u/SomeGenericNameDude

It's a super specific thing, but hopefully someone here shares the itch and has something to recommend.

I've become obsessed with games that let me directly mess with unit scale and density, the sheer number of models you can feasibly get moving on a map at once. Total War Warhammer 3 is where I’m letting loose with this, since there’s an experimental mode where you can crank the unit size setting and get insane unit numbers. It also messes with balance in battles but it’s just fun to watch so many units fighting each other.

Where this itch comes from is probably my recently found love for horde-based defense RTS the likes of They Are Billions (GOAT), Diplomacy is Not an Option (also GOATed, insane unit numbers + variety since there are now different factions as well) and Age of Darkness (did not like it before but I’m slowly getting into it). Same rush of just seeing vast numbers of units on the map, it gives me that epic feeling that small scale skirmishes just can’t.

That specific dial, being able to tune how many units are actually on screen, is what I'm chasing. I’m also okay with mods that let you do this, just crank them numbers up. I remember the old Dawn of War 1 Ultimate Apocalypse mod being the perfect example. It cranked the unit caps up by a ginormous amount and turned a fairly standard scale RTS into something gloriously stupid in scale (on point for 40k)

Scale as a feeling just does it for me, the game letting the numbers get ridiculous but in a way you can see (not as just abstract numbers like in grand strategy) 

And thus I want more of this sensation. What games would you point me to?

This is something that's so omnipresent we don't even notice it anymore. We have these deeply ingrained expectations about what a game should look like based entirely on what genre it falls into, and most of the time developers just go with it. 

This isn’t a comprehensive list but it’s easiest for me if I just go off the genres I enjoy playing the most, and where I initially noticed this genre - visual look correlation. So in no particular order…

FPS games usually go for the high fidelity realistic look, at one point with sepia filters but we have moved past that (thank god). Probably because the first person just always felt like the natural perspective to showcase really fancy graphics, since you can easily look around and move the camera. Only exception being classical boomer shooters that go for a more stylized vintagey look.

Platformers are expected to be colorful and cartoonish and usually retro, especially if they are 2d. This feels like its due to the genre staying pretty true to its roots, with the games themselves feeling kind of nostalgic going for that look kind of makes sense. I’m thinking of games like Celeste with its pixel art or the upcoming Croak with its hand drawn visuals that are basically 1 to 1 translations of old school cartoons in gaming. It’s a tradition that Cuphead brought to perfection in modern gaming (and Croak is in my opinion the one that’s continuing it) but it’s clear that realism just would not work here. In fact, this is the one genre where the stylization and charm matter most simply because the games themselves have relatively basic (though oftentimes HARD) gameplay.

ARPGs are grimdark gothic fantasy to the point where if you showed someone a screenshot of any random ARPG they'd prolly guess the genre correctly just from the color palette and similar UI they all seem to have. It feels like the visuals for the whole genre were pretty much inspired by Diablo, I don’t know of another genre where one game had as much influence as that. 

Roguelites are a bit of a mixed bag, I would say the oldschool retro pixel art look is probably the most popular, but at this point I’ve played RLs with all sorts of different graphics. 

Visual novels are so tied to the anime aesthetic that a VN with realistic character portraits would feel like blasphemy, I’m not even sure I could viscerally even consider it the same genre if the characters were done in full realism. It’s such a culturally-bound product too (most being from Japan) that this does not seem at all possible, or needed.

And I go back and forth on why this happens and how specific stereotyped “looks” emerge. The cynic in me wants to say that developers just copy whatever the most successful game in the genre looked like, every FPS wanted to be the next Call of Duty so they went in a similar direction, every roguelite saw Binding of Isaac and Dead Cells succeed with pixel art and figured that's what the audience expects. But there might be a more interesting answer, which is that certain art styles actually complement certain gameplay loops in ways that aren't immediately obvious. Pixel art works for roguelites because you need to read enemy patterns instantly at a glance and clean pixel sprites make that easier than detailed 3D models. Photorealism works for shooters because the games are really immersive and the perspective lends itself to enjoying detailed visuals. The grimdark palette in ARPGs serves the loot loop because if the world looks muddy and muted then that one shiny drop with a golden glow actually pops visually.

The games that break these conventions are almost always the ones that stand out the most though (visually at least). Like Mouse P.I. with 1930s cartoon animation in an FPS and Titans Quest with its bright colorful look for an ARPG. Or Last Epoch with its different eras (there's a time travel mechanic), each era kind of has its own vibe and the environment design is pretty distinct between them. I’ve always been a fan of devs brave enough to do something different in that regard. 

I know it's really hard for devs to justify breaking the mold when they know a certain visual style is a “safe” choice for their game. But games with unique visuals, like Return of the Obra Dinn or Cuphead when it came out are just way more memorable for me.

I’ve been thinking about quitting Upwork/Fiver and moving to LinkedIn for client acquisition permanently. About 6 months ago a friend of mine started his own mini business as a graphic designer. He had worked in a few studios after we finished college, then moved to freelancing as he obtained more experience, and now pivoted to doing creatives for ads + helping companies run them.

He was over yesterday and we talked about finding clients because I’ve been having some issues with that lately and have been trying to figure out what to do. I mean, it’s not that I have trouble finding clients per se, it’s more that I don’t really like the quality of the projects I’m coming across on Upwork and Fiverr. As a consultant, it truly feels like people sometimes think that I’m just trying to take their money for “a few hours of talk” even though behind those few hours are years of experience I’ve accumulated. They even expect me to work way beyond the initially defined scope of work. One client asked me to run their social media because “they are paying me anyway” and “since they don’t have anything that requires my expertise, I could stay busy with that”. Mind that this is a retainer that I’ve been working with way under my usual price because the work’s stable and predictable.

I’m just tired of this after years of pushing through and tolerating any nonsense to make clients happy. He advised me to switch to LinkedIn because the quality of the clientele is higher there, especially with my knowledge and expertise. But I’m kind of scared of making the move because I’m so used to Upwork and Fiverr and the “security” I have here.

Has anyone done this move, and if so, did it work for the better? Im open to starting relatively slow, maybe work on my profile and connections first, then move to posting and reaching out to people as I get used to the platform more.

Ever since I played KCD I have been thinking about this. RPGs as a genre seem like the perfect fit for telling real stories, you've got character progression, faction systems, branching narratives, resource management, like why wouldn’t we have more RPGs set in the Roman Empire or Medieval Britain for example. Period historic ones, I mean. When you look at RPGs overall it's like 85% fantasy, 10% sci-fi, and then KCD and KCD 2 standing almost completely alone, or that is my unlearned impression.

I mention KCD specifically because it pretty much proved how the low (actually zero) fantasy setting can still work and the sequel was just as good and delivered despite the hype, and the historical accuracy is one of the crucial points of the game.. The Bohemian setting doesn’t just add flavor, it turned out to be the whole selling point because it made every quest feel like it mattered in a way that a random fantasy quest never can, with villages and nooks and rivurlets that would look “generic” in other games being all important landmarks, and all seeped in history and culture of the boiling pot that was Central Europe in the 15th century because when you hear about something that really actually happened it's always going to feel more real than fantasy.

But I think the problem is in how RPGs have always handled player agency. The whole appeal of the genre is that your choices shape the world, and history (by definition, in a history centered RPG) has already been shaped. You can't let the player assassinate Julius Caesar in 50 BC and then have Cleopatra's storyline play out normally, your character can’t change grand events (while still being “historical”) although it does provide a lot in the way of character building, especially minor characters. Warhorse solved this by making you a bit of a nobody, Henry's story exists in the margins of history, below the level where your choices would contradict the record but that's a pretty narrow design space and I suspect most studios look at something like that and conclude it’s easier to just make an original fantasy setting.

There is an upcoming RPG I discovered though that deals with real world events, Hollow Home, one of those Disco Elysium like games (a purely narrative based RPG with no combat and a lot of dialogue) based on true events that happened (/are happening?) during the Russo-Ukraine war It has me curious about because these types of games are purely narrative focused so the setting is not just going to be there for flavor or aesthetics, or I hope not considering the bleak and frankly depressing subject matter, so I assume they’re betting on that gut weight based in a grounded, somewhat bleak story that fantasy only seldom achieves (since it’s based on the events of a real ongoing war, this one is bound to stir up some emotions one way or another, that’s for sure)

By the by, I think another problem is also meticulously researching the specific history of any single setting and then choosing how to portray it as a work of art (which parts, what to transform or change…because it can never be “real” history, no more than a book), and it’s massively underestimated one at that. Because a fantasy RPG with shoddy worldbuilding will get called generic or bland at worst, but a historical RPG that botches the history will get absolutely ridiculed by the internet,  actual historians writing massive takedowns of your armor designs in the comments (which is half the entertainment value of some YouTube channels but probably not ideal if its your baby they’re pulling apart) 

That way, the accuracy bar ends up way higher while the creative freedom shrinks, and most studios probably just don't think that’s worth it, unless the real story they want to tell actually matters to them a lot, then they might still risk it. Otherwise, I think it’s simple that it’s safer to work and let your creative freedome loose in a fantasy setting, rather than unknowingly stirring some hornet nest because you didn’t handle a specific historical portrayal with care. 

What’s your take on this, if you have one?

When I was younger the mental barrier to trying a new multiplayer game felt nonexistent - you'd hear about it from a friend at school or see it at a LAN cafe and just jump in, and the implicit social contract was that everyone was figuring it out together. 

Nobody had any thoughts of optimizing anything and there was no real concept of a “meta”, which (though I might be mistaken) began with the advent of live service games. We were all just kind of fumbling and that fumbling WAS the experience. The discovery was communal, regardless of whether it was massive multiplayer or if it was the LAN experience.

Now though, every new big multiplayer game launch feels like it follows the same predictable arc. There’s massive hype and news outlets shouting about it for two-three weeks of hype and then… the launch. Which in almost 9 out of 10 cases is rough beyond belief. And sometimes they just flop or shut down, or end up being Kickstarter scams (Ashes of Money) and everything in between.

Let me give you a personal example in Darktide. It’s perhaps my favorite multiplayer game right now (even though I only play it with friends, so basically co-op, aside from the occasional random match I find on Gameram when all my real life buddies are sleeping). But the launch was ROUGH, like really darn rough and the game still suffers from a severe lack of optimization in many areas. But it trudged on, it improved, got boatloads of content… and same as most of these multiplayer games now, it’s basically a constant WIPs with no clear end in sight until the devs say so. 

And for me, this is the best case scenario, devs polishing their games until they make them into something enjoyable, even if the game got off to a less than ideal start. I almost never try a new one without a personal good friend who knows my tastes recommending it to me and willing to play it WITH me. For the life of me, I don’t remember if I ever tried a modern multiplayer solo, as in going that yeah, I’ll get this and just queue up solo. Nah, brother…

The personal side of it is just as big of a factor though. The window where we're all free at the same time has shrunk drastically. Which means if I want to play something multiplayer, I'm looking at matchmaking with randoms, or I guess trying to find premades on some discord server or relying on apps like gameram to connect. And that’s a variable experience, to say the least.

Classic couch co-op is the one exception, if we can consider it multiplayer at all in that “true” sense. Because you’re actually in the room with your friend, so it’s a bit like LAN except even more direct and tight. But this is an even more niche space, if any of these polls are to be believed - splitscreen co-op, despite being a beloved category, accounts for maybe 5% of total multiplayer if less? I mean, I do enjoy playing It Unravel 2 with my gf, and we have some games like Water Me & You that we’re excited about, but that’s an intimate kind of excitement because you want to play it with exactly 1 person, and no one else.

I know this is a really broad question but with live service gaming/ multiplayer in general still being such a dominant force, I’m interesting in where you all stand and what makes you willing (or not) to try any new ones that have or might come out.

I have been running a small marketing agency for the past three and a half years, covering content strategy, paid social, email campaigns, as well as light brand work when clients needed it as a bonus package.

It was the kind of grind in the beginning where you finish one engagement and immediately start scrambling to get some more clients (and undervalue yourself all the way) before cash dries up. Feast or famine in the best of times, but usually just a month or two away from feeling unpaid bills weigh you down. I made decent money but it always felt temporary, like I was one bad quarter away from pretending the whole thing never happened. On an emotional level, this was my regular state.

Most of the work I do is project-based. A company hires us to launch a campaign on a social network or rework their funnel, marketing consulting work in other words. We'd deliver, they'd say thanks, and then silence. My campaign model was 1 to 3 month and most of the clients were one-off. I spent more time writing proposals and  discovery calls than doing actual marketing. This all accumulates to vast fatigue and long hours, and only getting a junior (a senior in disguise literally) did I get the bandwidth to make the delivery streamlined.

Few months after, because I could finally breathe and actually have quality talks with prospects, I finally got my first $4k/month retainer deal with an midsized indie game company, long term, NDA and for the foreseeable future. We’re now almost 2 years running together. That wast the *moment* in that pure sense when a client becomes a stable part of your income, and you know they’re not just testing out your services but actually prefer them to those offered by others. Nothing glamorous on paper when that first recurring invoice got paid without me having to chase it down or justify every hour, something shifted in my head. It wasnt even the money really, it was the fact that someone looked at our work and said yeah, I trust you enough to commit to this on a rolling basis instead of treating you like something I rotate every other month.

Thats when I started actually investing in the business instead of just surviving in it. From then to now, a lot of things have changed and now I have a sufficiently large network of recommends from previous clients and what I call cross retainers (lead people who quit but then contact you from their next job in the same industry, and get you on as a client twice - my favorite). A lot of it now runs on greased up wheels wherever I find I can save my team's bandwidth, especially LinkedIn which I completely disregarded for years because it wasn’t that relevant for my industry. An acquaintance got me a free plan for Expandi for a whole month, and I just let it run on its own wheels once I set up an adequate pitch deck for my services (I only look for SaaS clients there now) and it’s almost completely hands off and to be perfectly honest, plays a more supplementary role to the already established client network I have in some niches. The only manual outreach I do is to reconnect with past clients on Discord and see at which stage their projects are, see what they’re up to and if they need any help. It's small trickle of money for an even small amount of work, but it compounds the more you do it.

Besides, I think I reached the point where I can pick between clients, at least based on the perceived value I’m getting for using my bandwidth. It’s all specialized work and a custom campaign better be paying well.

That initial burst though, couldn’t have happened without that first retainer that first made me feel like my work was valuable. Funny thing is, that client-bro is still with me all this time later. It started as a straightforward retainer and turned into something much more intimate (not that intimate lol) than a business relationship. He still calls me when he's stuck on decisions that have nothing to do with marketing the product but something about his side projects, the stuff that you LIVE to work on, not only the stuff you work on to live. I consider him a friend at this point and I think that only happened because the retainer campaign gave us enough time to nourish that bond.

What was that moment for you fellas? When you first felt like you were running an actual business and not scraping by