SuperChaingun

Entrepreneur, Gamer, Streamer, Aspiring Artist/GameDev.

[SuperChaingun @superchaingun]

After years of trying to "hustle" and make different businesses that failed, I think it's time to go back to game design.

[Jay Alto @theJayAlto]

there are essays, and then there are "violently shift your entire perception of reality" essays

[SuperChaingun @superchaingun]

I've been trying to find this game for 20 years...

[Timeproof Games @timeproofgames]

Three Dirty Dwarves (Saturn, Appaloosa Interactive, 1996)

[Grummz @Grummz]

Absolutely nobody had a problem with this back then, and would have no problem with it today.

You're deliberately trying to paint gamers as anti-women when you fully know the reason why people don't like girl-bosses who demean the main character and shoving DEI into games.

You do this because it's obviously wrong to do, so you have to make it seem like something it isn't to try to have any argument at all.

[Doc Strangelove @DocStrangelove2]

Absolutely insane that the same Microsoft that funded this, would end up funding the slop fest Paramount series.

[Ed Latimore @EdLatimore]

For folks interested in YouTube.

I'm not an expert, so any experts who see this, feel free to eviscerate and educate me.

I'm just a guy who:

-Easily spent over 1000 studying the YouTube algorithm (from what YouTube says, what different channels focused on growth have said, and using AI to reverse engineer things)

-Looked at the analytics for 10 different channels outside of my "niche" and helped them improve

-Applied what I've learned (somewhat inconsistently) to get some solid traction on my channel, where I don't use graphics or music. Just talking at the screen and aura.

With that out of the way, do thumbnails matter?

Yes. And there are a few (obvious and not so obvious) reasons why:

1) People process images faster than words. If you can capture your idea in a striking image, you're already one step closer to winning the click.

2) The algorithm is sophisticated enough to look at your thumbnail. It uses some of the data it gathers from your thumbnail to figure out who to put your video in front of. This is one of the reasons why it's *strongly* recommended that you put some words on your thumbnail.

3) Click-through rate matters. The more people who click on your video, the more people who watch it. That's obvious.

What's not so obvious is that YouTube is a zero-sum game. If your video is shown, someone else's can't be. You steal their views.

Imagine a scenario where someone has made the exact same video, and it's got the exact same audience profile. The algorithm has to decide who gets the screen time real estate.

A few things factor into this, but let's assume all are considered equal—AVD, AVP, length, title, description, follower count, and previous watch time.

The ONLY thing that's different is that one video gets clicked 5.1% of the time it's shown, and the other gets clicked 5.0% of the time it's shown.

That's a small difference—in 1000 impressions, only 1 extra click—but it's enough to tell the algorithm that people prefer this thumbnail and to show it to the audience profile that'd be interested, over the other.

Of course, that's hypothetical, but the general idea remains: every little bit you can increase your CTR, the better chances you have at a successful video.

4) Everyone else makes thumbnails. That means you should too, if not for any other reason than your video is being shown next to other videos in browse and suggestions.

You need to stand out and (harkening to the first point), you need to get their attention better than the other videos your video is shown next to.

That's all I got. I got on my computer to write this, but it demanded the detail.

Hope it clears things up.

[Gary Vaynerchuk @garyvee]

Get rejected so much that you don't feel it anymore

[MegaPhilX @MegaPhilX]

NO FUN ALLOWED!

[SuperChaingun @superchaingun]

@NilesSankey @halosniperrifle The Citadel series is awesome

[Niles Sankey @NilesSankey]

I gained a lot of followers that are tired of the AAA corpo slop games.

Honest indie and small dev-team games are the future. Here are a couple recommendations similar to Halo that you might want to try..

Metal Garden - The vibe is both similar to OG Halo but also quite different. Great game.. and it's only $6!

Trepang 2 - Closer to FEAR in its influences but a very well made game. Huge discount right now $10!

Stop giving your money to morally bankrupt corporations. You can find both games on Steam.

(Feel free to reply with other recommendations!)

[Monly @monly360]

Every single time...

[Marty O'Donnell @MartyTheElder]

@EndymionYT Funny. In the original that was from a scan of the face of one of our engineers, Matt Segur.
He also programmed the audio engine.

[SuperChaingun @superchaingun]

Grummz is right.
This is why indie gaming is killing it right now.
Fire everyone and start from scratch.
Make what sells.

[Grummz @Grummz]

The best way to reduce cost in AAA is a complete purge.

So many devs are not carrying their weight, and were hired for DEI purposes and cronyism. They carry their toxic politics into studios, then multiply by nepotism.

With modern tools, you can get rid of 80% of dev team sizes (250-500 people or so counting contracting firms....ridiculous).

[SuperChaingun @superchaingun]

Old Xbox attitude and style is gone.

MS should not get anyone's money.

[Niles Sankey @NilesSankey]

Having women in the game is fine (e.g. Kat in Reach was well written). I've written women into my own games. The issue is artificial writing and lack of awareness.

It's clear that the devs needed to force more diversity into the story, so they made the new main character a girl, as if everything MUST be 50/50, evenly distributed against all logic.

Then they use the excuse of "lore" to make a poorly written character that immediately berates the player, even though it's contextually ridiculous.

The end result is a cliche girl boss telling the player how terrible they are, in a game where your (primarily) male audience is already very skeptical of forced social politics. But the devs/leads never stopped and said "Hmm, maybe the end result here is not achieving our goals of winning back our primary demographic."

It's tone deaf on top of being poorly executed. And this hurts branding, it hurts sales, and will destroy a studio's reputation (whatever's left of it anyway)

[SuperChaingun @superchaingun]

@Grummz 💯

[Atacan İlkin Tansel🎮 @konsolum]

Yanlış filme gittik galiba

[SuperChaingun @superchaingun]

@B_OX_MOD1

[AJAC @AJA_Cortes]

@naval StarCraft is the best analogy

Drones are essentially a Baneling+Zerg rush. Cheap and fast and explosive

Countering requires heavy armor and artillery, multiple lines of defense, disproportionate resources spent

And you're still not going to stop them all

[Scott Miller - Apogee/3D Realms Founder ☢️ @ScottApogee]

We purposely picked winter for the atmosphere, plus every scene takes place at night--there are no daytime scenes in Max Payne. Vibemaxxing.