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[–] 92 points 1 month ago (34 children)

If the lesson is "just let Ubisoft die, and support their former workers if they want to produce labour-of-love games in small indie studios", then we could be in for great things. E33 is possibly the French-est game ever made and has brought French culture around the globe, in the way that "yet another Rainbow 6 sequel" certainly does not.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (11 children)

    I wish that was how it would work, but we have to step all the way back here and consider how there is a fundamental difference from an employment perspective, from a target product perspective and from a budget perspective between indie game companies and large boring game companies.

    I love indie games, I don't play AAA games really, but you have to recognize the crucial role larger game companies play at providing consistent employment for entry level game development jobs... those workers can go on and found indie game companies and make their best games fine... but what about before that? What if you want to develop awesome video game but you have a family? You really want to fuck around with going it alone as an indie game company?

    From the other side, even in the sanest possible world are indie game companies the right tool to craft highly iterative cinematic sports games with? ... that sports fans will want to play?

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  • [–] 21 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Sorry, let me point out one thing: that's a load of crap.

    The only thing I agree with is that AAA studios have the funds to make huge projects, while indie devs usually will not.

    However, their business model is built around developers being treated as an expendable workforce, and offers little if any job security at all, almost all mass layoffs in tech up until recently were by AAA studios.

    Especially entry level jobs, including Q&A folk, they're the first to go once a project is complete, if they were even hired in the first place and not just contractors. Zero job security.

    And if you think they provide stability from a family time perspective, you mustn't have heard about the "crunch", the ridiculous number of mandatory overtime, or the high burnout rate.

    AAA is cancer.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    Trust me, there's just as much crunch and toxicity in indie studios. Layoffs are just as common, if not more so.

    But your boss is clueless and well intentioned with the abuse... which honestly is almost worse I'd say. A prick boss that is honest about being a prick boss is a + in my book. At least you know the game.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago*

    I am not saying the culture of AAA studios isn't toxic as hell, but the size difference does create the potential for stability a smaller studio just physically cannot have even if its culture is far better.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago*

    We have a big sample bias with good indie games too. For every big hit, there are dozens of abject financial failures. Which in Canada with stuff like the CMF, its fine... but these funds can only support so many things.

    AAA studios might be ruthless with layoffs and cancelations, but they have a much better batting average of breaking even or making money. Indie games go belly up all the time and people lose everything.

    Like just play stuff on the Steam next fest. Tell yourself that only the top 10 or so games will ever get any sales. Half the games you play might never even make it to market. There's hundreds of good games there.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (18 children)

    Is it though? It feels very J as in JRPG with a superficial French coating. I don’t see much „culture“ but it might be too subtle for me.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 month ago (14 children)

    but it might be too subtle for me

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  • [–] 13 points 1 month ago (7 children)

    I think that’s exactly what was meant, though. Taking only this screenshot into account, that’s not French culture, that’s French caricature. Are there other aspects that more genuinely express more subtle aspects of French life and history? Genuinely asking

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  • [–] 26 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

    It's literally based on Paris around 1900, the architecture and the trains, the technology and stuff are directly taken from the French "belle époque" of those years. Then there's the music (accordion), the outfits, the entire painting theme, etc. Obviously technology is not exclusively French, and the architecture is generally western European, but that is literally Paris around 1900. Oh, and the names of the painters are from actual people.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    As someone still at the beginning of the game it still feels somewhat superficial. I dunno what else I would expect, were it not for the descriptions like the OP, which conjure an image to me of game mechanics involving the freshness of bread, force-feeding geese, and interrupting traffic to play bowls (though on that subject I have found two "pétanks") not just art and music.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago*

    were it not for the descriptions like the OP, which conjure an image to me of game mechanics

    You might have read way too much into that comment. It still is a JRPG through and through, the devs have made clear comments about the FF (old turn-based) and Persona and Dark Souls inspirations on the gameplay side and the whole frenchness is entirely in the writing and the designs. You'll get the bulk of the story in the last 10% of the game.

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    [–] 31 points 1 month ago

    Fuck you, you neoliberal ghoul. I lost my fucking job, and probably my career in the industry at this point, in no small parts because you squandered the potential of the French games industry.

    Videogames are just PR for him. I think he knows most french gamers have the political education of a mussel and plays around that. He's been flip flopping between "videogames bad" to please old people (who are by far the ones with the biggest turnout at every election) and some low effort praises when something good happens.

    I wish the Clair obscur people refused the stupid award he gave them a while back. That really tainted my image of them.

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  • [–] 27 points 1 month ago

    Details of Macron's proposed new showcase weren't shared, but he did offer some insight into what he called "profound upheavals" in film, television, animation, and videogames, including artificial intelligence

    NO

    NO

    NO NO NONONO NO!

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

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  • [–] 25 points 1 month ago
    [–] 24 points 1 month ago (1 child)
  • [–] 19 points 1 month ago

    He's full of shit, please do not trust any word coming out of his mouth. Last week he wanted to create a dragon ball z theme park with saudians, but didn't have the copyright stakeholders approval.

    Meanwhile, he cut by 80% the already tiny envelope for school renovations and push for far right financial backing by French banks, lied about firefighters allocations... And so on and so on.

    PS: we have Paris Games Week already btw

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  • [–] 14 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    videogames are part of our culture

    I don't get what that means. Was there a threshold of french video games that needed to be met before it could be considered "part of our culture"?

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  • [–] 14 points 1 month ago

    It blows my mind how most countries have the giant douche (Macron) vs turd sandwich (le pen) formula in play simultaneously across the globe. Its almost like we all use the same economic system or something.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

    Video games are more than part of our culture, they extend into areas far beyond just entertainment.

    Games are a way of understanding dynamic, hopelessly interdependent systems whether in an attempt to predict how dynamic situations with multiple actors with differing objectives will turn out or better understand history as a living dynamic thing that happened to occur one way (see Cole Werhle's board game Pax Pamir 2e or John Company as perfect examples of this).

    The evolution of good game design and the general progress of most games getting better UI systems over time as designers figure out how to best represent complex situations and choices to players is also FAR more important than just a nice consequence of iterative design, it is the groundwork for good architecture in the software realm in terms of how software is experienced by humans.

    longer thought


    This is why I find the dismissiveness of virtual interactive experiences as somehow lesser to "real" experiences so insulting, video games make us more human by making us able to express ourselves more truthfully, intuitively and vividly in digital spaces... providing entirely new ways of people finding theirselves, which is the most human thing to do! The rest of systems in modern society DESPERATELY need to learn from good video game design and UI principles, and this lame attempt to "gamify" things is such a superficial phoned in movement that I can't even use the word "gamify" without putting quotes on it... it doesn't count.

    Learning from the wisdom of game design is NOT just making everything into a points system that constantly prods you with rewards and goals like a casino, that is an insult to actual good video game design.... but I digress....

    The biggest mistake people will continue to make in the early 21st century is to treat the medium of video games as purely an expression of artistic pursuit, it is that and so much more. I mean... look at Ukraine... who do you think has been training to fly FPV drones for hours and hours in abstracted contexts that nonetheless drill the same core competencies you need to be able to fly FPV drones aggressively?

    What pushed the development of graphics cards for years and years before anyone thought to apply them to machine learning?

    It wasn't war, it wasn't business, it was video gaming

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I got a book recommendation for you, I really liked this one: Games: Agency as Art

    Games, then, are a unique social technology. They are a method for inscribing forms of agency into artifactual vessels: for recording them, preserving them, and passing them around. And we possess a special ability: we can be fluid with our agency; we can submerge ourselves in alternate agencies designed by another. In other words, we can use games to communicate forms of agency. Games turn out to be part of the human practices of inscription.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago

    Videogames always has been culture, anything produced by human beings is culture, not necessary consider art, althrough i consider.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago*

    “(…) "cinema and the moving image." I assume that last bit is a just-missed translation of "motion picture," because that's clearly what the conference is about (…)“

    I rarely read something this stupid

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    And the moment Le Pen wins, it'll be all undone, money will be redirected to some foreign AI company, and culture will be destroyed.

    Hungarian here, our culture was pretty much eliminated by Orbán and his cohorts, for not making nationalist enough stuff glorifying at least the expies of the Orbán cabinet. But I knew many people at that time, who thought increased nationalism from Fidesz will push people to consume more national products, except they started to immediately gatekeep what national products were though telling people what is a "Hungarikum" - which itself was astroturfed by booze manufacturer Zwack Zrt. (it literally came from their product, Unicum's name - yes, it's called that), to make Hungarians drink their overpriced products more, all while Hungary struggles with an alcohol problem.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Hopefully the advertising showcase called the "video game awards" will fade into obscurity by a credible festival.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    That's what I'm talking 'bout.

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