MOOMANiBE
@MOOMANiBE

Everything on mobygames is contributed by users and if your game/credit/etc isn't on there or is wrong the fastest way to ensure it gets fixed is to submit the information to the site yourself rather than complaining on social media and hoping it magically corrects itself

the volunteers on that site put in a COLOSSAL amount of unpaid labor filling this stuff in and the way the industry at large treats it as a magical and unknowable process that just ~happens~ irritates me to no end. you can literally see who submitted the credits for your game at the bottom of any credits page!

If we can't give those people money or respect (and we do not) the very, very least we can do is give back once in awhile and submit correction requests ourselves.



aliothfox
@aliothfox

Please don't give up on this site! I know it's taking the staff a long time to work down that activation queue, and it can be discouraging when it doesn't feel like it's moving. But here's just a few things to keep in mind:

  • Cohost has only three full-time staff members. I believe they're in the process of hiring more, but they never meant for this place to be a "Twitter lifeboat," so they're probably pretty overwhelmed just keeping the site up and running, let alone having any time to activate a lot of new accounts every day.
  • It's Thanksgiving week in the US. Things are probably moving slowly right now because holidays always put a bigger strain on websites (because more people are off work and able to be online). (Edit: it's not Thanksgiving anymore but things are still busy)
  • You can still participate on the site before you're activated. You can't post comments or make new pages, but you can still read people's posts, you can still share/reblog what other people are posting, you can still like posts, and you can still follow accounts. If you're coming from Twitter and still waiting to be activated, try finding some of the folks you follow(ed) on Twitter in the meantime.
  • As the influx of new users reaches an equilibrium, the process will stabilize. It may take a while, and it may feel frustrating that you're not able to join the conversations, but this stage of the game isn't going to last forever.
  • This site operates on a "no crunch" philosophy. The limited staff aren't putting in crazy overtime hours on weekends and late at night. This site has a relaxed atmosphere. Things don't move as fast here as they do on Twitter. The staff get to enjoy that relaxed atmosphere too, and that is ultimately good for the site, even if that means things move a little slower.
  • The wait will be worth it. This site has so much promise. Interaction is different here than it is on Twitter; the pace is a little slower, the posts usually a lot more thoughtful. The site is improving, and you're coming in close to the "ground floor." You'll get to watch this site grow up - and take part in that. Stay patient - that number will get to zero sooner or later, even if not as quickly as you'd like, and then you'll be part of the fun.

shel
@shel

I wanna add:

Staff aren't working at all during holidays. they keep a very strict work-life balance. No working weekends, no working holidays, no working in the middle of the night. They're trying to prevent burnout and keep things sustainable, which is also why there's an action queue, allows them to ensure the site can handle more posts and won't get overloaded.

The activation queue contributes to the good culture here. Having to take some time and lurk before you post for yourself is a great way to learn the social norms on here. It used to be an old Internet adage to lurk in any community for a while before you start posting. Think of it like that. You get to let yourself be a fly on the wall and learn the lay of the land.



joshmlabelle
@joshmlabelle

It's often taken as an article of faith that if a game has choices, those choices should "matter". 1 star reviews for choice-based games are littered with this kind of feedback. On nearly every game I've worked on, one of the earliest pieces of narrative documentation will dutifully repeat this idea and explain how on this game, unlike most games, choices actually WILL matter, often without clearly defining what this means.

A working definition of "choices matter"

In my experience, when a player complains that choices "don't matter", they felt that any, all, or some combination of the following constellation of experiences was missing:

  1. Choices have an immediate impact, leading to the player accessing material that feels qualitatively different. ex: investigate the crime scene or research at the library leading to different scenes and info; fight or negotiate; go visit this character or that character, etc.
  2. Choices have delayed, recurring impacts that feels significant. ex: picking up the gun or the crowbar pays off once or multiple times; make a connection with this character or that character allows you to rely on their expertise at key points
  3. There is a significant and ongoing change in the state of the world. ex: an important location burns down or is taken over by another faction; a character dies or leaves; player advancement
  4. Decisions have noticeable recurring or cumulative impact, not fading into the background after initial branching. ex: a character remembers that you chose to help them instead of someone else; repeatedly screwing over an ally leads to them treating you differently than if you did it one time
  5. End states are significantly differentiated. ex: player accesses significantly different content in the end game; choices the player doesn't necessarily even remember making are called back
  6. The impact of choices is clearly signaled. ex: the game makes clear that what's happening is happening because of a choice you made. I've seen players complain about choices not mattering in games with hundreds of thousands of words of differing content simply because they had no idea the impact their choices were having on what they were seeing.

But depending on your game's pillars, audience, and fantasy experience, it's worth examining whether choices should really matter in your game, or if they should be there to serve some different purpose.

My chief example of a game pillar that can conflict with choices mattering is "player expression". Everyone with access to analytics for game choices can attest that "evil" or "mean" options are rarely picked by players on a first playthrough. In Mass Effect, even the relatively heroic "Renegade" route was picked about 10% of the time compared to the "Paragon" options.

I want to propose that this is not inherent, but something that happens because players are trained out of picking options they might otherwise pick because of the most common ways in which designers make "choices matter". Players are trained to expect that the "mean" or even "lightly sassy" options will lead to punishment, often in the form of less content or fewer "social" rewards from characters (ie characters liking and opening up to you).

An example of this effect in action from my career

On one game I worked on, we put in a lot of effort to craft funny, sassy options to say to the characters. The choices in this game were almost entirely about player expression in a game all about player expression, from how the player dresses to how they decorates their homes. In our forums, players would post screenshots of the choices, laughing at the options and daring each other to pick the "sassy" one. I quickly realized that players wanted to pick these options, they wanted to define themselves as snarky or funny, but they were scared to do it, expecting these options to result in nerfs to friendship levels with the characters. As players began to pick the options and discuss the payoffs with each other, they realized these choices didn't matter... and they were _excited_ and _relieved_. Suddenly they were able to express themselves and pick the choices they wanted to, the ones that best represented their desire for how to interact with the character, and not have to worry about losing points or facing consequences for it.

When players see that it is not the case that we'll punish them for their choices by making them "matter", it often frees them up to enjoy making choices purely as a means of fantasy and self-definition. Sometimes deciding to be mean or nice in the moment matters more when [blank] WON'T remember that. Sometimes what really matters is what your choices say about you.

An addendum with another place where making choices matter can backfire...

Making choices matter can also backfire in games that are highly completionist but not geared towards replayability. On one game I worked on, we made a quest involving choosing between two competing fashion designers to make what the avatar would wear to a fashion show runway.

Approaching this from a "choices matter" perspective, we would have wanted to create two completely different dresses that reflected the different styles of the designers and gave a clear payoff for the player's choice. Perhaps we'd even want to add a few differing accessories depending on small choices the player made with each designer.

But this was a game where we were nearly always working on an absolutely razor thin art budget, and getting even one new dress created for a quest was a tough sell. The choice of designer became flavor, with the dress given to the player in the quest being identical regardless of their choices.

It was amazing to see that players on the forums became upset and anxious about the choice immediately. They were frustrated that the quest seemed to imply there were two possible dresses, one of which they could never attain. When players discovered that there was only one dress, they were, again, excited and relieved.

Go figure. FOMO can be a hell of a drug.


damon
@damon

great post. I'm actually really in love with dialogue choices not having consequences while gameplay choices do... FFXIV has played with this a bit and players seem to instinctively understand that they can choose any option and the outcome of the conversation will be the same. in a fully linear narrative this really lets the player feel immersed without, like this post mentions, suffering from that FOMO!



vogon
@vogon

links to more reading below the fold

FTX was the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange on the internet, and its CEO was simultaneously a luminary in the "effective altruism" space, democratic fundraising, and also the money behind a bunch of weird ballot propositions in seattle (a city in which he has never lived) about approval voting and whatever the hell "seattle for a healthy planet" was going to be.

yesterday, it was widely reported that there had been a run on the bank and that it was going to be acquired by their largest competitor, binance, which today abandoned its acquisition offer because they had discovered that FTX was completely out of actual assets and was just a -$10 billion hole; the only valuable asset they were interested in was FTX's US-based subsidiary, which binance was probably trying to acquire because they're knee-deep in criminal investigations for fraud and probably want a clean name to do more fraud under. in the wake of this, another $130 billion in "market capitalization" has vaporized from the cryptocurrency space in the last 24 hours, which is now off like $700 billion since its peak earlier this year.

crypto people are still, to a person, trying to rip the world off and you should never trust them about anything.