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I just had a random shower thought recently.
The FR admins say that they want to avoid "crunch time" for their coders. But now that I think about it, it doesn't make sense to me because aren't the main coders people who own the site and have equity? (Maybe Mutron/Kaepora don't but Akiri and Xhaz do)
Usually crunch time is awful because it means that management is telling employees to do more work for the sake of the company profiting. But in the case of Flight Rising, Akiri and Xhaztol ARE the company. And owning a small business often means putting in longer workdays than normal compared to working for a 9-5.
Obviously it's their company, and they can run it however they want. And by all means, the company has been very successful regardless. But the language just irks me. Like if you don't want to work extra time for your business, then don't. You don't have to make a statement to your players about it so people feel less bad.
The FR admins say that they want to avoid "crunch time" for their coders. But now that I think about it, it doesn't make sense to me because aren't the main coders people who own the site and have equity? (Maybe Mutron/Kaepora don't but Akiri and Xhaz do)
Usually crunch time is awful because it means that management is telling employees to do more work for the sake of the company profiting. But in the case of Flight Rising, Akiri and Xhaztol ARE the company. And owning a small business often means putting in longer workdays than normal compared to working for a 9-5.
Obviously it's their company, and they can run it however they want. And by all means, the company has been very successful regardless. But the language just irks me. Like if you don't want to work extra time for your business, then don't. You don't have to make a statement to your players about it so people feel less bad.
I mean, there are definitely several engineers/coders who are not site owners. Not to mention that new features or just heavily updated features also involve the art teams, community and project management, etc. So I don’t think it’s that weird to call it avoiding crunch time or whatever because multiple employees are going to be involved with whatever features get implemented.
Also, you don’t know the actual work hours they do - for all you know they are putting in significantly higher hours than it seems on the surface so that non-owners don’t have to.
Even so, I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with the ‘bosses’ wanting to avoid stressing themselves so long as they’re also reducing stress for their workers. A healthy work environment should be healthy for everyone, even those in charge. It’s good to normalize that.
Also, you don’t know the actual work hours they do - for all you know they are putting in significantly higher hours than it seems on the surface so that non-owners don’t have to.
Even so, I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with the ‘bosses’ wanting to avoid stressing themselves so long as they’re also reducing stress for their workers. A healthy work environment should be healthy for everyone, even those in charge. It’s good to normalize that.
If you think indies and self-owned game developers don't crunch, I have news for you. It's pervasive, and sometimes self inflicted (often in a non-malicious way). It's common for devs to get "in the zone" and not want to stop, especially if they are really excited for a certain feature or they just *really* like programming. If enough people start doing that, then the game workers who otherwise wouldn't do this start feeling like the odd one out, and may stay late anyway out of a sense of misguided "support". Furthermore, the games industry is highly saturated, heavily competitive, and volatile (changes to web browsers or newly discovered vulnerabilities in a backend software stack can make a lot of urgent, unplanned work for a project like this with little to no warning). The urge to go into heroics mode to deliver a very impressive feature is partly shaped by this environment. And self inflicted crunch has the same bad health/project effects as crunch mandated from top-down.
Having a group policy of "we all go home on time, no exceptions" and enforcing it goes a long way to stopping that behavior and keeping the peer pressure effects from setting in.
Also, I think their statements may be less about making players "feel bad" and more as a positive example for other game devs: "Yes, we can have a profitable game studio without doing this."
Having a group policy of "we all go home on time, no exceptions" and enforcing it goes a long way to stopping that behavior and keeping the peer pressure effects from setting in.
Also, I think their statements may be less about making players "feel bad" and more as a positive example for other game devs: "Yes, we can have a profitable game studio without doing this."
>If you think indies and self-owned game developers don't crunch, I have news for you.
I never said that. I said that FR developers don't crunch
>Having a group policy of "we all go home on time, no exceptions" and enforcing it goes a long way to stopping that behavior and keeping the peer pressure effects from setting in.
If they want to do that, that's awesome, but why do they need to tell everyone?
>Also, I think their statements may be less about making players "feel bad" and more as a positive example for other game devs: "Yes, we can have a profitable game studio without doing this."
FR is such a small/niche site it doesn't even have a Wikpedia page. Just who is FR serving as an example for? And it's just not realistic that everyone else can follow their example.
I never said that. I said that FR developers don't crunch
>Having a group policy of "we all go home on time, no exceptions" and enforcing it goes a long way to stopping that behavior and keeping the peer pressure effects from setting in.
If they want to do that, that's awesome, but why do they need to tell everyone?
>Also, I think their statements may be less about making players "feel bad" and more as a positive example for other game devs: "Yes, we can have a profitable game studio without doing this."
FR is such a small/niche site it doesn't even have a Wikpedia page. Just who is FR serving as an example for? And it's just not realistic that everyone else can follow their example.
DA, but they tell everyone they won’t do crunch to explain why some features are taking longer or why they are choosing to focus on the refract over other things at the moment or why ancients are a thing. I really don’t see why it’s such a problem for them to do so.
yeah, the people who were obnoxious teens on tumblr in 2014 or whatever are now adults lol 😂
"I really don’t see why it’s such a problem"
Because it's not.
Because it's not.
DA
FR isn't a AAA studio by any means but that doesn't mean it isn't influential. to date there's almost half a million accounts onsite and 80+ million dragons. while the FR team definitely has its fair share of royal fuckups it's often considered to be one of the better petsites available when considering things like economy management, content releases/quality, and community. hell, that upcoming cat petsim blatantly ripped off multiple design choices from FR.
going "FR is so niche why should we care" is a little disingenuous imo. of course todd howard isn't going to be swayed to change all of bethesda's organization because of FR but that doesn't mean that what FR is doing isn't meaningful. i appreciate that, in the world of development hell where crunch time and unhealthy hours are super common, FR devs make an effort to consider work/life balance.
FR isn't a AAA studio by any means but that doesn't mean it isn't influential. to date there's almost half a million accounts onsite and 80+ million dragons. while the FR team definitely has its fair share of royal fuckups it's often considered to be one of the better petsites available when considering things like economy management, content releases/quality, and community. hell, that upcoming cat petsim blatantly ripped off multiple design choices from FR.
going "FR is so niche why should we care" is a little disingenuous imo. of course todd howard isn't going to be swayed to change all of bethesda's organization because of FR but that doesn't mean that what FR is doing isn't meaningful. i appreciate that, in the world of development hell where crunch time and unhealthy hours are super common, FR devs make an effort to consider work/life balance.
FR is only relevant in the petsite community niche, which is a dying genre. I'm not saying that you have to influence Todd Howard to be influential, but I just don't see how the site is influencing anyone besides petsite makers.
ayrt
genuinely not sure what you're trying to say here. yeah, it isn't some sweeping industry-wide reform/unionization effort but it's still a deviation from the norm that benefits workers. if a handful of devs involved are given a good work/life balance, is that not good enough? should a small dev team /not/ provide benefits to their employees because it won't impact the entire industry?
it's honestly just sounding like you're looking for a reason to justify disliking the team not crunching.
genuinely not sure what you're trying to say here. yeah, it isn't some sweeping industry-wide reform/unionization effort but it's still a deviation from the norm that benefits workers. if a handful of devs involved are given a good work/life balance, is that not good enough? should a small dev team /not/ provide benefits to their employees because it won't impact the entire industry?
it's honestly just sounding like you're looking for a reason to justify disliking the team not crunching.
honestly you are so right though.
i believe in gay rights (to have aesthetically pleasing neutral scenery).
i believe in gay rights (to have aesthetically pleasing neutral scenery).
DA
They're definitely being weird about this. The dev team is doing what it can to make a positive impact, that's a good thing regardless of the size of the impact in question.
They're definitely being weird about this. The dev team is doing what it can to make a positive impact, that's a good thing regardless of the size of the impact in question.
DA, but they tell everyone they won’t do crunch to explain why some features are taking longer or why they are choosing to focus on the refract over other things at the moment or why ancients are a thing.
NA: This. In a perfect world, there wouldn't be nagging for more update frequency - people would play the game that's there, and if there wasn't enough new content or updated features to keep them interested, they'd just stop playing. But we don't live in a perfect world, and even if the devs released the above statements specifically to nip at least some whining in the bud by leveraging guilt, I don't much blame them.
(And look, not to say feedback on games you like is necessarily bad - obviously hearing in a polite and constructive way which specific things their current players would appreciate can help guide decisions in ways that would be preferable to simply having those players leave. But 'you need to work longer/harder to give us new art/options' isn't particularly informative - of course they know most people would prefer to have more new stuff more often.)
NA: This. In a perfect world, there wouldn't be nagging for more update frequency - people would play the game that's there, and if there wasn't enough new content or updated features to keep them interested, they'd just stop playing. But we don't live in a perfect world, and even if the devs released the above statements specifically to nip at least some whining in the bud by leveraging guilt, I don't much blame them.
(And look, not to say feedback on games you like is necessarily bad - obviously hearing in a polite and constructive way which specific things their current players would appreciate can help guide decisions in ways that would be preferable to simply having those players leave. But 'you need to work longer/harder to give us new art/options' isn't particularly informative - of course they know most people would prefer to have more new stuff more often.)
A friend has recently gotten me involved with a game that has an extremely limited vault/inventory mechanic, and it is absolutely the thing that hurts my enjoyment of said game the most - every time I get a 'good' drop, it's not a very pleasant experience, because I'm constantly cramped on space, so if I can't consume the item immediately, or replace an objectively inferior item already equipped to a character, I have to stress over whether it's worth tying up a slot with until I can figure out what to do with it. I hesitate to play because I'm afraid of getting cool stuff and then having to deal with that headache.
FR's system is both thematic (greedy dragons hoarding ALL OF THE THINGS FOREVER yay!) and much more fun for me as a player.
FR's system is both thematic (greedy dragons hoarding ALL OF THE THINGS FOREVER yay!) and much more fun for me as a player.
Realm of the Mad God. Definitely not a petsite-type game, although there is a pet collection mechanic.
I have no horse/info in this Nearku race, but as for G1 Hell in general: it was a glorified stinkhole. I was friends with Marceline and their top-dog friends, and while Marceline is NOT Rhea in any shape or form, the structure of the friend group is similar to hers. Her friends are snarky and mean, and passive aggressive to people, and then backtrack and say you just misread their tone--while giggling in a different chat that they got caught.
This is just my personal anecdote with nothing to back up my claims, so take me with a healthy helping of salt. I don't want to out myself to them.
This is just my personal anecdote with nothing to back up my claims, so take me with a healthy helping of salt. I don't want to out myself to them.
Ah, yes. Because there's no such thing as a queer person wanting actual representation over the age of 30, right?
What a shitty take.
What a shitty take.
Honey, I'm almost 40 and I still am surprised when I see positive rep for asexual folks, because assholes try to say ace folks aren't part of the queer community.
I mean this kindly: Go talk to actual queer adults over the age of 30.
I mean this kindly: Go talk to actual queer adults over the age of 30.
Ffs, why are other queer people my age acting like this.
Most recent was this person who DM'ed me over a fandom interest, she seemed fairly pleasant and I was amused by how horny she was over a fictional character. Talking about wanting to suck her off, to be topped by her etc all the time.
Then she drops this bomb about "I'm ace, I don't really feel horny" and "Non ace people always feel the need to get laid whenever they see someone attractive, I don't feel that"
...LOL. And a day ago she admitted that she has no experience whatsoever. It really shows.
Most recent was this person who DM'ed me over a fandom interest, she seemed fairly pleasant and I was amused by how horny she was over a fictional character. Talking about wanting to suck her off, to be topped by her etc all the time.
Then she drops this bomb about "I'm ace, I don't really feel horny" and "Non ace people always feel the need to get laid whenever they see someone attractive, I don't feel that"
...LOL. And a day ago she admitted that she has no experience whatsoever. It really shows.
That's my feelings on this, too.
FR has a revolving door of new players coming in all the time. Having to repeat "we don't crunch" is necessary because 1. we get new players all the time who should know they don't crunch, 2. not everyone stalks the forums or hangs on every little word of an announcement and therefore can miss the fact they don't crunch, and 3. people are just plain capable of forgetting this fact.
Crunch is everywhere, and even though a lot of people HATE crunch, a lot of people (not necessarily the same people, but they can overlap) subconsciously expect it in ways they might not realize. Reminding people that they don't crunch is reasonable.
FR has a revolving door of new players coming in all the time. Having to repeat "we don't crunch" is necessary because 1. we get new players all the time who should know they don't crunch, 2. not everyone stalks the forums or hangs on every little word of an announcement and therefore can miss the fact they don't crunch, and 3. people are just plain capable of forgetting this fact.
Crunch is everywhere, and even though a lot of people HATE crunch, a lot of people (not necessarily the same people, but they can overlap) subconsciously expect it in ways they might not realize. Reminding people that they don't crunch is reasonable.
Will have a new post up either tonight or tomorrow. Until then, feel free to toss FR related memes/ideas/jokes etc at me to use on the next post.
lmao I love that chaotic ass game
I'm sixty, but I can be just as obnoxious as a teen with the right motivation...
^(different anon than the one you replied to)
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