• She/Her

18+ Only.
30 year old Transgirl furry anarchist who doesn't know what to do in life.
Dragonuki (Dragon-Tanuki) therian. ΘΔ
Equipment Supply Liason at CESA
(I transform into things people need)
Lots of dragon and yinglet sharing, plus some NSFW.
Plural but my headmate, Nidea, is shy so don't expect to see her much.
In a closed poly relationship.
name-color: #9320DC
A pink chocobo next to the words "Chocobo Ranch"


trashbang
@trashbang

come make video games, we've got:

  • players don't look up
  • players don't look down
  • players don't look
  • players don't read
  • players don't listen
  • players don't look
  • players don't look
  • players don't look
  • PLAYERS DON'T LOOK

bruno
@bruno

the cool thing about designing video games is that for every single piece of information you try to convey to the player there will be a player who either misses it or misinterprets it


bruno
@bruno

and the thing about this is that players will always discover new ways to misunderstand things, ways you hadn't even considered. you can deal with the idea that they'll miss some information, you can build in redundancies or try to work through a process of teaching and reinforcing and testing so that you can re-expose the player to the critical information they need. but they'll always find the one assumption you made where you thought something could only ever be interpreted one way, and they'll devise some absolutely diabolical misapprehension of what you're trying to convey. every time.


trashbang
@trashbang

In all sincerity: an important part of my learning process as a level designer over the last few years was letting go of the idea that it's possible to have everyone experience things the way you intended them. You can lock them in a room, point lights at something, have it jump up and down and make sounds, and unless the camera is physically wrenched out of their hands, they might still miss it. Chasing perfection is a road to madness.

This isn't to say that there's no reason to try—god knows I try. But you get diminishing returns for your efforts, and past a point, you have to examine how they negatively impact the experience in other ways.


quwyou
@quwyou
the portal 2 devs put a sign in the game that said "in case of implosion look directly at implosion" bc players kept looking away from the animation they worked so hard on

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in reply to @trashbang's post:

🦨I remember making some offhand remark about the "tutorial bushes" in our game because we had a note that said "if the player can't figure out how to get past these they can't play the game," and someone said "that's kinda mean tbh" and I'm like, literally the entire point of the game is to spin into things (which cuts down bushes) and if the player can't figure that out then they literally cannot play this game. That's like one of your two moves lmao

in reply to @bruno's post:

Giant sign saying "please wait to be seated". Barrier to force you to walk past it. People walk right on by, or even move or duck under the barrier. They then get angry that a waiter doesn't appear.

Some people will not succeed, no matter what you do.

in reply to @bruno's post:

in reply to @trashbang's post:

Skip tutorial and story dialogue "This game sucks! It expects you to 'just know how to do things' and I don't even know what the story is about!"

Game: "This character was a bad person, they did bad things. THey are bad"
Player: "Character wasn't bad at all you see-- [essay follows]"

Dev: "This character is trans. They are so trans!"
Wiki: bans dev from the Wiki "[Citation needed]"