Ludite Sam

Systems are beautiful.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

Yes, everyone has different tastes. But you know what I like? When someone thoughtfully convinces me that my tastes are wrong.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

In all seriousness, there's probably less than five games where that tag is legitimately even on the table, but all of the games where gamers felt an impulse to use that tag are games that are farthest from.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

Steam is removing the 'Masterpiece' tag, which is good because the aren't any in its library.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

@RuleOfThule I was going to make a joke about Pajama Sam, but then I saw he even did the soundtrack to the Natural Selection mod for Half-Life!

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

This is the only thing games have ever managed to achieve.

[Grummz @Grummz]

This is the only thing that has ever mattered for games.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

Only by committing to the long arc of consequence can you discover games of any significant depth. You're not guaranteed to find them - its a difficult discipline.

But if you commit to immediate and inherent excitement, you guarantee that you will not.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

Way too many designers zoom way too far into the experience of the game and decide 'Every single moment must be exciting!' and don't consider that the meat of a game's sophistication comes from its long arc.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

This often becomes a design crutch: you don't have to design a game whose depth comes from the ambiguity and complexity of its interactions. That's hard. Much easier to just make the results of decisions inherently unpredictable directly.
https://t.co/8I9pHciHRf

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

@tuvya68 @donttrdonme @markgadala @WhiteHouse @FBI What if I'm in the picture? I don't even have the damn app.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

I don't remember clicking any buttons marked "Allow" or agreeing to any terms of service or signing consent forms or anything.

Oh right, that's because I never even had this app on my phone but am still now part of some random AI training data set.
https://t.co/75nN2Fyvfp

[Mark Gadala-Maria @markgadala]

This is wild.

143 million people thought they were catching Pokémon. They were actually building one of the largest real-world visual datasets in AI history.

Niantic just disclosed that photos and AR scans collected through Pokémon Go have produced a dataset of over 30 billion real-world images. The company is now using that data to power visual navigation AI for delivery robots.

Players didn't just walk around with their phones. They scanned landmarks, storefronts, parks, and sidewalks from every angle, at every time of day, in lighting and weather conditions that staged photography would never capture. They documented the physical world at a scale no mapping company with a fleet of vehicles could have replicated on the same timeline or budget.

Niantic collected this systematically, data point by data point, across eight years, while users thought the only thing at stake was catching a rare Charizard.

The most valuable AI training datasets in the world aren't being assembled in data centers. They're being built by people who have no idea they're building them.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

@KKalvaitis Love when my media server reboots itself without my knowledge or permission and I'm 75 miles away trying to listen to my music.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

@SandyofCthulhu Blowing Your Mind
With Highlander

Emperor's Court Podcast
Circa 2008

Some of us remember.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

@DunderMoose Sounds like a great book.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

It is and it sucks.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

Wait, is Protomen Act 3 released now?

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

@Gingerblast "Fair" encounters imply players are "meant" to win. Utterly artificial, anti-real. Not so much a world as as stage.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

@fl0w_t And yet it still sounds exactly like a professional games writer.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

100% accurate rendering of the eternal state of games journalism.

[Kyle Mann @The_Kyle_Mann]

Tried a new board game this week and was not impressed. Lots of flaws.

1. Only one scenario - Most games these days have dozens of scenarios you can play. This game starts the same every time. Very low replayability. Will probably get old fast.

2. No campaign mode - Every game is a standalone experience. This feels pretty lazy. Where are the Legacy style booster packs we can unlock? Where are the persistent changes, character upgrades, etc.? Just sloppy design work.

3. Crude miniatures - Yeah, they're kinda nice in a minimalist way, but it feels like they were just cutting costs here. No big bucket of plastic minis I can paint. Very low detail renderings on the small soldier pieces in particular.

4. No expansion packs - Adding on to the replayability problems is the fact that no new content has been announced. It's just good design and business sense to have the first 2 or 3 big box expansions already in production when the base game hits. But this is just a core set without any new content on the horizon. So the meta will probably die pretty fast.

5. New players are at a disadvantage - You have to play this game more than 2 or 3 times to find any kind of viable strategy. So new players are at a huge disadvantage. When I play a game, I want everyone to feel included so all players should be getting like 400+ victory points

6. Only one way to win - The only way to win is by taking the other player's king piece. That's it. No alternate paths to victory or other strategies to pursue. Just take the king and you win. Boring. I really would have liked if you'd been able to win by building up your kingdom peaceably, or pursuing alternate routes like farming, trade, or earning favor with a visiting monarch or something. As is, the game really pigeonholes you into just one approach.

So yeah. I won't be revisiting this one. Sad, because it feels like there was a lot of potential here that was wasted by some short-sighted design and development decisions.

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

Followup headline:

'New Chess Mod Turns All My Pieces into Queens, and the Game is Way Better Now'

[Ludite Sam @LuditeSam]

The people pointing out all the weird and janky AI art mistakes and extra limbs etc. VASTLY overestimate how much the glassy-eyed, chimp-noise making, perpetual binge consumer of such content actually cares about such things.

[Grummz @Grummz]

AI is getting pretty good.