T w e n t y S i d e d
This poll has two purposes. The first is run a poll to answer a question. I’ve asked this question before, but “state your preference in the comments” makes for muddled and difficult-to interpret results.
The second is to test out this polling platform. I’ve messed with lots of plugins and widgets for running polls, and they were all varying flavors of broken. Maybe it takes the user away from my site when they vote so it can shower them with ads and skeevy download links. Maybe the embed code is so complicated it confuses WordPress. Maybe it has some annoying limit to the number of answers, or it allows instant no-effort ballot stuffingAll polls are susceptible to ballot stuffing in a world of proxy servers, but at the very least, users should have to go to some sort of trouble to do it.. Maybe it requires a WordPress plugin that’s hasn’t been updated in 3 years and is many WordPress versions out of date. Or it wants me to create a premium account to see the results. It’s hilarious to me that we live in a world where it’s effortless to embed 1080p video on a webpage for free, but a simple text-based poll is apparently too much to ask.
Anyway. I’m trying out a new site. We’ll see how it goes:
Of course, my work is driven more by my passions than public opinion, so this poll probably won’t change my output. But I do get curious about this sort of thing from time to time.
Also, I can confirm that our Fallout 4 series is going to conclude in the next block of episodes. After that? The next game is already chosen. I’ll give you a hint: It’s a PS4 exclusive from a developer that’s really, really large.
EDIT:
And that poll is broken for some people. It’s unreliable and sometimes requires multiple refreshes to load. (Well, the ADVERTISEMENT part always loads. Of course.)
So let’s try a Google form:
Yuck. I don’t like how much space it wastes. But it’s Google, so at least it works.
Footnotes:
[1] All polls are susceptible to ballot stuffing in a world of proxy servers, but at the very least, users should have to go to some sort of trouble to do it.
Black Desert Online
This Korean title would be the greatest MMO ever made if not for the horrendous monetization system. And the embarrassing translation. And the terrible progression. And the developer's general apathy towards its western audience.
Silent Hill 2 Plot Analysis
A long-form analysis on one of the greatest horror games ever made.
The Opportunity Crunch
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
Internet News is All Wrong
Why is internet news so bad, why do people prefer celebrity fluff, and how could it be made better?
Starcraft: Bot Fight
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.
… bike trail guide? What does that mean and why does it take me to a bike trail guide site?
>Anyway. I'm trying out a new site. We'll see how it goes:
>bike trail guide
Just something a bit off with the post.
EDIT: but now I see a poll.
I was also seeing just “bike trail guide” where the poll is supposed to be, with a link to trailguide.net
I thought it might be because I was loading the page inside my RSS reader (it has an option to load the full page rather than just the feed content/link), but the problem persisted when I loaded it in a new tab. Then I thought NoScript might be breaking things, but it still looked the same when I allowed scripts from easypolls.net
I tried force-refresh a few times before deciding that maybe Firefox was breaking things and switched to Chrome. That worked, although it still says “bike trail guide” just under the poll… I guess that’s an ad the poll is loading?
Then I switched back to Firefox and refreshed again, and now it works too with nothing else having changed in the 30 seconds since I last tried that. Also still says “bike trial guide” under the poll. But I have no mental model at all as to what could have been causing the problem for switching briefly to Chrome to cause Firefox to abruptly figure its shit out.
In any case, the option I would pick had it been present in the poll is “I will read any text or image you want to put in front of me, but I’m less fond of video content in general”. Lower information density because people talk far slower than I read, and it means I have to dig out my headphones.
Whelp, that’s just too dodgy. Another poll platform abandoned.
I really don’t see why this needs to be so difficult.
I was gonna ask if you’ve tried strawpoll already, but then I realized you’ve probably already gotten more suggestions than needed.
Still though, Jupiter Broadcasting uses strawpoll and it seems to work fine.
Have you tried using a Google Form? It’s got a nice easy interface, just like their Docs, Spreadsheets, etc, and it’s got a button to get an embed-code to stick it on a web-page. If you don’t trust us to vote-spam, or think it might get bot-spammed, it does need a Google login, but otherwise, it seems like a fairly easy solution.
EDIT:
I tried sticking the iframe tag in here, to see what would happen. Hopefully it didn’t send your server into infinite “Loading…” land. ^^;
You’d think that by now there must be some wordpress plugin/script that just runs on the server itself without having to rely on some external provider … it’s not as if this requires a lot of storage or computational power…
Firefox loaded the poll correctly for me, then showed me results after choosing, then after reloading a minute later updated the results, then upon another reload, showed only the biketrail thing, and was not persuaded to show the polling results again.
The poll is really slow to load.
I also saw ‘bike trail guide’ (which triggered a suspicious site alert in my antimalware blocker, but that thing is finicky, so it may have been a false alarm). Once the poll had loaded and I’d voted in it, it changed to read ‘Easy polls’ instead.
Until Dawn? I am amazingly happy with that choice. That game set the gold standard for how a cutscene driven game should play, and used the most brilliant genre to do so. I’m super excited to see in the future if they take the idea and continue to run with it. An “After Dusk” style spin off with even the same characters but new writing, setting and etc.
Super jazzed to hear the crews thoughts about it.
I wouldn’t call the Until Dawn guys “really, really large” my bet is on Uncharted 4.
It’s a pun on their name.
Oh… right…
Until Dawn would be really great :D
Well, their name is “Supermassive Games”…
Crap, didn’t think about that. Possible, though, even though I know it’s a short game, I don’t know how much Until Dawn has to talk about. It’s a fairly linear cinematic game that’s a version of a film genre that isn’t known for being that “deep.” (The best cinematic zombie stories (like Romero’s first two or Shaun of the Dead) have more meat on their bones than even the best slashers, like original Elm Street or Halloween.) I left a few other, less literal than that, interpretations of that end statement below to muddy the waters.
To be honest, that might be what we need after a drawn-out vitriolic season like Fallout 4. A quick and light palate cleanser.
I’m pretty confident we’re heading for Duke Nukem Forever…
Not rise of tom braider?But its traditional.
Would they even have much to say about it that would be different from the last game? I never played it but remember that it was described as similar to the previous one, even with the bit of innocence arc at the beginning.
It would be funny if they took the audio out of that season and simply slap it over Josh playing the new game.
PS4 Exclusive that’s very, very large? That can be taken a few ways, so does that just refer to popularity, or does it refer to the number of people working at that studio or is it an implication of an, arguably, inflated self worth? If #1, it’s probably Uncharted 4, but possibly Bloodborne. If it’s #2, it’s Tales of Zestiria. (Seriously, Namco Bandai Studios has over 1000 employees.) If it’s #3, it’s Disgaea 5. (Nippon Ichi Software means “Japan’s Best Software” They kind of earn the designation, but it’s still kind of an arrogant name.).
Supermassive Games.
Tales of Zestiria isn’t PS4 exclusive.
Josh did a pretty long live stream of Bloodborne a while back. Which makes me doubt it as a season title.
If you’re looking for someone to do video editing, I can help in a couple weeks.
that poll font was very very tiny.
Dangit, you’re right. It’s even a little hard to read on my giant monitor, which is a sure sign the defaults are way too small.
And now I see that since it has votes. I can’t change it. Not even the style properties.
Ah well. Sorry for the eye strain everyone. If we do this again I’ll increase the font sizes before publishing.
It wasn’t too bad to read, but that’s because I don’t need glasses. That… wasn’t meant to be an insult, I swear, it was meant to be a bad joke. A TERRIBLE joke.
But I digress, I’m attempting to binge read your long form posts over listening to the Diecasts and watching the Spoiler Warnings. I love both series though. There’s always something you guys point out that makes me somewhat question my taste in gaming, so thanks for the wakeup call as I play Fallout 4’s campaign for the seventh time.
I would like to note that I’ve only found your blog recently. Clearly the choices of what you write about or do are up to you. I’m just looking forward to anything written about, and happy to have discovered this small but not so small niche community of gamers and readers :).
I picked the autobiographical option but I also really wanted to pick the programming one.
Me too!
If this polling exercise isn’t complicated enough, next time let us have two, ranked choices. :P
I think that just letting people rank ALL of the choices in order of preference might make more sense.
I’d love if polls (and possibly even political votes) would work like this, instead of just allowing you to pick your #1 favourite option, as such systems allow compromises to emerge dynamically. Imagine the following poll:
What to make for dinner today?
1. Pizza
2. Soup
3. Salad
4. Sandwiches
And then 55% of the people vote pizza, 45% of the people vote sandwiches. But if they could rank the options, most of the pizza people might have voted sandwiches 2nd, but most of the sandwich people might have voted salad 2nd. Which essentially means that sandwiches would be the option almost everyone would be satisfied with, and thus a good compromise.
Implementation-wise, it could probably work on a point-based system, i.e. if there are 10 options then the #1 pick gets 10 points, #2 gets 9 etc – and it should have the option to exclude any options entirely so they get 0 points from you (the points are just forfeited), for if you are dead set against some of the options, you don’t want them to still get any points from you.
Making a good poll that will get to the socially optimal result, across a wide range of potential preference options, is hard. In fact, it’s theoretically impossible.
Your suggestion is not a bad one, but has some issues. It makes an assumption that you like your second option almost as much as your first option, and your third option almost as much as your second, linearly. That might be true, and it might not. If I LOVE pizza, and am relatively indifferent to the other three, but have a weak preference for sandwiches among them, the point count won’t reflect that – only 40% of my votes go to pizza, and 30% go to sandwiches, even if to me it would work like 90% pizza, 5% sandwiches, and 2.5% to the other two).
A different approach would be cumulative voting. I get 10 “votes” and can cast them however I like – I can vote 10 times for pizza, or 5 for pizza and 5 for sandwiches. In theory, this captures everyone’s preferences well. On the other hand (among many potential problems) it can be problematically inclined to a vocal minority. For example, say our options were pizza, soup, salad, sandwiches, and chicken tikka. Maybe most people want more traditional fare, but about 25% were thinking “yeah, I could go for some Indian food.” The “traditional american” options split the votes of the 75%, and the pro-tikka group could win because they concentrate the vote. This is compounded by a potential desire to vote strategically – I might be good with tikka OR pizza, but if I prefer tikka, I can make it more likely to win by throwing all my votes behind it, even if that doesn’t match my personal preferences.
This “flaw” is actually sometimes seen as a benefit. One issue with cumulative voting approaches is that they can (absent a significant minority with a strong preference) lead to favoring largely similar options. Say we have a population where 60% supports party A, and 40% supports party B. We have 10 candidates for 5 city council seats, 5 candidates from A and 5 candidates from B. If all the candidates are relatively the same, all 5 of the “A” candidates would be elected (each “A” gets 12% of the vote, each “B” gets 8% of the vote) , so the council will be 100% “A”. On the other hand, the minority for party B could use the strategic approach to their benefit and only run two candidates (or, try to convince the voters that they should throw their weight primarily behind 2 of their 5 candidates). Those minority candidates can be the most popular candidates, getting all the “B” vote, and we’ll elect 3 A’s (16% each) and 2 B (20%) each, which is closer to the “real” makeup of the community.
There’s a lot of research on this topic, and (as alluded to earlier), there’s a flaw in every theoretical polling method. So if you want a reason to say “this approach doesn’t always work,” you’re always right.
For an informational approach like this one, when there’s no hard “we only get X!”, I think the approach Shamus is now taking (“how much do you like X?”) is a good one – he gets a lot of information, and there’s really no major incentive to vote strategically.
My favourite mode would be to let people assign scores to each option.
I like the programming, the comics and the reset button things a lot (so choosing between them is hard), I like most of the other written content, but the long-form videos I will mostly not watch.
I saw it wrong on the first load, too.
Also, honorable mention vote for “more comics.” But *most* like to see would be programming, which is how I voted above :-)
I voted “long Form”, but honestly my vote is split between Long Form and Comics, because I get as much enjoyment out of the antics of Lulzy and Star On Chest as I do reading the long rants about why computer games are terrible.
Well, I’m glad to see my choice of funny comics mocking geeky things is a respectable 3rd, well ahead of video/streaming nastiness, and that my second choice of programming stuff is firmly in the lead.
Then again, that could be because only people nerdy enough to work out the totally broken plugin have voted so far.
Still can’t believe you probably wrote more words about Mass Effect than are *in* that game, but I guess people liked it.
Here’s what I really want to vote for, though it’s more a meta-content thing: A feed with a title, one image if relevant, and summary paragraph.When you post 20 yards of image-heavy stuff I don’t care about…I have to scroll like a mad bastard, because feed contains everything.
I still follow this site by RSS (that goes hand-in-hand with being a video-hating grumpy oldster), and if something looks interesting, I’ll open the page. Maybe you care about the clicks, but mostly because RSS reader doesn’t work with the fancy footnotes.
Shoutout to the one other guy who (so far) agrees with me that more Reset Button videos would be cool.
I kinda wanted to just say “all of above” apart from programming, which i tried to read… but it just goes right over my head.
I read one of Shamus’ programming articles once. That’s all I remember about reading one of shamus’ programming articles.*
*Not a criticism of Shamus’ writing. I’m sure the programming articles are great for people who know anything about software wizardry.
As a skilled software sorcerer, I really like the programming posts!
I think most of us like reset button but Shamus has mentioned a few times how it takes like 400 hours to make a 3 minute video so we wouldn’t get much content. Same for comics, DM of the rings was great but a few hours work for something read in under a minute isn’t good bang for buck.
+1.
I really enjoyed the Reset Button videos, but given Shamus’ known-to-be-finite time available, I’d much rather see him focus his efforts on lower-production-effort items that produce moar contentz for the investment, so I ranked Reset Button lower.
Seconded, for me it’s neat reading about something else than system engineering for once.
I’m not sure if this a glitch in the embedding or just a terrible design on the poll, but when you click “See results” there’s no back button, meaning if you haven’t voted, you have to refresh the page in order to do so.
Anyway, I voted for for long-form analysis which was not my first choice, but it’s pretty clear that this poll is two-horse race, so anything but “Programming posts” and “Long-form analysis” would be a wasted vote. Sorry for skewing the true accuracy of your data.
Would be nice to have a “Rank your preference” option. I enjoy the programming articles, but the autobiographical stuff is also of interest, and I don’t watch the videos. (I share the heck out of your post on allergies when people suggest they’ll vacuum before I come over.)
I would have also have liked to rank them. I voted for the comics because that was how I discovered this website (through GM of the Rings) and discovered Fear the Boot, which is a good tabletop rpg podcast (through Chainmail Bikini). I also really like the long form analysis you’ve done.
The programming articles are hit and miss for me. I’m not a programmer but have some distant familiarity with the very basics and having to muddle my way through looking at code for a few possible projects (I was actually interested in Neverwinter Nights map creation which required some basic coding that I was trying to learn. I gave up when I realized I had no good map creation ideas and didn’t want to spend the time learning to code). So, the nitty gritty stuff of coding doesn’t interest me but seeing some of the bigger perspective or explanations, I do find interesting in a “how does this work?” sort of way.
I think we need some way for people to weigh in with all their preferences on how Shamus should conduct his next audience poll…
I’d actually want Shamus to write more novels! I even downloaded and enjoyed that incomplete SF novel he wrote a while back — yeah, obviously it’s not done or anything and it did feel kind of like two different stories jammed together, but there were some really great scenes and elements in it.
I thought about the poll for a bit, and couldn’t decide on an answer. Then I read this:
…and realised that one of the things I like about your site is just this – that you get impassioned about a particular topic and dive into it, and your excitement then comes through in your writing. So if you’re going to meta your own poll and say that you’re liable to ignore the results and do what you feel like, can I meta your meta and answer that I want you to do more of whatever you feel like?
(I’ll throw in the caveat that I am primarily a consumer of text, not video or podcasts, but we’ve had that discussion before, and it has far more to do with my consumption habits than anything else.)
Real toss-up between “more programming projects” and “more long-form series” here.
I picked more comics largely because there just hasn’t been one in a long time.
I’ve been teetering on the edge of asking Shamus if he’d be interested in playing in a pen and paper game of some kind and letting me post my Classic Jen-Style game writeups to the site for more content. The game sessions don’t take long if you’re playing instead of running. I have kind of an oddball idea that I’d like to run in a system of my own invention that I’ve been slowly picking at.
It’s a thought.
Now there’s a “back to our roots” suggestion!
I picked more comics, too, and that can be solely attributed to DMOTR. It’s one of the most entertaining things I have ever seen, and none of the similar project by other people (e.g. Darths&Droids) come close.
I would like to see that. Anything that help me be a better GM is a win in my book.
FWIW, both polls worked fine for me. And I liked the colorful and easy-to-read Google Forms results.
…and now that I’ve scrolled back up, I’m also seeing the “bike trail guide” microlink.
Heh, I don’t really do GMing advice. I do novel-style writeups. Some people like them, some don’t.
From the department of
unreasonable demandswishful thinking…It would be really cool if you could do a collaborative programming project with Campster and/or maybe Josh.
That’d be pretty cool, to see what three programmers can come up with, in some time-limit like a weekend or something. :)
Re Google poll:
I think it would let me cast my vote as often as I like. (After reloading the page the form is back again and accepting my input. And it allowed me to submit an empty form when I was trying to see the results again.)
There’s a checkmark to only allow a single vote, but it requires a login. So, tradeoff between trusting us not to be jerks, and inconvenience of login. Plus I think it needs a Google account to log in, and not everyone’s using Gmail.
I don’t have an answer to this – I’d enjoy all of this content, and the thing I really do want isn’t an option – basically, the thing I’m most missing from this site is from the way old days, the Mar Tesaro campaign stuff. I would love to see Shamus and company playing a tabletop RPG of some variety. I feel like the group of you would make for a very entertaining game, both in terms of humor and dramatic storytelling. I know you’ve flirted with the idea in the past, I just want to put it out that I am, at least, still very much interested.
Long form and programming are my first picks.
I’m mixed on streaming because I like the content but find it difficult to listen to. The last few times I listened, the audio levels varied quite a bit between the crew. As a result, I had to manually adjust the volume constantly to hear the quiet people while toning down the loud ones. Editing the audio would add more work for you guys and kind of defeat the purpose of the stream…
Last are Reset, autobiographical stuff and comics. They are a good addition to the site but I don’t value them as much as the rest.
I hope you continue to enjoy your work Shamus.
You know what you should do?Make a youtube poll,with a bunch of links in the video at different places of the screen,then embed that.
Not gonna lie, I am a sucker for the autobiography stuff (and I’m not entirely sure why). I was actually pretty close to writing about your autoblography for my senior year college paper.
I prefer the Google poll.
And looking a the results so far it seems most want more programming/project stuff.
And they seem ok with more reset button videos.
And are quite content with the amount of Diecast stuff.
And like the longform posts/series.
And don’t mind more autobio stuff.
And would welcome more comics.
Yeah. Unless you forgo eating and sleeping you’re pretty screwed Shamus. :P
So I guess its going to be a 1,000 panel webcomic about building an internet poll platform?
I miss Stolen Pixels ;(
Also, streams with Josh!
And this is why I keep coming back, and why I enjoy reading what you have to say about things like FFX, even though I have never played a FF game in my life. :) I enjoy reading about things that the author is passionate about, so for my part I’d mostly say, “Keep doing what you love.” If you stop loving doing it and writing about it, then I suspect it won’t be as much fun to read, either.
Haven’t played a single FF either, still really enjoy the series, too.
i mean its pretty hard to give good answers when i enjoy basically everything thats put on this site.
its all great. sorry…
Until Dawn just went on digital sale in the EU (PSN Store) and I jumped on it because the wife and I want to play a Halloween-y game.
Looking forward to comparing notes with the crew!
The Mass Effect series of essays was some of the best content I’ve read on the site. I wish I was into Final Fantasy so I could enjoy the current series as much.
Would you consider a long form series on, say, Deus Ex?
Fervently seconding this! But then, I’m a sucker for anything DX-related. :) (It might actually make me get on and upgrade my desktop so’s I can play DX:MD, although I’m decidedly underwhelmed by much of what I’ve heard about it.)
PS4 exclusive… from a developer that’s really, really large.
Next Spoiler Warning is Transistor. Confirmed. It’s going to be interesting to hear you guys talk about a game that uses more esoteric storytelling. I was expecting Dark Souls to be the game you tackle that on first when you inevitably get around to it. But this works too.
Transistor would be great but it’s not a PS4 exclusive ;-)
The Order: 1886 confirmed for next season.
The first poll showed after a reload, so I filled out both. Sorry if that skews your results a little.
My answer (highest preference to more Reset Button videos) is based on the presumption that the ratios of other content remain otherwise more or less constant. I really like your longform analyses of games, and I enjoy reading your posts about programming (as a non-programmer), and music (as a non-musician), and the game industry in general. I also like reading Rutskarn’s stuff. I watch the Spoiler Warning videos only when it’s a game I’ve played (I can’t pay attention to both the conversation and the game at the same time consistently if I’m not already familiar with at least one of them), so while I enjoy them when I do, I only see them occasionally. I liked DM of the Rings a lot (it’s what brought me here), and Stolen Pixels, but I know making more comics isn’t really your interest (plus, I’ve got plenty of other comics I already follow).
Reset Button, on the other hand, is exactly the sort of thing I find myself wanting more of these days – video content I can play on my secondary monitor while I’m working, and only actually watch intermittently, even though I’m listening pretty closely. Mumbles’ comments on people’s internet habits in the last DieCast were very much on point for me.
I vastly prefer the second type of poll, because I can’t decide which I like more between programming, long form and autobiographical, and the first version forced me to choose just one. In the end, whatever you feel like writing is always going to be more engaging than something you aren’t interested in talking about, but those three are my favorites.
While I absolutely agree with others about writing/making content about whatever holds your fancy (really, make a series on “how to do the dishes” and I’m sure it’d turn out funny or interesting), I’m a bit surprised to see that streams and videos – admittedly the type of content that interests me least, too – is doing so bad. I thought they’d be more popular amongst viewers, but apparently text really is more popular than video around here. I wonder if this has to do with the make up of your audience or is more general – there’s a glut of video and audio content on line, but it can be tough finding a good writer who actually produces quality content (like you or Rutskarn).
My best guesses for the upcoming game are Abzu (Giant Squid Games), Transistor (Supergiant Games, though admittedly this one is only exclusive to PS4 as far as consoles go), Until Dawn (Supermassive Games) and as a joke candidate I’ll throw in What Remains of Edith Finch from Giant Sparrow.
Until Dawn is the most likely, I’d think, but you can’t count out the powerful allure of Logan Cunningham’s narration.
On the subject of the poll, you already said it’s not going to influence you much so I’m not getting my hopes up, but I was ecstatic to see you start your FFX long-form analysis, touching a genre I love to death, a game I love to death and a type of content I don’t see nearly enough and it’s been the highlight of my day whenever another one gets posted up.
The problem with the google form:
It wont show results until you vote again.And it also doesnt remember your ip so you can vote again and again and again and again….
FWIW – I like the longforms the most, and then the Let’s Plays, and then the comics and … I like all the rest too, but I’d say that’d be my preference for priority.
Yours are the only Let’s Plays I’ve been able to get into, though I suspect I could follow Josh and Ruts and Mumbles to something else, if I really worked at it. I’m old though, so watching someone else play a game remains foundationally confusing.