what your chosen design specialization says about you, a thread i cannot explain but simply believe:
combat design/weapon design: you like to think you would crush it at evo but you literally wouldn’t make it out of pools and we all know it. sorry
level design: people you barely know are constantly asking you where the good local weed dispensaries are. also, you have an answer for them
content design: you still have no idea what you want to do with your life, but here you are
world design: you still have no idea what you want to do with your life AND you went to art school.
narrative design: you have been to *just enough* therapy to have mastered the vernacular of self care, but not enough therapy to stop you from weaponizing it against everyone you love
systems designer: nobody is ever going to agree to play the battlestar galactica board game at any dinner party you attend. WHY do you keep bringing it
agent/hero/champ designer: you only really feel truly alive when you know someone hates the shit out of you. even better if it’s a lot of people
game UX designer: you’re wondering if getting a shiba inu puppy, another fancy coffee grinder, or a pothos plant makes you too predictable. the answer is yes
lead designer: at some point in your life mom put you in charge of your siblings, handed you $20 for pizza and said “call the cops if anything bad happens, the other moms and I are going out for drinks indefinitely” and your watch has somehow never ended
progression designer: you definitely got kicked out of your MMO guild when you were younger and a) i’m sorry about that, it must have been traumatizing but also b) lmao
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a thread of the top questions i've seen asked at tech company town halls, in no particular order:
#1: "will (company) open a NYC branch? the ratio of women to men is better there than in SF, and finding a wife would be a huge company perk for a lot of the men here."
#2: "i don't eat the free snacks, but i see that some people eat too many snacks and seem unhealthy. can those of us who do not snack be paid extra for our health choices?" (the actual question was a lot more body shame-y, this is me paraphrasing so it's less triggering)
#3: "i don't think anyone should ever wear shorts or tank tops to work because it's scandalous. also, it's disgusting for me to have to sit on a bench that someone else's bare legs have touched. can we implement a company dress code?"
so godaddy runs a brilliant new scam where if your domain name expires, they purchase it, park it, and then pretend someone else bought it and make you bargain via a “godaddy broker” to get it back. their “suggested starting bid” for our indie game’s website was $2-4,000
I offered a hundred bucks. he was not amused. extremely funny notion that godaddy would pay itself an exorbitant sum to own a prestigious url belonging to (squints at notes) some college grads’ side project
this story has a totally fine ending- we own a url that’s a permutation of the old one and we’ll just move everything over there. but i’m kinda sad! i’ve been with godaddy since my “katie runs a neopets tips blog” days back in middle school so this is a bummer i’ll admit
it's grad season, & lots of folks are looking for entry level work. i often hear "i'm applying to full time roles listed on a website but never get a reply," so i'd like to point something out: most junior/mid roles w/ big studios are actually invisible contractor roles. (cont'd)
i did a separate thread about why this is the case a while back, which you can find here:
i sometimes see applicants lamenting that "game companies only want seniors!" going purely off of those companies' job listings. that's partially accurate. in reality there *are* non-senior roles available, they just aren't surfaced anywhere, so those jobs are far less visible.
i wanna talk about my favorite elden ring/bloodborne encounter design thing because it's so simple but it forms the backbone pattern for like 50% of these games' encounter design.
i call it the triple zombie combo.
there you are, outside a room. you look & see an enemy inside.
you go inside and kill the enemy. you feel like you got away with something because the enemy was probably like, crouched down or just standing there or something. maybe there's an item on the floor. you pick it up.
the important thing is you're facing a particular wall, and they've placed this enemy/item to get you to be facing that part of the room when hoLY SHIT A SECOND ZOMBIE APPEARS IT'S RUNNING AT YOU
recently i've seen numerous pitches from new game startups in the vein of "we're gonna ship ambitious, incredible stuff to players but we're going to keep our company lean, under 100." in a truly self-contained startup with no publisher, i can think of 5 ways this happens:
1. you have the world's best tech and tooling. you can have like 2 and a half designers on the entire game but the tools are good enough that they can essentially channel raw vibes and manifest any piece of game content instantly. your team is like 87.2% engineers.
2. your game isn't that large in scope. you want to make the world's greatest live service minigolf game? sure, there's probably a market for that, and if your primary content is just new courses, clubs, and skins, that's maybe doable with a small team and some outsourcing.
i opened up the journal at the start of edith finch and saw that edith was born in 1999. “ah, so she’s like 9 years old,” i thought, followed by “oh no”
girl what do you mean your family’s 6 bedroom estate in the woods has just been sitting here untouched for years. have you never heard of zillow
“there are 3 dead gerbils in our pet cemetery” yes that does tend to happen when you keep them in a drawer