KTallguy

I’ve been using Artemis ever since it was posted here earlier this year. I love it because there is very little pressure to read everything and it updates infrequently so I don’t impulsively check it. Great product.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42471913

https://artemis.jamesg.blog/

What an amazing success. I waited for the mobile version to dive in and it was a perfect fit. I appreciate that he wants to stay anonymous (for his health and other reasons). Nothing makes a game developer happier than watching people enjoy their work.

Balatro was built on the Love2D framework and its success inspired me to start playing with it. I’m a novice programmer but I feel that it’s a really amazing kit and has a lovely community attached to it.

I’ve been looking for sources about the Japan doctor shortage, do you know of any that describe the cause as being low pay? I have heard about the medicine issues.

A few comments:

1. It’s not very fun on iOS, especially because crypto mining makes the screen zoom in and it’s no good. Also the sound for the phone doesn’t work so that’s a big blocker. You probably know already.

2. Later, playing again on PC, I fist pumped when I finally was able to pay my ISP and the network clicked on. It felt like I defeated some boss in Dark Souls. You made that feel so horrible … thank you.

3. I sent this to a friend and he said that the browser was requesting microphone permissions so he turned it off. I didn’t encounter this but I’m wondering what that was?

Anyway I don’t know if I’ll continue to play and try to pony up the six thousand dollars I need to pay my rent and open the door to the endless staircase, but good job anyway :)

Thank you for the article! I’m an American who’s lived on and off in Japan for around 10 years, currently in Tokyo working in game development. I related to many parts of your article, especially the later part about foreign devs working with Japanese executives.

My work environment aims to be multilingual (Japanese/English) but creative conversations are inevitably stymied by pauses for translation. Machine translation and AI is helpful but fails to capture nuance, and compounds normal, everyday communication woes. Japanese only speakers on our team feel lonely and left out despite best efforts. Japanese applicants are quite rare because of the stress of being in such an environment. It’s exhausting when people around you don’t share common cultural touchstones and every conversation is an unpredictable exchange.

On the other side, although many of my non-Japanese colleagues speak varying levels of Japanese, some have tried but are unable to (or don’t care to) improve further. Working proficiency is a high bar, and our “real work” is busy. You can get by in Tokyo with cursory Japanese, translation apps and online reservations. There is a large expat community, so you can ignore the “Japan for Japanese people” if you so choose.

I wonder how things will change as the native population continues to shrink over the years. Even in Tokyo, many businesses have responded to the tourist explosion by insulating themselves in various ways. There are recent incidents related to concentrated immigrant populations as well. I hope that we avoid the xenophobic trend that is sweeping the rest of the world but I do worry.

There are a lot of cashless options but many places still only take cash. There’s a bakery in building that opened right when COVID started and they’re strictly cash only. Whenever friends and relatives visit they’re always stunned.

I don’t know if I agree that phones are the only culprit, but I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your article. Teaching is an incredibly hard job.

Lately I worry about all the AI written content that appears when doing a simple web search. I’ll find an article that seems relevant, but after spending 30 seconds or so unwrapping the prose, I find absolutely nothing of value.

If I was younger and every time I tried to read something longer than a tweet I got nothing out of it, I would likely get frustrated. Maybe that’s why it’s easier to default to gifs and memes.

The market is saturated.

This is not the middle. The author is talking about small games.

Exactly what I thought reading this article. It’s very hard to stand out and it’ll only get harder. Tools are much better than before, and now AI generation is entering the ring. Being an exceptional game is half the problem, the other half is getting noticed. Which takes money, or connections. Usually both.

Two additional points.

1. Good interaction design is still hard. Making something that many people can play and understand quickly is a skill. Releasing lots of content is the best way to learn.

2. Back in the Newgrounds days it was really simple to put something out there and get feedback on it quickly. Ads were (generally) not woven into games directly, the Flash tools were simpler and they limited game scope. Itch.io is ok for this but has a lot of downloadable stuff. I miss the days where browser games were huge but I guess there’s no money in it anymore. Maybe someone with better insight can share.

It’s a shame. Hobbyist developers and smaller studios have very little time to sift through all of these complicated pricing situations. The pay-per-installs prevents giving away a semi-successful game for free in donation packages, and adds new admin overhead. I don’t understand the goal… what new revenue stream will magically spring forth from these changes?

Unity is not my favorite engine to work with, and there was a long period of buggy, non performant console ports, but less choice is always worse.

Very interesting video that verbalizes many thoughts I’ve privately had. I agree that NPR has gotten more sensational and hive minded over the recent years. I was pledging 10 years ago or so, not anymore.

Lately I was trying PBS because it’s pretty dry, but they’re also quite left leaning no?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-Ug2-Ou2Rc

Thanks, that’s exactly the kind of context I was looking for! I had no idea…

My favorite yojijukugo is from Chinese, despite the fact that I barely speak it.

自強不息, or “Pushing forward to better yourself without ceasing,” I think? Maybe there’s a better way to put it?

Another poster mentioned 点滴穿石 which is my second favorite. It puts things in perspective quite well.

Apparently the vernacular these days is 「スマホ馬鹿」, “Smart Phone“ idiot. Same principle, different device.

Personally, I’m thankful that they’ve locked down as long as they have. We’ve already had our share of death, long Covid cases and stress on our public health system. Simultaneously, people are generally free to choose whether or not they want or be vaccinated, and there are no heavy handed lockdowns like many other countries. It’s inevitable that Covid will still spread even with our best efforts, but not overwhelming hospitals and avoiding needless death and disability is very important. I think that Japan‘s response to this ongoing crisis is not perfect, but well balanced overall.

When tourists do return, I hope they respect the norms here and wear masks in public spaces, disinfect their hands, and do their best to avoid risky situations… and don’t act like Japan is a giant theme park where Covid doesn’t exist.

I’ve given up, and I dislike having content pushed to me in general.

I use a combination of Remove YouTube Suggestions[1] and prefacing “intitle:” before any YouTube search to avoid weird matches that point me to irrelevant content.

I think it’s ridiculous that I need to constantly click “show less like this” and exert so much effort to train YouTube. I also hate how they’ll insert random unrelated videos “For Me” or “Watch it Again” in my search results. It’s all designed to keep me on the site and distracted… better to avoid it entirely.

[1] https://github.com/lawrencehook/remove-youtube-suggestions

This is the correct take. SQEX has a pretty poor reputation when it comes to outside studio management in general (both domestic and international). Their in house development has produced the most hits.

Also, SQEX desperately wants a Destiny style live game that they can run for many years, like the domestic mobile titles that keep them afloat. Marvel Avengers, Outriders, and Babylon’s Fall were all attempts at this model but none of them captured a significant market.

They’re also pushing harder in the mobile space, trying to get at least one international moneymaker. We’ll see if their bets pay off in the next few years.

I’m enjoying Read Max, a newsletter about Pop Culture. https://maxread.substack.com/

There was a Dune article that got some traction here a few months ago.

Thanks, this comment really made me think. I noticed a lot of the same things you did, but my impression was much less negative.

Maybe it’s because of the presentation. In many open world games the UI makes it clear that there are “X towers to climb” or “Y camps to clear”… there’s a checklist of goals. Elden Ring just lets players stumble on things as they will. Even as the map design may be similar to other open world games I feel less pressure to “do all the things”; as a result my personal journey feels more organic.

I did recognize the template pieces used in caves/mines and it did turn me off a bit. But because I’m not guided to clear all of them checkbox style it was less offensive. In a way it’s smoke and mirrors: a lack of information makes the design more mysterious than it really is.

A sibling comment mentions that the length makes multiple playthroughs a pain, but I generally am a one and done for souls games.

In another thread I commented that the open world gives a casual player more options instead of getting forever stuck on a single challenge. I think that feeling of freedom combined with faster (but buggy) movement is responsible for the broader appeal and high scores. Oh and the art direction doesn’t hurt.

You have a good point. I imagine the author tried many of the older open world games of the previous generation, like Farcry 3, Assassin's Creed 2 games, and likely GTA4 and 5. They were incredibly novel for the time.

Now we're at a point where open world games are a dime a dozen, and for good reason: they sell. They're easy to understand, simple to drop in and out of, and many of them now have multiplayer. Rather than aiming to make an immersive world to get caught up in, companies run them as live service games with a drip feed of content―essentially a big sandbox that I can mess around with my friends in. On the flip-side, Breath of the Wild is strictly single player, but it has a lot of fun systemic features that combine in interesting ways (weather, elements, physics, etc), making it feel like an experimental sandbox of its own.

Elden Ring is basically a Souls game with two major innovations for the series:

- Previous games had mostly linear progression. Elden Ring opens up the world to the player and gives them tools to explore without penalty from the start (fast travel, for example).

- Outside of interiors, the player is afforded much more mobility because of their mount. They can outrun almost all overworld enemies, and do hit and run attacks (Interiors are traditional Souls challenges).

These two points, combined with a generous allied NPC summon system, means that the player has a lot more options in how they want to approach the game. In previous Souls titles if you reach a boss you can't defeat, the game is over for you. Elden Ring is structured in a way where you can just go in a different direction, and warp back to that boss when you feel more confident. The environmental storytelling, cryptic NPC dialog, and multiplayer systems are nicely tuned to fit the different affordances Elden Ring provides, but they're not wildly different from previous Souls titles.

Agreed, it shouldn't feel forced.

Some people really don't like 1:1s and that's down to individual personalities. Also company culture can make 1:1s feel meaningless if the conversation that happens is never actionable.

I try to see where the person is coming from and adjust my approach. If their concern is not in my power to change, I escalate to my lead when appropriate.

A sibling comment mentioned that chatting about how you're stressed or frustrated can be used against you... I've had that experience and it was terrible. I think it all comes down to having a good manager, and unfortunately you can't always choose.

I get it. I've had my share of bad managers.

What you described sounds like a performance review... I think 1:1s should be monthly or weekly, depending on the team.

I disagree. I approach 1:1s as an opportunity to just shoot the shit if that person is interested, or if there is something on their mind they can choose to chat about it. As the article states, it's that person's chance to completely dictate the conversation.

I think the best is to personalize things as best you can (depending on your team size). Some personalities are less interested in talking, which is fine―I just try to make sure nothing is blocking them or they're not dissatisfied. Some people love to talk about their life, and I usually have to time-box that.

I genuinely care about how my team is doing and want to help them grow, so 1:1s are my main opportunity to figure out how I can help them... especially in the era of remote work.

There are kernels of truth in here, like the unsubscribe link not required by law.

But there are many huge Japanese internet based companies, like Zozotown, that are extremely savvy at their UX experience and are extremely metrics driven. Not to mention the recent surge of internet based cellular providers that don’t have a brick and mortar storefront.

Meanwhile the fax machine anecdote is about ten years old at this point. Most Japanese purely rely on mobile devices these days.

Demon's Souls was much more difficult in some ways, because you got weaker when you died (zombified), and your potions are consumable items that don't automatically recover. However you could also farm lots of potions, so there were ways to game it.

Beating Demon's Souls on a tiny CRT in an even tinier Japanese temp-apartment is one of my most cherished gaming memories.

I like VR, but haven’t gotten into these chat like spaces yet. I feel like the setup is just way too cumbersome still. But this video is very convincing.

It makes me wonder how it would feel to walk around a virtual museum like this in VR and experience it with friends. However because the avatars are so loud it would likely detract from the experience.

[Radiohead - KID A MNESIA Exhibition (PS5)] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qW_uHohQUpo

Incredibly useful article. Thank you.

A useful series of posts that thoroughly debunk this quote/meme.

https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...

This is a great post and generally echos my own experience. I think Destiny is a decent brand with a smaller, but still sizable following.

My personal opinion: Sony wanted to acquire both the Destiny brand and the team that built that brand—especially the innovative networking engineers. I hope that Bungie gets another shot at a new brand, maybe something that isn't a shooter.

Haha, thanks. Just more evidence that I'm getting old. It feels like I've been using it since I first touched a computer. But most likely I found my way from Winamp like most folks.

I've been using foobar2000 since the 90s. It plays music effortlessly, but I also love the extensive tagging and ripping functionality. Another plus is its interface skinning flexibility. There are recently made "modern" looking themes if that's your thing. I'm currently using Georgia[0].

[0]https://github.com/kbuffington/Georgia