This took way too long for a haha funnie joke but I got this idea as soon as I saw the trailer!!! Leo would be SO excited and his fam would be very supportive!!!💖💖💙
wheels1185 asked:
Lately I’ve noticed a bit of, let’s call it pushback, against the upcoming release of Baldurs Gate 3 and Larian Studios, by developers and studios alike. From your perspective as a game developer yourself what is this all about? Why are they calling BG3 an anomaly and making it sound like Larian hasn’t earned the praise they are getting? Why all the attempts at what sounds like trying to discredit their work?
askagamedev answered:
The unfortunate truth of the matter is that the discussion I’ve seen from devs is subject to signal decay when in an environment where the most maddening and viral takes are the ones that get amplified over accuracy or educational takes. The various “hot takes” I’ve read were traced to the observations of [Xalavier Nelson Jr. about BG3] and I have to say - after reading his original thread, I am very much in agreement with him. Baldur’s Gate 3’s success is absolutely not a template that can be easily repeated and is very much an anomaly.
You can tell a lot about a game by the number of developers in the credits and the length of its dev cycle. If you multiply (number of devs) x (months of development) x ($10,000 per month per dev), you get a pretty good estimate of a game’s overall budget. BG3 started development in 2017 and had a team of over 300 developers working on it. 300 devs x 72 months x $10,000 = approximately $216 million USD. “Step 1: Secure $200 million in funding to develop your game” is absolutely not a business plan that is feasible for 99.9% of indie developers.
This also goes for other circumstances beyond their control that managed to favor them. Larian was incredibly successful in raising funding during early access, but they are one of a tiny fraction that made it. Larian got incredible word-of-mouth promotion from their fans while thousands of amazing indie titles languish in obscurity on Steam. Larian managed to secure a major license that is extremely well-regarded - not exactly an easy feat to replicate. Each of these various circumstances ended up a win for them and every single one of them was necessary to obtain the success they did.
This isn’t to say that Larian doesn’t deserve praise for their success - they absolutely deserve all the praise and more. They managed to deliver a fantastic high quality game and I laud them for it. It is a tremendous accomplishment and I am happy for their success. What I will never agree to is saying that this is the path others should follow, because I believe that Larian managed to capture lightning in a bottle. All of the ducks had to line up just right for them to succeed like this, and any of the major factors in their success could have gone very very wrong for them through no fault of their own and sank the project partway through. Larian managed to win and they deserve huge amounts of praise for it, but it is in no way an easily-repeatable formula for success.
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Everyone cheering about 'lol other game devs are shaking in their boots cuz they're jealous of Larian' are, I think, entirely missing the point.
Like step back for a second and ask yourself why devs at other companies might be wary of Gamers (TM) treating this huge, complex game based on a beloved franchise that promises unprecedented agency and consequences as a new baseline.
Like, perhaps they are concerned that the already standardized-shitty working conditions and outrageous demands of publishers could be made worse if upper management get it into their brains to demand "why can't you just make it like BG3" while providing a fraction of the resources and time.
Not to mention the rather notorious way that Gamers (TM) tend to harass and threaten game devs when they don't get what they believe they are entitled to in a game.
You'd think the devs discussing the working conditions and material conditions that make BG3's development exceptional would get more understanding & sympathy from folks on this site when those devs talk about how their own working conditions wouldn't facilitate such a development cycle.
On how a video game about fucking a bear interrupted furry discourse
People don’t realize the absolute comedy that just went through Furry social media.
See, feral smut (i.e. smut of four-legged characters who otherwise satisfy the Harkness test) has always been a contentious subject in the furry fandom, due to how easily it leads to unwarranted real-life accusations of zoophilia. It’s an annoying bit of discourse that has been rearing its head every other year since the modern fandom began four decades ago.
Which, you know, pretty rich, coming from the fandom where a pretty large percentage readily admit to having had some form of sexual awakening over the TLK and MLP:FiM franchises.
And anyway, that discourse was exactly what was going on last week. People getting harassed on Twitter, as an extension of the whole “groomer” moral panic. A lot of fandom relative newcomers parroting arguments right out of the Burned Furs movement (a late 1990s/early 2000s movement dedicated to “purifying” the furry fandom from “perversion” and “degeneracy”).
And then, just as the discourse was at its most heated, Baldur’s Gate 3 entered the chat.
Suddenly, everyone was talking about the game that will let you fuck a bear. Yes, a bear, as in Ursus arctos. A Druid shapeshifted into a bear, to be fair (again: the Harkness test), but a bear nonetheless.
And mainstream media erupted with reports that the game’s sales skyrocketed based on that scene alone.
And the discourse suddenly screeched to a hilariously embarrassed halt.
10/10 comedic timing, no notes.
happysunshinerainbowbarf asked:
Hello! I'm excited for things to come! However, I'm also wondering if you plan on editing ur blog theme anytime soon? The asks are currently magenta text on magenta with a bit of a drop-shadow, and your sidebar is plain text on a very busy background and both are difficult to read
utopianparadoxist answered:
Yeah it’s sort of a mess I’m actively editing right now tbh, as I go through the midst of this Self-Realignment Ritual/Public facing Rebrand?
Its been a long time since I edited Tumblr themes so I’m doing a sloppy job of it. TBH I’d suggest people interested in my Homestuck content just use my blog as a link to the Apocryphon right now, since it’s the most relevant and interesting thing I’ve done by far atm. Like I’ve said previously, I’d be happy if people just started talking about that with the #Pumpkin Path or #Pumpkin Track tag. As far as Im concerned, everything else on my blog ATM is a distraction.
Alternatively if they’re looking for my analysis work, I’d suggest peeps try checking out my Medium profile. That was always where my best work was hosted; I never managed to port it all to Youtube practically and Tumblr just wasn’t as good at letting me use images to supplement arguments.
I have major essays on Rose and Kanaya, Dave and Karkat, Jane Crocker and Gamzee Makara, Dirk Strider, the whole Active/Passive Class system, and Homestuck’s influence from stuff like Gnosticism, The Neverending Story, and Earthbound/Mother 3 on there. Heck, there’s even an essay or two on non-Homestuck subjects, like my ZEAL-published piece on BOKTAI: THE SUN IS IN YOUR HAND (2003)
Of course there’s also always the Youtube channel, and content should be getting started up again there relatively soon as well.
By nature its also a bad idea to change branding too much on youtube, so fans of optimisticDuelist specifically can expect that house style to mostly stay the same, with maybe a surprise or two inside the framing of Youtube videos themselves (;3)
My tumblr is not exactly in a state for public consumption yet and I’m mostly using it as personal catharsis/to mess around and cope. I’m not even reblogging/posting much Homestuck, i seem to be defaulting to reblogging Boktai and other stuff like that instead atm!
I don’t expect that to change very much for the time being unless I start engaging with Pumpkin Path discussion or fanart, but that hasn’t manifest on Tumblr basically at all yet.
So for now this Tumblr is a messy in-transition personal blog of SOME Homestuck but mostly random fandom content of stuff I love.
Well. And Plenty of dude/achillean love-centric 18+ content on my sideblog that is now just for giving me an outlet to reblog stuff like that, as well.
…
Hey what if i just started taking dirkjake writing smut commissions on there? that’s most of what my fanfic output was anyway–
Disgust has absolutely no ethical weight. If you are basing your ethical positions on the emotion of disgust you should stop, it is entirely unjustified and leads to a huge amount of harm.
Word for today: wisdom of repugnance
The logical fallacy that because something disgusts you it must be bad
ALTthis is probably the funniest example of a tumblr user simply not reading the post theyre reblogging at all
