Rarden

Low-voltage dragon

  • They/She/It

Shapeshifting therian dragoness thing from the UK. Currently marinating in sci-fi and fantasy media.

Avatar by hr_bananabird


Bluesky
rarden.bsky.social

MoidDoesArt
@MoidDoesArt

honestly there's something like downright pornographic about how AC6 depicts its mechs. the setting is really, really fucking grim but at the same time it's the epitome of cool robot.

the same as gundam, really. you could not begin to guess how bad the war is, nor how cool the robots are.


MoidDoesArt
@MoidDoesArt

I'm working on some pride flags! I'll get more done later on but here's a few!

NONBINARY:
Flag - AA8C786DJH82
Heart - RW91YFH37VYB
Triangle - EL16H11U1ATT

PANSEXUAL:
Flag -
5C0UN4VUNN59
Heart - QUP0AWPEPKUT
Triangle - NSL4Y97RBGQZ

BISEXUAL:
Flag - NUMNLES7CPTP
Heart - CK193YQ55RNV
Triangle - 5CEHG842QCK5

TRANSGENDER:
Flag - QVRYB449AFDA
Heart - AE2YR3APA5KQ
Triangle - TUXKH0LTFN3C

INTERSEX:
Flag - LNVESV7C7N3N
Heart - AERY0ZCAZLXD
Triangle - 49LKS8FRZ173

LESBIAN:
Flag - TZ4DZB8XGQEK
Heart - NTSTPRXHK7PK
Triangle - HPJF1C7MEJE

MLM:
Flag - GKLX9WMJPF6J
Heart - DG7GXB9M1KBM
Triangle - PS7LG81EGGUV

GENDERFLUID
Flag - 38yY9WZNMT6Z
Heart - FKJ4R7YKTXLZ
Triangle - 5AW76Y6ZFB0K

ACE
Flag - 4YQ84QBBA0WV
Heart - WLNEA4AYGRT8
Triangle - 5ZWB1XMM1U9W

GENDERQUEER
Flag - 82CV9B8BQ1WR
Heart - D76207WNQL2E
Triangle - RJ61P69R8YDV

DEMISEXUAL
Flag - DE6T2NNH3S3X
Heart - 46B3FNFYALHB
Triangle - 9AF112UQ46C1

DEMIROMANTIC
Flag - 2658FE417Y7M
Heart - FHN1W3FLH4M4
Triangle - DFPURCAG12ZJ

AROMANTIC

Flag -R6VQT6VZU10VN
Heart - Q5UF0ZY38G0N
Triangle - R6FX0A9MMFH2

AGENDER
Flag - 14EPJ2UKLYJL
Heart - FH883V2B28M7
Triangle - 8AMGG3WHDDK4

RAINBOW
Flag - JGY1AZPYJ33A
Heart - HH94ZY8WENSK
Triangle - 87M38FLZ5KMR

PROGRESS
Flag - FFL8B0A4QWZP
Triangle - BBA09ALVQNYD



amaranth-witch
@amaranth-witch

If I wasn't sick, if I had more energy, I'd go in on this but I'm just so tired. Vent time.

So this is a reply to a reply. My thread starts here, if you wanna see. Don't worry, this one is short. https://twitter.com/JazzElves/status/1691223248501981184?s=20

I can't say this on twitter - ok, I can. I could technically say this on twitter. It's not against ToS; the problem is that between engagement and presentation, there's no space for me to make a complete statement; it's not actually a very complex position, but it's one that is, apparently, difficult to comprehend. Between people completely missing the ideas behind the original (and behind Xalavier Nelson's commentary on Larian/Baldur's Gate and perspectives, which I do highly recommend if you can find it) and then this, I honestly believe that it's just not going to fly on twitter. So I'm going to break it down here, where it's safer for me to say difficult things.

This isn't about "all games should be standalone works of art, nothing should get followups". This isn't about "games shouldn't make money". Before anyone says "uh, no one is saying that": yes, they are. Not in so many words; no one is actually claiming "I don't want companies to make money off of games", but every time someone brings up an objection like the one pictured, it's misinterpreting commentary about the extractionist nature of the AAA game and studio industry as the commenter saying "but you shouldn't make a game just because it'll make money". Not immediately; it's several steps down the line, but we always get there. The Profit Motive is so ingrained that we just can't see past it, even as we're demanding "better, more passionate, Good And Finished stuff".

Also obligatory, even though this isn't twitter, I'm still sliding this in before someone snipes the comment: the idea of "just ship a finished game, it's not that hard" is a big and complicated subject. On a matter of principle, yeah, I too want "complete" games on launch. I have major issues with Bethesda's practice of "dw about it, the fans will fix it for us, they always do". I have issues with the idea of "oh we'll release a game that's like, 50% done, and then sell the rest of it to the consumers as DLC" - though I couldn't actually point to a game that's done that, not to the level that the dogwhistlers claim (and I could talk about Stellaris sometime, a game I love, which looks kind of like that from a distance but actually it's more like "we shipped a complete game. Then we had more ideas for it. Then those ideas changed what the complete game looks like. Then we had more ideas for it. Then those...") and it is COMPLEX, let me tell you, and I would 10,000% prefer the modern big fat bandwidth days which allow people to fix up games post-release to the heady days of the 1980's through 2000's where if a game was released with bugs that's it, that's all she wrote, legendary glitches go down in history and sometimes we're left with the back half of an RPG which is completely unplayable because of a major bug that just wasn't caught somehow and, well, that's that unless a fan patches it. I'm not talking about that.

As I said to a friend elsewhere, yeah, I'm actually fine with the idea that a good game comes out and suddenly makes other games look worse. I'm not talking about that either. That's, well... that's how the creative world works. I have a whole other screed about how "the presence of good art shouldn't mean that bad art isn't allowed to exist, or that we aren't allowed to enjoy bad art, or aren't allowed to make bad art", that's not it here either.

They get conflated in because of, JFCVS, it's hard to sum up, the radiation pattern of gamergate fucked a lot of things up even when it's not stuff that it directly affected, and this IS part of that, and anyway I've gotten further off-topic. Sue me, I'm sick, this is inchoate screaming and I understand that it's completely incoherent, but I'm allowed to express myself.

Anyhow, the thing is: follow-ups happen for a variety of reasons. Sometimes that reason is "money". The last game was well received, we'll make another one. The last game was poorly received, we won't make another one unless we're really feeling it. Sure, this is fine. Not only do developers need to eat, but also, yeah, there's an extra "passion surcharge" to be happy working on a project that you feel "nobody really likes" for whatever reason. I'm not here to argue about that, I'm not here to condemn that, it's... honestly it's fine. And that's not even what I'm pointing out: the thing I'm pointing out is that studios like FromSoft, like Larian, like Supergiant, fucking.. Nintendo honestly counts here BECAUSE it's first-party, these studios are a rarity in this era of increasing enclosure and AAA enshittification, because the big boys are aiming to extract the biggest value for their shareholders for the least effort with the least delay, and so seeing big players (and good god, Supergiant is an anomaly because they're not a "big player" in this sense but they still grandslam the hits, anyhow)... seeing big players operate like passion-driven indies, seeing them say "no we're keeping this in the oven", saying "yeah we think that selling the game is what will make us enough money to make the next game", this IS an anomaly and that's a bad thing. It's good that they're succeeding! It's excellent! It's ASPIRATIONAL.

But the reason we aren't seeing more of it is

  • Developers need to eat
  • The people paying the developers in the AAA space are, by and large, not concerned with "good games" at all
  • Larian, Supergiant, FromSoft having their own variant revenue streams of all the variant sources is part of what keeps them around to take these big risks that are anathema to shareholder reports

"Where does Bethesda fit in" well, that's ANOTHER subject, because some of the fans will argue that they fit with Larian in the "releasing a whole game with no microtransaction bullshit!" category, others are going to argue that they're poster children for the "sell us the rest of the game at a higher price" category and both are right, both are wrong, there's a lot of parasitical profit (yes, I know, redundant) where fan hype drives, not new games, but "another skyrim rerelease" (without even new features!) and theres just

the whole scene is fucked. There's beauty that comes out of it, there's art that thrives, but it's so fucked. And I can't offer ideas to "fix" it, because it's so much bigger than me, I can't actually SEE a way to "fix" it without a burn-it-down-and-rebuild-equitably way, but even THAT would leave a lot of people hungry - and I'm not talking about customers here, I'm talking about creators (who need! to eat!) - unless OTHER systems are also fixed before/in parallel and just

I mean, yeah, I kind of understand why people have such a hard time getting my point, because it's uncomfortable and people don't want to be uncomfortable, not when it's pretendy funtime gamestime.

But it fucking sucks to try to explain myself and just keep getting met with "but... they follow up games that people LIKE...you fool..."


IkomaTanomori
@IkomaTanomori

I have made this observation before, and will again: the companies that are making decisions differently are not traded on the USA stock exchanges, nor owned in significant fraction by entities which are, nor by private equity investors. Most are privately held by someone still working at the company. This strongly affects how the decisions are made. They try to make money to stay alive, sure - but they aren't pure money machines.

Nintendo is a special case because of different cultural expectations around decision making on creative projects. That said, Nintendo has some of the worst union busting and anti worker crap going on, so they take it (the extracted value) out in other ways.

Ownership incentives and decision making authority that goes with them are important.



lorenziniforce
@lorenziniforce

You don't know what lit it, exactly, but you can feel it.
A fire burning within you. Warmth and power.

It feels right. Like an engine, running for the first time. Like there was an emptiness, something missing within you now filled, it's absence only apparent in hindsight.