SAILERIUS'S PROFILE

It took me about fifty hours across two weeks to make the final cutscene of Vacant Sky Act II (most of the time spent was playtesting dialogue to see if it was timed appropriately to ensure the average player would get to certain lines of dialogue during certain points in the song), and it's only about seven minutes long. It's really depressing how disproportionate the amount of work a cutscene is to make versus how much mileage you get out of it.

Hell, I'd extend that further and say that if you're not engaged with a game in 20 minutes, the game sucks. The fastest way to identify an incompetent developer is when they belt out the "it gets better" line.

I love when apologists for terrible games get defensive about it, too, blaming the player for being impatient instead of the game for having wretched pacing.

When I review games, I force myself to sit through at least 2 hours no matter how bad it is, but if I haven't committed to doing a review, I'll usually drop a game in 20 minutes if it's putting me to sleep.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/546066/googles-ai-masters-the-game-of-go-a-decade-earlier-than-expected/

Go, long a game that moderately skilled human players could crush AIs at, has been mastered by DeepMind, a generation sooner than expected. AI is getting crazy advanced. Here's a really interesting quote from the player who lost to it:

author=Fan Hui
In China, Go is not just a game. It is also a mirror on life. We say if you have a problem with your game, maybe you also have a problem in life.

Losing was very hard. Before I played with AlphaGo, I thought I would win. After the first game I changed my strategy and fought more, but I lost. The problem is humans sometimes make very big mistakes, because we are human. Sometimes we are tired, sometimes we so want to win the game, we have this pressure. The programme is not like this. It’s very strong and stable, it seems like a wall. For me this is a big difference. I know AlphaGo is a computer, but if no one told me, maybe I would think the player was a little strange, but a very strong player, a real person.

Of course, when I lost the game I was not happy, but all professionals will lose many games. So I lose, I study the game, and maybe I change my game. I think it’s a good thing for the future.

It wasn't a bad movie, don't get me wrong, but I feel cheated that I paid money to watch a movie that I've already seen before. There wasn't a single surprise in the entire movie. At its core, all I expect out of Star Wars, or a scifi movie in general, is to see some cool, imaginative, otherworldly setpieces, but Force Awakens didn't even have that. Reskinned Tatooine, reskinned Empire, reskinned Vader, reskinned Hoth, reskinned Death Star.

Even the prequel movies had something new. It was an adventure story that was unadventurous, the only unforgivable sin it could have committed.

I wish it had been more than a soulless remake of A New Hope. :( I kept waiting for something new, exciting, or surprising to happen but it never did.