were discussing. Looked into it, they often have misinformation where misinformation is the correct term, and where thats the wrong term there's a lot of stretches. They seem to start with their idea of how game design works and go gather/stretch/invent evidence for it, rather than looking at the evidence and coming to a conclusion later. also ages after i stopped watching them, they started acting like cunts to people over political bullshit they invented so they can fuck off.[/QUOTE] Examples of inaccuracies regarding 'mechanics and aspects'? When I used to watch them their idea of 'how game design works' were all valid ideas and approaches. Edit: Like, I mean, if I were to start a web series about basic game design stuffs and were to cover a topic like breadcrumbing then I'd be 'gathering and inventing' evidence to demonstrate the reward system and how it can be used and is used in various games. The 'inventing' would involve me setting up simple games to show how the breadcrumbs make the player want to follow particular paths or flows without them feeling 'forced to follow them' and the 'gathering' would be me just taking various footage from games that use breadcrumbing in various respects and going 'and here's some real-life examples where it was used'. Delving into the philosophy I could see folks calling 'stretching' because we have to make assumptions about the people playing the game to get into it even though it nonetheless reaches back into the Skinnerbox-side of things ultimately where mounting rewards tend to create a cycle the player willing puts them in to obtain more of those rewards. To sum up: What's your specific beefs because I'm curious and nobody's done more than say more-or-less 'eh they don't care about fact-based lecturing' when what I've watched of them shows that they care enough to actually go and verify as well as get footage to back their statements.

[QUOTE=Noob4life;53112823]AAA games are already the top dogs of the arms race, and how will anyone justify a game's higher base cost? Game length? Review scores? Not to mention that the pricing is in a bind right now that nobody would dare raise their standard edition price beyond 60USD which has stood for so long. Microtransactions and special editions are a way is the answer to the problem, but currently it isn't very popular with this subset of players.[/QUOTE] Game length and review scores are merely metrics of what people actually appreciate. If a game is being super ambitious and actually nails it, then the price is justified. If they don't stick the landing, then the game quickly corrects its price, just like many AAA games do now when their sales underperform. If they aren't as ambitious, they can stay with the usual AAA price. But this is an aside. If I feel like giving the developer more money then I will happily buy the expansion, DLC, skin, whatever but they shouldn't just assume I will or force me to by telling me that their game is actually worth THIS much. I don't give a shit about how much YOU think YOUR game is worth.

[QUOTE=Jabberwocky;53112855]Game length and review scores are merely metrics of what people actually appreciate. If a game is being super ambitious and actually nails it, then the price is justified. If they don't stick the landing, then the game quickly corrects its price, just like many AAA games do now when their sales underperform. If they aren't as ambitious, they can stay with the usual AAA price. But this is an aside. If I feel like giving the developer more money then I will happily buy the expansion, DLC, skin, whatever but they shouldn't just assume I will or force me to by telling me that their game is actually worth THIS much. I don't give a shit about how much YOU think YOUR game is worth.[/QUOTE] Though they are metrics of what people appreciate, unfortunately the purse-side of things take them as a 'temperature read' for 'how good your game is to the everyman' rather than 'how much your target audience enjoys it'. Even if you knock it out of the park for your target audience if the everyman is booing it then the purse is going to come down and ask why you're wasting their money a lot of the time (exception: you have a purse that actually understands what games are, what your target audience is, and cares more about supporting that audience than building your studio's image as a blockbuster-maker and a titan of the industry). Regarding pricing - we all tell you how much we feel our game is worth and people do tend to care. As an example if the next Unreal Tournament was sold for $1.50 that would harm sales because immediately people would go 'wait, is this shovelware' or even be insulted at first flash by this 'OK, so it's free-to-play but you're being a money-grubbing arse by charging a paltry upfront fee just to make sure I buy something even if I don't get into your in-game market' sentiment without even looking beyond the game's price. People do make snap decisions on your product depending on what price you set it as. If you sell your product for $59.99 people expect it to be top-shelf tier in every respect and in every part of your game design - they also expect either a lengthy experience or a very engaging multiplayer. If you sell for $4.99 people expect a short game with not a lot of time invested into it. Et cetera. Opinions on what price means what to who varies, of course, but it holds true if you ask a lot of people - because it's just one of those core marketing things about people in general because people make assumptions on price by internally thinking that cheap means poor quality or a rip-off and expensive means high quality. Nonetheless, AAA development [i]does[/i] inflate the price of games beyond what developers might otherwise sell them at. You might think your game you've invested some $200k into is worth about 8-12 hours of play and so decide to go for a reasonable $25-30 price range. But then you're told the marketing dept. has spent [i]4.3 million[/i] on it and so the purse says they have to sell at $49.99 or higher in order to recoup the marketing price even though that's wholly out of your wheelhouse and is not the game you built. If you're mad at AAA pricing, be mad at the purse strings and the investors. Typically the people who actually make the software itself aren't involved much in the ultimate pricing of the game - even if they feel the price doesn't match their expectations of what people would pay for it without being prompted. It's sort of undermined, too, by the whole '59.99 is now just the price for a game, regardless of its content' stuff and because people accept that then it sort of self-justifies.

I'm not disagreeing with you. That's largely my point. If people want to pay $60 for a game, that's what it's worth. It doesn't matter how many dollars or manhours people put in. Some details I will dispute though. The initial pricing may influence first impressions but if something is worth more than what they're charging for it, the word gets out. I certainly struggle to think of an example of a good game that didn't sell specifically because it was priced too low. The Jimquisition video also neatly debunked the notion that games are priced the way they are in order to recoup the costs of production. And even if they were, so what? Just because you spent so much, doesn't mean I have to spend more. It just means you go out of business. And marketing exists to make more money out of something. Companies wouldn't spend $5 million marketing something if they didn't do the math a figured out that doing so would net them at least $5.1 million. It could definitely be done more ethically but that's another topic. People shouldn't be mad at anyone over pricing. It is the customers that have the power as long as they stay savvy and resist the bullshit from marketing. Be mad at the manipulation to trick you into spending money.

[QUOTE=Jabberwocky;53112917]I'm not disagreeing with you. That's largely my point. If people want to pay $60 for a game, that's what it's worth. It doesn't matter how many dollars or manhours people put in. Some details I will dispute though. The initial pricing may influence first impressions but if something is worth more than what they're charging for it, the word gets out. I certainly struggle to think of an example of a good game that didn't sell specifically because it was priced too low. The Jimquisition video also neatly debunked the notion that games are priced the way they are in order to recoup the costs of production. And even if they were, so what? Just because you spent so much, doesn't mean I have to spend more. It just means you go out of business. People shouldn't be mad at anyone over pricing. It is the customers that have the power as long as they stay savvy and resist the bullshit from marketing. Be mad at the manipulation to trick you into spending money.[/QUOTE] I don't dispute that they're not priced the way they are to actually recoup the costs of production most of the time. I'm merely stating that it is the reasoning given more often than not to justify the price being set to whatever it's set to. My main point of contention with your statement was just that you said 'you don't give a shit how much we say our game is worth' - but you do because people do. If you meant instead 'you don't give a shit about the justifications beyond gameplay features for why a game is priced the way it is' then yeah that more lines up with what you're saying here. People are often mad about pricing though because they don't think about the price being manipulative; they think about the price versus their spending cash versus the game's features and typically are either mad that they can't afford it or mad that the features don't appear to justify the price. IMO they should be mad and we'd want them to be mad. Mad people remember that they wanted your game and might buy it later when you inevitably reduce its price or put it on sale. If you're forgotten you've almost certainly lost that sale by contrast. They should also be mad for their own sake because enough people yelling at a company that their games are priced too high does cause migration of price to occur - because ultimately the purse strings will yield to pressure if they feel that pressure is either high enough to see if lowering that price creates more demand. Us spending so much does directly influence how much we ask for; that's just how things work. Going out of business may be a result of that - but ultimately games are typically built to make a profit and in order to make a profit, you have to price yourself in a way that helps you recoup what you spent and hopefully gain profit above that. If I spend 2 hours on a game and charge $1 I think that's just as justifiable as my spending 4000 hours on a game and charging $20. It's not paying for my labor, it's how much I feel my labor is ultimately worth compared to other games in the market. This gets more complex and daring/inflatory when people with invested money get involved in the pricing decisions though.

[QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53112841]Examples of inaccuracies regarding 'mechanics and aspects'? When I used to watch them their idea of 'how game design works' were all valid ideas and approaches. Edit: Like, I mean, if I were to start a web series about basic game design stuffs and were to cover a topic like breadcrumbing then I'd be 'gathering and inventing' evidence to demonstrate the reward system and how it can be used and is used in various games. The 'inventing' would involve me setting up simple games to show how the breadcrumbs make the player want to follow particular paths or flows without them feeling 'forced to follow them' and the 'gathering' would be me just taking various footage from games that use breadcrumbing in various respects and going 'and here's some real-life examples where it was used'. Delving into the philosophy I could see folks calling 'stretching' because we have to make assumptions about the people playing the game to get into it even though it nonetheless reaches back into the Skinnerbox-side of things ultimately where mounting rewards tend to create a cycle the player willing puts them in to obtain more of those rewards. To sum up: What's your specific beefs because I'm curious and nobody's done more than say more-or-less 'eh they don't care about fact-based lecturing' when what I've watched of them shows that they care enough to actually go and verify as well as get footage to back their statements.[/QUOTE] at the top of my head [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuqmKg6QQTw[/media] [url]https://np.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/4frib6/extra_history_suleiman_the_magnificent_or_how_to/[/url] nothing comes to mind in regards to game theory, but I'm not well versed enough in the subject to really tell, I'm sure others might contribute to that. Need less to say they have a spotty track record of picking and choosing evidence, bad sources and fabricating evidence.

[QUOTE=Xavith;53112939]at the top of my head (video) [url]https://np.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/4frib6/extra_history_suleiman_the_magnificent_or_how_to/[/url] nothing comes to mind in regards to game theory, but I'm not well versed enough in the subject to really tell, I'm sure others might contribute to that. Need less to say they have a spotty track record of picking and choosing evidence, bad sources and fabricating evidence.[/QUOTE] Not seeing anything particularly wrong with the EC video you've posted so far. The main problem I'm seeing with it is just that they're not giving consideration to optimization of network usage and so forth - but I mean, they're not network engineers - they're game design theorists. They did bother to actually go out and find evidence that supports their hypothesis and that evidence appears to come from unbiased reporting - albeit the concern of bandwidth running out obviously didn't happen as expected, but that's probably due to internal changes made in recognition of the then developing problem -- or cellphone packets/network architecture is reliable enough to take on a world where their bandwidth is 100% in use, leading to constantly dropped/not received packets and so forth. I've walked around with a WiFI app on to watch bandwidth and channel usage. I live in a fairly well-spaced-out apartment complex in the less populated part of Ohio's suburbs (and previously in the high-density areas of Plano) - the channels are always very crowded and multiple routers are always using the same bands with about the same amount of power behind them. There's definite crowding going on with bandwidth usage at the moment and that's just talking about WiFI bandwidth ranges. Whether it'll get bad enough that we need new network structures (e.g. migrating people to 4G from 3G et cetera) to keep signal quality high by changing the sorts of signal structure being sent out/received is a bit more speculative, yeah. Beyond that, they're more or less re-reporting what independent reporting was reporting about that stuff back then - so it doesn't sound like what they're reporting there is 'bad sources' or 'fabricating evidence' when they're just sort of reporting what Credit Suisse reported after it put out a survey to network companies asking them, basically, 'how's y'all's bandwidth usage/uptime'. e.g. [thumb]https://imgur.com/Umxxt9m.png[/thumb] That's all sort of off topic though because I'm interested in what game-specific stuff they've been distorting/picking and choosing/fabricating evidence for - and I don't even see them distorting/fabricating evidence here either.

[QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53112807]I don't feel comfortable lumping Gametheory and EC into the same category. A lot of the things they discuss on EC game design and so forth wise is entry-level sorts of discussion most of the time -- but they still hit the nail with their hammer almost all the time. They have a brisk and somewhat topical approach to the subject matter - but they make up for that by making their content entertaining to watch and thus easier to remember. (Necessary context I guess: I'm a game developer with about 10 years of experience at this point who's worked mainly for indie/A studios but have talked a lot and worked with folks from the AAA and Mobile side of things) I haven't watched them in a while but are there particular qualms you have with their content which makes them 'for people that don't care about reality'?[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=buu342;53112689]I think I missed a memo. What's wrong with Extra Credits? I always found their videos somewhat interesting, and supposedly their team consists of actual game developers, so I thought they'd have a lot more experience than what I'm getting a vibe from here. What makes them so different from Mark Brown or any other YouTuber that discusses game development or design? Also, isn't Game Theory is about generating theories about story Lore or applying said lore to real life. I don't think the two go hand in hand, so I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here?[/QUOTE] EC likes to drone on and hammer in ideas, sometimes taking a 1 minute idea into a 5 minute one. They have a thousand ideas on what games should be but are very [URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vB9iSXPzm0"]bad at actually showing examples or truly explaining why[/URL]. Sometimes they'll even say that something 'should be this way', when they've actually worked on very few games if any. Even though video games as a medium can flexibly adapt something into any form and that genre's and ideas aren't universal across the board. [URL="https://critpoints.net/2015/10/15/extra-credits-is-bad/"]More examples here[/URL]. or their [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6xQlnzffRg"]Hatred video for example[/URL]. It's a 7 minute video where he tries to explain that violent video games are good by repeating himself but this one specific violent video game is bad because he doesn't like it. He isn't a psychologist and uses double-think. I group him with gametheory because both channels just kind of, totally seem to make shit up, probably not that good of an example though. You never actually learn anything watching EC, its either insanely obvious or just made up, sometimes just totally ignoring whats happening around them. Lets not forget that he isn't successful at all in being a game dev, as far as I know. [URL="https://youtu.be/1xeTMCPG2gg"]When they ditch the bullshit it actually ends up being a good video[/URL] that's really grounded in examples and does slam dunk demonstrate effectively what they're talking about.

[QUOTE=J!NX;53112978]EC likes to drone on and hammer in ideas without actually saying anything at all. They have a thousand ideas on what games should be but are very [URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vB9iSXPzm0"]bad at actually showing examples or truly explaining why[/URL]. Sometimes they'll even say that something 'should be this way', when they've actually worked on very few games if any. or their [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6xQlnzffRg"]Hatred video for example[/URL]. It's a 7 minute video where he tries to explain that violent video games are good by repeating himself but this one specific violent video game is bad because he doesn't like it. He isn't a psychologist and uses double-think. I group him with gametheory because both channels just kind of, totally seem to make shit up, probably not that good of an example though. You never actually learn anything watching EC, its either insanely obvious or just made up. EC has a lot of advice on how to make games and a lot of the time they just ignore what actually happens in gaming. [URL="https://youtu.be/1xeTMCPG2gg"]When they ditch the bullshit it actually ends up being a good video[/URL] that's really grounded in examples and does slam dunk demonstrate effectively what they're talking about.[/QUOTE] As a horror-focused developer, I actually agree with a lot of what's said in that particular video e: the one the video you linked is 'responding' to (I remember watching it and agreeing at points; I have a lot of similar problems with 'horror' games these days) and they do explain their reasoning behind it. It sounds like you just don't like the delivery of the content rather than the content itself - which is fine, I mean. Not everybody likes lecture-style presentation like this and not everybody easily learns from this sort of rapid-fire presentation. Discussing the minutiae that separates thriller games from horror games (specifically the mechanics and flow -- probably better stated as 'the objective of the game' -- have gotten sort of entangled as people started associating them - horror-stuffs and thriller-stuffs - with each other) is a topic probably best explored by folks who've already got the definitions of those already down before you dive into a discussion about the nitty-gritty 'here's what we're doing wrong in horror games' presentation. I admit it's a bit of a departure for a mostly 'entry level' channel - but they did have weeks of stuff that 'prepped' the typical viewer as they led up to that discussion (edit: If I'm recalling correctly which one this one is. They've had a few horror-specific videos that go over this area of discussion and I can't seem to recall when, exactly, this video dropped). Every game-mechanic designer is a psychologist - we're just not licensed to dispense medicine or solve people's problems on a couch. What we do is understand the psychology of gamers, risk/reward systems, balance problems, and all that manner of stuff - the nitty gritty 'how and when and why' of the usually overly elaborate magic shows we put on to make people think they have agency and freedom, that there's a world outside that window, that picking up that ammo is useful, satisfying, and relevant to you as a player. I'm not seeing 'shit being made up' here in either example. He has particular problems with games that have a main character with a skin-deep objective, whose purpose is to be edgy, and whose overall message is 'kill innocent people and cops because fuck society'. He's probably not a fan of Duke Nukem 3D either but at least Duke tries to be a parody of all the things he presents where Hatred's character is played straight. It's a bit like saying 'A columbine shooter RPG is a bit much' - hating a Columbine Shooter RPG doesn't make you hate shooters or violence, that's doublethink. If Hatred wasn't played straight I doubt he would have any problems with it. As for things being 'insanely obvious' - well, it's aimed at people who are more or less new to game design. What's 'insanely obvious' to you is probably to a lot of people stuff they didn't think about. It's mostly super obvious, 'back to basics' stuff to me - but to my girlfriend it's fascinating because she doesn't dissect the games she plays to understand them, she just plays them, and is engrossed when she has 'aha, so that's why that is' moments with Extra Credits. Please provide examples of them 'totally making shit up' specifically in regards to game mechanics? Edit: [quote]Even though video games as a medium can flexibly adapt something into any form and that genre's and ideas aren't universal across the board.[/quote] If it 'as a medium can flexibly adapt something into anything' then why are 'ideas and genres not universal across the board'? The point of the horror video, for instance, was to argue that some things do not adapt well to certain forms of entertainment in games. You will not have a horror game if you give your player an exact value for their health, a known value of ammo, and clearly label everything in the game; you will have a thriller. Part of the whole 'never let the player fight C'thulhu' mantra is to avoid all that business. If players can do more than simply buy themselves a moment of time or hide themselves away from their aggressor in a horror game, you're taking big steps into thriller territory - and that's because the ideas you're bringing in are to empower and inform the player in a game genre whose objective is to depower and make the player question everything. Also your source of 'other examples' includes bits like this: "The magic circle in games isn’t about escapism, it’s about contracts. There’s a magic circle in decidedly non-escapist contexts, like rock paper scissors, chess, poker, go, basketball, hockey, tetris, etc. They’re bastardizing an established anthropological concept that I believe goes back to the book Homo Ludens." Please spare me. Games are about escapism - it is the primary reason for their existence and is the thing that decidedly separates them from games such as board games and so forth where you must 'trick yourself' into believing a world - where our job is to 'trick you into believing a world'. Contracts-specific stuff is for things like board games, as the author readily admits. It bastardizes nothing - it is in its own context so, of course, it doesn't have the same sort of concerns as board games. Video games are interactive simulations whose mechanics are more or less obscured entirely from the player most of the time. (excluding games where that is not the point, such as Strategy or 4X games - which are still about escapism but a different sort of which are, as you'd expect, also their own specific context)

[QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53112841]Examples of inaccuracies regarding 'mechanics and aspects'? When I used to watch them their idea of 'how game design works' were all valid ideas and approaches. Edit: Like, I mean, if I were to start a web series about basic game design stuffs and were to cover a topic like breadcrumbing then I'd be 'gathering and inventing' evidence to demonstrate the reward system and how it can be used and is used in various games. The 'inventing' would involve me setting up simple games to show how the breadcrumbs make the player want to follow particular paths or flows without them feeling 'forced to follow them' and the 'gathering' would be me just taking various footage from games that use breadcrumbing in various respects and going 'and here's some real-life examples where it was used'. Delving into the philosophy I could see folks calling 'stretching' because we have to make assumptions about the people playing the game to get into it even though it nonetheless reaches back into the Skinnerbox-side of things ultimately where mounting rewards tend to create a cycle the player willing puts them in to obtain more of those rewards. To sum up: What's your specific beefs because I'm curious and nobody's done more than say more-or-less 'eh they don't care about fact-based lecturing' when what I've watched of them shows that they care enough to actually go and verify as well as get footage to back their statements.[/QUOTE] Extra Credits are fine as a game design channel, considering they have more game industry experience than pretty much all the other channels out there it's weird that they don't actually stand out as better than them, but whatever. The problem outside of that is that they now have a history of favouring the established industry over consumers. They also randomly hate TotalBiscuit because of Gamergate or something(?). Like, they really hated TB, they had some proper completely asinine beef with him in public.

[QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53113010]As a horror-focused developer, I actually agree with a lot of what's said in that particular video (I remember watching it and agreeing at points; I have a lot of similar problems with 'horror' games these days) and they do explain their reasoning behind it. It sounds like you just don't like the delivery of the content rather than the content itself - which is fine, I mean. Not everybody likes lecture-style presentation like this and not everybody easily learns from this sort of rapid-fire presentation. Please provide examples of them 'totally making shit up' specifically in regards to game mechanics?[/QUOTE] The video I posted was a response video. It's also extremely far from rapid-fire, he'll sometimes take a simple concept that takes seconds to be explained and stretch it out over minutes, making it extremely tedious and dulling to watch (His Hatred video for example takes [URL="https://youtu.be/s6xQlnzffRg?t=180"]three minutes[/URL] just to ~DEEPLY EXPLAIN~ violence until he even gets to his point). That's where the brunt of the problem comes up in where he just kind of 'doesn't say anything'. 90% of what is said it quite effectively making the same point using an incredibly long description. I have no idea how you could think this is rapid-fire. It's as tedious and numbing as burning wet cardboard with a wet match. The video response itself explains that the stuff he discuss's actually happens in games, and sometimes even in the specific examples he uses. EC basically says 'this should be this way' despite the fact that yes, it already is that way. when I refer to 'making shit up' though I'm not talking about mechanics specifically, I'm more talking about 'ideas'. If you want examples, the videos have already been posted. [QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53113010] Every game-mechanic designer is a psychologist - we're just not licensed to dispense medicine or solve people's problems on a couch. What we do is understand the psychology of gamers, risk/reward systems, balance problems, and all that manner of stuff - the nitty gritty 'how and when and why' of the usually overly elaborate magic shows we put on to make people think they have agency and freedom, that there's a world outside that window, that picking up that ammo is useful, satisfying, and relevant to you as a player.[/QUOTE] Predicting what a gamer might do is far from actual psychology, I don't even know what you're trying to say here, but it sounds like the same problem I have with EC. You understand how they think on a basic level, not a deeper emotional level. What you understand is [I]world and story building[/I]. You're far closer to a novel writer than a psychologist, preying and understanding the expectations of someone. You don't actually understand how they think, you're using experiences and understanding of a world and how to build it, not understanding of human psychology. This just sounds like making shit up in exactly the same way EC does to create a deeper meaning from nothing. It's really pretentious video-game-philosophy at its best. [QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53113010] I'm not seeing 'shit being made up' here in either example. He has particular problems with games that have a main character with a skin-deep objective, whose purpose is to be edgy, and whose overall message is 'fuck society'. He's probably not a fan of Duke Nukem 3D either but at least Duke tries to be a parody of all the things he presents where Hatred's character is played straight. It's a bit like saying 'A columbine shooter RPG is a bit much' - hating a Columbine Shooter RPG doesn't make you hate shooters or violence, that's doublethink. If Hatred wasn't played straight I doubt he would have any problems with it.[/QUOTE] You're applying my 'made up' line even though I didn't even refer to it here specifically. [QUOTE][url]http://powerupgaming.co.uk/2014/10/30/what-is-the-meaning-of-hatred/[/url] In one interview, Zielinski claims that the intent behind Hatred was to “create something contrary to prevailing standards of forcing games to be more polite or nice than they really are or even should be” while targeting “a gamer that is coming home after a long, tiring and overall a sh**ty working day.”[/QUOTE] He doesn't seem to realize that people have the ability to think and perceive emotion without actually needing to act upon it, that YES, you can "CHANNEL" sadism, there are even films that do this. I don't see how its OK for one game to be about senseless violence like any Doom clone or any WW2 game but because Hatred is about "Sadism" it's worse. They're both violent games, they aren't mutually exclusive at all. If he didn't pretend that Hatred isn't about violence and explained that he feels like it takes that violence too far, then I'd be fine, but this idea that 'no, its [I]actually [/I]about sadism because I said so' just seems like yes, making shit up. I happen to have stated when it first came out that I think Hatred is just dumb senseless violence, but I didn't pretend that it's somehow separate from other violent games. I also don't pretend to somehow know how the 'sadism' will impact someones psyche, or act like there's some deeper emotional meaning to be learned from violent video games. And also the "I usually don't like to make categorically dismissive statements" line he says is gold, what the fuck lol, why even bother. [QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53113010] As for things being 'insanely obvious' - well, it's aimed at people who are more or less new to game design. What's 'insanely obvious' to you is probably to a lot of people stuff they didn't think about. It's mostly super obvious, 'back to basics' stuff to me - but to my girlfriend it's fascinating because she doesn't dissect the games she plays to understand them, she just plays them, and is engrossed when she has 'aha, so that's why that is' moments with Extra Credits.[/QUOTE] There are people that explain [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvqeNu7RmxM"]game design[/URL] far [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOC3vixnj_0"]more effectively[/URL]. With Extra Credits you don't actually learn anything useful at all. You'll get a pretty wrong impression about things. In fact, Extra Frames would make for a great example of a EC alternative, and its made within the same channel. Just look at the overwatch video, its something non-gamers would understand perfectly and is explained better than most videos out there. You don't need any understanding of games to listen to Extra Frames, just ears. [editline]6th February 2018[/editline] [QUOTE=Rossy167;53113192]Extra Credits are fine as a game design channel, considering they have more game industry experience than pretty much all the other channels out there it's weird that they don't actually stand out as better than them, but whatever. The problem outside of that is that they now have a history of favouring the established industry over consumers. They also randomly hate TotalBiscuit because of Gamergate or something(?). Like, they really hated TB, they had some proper completely asinine beef with him in public.[/QUOTE] More here [url]https://youtu.be/H3QZqD3OQbM?t=130[/url] [url]http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/852368-gamergate[/url] [url]http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/905925-gamergate[/url] All I could really find about it personally

[QUOTE=J!NX;53113207]Predicting what a gamer might do is far from actual psychology, I don't even know what you're trying to say here, but it sounds like the same problem I have with EC.[/quote] What?! I won't even (fully) rebut this because I'm hoping you're fully capable of rebutting it yourself by just looking at your sentence and re-evaluating it. Nobody's claiming to have a Masters in Psychology when they design mechanics - but it [I]is[/I] actual psychology. It's an extremely focused and particular field, sure, and it doesn't grant much knowledge outside of itself but you've got to be kidding me that 'predicting what someone might do doesn't involve psychology'. [quote]This just sounds like making shit up in exactly the same way EC does to create a deeper meaning from nothing. You understand how they think on a basic level, not a deeper emotional level. What you understand is [I]world and story building[/I]. You're far closer to a novel writer than a psychologist, preying and understanding the expectations of someone.[/quote] We're not looking for 'deep emotional levels'. Where did I say that we were? Horror games are the height of attempts to reach into the actual core of what makes us disgusted, alone, and frightened beyond simply getting your pulse up from sudden surprises and so forth. We don't need to know how they work at a 'deep emotional level' the majority of the time because we're not making sex robots here. We're making games where guns go bang and enemies usually fly into the sky as a result; most of the time anyway. What 'shit am I making up' here? [quote]He doesn't seem to realize that people have the ability to think and perceive emotion without actually needing to act upon it, that YES, you can "CHANNEL" sadism, there are even films that do this (Fight Club). I don't see how its OK for one game to be about senseless violence like any Doom clone or any WW2 game but because Hatred is about "Sadism" it's worse. They're both violent games, they aren't mutually exclusive at all.[/quote] He doesn't need to? Fight Club is an over-the-top parody. Doom is an over-the-top game. Games that take place in WW2 are often more about performing heroic or desperate acts than particularly cruel and wanton things. If we're going to make a fair comparison, let's talk about what separates Hatred from Spec Ops: The Line - your hint of the day for that is that every moment of Spec Ops: The Line is not the white phosphorous scene from beginning to end, except for the very end where it's revealed 'you're the real bad guy' as you draw a '666' in red marker on your forehead to launch the nuke that ends the world. [quote]If he didn't pretend that Hatred isn't about violence[/quote] He doesn't. He accuses it of being specifically about violence - but not senseless or cartoonish or justified violence - unjustified violence and brutality against specifically innocent people on a mass scale, played completely straight the whole way through except for its ending, which is where it goes from 'straight' to 'stupidly goofy' which in no way really changes what's gone on through the whole game up to that point. [quote]With Extra Credits you don't actually learn anything useful at all. You'll get a pretty wrong impression about things.[/quote] Girlfriend's gotten plenty of useful impressions and has learned plenty. She doesn't really want a 30 minute dissertation on why skinner boxes are the foundation of nearly everything we ask a player to do in a game - and why those boxes exist to begin with. She doesn't care. She just is interested in 'but why are there items in lines on this map' and the like. [quote]In fact, Extra Frames would make for a great example of a EC alternative, and its made within the same channel. Just look at the overwatch video, its something non-gamers would understand perfectly and is explained better than most videos out there.[/QUOTE] It's not really an alternative so much as a different sort of presentation and focus. My girlfriend really wouldn't care about showing character design through gun motions and that sort of thing - nor would most people who aren't really invested into design I'd gather. She doesn't want an hour-long TED talk on incentivizing player actions - she's looking for a YT video that briskly goes over the basics of stuff. There's definitely an audience for this sort of content and they're doing a fair job of serving to that audience from what I've seen of them.

[QUOTE=J!NX;53113207]No like Extra Credits[/QUOTE] Hmm... I've had this discussion before with someone else in Discord (also on the subject of EC). From what I could draw, you and him both simply does not like the style of delivery and disagreed with a few of their points, which is fine because I have my share of disputes, taking their info with a grain of salt, not commandments. Instead, case study and critique is what you much preferred, not intangible ideas and concepts. I have no idea about them and outside-of-video politics, I tend to stay away from drama like those.

Jim's main point about video games being too expensive to produce is really right on, if a company can't produce a game and make a profit on direct sales alone than there is something seriously wrong with the structure of that company. Microtransactions shouldn't be touted as necessary, but as a way to make more profit from top of what you're already making. But of course, we all know that's bullshit, they do make back how much they spent on making said games, they just don't make how much they want without shoving season passes and microtransactions and loot boxes down our throats. But of course, if they really aren't making back what they spent on just the base product, then that's really not the consumers problem is it? If they can't create a sustainable business model without everybody buying season passes and loot boxes then they really don't deserve to be making games in the first place, let alone running a company.

[QUOTE=J!NX;53113207]There are people that explain [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvqeNu7RmxM"]game design[/URL] far [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOC3vixnj_0"]more effectively[/URL]. With Extra Credits you don't actually learn anything useful at all. You'll get a pretty wrong impression about things.[/QUOTE] Wow are these some dreadful examples. I mean Sequelitis, really? I get embarrassed by proximity watching those videos, I generally like the dude as an entertainer but Arin Hanson's complex opinions on games are literally childlike. His claim to fame as a critic is a hit piece on one of the most influential and well designed games of all time, and his problem with it is that controls from the 90s aren't as good as controls from the 2010s. If you seriously want to believe that he can tell me more about game design than a bunch of industry professionals trying to appeal to a wide and uninformed audience then I think we've reached an impasse. But just in case we haven't: Extra Credits teach some pretty basic game design fundamentals in a bubbly and cartoony way, they are fine, they do their job ok. Stop pretending like the problem with them is about their content. Complaining that Extra Credits don't go in depth enough is like complaining that a Kirby game is too easy. You probably already know everything they have to say, if you have an issue with how low level they are then go somewhere else, maybe Mark Brown or Super Bunnyhop. But Extra Credits are easy mode, they are entry level, they are 101 [B]and that is fine.[/B] If you have a problem with Extra Credits on game design front, I don't really know what to say, I personally think you're being a bit silly tbh. On the other hand, they are industry insiders who have been known to side with other industry insiders even when they're clearly in the wrong. In the past they launched a hate campaign against TotalBiscuit shortly after he publicly announced he was undergoing chemotherapy. They lied about him, and his finances, and they have yet to this day to apologise. James, has also claimed to work on titles like CoD which [I]might[/I] be untrue(?).

[QUOTE=redBadger;53110714]The whole concept for publishers needs to go away. They were really only there to provide funding and marketing. Now we live in a world where marketing can be done entirely online and you really don't have to rely as much on these publishers anymore. If all the money was returned to the developers and not the publishers, development studios would be more successfully independent.[/QUOTE] its called kickstarter

[QUOTE=elowin;53113307]its called kickstarter[/QUOTE] Let's hope it never comes to the point where every project is funded by Kickstarter. The mainish problem of KS is that all your money comes up front rather than when you release your game. As a result, that means the incentivization to patch and support the game in question are greatly diminished outside the responsible sorts of developers. It'd also give much greater pull towards Microtransactions, Loot Boxes (and that sort of prattle), and Post-Release DLC because you need operating funds going forward from your game launch. That, or you have to chop promised features to ensure you can make your next game off this game's proceeds in case the next KS fails - which makes very few people happy I imagine. Deadlines set in stone in advance with zero flex, set up by particular funding, is a really dicey way to deliver the larger and less wholly experimental of games.

I think it's kinda telling that Extra Credits (and all of their other shows) consistently has people doing rebuttals and fact correction as a norm. They honestly seem like such a lazy common denominator pandering business. [sp]Also their history videos appall me[/sp]

[QUOTE=Destroyox;53113342]I think it's kinda telling that Extra Credits (and all of their other shows) consistently has people doing rebuttals and fact correction as a norm. They honestly seem like such a lazy common denominator pandering business. [sp]Also their history videos appall me[/sp][/QUOTE] I dunno about that. Any popular youtube channel often has people throwing around rebuttals and 'this guy is wrong' and so forth. It just comes with the popularity in a lot of cases. I haven't seen any real justification on it so far, other than folks disliking it for the admittedly horrible if true attack campaign they set up against TB -- but that doesn't really justify 'fact correction'. People do 'fact corrections' all the time where what they bring up as 'corrections' are in fact far from the truth or misleading themselves. e: I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Captain Disillusion would have a YTer go after him for being 'factually wrong' about stuff if he ever gets somewhat popular - because just like people who rate good movies with terrible scores, they're after the attention rather than attempting to improve the level of discourse. Even so, that's not really a 'credibility' problem so much as a 'host is horrible' problem and what folks keep repeating is that they're 'constantly distorting/inventing facts' as goes the game-mechanics side of stuff.

[QUOTE]We're not looking for 'deep emotional levels'. Where did I say that we were? Horror games are the height of attempts to reach into the actual core of what makes us disgusted, alone, and frightened beyond simply getting your pulse up from sudden surprises and so forth. We don't need to know how they work at a 'deep emotional level' the majority of the time because we're not making sex robots here. We're making games where guns go bang and enemies usually fly into the sky as a result; most of the time anyway. What 'shit am I making up' here?[/QUOTE] I'm saying I dislike it when people create a deeper meaning for something where it shouldn't apply. Just because horror games apply a slight amount of psychology doesn't mean its close to literal true psychology. Advertising effectively and selling things uses Psychology, does this mean that a retail salesmen is a psychology? Are used car salesmen psychologists because they're good at lying? Horror games are far more grounded on effective world building to create immersion, through effective level, sound, and visual design. Having an actual psychology degree wouldn't make a good horror game or novel, being effective at story telling and world building will. You cannot create a functional horror game if you ignore good world building. [QUOTE]He doesn't need to? Fight Club is an over-the-top parody. Doom is an over-the-top game. Games that take place in WW2 are often more about performing heroic or desperate acts than particularly cruel and wanton things. If we're going to make a fair comparison, let's talk about what separates Hatred from Spec Ops: The Line - your hint of the day for that is that every moment of Spec Ops: The Line is not the white phosphorous scene from beginning to end, except for the very end where it's revealed 'you're the real bad guy' as you draw a '666' in red marker on your forehead to launch the nuke that ends the world.[/QUOTE] Hatred is an over the top game as well. I don't see how it truly separates itself from other games to the point where it's 'not about violence, its about sadism'. Most shooters are about senseless violence, even if it's not about intentionally making that violence happening. Every War game out there is nothing but senseless violence, even if it has meaning and heroism laid behind it. [QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53113244] He doesn't. He accuses it of being specifically about violence - but not senseless or cartoonish or justified violence - unjustified violence and brutality against specifically innocent people on a mass scale, played completely straight the whole way through except for its ending, which is where it goes from 'straight' to 'stupidly goofy' which in no way really changes what's gone on through the whole game up to that point.[/QUOTE] He literally directly says [URL="https://youtu.be/s6xQlnzffRg?t=187"]"Hatred the game is not about rage, its not even really about violence"[/URL]. His Hatred video was made before Hatred was even out, so it's not like it could have deeply analyzed it outside of the context of a trailer. That seems like an incredibly unfair way to look at the game, effectively judging a book by its cover. [QUOTE]Girlfriend's gotten plenty of useful impressions and has learned plenty. She doesn't really want a 30 minute dissertation on why skinner boxes are the foundation of nearly everything we ask a player to do in a game - and why those boxes exist to begin with. She doesn't care. She just is interested in 'but why are there items in lines on this map' and the like.[/QUOTE] I'm sure she's learned a lot, but I really genuinely think that EC gives a poor impression on it. Even at 8 minutes long their videos feel like they last 40. You could learn far more in a properly made 30 minute video than watching 30 EC videos. [QUOTE=Rossy167;53113278]Wow are these some dreadful examples. I mean Sequelitis, really? I get embarrassed by proximity watching those videos, I generally like the dude as an entertainer but Arin Hanson's complex opinions on games are literally childlike. His claim to fame as a critic is a hit piece on one of the most influential and well designed games of all time, and his problem with it is that controls from the 90s aren't as good as controls from the 2010s. If you seriously want to believe that he can tell me more about game design than a bunch of industry professionals trying to appeal to a wide and uninformed audience then I think we've reached an impasse. But just in case we haven't:[/QUOTE] You're right, I haven't watch it in so long I forgot that it's just wall-blasted opinions and doesn't even analyze it that well But can someone show me what makes EC in any way qualified, I can't find ANY info on what makes them 'industry professionals'. It gets boasted around everywhere and yet their entire channel seems to be based far more on their opinion than any actual credibility.

[QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53113366]I dunno about that. Any popular youtube channel often has people throwing around rebuttals and 'this guy is wrong' and so forth. It just comes with the popularity in a lot of cases. I haven't seen any real justification on it so far, other than folks disliking it for the admittedly horrible if true attack campaign they set up against TB -- but that doesn't really justify 'fact correction'. People do 'fact corrections' all the time where what they bring up as 'corrections' are in fact far from the truth or misleading themselves. Even so, that's not really a 'credibility' problem so much as a 'host is horrible' problem and what folks keep repeating is that they're 'constantly distorting/inventing facts' as goes the game-mechanics side of stuff.[/QUOTE] I'm talking purely about their script. I've watched plenty of Extra History videos that made me kinda mad with how much bullshit they were showing. I don't remember the specifics it might've been their kursk videos but there's this one response by MHV that nails the sort of issues I constantly find in their videos. [video=youtube;9a46ieMjtCY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a46ieMjtCY[/video]

[QUOTE]Please provide examples of them 'totally making shit up' specifically in regards to game mechanics?[/QUOTE] Pretty much any video they've made in the last three years. They got a taste of that marketing money, and they are straight bitches to the marketing machine at this point. As for a great example of getting eye rolls from an actual game designer, their "exp" and "sidegrade weapons must always be" video are perfect examples of trying to extend generic and outdated design philosophy to encompass any and all games as a "basic ruleset". [QUOTE]they are industry insiders[/QUOTE] Marketing shills are no such animal except in places like EA and Ubishaft, and as we've seen for the better part of decade and half, putting marketing in charge of design never ends well.

god the lightning in a bottle point is so true whenever a game comes out that doesn't follow the AAA norms of slamming in DLC or extra monetization strategies, and makes a load of money, it's simply branded "a freak of nature" which is for some reason or another, not valid as an example because it makes AAA uncomfortable when you talk about wildly successful games that [I]didn't[/I] pursue downright unethical moneymaking schemes

[QUOTE=J!NX;53113371]I'm saying I dislike it when people create a deeper meaning for something where it shouldn't apply. Just because horror games apply a slight amount of psychology doesn't mean its close to literal true psychology.[/quote] It's literal true psychology. I think you're being rather pedantic on this point. I may not have the professional training and background knowledge to know how to completely make water safe as a sanitation engineer might -- but if I'm selling water that's been filtered it's a bit invalid to say 'I'm not using actual literal water sanitation' when I filter it through sand, charcoal, and so forth to get all the crud out. I am using sanitation knowledge in a particular context within a narrow scope. I may not know about what pipes to use to send water through and that sort of lower-level understanding -- but I don't need to because my job isn't to be a water sanitation engineer. [quote]Advertising effectively and selling things uses Psychology, does this mean that a retail salesmen is a psychology? Are used car salesmen psychologists because they're good at lying?[/quote] [I]Absolutely?[/I] Salesmen make their money basically by how good they are at exploiting people's psychology -- turning 'I'm just browsing' into 'Here's a $10,000 check' doesn't involve you listing out the information on the side of the car and them going 'OH OK here's my money!' Might as well say 'people that play Poker professionally aren't using psychology to win the game'. [quote]Horror games are far more grounded on effective world building to create immersion, through effective level, sound, and visual design.[/quote] Those are important parts, sure, but they're not the only ones. That's part of the problem with modern horror game design - you're dressing up a boring table and calling it horrible. The level, sound, and visual design should all serve a central and revolving point that is served by those things rather than saying 'all I need to make good horror is good level, sound, and visual design practices'. Knowing the distinction, and knowing why it matters, is what separates PT from 'Silent Hill 8: Now with 300% More Guns and Enemies'. [quote]Hatred is an over the top game as well. I don't see how it truly separates itself from other games to the point where it's 'not about violence, its about sadism'.[/quote] See my example. If you still don't get it, re-read it again. If you still don't get it after that then I don't think I can explain it to you because apparently a game that tries to really capture people's suffering by your hands as the point of the game isn't any different at all from a game which tells you you're the good guy as it makes you keep doing not just more and more horrible things but less and less justifiable things - and then starts asking you if you think you're a good guy. [quote]Every War game out there is nothing but senseless violence, even if it has meaning and heroism laid behind it.[/quote] You just contradicted yourself in the same sentence. [quote]He literally directly says [URL="https://youtu.be/s6xQlnzffRg?t=187"]"Hatred the game is not about rage, its not even really about violence"[/URL]. His Hatred video was made before Hatred was even out, so it's not like it could have deeply analyzed it outside of the context of a trailer. That seems like an incredibly unfair way to look at the game, effectively judging a book by its cover.[/quote] And his analysis was not wrong because the game's marketing sold it as exactly the game it was. He made an analysis/judgment based on the marketing that the game sold itself as, thinking that was the game that would result, and lo and behold the marketing was accurate. And yes, he's making a distinction there because it's not 'about' violence. It's about, specifically, making people suffer. There's a difference between a game that asks you to just have fun and do whatever you like and a game that tells you 'shoot that baby. now shoot that woman who's crying about her baby as she runs away in terror. that cop who just pulled out his gun to stop you from murdering people? kill him. now kill everyone in the police station. kill the prisoners in the police station. everyone deserves to die; especially the innocent.' [quote]I'm sure she's learned a lot, but I really genuinely think that EC gives a poor impression on it. EC gives meaning to nothing and even at 8 minutes long their videos feel like they last 40[/quote] She often talks to me about EC and the impression I always got is that she came away with a basic understanding of a topic. Not necessarily the exact whys, or the deeper reasons why they're popular, or why it was used in this particular game she remembers -- but enough to have a conversation. That's not a poor impression - that's building blocks enough to have a conversation on where she can actually understand what I'm talking about thanks to have being primed by said video. Again, it just sounds like you don't like the presenters or the presentation style. You stating that the 8 minutes feels like 40 really hammers that in for me. You don't want to watch them, but you're watching them, and so you get annoyed, and so you come away having learned nothing because you didn't care to start with and you weren't listening because it annoyed you to do so. Am I right? [quote]But can someone show me what makes EC in any way qualified, I can't find ANY info on what makes them 'industry professionals'[/QUOTE] I'm an industry professional. Most of the things I've seen them put out are things that in fact are used in the industry and are concerns we sometimes have. I've yet to see them pull anything 'out of their ass' and even the more 'we're making a speculative guess here' exceptions often have very real and understandable (as in a 'I can give you the benefit of the doubt on that') underpinnings that they then proceed to point out and qualify. e: To the point, I don't think it's really relevant whether or not they're actual industry professionals if they nonetheless grasp and can explain what we use anyway. If they're claiming to be industry professionals and aren't, that is a problem though, certainly - but it doesn't make their analysis 'suddenly valueless'. There's about two schools in the whole world I know of who'd I'd give the time of day to as goes 'game design programs'. Though I can't say 'nobody teaches you this stuff; you teach yourself through experimentation, failure, analysis of other games, and thought experiments' - it's nonetheless still how the majority of folk get their 'professional credentials' to begin with. Do you need more than that? [quote=27X]As for a great example of getting eye rolls from an actual game designer, their "exp" and "sidegrade weapons must always be" video are perfect examples of trying to extend generic and outdated design philosophy to encompass any and all games as a "basic ruleset".[/quote] I don't see any problem with sidegrade weapons being things to work towards in nearly all systems that can support them. Players like choices - if you can give them more choices that makes sense within the scope of your design that doesn't necessarily complicate your existing balance I don't see the problem. Star Ruler 1 was a game whose weapon systems are entirely sidegraded - there was no 'rock paper scissors' approach so much as 'weapons that attack a particular stat' and 'subsystems that modify particular stats'. This design decision carried to SR2 as well. We went that way because sidegrades give players more options without necessarily making them 'more powerful' - it just lets them counter particular strengths. Nobody has fun when they hit unassailable bulwarks -- giving players the tools to knife around those bulwarks in ways that are both skillful and thoughtful reward thoughtful play which is what we were more or less going for. Not all games are thoughtful games and so don't really 'need' sidegrades and that sort of stuff but those that are thoughtful or slowpaced I can imagine usually benefiting from it if the design isn't already super-complex. Very few things in game design are truly 'outdated'. Haven't watched their 'EXP' video though but usually there's some sort of progression system in most games that are not specifically linear to both gate and help both player empowerment and rewards/progress visibility. I do note that they often get very excited about particular systems when they explain them and tend to overglorify them a bit here and there - but on balance that's the sort of channel atmosphere they want: Upbeat and progressive towards future and better design through analysis -- even if it's still approached as a 101-level introductory course.

[QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53113425]It's literal true psychology. I think you're being rather pedantic on this point. I may not have the professional training and background knowledge to know how to completely make water safe as a sanitation engineer might -- but if I'm selling water that's been filtered it's a bit invalid to say 'I'm not using actual literal water sanitation' when I filter it through sand, charcoal, and so forth to get all the crud out. I am using sanitation knowledge in a particular context within a narrow scope. I may not know about what pipes to use to send water through and that sort of lower-level understanding -- but I don't need to because my job isn't to be a water sanitation engineer. [I]Absolutely?[/I] Salesmen make their money basically by how good they are at exploiting people's psychology -- turning 'I'm just browsing' into 'Here's a $10,000 check' doesn't involve you listing out the information on the side of the car and them going 'OH OK here's my money!' Might as well say 'people that play Poker professionally aren't using psychology to win the game'.[/QUOTE] It's not about how 'literal true actual pure genuine' it is, its about stretching a definition infinitely to the point where you are calling devs a psychologist because they make video games. Applying the logic behind length and math doesn't make a welder a mathematician purely based on him putting numbers into a calculator. Using psychology to play poker doesn't make you a psychologist either. My point isn't that they aren't using psychology at all, my point is that merely applying some of the science behind it doesn't make you a psychologist. A Bar bouncer could be trained by a professional to take someone down, does that make them a Military Tactician? Is a mother a nurse/doctor because they use actual true medicine to treat a boys wound? Horror game design is far, far more than using psychology, psychology is at best merely a portion of the whole thing, even you know this. if we apply your same logic, how are you not a sanitation engineer? What about a walmart janitor, are they not sanitation engineers? You're using actual true water filtration to filter water. You yourself said that game devs are psychologists because they use actual true psychology, and that car salesmen are psychologists because they're good at lying. How is it any different that you aren't a sanitation engineer desipte using 'actual true sanitation' Also, I'm a SH regular so I'm as pedantic as a fool can be. Being a SH regular I argue politics. I use true literal political arguments, that means I'm a politician. Do you see what happens when you apply this logic? Using the princibles of something doesn't make you that thing instantly. (To be honest though 99% of the time I just make a 1 second joke) This statement that devs are psychologists. How does that fit into EC making psychological analysis/judgment like not being able to 'act out' sadism. [QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53113425]Those are important parts, sure, but they're not the only ones. That's part of the problem with modern horror game design - you're dressing up a boring table and calling it horrible. The level, sound, and visual design should all serve a central and revolving point that is served by those things rather than saying 'all I need to make good horror is good level, sound, and visual design practices'. Knowing the distinction, and knowing why it matters, is what separates PT from 'Silent Hill 8: Now with 300% More Guns and Enemies'.[/QUOTE] I don't disagree. Horror games require a delicate balance of understanding todays 'understanding' of horror, as well as understanding expectations and using the senses and story to immerse a player into the world, building it into something that's well, actually fucking terrifying, like RE7 or SH in its day. [QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53113425]See my example. If you still don't get it, re-read it again. If you still don't get it after that then I don't think I can explain it to you because apparently a game that tries to really capture people's suffering by your hands as the point of the game isn't any different at all from a game which tells you you're the good guy as it makes you keep doing not just more and more horrible things but less and less justifiable things - and then starts asking you if you think you're a good guy.[/QUOTE] They're drastically different thematically, which is fair. But how is Hatred any less about violence than any other violent shooter? Sadism and violence are not mutually exclusive. [QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53113425]You just contradicted yourself in the same sentence.[/QUOTE] You're right, I'm a shithead with wording. This is why I edit posts every 5 seconds. [QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53113425]And his analysis was not wrong because the game's marketing sold it as exactly the game it was. He made an analysis/judgment based on the marketing that the game sold itself as, thinking that was the game that would result, and lo and behold the marketing was accurate.[/QUOTE] The games marketing was about burning your stress through violence. The game is literally about violence but he says it isn't. Just because its about sadism doesn't make it not about violence. Do you see the issue here? [QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53113425]And yes, he's making a distinction there because it's not 'about' violence. It's about, specifically, making people suffer. There's a difference between a game that asks you to just have fun and do whatever you like and a game that tells you 'shoot that baby. now shoot that woman who's crying about her baby as she runs away in terror. that cop who just pulled out his gun to stop you from murdering people? kill him. now kill everyone in the police station. kill the prisoners in the police station. everyone deserves to die; especially the innocent.'[/QUOTE] It's not about violence, but its about making people suffer. There isn't really a difference between the two. You can have a violent game that's not about making people suffer, but you can't make people suffer by slitting their throats and shooting a school up without violence. Hatred is literally 'violent video game, the video game' defined. It's violence and yes, sadism in its most bare form. If he talked about this I'd have had no trouble here. There is no exclusivity in the concept, why separate the two. It's OK [QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53113425]She often talks to me about EC and the impression I always got is that she came away with a basic understanding of a topic. Not necessarily the exact whys, or the deeper reasons why they're popular, or why it was used in this particular game she remembers -- but enough to have a conversation. That's not a poor impression - that's building blocks enough to have a conversation on where she can actually understand what I'm talking about thanks to have being primed by said video. Again, it just sounds like you don't like the presenters or the presentation style. You stating that the 8 minutes feels like 40 really hammers that in for me. You don't want to watch them, but you're watching them, and so you get annoyed, and so you come away having learned nothing because you didn't care to start with and you weren't listening because it annoyed you to do so. Am I right?[/QUOTE] poor presentation can massively harm how one takes in information. If you can't take in information effectively how will you understand that information. I agree'd with some of his hatred video, the thing is, it made it extremely hard to take in because he didn't get to a point, it's not that I wasn't learning anything, it's that he didn't say anything after a certain amount of words that would have added anything to the video in any way that deserves use. Then again who the fuck knows, it's literally impossible for me to watch him from the 'ignorant of games' (i mean that in a neutral way, ignorance isn't a bad thing, asking questions is positive) point of view. I've played thousands of games since an incredibly young age. [QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;53113425]I'm an industry professional. Most of the things I've seen them put out are things that in fact are used in the industry and are concerns we sometimes have. I've yet to see them pull anything 'out of their ass' and even the more 'we're making a speculative guess here' exceptions often have very real and understandable (as in a 'I can give you the benefit of the doubt on that') underpinnings that they then proceed to point out and qualify. e: To the point, I don't think it's really relevant whether or not they're actual industry professionals if they nonetheless grasp and can explain what we use anyway. If they're claiming to be industry professionals and aren't, that is a problem though, certainly - but it doesn't make their analysis 'suddenly valueless'. There's about two schools in the whole world I know of who'd I'd give the time of day to as goes 'game design programs'. Though I can't say 'nobody teaches you this stuff; you teach yourself through experimentation, failure, analysis of other games, and thought experiments' - it's nonetheless still how the majority of folk get their 'professional credentials' to begin with. Do you need more than that?[/QUOTE] I trust you, but I've not an idea what to really do with that. Where are you in the industry? Level designer for a independently made studio, or a VA or artist working under a company? Maybe even a journalist for a well recieved blog? Out of curiosity, I'm not questioning you. as for EC, I ask because people say he's one, but they don't actually say what he's published, what he does, what he works on. What makes him an industry professional? What gives actual merit to this claim being made as often as it does? I judge based on individual merit. Being a chef allows you to understand food better, but it doesn't grant you authority or grant secret knowledge over people who aren't.

Regarding my credentials: I was a graphics-artist/game-designer/writer/animator/concept-artist/particle-effects-designer/foley-artist/marketer/video-producer/public-relations/business-relations/contract-director/debugger/quality-assurance-tester/co-lead developer for 9 years and the assistant to the technical director for the remaining year at another studio, working by contract, where I put on a lot of hats just as I did before but my primary role was sorting through massive numbers of prefabs to fix an entire user interface after it got an entire reskin. Before all of that I was working here, on Facepunch, as the project co-founder and then project director for the SBMP (now SBEP). I have also more or less taught college courses on the subjects of game design and what to expect when you get to work in the industry - and nearly worked for Gearbox before it was discovered I was being taught in Richland College's at-the-time sham of a game design course (which is why I more or less wound up teaching it). Before that I was training to be a level designer throughout most of my youth, ever since I discovered ZZT's level editor. Conservatively I'd say I've spent more than 30,000 workhours developing games and game prototypes at every level of games development; bolts to paint, disposable contractor to nearly-studio-head. I've been to conferences to sell our game to the press, traded words over contract disputes with (the now mostly defunct) Impulse, and got our game on Steam before Early Access/Greenlight was a thing without a publisher while the game was still very much 'Early Access'. These days I'm helping to bring to life and both am and will be (it's not yet through construction yet) managing the largest VR Arcade in the US' Midwest, bolts to paint and all the grooves between but for the funding, but I'm still working on games in my off hours when I have them. Whether you feel that qualifies my opinion or not is up to you. [quote]It's not about violence, but its about making people suffer. There isn't really a difference between the two.[/quote] The objectives in the play are entirely different. In one it's to win; in the other it's to kill/maim innocent people to make them suffer. Not much different from people making Sims of their family/friends and relieving some stress by seeing them torn apart, burned alive, and being generally made to suffer. The Sims were never obstacles to your game objective because your game objective was to make them suffer and die - they aren't preventing you from progressing or making you choose between things you like and hate. The Sims doesn't ask you to do those things; you [I]can[/I] do them but they're not the point of the game. In Hatred it is [I]actually[/I] the point of the game and, if you don't engage in violence, then nothing interesting happens ever. [quote]It's not about how 'literal true actual pure genuine' it is, its about stretching a definition infinitely to the point where you are calling devs a psychologist because they make video games.[/quote] My definition was specifically limited. "Every game-mechanic designer is a psychologist - we're just not licensed to dispense medicine or solve people's problems on a couch. [U]What we do is understand the psychology of gamers, risk/reward systems, balance problems, and all that manner of stuff - the nitty gritty 'how and when and why' of the usually overly elaborate magic shows we put on to make people think they have agency and freedom, that there's a world outside that window, that picking up that ammo is useful, satisfying, and relevant to you as a player.[/U]" We specifically study the psyche of gamers. If that is a field of study, an 'ology', then that means that yes, we are gamer psychologists - we study and attempt to predict the behavior of gamers and how they interact with game mechanics. We make up thought experiments with those behavior sets, stating 'Gary likes fast-paced action games and has played most of the games on the market in that genre, Sue is a teenager who is only moderately interested in games and has little experience with most games to begin with, and Mary is a mother of two with very limited time to play and learn the games they're interested in. What do they all think of this particular health mechanic?' We ask that question not to sound self-important and think we 'understand people at deep emotional levels'. We ask that question so that we don't have to spend money and time focus testing audiences that we can at least to a degree simulate the reaction of and thus tune our mechanics off of. Also because we're not making games for ourselves to play - we're making them for others to play. That necessarily means we have to know and understand what other people [I]want[/I] as well as what they don't want and why they don't want it. [quote]The games marketing was about burning your stress through violence.[/quote] The game's marketing was about 'kill them all - even the innocent - because fuck society'. That may be why people play it - but that doesn't mean that's what the game marketed itself as or is really about. Unreal Tournament is used for people to burn their stress with, sure, but it's a game [I]about[/I] speed, accuracy, map knowledge, movement prediction, and overall technique. [quote]Hatred is literally 'violent video game, the video game' defined.[/quote] Also, I take issue with this statement. Hatred is specifically not 'the most violent video game'. There are games far more violent than Hatred; hell, the newest Doom is far more violent in every single respect. The reason why you think it's 'the most violent' is because its violence is one of the least justifiable. That doesn't make it 'more violent' - it just makes it 'more sadistic'. If it were intentionally cartoony or overdramatic in execution (other than the writing which takes itself seriously and without irony somehow? it doesn't feel self-aware and it's not written well, so it lands in an uncanny valley of 'is this serious or not' which is then immediately answered by the played-straight gameplay) then it would be 'twisted' and would fall into the category of games like Postal - where the point of the game is ostensibly to make the player laugh at the absurdity of it, which you can't do when you play your game straight.

[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;53113421]god the lightning in a bottle point is so true whenever a game comes out that doesn't follow the AAA norms of slamming in DLC or extra monetization strategies, and makes a load of money, it's simply branded "a freak of nature" which is for some reason or another, not valid as an example because it makes AAA uncomfortable when you talk about wildly successful games that [I]didn't[/I] pursue downright unethical moneymaking schemes[/QUOTE] isn't it called lightning in a bottle because it is one success story out of thousands of failed unknown ones?

Lightning in a bottle means a grouping of both fortuitous circumstances and group of people that circumscribed it with synergistic awesomeness. see: Alien.

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