Happy Dosa Divas release day!
Here’s a before/after for the announce trailer which @ekanaut.bsky.social made and hired me to consult
The first draft had an extremely common pitfall I see which is lack of a story or gameplay goal.
But just a few tweaks were all it took to make it more compelling!
Yes, I understand. I was not arguing against the existance of global poverty.
So, I'm not agreeing with nor denying that original, 90% number.
I think it stinks of American exceptionalism but it's a mushy argument. My argument was "salary divorced from cost of living is not viable data to come to this conclusion" and "define 'lifestyle.'"
They didn't say QoL or HDI.
Sure but it's a pretty big one that overlaps with the other factors.
But if you you skip the ragebait RTs and look at the context, my argument was against the statement that "Americans have a lifestyle 90% of the world can't imagine" with the evidence of... average salary.
I miss when popular people's profiles made clear what they were popular for.
Not disputing that, "my man." 43% is a much smaller number than 90%.
I haven't linked anything. The $35k household figure comes from the person I was replying to but what I found matched that.
My very simples points, one last time:
1)income is a useless metric of "lifestle" without also considering cost of living in that place
2)income != QoL
I get that people in much of the world don't see how Americans could struggle at $35k, just like most Americans can't understand how you're going to struggle on 3x that in NYC or SF.
Context matters.
I think I've already demonstrated an understanding of that.
My argument is not about who makes what where, but that "Americans are more well off than the rest of the world because of a $35k average income" is incomplete data to push a narrative of exceptionism.
Or is lifestyle purely "purchasing power?" In which case we're just measuring how capitalist we are, not how good our lives are.
Are you using lifestyle and quality of life interchangeably? Because that's more complicated than average salary. You don't need to leave the US to know six figures is pretty good in Mississippi and broke in San Francisco. What QoL index lists Americans first?
What does $15,560 mean in reality? In the US, that's living in your car or with a bunch of roommates. It's not getting you a one bedroom in Alabama.
One more time for the cheap seats: "poor" means nothing without cost of living. $35k is a lot of money in most of the world.
I agree too but Berlin has a massive housing crisis. The rent there isn't a reflection of excess supply.
$35k won't get you a 1 bedroom in most US states but the poorest.
I had Germans laugh at me for getting "ripped off" for paying rent in the middle of Berlin that was 1/3rd what I was paying in the US.
Okay but what an entirely useless number when not considered in the context of "cost of living."
$35,000 is baller salary in 90% of the world and barely above the poverty line in the US.
I lived in Europe on middle class European wages more than once, sometimes 1/3 to 1/2 my US wages. By most measures besides "quantity of stuff I could buy that I didn't need" and "weather" (I wasn't in the sunny parts) my QoL was superior in Europe.
One of the many sad things about the flight from Twitter is that I can't point back to my mid 10s posts that "your beef with #gamedev is really beef with the incentive structure of capitalism."
10ish years later, I think a lot more people have come to this conclusion.
Kinda pushed forward a lot of people for connections and networks over accomplishment, merit or expertise. Then we patted ourselves on the backs for making an even smaller teacup to have storms in.
Mine was how big accounts became big by being mutually recommended by other big accounts instead of a decade plus of organic accumulation.
The idea that the world needed #AI clip art and stock photography is some Columbus-ass bullshit.
Everything 99% of us needed was already there and mostly for free and cheap. Now all that good stuff is buried in fucking garbage.
I totally missed "day!" My apologies.
But the same as a FTE is a pretty bad deal!
Companies offload enormous amounts of money on employment taxes, insurance and benefits, plus all the intangibles when they hire contract vs fulltime.
Contract work 100% has a place but the rates needs to reflect the extra burden on the worker.
It is a confusing time to be getting older.
It's definitely a trope and a tendency to get more cynical and think that things used to be better but there are also so many things that are objectively getting shittier.
The big reveal at the end is that it turns out it wasn't a bunch of bullshit.
From my limited research, it seems to be the "man, I so SO HYPED there isn't a cheetah behind me" wiggle.
What in the hell is happening with physics at the 3 seconds mark? Is this room inside a vehicle that suddenly accelerated?
I had to go down a brief (drumroll please...) RABBIT HOLE and that's not right for a run/jump/bounding cycle but I did find a similar launch.
youtube.com/shorts/PKvK7...
Guys, I have a killer idea for the next first person, parkour game...
www.tiktok.com/@isdurpyy/vi...
(fb @downieseb.bsky.social )
Just called mine and after the phone tree misheard me 10 times, my senator is not even taking messages.
Nate was also core to the creation of the GDC Animation Summit, which helped to establish a level of knowledge sharing about interactive animation that did not previously exist. His tireless quest to share his learnings was admirable and inspiring.
I hate having to do the "look, they're normal just like us" post, but sometimes you have to do that when American propaganda tries to convince everyone Iranians are "animals".