Josh Sawyer Q&A Thread

[KVVRR]

Yeah just sweating it up a bit and a good workout rutine can genuinely do wonders for your skin. Josh is a degenerate cyclist and he lives on california to boot so i'd reckon he's sweating 24/7

 

[HoboForEternity]

Also drink water and sunscreen. Proper hydration is the best thing you can do to your skin

 

[rusty_shackleford]

it's genetics, you're fucked.
people refuse to accept this so when anyone asks about skincare 100 people will pop out of the woodwork all offering their own solution

 

[Fredward]

Hey could someone with a tumblr please ask Josh about his skincare routine? He looks really good for 54.

Okay but Josh is actually 46 and this was mostly a joke. He does have good skin though. Good to know the Codex is open to discussing skin care, I can now make a thread in GD. "The struggle against inevitable entropy: Rage, rage against the dying of the light [and wrinkles]".

For example, I'm almost 30 and seemingly overnight the skin under my right eye is textured like crepe paper or a misplaced ballsac. What's up with that?

 

[Humbaba]

it's genetics, you're fucked.
people refuse to accept this so when anyone asks about skincare 100 people will pop out of the woodwork all offering their own solution

That's like saying people with fat parents cannot possibly become skinny.

 

[copebot]

Josh is really delimiting himself in his discussion of medieval citizenship. There's really no need to make it out to be an HRE-only phenomenon, because in the same time period, there were similar types of legal identity in France, England, Italy, and elsewhere. The real breakdown is between urban legal identities and agrarian legal identities. Urban polities tended to be owned by the rich people who lived there, and your legal identity was related to what you actually did for work in the city. These identities were not really analogous to either classical conceptions of republican citizenship as in Athens or Rome and they were not really analogous to contemporary post-French/American revolution conceptions of republican citizenship.

Overall he isn't wrong; he's just wrong in making it seem like an HRE thing. What I think gets garbled is that the role of royals and what it meant to be a vassal of a king really tends to be garbled in contemporary fiction about the medieval period. It was not fully analogous to contemporary multiple citizenships, such as me being a citizen of my state and a citizen of the federal United States. For all practical purposes your relationship with the king was not relevant in most circumstances for most individuals unless they were involved in a capital criminal issue, something relating to poaching the king's wild animals (yes really), or something relating to politics. Your relationship to your manor lord was more like a contemporary person's relationship with their boss or manager, because the relationship was overwhelmingly related to work.

I think the person raising the question was aiming for the right target -- the POE world does feel very anachronistic in many respects, partly because it tries to be so detailed in things that happen off-camera, while the things that happen on-camera often do not make much sense. The urban environments do not make much sense in particular, which is kind of a pity, because how urban environments were laid out and how they worked economically is probably the best documented aspect of the time periods that POE tries to represent. It is also probably one of the most popular micro-aspects of the contemporary study of medieval history. In the games, none of the cities make any sense at all and are not laid out like historical cities were even in broad strokes. I understand gameplay issues, but if the pitch for the worldbuilding was a whiff of historical accuracy, all it did was spam out a lot of irrelevant worldbuilding (that also didn't make sense because most of the species mix together somehow) while whiffing the details.

 

[Lim-Dûl]

it's genetics, you're fucked.
people refuse to accept this so when anyone asks about skincare 100 people will pop out of the woodwork all offering their own solution

That's bullshit... but I believe it.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Tihskael]

The Todd on the other hand just bugged Bethesda to give him a job until they did. End of story.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

sawyer feels personally called out after someone points out that TV shows(and essentially every other medium) aren't afforded the luxury of being allowed to fix their product after release


almost like video games have the most forgiving audience they could ask for and yet gamedevs still shit all over them

 

[Roguey]

I think he's seething over the idea that they're called "lazy."

There was a time when he was against changing content post-release (citing reactions to Lucas's Star Wars and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner as examples), but he slid into decline with Deadfire.

 

[Butter]

Man who is addicted to Twitter: "How dare you imply that I don't work hard enough!"

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I think he's seething over the idea that they're called "lazy."

The data backs it up, video games are taking longer and longer to release. You can't attribute this to increased complexity because many of them aren't more complex than their predecessors. Nor can you point towards increased graphical fidelity, as the issue has never been making the content but getting the content within budget constraints-- something easier than ever.

 

[Roguey]

The data backs it up, video games are taking longer and longer to release. You can't attribute this to increased complexity because many of them aren't more complex than their predecessors. Nor can you point towards increased graphical fidelity, as the issue has never been making the content but getting the content within budget constraints-- something easier than ever.

Could be an issue of both bad management (running in circles, never getting anywhere) and good management (no crunch and no one allowed to be a hero or martyr as Patel put it ).

 

[Humbaba]

Do we have some sort of metric on whether or not games back then had fewer bugs than they do today (indicating laziness)? Because I have the feeling that games on average have remained the buggy pieces of shit that they are throughout time, only these days patches are a regular and easy thing.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Do we have some sort of metric on whether or not games back then had fewer bugs than they do today (indicating laziness)? Because I have the feeling that games on average have remained the buggy pieces of shit that they are throughout time, only these days patches are a regular and easy thing.

Ease of patching games has definitely led to an increase in buggy releases. It's not uncommon to see people express opinions of waiting for the "director's cut" or what have you release to play games because they release unfinished. When you either had no way to patch the game or distributing patches was a nightmare, "ship it and patch it later" isn't a strategy you can use.

 

[Humbaba]

Do we have some sort of metric on whether or not games back then had fewer bugs than they do today (indicating laziness)? Because I have the feeling that games on average have remained the buggy pieces of shit that they are throughout time, only these days patches are a regular and easy thing.

Ease of patching games has definitely led to an increase in buggy releases. It's not uncommon to see people express opinions of waiting for the "director's cut" or what have you release to play games because they release unfinished. When you either had no way to patch the game or distributing patches was a nightmare, "ship it and patch it later" isn't a strategy you can use.

Idk, there's lots of older games with fan patches because loads of bugs were never fixed in the first place. One could also make the point of increased complexity in coding being the cause for more bugs instead of outright laziness but I know nothing about programming. Then again, things like Early Access may encourage sloppy development.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Do we have some sort of metric on whether or not games back then had fewer bugs than they do today (indicating laziness)? Because I have the feeling that games on average have remained the buggy pieces of shit that they are throughout time, only these days patches are a regular and easy thing.

Ease of patching games has definitely led to an increase in buggy releases. It's not uncommon to see people express opinions of waiting for the "director's cut" or what have you release to play games because they release unfinished. When you either had no way to patch the game or distributing patches was a nightmare, "ship it and patch it later" isn't a strategy you can use.

Idk, there's lots of older games with fan patches because loads of bugs were never fixed in the first place. One could also make the point of increased complexity in coding being the cause for more bugs instead of outright laziness but I know nothing about programming. Then again, things like Early Access may encourage sloppy development.

I'm not going to pretend there weren't buggy releases, but they were definitely less tolerated. It's pretty much why Troika sank if you look at the contemporary reviews for their games. Now reviewers gloss over bugs, and if a reviewer dares to mention bugs that prevent them from completing the game even with the dev's help they get attacked for it.

 

[Roguey]

I'm not going to pretend there weren't buggy releases, but they were definitely less tolerated. It's pretty much why Troika sank if you look at the contemporary reviews for their games.

Troika was never popular because they didn't make games that could become popular (not fun enough, not appealing enough), not because they had bugs. Bethesda and Bioware games had a ton of bugs, no one cared. Bloodlines was the only game of theirs that had a gamestopper (and this was fixed in their one and only patch).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm not going to pretend there weren't buggy releases, but they were definitely less tolerated. It's pretty much why Troika sank if you look at the contemporary reviews for their games.

Troika was never popular because they didn't make games that could become popular (not fun enough, not appealing enough), not because they had bugs. Bethesda and Bioware games had a ton of bugs, no one cared. Bloodlines was the only game of theirs that had a gamestopper (and this was fixed in their one and only patch).

https://co8.org/community/threads/the-atari-buglist.4051/
you can argue whether co8 addressed those bugs, but the game was unbelievably buggy not only at launch, but at the final patch.

And the argument it didn't affect their sales is flat out false.

This is what Jason Anderson said about Troika in a retrospective:

Publishers aren’t interested in games from developers that consistently turn out B titles. Unfortunately, although our games had depth and vision, we were never able to release a game that had been thoroughly tested and rid of bugs. The large quantity of errors in our product automatically rendered them B titles.

 

[Roguey]

https://co8.org/community/threads/the-atari-buglist.4051/
you can argue whether co8 addressed those bugs, but the game was unbelievably buggy not only at launch, but at the final patch.

It can be completed without any unofficial patches according to Lilura, the authoritative source.

And the argument it didn't affect their sales is flat out false.

This is what Jason Anderson said about Troika in a retrospective:

Eh, he made the games, but I wouldn't necessarily say that gives him additional insight on why they weren't mega-sellers. They simply didn't have mega-seller potential. ToEE, their fastest-selling, was an Icewind Dale at best.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Eh, he made the games, but I wouldn't necessarily say that gives him additional insight on why they weren't mega-sellers.

I'm sure as co-founder it gave him insight as to why no publishers thought they were worth the risk which is why they ended up closing shop.

 

[Roguey]

I'm sure as co-founder it gave him insight as to why no publishers thought they were worth the risk which is why they ended up closing shop.

Publishers noticed that there was no big money to be made in funding a "Troika RPG" so the only offers they got were crap they had no interest in playing.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm sure as co-founder it gave him insight as to why no publishers thought they were worth the risk which is why they ended up closing shop.

Publishers noticed that there was no big money to be made in funding a "Troika RPG" so the only offers they got were crap they had no interest in playing.

Could you perhaps give a reason why games that were warmly received except for bugs might not have had large a large potential for sales? Was there perhaps a flaw in them that caused people to reconsider buying them? Maybe perhaps after 3 products the developers might have earned them a reputation for something off putting to potential customers?

 

[Roguey]

Could you perhaps give a reason why games that were warmly received except for bugs might not have had large a large potential for sales? Was there perhaps a flaw in them that caused people to reconsider buying them? Maybe perhaps after 3 products the developers might have earned them a reputation for something off putting to potential customers?

Sure.

a) they weren't that fun to play
b) they had premises that weren't really all that appealing, especially compared to a Bioware or Bethesda premise.

Kingmaker shipped utterly broken; more broken than a Troika game by far. It had a long tail success because it had an appealing premise and it was fun to play. Bethesda games ship broken and their bugs become memes because they have appealing premises and a lot of people find them enjoyable enough to play.