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Audio&Games

Ubidown

What’s ailing Ubisoft? | Opinion | GamesIndustry.biz

“It has a solid set of well-known and popular IPs – Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia, Tom Clancy, Far Cry, etc. – but it has consistently struggled in recent years to translate that into serious commercial success.”

Because those IPs are the same game over and over with a change of aesthetics. Strong IPs have memorable characters, settings. Those Ubi IPs are the definition of generic dude stuff. It’s a miracle they worked for so long. Probably due to questionable marketing and PR stuff.

Also there was over 10,000 new games in 2023 on Steam alone. It used to be a few hundreds.

Good luck with the future, y’all.

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Audio&Games

Valve

The Early Days of Valve from a Woman Inside | by Monica Harrington | Aug, 2024 | Medium

Fascinating read.

“I had another conversation with Microsoft execs about my role and the conflict with Valve, and again I was essentially told, “it’s fine, we’re OK, we like where you’re at, don’t worry.”

So. Wild. It was clear that Microsoft had something to do with Valve’s success but it actually was way more than I thought. And a bit sad how Valve did Windows 8 and its app store wrong while they’re indeed the de-facto game store. A bit of competition would have been great.

“All of this came from the collective Microsoft experience about working with OEMs and seeding product in mass quantities to spur user adoption.”

I often think about this experience with OEMs. That collaborative power where MS gets to stay at the top but works with everyone all the time? That’s huge, and that’s hard to maintain. But you get to learn, to change, to pivot and to stay on your toes I guess. Dictatorship is a lot easier.

“About a year earlier, I had worked with Gabe to set the audacious goal of Half-Life winning at least three of the top industry Game of the Year awards. We very consciously thought through what it would take, including breakthrough technology, a compelling new angle, and broad industry support. It was going to be especially tough for a game that some insiders initially dismissed as “Microsoft developers building on id’s technology.”

Planning works, folks. Visualizing is massive. I remember Half-Life, the Doom “mod” and how the game that shipped was really good and really different from anything at that time. That first grenade that lands at your feet, OMG. Iykyk

“I’m also proud of the work I did while recognizing that my biggest contributions to Valve’s business went largely unnoticed and unrecognized within the industry. Part of that was due to the bro culture of the software business, part of it was that I receded to support my husband in a partnership where he was effectively the lesser partner, and part of it was that women, especially in tech, often seem to disappear when the story gets told.”

This is always the reality, and a sad one. In the world of music for instance, it’s ridiculous the number of women who managed, cured, helped, protected and cared for dudes who would go on having superstar careers. And wouldn’t have had anything without those women.

TL;DR: collaboration works and women are dope and deserve more.

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Me Myself&I

Latest trip

I have to reminisce:

  • It’s a lot of love. I land, the sun is out, the security line is long but dad is patiently waiting while not understanding my stupid jokes.
  • We drive home, it looks like they’re blocking more roads every time I’m back, which makes our airport exit more and more complex. We laugh.
  • Mom has the goodies (baguette and croissants) and I go down on them like they’re WAP.
  • I brought her a hoodie and she quickly washes it and puts it on the whole time I’m there.
  • Time to go do some yard stuff at grandma’s old house. There’s bamboo and this bitch is growing like crazy. We spent 2 hours and a half cutting it. I’m light headed, pushing through. It’s been over 20 hours up.
  • We go back home, my homeboy picks me up and we drive to the restaurant, brasserie. Lots of smiles and laughs, we have a little smoke and I go to bed at 11pm after 33 hours straight without sleep. I’m feeling good and completely crazy.
  • During that dinner I realize that the daughter of the woman victim of that insane mass rape trial, was with me in junior high. Just behind me in the classroom. Her smile and laugh were potent. I joined feminist groups in the early 00s and it feels like we haven’t done enough. We never do. I can’t believe this trial jfc.
  • I try to relax on Sunday. Emotions are high. Just enjoying my family’s presence, sharing my architecture stuff, them doing the same. They dig my project.
  • Next day I’m on the road at 6am to go see my foster mom in her little village. I knock at her kitchen window again. She had hip surgery last year and she’s still living on her own, going up and down stairs albeit with some pain and added difficulty. We go to the restaurant with her daughter and granddaughter. We’re so happy to do this and be together. I’m drinking coffee every hour.
  • It still hasn’t rained, basically a miracle.
  • Next day I go to my local mall for some shopping. It’s unreal. The smells are the same. The aisle where beers and alcohol are, is still the same aisle as it was in the 1990s. The shops changed and many are closed, but many are still there. It’s just impossible to stop on one thing, I’m constantly oscillating between remembering, comparing and projecting. Smells, bro. Powerful.
  • Quick look at our skate spot: looking at the barriers attempting to block the way and fresh wax, it’s still being skated. Marble never dies.
  • In the afternoon we go see my mom’s horses. So wild to write this casually. Smells again! I hadn’t been close to a horse in decades probably. They’re so amazing. We don’t ride them, but we go for a hike in the forest. As we used to do every single Sunday with my grandparents. Fall being a great time to do it, looking at nature changing clothes.
  • We drive back home and I’m freaking out at the amount of construction happening, again. What the fuck y’all doing.
  • For once I lay down with pop, watching TV. It’s a show with mechanics working on cars and there’s a team with a white dude and a black dude and the black dude never says anything until he does and he’s immediately cut off by the white dude. That’s France alright.
  • That humid cold is starting to eat at my bones. Memories. Last supper. It’s always too short and at the same time, it’s fine?
  • We’re kind of really used to it now. Dad drives me back to the airport. His blue eyes are a bit sad, and we give each other’s a kiss on the cheek and mention to take care. I remove a leaf stuck on his car’s hood and he smiles from inside. Love you dad.
  • I pass security and it starts raining hard. I do not care.
  • Middle seat, drunk ass mfs around. Sigh.
  • It’s always a bit of pain to wait for your suitcase after a long trip. Not this time! Both ways, my big red brick is waiting for me before I have to wait for it. Noice.
  • LAX/Shuttle is a breeze, my driver is cool but we’re chatting too much and he’s always on the wrong lane, meaning that he has to drive a bit stupidly to readjust (yes, it’s a Tesla).

The sun is strong, it’s 30°C. As usual, it feels like I dreamed. And it’s a bit hard to deal with. Let’s abolish time zones real quick.

Categories
Me Myself&I

wildfires straight outta cigarette butts

Journalists at it again:

A bit below on the same page:

To recap: the LA Times is using fearmongering and climate change to make people think (and click, duh) that we are doomed forever. They then make a little article about some stupid ass human being setting shit on fire.

The reality: 4 out of 5 wildfires, aka a large majority, are started by folks and/or our stupid machines. The earth being dry has nothing to do with it except that obviously, that doesn’t help.

The LA Times should investigate about why robbery will get you 30 years but burning acres, displacing thousands, killing a few and destroying nature for decades is not even ever discussed whatsoever. Now that is wild.

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Me Myself&I

Keep going LV

The difference between how people supported the Bulls to 3peat while people want the Aces to fail at that, is there.

The way everyone forgets about A’ja Wilson, how she’s the OG #22, how she should have gotten a shoe model since forever, how she should be the face of the WNBA since forever because she’s a fantastic role model, is there.

The Aces’ season has been pretty rough. It highlights the challenge of going for a third title in a row, a feature never done in the WNBA. The Aces are definitely able to do it. It’s going to be tough though. But when they click, when Chelsea and Jackie and Kelsey and Alysha and all get unconscious, Jesus fucking Christ. There’s no stopping them, at all. Chelsea did it again this week: no-look behind the back bounce pass from the 3 point line to the paint. Unconscious.

Yes, there’s been some dirty things going on business wise with Ms. Hamby, but that’s business. It’s going on everywhere.

Time to get into beast mode, LVA. You got this.

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Me Myself&I

Labs

In America, Labradors are viewed as smart because you can make them do whatever you want.

In France, there’s a saying “con comme un Labrador”, which can be translated to “stupid like a mf” because Labradors do whatever you want them to do. Which is, in a way, not a sign of intelligence.

I think about that cultural distinction a lot when I see one of those dogs (or his hairy cousin, the Golden Retriever) around.

Or people.

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Me Myself&I

AI nerfed bro

Let’s go back. It’s early 2023, ChatGPT just came out and it’s so spectacular it leaves everyone kind of speechless.

ChatGPT makes progress and demonstrates week after week that it can handle a very wide variety of tasks very well. Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO tours the world and meets every single VIP on earth in a few months.

???

End of 2023 and start of 2024, ChatGPT smells like teen spi smells like it has been nerfed. It’s weird in Copilot. It gives me some truly impressive answers at some point, and now it seems like it mutes itself. It feels like it could help me far more, delivering clearer answers or better examples. But now it’s kind of dumbed down quite a bit. It seems like it censors itself.

What happened?

My feeling is that Sam showed all that good stuff to governments and they all freaked. the fuck. out. They realized that capitalism-based societies cannot work the way they used to with AI. There’s already an unfathomable amount of bullshit jobs. AI exposes all that even more and governments don’t want civil unrests left and right so they said “Sam that’s cool but also, turn this shit off”.

Another thing, AI is hitting a scale issue for sure: there’s diminishing returns with more data fed into LLMs and feeding more data and fine-tuning it, is horrendously expensive today (GPUs, GPUs, GPUs).

So what would you do? You would milk. OpenAI and competitors are trying to milk what they offer right now, making money to re-invest into the tech, I imagine.

Last fall Microsoft and OpenAI were working on designing custom chips to handle AI better. What’s interesting is that now they have hundreds of millions of daily testers, all the data in the world, best minds and are designing chips at the same time. That’s got to lead somewhere. LLMs work rather well on freaking Graphic Processor Units, calculators that were destined to do graphic stuff. And yet they are doing an admirable job with LLMs loads.

I could see how custom chips could lead to a breakthrough or if it doesn’t, make the teams understand some stuff a lot better and improve current AI a lot. Maybe they have already reached that point, and can’t show it because global mayhem would follow.

We just need Universal Income before new AI drops, that’s all. Meanwhile:

The Western world wants to keep its bullshit jobs, y’all. Again, I’d rather have Universal Income and people riding bicycles on a Tuesday afternoon than those vague treaties not protecting people who are already not protected.

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Audio&Games

Video games

I’m basically off of them. For most of my life, I thought about games daily. From their cultural impact to the gazillion questions spawned by game development. Not anymore. It’s a big personal shift.

Today I see a “Press R2” or “Press triangle for strong attack” or “Press up arrow for potions” in a YouTube video or in front of me and I feel like heading out to touch grass.

I see a “4/18” orb counter and I’m sick. Another skill tree, some crafting? Fuck my life. Opening crates sure, it’s not like I haven’t done that 48 trillion times since 2000.

War, tentacles, gore and cute overload. OK. I am so bored as hell. Sound design stays the same as it was 15-20 years ago. Slashing bodies doesn’t need to make a different noise, fair enough.

Another abandoned city because game development still can’t do fully alive cities well. So instead of inventing a completely different world without buildings, let’s just make one that used to be alive. But! Something something happened. So unheard of and edgy!

The me-too paradigm exhausts me. The second a game is popular, 300 copycats show up within a year. The second exhausting thing is “let’s combine two very popular things” and we end up with Call of Duty meets Stardew Valley where you can raise zombies and nuke your friend’s garden. It’s just weak brainstorms.

LOL but also what are we doing?

Looking at game culture from the side now, it’s wild how hidden it is. Very few people talk about playing games. Very few play in public! Games are huge and don’t exist at all, simultaneously. Or when the culture does exist in the news, it’s about groomer streamers and silly games like that checkbox one. Ugh.

This is after 40+ years of game culture. A joke! Yeah. I don’t know man.

Games don’t teach much if anything if we want to be honest. They are making folks busy for hundreds of hours for no other benefit than humming that menu melody for the rest of their lives. I’m less and less OK with that.

Gamification has ruined so many things. Another tool for coercion, distraction and control as the article says.

Meanwhile inside the industry, layoffs, acquisitions and mergers bring pain x100 left and right. Another small team of folks who worked at that big studio for 20 years and believes that their ideas and a $1M VC check are enough to sustain themselves (narrator: probably 100% not).

And of course, video games are still mostly about sequels ad nauseam. I think another Tomb Raider is in the work? What the fuck.

Watching Wukong or Star Wars Outlaws, the latest big releases which are not sequels, I’m amazed at the amount of work. The incremental progress on everything (lighting is clearly near perfect today), fluid dynamics getting there, the accumulated knowledge at Ubi (25 years of open world system design), or Unreal 5 in its full glory, it shows and it’s impressive. At the same time it all feels so predictable, pointless, corny (listen to games without watching them and you’ll understand) and unnecessary to spend a hundred bucks to check waypoints, do pew-pew behind a wall and open crates as if –again– we hadn’t done that for decades already.

Having said all that, I could play some Counter-Strike with homies and talk shit all evening right now. It would be fun. I don’t know when I’ll be able to gather 10 folks with similar CS skills around a table or two.

Maybe never. Perhaps that’s a good thing.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Writing online

https://lars-christian.com/re-do-people-irl-know-you-have-a-blog/

Yes, some do. It doesn’t influence my writing because I tend not to think about the audience when I write. I do the same when playing music, which I did for years before starting a blog.

The benefits of writing for years about life are incalculable. I didn’t know when I started!

At [day job], my writing skills have been very useful if not extremely useful. My ability to parse things the right way and bring clarity, comes from blogging. My grammatically OK English is from years of cleaning it on my blog. My analytical skills, used left and right when writing about any topic ever, have been refined and sharpened with blogging. My knowledge of things has increased dramatically by writing about those things (looks up on Wikipedia: oh shit! I didn’t know). My blogging started businesses and deep ideas, like designing a 3D printed house, which is in progress and really exciting to work on. I wrote stuff that I read years later like “I had totally forgotten about that post and damn, that perspective is on point” or “ooooh, that’s why I think this way now lmao”

I’ve always thought of this as a kind of freedom. A license to be myself. To explore my interests unapologetically and without having to explain myself. If nobody cares what I’m doing here, it means I’m free to do whatever I want. To say what I’m thinking about whatever I’m thinking about.

Exactly. This freedom of developing oneself is not always easy (countless grimy/whiny posts will spawn in your mind), but when you get there, publish something interesting and feel enlightened, it’s just so dope. Great, great feeling.

I think it takes a long time to feel good about a blog. It really is like a plant: there’s not much going on at first. But then it blooms, it grows, it looks lovely. Your mind grows, gets excited and it’s hard to put that feeling down to go back to platitudes, social dogma and all that good, stale stuff.

I think blogging can create beautiful minds that are much more calm and resilient than what the algorithms in social media do. I think we need that? Yeah.

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Me Myself&I

Vacay done

Pure bliss.

The last time I had been floating in a pool was in 2015 in Santa Monica after some handyman work, in the middle of those wildfires that were raging on not so far away. The sky was filled with smoke and the sun was red.

Nine years later I’m in the crisp morning desert air, listening to water glistening around my body before being hit by triple-digit temperatures drying me out in an instant. Sunscreen and coffee smell.

I want to be back already.