ChocoSune

Furry Fetish Artist & Streamer

(NSFW/πŸ”ž) Confectioner of Kinks. Art is at @AvecLeChocolat. Freelance furry artist.
I make fetish art and love engaging with others.
I post my art [ just about everywhere. ]

Be Horny, and do Kinks.

Above all, fuck fascists; but not in the fun way.


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🌐 Homepage & Other Sites
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cohost.org/AvecLeChocolat

So I finished Mario Wonder so I can watch the playthrough of one of the YTers I currently follow without ruining any of the surprises, and if I was a pro game dev I'd pay next to anything to get a running feed of their thought processes to try and understand how they're exploring the game and learning to play it.

I'm now all but convinced there's genuinely no accounting for game literacy in game design. Certain conveyances in the game that I thought were so obvious as to be literally elementary soared so far over their head they went into fucking orbit. They don't tend to act out to the camera, very scarcely interact with chat, and seemed to be very focused on enjoying the game; so I genuinely don't think it was the "streamer effect" at play.

And I don't mean to make myself sound like I'm saying I'm better than a speedrunner (they used to do that back in the day); there's likely going to be a lot of stuff they'll figure out automatically that I struggled with myself.

While looking up information about Yoshis' and Nabbit's mechanics, I found two articles that concerned me: one that explained the mechanics but failed to do so in any sort of detail I was hoping for, and another that complained about Yoshi not being allowed to pick up powerups and how this "denied them an integral part of the experience" because they weren't made aware of it until several levels in - when the character selection screen has a warning plastered across it that explicitly says as much. The YTer I watch made the exact same mistake, multiple times.

It's just so fascinating and a little frustrating how, at least in practice, nothing can be assumed to be "obvious" in games - even if and when it's written in plain language front and center.


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in reply to @ChocoSune's post:

I don't like the handholding in games, but it's there because the average player will miss the plainly obvious unless told directly and shook violently.

I've seen a lot of fresh and seasoned devs realize you really do have to put a giant arrow above someone's head because a fair portion of players will just become "blind" in video games.

There was a brief discourse on Twitter about a brightly yellow painted ladder as something that is "climbable" and how some players feel like they're being treat like idiots, but in the game dev world: This is often a necessity so players aren't faffing about doing something that's not conducive to the progression of the game.

Yes, most people know a ladder should be climbable. However, in a game where you might not be climbing around a lot: It might not cross your mind that you should climb this ladder to reach somewhere ... until it's painted yellow to contrast everything else.

I think it was something from the latest RE remake where during playtesting literally nobody would break any barrels for important resources unless they were painted on or something like that.

I just think that at some point during gamedev you have to make the decision, consciously or otherwise, on where to draw the line with your signposting and player guidance with the tacit understanding that you are making your game less playable to some portion of your audience one way or the other.

There's a lot of choices one can make to ensure accessibility without necessarily compromising on design and artistic intent, but there's always going to be a limit to how inclusive you can be.

Far as I'm concerned, no game can ever be made for everybody to play, and that's okay.