The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition - Obsidian's first-person sci-fi RPG set in a corporate space colony

[IHaveHugeNick]

This. You become a writer by living, not by reading. You live a lot, and then, if you had it in you, you will be a writer. But the problem of graphomania has been around forever.

By his own admission, Chris Avellone was a fat meganerd when he wrote Torment.

And he's just a part of tradition that goes back to the antiquity, because throughout history most writers were independently wealthy sheltered aristocrats, or at the very least, middle-class well educated upstarts. People with " rough life experience" didn't write fancy novels because they had fields to plow.

But anyway, let's go back to discussing how real writer needs to fight in a war and wrestle bears.

 

[Daidre]

Developers are under pressure to hire more women and since finding a quality female coder is on par with finding a Big Foot all those new female hires pile up in their art or writing departments. So while in the golden days games were written by neckbeard engineers today they're written by college age dangerhairs. I.e still trash but a different kind.

I kinda think that game with a team of female coders will end up in a much better place than a game with a female writing team.

Code just works. You can't force your opinion or personality in it. And ladies, as my experience shows, less creative but much more throughout about it. So end result is always less buggy, if delivered a bit slower. Not mentioning that 80% of QA in Russia is girls.

 

[Theldaran]

Looks legit to me. In the past, the games were by nerds for nerds. Now, the games are by hipsters for hipsters. That's what causes the repulsion for most of us.

"The future is our world, Morpheus. The future is our time."

The exception to females being shit at game design is Rieko Kodama, of Phantasy Star fame. Though she's from a conservative society like Japan, with a pretty different approach. I have no doubt than in the eyes of Californian hipsters, the Japanese are a bunch of sexist scum and enslaved women. I don't mean to say that Japan is free of problems, far from it, but they are different problems. Though they also have their cuckold games, that doesn't bode well for them :D

 

[Van-d-all]

Code just works. You can't force your opinion or personality in it. And ladies, as my experience shows, less creative but much more throughout about it. So end result is always less buggy, if delivered a bit slower. Not mentioning that 80% of QA in Russia is girls.

Just no. Time-effectivenes might be a common factor in modern corporate development thus resulting in severe decline in coding standards, but there are dozens of ways to implement the same functionalities. Things like readability, maintainability or adherence to design patterns or coding standards are a thing. I've only worked in my life with two female coders, both presented rather bad approach. First was a typical mess of pasta code, fixed ad hoc and lacking overall planning. The other was just minimalist, case specific code without a speck of flexibility. Spend enough time with programmers and you'll be able to tell the author by their code.

 

[Theldaran]

But why do we need mandatory women making the games. Is there any quota by law in Murica? Or some government financial support for integrating the poor destitute girls into society?

In my eyes the feminists just want to hold the jobs that are primarily occupied by women, while worming their way into jobs primarily occupied by men. And still many of them just choose not to work.

But in the end, these games are bad because they're made with the wrong idea or by people with next to no talent, there are also some mediocre games made by men with next to no talent.

 

[Prime Junta]

Code just works. You can't force your opinion or personality in it. And ladies, as my experience shows, less creative but much more throughout about it. So end result is always less buggy, if delivered a bit slower. Not mentioning that 80% of QA in Russia is girls.

Eh, generalisations.

Two best coders in my team are women, as is the lead QA, who is the third-best QA I've worked with (the other two were also women). So can confirm that part.

The other part not so much. Helen Hindpere wrote a lot of Disco Elysium and her work is top.

 

[Infinitron]

2. Developers are under pressure to hire more women and since finding a quality female coder is on par with finding a Big Foot all those new female hires pile up in their art or writing departments. So while in the golden days games were written by neckbeard engineers today they're written by college age dangerhairs. I.e still trash but a different kind.

No pressure is necessary. Writing in general is becoming a pink-collar profession in the West, and there are aspects of professional video game writing that probably make it particularly suitable for women (lots of "secretarial" fill-in-the-blank tasks as opposed to stream of consciousness writing, lots of collaboration and teamwork, etc).

 

[cvv]

I'm not looking for high art here, just passable writing

Gimme quality on the level of Betrayal at Krondor, Torment, Dragonfall, Witcher 3 or Kingdom Come and I'm a happy clam. I don't need Umberto Eco either, just solid, well-executed craft.

 

[Van-d-all]

Code just works. You can't force your opinion or personality in it. And ladies, as my experience shows, less creative but much more throughout about it. So end result is always less buggy, if delivered a bit slower. Not mentioning that 80% of QA in Russia is girls.

Eh, generalisations.

Two best coders in my team are women, as is the lead QA, who is the third-best QA I've worked with (the other two were also women). So can confirm that part.

The other part not so much. Helen Hindpere wrote a lot of Disco Elysium and her work is top.

Sure, female coders are a rare breed still, so it's just statistically obvious, they're likely to represent the wide average. And said average nowadays, in an over saturated market full of wannabe script kiddies, is just like that. The two examples I gave are my personal experience, but by far they're not the worst people I had to work with.

 

[Atchodas]

I don't need Umberto Eco either

Inb4 Sawyer releases Disco Elysium iike game inspired by The name of the rose and its actually good

 

[Theldaran]

By the way, you do know that there are women untainted by the SJW plague, right? The problem may lie then in recruiting questionable artists such as Amber Scott or this Megan Starks, whom haven't produced anything of worth before this job, nor will produce it later.

 

[jf8350143]

One could make an observation that vapid and uninteresting Parvati must be doing something right it she causes 50 pages of furious discussion and encourages people to emotionally debate politics of China, differences between man and woman, nuances of Californian lifestyle and meaning of life itself.

It almost seems that some of our esteemed posters have developed an obsession with a cute girl from a vidya game. And when nobody is looking, they stare dreamy-eyed at the sky, imaging a perfect TOW sequel where they get to finally play house with their asexual lesbian waifu.

Meh, if there is a sequel I would prefer Pravati to be married with Junlei and in charge of the groundbreaker together.

It would cause much more butthurt comparing to being a love interest.

 

[Daidre]

Just no. Time-effectivenes might be a common factor in modern corporate development thus resulting in severe decline in coding standards, but there are dozens of ways to implement the same functionalities. Things like readability, maintainability or adherence to design patterns or coding standards are a thing. I've only worked in my life with two female coders, both presented rather bad approach. First was a typical mess of pasta code, fixed ad hoc and lacking overall planning. The other was just minimalist exact case code without a speck of flexibility. Spend enough time with programmers and you'll be able to tell the author by their code.

I work with dozen of girls in ~50 people Dev team and main thing about them that they worry about business logic, usability and on-time delivery much more than about patterns. Or coding styles. Or new shiny technologies. It is nice in bloody enterprise but lot less attractive in start-ups.
Another strange observation - female coders tend to be more proficient with SQL, when guys are better with java and frontend.

The other part not so much. Helen Hindpere wrote a lot of Disco Elysium and her work is top.

I have meant totally female writing teams in exaggerated lesser of two evils comparison. As far as I know one of the better written companions in P:K - Jubilost was also written by girl.

 

[Van-d-all]

I work with dozen girls in ~50 people Dev team and main thing about them that they worry about business logic, usability and on-time delivery much more than about patterns. Or coding styles. Or new shiny technologies. It is nice in bloody enterprise but lot less attractive in start-ups.

Case in point. That's the exact problem. It's not about "attractiveness" it's about craftsmanship. "It just works" is a lousy standard

 

[cvv]

I don't need Umberto Eco either

Inb4 Sawyer releases Disco Elysium iike game inspired by The name of the rose and its actually good

A Name of the Rose game would be extremely cool. All 53 people who'd buy and play it would enjoy it tremendously.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

These "life experience" comments read like pseud bullshit.
The people who made your favorite games were fukken' NERDS who sat on their ass all day watching and reading TV/books, if they lived interesting lives they wouldn't have made video games.

And eating pizza, drinking cokes, spending multiples days without sleep or showering, jerking off to relax, etc. You can’t expect Tumblr women studies dykes to provide the same gameplay experiences because they are completely different creatures with different formative experiences and priorities. The nerds didn’t see themselves as artists, didn’t take themselves seriously and wanted to have fun and immerse themselves in their work. The dykes see themselves as top-notch artists, take themselves too seriously, want to express their profound feelings and will control and restrict their work according to the dictates of the latest political correct post-modern diarrhea. And yet if you point these obvious differences, some people here will say you are crazy or paranoid. Guess what. The only people who don’t care about this topic are either sympathetic towards these cultural tendencies or are too dumb to tell the difference between the genuine article and this inferior FO4 clone.

 

[cvv]

The other part not so much. Helen Hindpere wrote a lot of Disco Elysium and her work is top.

I hope no "great female writers exist too" disclaimers are necessary here. Because of course they do. We have one on one of our banknotes.

 

[Haplo]

I'm not looking for high art here, just passable writing

Gimme quality on the level of Betrayal at Krondor, Torment, Dragonfall, Witcher 3 or Kingdom Come and I'm a happy clam. I don't need Umberto Eco either, just solid, well-executed craft.

I'd argue that Planescape: Torment goes far beyond well executed craft. Unless you meant Numa-Numa.

 

[Prime Junta]

Another strange observation - female coders tend to be more proficient with SQL, when guys are better with java and frontend.

IME (and where I'm from) this is true for the older generation of women coders -- my age and above. There's not much difference between men and women among the twentysomethings. Same applies for the other other stuff (patterns, coding styles, rigorous architectural designs, etc). It used to be like that ten, fifteen years ago but it's much less so now.

Another observation: some Chinese women are really good at programming: they've got the full deck, patterns, architecture, rigorous design, attention to detail, conformance to standard. Chinese men not so much, they tend to be supremely arrogant without having the understanding to back it up.

Yet another observation: I haven't yet worked with any really top-drawer Russian woman coder, whereas I've worked with two Russian women QAs, both of whom were top. Whereas I have worked with Russian men who were cutting-edge, amazingly good programmers.

My working hypothesis is that education and engineering cultures in different countries produce these different outcomes.

 

[Atchodas]

A Name of the Rose game would be extremely cool. All 53 people who'd buy and play it would enjoy it tremendously.

INSPIRED

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

This is an issue for every single character and faction in the game and it makes the game’s narrative and writing thoroughly unenjoyable. It is required for practically any sort of writing: jokes, satire, social critique, drama etc. and it is missing.

This.

If you're writing a RPG, even if it's a comedic one, you need to make a world and then write characters that inhabit that world. You can't just drop in a bunch of vapid twentysomething middle-class Californians in brownface and expect it to work. They were so desperate to represent everyone they ended up representing no-one other than themselves.

Take the characters of FO and FO2. Are they deep? NOPE. Yet those game work. Why? Because they didn't think that motherfucking cRPGs were supposed to be novels, that's why. The moment these narrative designers or game writers became a thing, it was all over. NPCs and companions aren't supposed to sophisticated characters in order to work. If they happen to be, that's a bonus, but the idea that developers should try to achieve that is part of the problem already. It's this mentality that will attract second rate racks to fulfill their creative ambitions at the expense of their audience and the medium.

 

[Prime Junta]

A Name of the Rose game would be extremely cool. All 53 people who'd buy and play it would enjoy it tremendously.

Sign me up.

 

[Haplo]

This is an issue for every single character and faction in the game and it makes the game’s narrative and writing thoroughly unenjoyable. It is required for practically any sort of writing: jokes, satire, social critique, drama etc. and it is missing.

This.

If you're writing a RPG, even if it's a comedic one, you need to make a world and then write characters that inhabit that world. You can't just drop in a bunch of vapid twentysomething middle-class Californians in brownface and expect it to work. They were so desperate to represent everyone they ended up representing no-one other than themselves.

Take the characters of FO and FO2. Are they deep? NOPE. Yet the game works. Why? Because they didn't think that motherfucking cRPGs were supposed to be novels, that's why. The moment these narrative designers or game writers became a thing, it was all over. NPCs and companions aren't supposed to sophisticated characters in order to work. If they happen to be, that's a bonus, but the idea that developers should try to achieve that is part of the problem already. It's this mentality that will attract second rate racks to fulfill their creative ambitions at the expense of their audience and the medium.

They don't need to be deep... I guess that's right. But they should be cohesive. Have some motivations. Making paper cutouts is not sufficient either.

 

[Theldaran]

A Name of the Rose game would be extremely cool. All 53 people who'd buy and play it would enjoy it tremendously.

Sign me up.

There was a home Spanish game for The Name of the Rose in the 8-bit era. Cool game.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

They don't need to be deep... I guess that's right. But they should be cohesive. Have some motivations. Making paper cutouts is not sufficient either.

Nigger... pleeeease! Most quests in FO2 are banal fedexquests. Kill those evil plants for me, fix the well, find my dog, etc. Most of them are not that complex.