- 0 Posts
- 202 Comments
We are supposed to work from home two days a week, but we must sign an agreement that it will be such and such day. Or we can have one single moving day. Can you smell the bullshit? In practice I never signed anything and we all do as we fucking please because fuck HR. So right now I’m in the office alone because it’s great to have a big desk and good light with a beautiful sight on the countryside, and I get free heating.
But yeah, we have a few contractors right now and we have no idea what they are doing or if they are useful at all. Which would be fine, except when we do get to see their work, it’s usually all over the place in terms of quality and we often have to rewrite a lot of it.
But that’s not an issue with remote, that’s an issue with managing people, I think. If they’re shite at their job and we gave them one, we have to teach them to get better. Which is easier and more efficient on site, sure, but you can’t really be sitting next to them checking their screen all day. At some point you gotta trust them and judge them on results.
Oh I guess you read “it’s tough” as me being depressed of being alone while everybody else is having fun together in the other office? Shit, hahaha! That’s sweet of you.
But no it’s not about me, it’s about my managers having difficulties keeping our team together because it’s split across France, and even the other site, they are mostly working remotely. There are like one or two people on site at one time, while a dozen of us work remotely from each other.
Anyway my point is we still get the job done because we don’t need to be a happy family, since we’re just doing a soulless job. You can be a cave troll and still do Devops, nobody cares.
One thing that everybody does agree on, though : it’s much easier to work together on a project when you’re sitting next to each other. It helps if you enjoy each other company, which we do.
So some managers must think, well, we must force people to sit together in an office since it’s positive. Which is completely stupid. It’s like they don’t understand human nature at all…
You know, I wanna hate on big corpo breaking our balls about working on site juste because, but I gotta admit it’s super difficult to have any esprit de corps without some physical presence.
I’m one guy alone on a site, and the entire rest of the team is like a dozen people in Paris and it’s tough.
When people are not used to working online and communicating it’s like they don’t exist. You’ve no idea if they are indeed doing anything, sometimes, when for example their domain is not touching yours.
I dunno but I can see how this is a big hassle when you’re head of a team.
Shit, my mate is exactly in this situation : he is the head of a team, and having worked with him, I know he’s a great team leader. And he’s been struggling in his new post for a whole goddamn year because it’s a similar situation : he’s the new lead but all the team is in Paris and he’s not. They don’t give a fuck what he says. So now they found a solution, he has to go there in person every fucking month. So yeah, I can see how you don’t want everybody to be working remotely when he bothers to fly 500km just to show he is a real dude every month.
But I think ultimately all it shows is how soulless it is to work at such a scale, and how it clearly impacts the final result.
I don’t know what size Keen games are, or Moon Studios, but those games are so fucking full of spirit. No way a big ass AAA can produce something like they do these days.
They fucking wish, though.
That’s what happens when your artists are not technically literate. I worked with photographers / videographers for a bit and I had to explain to them that no, you can’t just copy paste your 40Mb photos onto the online gallery, even if yes, the Web page will just resize them. We don’t actually need a full gallery of 600dpi files online thanks.
Feckin muppets.
I dream of AI being used to generate cool, theme appropriate NPCs for an indie dev that doesn’t have an army of talented writers at their disposal.
But honestly let’s face it, that’s never what they’ll aim for. It’s all about not paying people, for these assholes. They’ll happily fire their talented writers of they can use AI instead, never once wondering who’s gonna feed the AI in the first place.
And so it is a matter of principle to say no to AI in general, because you know they’ll always pick the worst possible way to use it.
Absolutely amazingly beautiful game. The cutscenes…
makes me think of Arcane every time I load it up.
And then, it turns out it’s got solid gameplay, if you like Dark Souls type of games. It’s got that oomph to the fighting. That visceral feel that really makes the fighting enjoyable, although brutal. It’s got room for improvement for sure, but they keep polishing it and every time I come back it’s better. It’s hard to believe it’s only a fraction of the full game, too!
The only way to fight this is to show you’re spending more money than those idiots no? Would be fun if Steam and Itch.io made some numbers public to shut down those prudes.
Brigador has surprisingly excellent writing. And moreover, I mean it literally.
Between maps, you have a config interface where you pick a pilot, guns and a vehicle to put it all on. But you also have a window with Intel. You have to pay ingame money to unlock this Intel, in the same you have to pay to unlock pilots, guns, vehicles, maps. They prices are not negligible.
I unlocked every single piece of Intel, many times before I unlocked other more useful things, because it was that good.
I wanted to read more. I wanted to know more. I should point out that most of the Intel was self sufficient : it wasn’t a huge story cut up in parts. I could read one Intel and there was no incentive to buy the next more expensive one to know the end.
But it was quality military sci-fi and so much lore building. And here and there, hints about cool equipment combos to try out in game (this pilot in that mech with those guns and gizmo).
It was a complete shock to find such quality in what is otherwise a shooter. Yes, many action RPGs have encyclopedias worth of lore, disseminated freely throughout the world, on items, etc. I think the presentation here helped. But I was genuinely surprised at how good and enjoyable it was to read. I literally sat down and few times spending like an hour reading through bits and pieces and going to play a map or two only so I’d have enough cash to unlock some more.
I hope I get to enjoy such surprisingly good writing in a game again in my gaming lifetime (and I’ve been playing for about 37 years, I should add).
Brigador is amazing! The flavor text is so good I went out of my way to purchase it all (in game money, but still). Even better, it gives you hints of powerful combos to try out, amongst the many many possible combinations. It’s a fantastic blend of Mechwarrior, with Syndicate graphics, with a brilliant soundtrack. Such a gem!
If you enjoy zombi bashing but don’t care for all the depressive atmosphere of Dying Light, but would rather kick some ass, I would recommend Dead Island (1 or 2). The close combat fighting is visceral and fun and while the story has some real drama at times, it’s generally upbeat.
Seriously, I’ve had Dying Light for years not every time I get too brought down by the overall vibe and constantly feeling so weak. Whereas DI had me shredding a tear at least once but you kick ass throughout.
With the hours I’ve spent flying my drone in Ghost Recon : Wildlands, I’m 0% surprised at the games skills IRL, nor their effectiveness on the battlefield. I’m just mighty curious at how easily spotted they are compared to the video game ones.
Only slightly related, but it’s hilarious to hear my surgeon wife being told to start practising her gamepad handling skills on video games so she can better operate using the robot. Well, sweetheart, let me show you what more than thirty years of practice look like! :,D
I’m right there with you on that one. For years I’ve dreamt about a post-apo game where you rebuild and look forward to the future, instead of wallowing in misery and barely getting by.
I think a 4X game, or better, something like a Heroes of Might & Magic might be the right scale to do it, but so far nobody seems to have seen the niche waiting to be filled.
I dream of filling it myself but I simply don’t have the energy for a project that scale. I’m no ConcernedApe or Tarn Adams, ha !
I can’t wait for people to get back to IRC!