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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Unless you’re willing to put in some kind of response that basically says “I’m not going to respond to that” (and that’s a sure way to break immersion) this is effectively impossible to do well, because the writer has to anticipate every possible thing a player could say and craft a response to it. If you don’t, you’ll end up finding a “nearest fit” that is not at all what the player was trying to say, and the reaction is going to be nonsensical from the player’s perspective

    LA Noire is a great example of this, although from the side of the player character: the dialogue was written with the “Doubt” option as “Press” (as in, put pressure on the other party). As a result, a suspect can say something, the player selects “Doubt”, and Phelps goes nuts making wild accusations instead of pointing out an inconsistency.

    Except worse, because in this case, the player says something like “Why didn’t you say something to your boss about feeling sick?” and the game interpreted it as “Accuse them of trying to sabotage the business.”







  • He has a lot of narcissistic traits. I’m sure he was expecting a deluge of “of course we love you, you’re a genius and real life Tony Stark, please make our bird app better!” That kind of genuine adoration is one of the few things he can’t just buy outright, and he used to get it, but that well has been drying up as other car companies catch up to Tesla on EVs and their own products stagnate or get worse. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s last big public event was a rocket blowing up, which they could try to spin, but it also destroyed their launch pad because they ignored lessons that NASA learned in the 60’s. I’m sure in his mind all the bad press as people have started to realize what a shithead he is was just haters who were jealous of him, so surely if he just gives his fans an opportunity to express their opinions he’ll get lots of positive responses, right?


  • A bunch of my favorites have already been listed, so I’ll just mention the one that wasn’t: Antichamber, a first person puzzle game that’s probably somewhat like Portal in terms of how it requires you to rethink your assumptions about how space works, but it’s a very different game, both mechanically and in tone. I don’t want to give away too much, but it’s a mix of weirdly unsettling elements (although it is by no means a horror game), a design that’s actively trolling you in ways that will make you laugh, and mechanics revelations that will have you scream “Wait, I could have done that this whole time?!” It’s one of those games that I wish I could delete from my memory and play for the first time again.