MAX MCGEE'S PROFILE

First note: if this would be better served as an article, let me know immediately and I will port it to that format. It's a bit of an 'op ed' piece, but I do want to foment discussion.

The point of this thread is to posit a single observation for discussion. It's kind of a simple one, but I think it's really important, and hopefully will provide a basis for some unique insight and discussion.

The truth is...we amateur game developers have a completely different argot for talking about commercial video games than we do for talking about our own amateur games.

I've come to this realization gradually over time, watching LTs and reviews and the feedback and debate and overall cultural surrounding them, that amateur game designers and reviewers hold amateur games to vastly different standards than they do commercial games.

If you're thinking something along the lines of "duh", then I need to add that I think the standards that amateur games are held to are HARSHER.

There is a very extreme attitude surrounding amateur games like those produced by our community that 'The Customer Is Always Right' and that, by extension, the designer is always wrong. Very, very rarely is the possibility discussed that a PLAYER might be playing such a game wrong. For a game designer to suggest such a thing, especially of their own game, is viewed as the height of "arrogance" or "ego", the two things that the amateur game design community hates the most. When a chest is missed, when a puzzle can't be solved, when a battle results in a game over, always, always, always the hue and cry is 'BAD GAME DESIGN!' and never..."player, you're doing it wrong!".

Of course, if you look at the way we talk about game design in PROFESSIONAL games, our vocabulary and attitude is very different. Admittedly, as seasoned game designers we are much more likely to point out the design flaws of any instance of the Persona or Dragon Quest series than the average joe RPG fan. But still, the respect, the benefit of the doubtwhich we afford commercial games is far greater than that which we afford each other's creations. If I mention that I had trouble with 'Mechanic X' in 'Final Fantasy Game Y' the response is just as likely to be: "You suck at Final Fantasy, bro." Can't beat Sephiroth? Try playing better.

Imagine if I was trying to explain being unable to get past a boss battle in Eternal Paradise, on the other hand. Maybe I made an LT of it and posted it on RMN? I very much doubt that anyone would come back with "you suck at Eternal Paradise"...not even Ephiam. Instead, the consensus would most likely be: game's too hard, bro! Tone it down!

Why does this phenomenon exist? Here's my theory.

Amateur games are a dime a dozen. We're drowning in them. They're not just cheap, they're free. They're not just plentiful, they're overcrowding the internet. And as our resident asspear is fond of saying: familiarity breeds contempt. Few of us give even the best looking RMN games the slightest fraction of the benefit of the doubt that we'd give the shittiest commercial game...except, of course, for the RMN games made by our close personal friends...but that's another story entirely, the story of RM cliques, and I'm not going there.

Of course, there's more to it than that. Our aim when LTing an RM game is different than our aim when playing Final Fantasy XXIV. We are not, fully, in the 'player mindset'...we are LOOKING specifically for something to complain about.

Tautology disclaimer time:

Obviously, neither of these extremes are correct. It's not true that a perception exists that it's 'always the designer's fault' in amateur games or that it's 'always the player's fault' in commercial games or vice versa. It's not all or nothing either way, and I'm not trying to say that. I'm not positing that we all think all commercial games are flawless or that players of RM games can't make mistakes. Nor am I advocating a system where we assume that the creator is always right/the audience is always wrong. I would hope that's obvious.

But there are strong, conflicting biases in how we evaluate these games, based in part on the arbitrary 'professional' and 'RM' flags we assign to things. (Games like Hero's Realm that are 'community canon', BTW, get assigned the 'professional' mental flag often and are more commonly evaluated on that basis than any other RM games.)

Now that I work as a professional instead of an amateur in the game design business--the kind that doesn't involve pixels, that is, haters rest assured that video game design as a career is probably never going to happen for me--I feel more qualified than ever to say that the distinction between 'AMATEUR' and 'PROFESSIONAL' games is almost completely aribtrary. So I view these divergent standards toward them as a problem.

Because sometimes even in 'amateur games' IT IS THE PLAYER'S FAULT...and I'm sure that many a developer has made wholly unnecessary and maybe even destructive changes to their game because of our failure to realize this. Because of the communal, attitudinal insistence that 'the customer is always right'.

To support my point...has anyone ever played the classic SNES platformer 'Out Of This World'? Can you imagine if that had been released as an RM game, how immense the pressure would have been to make the (awesome) introductory sequence much, much easier?

Discuss. Not just the silly off the cuff Out Of This World example, hopefully, but the whole ball of wax.

Coming next time on 'Max McGee Stirs Shit Up...':
Mapping doesn't actually matter all that much, you guys, chill out about it.

It's come to my attention recently that if a developer ragequits RMN, all of the games they developed get anti-climbing painted.

If a game has two or more (main) developers, and one of them ragequits...what happens to the game? Does it always get removed? Never get removed? Does it get removed only if they were the initial creator of the game page?

This is probably an edge case...but it could happen.

Hi, so you all know me at this point I think, so I won't bother with introductions, but if for some reason you need my credentials, yeah, just click my name and browse the five million or so game profiles I have on this site.

Anyway, I am trying to finish my old rm2k3 horror adventure game Backstage 2 and I am looking for someone who is really reasonably good with 2k3 eventing and graphical user interface type stuff (back in the olden days, we would call what I am looking for a 'CMS' which stood for Custom Menu System) to help me with that game's menu.

The game has a temporary menu which is functional, i.e. it works, but it's pretty ugly and a bit clunky. It uses entirely Message, Show Choice, and Conditional Branch, to be honest, because I have always been afraid of/not well suited to picture based menu systems using the show picture command.

I'd really like somebody who's good at this kind of stuff to help me transform my temporary menu into something a bit more aesthetically pleasing and convenient for the user. It doesn't need to be 'fancy' by any means (no matter what it will be better than the text based menu), and I'd prefer something clean and simple and lag-free to anything with elaborate and fancy graphical effects.

This is definitely a 'catch a fish', not a 'teach a man to fish' request. I'm not looking for someone to teach me this stuff or for a tutorial--Backstage 2 is very probably my last game, and even if it wasn't I've almost entirely moved on to VX at this point; ongoing computer issues notwithstanding, it's scripting I should be learning.

Anyway, this is a reasonably medium-to-long-term request, so if I don't get a lot of (or any) responses right away, I won't get discouraged. I'll just keep bumping this topic periodically over time, every few weeks or so. Worst comes to worst if I'm on the cusp of finishing the game and this is the only thing holding me back, I'll just release it with the cruddy text based menu. I can live with that even if it wouldn't be ideal.

So, request complete. Compensation = credit in a project over five years in development, and I will owe you a favor. (If you do a really good job I will pay you $5.00 US Cash Money, if you send me a self addressed stamped envelope. Fuck Paypal.)

I'll remember to include the magic word: please. And say also:

Thank you!
-Max McGee

If you were to submit a project for which screenshots would be completely meaningless (such as, for instance, a piece of Interactive Fiction (or if you prefer, a text adventure)), do you still have to submit three/any screenshots? Or could a special arrangement be worked out with staff? Especially since "you" in this case is really "me" and there is demonstrable proof apart from screenshots of the likelihood that any project I submit is an actual game and not, say, a virus.

Taking screenshots of plain text seems absurd, and I'd rather not have to do anything ridiculous and silly that I don't have to do. The reason this isn't just a PM is because I figured this was a valid question that could be relevant to other people in the coming year.

tl;dr do games without graphics need screenshots?

Sorry if this has been asked elsewhere.

Technical question. Goes to RPG making (what version of Yanfly I should use essentially) though.

My machine is a Gateway laptop that I bought in late 2009, so it is a little over a year old. It is running Windows 7. It is relatively healthy for its age, I think. In general, it's not running great, but not terrible. In terms of its specs, it is nothing amazing, but I don't think it's terrible, either. Here are the specifics:

* 2.10 Ghz Dual-Core Processor
* 4.00 GB RAM (3.75 GB Usable)
* ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics Card (I don't think this is very good for gaming, but then again, VX is not Crysis)
* I honestly don't know what other specs might be relevant, or I'd list them.

When I run the demo of Yanfly Engine Melody (1.00m) just now the lag is absolutely hellacious. Like, unplayable. I was kind of unsurprised because that is pushing an AWFUL lot of scripts through VX, all of them with graphical components. However, even when I was making my own test game with bits and pieces of BEM/YEM back in the middle of last year, the lag was still pretty atrocious even with only a few of the scripts running. I'm trying to figure out what is going on here. Is this my computer? If so, is it a hardware or software problem? Is the fault with RMVX? Or is YEM just really lag prone? I'm going to try rebooting, naturally, but I don't expect I'll see a significant performance increase: I rarely do, just from restarting.

Is this normal? Has anyone else experienced problems like this? For anyone who has YEM running lag free, how good is your computer? I don't think my middle of the road computer should be having this much trouble with what amounts to something about as resource intensive as Super Nintendo or PS1 game...should it?

Thanks.