m. tarah henry ➡️ BLFC @Lobst@scalie.club

#introductions

Hi, everyone; I'm tarah, otherwise known as lobst. I've drawn a few comics that people have seemed to enjoy, and programmed a game demo that won 10th-place in a 140+ entry game jam despite having no sound. My ability to finish any individual project has been stymied by mental health problems for over a year, but I've been seeking treatment and making progress. I've also been streaming videogames on weekends. Watch this space!

https://lobstworks.com/
https://lobst.itch.io/

...two of these can be solved in ways that don't depend on streaming:

1) Rather than integrating a "just websearch it" solution, devs can add more documentation/assistants to the games themselves. This should be done anyway, for accessibility reasons
2) Console manufacturers should allow background downloads for patches and mandate the full retail game be on its disc for players who Must Play Now

The third one? I've gotta admit, for a stream-capable playerbase, it sounds effective

I think there are some merits to the QoL changes they were proposing:

1) The game loop for singleplayer often relies on outside information these days; there's merit in streamlining the process of getting help for puzzles or directions
2) Download sizes are enormous, and patch downloads often aren't started until the user tries to play the game
3) Eliminating aimbots and hackers in online multiplayer titles depends on outside moderation, which isn't 100% effective

However...

I still can't believe they did the Digital Foundry zoom-in on their own graphics presentation. I also can't believe they treated "what if we applied deep-dream technology to every frame of the game you're playing" as a serious value-add

I can see this acting as a good starter platform for city residents who aren't interested in a dedicated hardware commitment for video games, but to treat it as anything else is a proposition for the centralization of culture under the infrastructure of a for-profit company, and nobody should need or want that

This stream has glitched out several times and frozen once while I've watched this. I live in a suburb of a major city on the West coast of the United States

The people who designed this heard the XbOne "infinite power of the cloud" selling point back in 2013 and their eyes all lit up simultaneously

"Think about the opportunities this can afford you as a developer" is a dodgy proposition when everything you make depends on a single company maintaining the servers your software runs on

Splitscreen between a benchmark demo running on a single GPU and on multiple GPUs. The presentation zooms in on the seam between the screens, because of course you wouldn't notice the detail differences on either side otherwise

"We recognize that widespread proliferation of 8K monitors is inevitable." What the FUCK

For real, this had me with "we're bringing games to EVERYONE" and subsequently lost me when it wasn't about making a cheap and accessible local hardware standard. I was hoping for a Switch or an nVidia Shield-like proposition; something you could program for

Instant access to games: click a button on a YouTube video and be launched into Assassin's Creed Odyssey in five seconds. Who wants to download and patch games and have the data locally? Nobody, I bet!

An assistant jumps between playing the same AC:O session on his Chromebook, then his phone, then his PC, then his tablet, then a TV via Chromecast

(sfx: tribal chorus) "From the beginning of time, games have brought us together."

The thing is called "Stadia." Focus is on "one place", and incorporates streamers and YouTube creators in a way "that only Google can". File footage included Markiplier, SonicFox, and that one guy everyone hates

...and the first point I came in to see was about how game AI was helping self-driving vehicles. Not a good look

OK -- after some confusion about whether the friends splitting the room would be able to show up, I can confirm that I will be at BLFC 2019 from May 16th through the evening of the 19th! Mutuals, let me know if you'd like to meet up ( ❤️ ) 🔸