Post interesting talks / presentations / conferences

In the video it is spoken about the exploatation and the insecurity of the jobs in the gaming industry. As an outsider i tend to belive it, but something tells me that it is not entirely true. The video offers some examples on this subject. So it is true that those things exist in the gaming industry?

Quote from Serialmapper

On 1/22/2021 at 10:38 PM, Serialmapper said: In the video it is spoken about the exploatation and the insecurity of the jobs in the gaming industry. As an outsider i tend to belive it, but something tells me that it is not entirely true. The video offers some examples on this subject. So it is true that those things exist in the gaming industry?

Some things are not isolated just to the games industry and can be found in other fields as well. There's jobs were people have it a lot worse, not that it's an excuse to overlook these kind of things when they happen. But as someone who has only been working in this industry for 2 years, I have to say that I've had a pretty smooth time so far. Last summer, when Ubisoft was making the headlines about mismanagement in some studios, I felt pretty disconnected from the entire situation because I hadn't experienced that in my studio. Generally, I've never found a more friendly bunch of people all gathered in one place. Hopefully, this will still be true going into the future.

“Tools live longer than games do”

I guess this is the right thread for this? Been following this channel for awhile now, their vids are legit:

Translating the story:

He is a specialist in Krav Maga, personal defense and public safety. (the guy to the left). He is telling the story of how he was in a car with his wife driving it. Two random guys driving a BMW insulted him, his wife and zigzagged in front of them in an attempt to really provoke he and his wife. At a certain moment both guys stepped out of their car and approached his car in an attempt to start a fight with his wife and/or himself. He stepped out and using his arm extended fowards tried to persuade both guys to go away.

At that point there was a crowd watching the whole drama happening in the middle of the street. That guy made the conscious decision to walk backwards to the sidewalk. He did that because he knew that a fight in the middle of the street would mean more opportunities for him to be caugh off guard or from behind. One of the aggressors took the initiative and tried to punch him. He easily blocked it and knocked down the guy. The other guy kept insulting, provoking, but was not brave enough to fight.

Later on a woman showed up and started to insult his wife that was still in the car. Another woman came out of nowhere and began to yell that the street fight was an act of racism, that the white guy was beating down two black guys. She started to yell, insult and provoke him. He tried to intimidate the woman in an attempt to make her stop but instead she began an assault, beating him with her purse.

He could have attacked her in self defense, hold her arm or something, but he choose to ran away. The furious woman pursued him and they both ran like a cat and a mouse, in circles, around his own car with his wife in there. His reasoning for not touching the woman was this "Had I touched her in some aggressive form, somebody from the crowd could have had missinterpreted the whole situation and it could have spun out of control. I was consciously protecting the crowd, myself and my wife by not giving any chances for somebody to step in, wrongly beliving that it was racism or that I was a crazy guy beating a woman in the middle of the street. Imagine the scenario of a fight that would involve more people from the crowd and could potentially get worse with weapons and people, that were not aware of the situation, getting hurt?".

Later he found out that both guys were known troublemakers and that they had just left prison months before the inciddent. Judging by their behavior and even their smell, he's pretty sure that both guys were high.

He has a channel and a school dedicated to teach self defense but I think that the most important lesson that he teaches is not how to fight, but how to think before doing anything stupid.

Quote from 0kelvin

On 5/17/2021 at 4:48 AM, 0kelvin said: . At a certain moment both guys stepped out of their car and approached his car in an attempt to start a fight with his wife and/or himself. He stepped out and using his arm extended fowards tried to persuade both guys to go away.

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I’ve been listening to game industry podcasts for months now. I started with The Quakecast, The Level Design Lobby and Level Design Podcast while I was painting my landlord’s second house last year, and then just managed to work the listening in my routine (I felt I was never able to find the time)… now when I’m grocery shopping or cooking, I listen.

When I started to expand my listening experience I discovered Designer Notes, a great series of interviews with very prominent personalities of the industry, I haven’t gone through everything, but still to this date the interview that I found most interesting was the one with Clint Hocking… I guess I’m a fan of Splinter Cell and there’s quite some behind the scenes there. Also very impressed of how quickly he levelled up in terms of job title, if I remember correctly he became creative director of game director by the end of the first Splinter Cell (starting as level designer and first job in the industry).

Part 2

More recently he was on the AIAS podcast talking more about Watch Dogs Legion.

I waited a while before posting here because I wanted to see if I would find any specific episode that I would have recommended more. As a “runner up” of sorts, I found the one with Chris Hecker (Spore, Spy Party) very entertaining, the guy being very outspoken (part 1, part 2), and since I was just playing through Uncharted 4, also the Amy Hennig episodes were fitting (part 1, part 2).

Hope it might be a useful/interesting suggestion ✌️

Math is math, but I would have never expected to see a setup like this.

But I might be even more impressed of the target system, can’t believe microphones can do this sort of measurements.

Quote from ThunderKeil

On 10/19/2021 at 3:28 PM, ThunderKeil said: I wholly understand every point raised, but it's still impossible to fathom they got a permit for this in 1998

The road might have been built after the shooting range. That would explain the coincidental placement. Otherwise, why would you build a shooting range over a road. That's a weird flex.

Not a talk but a really great look at Disco Elysium, dialogue and skills in particular.

Great for UI designers, but also game and narrative designers I guess.

Pity that they haven’t thought enough about accessibility and responsiveness of the interface, I also watched a video about the Final Cut on console and the text is not big enough/UI not adjustable enough.

One of my favorite post-mortems. I could listen to Brevik all day.

Higher quality version: https://gdcvault.com/play/1023469/Classic-Game-Postmortem

And here's a recent post-mortem on D2:

The Dune hangover reminded me I listened to one of the most interesting developer interviews like two months ago, with Louis Castle, co-founder of Westood

Imagine being the guy who has to collect references for the body decapitation system of your game.

I remember listening to the Irrational Games podcast back in the day with them talking about collecting reference for BioShock, they had a "nightmare" folder that no one wanted to go into.

Now I'm feeling like contacting her and showing my wiki to her. She is right, bad teachers are hindering everyone's ability to learn math. The example she gave with the sequence of squares. So many different ways to view it. Yet, if you take an IQ test, just one of those forms is accepted. I lost count of how many times my peers were complaining about exams that were at a level of difficulty that wasn't expected. That's one of the points that I made in my wiki, I writing it to learn, not to focus on scoring high on exams.