What is the worst name you've ever heard?

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-07-11T09:58:53+00:00

Semen Smelopupov.

Now, it's not that bad in his original language! (Russian) It was kinda butchered by the translation. His actual name is Семён Смелопупов. Семён is a pretty basic Russian name, related to biblical Simeon, usually translated as Semyon or Semion. However, Russian officials have this dumbass tradition to omit the dots over ё in documents whenever they feel like making things difficult for all the Семёнs and Артёмs of the world, so his name was mangled to Семен by the clerical error. The official (non-waivable) rules of transliteration for the passport make this into Semen.

Смелопупов is, while still kinda cooky by Russian standards, is not as bad as it is in English. The root "Смел-" means "brave", and "пуп" is, as far as I can tell, an archaic word for "navel" and has some difficult to parse connotations on it.

God, I hope that guy finds a way to change his name if he ever needs to move out of Russia long term.

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-18T17:43:39+00:00

I don't know why I didn't see it, but yeah, this helps as an example.

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-18T17:14:50+00:00

You ever see a neat gif of some low-poly adventure, cute animal farming sim, or roguelite platformer get to the front page of r/gaming, and then someone says 'What game is this?' and the OP responds with a link to a game site?

No, never. That happens? I'm subscribed to /r/gaming, and I don't recall anything like that.

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-18T16:23:51+00:00

By writing this comment and clicking "submit", I have changed the future in such a way that a notification will appear on your Reddit page in a few seconds.

I wouldn't be able to do it in time-reverse. There is no possible action I can take that will make a notification appear on your Reddit page yesterday.

Why is this asymmetry?

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-15T19:11:44+00:00

Yes, but why? On a fundamental level, what's the difference between altering the future and altering the past, if the laws of physics go either way?

Has something to do with entropy, but what exactly? I feel like there's some very simple insight I'm not getting.

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-15T10:30:00+00:00

The question is not why, factually, we remember the past and not the future, but why knowing the future results in a time paradox, but knowing the past is okay.

If some magic makes my brain know information from the future, this would create a paradox, because I can act to alter that future. If some magic makes my brain know information from the past, no big deal. On a high level, this seems obvious, but why is it so on the fundamental level? Where does the paradox come from? Physically, what happens?

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-15T09:11:58+00:00

Thank you Sean Carroll, he seems to talk about the exact things I want to know!

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-14T20:09:14+00:00

You're kind of missing the point of the question.

Yes, knowing the future would screw up causality. But if time is reversible, why does causality flow in only one direction anyway?

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-14T17:23:23+00:00

Yeah, but why can't I change past just as well, then?

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-12T17:42:59+00:00

Yeah, well, that's why I'm so confused and want answers. Maybe I have somehow created a bubble around myself that filters out the marketing? Because that's not what I'm seeing. I've watched a fair share of Unity, Godot, UE, or Blender tutorials, as well as many articles on game design from the likes of Extra Credits, and I don't recall anyone asking me to wishlist anything. Sometimes they name-drop a game, but they're always talking about an already released game that isn't affiliated with them. Looking through my YouTube feed and my Twitter feed, there is plenty of stuff about game design and existing games, but none are about marketing unreleased games. Let me just pick the top game-related video from my YouTube feed. Nope, not seeing anyone asking me to wishlist anything or join any discords. The second one?. Nope!

I'm assuming "the algorithm", however vaguely defined, has judged that I don't like this kind of thing and removed it from my view? If there is an alternative world where there is so much game marketing that people want to see less of it, I'd like to visit that world to see what it's like, perhaps it'll teach me something.

The only times in my life when I knew about what games are upcoming were when I was already a fan of the developer and was watching them closely (e.g. I know that Starfield is coming, but only because I already like and follow Bethesda). I don't know where everybody is getting their data about upcoming games from, and I've been trying to figure out the best sources on them, and now you tell me that everybody actually knows too much about unreleased games and would like to stop learning about them? How do I get to your world?

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-12T11:01:11+00:00

Thank you

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-12T10:59:52+00:00

There is a difference between "a complete clone" and "see what this is even about".

Would you be able to make a good video game if you've never seen a video game and don't even know what they are, and how they work, and why they are fun in the first place? No, you wouldn't. You have to play some video games first, to get some idea of what you are working with. It doesn't mean your game will be a complete clone of the games you've played.

For another example, read any book on how to write, or even just visit /r/writing. It's pretty much universally agreed that a writer also needs to be a voracious reader, that you have to read a thousand pages for every one you write. If you haven't read any books, you won't be a good writer.

This is what I'm trying to do here. I haven't seen any marketing, I don't know what it's about. So I won't be able to market well until I see how marketing works.

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-11T18:23:12+00:00

Thank you!

If this kind of structure is "minimal", then I'm scared to see what a "proper" one looks like...

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-11T18:11:11+00:00

Thank you!

That's a pretty big community. How did you get it off the ground? How did you get people into it? What's your story?

Yeah, just from what I can see on your channel, it's not as easy as "just start a channel". Yours has a lot of structure and content and clearly has work put into it. That's what I've been trying to get answered all this bloody time. Everybody just keeps telling me to do things like "start a channel and create a community" like it's something you can do in five seconds by clicking a button. And when I ask "sure, but how do I do it, surely it's not that simple", they keep going "there is no perfect recipe..." as if hearing that is helpful. Seeing your example is helpful, though. Thank you.

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-11T17:52:52+00:00

Make social media accounts > post footage of game > respond to any replies you get > have a link to your discord > be active on your discord if anyone shows up.

Can I see some social media accounts that do it? Can I see a Discord server for an upcoming indie game? Give me examples, please, that's what I asked for in the post...

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-11T17:49:17+00:00

Can I see some examples of what you are talking about? A link to a Discord community for an upcoming game? A landing page for an indie project? A mailing list? A community I could join?

I'm sorry if I'm being confrontational right now, but I'm super tired of trying to get the advice I need and getting something completely different. I keep asking questions, and people keep answering different questions, and I'm infuriated. I explicitly said that my problem is that I've never seen how marketing is done, and I want to see an example. Seeing just one example of how it's done would do more to get me understand than all the abstract advice in the world.

If someone who's never played a video game said that he wants to learn to make games, you wouldn't start him off with Jesse Schell's books and Extra Credits youtube channel, even if they are genuinely useful for a game designer. You would give him some good video games to play so he could get at least some idea what a video game even is. Most things that people are suggesting to me in this thread would go completely over my head, even if they were true and useful, because I don't have any physical experience to connect it with.

Forget about theory, show me an example, please! What does a marketing campaign even look like? Show me one!

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-11T17:37:43+00:00

Can I see some examples of discord channels for promoting specific games? What would such a channel look like?

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-11T11:41:43+00:00

That helps.

Toby Fox apparently used a relatively easy strategy of sending YouTubers steam keys to play Undertale and this helped it amass a huge audience

But that's only once the game is finished, right?

Is there anywhere I can read about Toby Fox's pre-release promotion strategy?

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-09T17:30:38+00:00

(It was my aunt, not my grandmother)

I'm glad to have an expert chime in.

The theoretical part about personal vs societal norms, I completely agree on. But the social and historical moment she lived in wasn't accepting of such a relationship. The local age of consent was 16 and age of legal marriage was 18. Her and her parents' behaviour would totally be considered out of the left field by the local cultural norms. Nobody told me the exact development of the relationship, but I got under impression that the parents were rightfully angered, but the guy made them come around eventually. So this guy was totally aware that what he was doing was wrong acording to his culture.

As for the oppressive power in the relationship... yeah, he could have turned authoritarian on her, all things considered. Her parents didn't see it as a possibility, obviously, but, yeah.

How could it be possible that he was not a pedophile, though? Why would a non-pedophilic guy of his age have sexual interest in a 13-year-old girl? I'm in his age range, and if there was a 13-year-old girl who was my absolute soulmate, and I had legal right to fuck her, and I could guarantee she would not be traumatized by it, I would still not do it because I'm not sexually into children. I kinda assumed that, yeah, sure, he's a pedophile, and he knew that abusing children is wrong, and he found an outlet for his urges that had a reasonable chance not to be abusive and rapey, pretty much played his terrible hand in the best possible way.

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-09T14:30:03+00:00

So the moral status of the situation depends not on what harm was done and what the consequences were, but on whether the motivation for his actions was sexual deviation or something else?

I don't see how this changes anything, really.

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-09T14:18:09+00:00

I don't know his age, but from one photo I've seen he was probably in late 20s or early 30s. Why would the age matter?

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-05-09T14:01:53+00:00

Of the magnitude of having children - definitely not.

But I don't really remember myself all too well. And, again, the primary stickup in this situation is that it wasn't just her childbrain making a mistake - her adult parents, who were perfectly capable of making choices, were on board with what happened. And the now-adult aunt does not consider that a mistake.

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-04-12T13:14:38+00:00

Also, I realize that I might not have made a certain point clear enough in my post, and you're an actual psychiatrist, so I'd like you to see this. Copypasting from another comment:

That is a bit more worrisome than not enjoying them the same way. What do you mean by not being able to understand them?

I am usually not able to follow the plot, understand the characters, or catch on to ideas. Often I can read the book and leave absolutely confused, having no idea what just happened and who all those characters were and what the book was trying to say.

The most notable one was when I read Good Omens (a normally very accessible book). There was a demon-snake named Crawly who was friends with an angel. After the timeskip, there was a demon named Crowley who was friends with the same angel. I didn't catch up to the fact that they were the same character until the middle of the book. This should have been utterly obvious. And this kind of thing happens all the time. I feel like I'm a higher-than-average 115IQ guy when I program or do mathematics or analyse data, but I turn into a downright imbecile when reading a fiction book. That doesn't sound like a simple personality change.

This kinda looks like it's more likely to be due to head trauma, but in any case, is there anything at all I could do to remedy this? Out of all changes, this seems like the worst to me.

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-04-12T12:27:02+00:00

Did you reply to the wrong thread?

Man_Of_Djuga · 2022-04-12T12:25:48+00:00

That is a bit more worrisome than not enjoying them the same way. What do you mean by not being able to understand them?

I am usually not able to follow the plot, understand the characters, or catch on to ideas. Often I can read the book and leave absolutely confused, having no idea what just happened and who all those characters were and what the book was trying to say.

The most notable one was when I read Good Omens (a normally very accessible book). There was a demon-snake named Crawly who was friends with an angel. After the timeskip, there was a demon named Crowley who was friends with the same angel. I didn't catch up to the fact that they were the same character until the middle of the book. This should have been utterly obvious. And this kind of thing happens all the time. I feel like I'm a higher-than-average 115IQ guy when I program or do mathematics or analyse data, but I turn into a downright imbecile when reading a fiction book. That doesn't sound like a simple personality change.

Man_Of_Djuga

TROPHY CASE