Fox Harper

Fox Harper

@foxharper.bsky.social

Games scholar, college professor, freelance writer, deeply tired all the time Was laevantine/arcanistfox on Twitter

1.1K followers187 following17.1K posts

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

I routinely post points of view on here where I agonize significantly over if I’m going to “get in trouble” for them and I think I need to do less agonizing and more posting because trouble seems inevitable in nature and infinite in scope but my time on this earth is finite.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

I get and completely agree that “saving Mass Effect but leaving the people behind is wrongheaded” but why… couldn’t you do both? Wouldn't “saving” ME *require* retaining or supporting the creators? I might be missing something but starting to get “inventing someone to get mad at” vibes from this.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

Realizing this is a question I don't actually know the answer to: are big Japanese gaming industry companies having to do huge layoff bursts and we aren't hearing about it as much? Or is this a thing that's more affecting US, Canadian, and European places?

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

As someone who’s old and gets very cranky/will abandon a game for getting on my nerves at record speed: good! Don’t design for me! Designing to avoid critique/complaint is a terrible idea! You just have to go with your vision and accept some people aren’t gonna like it. Like… okay. Listen.

Kayin@kayin.moe

"But people won't like it and will complain" people will complain because nothing does it anymore and if you just chase design choices that generate the least complaints, you'll eventually end up training an audience who will accept barely anything.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

I consistently tell students not to chase an A on assignments. Not because that’s a bad thing to want, but because thinking “what’s gonna get me an A?” is you trying to mind-read my reaction, which you can’t do! Focus on making the best thing you can within the assignment’s requirements.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

I’ve reoriented the class I used to do as “make a game in class each week” away from that for unrelated reasons, but the thing that consistently tripped students up was that they’d try to make one finished, “good” game in ~90ish minutes and it was so hard to convince them that wasn’t the point.

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Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

The point was to try ideas! Groups would spend so much of the time debating which ideas were good or bad and I’d have to continually say “why not build it and find out?” I think the classroom setting was the real issue; i didn’t grade these games on quality but people didn’t want to “fail“ at it.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

(this is also why peer review exists and it’s why scientists/academics are furious at that “AI does peer review better than humans” article because no it doesn’t)

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Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

Sorry I genuinely love the "playing the clown to hide the fact that you're doing incredible work behind the scenes" archetype. A personal weakness.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

Okay if you make a cooking competition show challenge that's "make [x], but we want you to put your own spin on it" and then for everyone who tries something new and different, in judging, you say "no this is overwhelming it's not [x] anymore" I think you're being a jerk, frankly.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

I know things seem dark right now, and I don't dispute that, but: queer rights/visibility/acceptance. It not only improved in my lifetime, it improved at a pace that was frankly unbelievable when I stopped and thought about it.

Michael Druker 🇨🇦@mdruker.app

Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

Again: I will not at all downplay how bad things are now, how much the resistance has laser-focused on our trans friends and siblings, but consider: the resistance has become so fierce and entrenched, in my eyes, because they are trying to stop a meteor

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

Theodora is an extremely relatable protagonist. Woman who is on the brink of erupting into violence every time some dipshit man is annoying to her?

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

I went and got tenure in a game design program and I think I've realized I don't really want to teach games or game design anymore? There's probably never a GOOD time to have that realization but probably the WORST time to have it is after getting tenure teaching in a game design program.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

Oh sorry that was my first time seeing the “Veilguard killed BioWare” sentiment so if you heard someone screaming “FUCK OFF” that was me.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

We have learned again and again and AGAIN that you can produce a smash hit that's universally beloved in thus industry and still be out of a job THE NEXT DAY. Pretending otherwise is willful ignorance.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

Woke up in the middle of the night, couldn’t fall back asleep, opened this website like a fucking moron, now lying in bed torturing myself with sad thoughts.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

[rubbing my face] You're not allowed to use "spoony bard" anymore, games. Not even if you have 'Final Fantasy' in the title. Let it go.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

The fact that books market themselves with a list of tropes from the book INSIDE the marketing copy fills me with an unknowable but oppressive despair.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

I don’t blame authors, who understandably just want people to read their stuff. I don’t even blame tropes, which become tropes for a reason. But something about them being almost more important than the book’s PREMISE, marketing-wise, distresses me greatly.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

[deep breath] the specific mix of serif and sans-serif fonts used in FF Resonance is going to destroy me. It's so ugly and mismatched. Yes, I know this is an absurd thing to be annoyed by.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

am writing something entirely before i pitch it somewhere and i'm having a hard time, because it's personal, but i feel like i'm doing my damndest to make sure it Sounds Detached And Academic instead of talking about my experience, even if my experience is the point

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

feeling like you, yourself, and the things that happen to you aren't actually worth anything is an extremely hard boulder to crawl out from under, if you didn't know this

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

NOW HIRING IN BALTIMORE: someone to follow me around Harris-Teeter on Thursdays while I get groceries and every time I say "sorry" to someone for a situation that is MANIFESTLY their fault and I did nothing wrong, you smack me on the back of the head with an anime paper fan

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

I just saw the sentence "CBS has sold its local election night coverage to DraftKings" and then spontaneously everything in my apartment burst into flame. Wonder why that happened, I ask, as I sit in the burning wreckage.

Fox Harper reposted

Stefan Gagne
@stefangagne.com

I think takes that "BioWare had it coming" are disingenuous. Andromeda? Corporate forced them to use the Frostbite engine. Anthem? Corporate wanted a live service. Veilguard? Corporate wanted a live service, then rebooted it. The creativity that drove BioWare got re-routed by mismanagement.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

If you have not started Fortune's Weave and, like me, were a Golden Deer fan in Three Houses, and thus are asking "which route is most like my beloved anti-racist disaster bisexuals?" the answer is "Leda's route"

Fox Harper@foxharper.bsky.social

Olympia's "how DARE you not try to FUCK ME" support with Sirocco might be one of my favorite things in all of Fortune's Weave.

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

I think a lot about how the trajectory of the video game industry is often described as "line go up above all else" and it makes me wonder if are forgetting that like... companies back in the day also enjoyed making money and pursued it with vigor. But HOW they thought they could do that changed?

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

Like, I dunno, man. In the 90s/00s I genuinely feel like even the most mercenary big game company was like "if we make cool, good stuff, people will pay us for it" And it eventually became "if we trap people in the Forever Game and monetize it, line goes up even if we produce garbage"

Fox Harper
@foxharper.bsky.social

Like don't get me wrong, capitalism has always been the problem, but it used to be that free market capitalism required, at least on some level, an actual quality deliverable with which to compete in said market. Now you don't even need THAT.