I have REALLY gotten sick of the “git gud” crowd.

I’ve always been sick of it. It’s impacted how developers create games.

Once upon a time, hard and difficult games on 8-bit and 16-bit platforms were created accidentally, either because of design bugs, or developers not having time to run through proper play-test cycles, or only doing the play testing themselves. We put up with it because we were kids and had a limited budget for games, so we played what we had. It was never intentional, since they wanted to make sure it was balanced enough to appeal to the general audience, but still have difficulty levels for people who wanted to try out a second harder playthrough.

Then, games like Dark Souls came along, which pretended that hard games were a From Software invention, and propped up a community of egoists and digital sadomasochists. All they did was make the designs more deliberate, to the point of developer trolling. (I know this started earlier on in the indie scene, especially roguelikes, but Dark Souls popularized it.)

The “git gud” crowd pushes this narrative of “if it’s possible to do, then it’s the player’s fault for not having the skill to do so”, to the point of personifying a game with statements like “the game is punishing me with bad RNG” or “the game is actively trying to kill me”. This completely ignores the developers’ responsibility of instituting balanced difficulty levels, since it’s the developers’ fault that “the game” does these things.

Again, it has really impacted how developers create games nowadays. First, the “git gud” crowd is loud enough that developers now think they deserve a voice, as if difficult games weren’t absolutely everywhere, even before Dark Souls. The popularity of speed running makes them think that have to cater to that crowd, and streamers streaming impossible challenges skews that difficulty Overton window even more. Developers think they have to make some impossibly difficult game, so that streamers, who famously play video games for a living for thousands of hours a year, will advertise their game and push it to the top.

As somebody who has used Fiverr, there’s a lot of good artists on there, but it does not cost five dollars.

Valiant efforts, but I hope Adobe and their software die a horrible death.

Absolutely. Been using GIMP for years, and I have zero need to switch to bloated, Windows-only, monthly-subscription garbage.

DaVinci Resolve, too. The improvements on Resolve 20 are amazing.

Also, also, @Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world, since you asked me to let you know when it was out, here it is!

Terraria has always been $10. Stardew Valley: $15. Undertale: $10. Braid was $15 when it launched, and even then, people were bitching about the price. So, the price tag has always been in that range since the first indie game launched.

I think you’re ignoring the incredible amount of oversaturation in the industry. Games are everywhere. I could throw a thousand sticks into the wilderness and it would smack into a thousand different game studios, all working for years on their big hit that (in their eyes) would make them millions of dollars.

But, people don’t have time to even play their own Steam backlog. On average, people buy more games than they even have time to play, and that’s not even counting the sheer amount of movies, music, TV shows, YouTube videos, whatever that is competing for people’s time. If they are playing video games, then they are not watching or listening to other media.

It’s not just the gaming industry. The entire creative industry is propped up on the backing of a 98% failure rate, or sometimes even a 99.99% failure rate. The lucky few get to spout off their survivorship biases, under the bones of former companies and individuals, crunched under the weight of oversaturation.

Will do! One of my favorites as well, which is part of the reason why I’m working on this thing.

OMG, this is like the best/worst time to be working on a two-hour video about the first game. I guess I better get cracking on finishing it up.