So, a while back I said I wasn’t planning to leave Tumblr - I wasn’t actually wrong, as I didn’t plan to leave, but I sorta stopped logging on and found that not having Tumblr in my daily routine didn’t really bother me that much.
So the tl;dr is that I won’t be on Tumblr anymore! If you enjoyed the stream of consciousness bullshit I reblogged, maybe check out my Twitter @EibonCyk that I mostly just retweet stuff on (it’s far more political than my Tumblr was, though). If you want to stay connected, I’m Eibon#0002 on Discord.
I also wanted to give a shoutout to some of the people/blogs that made my stay here memorable before the cut:
@michigrim, @justintaco and @thecenterforadvancedshitposting, @morisori, and @iamthedeadpool, thanks for all the content that brought me a lot of laughs, smiles, and groans.
In the extended edition of this post, I want to take a bit of time to fondly remember and reminisce on the positive impact Tumblr has had on me as a person.
It’s hard to understate how Tumblr has helped me grow, primarily my early usage of it back in...whenever the fuck I started using this hellsite. When I logged back in today, I was alerted I had two posts I needed to review because they were “adult” content. One of them was a post from a very, very long time ago:
I’ve cropped some of the image out so it won’t get flagged, but it’s a gif of a woman boxing a giant penis.
First: Uh, yikes af?? Bad post, OP (me).
Second: It’s interesting to grapple with who I used to be, and who I am now. I said some really dumb shit and believed some really dumb shit back in the day, and exposure to differing opinions from people actually experiencing the injustices I was mocking on Tumblr slowly changed who I was.
When I first got on Tumblr, I followed friends and other blogs that posted a lot more political content, and this was back before stuff really went to shit during the advent of GamerGate. While it took me a while to come around to what they were saying, the constant exposure did it. And it’s something I am eternally grateful for, because I’m a better person now because of it.
I genuinely hope that whatever remains of Tumblr now and in the future can continue to expose lonely, angry white teens, young adults, and adults to the ideas they rail against and change their perspective.
On a more positive note, I’d like to take a moment to appreciate how media-centric Tumblr is. People give it a lot of shit for being a house of coded cards, but no other prominent social media site lets you make such interesting arrangements of media as Tumblr does. It’s why, for the longest time, Tumblr was my platform of choice. I loved finding funny memes and cool anime pictures and interesting science posts with great photos and reblogging them, creating my own tapestry of interests.
As I became a more veteran Tumblr user, I stopped being as vocal on the site about things I care about - in some regards, I feel that was a mistake, but it was partially done for my mental health, as getting into arguments online for the sake of arguing really doesn’t lead me to good places. I do wish I had been more active in talking about game development and the issues facing the gaming industry, other than just reblogging Ask a Game Dev.
And finally, I want to recommend some excellent sources of content, for two reasons: 1) Some of these blogs have great insights into things I am very passionate about; 2) If you liked the content I reblogged, you’ll likely find some good stuff from these blogs.
In no particular order:
@askagamedev, @dailyaliens, @planet-bryyo, @jakke, @wizardsmagic, and @markrosewater
And that’s that! I won’t be active on Tumblr anymore, so please feel free to unfollow me if you don’t like seeing inactive followers in your count (I know I don’t/didn’t). I won’t be deactivating, though, so my posts aren’t going anywhere, should you really have liked a specific one (not that I made many original ones).
I hope all of you will be well and safe in these turbulent times, and be able to pursue your passions to the fullest.
“But X unit wasn’t in Y and it’s not accurate to the exact-” yeah and an IBM machine couldn’t promote a man named Major Major Major to the rank of Major in 1943 as a giant cosmic joke but that doesn’t mean Catch-22 is a bad book
Okay i learned recently that this has no CG in it so the fact that this is all 2d drawn shit is fucking mind-blowing what even was the Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 series.
getting bullied at art school is the worst bc not only are you getting picked on by people who post voltron discourse but every mean thing they say to you is verbatim lifted from a text post you’ve already seen and that has damaged my self respect in a way that nothing else ever could
knowing i am lower on the college food chain than 20 year olds who say “weird flex but okay” and “sure jan” in real life has done irreparable psychological damage
notch is the human version of those episodes in sitcoms and cartoons where a character gets really rich out of nowhere (lottery, inheritance, etc) and then acts like a pompous selfish asshole because of their wealth, causing them to lose all their friends and become miserable, minus the part of the character making up with their friends and learning a moral about the dangers of materialism
Follow-up on gated unlocks: To what extent is that applicable to content that's baked into the main game, before expansions or DLC, for games that aren't primarily online and controlled by the server? I can brainstorm a couple uses: Encouraging healthy player behavior and avoiding bad word-of-mouth from players who "only got three days out of" your sixty-plus-hour adventure. But how much does that actually factor in to design decisions, if at all?
It’s still applicable, even for base game content. If memory serves, time-gated gameplay really rose to prominence in the social games arena - primarily with Facebook games like Mafia Wars and Farmville, then established itself quite firmly in mobile games. But we’ve seen it as a feature appear pretty far back, across many platforms and titles.
If you look around, you’ll notice some of that time-gated design showing up here and there even in single player games. Dragon Age Inquisition’s War Table missions that will still work even if you’re playing offline, and completing those missions can unlock additional dungeons and such in game. You may be familiar with the Calendar Man achievement from Batman: Arkham City, where you have to visit the eponymous villain in his cell on twelve specific holidays over the course of the year. It’s even been used as an easter egg of sorts - if you play Metal Gear Solid 3 and just let 3 real weeks pass between your first sighting of boss character “The End” and the actual sniper duel against him, the character will die of old age in the game.
We designers definitely think about extended play while we’re designing the base game experience, but we also have to treat it with a lot of caveats - players have limited amounts of time and they have to be able to choose where and when they play. We must let them dictate their own engagement along the game’s critical path, or they’ll never be able to finish. However, this sort of time-release content is great for side missions and extra stuff - optional content where we can hide bonuses and rewards for players who are interested in playing beyond the critical path.
Time-gated content was less of a thing in the more distant past because continued engagement wasn’t as important. Back then, games were primarily measured only on sales. No DLC, no patches, and expansion packs only rarely. We didn’t have as much incentive to encourage players to keep playing back then. Today we do, so we continue to explore ways of engaging players over time.
The FANTa Project is currently on hiatus while I am crunching at work too busy.
[What is the FANTa project?] [Git the FANTa Project]
Someone please explain wtf with wrong with all the animal faces in the Mowgli thing on Netflix? Trying to put human features on them makes it SUPER uncanny fucking valley and nightmare fuel.
THIS IS NOT HOW YOU CAT
THIS IS
2016 movie looked so much better…what happened!?
Sorry, I’m browsing netflix and everytime that trailer comes out, I twitch.
