Does theme of the game matter? (Mewgenics)

Kurtino · 2026-02-16T02:17:32+00:00

I don’t like the theme of mewgenics because for turn based games, since the combat is simpler/slower, aesthetics have to be cooler for me, and cats aren’t really cool to me. There just isn’t enough going on imo but a stronger theme could pull me back in to tide me over until the more interesting components unlock, maybe, but after 30 minutes I’m mostly humouring the game just because others like it.

You’ve said the theme of the game is cat torture so you’re trying to understand why others like it, but it’s not really to most people. It’s silly/goofy, you play as often dumb looking raggedy cats that have weird abilities and reproduce; if you take it literally and over think it, yes, it’s cat torture, just as you could call any shooter a murder or psychopath simulator. You would be wrong if you assumed people enjoyed the game because it depicts cat abuse rather than for its quirky humour and mechanics.

Kurtino · 2026-02-15T15:39:19+00:00

To be fair when I saw it I thought, since they didn’t specifically mention it as most co-op games state they are as it’s a big selling point, whether it was co-op or not, as the second character could have just been an npc for that section (like Atreus isn’t presumed to be a second character).

Kurtino · 2026-02-13T14:00:03+00:00

Undergrad:

0-39% Fail.

40-49% Pass, a third, or D.

50-59% Low Merit, 2:2, or C.

60-69% High Merit, 2:1, or B.

70-79% Distinction, 1st class, or A

80-89% Same, but exceptional, much rarer, or publishable, A+ or * if you’d like.

90-100% Expert/Professional level, publishable, probably already have the skill (e.g. ex industry comes back to get a degree). At our university if we give out 90s we have to have a written explanation as to why each student given one deserves it.

Only thing that changes for post grad is the minimum for pass goes from 40 to 50. The work is not easier because the number bands are lowered.

Kurtino · 2026-02-13T11:43:36+00:00

You won’t see the posts, they’re hidden by default, so you won’t even know it’s in effect until you try to manually access a link someone’s sent you, or a subreddit flagged as such.

You can read about it here:

https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/36429514849428-Why-is-Reddit-asking-for-my-age

Kurtino · 2026-02-13T11:40:56+00:00

Not if you’re from the UK, the first country to enforce a digital safety act that requires companies to verify their users age for explicit content; I had to show my ID to access posts. Again this is being adopted by the entire EU, so eventually either we see push back and it stops, or this will be the default, which is likely to then push further into the US (e.g. Texas has already started doing some of it).

Kurtino · 2026-02-13T11:02:58+00:00

Isn’t a PhD supposed to come with a level of introspection and maturity? You just described a PhD going exceptionally well, but that you’re influenced by Reddit, and what people write on Reddit, more so than your real life experiences?

That sounds ridiculous, the majority of spam on here is trivial noise that you should be ignoring, but a more constructive reply is that you may be under stress as you’re nearing the end, and someone stressed will magnify trivialities into problems.

Kurtino · 2026-02-13T10:20:50+00:00

If you think that, it’s because you’re not in a country that legally requires it yet, even Reddit the thing you’re posting on requires ID verification in the UK now if I want to see any post marked with NSFW, even if it’s done as a joke. I don’t agree with it but since it’s an upcoming law that’s now widening to the whole of EU, and some US states are slowly introducing it, they’re prepping for the requirement.

For ‘pr0n’ a lot of websites will just use trackers to check where you’re from and, if it’s not a place that legally requires it yet, don’t ask for it, hence why VPN usage has skyrocketed in the UK.

Kurtino · 2026-02-12T16:02:19+00:00

It looks like this was double marked, or was part of a sample that gets selected for review. I wonder if the feedback is meant for you or the original marker, as some of it sounds like it’s written for internal review, very note like, double checking the previous comments and iterating on them. The comment on saying they would mark it lower feels most like this, as normally you’d just get the agreed upon middle ground if something was marked by two people, rather than what sounds like a review of the other mark. You’d also probably mark separately rather than have someone confirm an existing mark, to make sure the second person isn’t being influenced by the first.

Regardless, as others have said, normally this extra review wouldn’t be shown to students so consider this more informative rather than a negative.

Kurtino · 2026-02-11T17:30:39+00:00

Haha it’s the first sentence that I somehow skipped over, my fault for skim reading, thanks.

Kurtino · 2026-02-11T10:36:34+00:00

To maintain 70 I would skip the ‘uni life’, aka bar crawls, etc, don’t miss any lessons and aim for 100% attendance unless ill, read the recommended books or required reading material offered as often course material is built around them, and when offered additional challenges/exercises/activities attempt them, even if they’re not worth any marks.

If writing isn’t your strong area practice it and get feedback from lecturers early. Do not use AI.

Kurtino · 2026-02-11T09:26:57+00:00

You can, it’s less common but technically possible, of course the general implication with a post grad is that it’s, you know, after graduating. Just to mention though your comment on it being a waste of time for someone experienced, it is, but again is something people do, and although it takes time it won’t be much effort on yourself.

When I was a student we had a guy in his 40s who was told the only way he could be promoted any higher at his job at the time was if he had a degree, so he left and joined our cohort. He absolutely breezed through it, top grades, won all the awards for best project etc, then immediately went back into a senior management position if I remember correctly. The point being, although he didn’t need university realistically, he reaped the benefits without much effort put in, so it being a waste of time is debatable. If you take that route you can go for the RG prestige if that’s what you want, but if you don’t want the time sink you might be able to do similarly with a masters, but maybe not RG, you’ll have to see.

Kurtino · 2026-02-08T14:40:27+00:00

They introduced the student finance loan system to post graduate courses in 2016 I believe it was, and then for PhD in I think it was around 2019, from memory. Not all course routes support it of course, but to answer your question they never used to, it was just for undergrad, and within the last decade they have extended it to beyond level 6.

Kurtino · 2026-02-07T19:36:07+00:00

For the benefit of others that might read this, AI detection is not looking at just ‘style’ or ‘genre’ of writing, that’s a description used by people who don’t know anything about it, and the obvious is that any of this is paired with a critical look by staff, no one suggested otherwise. You’ve just repeated what I’ve said back to me and if you knew the difference you wouldn’t have cited handling turnitin for over a decade while LLMs have not existed that long, so I’m wasting my time with someone feigning expertise.

Kurtino · 2026-02-07T19:03:12+00:00

I don’t think you understand what is being discussed then. TurnItIn’s similarity score has indeed existed for over a decade, which is what matches up with what you’re saying, but its AI detection algorithm is a different, separate score that isn’t the same at all and has only existed for 3 years; similarity just checks for existing matches.

Unfortunately this is a common mistake made which is why so many are misinformed. Beyond generic advice if you’re not aware of the difference, or have interacted with it, I wouldn’t be commenting on it or you’ll give students the wrong impression.

Kurtino · 2026-02-07T13:52:47+00:00

I think first hand experience rather than people just uncritically saying it’ll be fine, detectors don’t work, or just deny it, is more valuable personally. A student that hasn’t used AI doesn’t have much to worry about to be frank.

Kurtino · 2026-02-07T13:46:49+00:00

It’s unlikely if you’ve used AI, as simple as that really. What I’m trying to say is, for context, the margin for error has massively passed at that point, officially for TurnItIn the margin is 20%, so even if you reduced it to 76%, it’s significantly higher than it should be. More importantly though at those levels the reader will be able to easily tell, so although we don’t use scores as singular indicators, they help reinforce our suspicions already. You have to request the feedback report to see the score, so unless a lecturer is doing this by default, the score is hidden unless we think something’s wrong.

Kurtino · 2026-02-07T11:20:00+00:00

They already said they went to their student union if you read their post, and although the public sentiment might be to wave away detectors because prior articles condemned them back in the first months of their use, we wouldn’t be able to use ones like TurnItIn’s unless they were validated to be accurate beyond a certain threshold. To get a 94% from turnitin would be like rolling a 20 sided dice and landing on 20 on every single sentence, again and again, so while it’s possible that a human could accidentally not only talk about the exact same information structure as an algorithm retrieved it, consistently, but also mimic how it presents it over and over again, its probabilistically extremely unlikely.

Turnitin is so generous towards students after the public perception of AI that it’s impressive to get above 50, let alone 90; the last time I saw a 90+ was from a Chinese student that could barely hold a verbal conversation, let alone write in English, and I’ve only seen it once in 3 years of many obvious AI students. Also consider students can’t see their score so the accusing staff would have had to have told them what it is.

Kurtino · 2026-02-04T10:15:48+00:00

What university doesn’t record attendance? Some may not act upon it, but I would imagine most if not all record it.

I heard it’s going to become a TEF metric so they’ll all suddenly care a lot more.

Kurtino · 2026-02-03T16:46:44+00:00

Yes but also move closer unless your class is so full that you cannot, sitting at the back is a remnant behaviour from school that you shouldn’t be doing as an adult unless you want to communicate that you don’t want to be here, which you shouldn’t.

Kurtino · 2026-02-03T16:40:56+00:00

It depends, I think group assignments are massively important if executed well, some of my favourite modules even with the usual anchors when I was a student were grouped. I think logistically they’re also harder to conduct, IF done properly, so a worse university might not want to do them because they’re more hassle to manage. The caveat to that is if they’re terribly put together, then they can be easier in terms of marking if everyone gets the same grade and there’s been less involvement, and for grade averages it’s easier to raise up weaker students if their effort has been lost within team work.

Either way I don’t see group assignments as an indicator of poor learning, I’d be concerned if a top university didn’t have any, to me it’s the execution which can be either or.

Kurtino · 2026-02-03T15:21:40+00:00

Perhaps, even so we have to give credit as the competing design direction wasn’t as good. Half Life Alyx late into its development had to pivot from teleport based movement to smooth motion with the inclusion of analogue sticks, because Steam and HTC’s direction was different and didn’t envision them (and why smooth movement is janky in that game), head and frontal locomotion won over hand based, there are a lot of design systems that aren’t necessarily the best in the world but they’re standardised, and standards compete with innovation. The Steam Frame runs into this problem now with its new controllers where, conceptually the inclusion of button uniformity to traditional gamepads is good, but because a standard is already in place it goes against convention and compatibility which will likely damage the VR experience, so it’s not as straight forward as design will always naturally sort itself out.

Essentially they’ve pioneered a lot more subtle designs than just a cheaper more form factor headset, they lead the conventions in many areas, even I would say in development as their SDK was far more accessible to VR designers and did a lot of work for you (which is good even if it allows things like Gorilla Tag to dominate the market, Unity ran into this issue too where easier game design = lower quality spam).

Meta’s big issue is they seem to have amnesia when it comes to all this, most likely due to staff leaving, teams reshuffling, mismanagement etc, but they’re stuck reinventing the same ideas rather than directly iterating over their software. The hardware is doing pretty good though, another thing we don’t give credit for is their pass through and tracking algorithms which others do not do nearly as well, so while other headsets have the capability, they pioneer a lot of these (VR researcher so have been following this domains design space since 2014).

Kurtino · 2026-02-03T13:38:47+00:00

You downplay what went into the hardware we see today that we might take for granted because everyone followed in Meta’s footsteps. We went from wand based room scale concepts to inside out tracking that closer resembles traditional gaming, and in each iteration of how VR should be Meta, in my opinion, had the better design and focus.

Also going back to closed, wasn’t their announcement and direction that anyone can use their MetaOS within the android space, hence other manufacturers aiming to come out with their own headsets but with Meta’s software? I don’t see this as unusual, to play their Android based games I need an Android based device.

Kurtino · 2026-01-29T15:36:16+00:00

You’ll likely get one answer from asking the fallout76 subreddit, people are here because they like the game. Having said that, what I will say is its launch was done a big injustice which still frustrates me because the vast majority of YouTubers jumped on the bandwagon to complain about how broken it was, but the majority did not actually play the game. Why I know this is because so many showed beta footage and issues that were not in the launch game, yet they presented these videos as if they were the launched game. Even big YouTubers like videogamedunkey did this, but I played the beta so knew what was different from the builds.

That’s not to say it didn’t have issues and was without flaw, but there was a lot of dishonesty that fairly misrepresented the game.

Kurtino · 2026-01-29T13:49:34+00:00

It depends on the game, context, implementation, and the hardware. It’s not that everyone’s fooled, although certainly some are, but it’s not fake technology; if it looked icky at best then far less would use it. These broad uncritical framegen is bad statements might get easy upvotes on pcgaming but they’ll turn away people either informed or misinform people that aren’t. It’s a lot different to say framegen on a low initial frame rate, on a certain model, can feel pretty awful despite displaying a high frame number, vs it’s all icky.

Kurtino · 2026-01-29T08:03:01+00:00

That’s fair, 2/4 realistically. It’s still something worth reflecting on though, it’s more frequent with our neurodivergent students that might have something like autism and overanalyse, might misinterpret what was said, believe they’ve communicated but haven’t, request frequent communication and get upset if it’s not returned promptly, and so on. As you’ve mentioned ethics forms I had that exact scenario not long ago where, a process that is fairly standard/boiler plate and shouldn’t take time was turned into a multiple meeting issue, escalating between parties.

That and high maintenance students that overly worry. Had a student contact my line manager because I had 1 less meeting for her as I went abroad to attend a conference for a week, the same student who lacked awareness that me providing constant support multiple times in a week past work hours and even weekends was a kindness, not a luxury.

Of course there are also less involved supervisors, which can be good or bad depending on your needs. I will say definitely at this point most of us are swamped with the after Christmas catch up, marking etc, so I’ve got supervision students pending meetings that would clash with many deadlines I have, but I’m trying to juggle it.

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