siliconereptilian

androidmaeosauridae

  • they/them

tabletop rpg obsessed, particularly lancer, icon, cain, the treacherous turn, eclipse phase, and pathfinder 2e. also a fan of the elder scrolls and star wars, an avid gamer and reader of webcomics, and when my brain cooperates, a hobbyist writer.

 

the urge to share my creations versus the horrifying ordeal of being perceived. fight of the millennium. anyway posts about my ocs are tagged with "mal's ocs" (minus the quotes). posts about or containing my writing are tagged with "mal's writing" (again, sans quotes). posts about my sci-fi setting specifically are tagged "the eating of names". i'd pin the latter two if they were actually among my top 15 most used tags lol. fair warning, my writing tends to be quite dark and deal with some heavy themes.

 

avatar is a much more humanoid depiction of my OC Arwen Tachht than is strictly accurate, made in this Picrew. (I have humanoidsonas for my non-humanoid OCs because I cannot draw them myself and must rely on dollmakers and such, hooray chronic pain)



robotface
@robotface

It's run by crypto/NFT weirdos. They promote "Gandi IDE" which is a modded version of Scratch that adds gamedev-specific functionality (mostly multiplayer focused). It looks pretty innocuous until you stumble upon this little whammy on their about page:
"Unlike other game engines, Gandi is designed by DAOs and made for DAOs. You can draw, code, debug together and exchange ideas, online, in real-time.
Moreover, you can also create extensions, mods, and SDKs to iterate the engine as well."
For those who don't know, DAO stands for "decentralized autonomous organization" and is a term for when a project is governed by blockchain stakeholders. The about page has a gif of someone clicking "mint NFT collection" and then a spinning Ethereum token pops up. Currently everything on their "asset marketplace" is free, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are planning to make it run on crypto. They're also marketing this to kids!
Please just use TurboWarp instead, and steer clear of "Scratch Game Jam".
Or PenguinMod is probably also cool? Idk, I haven't looked into it at all.


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in reply to @robotface's post:

am I being paranoid or does this also feel targeted at kids, by both medium and tone? maybe I'm unaware of a widespread adult scratch developer scene, but afaik aside from absolute beginners the only people spending much time in scratch are kids. and the copy just feels like it's ... directed at an all-ages audience at best

Yes, their website has pages for educators, and while it's currently pretty much a clone of the other "advanced" scratch mods with some more emphasis on multiplayer functionality, from what I can tell they're aiming to create something like the Roblox ecosystem but maybe powered by crypto. (This is entirely speculation on my part.) So yes, kids are a major part of their target demographic. The Scratch Jam awards some sort of currency called NG to the accounts of anyone who submits through Gandi. I don't know if NG is crypto or not.

There are definitely adults who use Scratch seriously. After years of learning traditional programming, I've just recently returned to using Scratch (TurboWarp) for a game jam (not this one). I've found it much more natural and it's making me seriously consider using it for a "real" gamedev project. I don't know if there's a scene aside from educators who use it to teach, and the modding scene, which feels like a mix of adults and older kids.

woah, yikes - thank you for the added context. a huge shame to see crypto and scratch getting mixed like this! you're confirming my experience that scratch is a really cool and powerful tool with a lot of potential, hopefully we'll keep seeing great things get done with it that don't have this kind of baggage. and hopefully at least some parents and teachers are aware! thank you for sharing this.

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