T w e n t y S i d e d
The good news is that the Summer Games Fest is coming up. The better news is that E3 was cancelled this year due to COVID and also nobody really wants to do it anymore.
That’s mean. E3 served us well for decades. But over the past few years it’s felt a bit excessive and archaic, even before COVID made large gatherings a dangerous proposition. For the last few years everyone has been saying, “Why don’t they just skip this show and put these trailers on YouTube?”
I guess that’s sort of what we’re doing now? The SGF show is all-digital, with Geoff Keighley presenting.
The show starts this Thursday at 2PM EST. Check the website or here for the time in your part of the world. Chris and I are going to be watching and reacting to the show live on his Twitch channel.
I realize that 2PM is a lousy time for a lot of you. You’ll probably be at work / school. But! This is one of those rare events that’s actually pretty good for Europeans. For people on the other side of the Atlantic, this show ought to land after you’ve gotten home from work, but before you go to bed.
I hope you’ll stop by and watch the parade of crass consumerism with us.
Starcraft: Bot Fight
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.
The Gameplay is the Story
Some advice to game developers on how to stop ruining good stories with bad cutscenes.
In Defense of Crunch
Crunch-mode game development isn't good, but sometimes it happens for good reasons.
This Scene Breaks a Character
Small changes to the animations can have a huge impact on how the audience interprets a scene.
Trashing the Heap
What does it mean when a program crashes, and why does it happen?
“You’ll probably be at work / school.”
Did you ever do a survey on the age of the visitors to your blog?
The comments are so mature, I have the feeling that few would still be going to school.
What about the School of Hard Knocks? I attend daily, for your information!
I’ve never done a survey, but my gut says you’re right. The regulars around here are far more likely to have jobs than go to school.
Some of us are even staring down the barrel of retirement.
Gen X is old, and I’ve always felt the majority of your “regulars” are Gen Xers like myself, thought it’s also clear you’ve got a steady group of Gen Y, Z, Millennials, Zoomers, and whatever the new hotness is going to be called…
I could just about manage generational nicknames back when the only labels to contend with were Baby Boomers and Generation X. Baby Boomers were people approximately my parents’ age. Generation X-ers were people approximately my age. I have never understood just who these other labels are supposed to apply to except that they are all presumably younger than me. Once again, language is the enemy of clear communication. Anyone who wants to specify people of a certain age range really ought to have the decency to just state the age range they’re talking about. “People in their 30s” doesn’t seem any harder to say than “Millenials” and is outright superior in the sense that it makes sense to people aren’t demographers or marketing executives.
You may call me a boomer now. I warn you, however, that, as a boomer, I am going to misunderstand you and think that you’re referring to my parents, so good luck with that.
I mean, if you’re GenX, GenY aka Millennials, are your kids and GenZ are your grandkids. If you’re a boomer, add an extra prefix to reveal the shocking truth. Though since people now delay having their single blossom of uniqueness for longer it doesn’t quite work out anymore.
That’s not how generational cohorts quite work, actually. They’re generally marked out by a birth year inside a given ~10 year window (depending who’s doing the categorizing, this period can vary a bit). As such, even someone born at the very beginning of such a period – say a Gen Xer born in 1970 – would typically not be old enough to be the parent of a member of the immediately following cohort – a Millennial born between ~1980-1989. It’s possible to become a parent in less than 20 years, of course, and so there are some GenXers with Millennial kids, but the overwhelming majority of Millennials have Boomer parents, and most of Generation X that became parents didn’t start having kids until the 90s, and so their kids are generally “Zoomers” or whatever (I don’t think a definitive name has been settled on for this cohort yet?).
This is, incidentally, a big part of why the Millennial generation is so much bigger than those to either side of it – they’re the children of the historically-large Baby Boomer generation, a cohort that, collectively, spawned in roughly the same proportions as anyone else, but since there were so many of them, they produced a generation somewhat larger than themselves (though every generation has members that don’t reproduce at all, and a large fraction that tend to only have enough kids to replace themselves, enough have more than that to more than compensate for the childless).
I was born in 1980, so I’m technically still a Gen-X’er, although in terms of cultural exposure and geek habits I probably cleave closer to the Gen-Y’s.
Hey, same here. I’d say we’re in a really weird inter-generational space where we mostly didn’t grow up with the internet, but then later many of us watched the internet grow up with us instead.
Those of us born in the last couple years of the 70s or first couple years of the 80s (’79 in my case) are sometimes referred to as “Xennials” for just those sorts of overlapping tendencies – we’re old enough to have had an early childhood that predated the public internet (and ubiquitous mobile electronics), but were still kids for most of its early stages in the 90s.
Also given your stated trouble with attracting new readers, even the young part of the audience has to grow up at some point right?
When I started reading this blog I was still at university and had to still write my second (I think) bachelor’s thesis. Since then I wrote that, my master’S thesis, worked six years in game development and five years in development for a financial solution.
That is really strange thinking about that. Maybe I catch the stream once I get off from work. :)
I started reading this blog in high school! I’m not sure how I got here… I think I discovered Spoiler Warning first, oddly enough. But how did I end up there? I can’t remember at all. Anyway, now I’m a few years out of college. I’m guessing I’m on the younger side of most folks here, but who knows.
It’s strange, I often feel as though I was on the very tail end of an era of internet culture, born just slightly too late to be considered a millennial and too early to fit in with the Gen Z/TikTok crowd. I keep watching as all the same subreddits/YouTube channels/Twitter… bubbles(?)/other internet communities that I frequented as a teen and young adult seem to grow older without much young blood coming in. The kids must be up to something else. Or I’m just having a quarter-life crisis.
Of course if there are in fact tons of people lurking on the blog who are even younger than I am, feel free to come out of the woodwork now and put me in my place :)
Don’t forget time zones. I am in Europe, for example, all assumptions you may have, about what time of day an event takes place, or which demographic may or may not be able to attend it live, will fall completely apart for people on other continents.
Well, despite being 31 this prompted me to think of the most immature way to reply to your post. After considering at least 5 variants with the word “penis” I have concluded that the most immature and annoying reaction would be:
“Ok boomerr”
EDIT: remove punctuation and introduce spelling mistake for greater authenticity.
P3N15!Will we break the penis joke thread record? It was set when Shamus did his Mass Erect retrospective. Specifically on the post with Kai Dong.
(should be an answer two posts above but oh well)
Maybe something along the lines of “You know who’s mature? Your mom!”
On a more relevant note this is actually prime time for European watchers, 8pm where I’m from. However this is of course the evening when my tabletop group seems to be finally able to gather so I’ll probably be busy with that.
You know who’s mature? Your granddaughter!
Remember, boomer is a mindset, not an age.
Regardless of how you want to define the term “boomer”, it does not matter for the fact that posting “OK boomer” is an incredibly immature way to participate in a discussion. It basically translates to “you are old/have old ideas so I don’t need to listen to you”. It is a very condescending dismissal of someones participation in a discussion.
Acknowledging that other people who have viewpoints different than yours might have valid reasons for doing so is one of the things you learn when growing up. Therefore I think that ” OK boomer” is incredibly immature.
Party pooper.
I’m so excited for us to get hyped about completely different things.
Assuming either of us gets hyped at all.
On a separate note, I was digging around for some research and found this old video on E3 2004, and what a time machine. On top of reminding me that the Phantom console was a “thing” (as in concept rather than physical manifestation of a product), and that America’s Army was also a thing, it was just interesting seeing so much of what was big coming out at the time (and it didn’t even cover some of the biggest announcements from Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo I don’t think, as I’m pretty sure this was the year Twilight Princess was officially shown off). It’s weird, but I genuinely believe my interest in this stuff stems from that desire to recapture the optimism and delight I found in showcases such as this.
More importantly it was the year that gave the distilled memeness, which was the Sony E3 press conference with the 599 USD PS3, the giant enemy crab, the zero reaction to Ridge Racer and the unparalleled excitement of the trailer for some safari game. I so wish the YT video with all these things cut together were still up on YT.
Alas, friend, but that was two years later! 2006 was the source of those embarrassing stumbling blocks, not 2004. I know it well because I ended up joining the Wii60.com forum and website and…
…well, do I have stories to tell. Not that they’re particularly interesting, mind, but stories nonetheless!
Oh boy! I was so sure. But all these conferences blur together a bit. Thank you for correcting me.
I’m also an old fart, around Shamus’ age.
But I try to keep my comments immature to mix things up.
Also, I completely agree on the subject of penis.
Finally, an event I can watch live at a good time! Things are looking up for us Europeans.
Yes! I’ll finally be able to catch you live! I’ll do my best to maks it to the stream!
I’m so sad E3 doesn’t exist anymore. I loved the hype. I know people say “I just want the trailers”, but man I loved the big crowds reacting in real time. There are E3 events and reveals I *still* watch years later to relive the shared excitement and joy and passion for things. These days the best you can get is watching one streamer react.
I think hype is really underrated these days, honestly. I get some of the pushback on it, but to me it’s part of the experience of a game. There are games I like *better* because of the atmosphere of excitement that came with every reveal and bit of info leading up to release. That stuff’s important to me. It’s like how a live concert is the same music you heard at home but it’s a core memory because of the shared experience.
Like a shambling zombie it looks like E3 is back again for 2023. Showing once again the big companies have an almost unchangeable momentum. E3 feels a lot like a big meeting that could have been an email.