There's something very libertarian to be learned from Unity. Too long I have been fat and soft, feeding off of engines and assets, and without them I'm nothing.

A single developer could be stranded in the woods and still make a great game with two sticks and OpenGL.

In World of Darkness, picking a Vampire clan is like: "do I like art, money or the ability to turn into a wolf?"

Stupidly easy.

Picking a werewolf tribe is like, "are Children of Gaia revolutionary diplomats or just feckless centrists? What is *your* ironclad belief on how to end capitalism?"

I have begun playing A Space for the Unbound, a sort of simple adventure game about a pair of young writers solving their problems with a magic book that lets them dive into people's inner psyche and resolve their turmoil

I like that the first use case is helping someone take a nap. Very comforting

Narratively, Resident Evil 4 is one of the bad ones. Poor production values aside, 1-3 actually had themes and characters and stakes. 4 deserves its gameplay accolades, but it came at the total cost of any good storytelling.

When 5 came along without a similar revolution and 6 kept coasting on name-drops alone, nobody bought it. Yet even the original 1-3 still entertain

7 and 8 finally managed to bring that back while still managing expectations for action and set pieces

Gotham Knights is in my top 10 games now (~8)

Realization: these 30-hour open world ARPGs all live or die by whether the fantasy speaks to you. The quality attributes we grade games on (fidelity, polish, writing, etc.) never outweigh the subjective appeal of The Fantasy.

Keep your psycho dads, your cowboys, your samurai looking for redemption. I want to be a sexy lycra-clad gymnast, teaming up with my queer commune to defeat crony capitalism by hitting it with sticks so I can make daddy proud.

Trying to learn an actual skill is slowly making me hate videogames. I spend 20 hours a week on disciplined, humble study trying to grow as an artist. Slowly, I improve, but it takes a lot of humility and patience.

I then pop in a videogame for the one hour I have left to play and it's like "haha, you suck at dodge timing. Try again next week". What false rewards are you promising that make it worth your suffering?