Really appreciate this game leaning hard into magenta.
Great to hear from these folks! Hard to think I've been playing Hitman games for around 16 years. 2, Contracts, Blood Money, 2016, and soon 2018. One of the best video game series out there as far as I'm concerned, and mechanically it's never been better (though I do miss the ability to push NPCs at will lol).
And I remember that business about changing 47's voice actor. Super duper glad they didn't! Awesome to hear from David Bateson.
Okay, this actually seems like it could be fun. A big part of that is that you can't actually interact with the other player lol. Keeps things focused. Seems stringent about giving out points too.
Yeah, I might actually give this a go. Good on ya, IO.
Guild Wars 2 did at lauch have dialogue choices. I don't remember anything branching like the "pick a topic" type stuff in BioWare games, but there may well have been that in there as well, and I've simply forgotten.
In any case, there's at least the means within their game for that kind of stuff, clearly. Not saying it wouldn't be a significant undertaking to focus development time and resources into making that a worthwhile part of their game, but either way it seems feasible technically (though maybe not from a business perspective). Unless of course there's some huge change to the game since that's made it a nightmare, or that it was a nightmare back then too, who knows. Might've been nice to find out.
But about Deroir, I think he was talking from a place of wanting to discuss game design theory, as opposed to treating the exchange as a suggestion box or whatever. That how it seemed to me anyways.
@onemanarmyy: didn't swtor have dialogue options and a slightly branching narrative for your class? Even ESO has some end of quest choices you make to personalize the experience just a tiny bit. They don't have to go back and redo the whole game, it could be a feature in the next expansion. It doesn't seem like THAT crazy of a suggestion to me tbh. I also think he was speaking about the MMO genre in general and how they handle telling stories and wasn't specifically telling her that Gw2 needed to change everything.
SWTOR did indeed have a heavy emphasis on dialogue and character choice. Pretty solid example of currently existing cases of compelling player-characters in an MMO. To be fair, SWTOR is basically 8 BioWare single-player storylines (and side quests and dungeons) that happens to also be plopped down in the middle of an MMO. The problem with that (at least as it pertains to the question of creating compelling player-characters that align with a player's subjective expectations around their creation) is your Sith Inquisitor's storyline and potential choices (i.e. potential characterizations and arcs) are all actually quite narrow.
You can't really be a Sith Inquisitor with the timbre of a Jedi Knight for instance, or really do whatever you want with your character's personality. Like in BioWare's single-player games, it's not really your completely individual character that you're creating and shaping from scratch; it's your Shepard, or your Warden, or your Hawke. Your spin on the Jedi Knight or the Sith Warrior's baked-in vibe, I suppose you could say. Of course when it comes to video games though, doing whatever you want is never really possible (you do what you can with what you've got).
But I think Price was speaking more to a way of creating MMO/cRPG player-characters that are far more oriented towards being closer to that kind of "be whatever you want" character, as opposed to the more refined and relatively canned characterizations of something like SWTOR (at least that seems in line with the spirit of what she was talking about, as I read it anyways). Your Hero of Lights and so forth. How to create a compelling character out of an avatar, really. The easy answer is to give the player a lot that they can use (dialogue choices, background elements like patron dieties and such, alternative animations, etc. etc.), all so that it's not about the writer specifically crafting a compelling character, but empowering the player to themselves develop a character that's compelling to them. 'Course that's easier said then done while also trying to manage telling an actual scripted narrative, but I don't think anyone's really suggesting it'd be easy, just possible.
Granted, the SWTOR class thing is kinda what Guild Wars 2 already does with it's races (except I found em all generally the same degree of bland and with so little to work with, despite everything around them in their personal stories being actually quite interesting), so maybe the comparison here is actually very appropriate. Frankly, I was never convinced this aspect of Guild Wars 2 was ever a priority. The dialogue choices and "personality" shaping were all so unimpactful, it ended up feeling tacked on. But I see no reason why it'd be impossible to change that.
It's posted in a public forum because she was being informative. People like having some insight into design problems. She was spending her time as a dev with experience to inform people about the interesting problems they have with parts of their game.
Why would that be an invitation for an uninformed influencer to come in and say "But have you tried this incredibly basic thing? I think that would work." Not everything done in public is an invitation for *Engagement*
And to all the people saying "Well if I yelled at someone at my customer service job I'd be fired too!" (1) She wasn't at work or on the clock and (2) She doesn't work in customer service.
And I was going to just drive-by this while I was drunk last night, but it felt too mean-spirited, but after reading more this morning, nah.
Anybody who doesn't see what Deroir did wrong doesn't have any close friends who are professional women. No he wasn't a misogynist harasser (Literally nobody has ever said this and your agenda when you say "The games media is slandering him as x and y" is extremely obvious) and she never called him a sexist, but he was condescending. She said that as a female dev, she gets more uninformed people assuming they know how to do her job better, and used him as an example of what not to do.
Did her tweets include a literal invitation for criticism? No. Do you need an invitation in a public forum? No.
It's deeply troubling that the notion that it's bad form to criticize a developer's opinion is trotted out with full unironic sincerity.
This wasn't a case of condescension and undermining of expertise and authority. This wasn't like someone writing about the difficulty of heart surgery and someone else chiming in "JUST GET IN THERE, SNIP SNIP." People keep insisting on that but I haven't seen anyone take a shot at explaining why what she said was beyond contestation by a filthy "influencer." If his basic-ass disagreement was so obviously obtuse, lay it out. Tell us why a compelling MMORPG (or cRPG) player-character is probably impossible to create. Or was it just tone, and not about him "trying to tell her how to do her job," or whatever the fuck. No. She made a claim about what's possible in the genre, he disagreed (tbh he was almost annoyingly polite, like that kind of tip-toey shit that makes you internally say "get to the fuckin point," but that's hardly an infraction).
Do condescendingly braggadocious/distrustful explanations of shit happen to women? Ya, 'course. Was that this? Nope. She propped him up (falsely) as an example of sexist behaviour, and deflected his criticism by essentially saying "pleb men be like."
I agree with you about the customer service thing (even if in this always-on world we live in, that's kind of an idealistic perspective), but Deroir said and did nothin wrong in their exchange.
@theht: @turambar: Of course. And while Pride events over the decades haven't necessarily been violent, they have at the very least been loud and disruptive--things that I think most people would agree don't fall under a strict definition of "civil." I just had to push back against the idea that gay liberation has only been because of how civil everyone is, when the event that started the movement was quite literally not civil.
I think people tend associate "civil" with being "polite." And politeness has its place, as does the cessation of politeness in the face of constant bullshit.
Definitely. And it's being polite in a very "don't rock the boat," and "don't cause trouble," kind of way. That association should be challenged, in my opinion. There's such a breadth of behaviours that can fall under "civility" when looked at in a broader social sense, and strong forthright messaging can absolutely be effective in defying, criticising, and rallying support against the failings of your time and place, all while maintaining an exemplary standard for moral fortitude and dignity.
And in the grander scale of things, nonviolent protest is certainly civil compared to violent alternatives. Relative to, you know, fancy dinner parties, sure, the behaviour at a protest may seem less civil (depending on your dinner parties). But again, on this larger scale, the context of "civility" shifts, and the umbrella under which certain behaviours fall widens . I think this is the more sensible way of approaching the question of civility.
I think what the incrementalists may actually be espousing is a kind of passive progress under the guise of maintaining a strictly timid conception of civility. Integrate and try to change the hearts and minds of those who (depending on the pertinent issues) other you (and worse), and to try doing so by being overwhelmingly palatable. Naively idealistic, and putting the burden of pushing the needle squarely in the hands of the very people keen to keep it in place. Assertive protest would be an inevitability anyways, unless the world miraculously wised-up to your grievances like a saccharine family film (not to knock saccharine family films). Because if worst comes to worst, that passive manner of progress could just as easily lead to the diminishing, if not stamping out, of your entire movement; keeping the very possibility of success viable would in time desperately require action.
But anyways, like @turambar said, this is definitely a conversation steeped in semantics. Worth reflecting on though, as words can so often shape our behaviour.
TheHT's comments