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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • This article is sensationalizing a non-issue. It reads like the author went to the convention with the story already written and then tried (and failed) to find people that supported the premise.

    As someone who attended GDC for the full week this year, I can tell you that not a single conversation I had or panel I attended discussed the RAM shortage. I’m sure this topic arose in some circles, especially anything related to the timing or cost of next gen hardware. As a professional AAA game designer of 25 years and an occasional game director, this does not affect the way that the games themselves are made. Games on consoles already have their limitations, games on PC should always be (but not always are) optimized to work across a broad spectrum of hardware configurations, with the minimum spec being the lowest system possible without sacrificing playability.

    Even people interviewed in the article are saying the same thing:

    “Does this affect us? No,” Subotnick said. “We’re making games on as many platforms as we can to delight consumers. Could it impact us? Sure. If there’s less devices for people to get their hands on, then we potentially have less consumers to sell to. But right now, I’d argue that there are plenty of consumers with plenty of devices for us to sell these games to. Where it could impact us is, sure, we will have to make decisions around next-gen platforms when they tell us that it’s time to bring content to them. And if they are threatened to have a total addressable market that is viable from a business standpoint, sure that’s a business challenge. But right now all I’d be doing is speculating on a bunch of hypotheticals.”


  • My partner got a pair for work when they first came out (her job involves creating social media content). I was impressed by the speakers and it’s the same style of sunglasses that I normally wear daily, so I got a pair for myself. It was so nice to be able to listen to stuff and take calls without carry around headphones or putting them in when the phone rang. I was already uncomfortable with the association with meta, but was able to isolate that aspect at first. As they continued to add features, I’ve started being less comfortable with them. I accidentally left them somewhere a couple months ago and decided not to replace them. It’s such a bummer that all the cool tech is now not just spying on you, but on everyone around you. Fuckin capitalism ruins everything.






  • Investors are not required to form an indie studio, in the case where every team member of that studio has some means to pay their own rent/mortgage, bills, and feed themselves for the entire duration of the project. If you’re in the US, you’ll also need to figure out how you’re paying for health insurance. This could be a passion project in addition to a day job, but coordinating work/life balance in that scenario with multiple team members is exponentially difficult.

    Money adds up quick. Let’s use some round numbers and say you want to hire a team with some experience (those folks that just got laid off and are looking for work). Let’s say everybody on the team costs the project $100k/year in salary & benefits. Let’s just imagine that includes costs a normal employer would pay: insurance premiums, IT hosting costs, all the little stuff. Note, this is underpaying people with more than 5 years experience who live in California (where many game dev studios are based). Let’s say you can get the game made in one year with everybody starting on day one and ending on ship day, exactly 365 days later. People will be wearing multiple hats, but let’s be general.

    • 1x Gameplay Programmer
    • 1x 3D Artist (general modeler)
    • 1x 2D Artist (general texture artist)
    • 1x Game Designer (Camera/Controls/Combat)
    • 1x Audio Designer

    $500k

    Expanding that team:

    • 1x Animator
    • 1x Character Artist
    • 1x Environment Artist
    • 1x Prop Artist
    • 1x VFX Artist
    • 1x Lighting Specialist
    • 1x Tools Programmer
    • 1x Render/Optimization Programmer
    • 1x Level Designer
    • 1x Narrative Designer

    $1.5M

    That’s a 15 person studio, where people are still wearing multiple hats like UI, Music, IT, Testing, other things I’m forgetting about. This isn’t anywhere close to a AAA sized team of 100+ people.

    This is also assuming you can stick to a STRICT time schedule. In reality you’re probably going to need a very small team at the start and not grow until you finish prototyping, then again once you’ve done a vertical slice.

    Anyway. This post got real long. The gist of it is the people making the game need that money to live. There should be space in the industry to make a game with a team this size, paying your employees something close to what the big studios pay them. Getting that kind of money has been incredibly difficult these past few years.









  • Everybody in this space, yeah, absolutely.

    Everybody who is informed and has been paying attention, definitely.

    Everybody in the voting public of the US, not so much.

    American exceptionalism is a real thing. The vast majority of the country has been fed fairytales about how they live in a perfect utopia where things are always getting better. They were taught that they were the richest, strongest, smartest, nicest, and most popular country in the world. Hollywood and the press barraged them with the message that everybody wants to either be them, be friends with them, or they’re an evil person with no understandable motive that seeks to destroy them so that they can take over the world and rule with an iron fist. They won every war they’ve ever fought in, usually showing up to save the day in conflicts that aren’t their own, just because they’re that kind, generous, and always looking out for the little guy. Nothing bad ever happens within the impenetrable borders, and when it does, it’s just a freak accident or a single bad apple.

    A shocking number of people began to interpret “American” exceptionalism as something that only applies to the largest part of the population, the straight, cis, white, Christian. Suddenly everyone outside any one of those categories becomes un-American and therefore the evil person who cannot be understood and deserves no sliver of empathy in attempts to do so.

    Those people voted for Trump.

    Twice.

    In 2024 they made up the popular vote. That’s the majority of America. That’s what this country was then. That is “everybody.”

    It’s crazy how long it’s taking for people to wake up. It seems like if the election would happen today, Trump wouldn’t win, but that approval rating might swing if his opponent is anything other than a straight, white, masculine, cisgendered man, with multiple children who all celebrate Christmas together.

    When will the truth become mainstream? What additional atrocities will need to occur before Trump becomes as universally hated as Hitler? I honestly feel like we’re not there yet. If anything happens to Trump now, it seems that nearly half the country will turn him into a martyr before realizing they are free of the figurehead of a fascist oligarchy.