Don’t you wish you could sit down and chat with your favorite online characters? Who would you sit down with?

Well in the glorious year of 2010 Telltale Games asked and answered that question.

You may know Telltale from their library of fantastic narrative focused games like The Walking Dead, and The Wolf Among Us.

Telltale blazed the trail for narrative heavy games, and for a short period of time they reaped their reward. The studio reached an unfortunate end in 2018 where the employees were brought into a surprise company-wide meeting where they were told they had 30 minutes to leave the building and not to come back. The studio had closed.

“When he said that we weren’t getting severance, our health insurance was running out two weeks later. Like. Nobody balked because it was just like, ‘Wait? We don’t come back to work? Like. That’s it, right now?”

Paul Mastroianni (Telltale: The Human Stories Behind The Games by Noclip)

Among their amazing catalogue of games is the incredibly unique “Poker Night at the Inventory.” A game in which you sit down with your favorite famous internet characters and gab while playing high stakes poker.

The game originally released back in 2010 and with the current speed of internet culture the “famous” characters featured in the game have all but disappeared from the zeitgeist save for the dark hallways of millennial’s dreams.

The game serves as an amazing time capsule, and frankly the world was a worse place without it. The poker in the game was also very fun, but that’s hardly the most interesting thing about it.

The characters featured are Sam from the Sam and Max detective series of point and click adventure games, Strongbad the comic relief from the early flash animated series Homestar Runner, Heavy from the ever iconic Team Fortress 2, and Tycho who is a character from the Penny Arcade comics.

When the game came out I was 14 and hardly had the context to understand who these characters were except for the Heavy. As time has passed I’ve come to learn about the other characters except for Tycho who seems better off left alone.

A lot of the fun of the game is watching these fictional characters ask each other questions about their lives, and having them recount their stories from their own perspectives. What’s particularly unique to me is the way that “The Inventory” is a place where all their fictional worlds are real. So instead of talking about their lives as actors they each get to candidly talk about their lives as if they live in different parts of the world.

Unfortunately the game was unlisted from digital stores in 2019 shortly after the studios closure along with the second game: Poker Night at the Inventory 2.

Games like these are fraught with intellectual property challenges. Most of the difficulty keeping a game like this in stores is legal negotiation rather than game development. As time goes on finding the rights holders to properties gets tougher and tougher.

See more about that in this video about CD: Project Red and GOG which specializes in revamping old games for sale.

It came as a surprise to me that all the way in 2026 the game was listed under a new developer with a new release date. The developers were a company called Skunkape Games who had performed some sort of benevolent necromancy on Poker Night.

Who is Skunkape Games?

As it turns out Skunkape is a studio founded by former Telltale employees who loved the games they made so much (Sam and Max in particular) that they have been working to buy the rights and continue to maintain the Sam and Max trilogy.

They describe themselves as:

“A handful of early Telltale developers, now the owners and caretakers of the episodic Sam & Max adventure games!”

Skunkape games bluesky description

Apparently they didn’t forget about Poker Night either. Maybe it’s just because it has Sam and Max in it, but either way I couldn’t be happier to see the legacy of these classic games live on.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to Skunkape games for your dilligent work.

Interested in sharing your game or sponsoring an article?

Reach out to bitsnpixelsnews@gmail.com

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LMK what you think!

I just put out an article talking about how unique Arc Raiders is, and I stand by that.

See that review here:

I racked up hours in the game like a migrant worker harvesting fruit, and as time went on, we learned some things about the game. Some very fascinating things. We learned that Arc Raiders is very, very easy to break.

I put out an article a while back about how I play games, and how I find glitches.

Check out my Glitch Finding article here:

I can’t personally take credit for finding the original exploit. I saw it in a youtube short. My parents have already disowned me for watching youtube shorts, but it was worth it. The glitch allowed you to get through any locked door in the game.

This is so absurdly broken. If you don’t know, Arc Raiders locks its best loot behind locked doors. The doors require keys which are exceedingly rare and can only be found by looting regular places in game.

No longer. You can stroll up to any door in the game and walk right through it.

I will not be teaching you how to do this. I also HIGHLY recommend not doing it for personal gain. We gain such an unfair advantage over other teams that we absolutely could be banned, assuming we abused it for PvP.

So where does our story start?

Our story starts on a slow day when my brother and I felt like we didn’t have much to accomplish. We strapped on our free kits and set out into the world aimlessly with nothing to lose. My brother had made some progress on breaking through walls, and that’s where we started our experimentation.

Rather than playing the game as intended, we set out meticulously searching every wall and rock for weaknesses. The first thing we found was a wall in Dam Battlegrounds. The unique thing about this wall is that you can fire through the wall from inside, but others can’t hit you back. This would be extremely overpowered if not for the second interesting thing about this wall.

Once you get in you are permanently stuck. It’s almost fitting. You can be in one of the most overpowered spots in the game but remain unable to reap the rewards. Everything you touch turns gold, yet you cannot eat.

Or something like that...

Anyway, many of the spots we checked turned out to be the wrong way on a one-way street, so we stopped bringing gear with us.

Next, we went after the edge of the map.

The edge of the map was surprisingly resilient to us pushing through it. Any attempt to get past it just resulted in us being pushed away. Despite that we still managed to make it a considerable distance away from the boundary by rolling.

Another interesting bug we encountered at the edge of the map is that there are some places where your player becomes invisible. I assume this has to do with detail culling but nonetheless it’s interesting and has some room for abuse given the right spot.

After that we tried out what became my favorite clip. Everybody complains about extract camping. You go through a whole raid just to be killed by some brainless fartwad sitting at extract looking to take advantage of all your hard work.

What we invented is extract heckling. On maps with metro extracts, we figured out how to get past the gates. We can’t shoot through the gates, and neither can other people. That doesn’t stop us from inflicting emotional damage on others passing by.

That’s all I’ve got for this week. I hope you all found this interesting. If you liked this article, go ahead and toss us a free subscription for email notifications of all future posts. If you’d like these posts along with an early ad free version of the YouTube video sign up paid benefits!

Thank you so much!

Arc Raiders glitch exploit broken bug gameplay guide tips extract heckling wall clipping door walk through invisible map edge metro

So, you want to make a game?

So, you want to make a game? That’s a great idea! Games are fantastic ways to beef up your logic, programming, design, and many other artistic and technical skills. Additionally, making a game is extremely rewarding!

Nothing comes close to the feeling of starting with nothing and watching what you build function in real time. Having someone else put their hands on your creation, watching them interact with it, and feeling their emotional response is one of the greatest feelings in the world.

Making games is also a great way to learn to work collaboratively with other people including friends. The process is much more fun with other involved peers who all have the same drive and passion that you do.

So how do you do it? How do you make a game? That’s what we are going to talk about today!

What do I make?

What do I want to make? If you’re reading this, chances are you don’t have the capacity to make much. Even if you can it doesn’t mean you should.

In this guide I want you to pick a simple game/thing that already exists and copy that.

Like... literally one thing from it. Copy it exactly.

Mario: Make a character that runs and jumps.

Breakout: Make a paddle and a bouncing ball.

Vampire Survivors: A moving character and enemies that get close.

We want to build a skeleton that rescues us from an empty canvas.

How do I make it?

Literally choose whatever you want. I suggest making a physical version before you step into an engine.

I mean literally make it out of index cards, post-it notes, and whatever else you can find. Miro is another great tool for this. Fail faster is the name of the game, and the more you can play the game without putting in a ton of effort the better it will be.

What engine?

I literally don’t care. Use Construct 3, Twine, Unity, Unreal Engine, Game Maker, RPG Maker, Godot, or anything else you can find that feels up your alley. I highly recommend Construct or Game Maker to start, but literally just pick one.

Congrats... you now have a game. How do we make it your game?

Ideation

Ideation is the process of coming up with as many ideas as possible in a short time without a filter. Pull out some post-it notes, set a timer for two minutes, grab some friends, and write out as many ideas as possible until the timer runs out. The goal is to expand on the game you’ve already created in a meaningful, fun, or creative way.

Importantly don’t just focus on ideas from the gaming space. Media grows by incorporating concepts from books, movies, and the real world.

After you finish ideating you go into editing mode. What can you actually accomplish? What theme do you want? Go with the simplest options of course, but any change is a step at making the game your own. Everything is a Remix.

Implementation

At this point you should have a good idea of how to put together basic elements into whatever tool you’re using. If you haven’t already created your skeleton in a basic engine you should focus on doing that.

Now is the time to follow your own path and implement the ideas you have curated for your new experience. This will take time, and is going to be more difficult given you have now entered uncharted territory.

You also now reach the most difficult part of game development: not knowing if what you’re making makes sense and is fun.

Your goal now is to get your game to a playable state as soon as possible, even if it’s missing features, so that other people can try it.

Watch them closely and don’t help them out. Ask them what they are thinking and compare that to what you had hoped for.

Do they like something unexpected?

Does something not make sense?

Are things too hard, or too easy?

After a playtest its your turn to choose to improve, fix, or pivot your experience in a way that is unique to you. The thing you start with may not always be what you end up with.

How do I know when I’m done?

When there’s nothing left. After you’ve implemented your change and it feels like it works its time to finish and polish. Add an ending, add a main menu, and that’s it. Post it to Itch.io and call it a day!

Project Done?

That’s the beauty of the artistic process. Just because I’ve told you to stop here... doesn’t mean you have to. By all means learn to add art, sound, animations, effects, and whatever else you can imagine.

It’s important to remember that each of these is it’s own goal though. Don’t stack your plate too heavily, and keep working.

Since this is your first project you will probably reach a point in which your design no longer fits new elements in your game easily. It’s fine to call it there and work on “Your Game 2.” Or start the process over!

Closing

Congratulations on making your game! I hope you had a great time making it, and you learned a lot along the way.

While working on this article I worked on my own game following my own instructions.

You can play it online here

Please share your projects with me here! I’d love to see what you all are working on!

Why not give you a step-by-step?

Not providing a step by step tutorial on “how to create x game,” was intentional.

There are three main problems with game design:

1. Problem Solving

2. Scope

3. Art

I believe that following a make x game tutorial prevents training all of these skills. Color by numbers tutorials provide no problem solving, a fixed scope, and pre-made art.

I believe in utilizing tutorials for specific mechanics. These help you learn to solve a technical problem without hand-holding you through the rest of the process. Follow art tutorials, follow guides about scope. These give you building blocks while allowing you to practice your own creative process. Skills which you WILL utilize later.

Therefore I believe in starting with your own ideas, and following more specific tutorials like: how to make x mechanic.

Featured Twitch Viewers

SparklyShiny

Edited by Charlie

My Journey With Breaking Games

Breaking games.

Think about your favorite game. How well do you know the game? Do you know it well enough to have an idea of how the developers think? Could you exploit that?

My friends and siblings have created a wonderful saying about me: “If I’m playing a game, I’m trying to break it.” This was lovingly crafted after many years of playing co-op games, and has even been adopted by my girlfriend. Why? Because if I’m playing a game, I’m trying to break it.

From what I hear, the experience is the same no matter who you ask.

You and I launch into a game. We engage in the co-op fun you’d expect for about the first hour or so. You walk back into the base expecting to see me and some project I said I would work on. Upon returning you find the project is abandoned in the corner, and I’m nowhere to be found.

“Where is this person I’m supposed to be playing this game with?” you ask yourself.

You look around for me and find that I’m running and jumping meticulously against every wall in the map.

“What are you doing?” you ask.

My response perplexes you more than it satisfies the actual answer you were hoping for.

“I found a spot on this wall I clipped on a little bit. I’m trying to see if I can climb it.”

You wonder to yourself why jumping on an empty wall is more entertaining than the real game. You go back to doing what you were doing. Perhaps you’re hoping that I’ll get bored and go back to playing the game.

“Didn’t he want to play this game?” You wonder. You set off to continue playing the game. Half an hour later you hear, “I BROKE OUT OF THE MAP!”

Anyone who plays games with me regularly is no longer shocked by this phrase; nor can they exude the same amount of excitement I seem to possess for accomplishing a seemingly superfluous tasks.

I wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time I was a normal boy just like everyone else. Every day after school I rushed home to play my favorite game, Jak 2 for the PS2.

This is where I had my first experience with the gaming ether, if only accidentally.

During an early mission I took a wrong turn and found myself lost and away from the mission. I would have turned back to follow my guide if not for the strange box on the floor that I had never seen before.

I hit the box and out came black and red trinkets. I was stunned. When I collected these trinkets… nothing happened. Those trinkets remained a mystery until many hours later. I was given access to a rifle by Krew (The leader of the resistance) and it turns out those trinkets were ammo capsules for the rifle. He immediately sent me off to the same location I had found the ammo capsules before, but to go a different route. This is where I learned I had unintentionally stumbled into the future for a brief moment. A moment in time I was not supposed to be in, but I had found myself in anyway.

The sequel, Jak 3 came out and I would similarly rush home to play that as well.

I loved Jak 3 and played it almost every day. It was an oasis amidst the chaos of my normal life. However, like the snake in the garden of Eden, the internet thrust itself upon me offering glitches beyond my comprehension. I bit into the apple and was forever corrupted by what I found.

The same day I walked to my favorite spot in the game, and thrust the disc out of the PS2 (PlayStation 2 for all you kids) with the game still running.

The fabric of reality broke open to reveal the invisible threads that held the world together. The world was not a huge world of buildings, people, and rules. There was nothing behind the buildings. The people and vehicles disappeared from existence when out of view. The most terrifying realization was that in this world I had pretended to rule over I was indeed truly alone.

The whole world, was just one carefully crafted magic trick.

I had freed myself from Plato’s cave.

Despite the Shakespearean theatrics, being able to see behind the curtains gave me a deeper understanding of how games are put together.

This was not the only exploit in Jak 3 that I knew about. The other exploit I learned is where if you use two abilities in succession, they allow you to fly as high as you want.

The other game I used to break out of constantly was Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland. American Wasteland had an interesting glitch where failing a specific move caused you to step through walls. Through experimentation, the funniest place to use this was on a casino level.

If you enabled the low gravity cheat code you could get up into the rafters of the level, use the failing glitch to get out of the level, and fall into the bottom of the map.

The interesting thing is that the casino level had a reflective floor, when you fell below the world you landed in an upside down version of the casino. My brother and I were perplexed by this. We called the area “Upside Down World.” There was something else funny about Upside Down World. In co-op you could see the other person below the floor, while they were in Upside Down World.

Eventually we figured out that the PS2 couldn’t handle doing actual reflections so to accomplish the shiny floor effect the developers made the floor transparent and put a copy of the level underneath the floor.

Why Break Games?

Through my years with gaming I’ve had a ton of fun breaking games. As a result I’ve also learned a lot about how they are put together. What’s important is that I didn’t break the games out of malice. These were games that I spent ungodly amounts of time playing. Even after finishing everything the game had to offer.

Breaking games came from a place of love and exploration. I wanted to continue my journey through games that I love in ways that transcended the original purpose of the media.

I reached out to a gaming speedrunner, Tomatoanus, who specializes in highlighting as many speedruns as they can, all while explaining every detail in the run. They were kind enough to get back to me, and had some perspective to share.

I have to thank Tomatoanus for this wonderful analogy. Someone who is very interested in games wants to take it apart just like someone who’s interested in watches or technology. Games exist as both an entertainment medium, but also as a technical one.

I think the tragedy of this tradeoff is that games cannot be easily deconstructed and reconstructed. Breaking games is a way of building intuition about how the game is made, but there is no way to analyze the parts like you can with a watch.

These experiences were the closest I could get to game development without years of coding and technical knowledge. Though it wouldn’t stop me from trying.

I think everyone who breaks games has a deep passionate love for games deep down. However learning more about the games is not the only benefit.

There are many other entertaining benefits as well.

I love breaking games because it allows me to be in conversation with the developer in a way that other mediums and experiences don’t. All games are made up of pre-defined rules. Board games are the same as the fastest first person shooters. The difference is that first person shooters take a turn every 60th of a second, and would have a rulebook that requires a course in vector mathematics to follow.

They are the same because somebody, some “person,” thought about each rule and wrote it down.

The way you find bugs is by asking the developer, “Yeah but did you write a rule for this?”

Eventually you will find a rule they forgot, and you can exploit it.

If you think of the game as a construction of the developers you will learn where their weak points are.

Breaking games also allows you to experience alternate forms of play beyond what was intended by the developers. This is an experience known as “Queer Play.” I’m not here to argue the validity of the term itself, but I do choose to accept it’s definition as a means of finding motivation in a game outside of the developers intent.

Imagine you’re playing Hitman, but instead of trying to kill everyone you just want to roleplay as someone whose identity you’ve stolen. Imagine playing Super Mario 64 but not wanting to use the jump button.

Challenges like these require critical thinking, and personal problem solving that the developers did not account for.

It’s not often that you get to explore something that hasn’t been explored before. There’s thrill to making progress in your own challenges when the outcome is uncertain. “Designed” game experiences can’t simulate this experience well because the experience IS designed.

When you break games, you open yourself up to new realms of gameplay opportunity. Not only in exploring outside the designed space, but also in something called sequence breaking.

Sequence breaking is when you play a game’s missions out of order. This kind of game breaking is used often by Speedrunners.

Speedrunners are a community of people who arbitrarily decided that it was cool to finish their favorite videogames as fast as possible (Lets be clear, it is very cool). More often than not this involves, not just sequence breaking, but all kinds of glitches and exploits.

How To Break Games

There are a lot of ways to break games. Some exploits can be as complex as performing a seemingly random set of actions then all of a sudden Super Mario Bros is Transformed into Flappy Bird.

I’m going to give you the most general list of glitches/exploits that should apply to most games, and game genres.

But before I do, I have a special message from Tomatoanus.

1. Non-Normalized Movement

The Oldest Trick in the Book and The Simplest

Normalizing your vector is an important concept in vector based movement. This means that whatever direction you are moving, you should be going the same speed.

I’m willing to bet that many of you don’t remember how vectors and trigonometry work. The truth is that many smaller game developers, and sometimes big ones, don’t remember their trig either.

If you are playing a game, try moving diagonally. If you go faster than moving forward you’ve found a glitch.

I recently discovered this bug in Planet Crafters when I was playing it’s 1.0 release on steam. When moving diagonally I got the feeling that I was moving faster. My girlfriend and I tested it. I indeed was moving faster. Now we only move diagonally in the game. OOPS.

Why does this work? Well if you press forward you move, lets say, 1 unit per second forward. If you press left you will also move 1 unit per second sideways. When you hold both buttons you are now moving 1 unit up, and 1 unit sideways at the same time. Therefore your total speed is:

or

2. Terrain Jumping Abuse

These Boots were Made For Jumping

Perhaps the second simplest thing to try in any game with real-time movement is to simply jump on surfaces and see what you stick to.

Keeping players inside the bounds of the game is actually an extremely difficult and thorough task. Developers want their movement systems to work on all surfaces to make things easy for their level designers.

When your character can go on any surface, that means that they CAN GO on any surface. The developers will try to keep you in with invisible walls and impossible terrain. If you test walls with a fine tooth comb you’ll find places you can stick to that the developers didn’t know about, or didn’t have time to fix.

3. Doing Things Out of Order

My teacher didn’t actually read my homework, they just gave me an A

Games are extremely complex pieces of software. Think about all the things that have to work together between the hardware and software for a game to function properly. Given all that complexity, the developers will choose to take a simple route when given the option.

Let me give you an example. Say you step into an area in a game that causes a brawl. The door is locked and will only open when you’ve defeated all the enemies. There is an NPC to talk to on the other side of the door, but you can’t get to them.

What game developers will do is use the physical door to prevent you from talking to the NPC rather than wiring the NPC only to talk to you after you’ve killed all the monsters.

Therefore if you can find a way to get within range of the NPC and talk to them, the game will assume you’ve finished the fight without ever having to do it.

A counterexample is in Dying Light where I did find a way out of the map, but the game is extensively protected from out of order missions so going to NPC’s early just causes you to be stuck with someone who doesn’t want to talk to you.

It was worth trying though :)

4. Animation Translation

Their Dance was Out of This World… Literally

Unsurprisingly, games need animations. It wouldn’t be Fortnite without all those dance animations. There are more than just dance animations though.

It’s important to think about the way a game keeps track of where the player is. Generally this is just a value. Around the value are a whole bunch of circles and squares to make sure that the player stays inside where they are supposed to be.

What’s important to note about game animations is that they are separate from the games physics system. Physics only happens when you let it happen, but animations are hard scripted movements which fight against the physics constantly.

If the game has animations that move the entire character in a direction, meaning it feels like the scripted part is actually translating the entire character, there is a chance you can abuse that to get things through walls or phase through the wall entirely.

“I did this to get out of bounds in The Sunwell in World of Warcraft using the animation and teleportation of my void elf passive”

- Charlie [Editor]

My favorite example of this is an exploit I found in Dying Light. The game’s jump from grab animation has a small translation right out of the jump which you can abuse if you get close enough to a wall. When done right you pop right through.

5. Physics Jamming

Objects in Bounds Stay in Bounds Unless Acted on by an Outside Force

Another issue plaguing any game with real-time physics is the concept of two objects being pushed against each other.

Real physics calculations are extremely intensive. In real life physics happen constantly on a microscopic level. Games don’t have the luxury to do this so they take shortcuts.

The way collisions happen in games is they check to see if one object will end up inside another object. If they do they need to be pushed apart somehow.

For a simple wall it will look something like this.

The blue line represents the half-way point of the wall. The object will always be pushed to the corresponding half of the wall the collision happens on.

Normal game movement happens slow enough that this usually isn’t an issue.

Now imagine a scenario where you are moving so fast that the next frame has you on the other half of the wall, or even all the way past it.

If this happens, the player will be pushed to the other side of the wall.

There are many ways to have this happen, but my favorite way is a glitch in Skyrim. Any game with pickup-able objects has the player directly influencing a physics body.

Therefore if you pick up a plate and press it against a wall the plate will attempt to find a safe place to be. It pushes off the wall to you, but it then gets stuck on you so it goes back into the wall.

This is just my best guess as to why this works. Eventually it moves so erratically that it pushed the player into the other side of the wall. The players collision takes priority over the moveable object therefore when the plate moves erratically it pushes the player out of the way.

When done successfully in Skyrim you can steal whatever you want from whoever you want because their inventories are literal chests underneath the ground.

7. Box Flying

According to All Known Laws of Aviation, There is No Way a Box Should be Able to Fly

Similar to the last glitch exploit. Any game that lets you move physics objects encounters a different problem. How does a game determine if you are allowed to jump?

Seems like a simple question, but is actually very difficult.

There are a few ways to do it, but some of the more common ways are to send a raycast (a virtual line checking for collisions in a single direction) directly below the player and see if it hits the floor.

Another way is to use a collision box and see if the box is colliding with anything on it’s bottom.

Fairly simple so far. The issue is when the game has moveable objects. Having physics objects adds a lot of work to game development because you have to label either every floor or every physics object as something the player can use as a jumpable object.

As you can imagine this is very complex. This leads to mistakes, or developers ignoring the issue due to time constraints.

Say the player can hold a box and that the box always tries to stay a certain distance from the player. If the player jumps while holding the box, the box will attempt to follow them. The player and the box will meet in midair, both suspended by the other.

If you can jump again, the process will repeat until you go as high as you want or hit a ceiling.

8. Placeable Object Abuse

Putting it All Together

One of my favorite ways to glitch a game is through placeable objects/building systems. If you intend to move objects around you might be able to reach places the developers didn’t intent.

However, if the developers let you build your own interactable objects, you will have even more room for abuse. The perfect object is usually something like a ladder.

Ladders in games are actually really tricky to implement. Since the players coded locomotion is for running around and not climbing ladders, it’s easier for developers to just code special ladder movement and switch to it when the player interacts with a ladder.

In general this means that the player snaps into a set position on the ladder. This is ripe fruit for abusing.

Imagine if you could get a ladder right next to the wall and face it backwards. If you could do that you could interact with the ladder, get sent to your designated ladder spot, and be on the other side of the wall. All you’d have to do now is get off the ladder and you’re home free!

Side Note: Often when games have building systems they will prevent you from placing things in “off limits” positions. There is room for abuse here too. Games will typically check for placement viability a frame or two behind your movement. So if you can get close enough, and put it down fast enough you might be able to get away with putting something where it shouldn’t be.

There are all kinds of ways to abuse objects like this. If you notice in a game that a placeable object snaps you in position to use it, see if you can get it to a weird or unexpected spot.

Refer a friend

Conclusion

This is about the most basic guide I could make for getting started on glitching games. I wanted to write a little piece about why I do it as well to help others understand where I’m coming from. I have a lot of fun playing games on my own terms, and sometimes that means setting challenges for myself that have nothing to do with the games at all.

Over the years I’ve picked up patterns in the ways developers make mistakes, and wanted to do my best to share them with you.

I also want to give a huge shoutout to Tomatoanus for chatting with me and providing their unique insight. Go subscribe to their Youtube channel using the video above. They also stream speedrun attempts live on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/tomatoanus. Go and drop them a follow.

I also livestream on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/bitsnpixels_. I stream a morning gaming news show from 8am pst to about 10am. I also do writing co-working where you can watch me write these articles live and even get featured.

Check Out Nick’s: Bluesky | Steam Curator | Writing Livestream | Youtube | Instagram | Tiktok

Chat with the writers themselves on the Bits N’ Pixels Discord Server!

breaking games game glitches speedrunning game exploits queer play sequence breaking game development insights glitch hunting game physics out-of-bounds exploration game design flaws co-op gaming game mechanics game hacking game exploration game challenges game development mistakes game modding game world exploration game breaking techniques

I’m still unemployed.

With all of my personal development, knowledge, skill, and personality, I only seem skilled enough to tutor AI so it can take my job someday. I’d love to abstain on moral grounds, but I truly can’t. There is no alternative.

Without Medi-Cal, I’d have no health care. Without my Mom, I’d have no home. I’m incredibly thankful for both. I have plenty to complain about sure, but I can’t let that overshadow what I’m thankful to still have.

Without the student loan income-based repayment plan I would have already filed for bankruptcy. So I sit in horror as the dam continues to fill hoping it doesn’t break.

Nothing crushes the spirit more than applying to jobs online. Succumbing to dementors would be gentler on the soul.

Feedback is everything. It’s how you judge where you are, how you are doing, where you should be, and how to improve. With online applications I find myself struggling to prove I existed at all.

Of the applications I’ve sent out, only around 40% of the positions respond. 100% of those responses are rejections with 95% of them copy-pasted. No interview, no conversation, nothing.

I’ve made countless resumes and cover letters. I’ve reached out to friends, family, and anyone who might be able to help. I’ve done conferences, job fairs, and so on. The only people who have taken my name are the other unemployed. The juniors.

I’m not mad at recruiters, hiring managers, or even the companies. We know not the criteria in which we are judged. We know not the machinations that lead to success or failure.

I can only speak from the perspective of someone who is under the foot of the machine. I stand amongst hordes of people, my colleagues, who are being crushed by its weight. Our humanity is ground down to nothing but grey matter and deemed unworthy.

The companies continue to tout how many jobs they have open and how great it is to work there. “You should totally apply again!” Yet the goalpost remains elusive.

I’ve put together a small art piece I call “A compilation of unfortunate regrettable messages.” It’s a compilation of all the feedback I’ve gotten since I started applying for jobs.

Enjoy.

A Compilation of Unfortunate Regrettable Messages

By Nick Pastoria

I apologize for the sour article. I was recently in a pretty bad car crash, and have been suffering quite a bit due to a lack of quality insurance. My car was totaled, and I don’t think I’ll be able to get another one even with the money I get back.

Fortunately, my body is ok and I made it out without any broken bones!

I felt like this would be relatable for a lot of other young people in the same position as I am. Sometimes the best way to get the feelings out is to share them.

Have hope, and stay strong!

Nick

Check Out Nick’s: Bluesky | Steam Curator | Instagram | Linktree | Itch | Twitter |

Chat with the writers themselves on the Bits N’ Pixels Discord Server!

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Introduction

Why must gaming hold on to traditional values of supply and demand?

No really. Its a videogame. A simulated space where anything is possible. Games have often sought to simulate the real world, but at what point is that at the cost of fun?

I would argue that having players deal with using a limited supply of items tied to abilities is less effective, and less fun than giving them an infinite supply of the ability on a cooldown…. in some circumstances.

Understanding Cooldown Abilities and Consumables

The difference between cooldown abilities and consumables is actually quite stark in concept. Comparing them could look like comparing apples and oranges, but I disagree.

Cooldown Abilities are simple. They are effectively “powers” that you as the player have access to. After you activate/use the power you do not have access to that power again for some pre-defined length of time. Its not always a length of time, but that’s the general idea.

Abilities like this were popularized in RPG’s MMO’s and Action RPG’s like Diablo. They evolved from early tabletop examples requiring player to sleep, or not take another action for a set number of turns. Once game calculations started to happen in real-time, so too did the cooldowns for abilities. The modern take on cooldown abilities was popularized by overwatch, a shooter with exclusively cooldown based abilities.

The other end of the spectrum is consumables. Consumables are items that exist within a players inventory that can be used. Its a very obvious solution to a problem of ability usage, and it mimics the real world. If you eat a candy bar, you no longer have a candy bar. Consumables have not changed much over the course of gaming. You either find or craft the item you want to use. When you use it you lose one of it. You can only use as many as you have access to. Fairly straight forward.

The Problem with Consumables

My problem with consumables is that they force players to play in the most boring way. When developers are creating a gaming experience their goal is for the player to enjoy playing the game as much as possible (unless its cruelty squad). That includes the consumables. Consumables need to be fun and satisfying to use, and often they are.

With the case of consumables when the quantity/supply of an ability is limited the player is forced to do a cost/benefit analysis for every use of the item. If a player is especially economically minded they may end up never using the item at all. “What if a better moment arises later when I really need it?”

This is colloquially known as “Too Good to Use.” Razbuten made a great video on his stance on the topic that I highly recommend.

This is an experience that I also have. When games have consumables, I’m more likely to avoid using them entirely since I can’t predict a good scenario for their use. Moreover, every scenario that comes up feels sub-par. Personally I feel like this is a failure of the system as a whole.

If it feels beneficial for me as a player to avoid using an entire part of the game, perhaps something needs to change.

How Cooldown Abilities Encourage “Fun” Play

The reason I personally prefer cooldown abilities over crafting systems is because your supply of the “resource” is effectively infinite. A cost benefit analysis breaks down when the “cost” is effectively zero. This encourages players to experiment with the items at no cost to themselves other than a short period of time.

Since the item is on a cooldown, this system also pushes players towards using the ability early on in an encounter. If they use the ability early enough, and the encounter lasts for long enough, they may get to use the ability a second time.

This flips the analysis on it’s head entirely. The question is no longer “Is this a good time to use that item” and becomes “How do I maximize my usage of the ability during a given encounter.”

This in my opinion is a much more fun system that allows players to fully engage with all of the games mechanics. It promotes experimentation and creativity.

Are Consumables and Cooldowns Interchangeable?

The concept of consumables and cooldowns being mutually exclusive is a new one to me. The reason this came up is because of the release of Dead Island 2. Dead Island 2 is not a very notable game. Its a zombie smashing RPG with the basics of a plot, and some rather impressive procedural mutilation. All stuff that sounds great on marketing, but makes for very basic gameplay.

I’ve been enjoying my time with it. The one thing that caught my interest in Dead Island 2 is how it changed consumables.

At the time of writing this only applies to two things. Shuriken for throwing at enemies to do small damage, and Blood Bombs for distracting basic zombies with something to eat.

In any other zombie game these two things would have been craftable consumables. Its obvious, of course you can only hold so many of them.

In Dead Island 2, however, they are abilities on a cooldown. Which is just so nice.

These abilities themselves are not actually that notable. In my opinion the implementation of the Shuriken in particular is quite poor. But I had never even considered the fact that you could take something that would normally be a consumable, and just give it a cooldown instead!

This really got me thinking about how changing craftable items to cooldown abilities makes for much more engaging gameplay.

It also gave me a glimpse into the future of what consumables could be!

A Glimpse into the future!

Imagine a world where you craft items using a limited supply of resources. Once you craft the item it becomes a slottable ability that you can use infinitely but has a cooldown after use.

To increase the feasability of a system like this you could also give the item RPG-like stats that would encourage players to craft more and more of the item to get the best possible version. Very skinner-box like, sure, but it allows for more positive experimentation with the games systems.

If you frequent games with a lot of magic this system is actually nothing new. With magic a system like this makes sense, but for some reason this same theory has never been applied to physical consumables.

Perhaps the affordance feels weird, but I’d love to give a system like this a shot! Its 2023 we’ve evolved beyond thinking realism in games is the be all end all.

Where This Approach Wont Work

The first thing that comes to mind is any game that is absolutely systems driven. RTS, strategy, city-builders, all examples of games that this doesn’t apply to at all.

Games that are entirely systems driven require resources in a supply/demand structure to even function as games or systems. Its literally in the definition.

For the unaware a systems driven game is one that has resources come in from a “sink” and exit through a “drain.” The player is involved in this system by activating sinks of different resources, converting them to new resources, and eventually using them up and draining them out of the system. The sink could also be a part of the conversion system.

These games inherently rely on the idea that resources are generated but finite (at least at human scales of time) in order to push players to produce more. Is that inherently capitalistic? MMmmm uughhhhh…. I guess maybe. But I’m not really here to argue that.

Even “Idle”, or “Clicker” games operate on this concept. For the unaware an Idle game is a game that plays itself. Its the equivalent of having a robot press on a calculator and keep adding one to it to see how high you can go. The catch is that interacting with the game makes the number go up faster, often at the cost of some of your current number.

These games are built on the complex psychological phenomenon of “Monkey like number go up!” or (MLNGU).

Where Do Ability Systems Work Best

Understanding the kinds of games ability systems don’t work in allows us to better understand when an ability system would actually be better.

RPG’s and large open world games put a lot of effort into pretending their open world has one big economy in it. One that allows players to always feel like they are gaining money, but not enough to where it feels meaningless.

This is often the job of at least a couple of people at a AAA studio. For large open world games something like this is important. But the lines blur when the systems become so abstracted that they barely stand for anything at all.

Like, for example, our zombie games. You pick up scrap as a resource to duct tape it together into shurikens… It’s already far fetched enough as it is, so why not take it an additional step. Cut out the meaningless menu work. Get to the fun faster.

Conclusion

In conclusion I think that the future of craftable consumable items lies in turning them into cooldown based abilities. They allow for more fun and positive experimentation in combat, allow for more room for error, and encourage players to engage with the systems.

Check Out Nick’s: Twitter | Instagram | Linktree | Itch | Steam Curator |

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I like to frequent message boards that revolve around people complaining about how games and media are too woke. It started as a way for me to read and laugh about posts that I thought were stupid, but the more I read, the more interested I became in what these people were saying. They kept throwing around the word woke with no inherent meaning. Even when I found a post of someone asking what woke meant, a lot of the responses were either someone calling the poster a troll, or multiple different variations of what people think woke means. They themselves didn't have one unified definition of what woke is.

Woke is a term that was originally taken from AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) which means being alert to racial prejudice and discrimination. Woke can be traced back to the 1930s in AAVE referring to political and social issues affecting African Americans. By the 2010s, when the term really started to emerge, it started to include being alert to prejudice and discrimination of gender and other discriminated identities. The term was popularized in 2014 during the BLM (Black Lives Matter) movement and eventually added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017. However, in 2020 and beyond, the political right wing started to use woke ironically, turning it into an insult to use against progressives and political leftists as anything woke was insincere and used to get votes from minorities. The term has now gained an increasingly negative connotation to it where conservatives will now avoid anything they deem woke and will often use the term 'go woke go broke'.

So what is media being woke? I'm going to list as many examples as I can remember of what being woke is to these message posters. I am not posting this to twist anyone’s words or to try to make anyone look bad, these are actual reasons I've seen people use for saying something is woke.

• Race-swapping original characters is woke.

• Changing the sexual orientation of original characters is woke.

• Reducing the breast size of women in remakes is woke.

• Adding peach fuzz to women is woke.

• Giving women less revealing clothing is woke.

• Not being able to look up a woman's skirt by giving her tights is woke.

• Having an LGBT person who mentions how they are LGBT is woke.

• A woman with short or colored hair is woke.

• Lesbians are woke.

• Muscular women are woke.

• Women that look like normal everyday women are woke.

• Women in positions of power are woke.

• Trans women and trans men are woke.

• A man being wrong is woke.

• A man who was once strong was made weaker so his usually weak female sidekick can be stronger is woke.

• A woman talking back to a man is woke.

• Empowering a woman who was once a damsel in distress trope is woke.

• Censoring a flirtatious relationship you can have with a child character is woke.

As I said before, I'm not trying to twist any words and I'm not changing how people posted things. The above examples are all real examples from posts or comments I've seen of reasons people gave for media being woke. Let's look at this list and talk about this stuff by starting with a reoccurring theme.

Women.

One of the widest range of complaints I've seen revolves around how media is making women less attractive. One of the more controversial games around being woke that I've seen is Street Fighter 6, the next installment of the Street Fighter series. There were a lot of early complaints that said Capcom is censoring Cammy by giving her a different outfit. Below is Cammy's original outfit.

In this outfit, Cammy is wearing a green, skintight leotard with a strap wrapped around her chest as well as one around her thigh. The leotard covers the chest completely, but fully shows the entirety of her legs and barely covers her crotch. She has extremely long hair braided into two braids with a perfect face, besides one little scar on her left cheek. As you can probably guess, the back of her outfit shows some booty as well. Most people who enjoy games know who Cammy is and knows this is her signature look. Here is the new Cammy in Street Fighter 6.

Her new outfit now comes in three pieces instead of one. She is wearing skintight yet styled pants, as well as a sports bra and a small jacket. This is what people were complaining about. This new Cammy was censored and woke. Let's break down the full list of changes. She is showing just about as much skin as before, but instead of her legs, it's a lot of her body. Her hair has been cut and lost the braids, and the scar on her face has been accentuated to look like an actual scar instead of a beauty mark. Her face is still perfect and pouty and she still has an amazing hourglass figure with wide hips and thick thighs. This is the Cammy that has apparently been censored according to the people calling her woke.

Women in video games and new-age media have been a popular talking point with certain arguments, especially since video gaming started becoming mainstream. And let me tell you, women can't win any of these arguments. As stated above, a big argument against woke is how they want their women to be hyper-sexualized and anything not super feminine or sexual is being woke. Which, that argument on its own has its merits. There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting attractive figures in video games. It's everything else that follows which is a problem.

When women enjoy these characters, some will like to cosplay as them. However, when women cosplay as these characters, they will get harassed for being fake gamers, for being sluts, and for being attention whores. Men who complain about things being woke will generally be the same men who hate popular streamers like Amouranth who became popular because of their bodies. Amouranth uses her body as a marketing tool because she is conventionally attractive, but she gets mass amounts of hate and is labeled a titty streamer* or attention whore because of that. Then following that, the same men will complain she's not working a real job or doesn't deserve anything she has because of how she does it. There's apparently nothing wrong when video game characters are extremely attractive, but when real-life women use it to their advantage it's the end of the fucking world.

Let's now look at competitive video games and women. The example we will use is League of Legends. LoL is very notorious for having extremely attractive characters on both sides of the gender fence, but their female characters early on were all thin and busty models with cute faces and sexy outfits. Exactly what anti-woke people wanted.

In an interview with Riot Reav3, a lead gameplay producer for LoL, he stated that around 97% of female-identifying players played primarily female characters. A lot of the most popular female LoL characters can be played in the support role, a role that is generally weaker and is made to make other characters stronger. There is nothing wrong with women playing female characters or women playing those female characters in the support role. The problem is the abuse they get. If the player is really good, they are accused of being boosted by their boyfriend. If they play with high-level players they are accused of sleeping with them to carry them. Shockingly enough, women are still told to “go back to the kitchen” or “go play support” just because they are women.

One of the reasons for wokeness I mentioned at the start of this piece was women in positions of power. The comment I am referring to is talking about how Blizzard went woke with its new expansion Dragonflight. In Dragonflight, the main character and protagonist is a female dragon named Alexstrasza. When she is not appearing as a giant red dragon, she takes the form of a very attractive woman. In the past, she looked like this.

As you can see, it's a generic female character design. Hourglass figure, large chest, very attractive while wearing a bikini and thong armor combination. She was recently re-designed for this new game and now she looks like this.

Here, she is much more covered up but still comes off as extremely attractive. She still shows cleavage and she's not wearing pants, just thigh-high armor socks that still show her thighs. The design is still attractive without making her come off as strict eye candy. Besides the obvious 'oh my god they censored her!' complaints that happened, I saw complaints that Dragonflight was woke because she was the strong main character of this expansion. No other reason, just 'Oh of course the woman has to be in charge' kind of complaints. It's good to see more strong female characters in games. There is nothing wrong with that. People like to see themselves represented in their media.

All of these double standards lead me to believe that some of the people who are anti-woke are just anti-women. It's a lose-lose situation if you are a woman in gaming trying to talk about what it means to be woke. You can have sexy characters in video games, but only for the guys to enjoy. Women can play video games, but only to support guys. There can be female characters in video games, but only if they are not stronger or more important than male characters.

There are woke arguments I have seen that have genuine merit and that I can understand. Race swapping and sexuality swapping for remakes is something that I can understand. It doesn't make me upset to the extent that other people can get, but I understand. They like and enjoy the original and they don't want it to change or don’t think it makes sense. On the other side, you have people making arguments that just because a character is gay or just because a character isn't a stick-thin model with big breasts, the game is super woke. When Tracer in Overwatch was first revealed to be a lesbian, it was revealed in a side comic that you had to go to the Overwatch website to see. People were yelling about how Blizzard was shoving gayness down their throats and that they don't need lesbians or politics in their video games. In a comic that you had to go out of your way to read. It's ridiculous.

The term woke has become so muddled in its 2020 twisting that it can mean anything from being aware of prejudice to a game featuring strong female characters. People can use it to mean something simple like changing characters for remakes, or people can use it to show their horrid and blatant sexism. Most recently, when Bud Light sponsored a transgender influencer named Dylan Mulvaney, people posted videos of themselves throwing away their beer, with Kid Rock posting a video of him shooting up some cases of Bud Light. The Los Angeles Police Department also reported that Anheuser-Busch facilities (the makers of Bud Light) had bomb threats against them. The people calling for a boycott of Bud Light would use the phrase they often do, go woke go broke.

When people use the term woke negatively, it’s hard to take it seriously. Are they trying to express their concerns over a remake of a past piece of media, or are they upset that a woman doesn’t look like a walking wet dream? Are they expressing concerns about discrimination, or are they attempting to hide their sexism and transphobia behind a term that they themselves aren’t sure what it means? The next time you use the word woke in a negative way or to complain about a new piece of media, maybe take a second and think about what you are saying.

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For those unaware, an EDU-larp is a form of Live Action Role Playing (LARPing). LARPing is a performance in which a group of people are given characters to play and a set of rules to follow. The amount of information for each person receives is dictated by the rule sheet.

The EDU part of the Edu-larp means that the scenarios and rules are designed in such a way in order to teach the group/observers something.

Once you’ve been given your ruleset, and characters it is up to the “actors” to play out the scene in a way that feels right. It compares very strongly to improv, but with a stronger narrative base for you to start with.

Somewhere between the spectrum of Improv ←> and Dungeons and Dragons.

The particular scenario we took part in today was called “Are You Like, Ok?” by Carly Kocurek.

It should be noted that not all participants in our group identify as women. So when I say she/her I am referring to the characters and not the actors.

For example I am a male, I use they/them pronouns. But my character in the scene is a woman, and I would refer to myself as a woman.

The rulebook for this larp does a great job of setting the scene. This larp is designed around the central idea of a bunch of women in 2004 meeting in a bathroom before a music concert. The book totally conveys that vibe with its notebook style artwork, and paper cutout text blocks.

One of the women has the role of “Sad Girl” who has an issue that the group has to work together to solve.

The sad girl is free to decide what her central conflict will be, and it fittingly will set the tone for the whole rest of the role play. The sad girl in our group decided that the conflict should be “My boyfriend wanted a hot dog, and I dropped the last one on my way to give it to him.” This immediately gave the performance a comedic slant that I think everyone in the group was more than happy to lean into.

There were some rules in the book about how our group should interact, but our group seemed to be built of people with improv and theatre experience. This of course meant most of the rules of the game were tossed to the wayside as soon as the scene started.

This also seemed to be informed by the massive amounts of detail each actor had to hold in their heads before the scene started. It made it difficult for the actors to add their own information into the scene.

Information like this tidbit for my character:

While fun in concept during my playthrough the person playing the character “J” was reluctant to add characters to their backstory which meant that I had nothing to play off of.

The adeptness of each of the other characters in the group also played a big role in moving the story along. The sheer amount of detail each person was keeping in their head meant that many of the group members were too afraid to add more detail to an already bloated scene.

Participating in any larp/performance activity is very challenging and upon reflection I can see why the rulebook had everyone sit in a circle and take turns chatting.

Since our group leaned into the more naturalistic/improv approach this meant that the only people participating in the scene were the ones with more experience in that space. People who were quick on their feet, comfortable with “yes-and”ing, and not afriad to add new detail to the scene. Unfortunately this meant that the others stood and watched for the whole scene.

Perhaps that’s not the worst thing, but I have no doubt that if we performed the same thing again with new roles the people talking would still be those with more confidence in the group. Our improv-like setup ended up making the game less inclusive unintentionally.

Our scene went like this:

The sad girl enters the bathroom crying. A couple of us started already in the bathroom, while others enter afterwards. The profuse crying from the sad girl attracts the attention of the other women in the bathroom. They ask her what’s wrong, and she tells them her backstory. The women in the bathroom lament over her issue and console her, and judge boyfriend for being so childish. I come out recognize a couple of the other people there and butt into the narrative. I have a rumor I’m trying to scope out, and I think that Sad Girl might know the answer to my question. In exchange for our conversation I offer a solution. She unfortunately doesn’t know the answer as to whether or not the rumor is true, dang. But I do owe her a solution so I say I know a hotdog vendor outside the venue that can get her an extra hot-dog. I agree to go get it with another lady who is a freelance writer. Once we make it back into the bathroom to deliver the hotdog I trip, dropping the hotdog on the floor. This effectively ends the scene, but since this is a larp we kept going. It ended with the group of women decided to murder the hotdog salesman outside for scalping them on hot dogs.

The debrief after the performance was almost more fun than the actual larp itself. Getting to hear each persons perspective on what was happening, and their goals throughout the performance. We concluded that our scene was definitely the silliest of the performances in class.

In conclusion this larp was very fun. The freedom we took for ourselves definitely made the experience our own. It definitely reminded me of how much I enjoy improvisation. But I feel like perhaps we were given too much information to hold onto. Also our aversion to the rules of the scenario itself created some social imbalances based on the individual experience of each actor performing their roles.

Today I left the barber feeling rather depressed.

It was a weird kind of depression though. I’m used to being depressed, the feeling of being totally drained. No self worth. The feeling that nothing I do is right, or worth it.

It wasn’t that kind of depressed. Certainly a colloquial version of the word, but not clinically.

I felt sad, defeated, but more alive and aware than usual.

Sure you could chalk it up to the fact that the sun is out today. Seasonal depression is real. But talking to people always manages to pull me out of my head for long enough that I can actually feel like a part of the world.

My barber was a Santa Cruz native. Someone who had grown up in Santa Cruz, moved around a couple of times, but, like the monarch butterflies, ended up right back at home.

The conversation started out innocuously enough, his kids were sick so he had to reschedule my appointment. I asked about how they were doing. He lamented about the schools new covid policies requiring kids to stay home for at least three days and test negative.

Just a normal guy trying to live in the world.

Something I have picked up about Santa Cruz is a uniquely sad disposition from the locals. Santa Cruz is a town that is undergoing active gentrification. This was an opportunity for me to chat to a local about the changes that they’ve seen.

Behind my coffee shop is a large abandoned building. This building is occasionally used by firefighters for drills, or squatters for shelter before they get snatched up by police.

A big grey husk.

One day a man walked in, he was obviously an SC native. You can tell by the way they dress, by their messy and unclean yet stylistic clothing. He told me he came here to reminisce. I wondered why.

He knew what that old building was. And he had come to see it. It was his childhood elementary school. Full of kids at play, teachers watching them, busy parents. Now totally devoid of life.

I often look out at that building imagining all those kids out there enjoying the great weather near the cliffside. What I see instead is adults barely scraping by coming to the coffee shop to peer over the metal fence and catch a glimpse back to their childhood.

Its so sad I have a hard time coming to terms with what I’m seeing. On the inside I’m thinking to myself,

“Oh fuck thats awful.”

But I don’t have the mental faculties to admit that. Steeped in this knowledge I used this barbershop as an opportunity to interview my barber about the changes to Santa Cruz he’s seen.

Santa Cruz is full of homeless, closed businesses (priced out by the rent competition), and wealthy tourists.

The first thing I asked about was the homeless. I asked if they were SC natives who had it rough and lost it all. He said no.

He said all the natives had to move out and scatter around other towns like Watsonville. The vast majority of homeless people in Santa Cruz are from other states. Santa Cruz has a lot of wealthy people, great programs to support the homeless, and fantastic weather.

What started out as altruism was soon taken advantage of. Other states used SC and California’s open support of homeless communities as an invitation to be even harder on the homeless and ship them out to us.

Thus increasing the number of people being supportive on what would be already minimal resources.

Many of these homeless people are in desperate need of psychological help. With the amount homeless people from other more conservative states being shipped here, there aren’t nearly the resources to successfully help anyone.

My barber told me that drug abuse, bad drug abuse, was rampant in SC.

He reminisced about the days of his youth, running around the town without the need for self defense.

“Santa Cruz has always been weird, but it used to be the good weird.” I knew exactly what he meant by that.

As we chatted, the man in the chair next to us chimed in. “I’ve noticed its very hard for people to afford housing on the coast. What’s the deal with that?”

An answer that both my barber and I knew the answer to intuitively as both Californians.

The man admitted to being from Minnesota, he understood the drug issue but didn’t really understand the housing situation.

Between the University, the wealthy people, the natives, and the refugees from fire disasters, Santa Cruz does not have nearly enough space for everyone. Supply and demand dictates that prices should rise. Which they definitely have. But that’s assuming you can even find a place to live at all.

This really is the case all over California. The demand to live here is so high that the price for housing greatly exceeds what you could make working minimum wage full time.

I admitted that I was living on the governments dollar, which is true. The only way I can live in California, and in Santa Cruz more specifically is with government support. Support that they expect to have paid back.

The school is huge, and admits way more students than it, or the town can support.

I transferred to SC in 2021 and was only barely able to find a home. One of my current roommates, was forced to live in a hotel before he moved in with us. Many live in their cars to attend university.

My barber wished that more resources could be put toward supporting the students instead of worrying about other states homeless. I tend to agree.

But the other faction in control of SC in direct competition to all this are the tech elites from San Jose. They buy all the property. After all, its great beach property.

They also price out all the local business. Most of Santa Cruz is made up of small shops. These used to be owned by independent individuals, but an increasing number are funded by tech giants who moved over the hill.

They don’t need their businesses to run at a profit. Which again eats up supply of space and drives up cost. What we are seeing now are tons of empty building blocks full of businesses that were not successful enough to keep up with rent increases.

With the increasing demand the rent is unlikely to go down to fill the empty spaces. They just have to wait for someone to come around who is willing to pay what they want. It’s only a matter of time.

As much as I wanted to shift the conversation in a more positive direction, I couldn’t deny how dramatic this would be for someone who grew up in SC.

We also came to a similar conclusion about the fate of SC, and California for that matter.

With the upcoming rise of corporate America, and the increase in remote work. Best case scenario is that people take high paying jobs and move away from dense expensive areas in order to enjoy the lower cost of living in other states.

“They’d be living large”

Either way it requires a fuller embrace of corporate standards, and ways of living. Homelessness will be dealt with, but so too will the strangeness and individuality of places like SC.

None of this is new information. This is happening all over California. It’s just interesting to be in a place witnessing it happening. Also knowing that it will continue to get worse before it gets better. But it will never be the same. (When is anything really)

The town is building higher density housing, the homeless continue to get moved around to wherever is most convenient. The houses rise in price, the future for Santa Cruz is similar to that of Santa Barbara, Venice, or Malibu.

Though it reminds me of the “Ship of Theseus” thought experiment. What attracted people to Santa Cruz was the people. If all the people get swapped out is it still Santa Cruz? That’s for you to decide.

Thanks for reading. I hope you all have a wonderful day. If you liked this consider subscribing for more things I write. If you really liked it consider throwing me a couple dollars so I can get off government support for housing.

Happy Monday everyone! I recently took the weekend off. I was feeling kind of shitty, and to be honest I really couldn’t think of anything to write about.

Certainly that conflicts with the philosophy of this newsletter. Which I’ve defined to be:

“Quantity = Quality; Put it out even if it sucks!”

But I’ve also decided that mental health comes first and If I need a day I’ll be a nice boss and take a day! That's part of the reason why I've put most of the articles behind a paywall. It’s also why the payment tiers don’t specifically say at what frequency I’ll be putting out content. Shit happens.

So for those of you who have been keeping up with my incoherent ramblings, first of all, ‘thank you’. I’ve been having an amazing time writing these articles, and monetary support just means that I can put more time and effort into them.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been reading the book What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo. Its an amazing book detailing the trials and tribulations of the author and her relationship with complex trauma. I picked up the book last friday, and have been reading it religiously since it arrived at my door. Its a fantastic book, and something I’m surprised isn’t more popular.

The mental health circuit is a difficult, and confusing road to go down. I have had no doubt that it was the right thing to do, but it takes a long time to even know what you are dealing with personally. I have had lots of different potential problems brought up. Every time I would research them furiously to see how much they matched me.

OCD, Autism, bipolar, panic disorder, I’ve considered and dealt with many extremely challenging topics. But to me the more important thing was just finding out what was right. I certainly displayed some symptoms of the diagnoses listed above, but they never quite matched what I was going through.

The research I did was not a waste. I learned valuable coping mechanisms, and skills through my research but it always seemed off. That was until my therapist told me to look into Stephanie’s book.

I found a lot of comfort from the way that Stephanie perfectly describes the concept of C-PTSD or (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). The comfort I felt was the realization that I too have been dealing with C-PTSD. All of the symptoms matched. Which is a scary, but also reassuring thing to find.

So what is C-PTSD? Well, PTSD is what happens when you experience a traumatic event. Your brain rewires itself to be triggered by things associated with that event. Even if they are not connected to the event itself.

Stephanie explains it great. If you are in a traumatic car crash that took place near a Krispe Kreme, even though the donut shop had nothing to do with your accident the shops proximity to the accident could become a potential trigger for the future. Complex PTSD is what happens when you experience traumatic events over and over again to the point where effectively your whole life is a trigger.

Your brain is effectively re-wired to almost always be in fight or flight mode. You are often dissociated from reality, and hyper aware of everything. It makes maintaining relationships, jobs, and friends exceptionally difficult due to how always on edge you are.

This kind of condition is associated with childhood neglect, and abuse. Boy did I have my fair share of both of those. But what happens is that over time as you were subjected to trauma as a child you attempt to take control over the situation. As adults suffering from this condition you often feel A: Like you aren’t feeling anything at all, B: Like its somehow all your fault; Like you haven’t been working hard enough, and C: Extremely jaded and mad at a world that you work so hard to be a part of but also feel totally unable to join.

Its a sad thing for me to look back through old photos of myself. Because as I go through the photos I can see when the smile, which was once so genuine, became fake. When I transformed into less than a person in order to survive the horrific circumstances I was subjected to on a daily basis.

When I think of my childhood I always remember an episode of Avatar the Last Airbender. Aang, the protagonist, needs something from a deity that steals peoples faces when they express emotion. It does everything it can in order to disturb and shock the person it talks to, and Aang remains stone-faced through the whole thing. Even as a young child this episode felt like something I had trained for, I felt like I could be the avatar because my life so perfectly reflected that singular moment in the show. It wasn’t something I wanted to be, it was who I was.

It feels like other people have the key to being happy and in the moment, and you just haven’t become successful enough; You aren’t funny enough; You just didn’t say exactly the right set of things to get people to finally like you.

My personal experience matches that for sure but goes beyond that. I often felt like recovery was hopeless. Every time I found something that worked for me it was only a matter of time before it all fell apart. I left parties thinking no one liked me, when people did like me I felt like I had lied to them.

Its a feeling Stephanie calls “The Dread”. The Dread is simply becoming so good at emotional control that you no longer know how to identify what you are feeling. I can say for certain that I often don’t know what I’m feeling or why for weeks. Suffering from emotional flashbacks that cause issues to cascade when they could have been resolved with a simple text.

The hardest thing about this whole process is self forgiveness. Because we believe all the problems with our lives are tied to us, and we worked so desperately hard to maintain control the one thing we can’t do is forgive ourselves; give ourselves a break.

As Stephanie put it, you have to re-learn how to be a person. Research has shown the intense repeated trauma actually changes the wiring of your brain. It becomes more than just emotional responses, but your actual physiology is has been re-wired to misfire.

The parts of your brain responsible for calm reasoning are underdeveloped, and the parts of your brain responsible for life and death scenarios are over developed. Your brain constantly secrets stress hormones without the relief when the experience is over. Not only did I not have the tools to connect with people, my brain had developed in the complete wrong way. So now I have to take steps to change it as an adult, which takes significantly longer.

Recovery from this process is different for everyone, and lord knows I’m still at the very early stages of my recovery but I bring this up because if you think that C-PTSD might be something you are suffering from. I highly recommend picking up Stephanie’s book. It certainly has been a light in my tunnel.

Thanks for reading my more serious article! I’ll get back to talking about gaming and other stuff when I feel ready. I’ve been playing through Earth Defense Force 5 with some friends, and I’ve just started my journey through the Resident Evil 4 remake. I’ll get to talking about that soon. Thanks to everyone who continues to support me through this extremely challenging part of my life.

Introduction

Lately I’ve had a craving. I’ve had a craving for style over substance. It’s something that I think I’ve craved my whole life, but am really only truly beginning to understand. My favorite pieces of media are ones where it feels like you can hear the creator of the piece speaking to you in their attempt to make something that is like nothing else. Dune, Redline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The French Dispatch, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, all pieces of media oozing from head to toe in their unique style.

Unique Style in Media

The major plot elements of all these aren’t all that complex, excluding Dune of course. The stories are incredibly simple. A fox, writers, the worlds deadliest race, a boy on a desert planet. The goal of most of these films is to tell their respective stories in a way that others wont. This is the kind of stuff I like.

I guess its kind of similar to someone who enjoys wine tasting, or rare foods. Perhaps the flavors they search for are not “better” in the traditional sense, but its the infinite search for something “new” that drives them. So too am I driven to find new feelings, and emotions, and styles that I haven’t seen before.

Generic Genres and Their Place

That is partly why I am so put off by anime, marvel, and generic fantasy. I will admit to loving anime, marvel, and generic fantasy, when they were fresh for me. I loved the original iron man movies, Fullmetal Alchemist, and RuneScape, and absorbed a massive amount of media from those genres. But those genres are so often used as a blanket jumping off point that I rarely find anything new in those spaces. Often what makes me more upset about anime and fantasy specifically is their straight denial of trying new things. There are opportunities to create new interesting worlds that are squandered by creators falling back into the defaults of Wizard, sorcerer, and knight.

This may make me sound bitter and jaded. It makes me sound like a hater of popular culture. I definitely grew up as a counter-culture kind of person, I had a childhood that caused me to reject normative models of heroes and success due to the way that I was raised. This I accept. However I am also a firm believer in the fact that every property in these “generic” genres is someone’s first experience with them. Plus some people just like these genres enough all they want is “more”.

I think the worst thing that someone can say is that these things shouldn’t exist. Because they absolutely do. Just like I hate on Assassin’s Creed, and Far Cry for being boring and tropey they were fun to me at some point. Just not anymore.

The Appeal of Unconventional Media

So as someone in this predicament the things I find myself loving the most are the things that feel like they shouldn’t exist. Media that defies the norms, creates new genres, and wants to flesh out the world around the main characters more than the characters themselves.

Hardspace Shipbreaker: A Unique Gaming Experience

This is a great opportunity for me to gush about one of the best games I played in 2022. Hardspace Shipbreaker. Hardspace shipbreaker is a simple game. You play a “Shipbreaker”, someone who has been hired to break apart spaceships for reclamation piece by piece. The catch is you are floating in orbit around the earth in a microgravity environment.

Through the story the game gives you progressively harder ships to break down. Ships with pressurized hulls, live electrical wires, and nuclear reactor cores. You have to plan, and execute your cuts very carefully in order not to splatter yourself on the walls of the junk containers.

All in itself this is a compelling game, but the setting is what really sells the game. You play a single worker, in a crew of five all of whom you never actually get to meet in person. Your crew is one of hundreds for a space faring shipping company working to break down ships of people doing much more interesting stuff then you.

When you first join the shipbreakers you accrue a massive debt for the cost of just getting to the site, and all the equipment. You are a contractor. You must pay for the fuel, tethers, oxygen, and explosives that you use. The game makes it very clear that you are not the one in charge, or the main character of whatever this story is.

Despite all of that the simple act of breaking down the ship is so relaxing, and satisfying it had me coming back to the miserable life of this shipbreaker again and again.

Plus the amazing story roped into the games dialogue. As you progress through your shipbreaker training you are trained by your manager, and you get to hear about the lives of your other shipbreaker peers. The major crux of the story is that it just so happens that around the time you join the shipbreakers a major union is forming to fight back against the corporation that is keeping you imprisoned in indentured servitude.

Despite the player barely having any direct action, or agency in this larger plot. Simply existing in this world and getting to help out in the small ways that we can was so much fun to keep up with I played it all the way through. The voice acting was incredible through the whole experience, from the disgruntled boss, to the angry and vengeful corporate representative brought in supervise your crew. The tension is always there.

Your boss trying to be understanding to your personal feelings and learning, their attempt to understand the corporate decisions being made, and the frustration of the corporate reps lack of understanding or care for the safety of the workers. It was superb.

To me that is what turned a fun experience into a superb one. It oozes its own style, and story outside of the standard Sci-Fi model. That is the kind of stuff that I love.

Conclusion

In our saturated world full of the same thing repeated enough times to drive Albert Einstein insane, it’s the unique, stylized and innovated pieces that harden to amber with time. Whether its the sweat soaked blue collar world of hardspace shipbreaker, the unique storytelling of Wes Anderson, or the absolute head-assery of Redline (Please watch this if you haven’t), these pieces remind us of what it really means to create. To set out in your own direction and make something entirely your own. So, go ahead and play Hardspace Shipbreaker, and don't forget to share your own favorite gems of creativity and world-building. Together, let's celebrate the unconventional and embrace the magic of artistic innovation.

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Considering the audience for this is still extremely small, I have a very small feedback system I can pull from for these posts so I’d love to hear your feedback about yesterday’s post. Finding a good balance of paid/free content and incentives is not easy, and it requires a decent amount of back and forth between me and you. So if things change a lot over these next couple of weeks or months please be patient.

All that being said I’d love to hear your feedback, and ideas for incentives!

Today by reader request we are going to talk about battle passes.

For the uninitiated a “Battle Pass” is a player retention reward system that gives out items based on how much a person played. Popular games utilizing battle passes right now include Fortnite, Rocket League, Overwatch 2, and more, to varying degrees of success.

This is usually accompanied by some sort of “objective” list that requires players to engage with the game in multiple different ways. At least, the good ones do anyway. What separates this from just rewarding players based on how much they play is the idea of “Seasons”. Battle passes have to take place in fixed periods of time called “seasons” that end. Once a season ends the ability to get any of the rewards go away forever (usually), everyone’s progress is reset, and a new season and reward list is created.

Battle passes are always accompanied by a “premium” tier. This tier basically always has the best rewards attached to it and offers the ability to finish the entire battle pass in less time.

My opinion of battle passes has flip flopped over the last couple years. In that time the method went from something that only Fortnite was doing to something that took over the industry as the leading monetization model. It frankly is kind of genius in the way that it generates profit and player retention all in one fell swoop. You have to pay to get the best cosmetics, and If you paid you have to play otherwise you miss out on the stuff you paid for.

These days I’m fairly lukewarm when it comes to battle passes. Some games do them better than others, and my opinion of them really depends on the game they are in.

Certainly there is a black and white consumer facing argument about, your money only being worth your skill level. Meaning that better players will get access to better cosmetics than worse players. But… That was already a thing.

That idea started in arcades where the value of your quarter determined how long you got to play the game. That idea has since cemented itself with delivery apps like uber eats straight up, gamifying work. Your wage is based on how well you game the system.

So is rewarding your most devoted customers wrong? No… not from what I can see. Is FOMO a bad reason to drive interest in a cosmetic? Again… perhaps morally in a digital space, but its not all that uncommon. As long as its the same for everyone there is no pre-established “issue”

Plus battle passes keep artists, typically people who are dropped late in a project due to not being needed anymore, in a job continuing to create content for a living breathing game. Which in my opinion is great!

The only negative I have with battle passes is for a person who pays for the battle pass then doesn’t play. That certainly can feel like a waste of money, and would be disappointing to say the least. However I’ve seen people use a strategy to counter this. The battle passes often let you level up for free and show you what you could get should you purchase the premium edition. People will play at the slower rate till they feel like they’ve earned the cost of the battle pass in cosmetics, then purchase it.

On the whole I personally don’t have that many problems with battle passes. I am getting older, and spending a lot less time playing multiplayer games than I did when I was 15. As a result I find myself getting fewer and fewer rewards from these games, but since I play them less I also find myself not really caring. If I load into a game of Fortnite I certainly feel pressured into buying skins and dances, but If I have to play a handful of rounds as the default dude I’m not all that worried.

And frankly compared to other monetization models battle passes are by far the most honest iteration of cosmetic monetization that we’ve seen yet. I absolutely abhor loot boxes that accept real cash, for reasons that I can’t fully cover here. I also dislike real-money shops since companies have shown that they will use every shady sales tactic in the book to obfuscate their pricing model. It all felt very insulting. Whereas battle passes are very honest and up front, play more & pay.

However I think the reason they are in hot water as of late is because of their involvement and addition to Overwatch 2. Overwatch 2, the artist formerly known as Overwatch 1, used to be a $40 title with loot box cosmetics that you earned from playing the game. You also had the option to buy them if you wanted.

During Overwatch’s transition to free to play (f2p) came changes to its monetization model. Including the removal of loot boxes, the addition of a cash shop and a season pass. The reason they were in hot water is because their new playable characters were locked behind a battle pass. Thus Alienating anyone who wasn’t able to fork over enough cash to skip the battle pass, or someone who didn’t have the time to play the game enough from access to the character for up to 3 months (Give or take).

That would make me pretty angry if I was an on-again off-again player. Double that if the new character is overpowered (which they usually are).

So on the whole my opinion is actually fairly positive of battle passes at the moment, but it definitely has room for improvement. Do you think battle passes are the way of the future or are you just waiting for the next big model to hit? Let me know what you think , either in the comments of this article, on my twitter, or in my discord!

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Perhaps one of the most toxic, gate-keeping, yet common phrases uttered in the gaming community is ‘get good.’ Games without a doubt are competitive. Multiplayer games are obviously competitive, but people will find a way to play even single player games competitively. Difficulty is a right of passage, and the gaming glory of “getting good” is so pervasive entire game genres are held up on top of that saying as a pillar. While I do think the gate-keeping nature of games can be intense at times I personally don’t think that making a game easier for those who want to experience it detracts from your personal experience. I think the souls games have gotten better at this over the years with Elden Ring being the best example of accessibility in a “challenging” game that I’ve seen.

The place I think that has suffered from the “get good” mentality has been the multiplayer gaming space. Multiplayer games by their nature are competitive. Competitive games and E-Sports are on the rise. E-sports are the future, whether you like it or not. Like I talked about previously with Counter Strike 2, what we have right now are the stepping stones for new sports, new sports casters, personalities, and each company wants a piece of the pie. You may not see it, but on the internet a war is going on with games attempting to cement themselves as the next “sports” with arenas, teams, sponsors, fans, the works. I think e-sports are great, and welcome any new disruptors to upset the tired old impenetrable monoliths that have cemented themselves as staples. It’s the life cycle of media.

My issue with the e-sports arms race is that, many multiplayer games, in an effort to make these games as competitive as possible, they forget to make them fun. In order to have a good time playing these games you need to have a full squad of dedicated people that want to play the game %100 seriously. Or a squad that’s ok with losing. I’ve put my time into competitive games. I’ve hit nearly the highest rank in Rocket League someone can achieve in a lifetime, but that doesn’t mean I’m having fun anymore. Often times I find myself more frustrated at the games, by the games, and the other players than I am enjoying myself. From toxic team-mates trying to go pro to systems designed to punish players who are doing poorly, I find myself spending most of my playtime dead watching from the sidelines.

I am a hyper competitive person, and not a bad gamer. So as easy as it is to point a finger at me and say “get good” like a neanderthal, it’s not addressing the real issue at hand. If this is my experience, how many other people are being alienated by the systems that these “competitive” experiences provide? I’m 26 and my reaction time is only going downhill so I don’t expect to get any better at first person shooters any time soon. But I still look forward to participating in playing competitive games from time to time, I just wish the developers had put more work into making the game fun for everyone.

I feel silly even bringing it up with how popular hyper competitive games are right now, but it’s important to remember that they don’t make up even close to a majority of the gaming market. As big as those games feel, they are still dwarfed in size by mobile games. They have a lot of room to grow and expand if they werent so determined to gate-keep the bad players off of the experience. This is why I believe a game like Fortnite has been so successful. Sure there are tons of factors, but one of the main ones is that Fortnite’s target market of “children” caused them to take a look at the moment to moment gameplay and have them ask themselves.
”How can we make this fun for a child who will get no kills?” So they add tons of optional mechanics and objectives, like dirt bike tracks, fishing, driving, water-skiing, and the kitchen sink to make it appeal to as many people as possible.

It’s funny for me to write this, because I am usually against mass appeal, but for me mass appeal in gameplay is different. That just means adding more mechanics that ultimately make the game more interesting. The opposite of that is an “Uncharted” like game that make the mechanics as simple as possible to appeal to a wide demographic. I prefer when games add additional depth in other areas. One of the best examples I can think of for this is TF2. A game with multiple different playstyles each is valuable and necessary to the team. My favorite class in TF2 was always the engineer. I was never great on the front lines, but I liked to be able to help and support the team in my own way. Overwatch took some notes from this, but I get tired of getting yelled at for playing Torbjorn so I usually stop playing.

Apex Legends is another game I’ll point to as being very “get good.” I like the battle royale formula, and I’m happy for its success. In anything competitive “random” elements are actually quite good at leveling the playing field and giving worse players a chance at achieving victory. Battle Royales appeal was how random the starting conditions were for each player. But god damn if Apex Legends didn’t get rid of that whole dynamic. You can either choose to drop in at a place with real guns where all the people who are trying really hard drop. So you will most likely die right away. Or you can drop somewhere more deserted, get crap weapons, and spend the entire game just running until you finally get in an engagement…. and die. You do nothing else, and I’m so bored by the time that I finally get to an engagement when I die I feel that I’ve just wasted my time.

Rainbow Six Siege, Valorant, and CSGO all have the same issue for me. I am nowhere good enough to be an asset to my team while holding a weapon. I actually really enjoy round based games, but with no alternative I have no way to practice. Rainbow is also the only one in this category that punishes its current players for having bought the game already by holding off the best deals only for those who are new with no way of upgrading. I think of these three the one I’ve had the most fun in is Siege because there are a handful of operators that I can still participate with while hiding in a room somewhere.

I remember a time when games just wanted to be fun. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with the kinds of competitive games that are out there right now, but I’m sad to see no other attempts to make anything different or fun. New competitive games continue to come out, then fail, because as the staples continue to cement themselves people who have already invested tons of time in “their game” won’t want to switch to a new main game. They may switch temporarily as a change of pace, but I think the time is right for some smaller multiplayer titles to come along and allow people a fun alternative that won’t replace their main game.

That’s my rant. Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed it please subscribe to my newsletter! Don’t forget to follow me on my social medias, and join my discord!

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I’ve been reading a lot about mental health, and creativity over these last few months. I’ve learned a lot, and gone through many cycles of epiphany. “Oh my gosh I can’t believe I never looked at the world this way before!” Then it crashes all back down to reality. Through my journey I’ve uncovered a wealth of knowledge about myself, how I operate, and the kind of life that I want to live.

I learned that I have an extreme anxiety disorder. I learned that I’m more creative than I am smart, and I learned that I love to create things. I also really enjoy being around other people who enjoy creating things. People who don’t judge other’s work by what it’s not. I like being around people who treat the finished work as a final piece, a marker of someone’s current level of skill. People who trust that the person creating the work knows what they did wrong, and would ask for help if they needed it.

I say all this because throught all the self discovery i’ve done the one piece wisdom that has stuck with me so far is this.

“Quantity = Quality”

I think partly because of the way that I was raised, and partly because of my inherent anxiety disorder, and also because of the internet. I’ve always struggled to produce work that I am happy with. Everyone deals with this I’m sure. But I would often get so discouraged when doing work that I would fire myself before I could even finish my first project. I was not taught to be proud of my first attempt, so If I could not be good at it on my first try. I wouldn’t even finish it. I wouldn’t share it.

But recently thanks to the help of my therapist, my psychiatrist, and some books I’ve been reading. Including “How to Fail Successfully” by Brandon Stosuy. I’ve come to find that creation is not a perfect science. Allow me to explain a little bit beyond what seems obvious.

I think my most self destructive mindset when creating in the past was the need for it to be “good.” Having some invisible bar of quality that was always above what I was able to reach. As one might expect each project that I worked on was more a battle with myself than it was to actually make the thing. But as a result I would be so burnt out from attempting to create the thing I wanted that by the time I was done I didn’t have the energy to do it again. Which it turns out is totally the wrong idea! There are so many factors to this, societally, socially, and the way we are raised all go into this.

The first time I ever noticed something different was when I was a freshman the first time I was in college. This was one of the first times that I decided to share something that I had made to new groups of people. I put myself out there in ways that other people might not because I love to create. The most surprising thing was that I got positive feedback. It threw me off, I judged their opinions as less because they liked my work. I had never had someone look at what I did and appreciate it for what it was. Not in the way that these college friends of mine had.

That moment would go on to be an outlier for me until an audio editing class I took with the amazing professor Brian Hansen at UCSC. The assignment was simple, basically create anything with audio. People of all different skill levels went into this class, and created works of different levels of skill to match. The thing that had me so impressed was the way that this professor treated every piece of work that he heard as if it was being presented in the MOMA and he had the once in a lifetime opportunity to interview the artist. He was truly an inspiration, and it continued to shock me for a while to come.

Now I’m in group projects working with large groups of game devs, all with unique skill sets and skill levels. I honestly try my best to approach the groups the way that Brian Hansen had listened to each of our audio tracks, and I think I’ve done an OK job. I’ve certainly tripped here and there. I’ve learned that the group itself is also an entity that must be trusted. I have also had to learn to trust that I am still doing a good job in groups that are doing well. Seeing as my impact on the groups may be more esoteric at times. A ship that makes no sudden changes must still have someone at the wheel.

However the thing that I’ve learned the most, and am trying to embrace the most is what I’ve written above. Quantity = Quality. What does that mean?

That means that if two groups of people are tasked with the same task. One group is told take all the time you need and you will be graded on the best version you turn in. And the other group is told to turn in as many as possible regardless of quality. The group who turns in as many as possible will be producing better results by the end of the experiment on average. Which intuitively makes sense, but I thinks schools work us out of this practice.

The reason this is so relevant to games is because of how iterative and artistic they truly are. Rarely in a games project, or any project for that matter, does something go entirely as planned the first time around. You really need to give yourself space to make the same thing multiple times so that you get better and better at it.

For games this takes the form of playtesting. You work towards a playable milestone, get some feedback, and use that feedback to change the game to make it better. Sometimes these changes are small, and other times they sweep the development entirely in a new direction. It’s chaotic, and uncertain. Which for a lot of people, including myself, is very scary.

But after reading this book, and watching the behind the scenes creation of Psychonauts 2. I’ve learned that the chaos means that you are travelling in the right direction. Chaos and uncertainty is the mark of something that has never been done before. It’s growth, its learning, and its hard! But you need that space to create, and re-create as many times as possible in order to get the best version possible.

So too… have I applied this philosophy to the creation of these articles. Will I win an award for “Best written article” any time soon. No. But that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that using this new philosophy I don’t need to spend forever to write “The best article” that may or may not happen. What I do need to do is give myself the space to say, you know what. That article is done. On to the next one. Because inevitably I will write “My best article”, or make my best game, or sing my best song, or whatever! What matters is that I create, and I share where I am at. Then move on to the next thing! Because it will be even better than the last!

So remember, don’t worry about if what you are making is good. Turn it in. Finish it. Move on to the next thing. Get that feedback, then if you want to, go back and make it better. Or use that information to make you next production even better!

Quantity = Quality!

Treat yourself like your work belongs in a museum no matter where you are at!

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Yesterday’s issue got me very excited. I read about the upcoming update for Sea of Thieves and got very excited to play it. I sat down, bought it on steam, and downloaded it. To be clear the updates listed in the video from yesterday don’t come out till later this month. Yet I thought to myself,

“Well it’s been a while since I’ve played the game, I should give it a shot a little early.”

Which is why I’m bringing it up to talk about today. That, and there really wasn’t that much else interesting happening in the news right now that I felt like I wanted to write about.

Sea of Thieves has a problem. Sea of Thieves is unable to keep its player around for long periods of time. One of the games core pillars is this: “All players must be on a mechanically even playing field.” This is not an unheard of core idea. Chess, checkers, Rocket League, CSGO. Many many games exist with this core idea. So why is this a problem for Sea of Thieves? Skill ceiling. If you’ve never heard of the term before “Skill ceiling” refers to the difference in skill between the most skilled player, and the least skilled. Games like Chess, Rocket League, and CS:GO all have staying power because, despite their repetitive gameplay modes, you can always be improving. The skill ceiling is very high. Consequently someone who invests twelve thousand hours is going to be much better at the game than someone with twelve.

The other key element is that these games are all player vs player. Going up against another human is always engaging because, as humans ourselves, we are unable to predict exactly what someone might do. That invested individual with twelve thousand hours, definitely will be able to predict what the person with twelve hours will do.

So what about games that do Player vs AI? Well. Unlike playing against other humans AI (in the past) have been hand written by humans. This meant that if you could learn the strategies that the AI’s used and exploit them. In this case how do you make a player feel like they are getting better at a game when the AI is basically at a fixed difficulty? Well you change the stats of the player, relative to the AI. This is how basically all MMO’s work. The player does get more and more skilled, but not to the extent that a chess player gets more skilled at the game. The fun and progression of the game has more to do with the player going through trials in order to earn gear that lets them have higher numbers.

So what does all this have to do with Sea of Thieves? SoT is a game with MMO elements that asks its players to enjoy it like chess. The problem is that SoT is not chess. Players can spend hours amassing Jeff Bezos amounts of wealth, but they gain nothing from doing so other than the ability to make their ship look cooler. You do have the ability to fight other players out on the high seas, but this also has some issues. When you sign up for a chess match, you are signing up to play against an opponent. When you choose to play SoT you don’t get to choose if you want to encounter players or not. So players aren’t getting any stronger vs the AI as they play the game, but they also might not be signing up to get better at the PvP. Which puts the game in a weird middle ground. The developers can’t make anything more challenging in the PvE because all players are at the same base stats, while they also can’t make players ships stronger since that would cause the already unbalanced PvP to be even more out of whack.

So what does a game like this do? In my opinion I wish that SoT would accept and adopt more MMO elements. I think having things like weapon stats and ship stats would greatly increase the potential playtime of the game. I think having PvP servers and PvE servers is also a nice option so that you can sign up for competitive experiences. Another option to consider is to have the stats of the weapons only effect the AI in the game, where all the weapons do the same damage to other human players in order to keep veterans from having a significant stat advantage.

The new update showing some of the quality of life improvements as well gave me some more ideas. The game is already fun enough as it is. Have us buy these quality of life improvements as ship upgrades with in game money. That would be a huge motivator.

Ok, I’ll step off my podium now. I love SoT and I say all of this because I would love to have a reason to keep playing and exploring the world of the game. The current content the team is pushing out feels shallow in my opinion for the reasons I’ve listed. If you’ve never played it before it’s an amazing time and will last you a while! Just don’t expect to stay for too long.

Some Fun Links:

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Of Fops and Flops: Cheating the Aristocracy in Card Shark by Errant Signal

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Sea of Thieves player retention, MMO elements in SoT, skill ceiling issues, PvE vs PvP balance, stat-based progression, Season 9 updates analysis, dynamic difficulty scaling, PvP/PvE server separation, gear progression systems, live-service game longevity