I can't decide if it's ironic or oracular that I ended up in the middle of an annoying discourse drama while I'm writing a game about arguing down various well-intentioned devils advocates including an AI supporter. Either way it's fucking exhausting. But the writing calls to me anyway.
Stefan Gagne
@Twoflower
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Video game developer and novel author, with Fiction Factory Games.
Before you YA YA YA YA YA at a new Crazy Taxi, it has Denuvo, you can only play as Axel, there's PVP, and they used generative AI. DAMMIT.
Sat down to finally, FINALLY crack into some steam demos that had been piling up over the, uh, years. Wanting to find something keyboard-playable and inspiring.
A good third of them, sadly, were apparently time-locked NextFest demos and now dead. That's a pity. Why jealously guard your game?
Had a blast playing through Penny larceny and then doing a podcast interview last night with Jasmine Page but wow is my throat raw today. I mean there are days where I barely say any words aloud which aren't directed to Siri. Chatting away for five hours kind of wonks me.
I'm really tempted by Mina the Hollower but have traditionally been absolute garbage at old school, reflex heavy, fast reaction action chaos games with no difficulty settings and a perpetual demand to git gud. I love the aesthetics & atmosphere but know I'd be smashing my face into the skill wall.
And it's now Pride Month. I predict a sharp decrease in Rainbow Capitalism this year out of fear of reprisal, which sucks. Yes, Rainbow Capitalism normally is ass, but it's at least an indirect indicator of public acceptance -- and that's a good thing. It shows we matter enough to be marketed to.
"just ask a disabled person about what they can and can't do rather than assume" is a good lesson. Normalizing disability and not treating it with kid gloves is a good lesson. But it's made kinda messy by having the character's wheelchair be a sci-fi robo-jet to prove his competency alongside Kim.
Got to the Very Special Episode of Kim Possible about disability. It's a good representation of the internal panic well-intentioned people go through that leads to ableism. It is frustrating that the disabled character required less than zero accommodations, however. That's overcorrecting.
Most games led with the C64, and re-used the same janky 160x200 wide pixels everywhere else. It was cheaper! So usually you gotta go with C64, even with the drawbacks. A pity.
(Sometimes you're lucky and it's Amiga. Amiga just rocked. I really need to rig up a proper emulator setup for it.)
Playing retro computer games can be tricky. For the 1980s It's SO hard decide the definitive version of a game. The lead platforms were Commodore 64 (great sound, good color, but slow CPU and horrible chunky wide pixels) and PC (barely any sound, bad color, but fast CPU high resolution).