The Shrine at 27: as old as Cobain, Hendrix, Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Winehouse ever got

[Julius Seeker]

That’s a dark topic for our birthday.

Just think of that. The age we were when we joined (most of us) and then a whole 27 year old on top of that.

25 years ago we were all playing StarCraft. Or at least, getting our asses kicked by Don at StarCraft.

[Eric]

CLockwork's brother was a bigger terror to me personally, but I understand. :^)

[Don]

I'm pretty sure he played more than any of us. I didn't actually play Starcraft that much and in retrospect playing the game more is a lot more important assuming you eventually pick up some tricks. Of course that was still back in the dark ages where most people thought strategy games actually has something to do with strategy as opposed to clicking very fast and researching build orders.

By that way that's Chockboard if I recall and his brother was Kaiserblades at least on Starcraft.

[Julius Seeker]

I also learned that economy was more important than tactics when it came to strategy.

I played a game Utopia, which you guys might remember, across a decade. My Kingdom played with a heavy tactical focus and had a bit of a Spartan-type society - if you were weak in my Kingdom, you were dead. We eventually became very successful playing in a way that many described as dishonourable (ironic, since we typically scored highly in the "Honor" charts), because we relied heavily on "black ops" and had alliances backing us. We had a strict policy of "if you attack into our wars, our alliance will mess your Kingdom up". I believe our policy was something like "Hit into our war, our alliance will attack your province until we take 5 times the amount of land" - which got people really anxious. One age, we got "gang banged" as they called it, we recorded all the names who attacked us, and we spent weeks retaliating on every single province we recorded to the list. While we didn't see incredible success in the charts, we occasionally hit the top 50, and were happy with that because even the top 5 Kingdoms in the game feared us (and for good reason, we took the #1 Kingdom down to about #30 one age, killing their Monarch in the process). We embraced the "violent alcoholic warrior" roleplaying, until one of our members, who was an accountant in her thirties, taught us about Excel...

...and we became civilized.

She taught us about spreadsheeting, and those who didn't have Excel used alternate spreadsheet freeware programs. All of the Kingdom leadership got onboard, and we shifted focus to economy. We had spreadsheets which had many pages of calculations. I think the first age we rolled this out we'd already rebranded, and were hitting top 5, I think maybe #2 in land and Networth. Then the cell phones kicked in, and we'd be talking/texting, and all in all we ended up ranking #1 in land and Networth across a few years. People assumed we scripted, traded, and multi-accounted, but we did none of those things - it was all Excel spreadsheeting and figuring out the optimal moves in any given situation.

Funny enough, all that time I wasted in Utopia had a more profoundly positive impact on my professional life than University in the early 2000s did. And the benefits last to this day, and probably for the next couple of decades at least.

[Eric]

Bro, that fucking game(Utopia) was wild. My career ended with my Kingdom leader literally hacking my e-mail account and stealing my fief or whatever the hell they were called. I got it back and deleted it out of spite, but like holy shit, it was kinda crazy how serious people took that game. If you weren't on at the exact minute for an attack or weren't feeding someone or whatever, shit was crazy.

[Julius Seeker]

Yeah, that game did get extreme. Glad you were able to get vengeance. Did the Monarch get deleted? Or did people smash him up? I do know a number of players who would randomly take out cheaters and “Net worth whores” (as we called them) unprovoked, because no one would dispute it - unless they were in a top tier alliance or had a reputation. It’s a little bit funny the players were that extreme though

But yeah, I ended up getting online at 4am for attacks and such. The only barriers I refused to break were school, work, and dating.

Speaking of dating and how crazy Utopia people were. I met a girl in the University residence back in the day. Slender red head, she played the game “Not Saturday, I’m out of town, maybe Wednesday or next weekend.” And then I bumped into her at the gym on Thursday. Anyway, the two of us got together, and one night I get the whole “I play this stupid online game and I have to be online for a bit.” Sure enough, Utopia… never took her as that kind of person. But also, she happened to be in a top Kingdom who was a rival of mine and hated my alliance (Absalom). Anyway, to make the long story short: she started accusing me of being “arrogant like Absalom” out of nowhere! And somehow we managed to stay together most of the semester, but in the end that was probably the reason we broke up… because I was in an alliance she didn’t like. Our two Kingdoms went to war sometime in the week after, you can guess how that went =D

Actually, now on reflection, I think I was the crazier Utopia person in that story. I mean, when she tells it, I can see myself coming off a lot worse than she does in my version… I feel like an arrogant prick just telling this story. well, shit.

[Eric]

That's wild. Yeah I remember those alliances, they should have been banned from the game! They were so incredibly toxic lmao.

[Julius Seeker]

I want to argue against you on that, because I loved the alliance culture, but I have no good arguments... and like six or seven reasons why they should have been banned (both for game reasons and reasons of social decency). So, you’re absolutely right!

[Don]

I'm still waiting for some kind of alliance based game that isn't toxic. To be fair I think Three Kingdoms: Tactical Version came pretty close to doing that. They had a season where you only play against the computer that has like infinite army and everything so there's no one to backstab and the computer totally doesn't care whatever you do to them anyway. Too bad nothing else really followed that line of thought.

[Julius Seeker]

I can’t think of any myself… Last game I played was Avatar mobile, and my alliance boss was insane - I mean, he was literally insane, would constantly talk to imaginary friends and get angry when anyone told him they weren’t real.

I also played this online grand strategy game taking place in world war 1 with “pay to win” mechanics that no one used - or so I thought. It required a lot of activity. Although… in one match, my alliance was up against this Kuwaiti guy who was conquering large portions of the world. We spied out his economy, plugged it into a spreadsheet, and deduced that he was spending 10s of thousands of dollars on the game to basically beat back our alliance and others when we took territory from him. The major battle I remember was the fight for Egypt (we were mostly located in Africa, and he was in the Middle East). I believe in the end we teamed up with him to take down the Europeans and North Americans. The Europeans were spending as well, but not nearly as much as the Kuwaiti guy.

I forget how we figured out he was Kuwaiti, but I think it had something to do with him having a gaming social media presence.

…and that was the least toxic alliance game I ever played.

[Replay]

The traditional birthday gift for 27 is a massive drug overdose. Think Kali's got us covered on that?

[Eric]

Still think we need to make our own game and lead the next generation into a future with toxic alliances and betrayal.

[Replay]

Still think we need to make our own game and lead the next generation into a future with toxic alliances and betrayal.

Eric, when have you ever loved that level of hard work?

[Julius Seeker]

In all seriousness, we can do this!

I actually have loads of experience and connections in the video game industry. Last year was also a bloodbath all the way into early this year, there is a lot of available talent, and the tools have never been better. I’ve worked for multiple major companies and indie studios, have done marketing, QA, and about a decade of game design and live ops which is great experience for running the toxic and exploitative game environment we need.

Our game should cater toward the most toxic alliances since 2006. It must be disgusting! We could probably gain a lot of notoriety if people develop strong feelings against the game - the louder the negative hatred voiced on social media the greater the contrarian support. We were really evil people at one point, Sineswiper - who was a free speech absolutist - looked at us and said “OK, you fuckers have gone too far!” and has banned each all at one time or another. Let’s do this: piss off the world, rake in the cash!

(Evil business mogul laughter)

[Eric]

In all seriousness, we can do this!

I actually have loads of experience and connections in the video game industry. Last year was also a bloodbath all the way into early this year, there is a lot of available talent, and the tools have never been better. I’ve worked for multiple major companies and indie studios, have done marketing, QA, and about a decade of game design and live ops which is great experience for running the toxic and exploitative game environment we need.

Our game should cater toward the most toxic alliances since 2006. It must be disgusting! We could probably gain a lot of notoriety if people develop strong feelings against the game - the louder the negative hatred voiced on social media the greater the contrarian support. We were really evil people at one point, Sineswiper - who was a free speech absolutist - looked at us and said “OK, you fuckers have gone too far!” and has banned each all at one time or another. Let’s do this: piss off the world, rake in the cash!

(Evil business mogul laughter)

[Replay]

I actually have loads of experience and connections in the video game industry.

(Evil business mogul laughter)

Do tell.

[Julius Seeker]

I actually have loads of experience and connections in the video game industry.

(Evil business mogul laughter)

Do tell.

I worked on contract with THQ (multiple games mainly pro-wrestling ), Ubisoft, Namco, and Electronic Arts - and then worked directly for Electronic Arts for nearly 10 years.

Interesting enough, I’ve worked on projects for both World Wrestling Entertainment and the company that famously sued them for Trademark infringement, the World Wildlife Fund… both of the WWFs.

I was also a pioneer in mobile development and spent a lot of time in that field, BREW, Java Micro Edition, Facebook (remember when they had games? Not mobile, but same tier), RIM, XCode (for iOS), Android, and some other products and platforms including NGage. I’ve owned (probably) over 200 mobile devices which I used for porting to the top 40 Java and top 20 BREW, and all sorts of iOS and Android devices.

I worked with A TON of licenses and writers, I even worked on licensing for the likeness and headed up the design for Elon Musk (including determining assets, mechanics, animations, writing the text, and doing up the XML script), this was before he went crazy.

I also got enough into the industry gossip to know that the father of Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi, was in fact a massive asshole and glory hog. Also, the beloved studio head of Silicon Knights (Denis Dyack) is/was probably the most hated video game development boss in all of Canada. It makes me wonder about other people in the industry who have achieved celebrity status.

[Replay]

I worked with A TON of licenses and writers, I even worked on licensing for the likeness and headed up the design for Elon Musk (including determining assets, mechanics, animations, writing the text, and doing up the XML script), this was before he went crazy.

He was always crazy. I take it you don't know much about his family?

I also got enough into the industry gossip to know that the father of Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi, was in fact a massive asshole and glory hog. Also, the beloved studio head of Silicon Knights (Denis Dyack) is/was probably the most hated video game development boss in all of Canada. It makes me wonder about other people in the industry who have achieved celebrity status.

Considering the way most people here feel about me, I'd feel I'd need a little bit more proof on that.

If you want to make a game, Seek - start one! Unlike even as recently as a decade ago, there's a wealth of free and low-cost templates and easy ways to start a project. I'd be happy to help you out, but seeing as how this community laughed at me while Kal was making threats at me the last two times I was here, you all would have to decide whether or not you're actually down to accept the help.

[Julius Seeker]

The video game career stuff is true - and I mostly tell it more openly now because I’m done with the industry (the corporate side at least) and anything negative I post about it won’t impact my livelihood. But actually doing game whose marketability is based on toxicity and controversy… that’s a pipe dream (that I thought was a funny idea).

But I think it’s an interesting idea to ponder, because it could work. It’s exactly why Raunchy comedies became huge in the 1980s and late 90s. It’s what drove music acts like Too Short, Eazy E, and Eminem become massive stars. Game franchises like Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto. Not to mention books like American Psycho, Internet communities like 4Chan, and the entire shock-era media of the late 1990s and early 2000s. It’s the contrarian counter-reaction and curiosity.

[Replay]

The video game career stuff is true - and I mostly tell it more openly now because I’m done with the industry (the corporate side at least) and anything negative I post about it won’t impact my livelihood. But actually doing game whose marketability is based on toxicity and controversy… that’s a pipe dream (that I thought was a funny idea).

I believe you. In fact, I was a porting engineer in BREW - apparently at the same time you were. I'm surprised we never discussed it when I was here before. From there, I actually took the plunge to become a full developer.

But I think it’s an interesting idea to ponder, because it could work. It’s exactly why Raunchy comedies became huge in the 1980s and late 90s. It’s what drove music acts like Too Short, Eazy E, and Eminem become massive stars. Game franchises like Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto. Not to mention books like American Psycho, Internet communities like 4Chan, and the entire shock-era media of the late 1990s and early 2000s. It’s the contrarian counter-reaction and curiosity.

It's a great idea. Like all ideas, it is however only an idea until you make it happen. Actually making a videogame is an unbelievable amount of work, and QA/marketing isn't actually production. I'd be surprised if this community has the dedication and discipline required to actually create a videogame. But I've been surprised before.

[Don]

So I actually tried making a mobile game in the past which is like all the problems with a PC/console game but amplified. In particular unlike getting a game on Steam where you can be sure people at least will sort of know it exists, in mobile gaming you got to spend a lot of money on advertising or people won't even know it exists. Another problem I encountered is that just because mobile games don't seem very hard and there are approximately 1000 clones of a typical archetype doesn't mean the guy you hire to do the programming can actually do it. In hindsight it should be obvious that there are teams that can't even do a carbon copy of some generic simple game since I've played plenty of games that can't even do that, but of course when you're starting out you don't have much to base on other than hoping the guy saying he can do a match 3 game can do it, and then it turns out he can't even do that and it was just a total waste of money. Sure we lacked experience in basically everything else so it probably wasn't ever going to work but we can't even get a functional game up.

Also I think our problem is that we hired guys we know and every one of them wants like a gazillion dollars for showing up, so it's like having some nepotism thing when the game doesn't even work. I think some random dude wanted like $5k for writing the story which is like 5 pages of text.

I'm still of the opinion that it can't be that hard to make a game, at least in terms of getting a generic archetype out in the game but there's really no way to know if the guy you have working can actually do it, which is why even very bad looking mobile games could cost millions to develop. Of course that just means you have a game that actually plays with some features. Whether it'd be any good is another question altogether. For mobile I think the genre in general has been stifled for a long time and is very difficult to get anywhere. For example Summoner's War + RAID shadow legends pretty much has a chokehold on the SW style quasi-turn based RPG, and both are pretty bad games but you can't overcome the inertia such that not even those two games dare making a sequel. Wargames out there are literally garbage and yet the three or four that makes $20M a month pretty much means nobody else has a chance of getting anywhere unless you've a big company backing you up. FGO has a chokehold on the bad RPG market too so you can't even make a bad RPG if you wanted to.

Genshin Impact I think is the only thing that was like big and remotely new and remotely decent and that's really just because the Chinese got billions of dollars to waste on pointless stuff and they eventually got a game that was actually respectable. It's kind of sad I'm mostly looking only at Chinese mobile games in terms of innovation because they're the only ones that got enough money to throw at new games to even worth trying. Everyone else is pretty much stuck making inferior versions of plays identically same of games that already exist.

[Replay]

I'm still of the opinion that it can't be that hard to make a game

Bet. We'll be waiting for your prototype, Don.

[Replay]

... doesn't mean the guy you hire to do the programming can actually do it.

Or...you could learn to code?

[Don]

... doesn't mean the guy you hire to do the programming can actually do it.

Or...you could learn to code?

Everything's too specialized these days just because I know programming doesn't mean I know how to do that in Unity. Heck just because a guy did a match 3 mobile game doesn't mean he knows how to do an idle game. I think if you got some ninjas that stole a copy of Summoner's War code it's very easy to make a SW clone (ignoring copyright issues) because replacing assets is easy even if your guys have no idea how the programming part of SW worked. But if you turn around and say 'how hard can it be to make Summoner's War basic mechanics', well, that turns out to be really hard if you haven't done anything similar before even if it looks easy.

I think that's also why idle games are a relatively big thing now because they're definitely the lowest in complexity, even less than match 3s. For example I think it is entirely possible we can put together a team that can do MementoMori, aka 'PowerPoint Slides The Game', since the game literally just shows you like 5 PowerPoint slides of various girls doing special moves and that's it. Now of course I have no idea how anyone thought a concept like this was going to work, and then even more amazingly enough it actually worked and raked in a lot of money. I guess they had really good PowerPoint Slides.

[Replay]

Everything's too specialized these days just because I know programming doesn't mean I know how to do that in Unity.

I heard "It's hard, so I'm not going to do it". I literally have to study new things every time I take on a new project in Unreal Engine. That's how game development works.

Again, I am a full-stack game developer these days - or reasonably close, the game industry doesn't really do "full stack", but I have been a generalist at my own li'l business so long that I know how to do most of the things that actually make up a modern videogame - and I'm happy to help you guys start something in UE if you really want to. But you have to want to. Game development is extremely difficult, requires serious commitment and usually months of effort at minimum to release even an initial demo, and not for the dilettante as a general rule.

[Don]

Of course it's hard, and it doesn't even pay well which is why it's just things people talk about but don't actually do. You got to be like Blizzard where you got talented guys working for way less money than they'd get elsewhere or you'd never have the capital to get even a small game developed in today's market, and even if you do you can't compete with the guys who already have/stole a copy of a successful base game where they just have to replace assets to come up with a new game compared to you. I feel the best way to actually develop a game is find some game that's dead and see if the owners will part with their game for a relatively cheap amount of money, so if you want to make a toxic wargame you can just find any random dead wargame and see if the bankrupt guys will sell you for cheap. That way you know you at least started with something with a functional game and don't have to reinvent the wheel.

I played this game called Pocket Three Kingdoms where it's clearly some Chinese guys stole a copy of an earlier build of Summoner's War and reskinned everything with Three Kingdom characters and the complexity of the game is absolutely something five guys on the Internet could've pulled off. They initially didn't add anything since it's clear they don't know how to, but obviously it's not hard for a programmer to say 'okay this block of code opens dungeon X so we can add a new dungeon Z if we just copy this but rename it', and the game is actually pretty innovative and addresses a lot of the original problems in Summoner's War. I don't know if it died because it was a cheap knockoff or Summoner's War actually sued them, but it lasted a few years so you obviously have some time to work with. Even clearly copyright ripoff stuff like 'Saiyan Warriors' shows up on my Apple Store recommendations so you definitely have enough time to make something before the copyright police gets you, and I'm not suggesting we're going for outright fraud anyway.

Here's a link to the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwoM5i7o9XA. There's basically a 1 to 1 copy and replace relationship between this and Summoner's War and obviously no need to be this shameless, but if say you can get a general shell for a game that has like 10 big stages with 5 small stages each with 2 dungeons where you just need to plug in your graphic assets and maybe a new set of game mechanics that you can plug in your encounters that eliminates a lot of the cost associated with reinventing the wheel.

[Replay]

you'd never have the capital to get even a small game developed in today's market

Counterargument: Three dudes did a demo back in 2020 in a weekend for a game jam that unexpectedly raised several thousand dollars and earned them thousands of fans. They proceeded to develop the demo into a Kickstarter for the full game, which then raised over $2,200,000. I know all this because I was one of those fans, early on, making fan videos and helping their first Twitch stream hit its fundraising goal almost instantly...though sadly, as soon as they made a fat pile of money, they literally stopped working on the game for several years...but they're working back on it now, and while I highly doubt they'll reach their ambitious stretch promises and goals, they are (at least if they've been reasonably responsible) sitting on fat piles of money, got themselves out of poverty, and have all the money they need to develop their dreams.

[Don]

Sure, some people do succeed but the vast majority fail and it can be a pretty big risk. Here is gameplay from Memento Mori: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2heqj1liPOY. This is the actual gameplay, not like fast combat mode or anything. If our future selves come and tell us making a game where this is the main gameplay is going to make $3M a month or more and all we have to do is beat the Memento Mori to launch I'm sure we can do it. Yes the game is more than just that but if you have a trivial amount of work for the combat engine that clearly lowers the bar by a lot to a point where it is indeed tractable for guys with less experience. Yes the graphics of Memento Mori is top notch but that's obviously an issue with paying off the right guys to get good graphical assets.

Of course there's also only one Memento Mori, and when this game I came out I thought the developers were out of their minds but apparently they're right in that people don't even care what your combat engine looks like in a RPG. Though I think this game does provide a good example of how people with less/no experience should approach. There's clearly no way we'd be able to make even a low fidelity version of any popular game so we really do need to gut certain parts of the game so that it is simple enough that we can actually finish it. If our ideas turn out to be actually good and the money comes in then we can actually try to improve it.

[Replay]

There are a million reasons not to do something, particularly when it's hard - and this community has not always been overly thrilled by doing things that are a lot of hard work, or get in the way of one's pursuit of pleasure.

As I said, I'd be thrilled to help develop a UE framework for a game - once time permits, anyway, I'm at the end of a big contract right now - if you all actually have a plan, a design doc, a pitch, literally anything to go on. If not - if all you want to do is dream about making a game - the revenues for that are well established, and are a nice round number to boot - indeed, the roundest number.

[Oracle]

Wouldn't mind trying out a game Replay had a hand in.

Suggestions?

[Julius Seeker]

Oh shit.
What about using gamer terminology from the 1990s that is considered cruel and uncool by today’s standards. Just for the dark comedy giggles because we know it will upset people.

Some of that language would get national news headlines if used casually today. And context is king. You can still say gay to mean homosexual, but to mean “lame” would summon the wrath of 90,000 Twitter followers… but also the defense of over 9000 Twitter contrarians who only defend the usage because others oppose it. And then there will be those who get it, “Ohhhh! These guys are being assholes on purpose!” 95% of people will say “That’s fucking cringe!” And the others will say you just don’t get the humour, and those numbers may change in our favour if we do well and write great comedy, like The Whitest Kids You know.

[Replay]

Oh shit.
What about using gamer terminology from the 1990s that is considered cruel and uncool by today’s standards. Just for the dark comedy giggles because we know it will upset people.

What in the big bag of crabs are you talking about? I mostly talk the same way I did back in the 90's, Seek. That never bothered you before. What is considered "cruel and uncool" here? I'm genuinely making a positive effort to be - if not nice, then at least honest and upfront.

Wouldn't mind trying out a game Replay had a hand in.

Suggestions?

If you played just about anything popular during the BREW era on a phone - Bejeweled, Neopets, the little 8-bit phone versions of Tony Hawk or Neverwinter Nights - there's a chance I (or Seek, for that matter) had a hand in it. The porting era was a Hellish goldmine for engineers - every title had to be hand-tested and sometimes re-engineered for every phone model back in the BREW/J2ME days - though it dried up after the iPhone/Android paradigm came to the fore.

AAA titles - sadly, query not yet found. I kind of wince at the way the top end of the industry is operating right now. You can put years and thousands into relocating for a studio and they'll slash you the second something major fails - the recent implosion of Concord comes to mind. I continue to develop my own tech; I have a lot of really good Unreal Engine tech at present - certainly enough to underpin an indie project. I noticed you all had fun with Crusader Kings, for instance - that kind of thing is well within the reach of indie teams, and very doable relative to projects heavier on AAA character modelling and animation and mechanics.