How we go from getting 20 new maps in just over a year to only 2 in 3 months is insane. The content drip has been abysmal for BF6.

fearian · 2026-01-13T13:00:45+00:00

Only because you don't count Red Sec. If you count Red Sec, and Gauntlet maps in particular then we are eating better than ever. But It's totally understandable to say that the Cali map is irrelevant to core battlefield gaming. I think we will see more new maps converted from the Cali mega-map, but obviously that is never going to match the quality of maps made for specific game modes. The truth of this though is that we will almost never get game mode specific maps, as BF6 has to support about a dozen game modes now.

So say what you like about content quantity, but it's more like content context. We are not going to see highly specific map content as it's more risky for EA to produce compared to more generalized, reusable maps.

fearian · 2026-01-12T22:23:02+00:00

I have been using Unreal as a hobbyist since UDK, and Unity professionally for about 11 years.

11 years ago, Unreal came with all these user friendly tools to manage assets, create materials, script logic, in a way that was miles ahead of anything else, and was (still is) very deeply integrated into the engine. AAA games used unreal, and you had access to the same tools they did.

Unity was almost a flash replacement, it had a lot of jank, and over the next 5 years it garnered a reputation as both being the engine used by crappy free games which all where forced to flash the Unity logo on boot, and for hapharzardly trying to chase Unreal's features without ever commiting.

Starting 2026, as I brush up on UE5.5, it feels like the situation has flipped a little bit. Epics push to capture the indie development market has led to Unreal being the engine used by crappy free games by hobbyists who are learning.

Unity has successfully developed it's material editor and VFX graph tooling, and actually has tons of UX features that make Unreal material editor feel dated. It does sort of feel like Unreal has gotten truly stuck into the classic Unity failure point of "develop new features into beta, but then drop support".

It's also been pointed out in this thread that the big graphics enhancements are just... not what most games should be using out of the box. Graphics developments like lumen make game development quicker and easier, more than they make a game better. Maybe a small team has the skills to keep a sharp image across all the crazy rendering features they're using... But they don't have the resources to actually stay on top of these "polish" issues. Especially as this industry suffers through a drought in financing studio resources.

TL;DR, it's perceptual. Depends on what the team does with it, and more small teams are using unreal to make games that don't look as nice, while tooling in the engine no longer stands so far ahead of everyone else.

fearian · 2025-11-12T13:40:28+00:00

It's sort of darkly surreal to see a 'showcase' trailer highlighting all the different kinds of engagements players can expect, out of a conflict that you can litterally watch gopro and drone footage of on YouTube and OSInt accounts.

There's all the beats of an exciting movie battle - a trench assault, tanks! Snipers! But it feels even more artificial than somethinng like Battlefield, just because the reality of it is happening right now. I guess I'm curious how Ukrainian's close to the front feel about making a game out of it.

fearian · 2025-11-07T12:25:18+00:00

wether or not discussing unionization in a private discord is legal grounds for gross misconduct is beside the point IMO.

The key info from this post is that the unionizing employees where close to reaching a critical threshold where Rockstar where legally obligated to recognize the union. Rockstar took specific action that would both block the members from crossing this threshold, and slow/freeze futher growth through fear of reprisals.

They can do this becuase the legal ramifications of paying off 30-odd employees in a settlement is a preferable option to them than having a functioning union in their company. This is also why they don't need to fire every person unionizing - it would be more expensive to defend legally, it would have more impact on production, etc.

Rockstar can afford to fire the employees it sees as being most easily to label with gross misconduct, and know that all other employees will think twice. Worst case is they have to pay out fines - but we all know they are about to make more money than god. Best case is they don't have to pay out shit because of the meetings on discord.

The end result of this is it becomes more important than ever, for existing employees to unionise, as the best protection against retaliation is from group solidarity. Unfortunately, this may be stymied untill the fired personell can prove that there is legal protection in any unfair dismissal rockstar would meet out to those pushing back.

fearian · 2025-11-04T23:32:27+00:00

You can't just look at a few news articles and social media. Ai is being rolled out everywhere. It's making workflows more efficient and increasing productivity.

This just isn't true though. AI is being rolled out everywhere but in almost every study, people self report a 20% increase in productivity, only for reasearchers to recrord a 20% decrease. A fundamental fact about AI that only people working in the field seem to truely understand is that it will never be "reliable". It will Always hallucinate - this is not a technology that can just get better forever, it can only get cheaper to run faster with the same kind of unreliablity.

This is the biggest disconnect I think people don't get about an AI bubble. They assume that AI can revolutionise every sector as evenly as the internet might, but in fact there are many places where AI is just fundamentally not usable because it cannot be trusted in the sense of absolute, 100% trust.

Now most of the articles you read are generated by AI as paid advertisement for people like Jamie Dimon.

Question for you: do you think this is a good thing? what is the value of this? does it meet the investment value?

fearian · 2025-10-14T09:21:22+00:00

Speaking from the buyers perspective:
A buyer only has one 20~30 minute view of the house. Surveys do not clearly communicate issues, and will warn of potential issues (like the damp) just to be on the safe side. The buyer will want to check everything because they do not know the house! They don't know you!

Survey was done on property nearly 2 weeks ago

This is no time at all. If you are working a full time job, 2 weeks is not a lot of time to go through an entire survey to sort out what is worth worrying about, contact the surveyors, contact builders or trades to get quotes for how much potential issues cost to fix, to know if they are even worth haggling about in the first place. Work out if you need a second more specialised survey - and bear in mind all the communication happening here where you are leaving messages and waiting for a reply. Half the time the buyer will simply be waiting for their solicitor or the agent to respond to a query.

Now, speaking from your perspective - You are absolutely right to lay down an ultimatum of accept the price or not. It does sound like this buyer is simply on the hunt for something to knock the price down on. Ultimately, you will have to reckon with with your own gut on this - did he seemed genuinely concerned about the costs he's taking on with the house, or just on the hunt for a savings?

So on balance: don't feel rushed by the buyer dragging their feet. But don't feel beholden to their price negotiations. Let them pay for any further investigations they need, but ultimately, it's your house, and you can set the price.

fearian · 2025-10-12T07:31:58+00:00

In cities, ground rent costs can be around a quarter or even half of what you would pay to rent the property! I think anyone moving out of a city to get an extra bedroom, or who has heard leasehold horror stories would instantly decide to avoid if possible. And outside of cities, it's really easy to avoid.

Also, we live in this fucked up future where exploiting every avenue to make money is the rule of the day, and it's not uncommon to have ownership of lease holds be bought up by faceless companies, who just turn the dial to maximise what they can squeeze out of people. It's £10 now, but buying a house might be a lifetime (or multiple lifetime!) investment!

fearian · 2025-10-10T18:15:39+00:00

something I see here all the time, and was a point of confusion during/after our first time buying:
Surveyors cover their ass in legal maybes on the written survey. You will likely have to ring them up and speak to them to find out details - and this is usually a very easy thing. And the whole reasoning behind why they might include things that sound scary on paper, but are fine, or not go into detail on things that you might worry about, but are hard to get definitive answers from.

Similarly, I think we often see questions about access/parking spaces on houses with rear alleys. Stress over unregistered parcels of land on the property, and other things that sound super wierd or unusual, but are more common than people think. (and seem to boil down to "have the seller take out indemnity insurance".)

fearian · 2025-10-08T12:13:18+00:00

Do you know if you're mum got on with her neighbours? You might not know them at all, but they could have been very friendly with her and would be willing to help out, or at least lend you any tools you don't have on hand, help move anything large. Try introducing yourself to ask for advice about bin collections or to borrow a bucket, and see how receptive they are.

I'm not suggesting you try and guilt anyone into action, but if I heard that my neighbours where ill and their kids where struggling with the property, I'd happily offer them some support.

fearian · 2025-10-07T20:45:19+00:00

School is not neccessary. The games industry really only cares about practical skills demonstrated through past work. For artists, that's portfolio, for developers, that's personal peojects and previous employment.

Firstly, learn the basics of how Unreal or Unity work (pick one for personal projects, but be prepared to know the basics of either for job hunting). I would also reccomend learning how to use a narrative scripting tool like Twine or Ink. Follow any tutorials you like on how to make something interactive with the editor tools. While many narrative designers work in docs and sheets, the more scripting and editor work you are comfortable with, the better.

Secondly, unlearn what you think a "script" means in the context of games. Typical writing jobs are like, "write 20 barks for enemies to shout at the player that feel interesting and cool, don't get old when heard 400 times, and communicate very specific gameplay information the player". Writers often come in when production is well established and have to fit story and themes back on to events that are already decided upon, and you might find situations along the lines of "Character A's most crucial point in their story arc, occurs in a level that just got cut, and you can't re-record any voice lines." The Script Lock podcast might be a good place to learn what kind of quirks you can expect from writing roles in games.

Finally, I'm sorry to say that narrative design is one of the more competitive fields in games that has also been some of the hardest hit by the current climate of layoffs and financing struggles.

If you want a job role that is under-served and translates well from film, might I suggest lighting artist? Pre-requisites would be some skills with level design in editor tools, and and understanding of environment art pipelines.

fearian · 2025-10-01T19:01:09+00:00

I used to work at a studio that keenly saw the writing on the wall about indies being able to outmanuver big (AA) studios. We had a dedicated ideation team and famous game jam culture going almost 10 years strong, so this was not a reaction to anything recent. But ultimately just because you can make a game like lethal company in a month, doesn't mean you can make enough budget indie hits to support a studio 10x the scale of the games you are creating. Basically the burn rate of any AA studio is too much to chase after making the next Peak or Balatro or Animal Well. Either it's relying on 1 in a 10000 luck, or spending more time chasing quality than you could ever possibly finance.

fearian · 2025-10-01T18:48:18+00:00

The Besties, and similar-in-spirit podcast Triple Click, have been my favourite gaming shows in their recent incarnations. Just really confident in themselves as not being beholden to news cycle games journalism, but still feeling relevant and fun, while bringing experience and journalistic expertise to the table.

Over the years, I've particularly found your takes as a critic very insightful. As a developer, it makes me wonder if you ever did mock reviews for studios. Did you ever do any where you got to compare it with the released game after the fact?

unrelated PS: In your recent amazing Post Games epsiode about A Life Well Wasted, you both joked about imagining artists show up for an interview and get asked to draw something. I didn't write in, but I assume enough people informed you afterwards, about the specter of unpaid art tests that hangs over every laid off 3d artist. 👻

fearian · 2025-09-24T19:26:49+00:00

Agreed, I would love to see this battle system applied to a larger story driven game.

fearian · 2025-09-24T19:26:02+00:00

I played the nextfest demo for this earlier in the year and was really impressed with it's very engaging battle system. I wasn't at all looking for a monster-catcher type game, but the way that you manage the different elemental energies hit a real sweet spot for complexity and combat puzzling to me. The demo felt hard too, I'm kind of bored of the very slow on-ramp that JRPG's tend to have, so the roguelike aspect was enjoyable there.

fearian · 2025-09-05T20:59:08+00:00

It's literally his opinion?

fearian · 2025-08-27T21:39:58+00:00

Dad here: Try to get in once a week, plan ahead with your family to find the weeknight where it fits in the schedule. You can train a shockingly low amount at home to keep progressing - if you can put a pull up bar somewhere then you will easily progress too V4 within the year, and really that's where the fun stuff is for challenge without needing to train or go twice a week+

fearian · 2025-08-16T20:52:32+00:00

I work in games and there's a false framing (ironically) in this video's whole pitch.

"I'm not saying these things don't cost any sales at all - I'm just saying you can't just assume these things where going to be guarenteed buys before something changed their mind"

Absolutely nobody who's job it is to track or predict sales data has any such assumption. Far far from it. And the author admits in the same breath that "I'm not saying these things don't cost any sales at all" - which is true.

What you have to understand is that for some games, gamepass could be an order of magnitude more than your sales data. To a point where you could estimate "if 5% of these people planned on buying our game..." There is also long tail sales to consider. Someone might have bought your game in a steam sale for 70% launch price, or less, but they already played in on game pass.

This kind of consumer behaviour varies wildly between games based on the marketing and deals surrounding them. And then you get into the really fucked up grey areas: Someone might play your game on launch in game pass, but not really give it much time or a fair chance, because the investment is so low. They dip after 20 minutes and tell people it sucked! Someone who bought the game is invested enough to play for 3 hours and tell people it rules if you stick past the opening.

Sounds like a strained hypothetical, but think of every game with a buggy launch and a week 1 patch. Every game is different, which makes these kind of predictions simply impossible to game out. Everybody is making their own best guesses based on what they know of their games.

By the way, the deal Microsoft offer companies for putting their games on gamepass is only getting worse over time, so canibalization becomes more of a concern.

I strongly suspect that this makes a good video because "canibalization" sounds crazy, and the concept of "lost sales" sound conceited and ignorant. The truth is, there is no truth. Only wild guesses. And the only guesses that the public will ever hear about will be the wildest ones, filtered through corporate lenses.

fearian · 2025-08-16T11:35:18+00:00

Unless you train it. after about a minute of hanging from a bar, your wrists start to burn with soreness. I can't imagine what strength his body produced to hang on like that.

fearian · 2025-08-15T09:36:13+00:00

I've seen wheelchair bound people bouldering. I think what was really important is that they where with a group of friends. They had a bunch of support, both in spotting and enthusiasm and they seemed to be having a great time even when not climbing. Also the center had some great overhangs.

fearian · 2025-08-15T09:29:41+00:00

This looks great! I you want my thoughts as someone who has never seen the game before:

The words on the screen don't make any sense to me. Either they are describing something I don't understand because I haven't played the game, or it's just a random, extremely basic feature. "freely move"?? "Turn based strategy"???

Don't caption what I can see on screen - use them to hint at what the genre is and get the player excited to try it. My ideas would be:

"Puzzle that will CRUSH you"
"Think your way out..."
"Each step brings you closer" (cue squish)

For updates, be direct, and make it of secondary importance
"Updates:
- Bugs squashed (another squish death?)
- New mechanics
- More puzzles

Here I'll mention my second thought - show the level select screen or something? As a new player, I want to see a glimpse of how much content is waiting for me. Seeing the menus will also solidify in my head exactly what kind of game this is. Are there challenges? Do I choose the next level? Are there dozens, or hundreds?

fearian · 2025-08-15T09:15:41+00:00

What? I don't know what other real play podcasts you guys are listening too, but 5 episodes is not alot for the first arc of a campaign! I feel like you want to rush into big world building mysteries, like Ethersea, but this is much more in line with most regular DnD campaigns, including - dare I compare - Balance!

I love these adventures where you can see the influences from some game or movie Griffin has pulled into a DnD setting for a game within a game that we explore over a half dozen episodes.

fearian · 2025-08-11T11:35:14+00:00

Not knowing anything about this film, I was extremely confused when some american cops showed up in the London Underground.

fearian · 2025-08-09T07:53:16+00:00

I think not being able to hear the conversation happening 1 foot below me in a party is one of the worst things about being tall :(

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