A . . . scam?

Grinding salt is a scam?

Are you struggling with the word here?

Been doing this for years. Game tracks your failures silently. If you fail to beat a boss X times, that boss hits softer or takes more damage under the hood. Miss a timed escape run four or five times in a row? The next run gets a bit of invisible time dilation.

Make people feel they've improved.

My worst one was a time I saw it coming, spoke to the directors about ways of dealing with it as best we could, was told not to worry and there was nothing wrong. I got on a plane and they shut down my studio while I was in the air. I got a phone call on landing from a colleague. 2000/01 I think.

I'm pretty sure a team I was working alongside in about 97/98 shipped a game as an OEM deal with that Matrox GFX card.

Nice bit of work.

My campaign uses Faerun too, but the idea my players could cope with one more bit of input would likely shatter their remaining minds.

Ah - should really have read "thirteenth" (x3)

38 years in game dev this year.

Three years (I'm assuming this is tongue in cheek) means I'm almost halfway through my thirteen career.

Cool.

Except the won't. They believe Trump when he tells them it was someone else's fault.

I mean, this is great and all, but these people almost certainly voted blue.

How are you guys going to convince all those republican swing voters that they have made a terrible mistake?

Content that grabs attention needs to straight up align people with or against it. Shades of grey get overlooked. Extremes generate traffic.

It's a sad fact of social media life.

As much as can be expected. Hope you're doing okay too, fella. Good luck with the pinball thing.

Three of those with coffee , every day, is my standard breakfast.

I'm trying to avoid political news stories any way I can. Social media that I view appears to be 80% US-based, 20% UK based, for reasons that are unclear.

Avoiding UK politics is easy but stumbling on it isn't a problem. US politics? Mostly unavoidable and borderline fucking insane.

Awesome.

In 1979 I was a kid who discovered two things; a Commodore Pet and Dungeons & Dragons. I put them together and started making games. It has been my lifelong professional career since graduating university.

You are aware that when I play a game I need to see every corner of every environment, open every container, etc?

Playing the game to completion took me about 200+ hours in total.

It is a very well crafted game, from many angles and techniques. Have never played this genre multiplayer though and not sure I’d enjoy them as much if I did.

He and I share a birthday.

For me it was Joanna Lumley, as Purdey, in The New Avengers.

If you're making a product for Gamepass then physical/digital sales are not your major concern. The publisher and holder of that platform will have pre-built recompense into the budget they've give the developer.

Ya know, there could definitely be worse times for this to happen.

I'll take it.

Oh fuck off

Why would they? It's clearly an insane brain fart that isn't ever going to be a thing.

It just makes the rest of the world stare at the US and ask how it became so fucking broken.

I’ve started to use it over the last week, after quitting twitter on the night of the US election. As with all social media, finding people to discuss things with and sources to read is a challenge at the start.

They are doing what EA actually does quite well - defining a market sector they can 100% own and earn from by giving them EXACTLY what they are willing to pay for.

Dumb as it sounds, many publishers have lost sight of this s a goal.

It's this.

Rage farming is more effective than being a decent human being.

First steps - everyone needs to take them

More and more so.

Congrats - that feeling never gets old.

I've been making games my entre adult life and I'm almost at retirement age and yet . . . somehow . . . I've never killed anyone.