Youtube Recommendations

[Syt]

I dunno, fully destrcutable environments have their drawbacks. I remember an old build of Starbound (Terraria in space) and getting excited about a dungeon/bunker I found. Only to realize I could bypass the traps and deadly enemies by digging around it and into the vault, because destructable everything. Which made it a bit boring.

[Josquius]

I don't know the technical details but lets assume what you've put out that trivially easy to have objects able to move about. 1) I think they'd still need to have more effort put in as you could see them now from all angles so all angles would need to look good. 2) There would need to be meaningful things to do with all these objects that can move about otherwise it'd just be frustrating to players. Only so many times you want to smash everything to bits vs. try to use these moveable objects in some fashion.

They're 3D models. Unless an object is complex and definitely only ever going to be visible from one side and they know that from the start they're usually complete.

And I don't know. Useful objects would certainly be good. But even just seeing a shoot out in a shop with things flying off shelves, trees being hacked to bits in the forest, etc... would add to the atmosphere- and as I write I realise as well as doing something with an object there's also doing something with the absence of an object to consider.

We've seen what happens when they don't focus on narrative choices. We end up with what a lot of time is spent with in Ubisoft games, doing a whole lot of busy tasks / a whole lot of nothing.

Or Deus Ex. A masterpiece with myriad ways to solve problems.
Or classic Fallout or to a lesser extent Bethesda games (they suffer from trying to offer full interactivity in a giant world)

Also, do recall that all of this is done not as pure art but as a business. Unless there are signs that players enjoy games more when they can interact with everything, why bother?

Art and creating a good game is part of it. Though YMMV depending on the developer.
Certainly I expect this is key to the reason.

[garbon]

I don't know the technical details but lets assume what you've put out that trivially easy to have objects able to move about. 1) I think they'd still need to have more effort put in as you could see them now from all angles so all angles would need to look good. 2) There would need to be meaningful things to do with all these objects that can move about otherwise it'd just be frustrating to players. Only so many times you want to smash everything to bits vs. try to use these moveable objects in some fashion.

They're 3D models. Unless an object is complex and definitely only ever going to be visible from one side and they know that from the start they're usually complete.

Again I don't know the technical aspects but intuitively what you've described seems...wasteful?  I get that the 3d model would exist but I don't see why they would put in as much detail on sides that aren't intended to be shown. Similar to say one sided staging in a play.

And I don't know. Useful objects would certainly be good. But even just seeing a shoot out in a shop with things flying off shelves, trees being hacked to bits in the forest, etc... would add to the atmosphere- and as I write I realise as well as doing something with an object there's also doing something with the absence of an object to consider.

But surely that would require more work. Let's take your tree object. They could be setting up each static tree object with all its individual components modeled as separate objects (leaves, branches, trunk, bark, roots, etc.) or it could just be one object that is the tree. No need for each individual object as individual piece with its own physics if you aren't planning to have every part move / break apart.

[Syt]

Haven't gotten into Total War: Warhammer III (which after initial backlash and Creative Assembly trying to make amends with their fans seems to turn around in reception?), but this video showed up in my YouTube feed.

It's  typical faction guide and what to look out for when playing dwarves. Except the creator, "Blake's Takes" has the tone and diction of a BBC public awareness campaign.

[Josquius]

Long, but I found it interesting.
The host has an annoying voice which I've just learned isn't something he puts on for comedic effect.
But the woman being interviewed has a lot of good insights into the modern anglosphere far right.

Also, irrelevant, but she's cute and looks like she's 23 but is actually 40

[Admiral Yi]

Russia paid American youtubers.  Jimmy Johnson is someone I've seen a lot.

[frunk]

Ceave always presents an enjoyable angle on video games and gaming, but I particularly enjoyed his latest one on 3-D platformers.  A genre I don't even play.

[Admiral Yi]

8 hardest positions in sports (America centric).

[Syt]

What has been dubbed "most myterious song on the internet" has been found and identified, and reunited its band.

Long story short: in the 1980s, a guy in Germany recorded music off North German radio station NDR. Over the years he labeled all songs ... except one.

In 2007, his sister turns to the internet for help. What follows is years of investigations, research etc., trying to figure out who the band was.

Here's the happy ending, after 17 years of internet mystery:

(Incidentally, the song comes from Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein - it seems very North German to be at the center of such a thing and not even be aware of it )

German article on NDR: https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/schleswig-holstein/FEX-spielt-The-Most-Mysterious-Song-on-the-Internet-nach-40-Jahren,mostmysterioussong100.html

For those interested, here's Whang's other videos about it which give a bit of a summary of the past few years:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU_4_X2epTdAEwEqk-a7Uxt_M-rJJu4V7

Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subways_of_Your_Mind

[The Minsky Moment]

I was hoping for a more technical video; it's however primarily looking at the ethical side of this (games that help kill people?), which ... I mean, yeah, worth looking at, and while the presenter tries to be balanced (i.e. wargames as tool to avoid conflict/be prepared for crises, their use in non-military and NGO environments etc.), but he always comes back to it being ethically problematic.

I was thinking about this in connection with some of the recent EU5 dev diaries.

Slavery is modeled in Victoria 3 but in the context of the gameplay itself it is almost always a bad thing, and there is strong incentives to change the law ASAP. So the player never faces a conflict between optimal play and doing the "right" thing.

It seems like EU5 will be quite different in that respect, and that there will be economic benefits that accrue from slave plantation-based production and the slave trade itself. Which may be historically accurate but which I think does raise ehtical issues.  Games - especially Paradox style historical map games - do have a pedagogical function, whether intentioned or not, and their audience includes young people. I do think there is a potential problem with a game design where participating in the slave trade may be optimal gameplay without some kind of contextualization within the game itself.

[crazy canuck]

Paradox has a game in which the Nazis can conquer the world, complete with gratuitous art which celebrates that outcome.  I am not sure they are spending much in the way of resources to contextualize the slave trade.

[Syt]

Paradox has a game in which the Nazis can conquer the world, complete with gratuitous art which celebrates that outcome.  I am not sure they are spending much in the way of resources to contextualize the slave trade.

But explicitly excludes the holocaust, concentration camps and (IIRC) slave labor or e.g. the more vile actions of the Japanese (biological warfare against the Chinese, Unit 751, "Comfort Women", etc.).

Which is something you see in most wargames.

[Syt]

I'm sure nobody but middle aged folks on Twitter find Minions funny any more. But this ... this made me chuckle.

[Norgy]

I'm sure nobody but middle aged folks on Twitter find Minions funny any more. But this ... this made me chuckle.

 

[Josquius]

What has been dubbed "most myterious song on the internet" has been found and identified, and reunited its band.

Long story short: in the 1980s, a guy in Germany recorded music off North German radio station NDR. Over the years he labeled all songs ... except one.

In 2007, his sister turns to the internet for help. What follows is years of investigations, research etc., trying to figure out who the band was.

Here's the happy ending, after 17 years of internet mystery:

(Incidentally, the song comes from Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein - it seems very North German to be at the center of such a thing and not even be aware of it )

German article on NDR: https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/schleswig-holstein/FEX-spielt-The-Most-Mysterious-Song-on-the-Internet-nach-40-Jahren,mostmysterioussong100.html

For those interested, here's Whang's other videos about it which give a bit of a summary of the past few years:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU_4_X2epTdAEwEqk-a7Uxt_M-rJJu4V7

Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subways_of_Your_Mind

They solved it?
This is huge.