BC GAME
Saved by @Alex1Powell

Considering this year I don't have much in the way of game translation to discuss, publicly, I'd say this was a productive year for writing threads on largely neglected and forgotten Japanese games. So if you're looking to learn about some, here's what I wrote about in 2020!

 2020 was another year where I talked a *lot* of shop about dating sim history. Much of it was actual dating sims, like in some threads below, but sometimes I went on adjacent tangents, like for the cool Kojipro-developed Tokimeki Memorial adventure games: https://t.co/uUl6Pmro06
I also went down a whole new rabbit hole for Fuuraiki, an open-ended PS1/PS2 adventure game with a cult following about traveling around the island of Hokkaido that's set to real world photography. It's a unique tangent in galge well worth exploring: https://t.co/wsZ6gJ4pwj
I also took a quick jaunt into Michinoku Hitou Koi Monogatari, a spiritual predecessor to Fuuraiki that's about traveling around Tohoku against a backdrop of mahjong matches. It's a rough draft that would get much more refined later, but still worthwhile: https://t.co/gcmCafAbyT
In terms of actual dating sims that I covered, the focus was mainly post-Amagami games released by Kadokawa such as Photo Kano. While I think these games have MANY flaws, they do offer key insight into the state of the genre during its decade-long decline: https://t.co/M6XBKjvgGg
In addition to Photo Kano, I examined Reco Love, a game with as many problems in the framing and execution of its mechanics as there are in its character writing. It's a dating sim I would never recommend, but an academically interesting one nonetheless: https://t.co/r8ipi5YlXX
And finally, some mechanically inventive RPGs I enjoyed very much. First up is Yuusha Shisu/Hero Must Die, a feature phone RPG that was eventually remade for Vita and other systems where the clock is ticking and the protagonist's strength drains over time: https://t.co/7OBq0SKePw
Then there's Next King, a deeply funny, inventive board game/RPG-hybrid by acclaimed designer Shouji Masuda that cynically riffs on the tropes of dating sims and other galge that were so prevalent in the Japanese industry throughout the mid to late 1990s. https://t.co/031HvrZP6n
And finally, the thread I'm most proud of this year: a retrospective on Gunparade March for its 20th anniversary. A rare example of a Japanese RPG whose storytelling is highly systems-driven, it barely functions at times, but is endlessly fascinating: https://t.co/aoJbkwdmNp
This is all, of course, in addition to my regular duties on the Amagami LP. It's been on another hiatus due to various life stuff going on, but the true finale of it is slowly nearing. If you want to catch up on the current arc, you can start here: https://t.co/DemkeTKAHt
I still have plenty more to write in the hopefully not-too-distant future, especially in exploring more dating sim history. (I played Love Plus for nine months straight this year!) But hopefully these threads offer good starting points for new games and genres to explore!
I do wish I had more I could openly talk about in terms of stuff I'm working on professionally and, like I said, with any luck, 2021 will be my biggest year on that end since 2016/2017. But in the meantime, thanks for your patience and indulging these adventures I go on. c:

More from Game

Andrew Woodhouse \U0001f333
Andrew Woodhouse 🌳...
@wouldhaus
Cyberpunk 2077 is not fun: a thread

Thanks to someone generously lending it to me, I’ve been playing for the past couple of days. As a Japanese person, its really been nothing but bad vibes for me.

I’ll list them in no particular order below:

Character Creation: lots of presets, little to no customization.

Can’t change the size of any of the facial features (nose, eyes, etc) which really limited options.

ZERO, and I mean ZERO body options. You NEED to look buff, apparently, in a world where every body is possible.

This, of course, doesn’t even touch on the gendered voice options, which many people much smarter than me have covered.

Combat: basically Borderlands.

Weapons are your standard types; pistols, rifles, SMGs, with a rarity level and a calculated DPS. Nothing wrong with this specifically, but unlike Borderlands, its really difficult to tell from a distance if a weapon will be worth it.

There is color coding, but the icon is really tiny and won’t show up unless you’re close enough. A far cry from Borderlands, where gear is very clearly highlighted.

Rarer items allow you to customize them with more slots, but the mods are all +% buffs and difficult to grasp.
GAME
\U0001d416\U0001d422\U0001d425\U0001d425\U0001f9c2\U0001f9c2
𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥🧂🧂...
@VoicetoGame
I'm seeing a lot of echoes of the GamerGate phenomenon happening right now, so it is important to revisit this a little, quickly.

Thread:

GamerGate was a misogynist movement to harass women online who were in the gaming industry or interested in games. They organized on message boards in places like Reddit and 4chan and picked targets together.

GamerGate didn't appear out of thin air. GamerGate was a representation of white male entitlement that has existed in our culture forever. In particular, the mantra "ethics in games journalism" made no sense and they targeted people who noted how games have bad representation.

There, already, were weird online groups for angry men:

Incels: Involuntary celebates, guys who believe (stupidly) that they're incapable for having sex with women because women only like "alpha" guys (Chads).

PUAs: Pick-Up Artists, guys who use abusive tactics to wear down women to trick them into sexual relationships. They typically are only interested in women in terms of "conquest" and dehumanize women constantly in their forums.
GAME
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Jason Scott
Jason Scott
@textfiles
This was terrible game design. But I squeezed some lemonade out of it. I'll explain


Call of Duty Warzone added a new map, "Rebirth Island". It's a new battle royale island, which is great, but it's very, very small. Super small, actually. They even know this because they currently only have about 50 people on it max.


To "celebrate", they added an "event" with about 15 "achievements" so you could win themed watches, patches, the usual. One of them was that achievement, "BRB", which is "Pilot a Vehicle on the Island for 20 Minutes".

Problems are multiple. First - the island is super small - you have to drive in circles around very tight turns. Also: It's a small space so EVERYBODY shoots at you because they HATE you because you're a jerk in a vehicle on a small island. You're just spreading anger.

So it sucks for everybody.
GAME
Jamie Degen - @Hellscreen_Game Dev
Jamie Degen - @Hellscr...
@uk_resistant
So @moreelen posed the question about "How to stay motivated with side projects". I left a few tips but I wanted to elaborate here.

After 5 years on @Hellscreen_Game , Here is a little thread about how I stay motivated

1. Post GIFS of cool things you have made.
Short ingame gifs help bookend your days work and are great for sharing what you are up to. The response will give you snippets of motivation to carry on.
I make posting GIFS a key part of my working day.

2.Dont bother with blogging or long dev logs.
These just sap time & energy away from the game, so unless you write to relax I would skip this. Instead,use that time on the game itself. I do enjoy super quick feature making of's though (if they take the same time to make as a GIF)

3. Keep a log of what you do.
It's is easy to feel like you haven't accomplished much so I like to keep a simple .txt with a list of the things I set out to do & the things I accomplished. It reminds me of my progress & can double as a quick commit message at the end of the day

4. Try and find the fun tasks.
When you are working on non player facing (or non GIF-able) stuff, its again easy to feel like you haven't done much. When I am bogged down in refactoring or save systems etc, I try and save myself something small and fun to do, like a VFX.
GAME
Pat Stares At Yoshi Being Fired Into Space
Pat Stares At Yoshi Be...
@PatStaresAt
Now that I have a little more time, I'd like to go into detail as to why this is such horseshit.

-39 Seconds- The implication that the PC release was of the quality standard they intended and that's extremely hard to believe. 1/many


-49 Seconds- Leadership Team is deeply sorry (not at fault), don't blame any specific teams (hold onto this one)

-1m42s- Describes a process of making the game look great on PC and then backsliding to "Old Gen" despite the game being announced before PS4/Xbox hardware was known.

-2m11s- Describes the old gen disk bandwith as "it is what it is" Considering the game got announced before those consoles even shipped, its absurd that the entire game was built so far beyond their possible constraints. Also, those consoles put out stuff like Tsushima late gen.

-2m19s- "-our testing did not show a big part of the issues
you experienced while playing the game" This is probably the worst part. Despite telling you not to blame any specific team, the test / QA team, somehow didn't discover the issues with the game.

You don't need to have worked in Dev or QA to know that the game was flying apart at every level (even on PC). The idea that the bug nightmare that ended up shipping seen for example here https://t.co/bgDkfQMVku went under the radar of a PROFESSIONAL QA TEAM is ridiculous.
GAME

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Zen Black
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1/ Thread: "A Silicon Valley Ponzi Scheme"

Thanks to @chamath for laying this out in Social Capital's 2018 annual letter.

I've always appreciated his outspokenness.

2/ The hardest thing for most startups today is the path to market: first finding product-market fit & a way to reach customers, then building a ruthless machine to acquire, monetize & retain them.

3/ Because of this, when the VC industry invests capital into fast growing startups today, the plurality (if not majority) of invested capital will go into user acquisition and ad spending, for better or worse— usually worse.

4/ Todays massive venture-backed advertising, sales, and user acquisition playbook has morphed into one that champions growth at any cost.

This is creating a big bill that will soon come due...

5/ Ad impressions and click-throughs are bid up to outrageous prices by startups flush with venture money, and prospective users demand more and more subsidized products to gain their initial attention.
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ThreadArchive33
ThreadArchive33
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Made by NickHintonn 2 apr. 2018

Here’s a thread about The Black Tom explosion: a terrorist attack on American soil and major event in US history. However, no one has heard of it and I believe it’s proof that our timeline may be changing.


On July 30th, 1916, in Jersey City, German agents destroyed American ammunition supplies by setting them on fire. The incident is famous for causing damage to the Statue of Liberty.


The fires caused the ammunition supplies to explode, lodging fragments in buildings miles away including the Statue of Liberty and the clock tower of The Jersey Journal, stopping the clock at 2:12 am.


The explosion caused windows to shatter as far as 25 miles away, including thousands in lower Manhattan. Some window panes in Times Square were shattered. Even stained glass windows in St. Patrick's Church were destroyed.


The explosion was so strong is registered as a 5.5 earthquake on the Richter scale. It could be felt as far away as Philadelphia. The explosion cracked the outer wall of Jersey City's City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge was shaken. People as far away as Maryland were woken up.
HISTORY
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Zach Weinersmith
Zach Weinersmith
@ZachWeiner
Hey, for people interested in this stuff, here's a thread about a change we made to running our facebook account:

So, about 5 years ago, we got on facebook. Why? Well, facebook has a big audience and they like to consume on facebook. So, we started posting comics there, even though we got paid nothing and facebook made money off the free content.

Why? Because back then, once in a while, you would say "also hey, I sell books" or "hey, I'm going to be signing at this event" and your facebook followers would actually see it.

Effectively, the implicit old arrangement was "facebook lets me reach readers efficiently, and I supply facebook with free content they run ads on."

Over time, like a bad business partner, facebook basically made it impossible to reach your audience without *paying them*. Thus, you supply them free content on which they run ads, and you get nothing in exchange.
MARKETING
Marina Amaral
Marina Amaral
@marinamaral2
Rio de Janeiro, 1920. 🇧🇷


São Paulo, 1910. 🇧🇷


“Arpoador”, Rio de Janeiro, 1900. 🇧🇷


“Avenida Paulista”, São Paulo, 1902. 🇧🇷


Recife, 1885. 🇧🇷
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WORLD OF SANATAN DHARMA
WORLD OF SANATAN DHARM...
@world_sanatan
WHY BABUR NEVER TRIED TO ATTACK SRI KRISHNADEVARAYA ?

A🧵u must read

It is very well known that Babur considered Krishna Dev Raya as the strongest ruler of the entire subcontinent, and Vijayanagar empire the strongest during that time in India.

1/10


The Vijayanagar empire reached its peak during 1509-1529 around the reign of Krishna Dev Raya.

Vijayanagar’s famed elephant brigade 👇

2/10


At his command there were over 50000 elite troops with a regiment of Portuguese gunners and 3200 cavalry with 600 elephants.

3/10

Along with that more than four hundred thousand ( four lakh) peasant levies and irregular military made this empire one of the largest in all of South Asia.

A typical Vijayanagar levie soldier 👇

4/10


During Baburs invasion, Krishna Dev Raya ruled supreme in all of deccan.

In fact, in an all our brawl, Krisha Dev Raya will beat Babur fair and square.

Babur could muster at max 50000 troops with 50 canons.

While Krishna Dev Raya had these numbers in Hampi alone

5/10
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