True Gaming Monthly /r/truegaming Post Feedback Thread |
- Monthly /r/truegaming Post Feedback Thread
- Essay On Soma and Existential Horror
- What are some of the best YouTube channels or videos dedicated to game design?
- Game devs need to invest more time into their subtitles. (Going off of the convesation about dialogue the other day on here)
- What game taught you the most about yourself?
- I want a racing game with the customization of NFS but racing like a Sim. What's your perfect game?
- Should I give Witcher 3 another shot?
- Why was Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Skyrim so fun?
| Monthly /r/truegaming Post Feedback Thread Posted: 30 Dec 2017 10:08 AM PST Many regular posters here at /r/truegaming may often wonder how to improve their posts to better improve possible discussions, but have been unable to get the feedback they desire in any form besides a downvote. This monthly post is designed for frequent posters of /r/truegaming to receive the feedback they'd like in an organized fashion. If you are seeking feedback for your posts, we recommend linking to your threads and explaining your thought process in posting them. Explaining the reasoning behind how you posted may be key to finding out what you did wrong and what can be improved. We also recommend including what type of discussion you wanted to start within your threads, and what you believe your own strengths/weaknesses are as a discussion author. This way, people can gauge how you see yourself and can give feedback appropriately. If you would like to give feedback, we emphasize to please be constructive and polite when doing so. This post is designed for posters to learn from their mistakes, and in order to do so, a decently-sized explanation of their mistakes may be needed. Please also consider replying to those who may not have any replies yet, for even the smallest amount of feedback can help discussion authors. [link] [comments]  |
| Essay On Soma and Existential Horror Posted: 30 Dec 2017 11:14 AM PST Note: This is a spoiler heavy write up. Though I don't think the game relies on reveals to carry the narrative, there are still some surprising moments that will be spoiled here. Soma is a game that wrestles with themes we don't often see in the medium. It is a great horror game, but not in the tradition of normal horror games. What makes Soma a great horror game is not it's monsters, jump scares, or atmosphere, though these things still abound. Soma deals with the horror of the fragility of self. What are we? Who are we? What is the relationship between the mind and the body? How does consciousness and personal identity work together? The game does this in a way that only games can, through exploration, dialogue, and most importantly, player agency. The narrative is something worth celebrating. We start out the game as a man who has already brushed with death. Simon has had a car accident, and sustained some brain damage because of it. He seems to be functioning when we meet him, but he suffers from dizzy spells, and the doctors tell him the damage will continue to progress until there is nothing left. He is somewhat resigned to his fate but keeps good spirits. The day we meet him he is to go to a doctor for a research project. Essentially, we eventually learn, the doctor is engaged in trying to have whole scans of the brain digitized for further study. The hope is that through this technology, they can run simulations of treatment and see the effects on the brain, without the trial and error of drugs and surgeries. Even though Simon is hopeful for a cure, it seems he is mostly interested in helping this research help others. When we finally meet the doctor, and sit down in his brain scan chair, we ask if it will hurt, and then everything changes. Simon awakes in a new place, completely alone, blood on the walls, everything ruined. Simon (nor you) has never been here, nor has he ever seen this place. Thus, the game really begins. The game designers here do a good job of letting you know what has happened before Simon does. It's the way things don't quite work right with his body, the way he can interact with technology he's never seen before, and other clues that tell you this is not Simon's body he is inhabiting. Sure enough, the illusion that he is human is broken, and he is shown to be in a strange suit. Your partner in the game is not surprised that you are here, nor of your predicament, even though Simon is terrified by it at first. The urgency of the current situation has you move along throughout the game without much time for deep thought. Otherwise I think Simon would have despaired right then. Quickly Simon learns of his predicament. Essentially, the world has ended. The only people that were left when the apocalypse occurred were underneath the ocean in a research lab. The main goal of the game is to launch the ARK, essentially a small number of digitized brain scans put into a matrix-like simulation. To the minds (people?) in the simulation, it would be like real life, but of course they are simply simulations floating through space. The hope is that eventually they will be found by something, and something of mankind will be preserved through the ARK. It's really the only thing left to do. What else is there to do at the end of the world? The dread is not just existential, but there is really nothing to save in this world, the prospects are about as grim as they could be. The world is over, you are the only ones left. Before Simon "woke up" there was a great drama that unfolded before most of the people were killed. That drama is revealed through memos and emails, and paint a picture as odd as you would expect. The antagonist in the game is interesting. He is essentially John Locke made villain. In our ruined facility, there is a project which starts to form, which involves taking a snapshot of the person's current brain state and putting it into a simulation. The idea, then, is that maybe humanity survives out there in space and can be saved. The problem, of course, is the classic problem of consciousness. Once you make a copy of your consciousness, which is the real you? The antagonist of the story starts thinking about this as well, and determines that the only way to preserve the continuity of consciousness is to kill yourself as soon as the copy is complete. Why he thinks the two different consciousness lines will converge is never explained, but the idea is great. He creates a cult of followers that are obsessed with being saved by suicide, keeping their personal identity intact. If nothing else, the problem with this consciousness copying is a true problem, one that undergraduate philosophy classes have a lot of fun wrestling with. This mode of presentation for the same problem deserves some accolades, since games so rarely go deep enough to give philosophical problems proper weight. Soma_PC_02 Keeping consciousness alive while the body is barely functioning also plays with our intrinsic beliefs of what it means to be "whole". As long as my mind is there, it seems like I am also there. Soma toys with this as well. Throughout this ruined facility, there are people hooked up to machines, bodies withered from lack of nutrition but still barely hanging on through machines connected up to them. The raw breaths barely creak out of their aching lungs. If you're paying attention, the game designers are trying to ask the player if that is all they are. If you lose the body aspect, are you still a human person? The very idea of this half existence is horrifying, and the game designers allow us to linger on these images as long as we want. It creates a wonderfully dreadful atmosphere, one that throws the player into the depths of existential questions rarely asked in games. Your companion represents the other side of the coin when faced with the consciousness problem. She accepts that our sense of self is this fickle thing. She lives in a small computer that you carry around, so she does not have a sense of embodiment like the main character does, which may sound like more of a horrifying situation than yours. She is completely fine with it, and comforts you when the dread of the situation starts to take you over. She is the grounding force, the other side of the existential argument. At the very end, when both of your consciousnesses are copied and sent off into space, your character has a panic attack. She is the one who tells you "we did it!", and your character quietly says "But I'm still here". She replies "But of course you are, you know how this works". Your character then spends his last conscious moments coming to grips with his situation, that he is left to rot in a dying facility on a dying planet, and the "lucky copy" of himself is sent into space. He did expect continuity of consciousness, but again it failed him. One of the more interesting parts of the game is in the middle. The main character literally does a body swap from one skin suit to another. Your companion lets you know that you will be copying your consciousness from one and putting it in another, and that doesn't bother your character one bit. Once it is done, the game's perspective changes into the new body. The old body with the old consciousness is sitting unconscious in the other room. You are staring at yourself, your old self. You have a choice whether to leave him as he is (essentially to rot) or to euthanize him. I chose the latter. At that moment, your character says "poor Simon", as if he is speaking to someone other than himself. He does not realize the tragedy of his situation yet. I realized how horrific it was, but Simon sure did not (yet). The game does a really good job at showing you what's coming, and still making the delivery of those moments jarring. The dread you start with builds steadily until the end. The great thing about the dread this game induces, is that it is nothing other than the dread of our own sense of self. There is a science fiction wrapper around the existential questions here, but the terror arises from asking questions about who we are. I would've loved even more of an exploration in something like transporter technology (wouldn't we just be dying every time we used the transporter?). The fundamental question of who we really are, what we really are, is also given some intense visual imagery of machines melding with man that make us uncomfortable. I speculate this imagery is not made without reason, and probably has something to do with our own image of self and how incompatible our imagined selves meld with the real world. This is probably for someone smarter than me to think about. The imagery is well crafted and harrowing, giving a good gut punch to an already interesting exploration of where we begin and end. The only major thing that disappointed me was some of the game mechanics. Like in other Frictional Games, you have no weapons to protect yourself from the horrors you face. The only thing you can do when faced with monsters is to hide. The hiding mechanic makes encounters with monsters incredibly intense and memorable, but I have never found this mechanic great. Often times the creature AI simply doesn't allow for proper functioning, such as monsters seeing you through walls or hearing you when you made no noise. In Soma the difficulty of these encounters is cranked up to a level that brings the overall game down. There are moments where the developers seem to think you are supposed to feel good about hiding from the monsters, like you are gaining a skill. In my experience, the hiding got in the way of the narrative. I ended up, after some rough first starts, installing a mod that disables monsters from attacking. This made the monster encounters less intense, but increased the overall dread. To see a shambling monster that comes out of the dark, ignores you, and moans back into the dark as they pass, complements the sense of dread the game is trying to induce. I actually recommend everyone find and use this mod when playing the game, as it will make the parts of the game that are great more enjoyable, while suppressing the parts which are not so great. Frictional Games has done some great work here. I hope more game developers take note of the narrative aspects that could only be pulled of in an interactive game and build on it. We have not had a "Citizen Kane" equivalent of games, but I hope ones like Soma can get us there. [link] [comments]  |
| What are some of the best YouTube channels or videos dedicated to game design? Posted: 29 Dec 2017 11:37 PM PST I'm interested both those that deal with specific examples of game design and game design in a more general sense. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Dec 2017 12:51 PM PST A few things bother me, that could be so easily fixed. Like, barely any extra money at all. First. Subtitle size. Games like Oxenfree, while compelling, has way too small of subtitles for only one option. A medium and large option would do a lot for readability. It's a quality of life issue that matters a lot. Second: SDH toggle. This is where it says shit like [Toby approaches stealthily] before you even are supposed to know. SDH is the sound effects having described subtitles. It would be nice to turn this off. Third: With number 1, the subtitle lines being WAY too long and spoiling things ahead. You don't need 30-40 seconds of audio shown at once. It makes it less comfortable to read as well, especially with the small subtitles. Fourth: For the love of everything, please stop with the "--" lines! The lines that basically spoil you and make you know something sudden and action-y is about to kick off. It's so easy not to do that. My idea would be to spell it all out, then in the dialogue editor, use an effect like red flashing or something that hides the unsaid dialogue really suddenly. This is one that I just don't understand. So many people play you gane with subtitles, devs. Also, every single major lets play channel turns on subtitles. It's something that really matters, whether you watch it online OR buy it. I'm really frustrated by the really small 1080p subtitles. I think at least in this aspect, Walking Dead does well. Good customizable size. Any other things? [link] [comments]  |
| What game taught you the most about yourself? Posted: 30 Dec 2017 12:49 PM PST I don't know if this question has been asked before (searched with no avail). I enjoy the escapism that the fantasy elements of gaming provide because I feel like it is an opportunity to discover "who I am" on the inside. Because of this, I am mostly drawn to role-playing games or games with role-playing aspects. Many people have a lot of fun with playing something that they are not in real life. Personally, I try to play "myself" as much as possible and make choices as if it was all real. But what exactly does that mean for you? For the people who are able to say, "I've always been a tank" or "I've always been a healer", how did you come to this conclusion? It's possible I may just be having an identity/existential crisis but I simply cannot understand the mindset of someone who "knows" what their role is in any particular game. For me, it tends to change depending on the context, but that may just be because I don't know myself very well. So the question is this: is there a game that specifically focuses on self-exploration of (the gamer's) psyche? Essentially, a game that might as well be one long, drawn-out introspective exercise of sorts? There are a few games that touch on making moral choices, but many of them are too surface in regards to the kind of "hard life decisions" and tests of character that I am looking for. I am looking for this kind of experience, but would also like to hear accounts from those who have strongly associated certain games with their overall development as a person. [link] [comments]  |
| I want a racing game with the customization of NFS but racing like a Sim. What's your perfect game? Posted: 30 Dec 2017 10:22 AM PST Trees wasnt a fan of my idea. I apologize if I'm breaking any reddit rules [link] [comments]  |
| Should I give Witcher 3 another shot? Posted: 30 Dec 2017 09:27 AM PST I bought it on PS4 a while back and the controls were so clunky and heavy feeling probably due to input lag. I also couldn't stand his wanna be Batman impersonation. I have a fairly high spec'd PC now and I'm wondering if I should give it another shot, perhaps with a voice mod or anything to mitigate his voice acting? Would the PC experience give a better feeling of control compared to PS4? Graphics and frames rates are cool too but that's not what deterred me from the game. I want to try to experience this game they way the hype makes it sound. [link] [comments]  |
| Why was Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Skyrim so fun? Posted: 29 Dec 2017 10:54 PM PST These three were my favorite Bethesda games, if not my most favorite games of all time. But, why were they so fun? I could name a few reasons why, but I just wanted to hear your guys' thoughts and opinions on this. [link] [comments]  |
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