Ecrapsnud's recent activity
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Comment on Summer Eternal - A new cooperative game studio from ex-ZA/UM devs in ~games
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Comment on Summer Eternal - A new cooperative game studio from ex-ZA/UM devs in ~games
Ecrapsnud LinkOf note is that I think this is the third(?) studio announced today by ZA/UM alums. This isn't surprising that it's happening in general, given ZA/UM laid off a bunch of staff a few months back,...Of note is that I think this is the third(?) studio announced today by ZA/UM alums. This isn't surprising that it's happening in general, given ZA/UM laid off a bunch of staff a few months back, but it's interesting they're all announcing today.
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Comment on Summer Eternal - A new cooperative game studio from ex-ZA/UM devs in ~games
Ecrapsnud LinkA handful of ex-ZA/UM devs have formed a new artists' collective/game studio, and this website has their manifesto, details on their structure as a co-op, and an artist's statement about their...A handful of ex-ZA/UM devs have formed a new artists' collective/game studio, and this website has their manifesto, details on their structure as a co-op, and an artist's statement about their project.
The ending to that artist's statement is really just some beautiful writing, and it has me excited for whatever they'll make.
Summer Eternal is the school break morning that stretches viscous like a hair of honey, luxurious enough to nourish you across decades, to form all notions of sunlight and safety and mornings forever, a gift from your child self to the old that you chase your whole life and can never quite recreate. Summer Eternal is the long glory of the golden season, Solar Maximum, sun-spot on a nuclear furnace, the stretching molten oblivion that will slowly engulf the Earth, the impending heat apocalypse of our world, ever yet longer by the year.
Summer Eternal is a war machine waging war at the machine. Summer Eternal is the last hearth, the burning roof that keeps the children from the dark. Summer Eternal is what we'll make of it, and what it will make of us.
Come outside with us tomorrow. You don't have to set your alarm.
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Summer Eternal - A new cooperative game studio from ex-ZA/UM devs
26 votes -
Comment on What would it take for a soup to be exciting? in ~food
Ecrapsnud LinkOk so there are obviously ways to make the soup itself exciting that other people are covering with their responses. However! I'd like to propose that we can also change the CONTEXT of the soup to...Ok so there are obviously ways to make the soup itself exciting that other people are covering with their responses. However! I'd like to propose that we can also change the CONTEXT of the soup to make it a little more exciting. When I was a kid, my church would do soup potlucks every so often, and it kinda was exciting to be able to try a bunch of different soups, and privately confer about which ones were the best. In a similar vein, you could retool a chili cook-off to be a soup cook-off, and I think that would be a little more exciting, especially if you think old church ladies aren't the most exciting crowd...
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~games
Ecrapsnud Link ParentMelee is a particularly interesting case, because I think it's one of the best examples for making the argument that "balance" or power rankings is dictated less by game code and more by players....Melee is a particularly interesting case, because I think it's one of the best examples for making the argument that "balance" or power rankings is dictated less by game code and more by players. Jigglypuff's rise in the rankings can be largely attributed to HungryBox's dominance as a player, and more recently Yoshi is rising now that aMSa finally won a supermajor with the character. A lot of discussion about the topic has shifted away from objective definitive character rankings and more towards tournament viability. Does a character have the tools needed for a good player to take them to victory?
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Comment on Star Wars Outlaws | Official story trailer in ~games
Ecrapsnud LinkI think this game is gonna do well solely on the promise of being an open-world Star Wars game, which we somehow never got under EA's tenure, but these trailers have me wondering if I'm actually...I think this game is gonna do well solely on the promise of being an open-world Star Wars game, which we somehow never got under EA's tenure, but these trailers have me wondering if I'm actually all that interested in what the game's offering, or just that idea of open -world Star Wars. It just looks kinda... mediocre, I guess. But I've sorta been feeling that way about Star Wars in general.
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Is anyone else at GDC?
If so, how's it going for you? Go to any interesting talks or events? Meet anyone new?
18 votes -
Comment on Titanfall is still EA's most innovative shooter ten years later in ~games
Ecrapsnud Link ParentSplatoon was pretty innovative, but even then, 2 and 3 didn't change much.Splatoon was pretty innovative, but even then, 2 and 3 didn't change much.
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Comment on How American evangelicals use digital surveillance to target the unconverted in ~tech
Ecrapsnud LinkThe future of proselytizing—and surveillance—has arrived. An app called Bless Every Home, which has been backed by some of the biggest names in evangelical circles, is mapping the personal information of immigrants and non-Christians in a bid to conduct door-to-door religious conversions and “prayerwalking” rituals through their neighborhoods.
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How American evangelicals use digital surveillance to target the unconverted
35 votes -
Comment on Sony is laying off 900 PlayStation employees in ~games
Ecrapsnud Link ParentI mean, the implication in the article is that it's at least relevant to the layoffs, but I get what you're saying. And I understand that laying people off is part of "balancing the budget," but...I mean, the implication in the article is that it's at least relevant to the layoffs, but I get what you're saying. And I understand that laying people off is part of "balancing the budget," but it's hard for me to even see this as a necessary evil. To put the livelihoods of 900 people at risk because PlayStation hasn't made nearly as much money as they had hoped (it's not like they aren't profitable) is just really dehumanizing, which I suppose is par for the course with big corporations like these.
Like, I get it, but it sucks.
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Comment on Sony is laying off 900 PlayStation employees in ~games
Ecrapsnud LinkI really wonder when we're going to begin to see the light on the other end of the tunnel. First with Xbox and now with PlayStation, it seems like there's a massive issue with the budgets going...The layoffs come just days after Sony missed a PS5 sales target, which led to Sony’s stock price plummeting by $10 billion. While the PS5 outlook wasn’t what Sony was expecting, analysts also pointed toward a near decade low games margin — suggesting that the cost of making games is eating into Sony’s gaming margins.
I really wonder when we're going to begin to see the light on the other end of the tunnel. First with Xbox and now with PlayStation, it seems like there's a massive issue with the budgets going into making first party AAA games. They take too long, and they're set up to be too big to fail, so when they do (or even just perform okay), it's a disaster on the business end. Losing $10 billion in value because Sony doesn't know how to budget is insane. The gross incompetence of game industry executives has had an incredible human cost, and with just how long it takes to adjust course, it makes me worried about the future of the industry.
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Sony is laying off 900 PlayStation employees
42 votes -
Comment on New moons of Uranus and Neptune announced in ~space
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Comment on New Music Fridays: MGMT, SZA, Real Estate, and more in ~music
Ecrapsnud Link ParentLoss of Life is a really enjoyable album so far! I keep coming back to Bubblegum Dog in particular. Very fun songLoss of Life is a really enjoyable album so far! I keep coming back to Bubblegum Dog in particular. Very fun song
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
Ecrapsnud LinkI participated in Global Game Jam for the first time last weekend! It was a really cool experience, and I made a fun little game that was loosely inspired by the Mario 64 head-stretching thing. It...I participated in Global Game Jam for the first time last weekend! It was a really cool experience, and I made a fun little game that was loosely inspired by the Mario 64 head-stretching thing. It was a good time, but also exhausting to grind something out like that over a weekend, especially when it was right in the middle of classes. I'll probably do it again though lol
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Comment on Minecraft, sandboxes, and colonialism (2019) in ~games
Ecrapsnud LinkThis video is a few years old now, but I think it's a super insightful watch, and I come back to it a lot. Regarding the point at ~10:45 lamenting the lack of any wilderness reclamation games,...This video is a few years old now, but I think it's a super insightful watch, and I come back to it a lot.
Regarding the point at ~10:45 lamenting the lack of any wilderness reclamation games, Terra Nil (a self-proclaimed "reverse city builder") has done just that. What I find interesting, though, is that in subverting the idea of infinite growth, in making the game instead about reclamation, the mechanics necessarily change too. The game loses that infinite expansion of your resource mill, and in so doing it becomes more like a puzzle game than any city builder that came before it. I think that's fascinating, and a form of proof that mechanics imbue meaning into games, but the sort of negative side of it is that it might mean that it's on some level impossible (or at least very difficult) to separate those mechanics from those meanings. Terra Nil is a step in the right direction there, and regardless I don't think it's bad to enjoy the colonialist mechanics of Minecraft or Factorio. Placing these things in a digital space allows for exploration without the harmful real-world impacts of the systems they reflect. Still, though, I'll return to the question that Dan ends the video on: how can we use games to argue against our own problematic histories?
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Minecraft, sandboxes, and colonialism (2019)
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Comment on Palworld could be a delight if it wasn't so invested in being awful in ~games
Ecrapsnud Link ParentNot the author, no worries. I think this article starts a conversation I'd like to have, but it does lack some depth. I think this is the part of the discourse surrounding this game that I...Not the author, no worries. I think this article starts a conversation I'd like to have, but it does lack some depth.
Personally, I don't see any of that as "cruel" - it's a facet of the game that the author of this article admits gives an interesting vector to consider when capturing more pals out in the wild. Just like I don't think it's cruel to smash 50 cows on top of each other to make a cow farm in minecraft, or beating down dinosaurs to drug them and "tame" them in Ark (which is basically what palworld is... it's Ark with pokemon instead of dinosaurs).
I think this is the part of the discourse surrounding this game that I personally find most interesting. Palworld isn't that different from other games in terms of the cruelty angle, which means that it's weird to make an exception for it. But maybe Minecraft is messed up, or Pokémon actually sorta is whitewashed cockfighting. Just because these things are justified diegetically doesn't mean they stop existing in the context of the real world.
I don't think the article really gets into that idea, though. It's short and rather inflammatory. But I don't get the sense that Palworld is all too concerned with making that point either. It's a satire of Pokémon, sure, but it's too busy putting half-baked features from as many popular genres as it can to do more than be fun and silly. Being bad art doesn't make it a bad game. Granted, that's subjective, so your read on it may differ.
Save for Kurvitz and Rostov's new studio Red Info, I believe Summer Eternal has the highest-profile names attached to it (namely DE writer Argo Tuulik, among a couple others). Longdue hasn't announced any names, and Dark Math seems to have been founded by a former motion graphics designer at ZA/UM as well as the brother of one of the people who helped take over ZA/UM in the first place, which is interesting (https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/a-disco-elysium-successor-studio-has-been-announced-for-the-second-time-today-meaning-there-are-now-4-companies-battling-for-the-title-of-za-ums-true-inheritor/).