Post

I know some folks see the yellow paint discourse as repeating old discussions. But do you have any idea how much of a repeat it actually is? Here is a video from Egoraptor explaining why players feel terrible about being handheld in less than a minute. Can you guess when this video was released?

But wait, there's more! It's all the same arguments everyone is still having all these years, again explained within one minute, and this was made by a non-gamedev at the time!

So when I see folks say 'If you're not a game dev, stay out of this conversation!' or 'You try and sit behind playtesters and see how they get stuck!' I am flabbergasted. He wasn't a gamedev, and he explained the problem in 1 minute. And he did this... 13 YEARS AGO www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fpi...

And for the arguments of "Well, 20% of players will always get stuck, so we just have to have incredibly ham-fisted and immersion breaking UX in our games.", alright, but if: 1. You do not mind the other 80% are now annoyed as hell. 2. You are crunching to get it done. bsky.app/profile/ryst...

In most cases the correct answer is "The level design and game design are not meshing together well, and we cannot resolve this for time, political, or expertise reasons. So, just slap some paint on that thing and call it done." and you feel this when you play it. Not your fault, but you do feel it.

Of course this isn't tied to just game development, which is especially why I find the 'Only game devs should be part of this conversation' train of thought so terrible. All creative endeavors have these problems. Every Frame A Painting did a great job explaining this with Jackie Chan:

The amount of effort put into the development of the creative product does not matter. It is an emotional argument. The end product matters, as that is the only thing the audience sees. Or will you go to every theatre and explain yourself?