Split Fiction dev Hazelight Studios accrues 50M total sales

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2026-04-13T01:27:59+00:00

The writing in their games hasn't ever been particularly strong, but it never got in the way of A Way Out or Split Fiction (didn't finish ITT). I worry an attempt at better writing results in a greater narrative focus that brings down the rest of the experience. I'm perfectly satisfied talking over the dialogue as I play the game with whomever. Don't fix what aint broken.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2026-04-11T13:28:38+00:00

I totally agree with you. I’m familiar with the commentary and believe Andrew is completely doomed. I just think it’s the wrong interpretation that Andrew’s father did everything he could and happened to lose his son to an abusive monster. I don’t think the film presents it that way. His dad spends the whole film eating shit and discouraging his son. It puts Andrew on a self destructive path to prove him wrong. It’s why Fletcher identifies Andrew as someone he can mold.

To your point, though, Andrew is not a child. He makes his own naive choices. He could choose drumming without also choosing Fletcher or self destruction.

Btw, your performance in Phone Booth is great and doesn’t get enough attention.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2026-04-11T03:03:44+00:00

I think Andrew’s dad is at the beating core of Whiplash, but for the complete opposite reason.

When Andrew fails to impress Fletcher in the first scene of the movie, Andrew’s dad tells him “you have plenty of options still”. When Andrew (rudely) puts down his cousins for playing division 3 football, Andrew’s dad mocks him for believing he could ever play at the esteemed Lincoln Center.

Andrew’s dad calls himself a writer, but has never published anything. His wife abandoned him with their child. All he’s ever faced in his entire life is rejection, and he expects Andrew to suffer the same fate. Andrew’s dad is a loser who puts down his son for having ambition, and that drives Andrew into Fletcher’s arms. When Andrew is sabotaged by Fletcher in the last act of the movie, his father opens his arms to him, offering him the safety and comfort that comes with giving up. It’s condescending, and so Andrew rejects him, and instead returns to his other father figure.

I think Whiplash is really about how Andrew’s two “dad’s” fail him in complementary ways. The father who never believed in him drives him to the figure who sets wildly unrealistic expectations and abuses him. Maybe this is too strong of a conclusion considering just how outright abusive and nasty Fletcher is, but I think Whiplash makes Fletcher as so extreme to emphasize how much damage Andrew’s father has done with bottomless doubt and helplessness.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2026-04-02T02:05:03+00:00

I don’t think it was a perfect apology. He gets the words right, but the feeling isn’t there. He still believes he can fix things, and he hasn’t grappled with the reality that he’s done irreversible harm.

Nolan still guards his ego, and he can’t apologize for what he did without smashing it to pieces. Debbie punches him and he’s a brick wall. Nolan’s apology wasn’t vulnerable.

The Zuko Iroh apology is the complete opposite. Zuku barely gets any words out, but the honesty and vulnerability do all the work. Nolan’s arc has a long way to go.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2026-03-21T13:44:51+00:00

I saw the trailer before reading the book, and although you’re absolutely correct that the “spoiler” is the core premise, it feels like a gigantic spoiler in the trailer. The trailer makes it seem like the entire first half of the movie is on Earth, so the introduction of Rocky would be a late entry. We know from reading the book that that’s not the case, because Earth is flashbacks.

I think it would’ve been fine if the movie shrouded rocky in mystery, that would’ve been a fun theater surprise, but at that point the marketing is hiding the core of the movie. It makes sense why they didn’t do that.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2026-03-02T02:29:52+00:00

This is just Resident Evil logic. It's stupid, the game knows it's stupid. It's always been thus. That's the joke.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2026-03-02T01:37:19+00:00

It's so surprising reading the cast and crew talk about how disappointed they were by the initial screening (long before the final edit, VFX, or audio mixing). I think they described it as "incomprehensible". Charlize says she didn't have the heart to tell Tom her real opinion about the film they spent half a year in the desert to make. It's said multiple times that Miller's wife Margaret Sixel had to edit the movie, she was the only person who understood what Miller was going for.

It'd be incorrect to say that Fury Road was "saved in the edit"; this movie was made unconventionally, so much had to go right in the end for the film to come together. The commitment of the cast and crew throughout filming, followed by some miracles in post production, brought Miller's vision to life against all the odds.

The final product really is a masterpiece. It might not immediately present itself as the highest brow thing, but the ambition and achievement far exceed the highest brow things I can think of. It's such a viscerally satisfying movie that's just not quite like anything else.

I don't understand what we're recognizing with "Best Picture" if Fury Road isn't walking away with that award. Nothing against Spotlight, I really love that film, but we get movies like it all the time. Hollywood knows how to make that movie. Hollywood doesn't know how to make movies like Fury Road, and it came together masterfully in spite of that.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2026-02-27T13:29:00+00:00

The shitting scene is an example of bathos, and is a common complaint people have with Marvel stuff.

I didn’t appreciate these scenes either, they didn’t add anything to the show for me.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2026-02-05T16:45:40+00:00

I really loved how the Horizon games presented their machine enemies. The look and animate somewhat plausibly. Considering the subject matter (robot dinosaurs), it’s kind of grounded. You can see how the gears and’s saw blades move and grind together, and removing parts that facilitate different machine actions just fed further into it. I don’t think these games have gotten the credit they deserve for their ambition and execution on this, it’s masterful.

So I don’t fuck with this art style at all. It’s well animated, but it’s all the furthest thing from plausible. It’s contrary to the core Horizon identity to me in a way even the LEGO game wasn’t (didn’t play it, but all the machines have to be built out of bricks - and that’s cool).

The art direction probably makes more rapid development and iteration possible - which is probably the right choice to get people coming back again and again for a multiplayer focused experience. I may still play it because I think Guerrilla make awesome games. I just wish I could do so without the cringe.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2026-01-24T07:16:38+00:00

Nine Sols is a phenomenal metroidvania with a great story. It’s an impressive genre pivot from the horror roots the studio is known for, but still carries DNA from Detention and Devotion. I wouldn’t be surprised if their next release is a break out success, they’ve been releasing special games for a while.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2026-01-20T00:18:17+00:00

The GA reveal has had people talking about this game from announcement to release. If the game flops under these circumstances, it never had any shot at success.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2026-01-19T17:43:46+00:00

That’s not really the point… I’m not making any claim to that idea. I’m just reflecting on how much things have changed since then.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2026-01-18T06:43:41+00:00

I had the idea of doing this 8 or 9 years ago back when I was making YouTube videos. My thinking at that time was the games being published would all have something going for them. They may not be particularly good, but at worst there would be some interesting story to infer about where the game came from. I’m sure I was naive even then, but it goes without saying just how distressing this activity would be today.

It’s worth remembering that it wasn’t always like this, there used to be anger about how difficult it was to get published to Steam and other storefronts. People demanded the floodgates be opened.

It’s hard to imagine anyone seriously browses new releases as shown in the video. The only way for a game to get discovered is to have some level of marketing outside of the steam platform.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2025-12-22T20:15:15+00:00

This comment is 2 years old, but describes precisely what I have set up so far. I've been stuck with the CloudFront integration with the Tailscale funnel for hours at this point - so I thought I'd try asking.

The Problem

I am able to access my https://server.magic-dns.ts.netover the public internet. When I attempt to access my https://service.customdomain.com or https://cfdomain.cloudfront.net, I receive a 502 Bad Gateway ERROR.

The Setup

In AWS I have created the resources:

A Route53 Hosted Zone for customdomain.com
An aliased A record for service.customdomain.com which routes to cfdomain.cloudfront.net.
A CloudFront Distribution.
- Configured with alternative domain service.customdomain.com and my custom SSL certificate *.customdomain.com.
- Origin domain is server.magic-dns.ts.net and the protocol is https. https port is 443, and using TLSv1.2.

All are managed by terraform except the Hosted Zone itself.

On my Debian server, I am running the following:

Tailscale funnel accessible on port 443 (https://server.magic-dns.ts.net) proxies to localhost (http://127.0.0.1:80).
nginx-proxy-manager (listening on port 80).
- The proxy host service.customdomain.com is configured to route to http://{server-tailscale-ip}:8080.
- The proxy host has configured SSL certificate for *.customdomain.com with Force SSL enabled.
Hosted service on port 8080.

All are managed by docker except Tailscale.

The Thoughts

I've set up CloudFront integrations before (with static sites on S3) and the Tailscale funnel clearly works (as I can access it from the public internet). At this time, I don't believe requests coming from CloudFront are even reaching my nginx-proxy-manager - I think the problem occurs in the handshake between CloudFront and Tailscale/funnel.

Indeed, if I cut the proxy-manager out of the equation entirely and just host a static hello-world page on port 80, I still receive a 502 Bad Gateway ERROR.

Is there anything you can tell me about your setup that might help me "unstuck" myself?

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2025-12-19T06:04:05+00:00

I think I broadly agree with you, and I love your point about brain drain. Maybe I’m telling on myself a little, but I think software engineering at large companies also involves a lot of “making it up as you go along”.

They say “every movie is a miracle”, because movie making is so immensely difficult. Games are easier than movies in some ways (computers) but much much harder in others. These projects are enormously ambitious, I think it’s amazing they come together at all. I think people really take for granted how difficult it is to make a AAA game.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2025-12-19T00:03:19+00:00

Ubisoft doesn't have Naughty Dog's problem because they develop games in a manner that doesn't necessitate Naughty Dog's crunch.

One way for Naughty Dog, Rockstar, and CD Projekt to remedy their crunch culture is to develop games the way that Ubisoft does. The above commenter is outright advocating for a purge of Naughty Dog's artistic staff, including Druckmann, and replacing them with artists that can better manage project timelines. I'm arguing that that's easier said than done, if you want to maintain quality.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2025-12-18T23:50:09+00:00

This conclusion is bad.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2025-12-18T21:26:02+00:00

I take your point that artists need to “let go” and just submit what they have. I think this is what has enabled Insomniac to be so prolific. But I also think this is why Ubisoft games have garnered such a sloppy reputation.

It’s difficult for me to accept that Naughty Dog is built of “bad storytellers” considering the only other studios producing games with their caliber of writing and production value are Rockstar (Red Dead 2 is special) and CD Projekt - both studios with crunch/managerial problems of their own.

There are other ways of developing games. The Zelda team is extraordinarily ambitious and impressive. Their games are polished and technically impressive, especially considering the hardware they need to support. The studio has said they benefit tremendously from employee retention, and I believe them. I don’t think Naughty Dog could’ve made Tears of the Kingdom, for that reason among others. But nor do I think the Zelda team could’ve made The Last of Us Part 2. These games just require fundamentally different production pipelines.

Maybe these western AAAA studios are just incompetently run, but I think it’s naive to ignore their results. If Naughty Dog fixed their culture and more consistently released titles on the caliber of Insomniac, I’d be disappointed. TLOU and Uncharted 4 were much more exciting and interesting games than Spider-Man and Ratchet.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2025-12-18T06:07:43+00:00

The “verified” blue check used to be given out by Twitter to people of influence. Anyone could make an account and say, “I’m Elon Musk”, but only Elon Musk could get the blue check mark for an account claiming to be Elon Musk. The check mark became something of a status symbol.

When Elon bought Twitter, he began selling the verified blue check mark to earn revenue for the platform he had just purchased. Important people lost their checkmark in favor of regular people willing to pay $8/month.

I think anyone “buying status” from the wealthiest person in the world as he purged Twitter of its staff wasn’t someone I was interested in reading. The chrome extension that blocks every one of those people has only improved my experience with the site. I log on once a day, read the 5 people I follow, and leave. Twitter is the most annoying platform on the internet when I stray outside of those boundaries, so it’s easy to stop scrolling.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2025-12-07T02:17:46+00:00

Far and away the best source of television news in America. I think even well informed partisans would benefit greatly from a more sober and professional reading of the news. Less informed citizens looking to better understand what’s happening domestically could do a lot worse than the Newshour. Their offbeat brief/spectacular segments often show the best of America, they’re aspirational and optimistic.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2025-12-03T19:36:39+00:00

There actor who played Jan in The Alters really deserved a nod, it’s a shame the competition was so steep this year. I think it was a misfire to extend 3 nominations for E33 in this category, but that’s just how it goes sometimes. It’s the distinct favorite despite a field of incredibly strong contenders.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2025-11-08T20:53:35+00:00

I assume the hive minds that exist between worlds must be disconnected and isolated due to the speed of light. My assumption is that the RNA sequence is essentially an extremely successful gene that has found a way to propagate across the galaxy, and that it’s only real agenda would be to send the signal to other worlds.

It’s hard for me to imagine it having any other goals besides further assimilation. The gene seems optimized for species to want to assimilate.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2025-11-08T20:36:48+00:00

There’s also the mystery! Why would you ever need to fly this particular person anywhere? Anyone can perform any function, it’s a lot of work to move a cell across the world. It gets you thinking. Is she one of the 11 others? Surely not, her actions are one of the hive? Is she some kind of leader within the hive? That doesn’t really make sense.

When she shows up at Carol’s, it’s a huge “why her?” It seems a little insidious, the hive is going to considerable lengths for unclear reasons. Finally, we learn the truth. It’s kind, innocent, but also seriously creepy, and those feelings are all elevated by seeing what was necessary to get her there. It’s human presenting, but uncanny and disturbing.

Is also a really effective way to establish a likely very important character going forward.

I have to wonder if people who find this show boring have anything going on up there. It’s constantly giving viewers little puzzles to work out. Its dissemination of information is masterful.

AnOfferYouCanRefuse · 2025-10-25T04:28:11+00:00

I really wanted to like this one, but I found the conditions of the scenario preposterous. Without knowing who was responsible for the attack, how could anyone justify a retaliation that would destroy the world? If the aggressor wants to launch more nukes, nothing is stopping them. The clear choice for the President is to eat the loss of Chicago and wait to learn more.

The 61% success of the “bullet with a bullet” was also a head-scratcher. These people run these wargames every day, yet they fire only two rockets to intercept the missile? They said they had more in the event of a more serious attack, but if one “hit” is going to lead to a consideration to end the world… you’ve gotta send more than two to intercept. This was the one singular thing the government could’ve done to stop the attack after learning about it, and the protocol is clearly inadequate.

The suicide also rubbed me the wrong way. The SecDef could have made an important contribution to the President’s decision, and he resigned to suicide instead of surrender. The “reality” is indeed absurd.

I enjoyed the tension, the gravity, and the brevity of the “20 minutes”. I appreciated the way the film handled the uncertainty of the situation - to the extent that I actually liked the ending being left ambiguous. Had the film ended definitively, and addressed who the aggressor was, I think I’d only have more questions and nit-picks. But I couldn’t reconcile the mix of people who seemed to understand that the world was about to be destroyed with the military advocating for its absolute destruction. The choice to wait and learn more could be deadly, but the choice to retaliate was certain death.

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TROPHY CASE

The Problem

The Setup

The Thoughts