#piratesoftware

Cellbit: You know Thor, don't you like, have to- need to go to the bathroom or something? Maybe like... it seems like you've been streaming for like, 15 hours.

PirateSoftware: Oh no, I've been streaming for 14 hours.

Cellbit: Yeah yeah. It's probably like- you can like, take a break, there's no biggie, I won't be like, offended or anything. You can like, stop and–

PirateSoftware: What if I took a break, and I still won? What would you do?

Cellbit: Uhmm. Delete you from my life, like, block you in every social media, yeah yeah yeah.

PirateSoftware: I mean, you invited me, this is your fault, frankly. You only have yourself to blame.

Cellbit: It's kinda rude to like, to- to I invited you, like, you should let me win, that's- that's kinda how it works.

PirateSoftware: Mmm, no I mean, that would- that wouldn't be fair, you've got so many good skills! I want you to showcase them by having a real challenge.

Cellbit: Yeah but like, we could like– we can like, pretend that you lost fairly, and it wouldn't be so bad for me, yeah. And people like, wouldn't make fun of me for the rest of my life for losing at my own tournament in the first match.

Because here you have this huffing-his-own-farts type of guy whose dad worked at Blizzard so he thought he just absorbed game design talent through genetics/osmosis, talking up his own project as having such UNIQUE and COOL features where even the SMALLEST, most INSIGNIFICANT decision will have MASSIVE consequences and SHIFT the game's plot in UNPREDICTABLE ways.

And I'm just sitting there like haha sure bud let's get you a Happy Meal and then you can go for a nap. I'm not even a coder/programmer and even I can tell that this is just straight up hubris, because whenever there's Some Guy talking about how HIS pet project is UNIQUE and DIFFERENT from all those OTHER GAMES and goes against DUMB AND SIMPLE concepts of having ITEMS and COMBAT in a game, there's a 90% chance he's talking out of his ass or hasn't actually done much dev work on the game/in general.

Because as much as the game industry and its mainstream design conventions are flawed, it's really rich for Some Fucking Guy to stand up and be like "wow all those decades of hundreds of thousands of people making games and creating frameworks and establishing design principles are fucking stupid as shit, I can do allat better and on my own without any help whatsoever because I know better." Like brother do you think those things are conventions because some big suits decided for them to be and not through people using trial and error to see what works and what doesn't? (Some are, to be clear, like loot boxes and microtransactions, but I'm talking about stuff like the player having a health pool that gets reduced when enemies do damage, or the game 'remembering' what items you 'pick up' with an inventory system.) You think you're the first one to *gasp* want to make a new and unique game, and nobody's ever tried your ideas before? And not that thousands of people did try and turns out it's either extremely hard or literally impossible?

And even though it's absolutely possible to make a game like the one he advertised, it would be a massive undertaking that would force compromises in many other areas. Game design in general is often just a lot of compromises. There's a reason a lot of conceptual games that fuck with game design conventions are usually focused on that fuckery in specific and make that a central mechanic, while games with a heavier focus on storytelling tend to be more linear. We all know and make fun of the whole "character will remember this" thing popularized by Telltale (may she rip in piss) precisely because the interactivity of gameplay often rubs up against telling a coherent narrative. But this guy is basically saying that his game is one huge Baba Is You level where moving a single block to the left instead of to the right will cause Ellie LastofUs to trip over a mine and die two hours from now. Not only is it extremely unlikely that one would program such a massive outcome for so minute a choice, but also why the fuck would you want to? Why the fuck would you do that? That's stupid! You cannot give every decision a player makes massively consequential narrative impact. You have to prioritize. Part of game development is figuring out what to prioritize!

And on top of this lack of prioritization is the fact that the story itself is so absolutely shit, too. Like the guy got SO upset about MatPat comparing his game to Undertale, but that's clearly the main inspiration for Heartbound. His list of inspirations is circling the Undertale black hole listing every game BUT Undertale, making it conspicuous in its absence. He's blatantly trying to copy the narration and dialogue of it, but he has no concept of anything, so all his jokey-jokes come off as tryhard lolrandum rawr xD humor. He's played Undertale and thought the jokes were funny, but didn't realize why, or how the humor was constructed, or the fact that the jokes worked because of timing and context more than the actual "random" content within (which, to be clear, was never actually random). He thinks it's enough to just make some cutesy nonsense jokes and that'll be just as good.

Anyway. I just wanted to yap about this stupid man and his stupid game. I loooove the way it's advertised as this unique and groundbreaking indie experience where even the unconscious choices may affect the outcome of the emotional and intricate story. And then you look inside and it's uh. One boss battle, "put sphere in the round hole" level puzzles, unfunny flavor text, and a dead dog pausing the game to lecture you about mental health.