As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

PC Games - Afterparty & Quest for Conquest out today!

19394969899101

Posts

  • DelduwathDelduwath Registered User regular
    Came across this, thought it was interesting:
    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3kxed3/the-ambitious-future-of-dead-cells-is-ditching-co-ops-for-capitalism

    TL;DR: Critically-acclaimed and fan-beloved roguesoulsvanialike Dead Cells is made by a company called Motion Twin, which functions as a co-op: all the employees are paid the same, decisions are debated and made collectively, etc. Motion Twin does not want to work on Dead Cells forever (indeed, didn't even plan to work on it for this long), but some of the devs do, and fans want that as well. So, a new company, Evil Empire, has been made by a couple of folks who split off from Motion Twin; this company will inherit Dead Cells, and will operate according to standard capitalist practices.

    This is interesting to me because Motion Twin was kind of notable in the games industry for operating as a co-op; it's interesting to now see them basically say "maintaining and adding continued content to a game is not compatible with a co-op structure". Apparently Motion Twin has hovered around the size of 8-10 employees, because their process couldn't accommodate more; Evil Empire wants to grow to a larger size and take on larger amounts of work, and also wants to build up some reserve funds to emergencies/dry spells (at Motion Twin, 95% of the profits go directly to the employees).

    I can't say I'm an ardent capitalism fanboy - it's hard to look at the state of the world (by which I mean the people living on this planet) and the state of the world (by which I mean this planet) and not think "well... maybe we should take a second look at this capitalism thing" - but at the same time the environment at Motion Twin sounds insanely stressful to me. Having to defend your intents and actions to 9 other people on a regular basis, even if those people are your pals, sounds like way more emotional work than I can handle. Granted, I don't know if that's worse than my current 9-to-6-soul-crushing-grind that's destroying my enthusiasm for my field and I think my health. I'm glad that someone's out there trying these alternate systems, though; I wish more companies were willing to explore more. Maybe then someone would be able to find some alternative that would work for me.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    That's conflating a flat payment structure with a flat management structure, when they're two different things.

    Even while paying everyone equally, they could have still picked a producer to guide the vision and have final say on things.

  • JacobkoshJacobkosh Gamble a stamp. I can show you how to be a real man!Moderator mod
    More equitable revenue sharing within organizations, a flatter pay hierarchy, is basically an untrammeled good and it kind of sucks that people keep wanting to shackle it to a bunch of other experiments that are less obviously good (or at least less obviously good fits for the kind of thing the organization is doing). I feel like you ought to be able to have a business where the gap between the highest- and lowest-paid workers is much smaller without turning it into "show of hands, are we okay with letting Dave take a pee break."

    rRwz9.gif
  • captainkcaptaink TexasRegistered User regular
    That's conflating a flat payment structure with a flat management structure, when they're two different things.

    Even while paying everyone equally, they could have still picked a producer to guide the vision and have final say on things.

    Yeah. A team of 10 people needs someone in a leadership position. If only to break ties or just decide what stuff comes up for group discussion/vote. Having to get everyone's buy-in on everything would be tiring.

  • KadithKadith Registered User regular
    that is not "the co-op" model and is in fact a fairly strange model that definitely can't scale

    zkHcp.jpg
  • DelduwathDelduwath Registered User regular
    To be fair, I'm sure the article is summarizing and skipping over the fine details of Motion Twin's deal, and I am further summarizing and skipping over the fine details of the article. I don't want to give the wrong impression of how Motion Twin's thing fully works, because really I don't know.
    That's conflating a flat payment structure with a flat management structure, when they're two different things.

    Even while paying everyone equally, they could have still picked a producer to guide the vision and have final say on things.
    In this scenario, it sounds like the producer would have more responsibility - and potentially more work - than everyone else, while not being paid for that extra burden (assuming equal pay for everyone). Is that just how that goes, and the person taking the role needs to know what they're getting into?

  • BroloBrolo Broseidon Lord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
    edited October 2019


    ...aaaaaaaand it's gone again

    I actually wonder if 2021 will be canceled too? Like ps5/scorpio aren't going to have decent install bases in time for the usual october/november launch dates

    man I want a decent basketball game that isn't riddled with gambling microtransactions or just... non-existent


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPB_me25O94
    back to regular human basketball for me

    Brolo on
  • KadithKadith Registered User regular
    more equitable pay structures is the way to go and removing share holders and owners whose only stake is profits is a good thing

    co-ops need to be employee/member owned

    they need bylaws which indicate what decisions are democratic and everything else is decided by operational need

    since operation is the concern not profits, this means you have more revenue to spend on things like benefits and improving your employee's quality of life outside of pay

    you definitely need an organizational structure and pay structure to be competitive and scalable

    as someone who works for a co-op, we pay typically higher than local market rates, and we focus on delivering services to the community

    and main issues are where capitalism culture interferes with the principles of serving our community/employees.

    saying everyone gets paid equally and every thing has to be voted on sounds more like a weird cult

    zkHcp.jpg
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    edited October 2019
    Delduwath wrote: »
    To be fair, I'm sure the article is summarizing and skipping over the fine details of Motion Twin's deal, and I am further summarizing and skipping over the fine details of the article. I don't want to give the wrong impression of how Motion Twin's thing fully works, because really I don't know.
    That's conflating a flat payment structure with a flat management structure, when they're two different things.

    Even while paying everyone equally, they could have still picked a producer to guide the vision and have final say on things.
    In this scenario, it sounds like the producer would have more responsibility - and potentially more work - than everyone else, while not being paid for that extra burden (assuming equal pay for everyone). Is that just how that goes, and the person taking the role needs to know what they're getting into?

    Well, I guess that depends on whether or not you think management is more burdensome than a non-management position.

    But more to the point, it's... dubious to me that there can ever truly be a way of measuring, say, a programmers workload vs an artists workload vs a music/sound engineers workload vs a producers workload to safely assume that "Everyone is doing an exactly equal amount of work and that justifies everyone getting paid exactly equally." At some point if you want a truly flat payment structure, you have to break away from the idea of quantifying the workload in terms of "how much" the individual is doing, and instead look at the greater whole and just make sure everyone is aware of what is expected of them and does it, even if that means more work for some than others.

    Undead Scottsman on
  • Knight_Knight_ Dead Dead Dead Registered User regular
    what was in all the now-deleted tweets on this page?

    aeNqQM9.jpg
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Knight_ wrote: »
    what was in all the now-deleted tweets on this page?

    Can you be more specific? Which post(s) are you referring to?

  • BroloBrolo Broseidon Lord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
    edited October 2019
    i can only see three tweets and they're all visible to me

    two from nibel (about CoD selling well, it made more money than the Joker movie)

    and then one about how NBA Live 2020 has been canceled

    Brolo on
  • PoorochondriacPoorochondriac Ah, man Ah, jeezRegistered User regular
    Delduwath wrote: »
    To be fair, I'm sure the article is summarizing and skipping over the fine details of Motion Twin's deal, and I am further summarizing and skipping over the fine details of the article. I don't want to give the wrong impression of how Motion Twin's thing fully works, because really I don't know.
    That's conflating a flat payment structure with a flat management structure, when they're two different things.

    Even while paying everyone equally, they could have still picked a producer to guide the vision and have final say on things.
    In this scenario, it sounds like the producer would have more responsibility - and potentially more work - than everyone else, while not being paid for that extra burden (assuming equal pay for everyone). Is that just how that goes, and the person taking the role needs to know what they're getting into?

    Even if a producer had more responsibility/workload (an assumption I'm not totally sure I'm on board with, but I can roll with it in this hypothetical), they also have more control over the project. "Financial" is not the only form of compensation that has value; "greater ability to affect change" has value.

    The idea that the ONLY reward work can have is capital is, well, capitalist. It tends to flatten out and marginalize non-material benefits.

  • DelduwathDelduwath Registered User regular
    But more to the point, it's... dubious to me that there can ever truly be a way of measuring, say, a programmers workload vs an artists workload vs a music/sound engineers workload vs a producers workload to safely assume that "Everyone is doing an exactly equal amount of work and that justifies everyone getting paid exactly equally." At some point if you want a truly flat payment structure, you have to break away from the idea of quantifying the workload in terms of "how much" the individual is doing, and instead look at the greater whole and just make sure everyone is aware of what is expected of them and does it, even if that means more work for some than others.
    Well, that is for 100% sure. Even among programmers: a lot of my teammates just type in commit messages like "Fixed email problem", and write pull request summaries that are just about as descriptive. I write commit messages that actually contain details, and pull request summaries that explain what problem is being solved by the PR and how. I'm sure my code output is lower, because time spent writing English is time not spent writing code. On the other hand, other devs don't need to spend time inducting themselves into the mysteries of all the code that surrounds the code I'm updating, and - in the future - can gain some insight into why a change was made thanks to my commit messages. How do you evaluate these two things against each other?

    I also pay attention to the way my co-workers discuss work issues, and ride in to defuse dumb and unnecessary tension (because apparently very intelligent people are incapable of noticing that they are vocalizing only maybe 40% of what is in their heads, and assume that everything else is obvious and implied and that everyone is working from the same base principles, which is absolutely never ever the case); how does that factor into my job description, and how do we weight that against the guy who knocked out three feature requests in the time it took me to get two people to understand each other?

    Basically post-scarcity fully-automated utopia can't come soon enough.

  • DelduwathDelduwath Registered User regular
    Delduwath wrote: »
    To be fair, I'm sure the article is summarizing and skipping over the fine details of Motion Twin's deal, and I am further summarizing and skipping over the fine details of the article. I don't want to give the wrong impression of how Motion Twin's thing fully works, because really I don't know.
    That's conflating a flat payment structure with a flat management structure, when they're two different things.

    Even while paying everyone equally, they could have still picked a producer to guide the vision and have final say on things.
    In this scenario, it sounds like the producer would have more responsibility - and potentially more work - than everyone else, while not being paid for that extra burden (assuming equal pay for everyone). Is that just how that goes, and the person taking the role needs to know what they're getting into?

    Even if a producer had more responsibility/workload (an assumption I'm not totally sure I'm on board with, but I can roll with it in this hypothetical), they also have more control over the project. "Financial" is not the only form of compensation that has value; "greater ability to affect change" has value.

    The idea that the ONLY reward work can have is capital is, well, capitalist. It tends to flatten out and marginalize non-material benefits.
    Hey, good points! I think it's obvious that tediously-capitalist work structures are all I've ever worked in, and lived in, and I haven't read enough about alternatives.

    As for responsibility, well. I guess my personality is revealed by the fact that I consider responsibility to be tremendously stressful; I suppose you're right that other folks might have a different outlook.

  • Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-Fed Registered User regular
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    Mvrck wrote: »
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    SanderJK wrote: »
    Isn't the graveyard game very grindy? And the dev feels like grinding builds character or something.

    It didn't feel grindy to me, just that there's tons of stuff to do and you really have to figure out what's necessary and what's not. You can also make zombies to handle stuff you feel you'll always need, like crops or wood or what not.

    Absolutely my game of the decade tho.

    Did they ever open up the town? Or is that area still a "joke"? That was some real fucking bullshit at launch.

    No. I have no idea why people expected it to be available. There's plenty to do in the game as is.

    Because there's a questline that can take dozens of hours to grind through, that tells you outright, "Do this to get into town"

    I largely enjoyed my time with the game, but there was definitely some "Point and laugh at the audience for believing we'd give them what we said we'd give them" that left a bad taste in my mouth

    I never saw any of that myself. I know a lot of the quests reference the Ship of the Dead that was stuck in the town harbour but I never expected or wanted to get there.

  • PoorochondriacPoorochondriac Ah, man Ah, jeezRegistered User regular
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    Mvrck wrote: »
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    SanderJK wrote: »
    Isn't the graveyard game very grindy? And the dev feels like grinding builds character or something.

    It didn't feel grindy to me, just that there's tons of stuff to do and you really have to figure out what's necessary and what's not. You can also make zombies to handle stuff you feel you'll always need, like crops or wood or what not.

    Absolutely my game of the decade tho.

    Did they ever open up the town? Or is that area still a "joke"? That was some real fucking bullshit at launch.

    No. I have no idea why people expected it to be available. There's plenty to do in the game as is.

    Because there's a questline that can take dozens of hours to grind through, that tells you outright, "Do this to get into town"

    I largely enjoyed my time with the game, but there was definitely some "Point and laugh at the audience for believing we'd give them what we said we'd give them" that left a bad taste in my mouth

    I never saw any of that myself. I know a lot of the quests reference the Ship of the Dead that was stuck in the town harbour but I never expected or wanted to get there.

    I just realized that we may have, functionally, played different games

    I played close to launch, and there weren't zombies or really anything to automate. The whole thing was rather punishing. A lot of stuff might've changed in between when I played and when you did.

  • Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-Fed Registered User regular
    edited October 2019
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    Mvrck wrote: »
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    SanderJK wrote: »
    Isn't the graveyard game very grindy? And the dev feels like grinding builds character or something.

    It didn't feel grindy to me, just that there's tons of stuff to do and you really have to figure out what's necessary and what's not. You can also make zombies to handle stuff you feel you'll always need, like crops or wood or what not.

    Absolutely my game of the decade tho.

    Did they ever open up the town? Or is that area still a "joke"? That was some real fucking bullshit at launch.

    No. I have no idea why people expected it to be available. There's plenty to do in the game as is.

    Because there's a questline that can take dozens of hours to grind through, that tells you outright, "Do this to get into town"

    I largely enjoyed my time with the game, but there was definitely some "Point and laugh at the audience for believing we'd give them what we said we'd give them" that left a bad taste in my mouth

    I never saw any of that myself. I know a lot of the quests reference the Ship of the Dead that was stuck in the town harbour but I never expected or wanted to get there.

    I just realized that we may have, functionally, played different games

    I played close to launch, and there weren't zombies or really anything to automate. The whole thing was rather punishing. A lot of stuff might've changed in between when I played and when you did.

    Oh I played at launch too. I just really liked the game. I love quests that take a long time to get done tho. I was done before the zombies were added so I'm not sure how much they even automate. But I believe you can build them and replace their organs so they get better and better.

    Magic Pink on
  • HobnailHobnail Registered User regular
    What if we have full automation and scarcity best of both worlds kind of thing

    Broke as fuck in the style of the times. Gratitude is all that can return on your generosity.

    https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
  • Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-Fed Registered User regular
    edited October 2019
    Kamiro wrote: »
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    Mvrck wrote: »
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    SanderJK wrote: »
    Isn't the graveyard game very grindy? And the dev feels like grinding builds character or something.

    It didn't feel grindy to me, just that there's tons of stuff to do and you really have to figure out what's necessary and what's not. You can also make zombies to handle stuff you feel you'll always need, like crops or wood or what not.

    Absolutely my game of the decade tho.

    Did they ever open up the town? Or is that area still a "joke"? That was some real fucking bullshit at launch.

    No. I have no idea why people expected it to be available. There's plenty to do in the game as is.

    Because there's a questline that can take dozens of hours to grind through, that tells you outright, "Do this to get into town"

    I largely enjoyed my time with the game, but there was definitely some "Point and laugh at the audience for believing we'd give them what we said we'd give them" that left a bad taste in my mouth

    I never saw any of that myself. I know a lot of the quests reference the Ship of the Dead that was stuck in the town harbour but I never expected or wanted to get there.

    I just realized that we may have, functionally, played different games

    I played close to launch, and there weren't zombies or really anything to automate. The whole thing was rather punishing. A lot of stuff might've changed in between when I played and when you did.

    Oh I played at launch too. I just really liked the game. I love quests that take a long time to get done tho.

    I think I stopped near the end where you need an absurd amount of gold for a quest

    I do agree money was crazy hard to get. It was the one thing I had to force myself to keep going after. I thought alchemy was needlessly complex as well but I hear they re-balanced that.

    Magic Pink on
  • PhillisherePhillishere Registered User regular
    What if we have full automation and scarcity best of both worlds kind of thing

    William Gibson could feel really proud of himself for predicting good.

  • ShortyShorty touching the meat Intergalactic Cool CourtRegistered User regular
    What if we have full automation and scarcity best of both worlds kind of thing

    lol if you think post-scarcity tech won't be hoarded and metered so that some people can be rich and some can't

  • DepressperadoDepressperado I just wanted to see you laughing in the pizza rainRegistered User regular
    just need one guy with a stolen Industrial Replicator to start making more of them

    or it gets distributed after Class War 3 ends with the overthrow of the NeoMonarchy for the third time.

  • BroloBrolo Broseidon Lord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
    just need one guy with a stolen Industrial Replicator to start making more of them

    or it gets distributed after Class War 3 ends with the overthrow of the NeoMonarchy for the third time.

    https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html

  • Crippl3Crippl3 oh noRegistered User regular
    Hey, this is technically a PC game now so I can post it.
    Death Stranding's 7-and-a-half-minute launch trailer: (There's probably a bunch of spoilers in here, but it's a Kojima trailer, so it will either be the entire story OR be a complete fakeout and none of this is important)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-hyFSivSmw

  • Knight_Knight_ Dead Dead Dead Registered User regular
    edited October 2019
    Brolo wrote: »
    i can only see three tweets and they're all visible to me

    two from nibel (about CoD selling well, it made more money than the Joker movie)

    and then one about how NBA Live 2020 has been canceled

    my bad they're back now, must have just been something on my end. sorry.

    edit: fantastic totp, great job me

    Knight_ on
    aeNqQM9.jpg
  • DelduwathDelduwath Registered User regular
    What if we have full automation and scarcity best of both worlds kind of thing
    Full automation - but no resources to implement it so it actually has no impact.

  • Munkus BeaverMunkus Beaver You don't have to attend every argument you are invited to. Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    edited October 2019
    Uriel wrote: »
    Barf

    Is any game in history less deserving of such success?

    Duke Nukem Forever.

    Munkus Beaver on
    Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
  • DepressperadoDepressperado I just wanted to see you laughing in the pizza rainRegistered User regular
    yeah I came in here to say, I got a new steam when I restarted my computer and I don't know how I feel about it

  • el_vicioel_vicio Registered User regular
    It's unfortunate that they don't allow users to drag around the boxes of the new layout - I don't like the "social" aspect, the activity feed, being front and center, and DLC, achievements etc moved to the side. The mobile-style tile view I don't care for, either, but it doesn't really impact usability, so whatever.

    And I'd like to get back the option to disable the mini icons next to games entries in the list, because scrolling down is chugging really hard - it's why I had them turned off in the old version.

    ouxsemmi8rm9.png

  • WiseManTobesWiseManTobes Registered User regular
    el_vicio wrote: »
    It's unfortunate that they don't allow users to drag around the boxes of the new layout - I don't like the "social" aspect, the activity feed, being front and center, and DLC, achievements etc moved to the side. The mobile-style tile view I don't care for, either, but it doesn't really impact usability, so whatever.

    And I'd like to get back the option to disable the mini icons next to games entries in the list, because scrolling down is chugging really hard - it's why I had them turned off in the old version.

    I havent even seen new steam and dreading the icons already because my library was already huge and has to scroll forever.

    Steam! Battlenet:Wisemantobes#1508
  • KwoaruKwoaru Confident Smirk Flawless Golden PecsRegistered User regular
    edited October 2019
    I think I'm gonna get satisfactory

    I think what my life needs right now is building and organizing machines and conveyor belts

    Can you reposition the main starting base though? I want to be able to eventually put it on a perfectly level platform and not gross uneven ground

    Kwoaru on
    2x39jD4.jpg
  • MaddocMaddoc I'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother? Registered User regular
    You can break it down, just make sure you empty out the built in storage box beforehand because it'll try dumping all that stuff into your inventory when you do

  • KwoaruKwoaru Confident Smirk Flawless Golden PecsRegistered User regular
    Perfect

    2x39jD4.jpg
  • PeewiPeewi Registered User regular
    el_vicio wrote: »
    It's unfortunate that they don't allow users to drag around the boxes of the new layout - I don't like the "social" aspect, the activity feed, being front and center, and DLC, achievements etc moved to the side. The mobile-style tile view I don't care for, either, but it doesn't really impact usability, so whatever.

    And I'd like to get back the option to disable the mini icons next to games entries in the list, because scrolling down is chugging really hard - it's why I had them turned off in the old version.

    I havent even seen new steam and dreading the icons already because my library was already huge and has to scroll forever.

    I have a 700+ library and the only things I'm seeing is that I can see the icons load in if I scroll really fast and that it's a little bit choppy if I drag the scroll bar to the other end.

  • Crippl3Crippl3 oh noRegistered User regular
    edited October 2019


    (Dan Stapleton is the executive reviews editor for IGN)
    yuck

    Crippl3 on
  • CouscousCouscous Registered User regular
    Uriel wrote: »
    Barf

    Is any game in history less deserving of such success?

    Postal 2?

  • GvzbgulGvzbgul Registered User regular
    :o

  • LalaboxLalabox Registered User regular
    dang i can't wait to play Afterparty

This discussion has been closed.