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thesquarepear

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thesquarepear

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#1  Edited By thesquarepear

Shoutout to the community highlights, I guess?

I can only imagine writing as much as Jeff had for Gamespot or Alex had for Tested Screened (man I need some sleep) and burning out hard on the grind of it.

I hope it's mostly about setting manageable expectations for once a month and getting into a rhythm because Vinny's "Thread About Site Goings-On" almost seemed too ambitious from the get-go. Patrick seemed to manage that very well to keep up the weekly output.

Though I will say some of the newsletters have been great pep-talks to get through 2020.

A suggestion could be locking occasional writing behind premium if it's such a time sink but I guess the newsletter is kind of that?

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thesquarepear

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Good luck, Ben!

DOTA "nonsense" aside, you really grew on me when you dived into CRPG's with an open mind and I can relate to your dark humor.

I didn't listen to the bombcast yet because I'm already in a precarious mood but I want to say thanks for sharing your enthusiasm about video games.

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thesquarepear

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Realizing Dirt 5 was actually developed by the Motorstorm and Onrush studio made the arcadiness seen as an onlooker make sense to me. Haven't played it but it looks a lot like those games and stuff like the Sega Rally games.

I found Dirt 4 really enjoyable with the mix of events and customizable setups also because I hit a brick wall in Dirt Rally due to the auto-difficulty and fixed progression as far as I recall. I haven't tried Dirt Rally 2 but it's in my backlog.

I'm kind of curios about the 4-player splitscreen because that's kind of unique in 2020 but it hasn't been covered much, though not helped of course by COVID-19.

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thesquarepear

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Even if I might not like it I think enough time has passed for Halo that it's almost like original Doom, Quake and Half-Life in that it's revered but not really relevant at the moment.

Was there even a "good" Halo game for Xbox One not counting the Master Chief collection? I never played Halo 4 or 5 but seemed like people were kind of "meh" about them.

If they want to spend the time to make Halo something spectacular again I think they should take their time. I'm more worried why Microsoft didn't even announce a Forza game yet when car games seem like a staple for new consoles.

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#5  Edited By thesquarepear

I'm partial to Mount & Blade: Warband

Nothing quite like riding around as a "knight" spearing that petty AI infantry with my lance. The whole momentum-based damage was pretty cool.

I should probably install the sequel but it's still in early access so I'm not in a rush.

EDIT: I miss the analog combat in first Dead Island as well. Dying Light was ok but maybe just marginally better than Condemned. Crowbar in HL2 and piano wire in Hitman are classics but not because they are particularly engaging.

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#6  Edited By thesquarepear

Great post overall and I recognize a lot of the concepts from my school-time and you explained it well.

I can't speak much to game development beyond some smaller experiments with modding etc. However I can't help but notice that even if Ubisoft has a shitty track record of toxic assholes they sure do seem to have planning figured out pretty well for Assassin's Creed and soforth. Too bad that I have zero interest for their games except Beyond Good and Evil 2 but we don't talk about that game.

Obsidian actually seems to have learnt some lessons from their troubled history and Outer Worlds (though restricted in scope) on a new engine was impressive in the timeframe they made it. Haven't heard much regarding the quality of the DLC but I thought the base game was quite good.

Development is complicated in that it's not only cognitively taxing but also increasingly requires a team effort from several skillsets. However if you hit a consistent groove it can be creatively fulfilling so I understand why you might be enticed into spending free time on it but ultimately you will probably get exploited. Game development might not even have the option for end-to-end automated testing so Q&A must be a pain.

That's as much as I'm comfortable speaking to game development so the following is mostly me talking out of my ass about software development in general so YMMV.

I do agree that volunteering overtime is counterproductive in the long run and I try to address it as something only done for drastic necessity (or if I have an extreme interest in pushing an improvement) but I've probably hit the tipping point of punching in and out strictly for the hours paid, deadlines be damned. Paid Time Off is equally if not more important to me and I think unions (that I support and have had benefit of in my country) are good for pressuring for that but I'm not sure collective bargaining is realistic in the current landscape of projects and consultants. With time it might change though.

Personally I have never done anything productive for more than 50 hours a week and that's stretching it so when people describe going beyond that I guess they are counting at least 20% "water cooler talk". Unfortunately technology waits for noone and keeping up with frameworks, languages etc. might require at least some personal interest on the level of a hobby but I might be lucky that I find some enjoyment in it.

Ultimately I hope improved education beyond hardcore STEM subjects can help the aspirants being cycled in to understand the processes and pitfalls of software development (e.g. methodologies like waterfall, prototyping, agile) and give them the resources for planning consistently. Some of the subjects were abstract mumbo-jumbo to me in school but I'm quite glad I learned it because it seems like most of my current and previous colleagues are oblivious to it (to the detriment of work/life balance and deadline accountability that I have burned myself on as well).

EDIT: Also I'd suggest finding a better word than crunch because management is not "crunching" more work in to less time spent but in fact expanding/dilating work into more actual time spent within a shorter timespan with both short and long-term repercussions.

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thesquarepear

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Nice collection and I'm not sure I've seen those videos.

Now I'm wondering if a koala suit would fit Jeff better but I'm gonna leave that to the fanfics.

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thesquarepear

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thesquarepear

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@hach said:

happened to be watching this

https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/gbe-playdate-the-real-super-mario-bros-2/2970-12192/premium-video

at 21:55

That's a such a good one so I'll embed it:

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thesquarepear

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I was playing this with my brother and it was great fun, but I was using the Game Pass PC version. The Windows Store apparently forgot that I had it installed until I went to reinstall it, at which point it told me I had it installed.

This happened with several games for me. At least I can launch them from the Start menu or uninstall from Windows Settings compared to Forza Horizon 4 that stopped launching completely. I even tried wsreset.exe but some games are still not showing in "Installed". Windows Store reminds me of GFWL and not in the good way :/