Esoteric Update #241 - Stonks Go Up, Stonks Go Down
Alright, this time, the update is a day early, and that's because I'm at the doctor's tomorrow and then at work for three more days. Still, nothing to share in terms of lore, as I just don't have the time or energy to deal with that.
So, what's on today's menu? A few things, big or small, and I'll be going over them in no particular order.
Firstly, let's talk about Karma and probability. It's an established bit of the lore that Karma can alter things in your favour. I've decided to make this more concrete. A random chance can now be marked as either "good" or "bad" for the PC, and accordingly, it will be modified by Karma in two different ways. Firstly, your current fluid Karma always affects random chances, similarly (actually uses part of the same code) as it affects skills though the "luck" modified. However, additionally, if you are using bursts of Karma (the clovers below your choice menu, basically), you will be able to use them to affect random chance, too. When active, they not only influence skill but also temporarily affect all probability rolls in your favour. This will pay dividends, design-wise, the more interactions we have.
Secondly, we finished the vending machine for the moment. As we've been nudged to do last week, we've included the possibility of items getting stuck in the machine. This leads to a little bit of expression for the player. Let us know if you want some other options to be added here. (And yes, this does use the system described above, where good Karma will save you from any snack-stuckage.)
Thirdly, back when I showed off how the bank works, I mentioned we wanted to do a few more things with it. Well, for some of that, I needed a working simulation of a stock market. Unfortunately, things went badly at first, as I started with realistic models that just didn't work for the purposes of the game. See, the issue with realistic models is that they also include possibilities of the market collapsing in various ways, and for a video game, I needed something that looked right but didn't necessarily have the full range of possibilities. Thus, I moved away from those models and set out to design my own that would have the desired properties but also held some stability for gameplay. What I came up with was a Higher Order Markov Chain based on a Beta distribution (some more details are on my Discord if you want to know) that gives good results in testing. This is how it behaves for four subsequent runs, each over the span of 1000 days:
And finally, we will go a bit towards research and design. We're currently trying to make right with the park location and make it everything it was supposed to be way back when we first came up with it... and to do this, we've been doing a lot of research on plants (mainly trees and flowers) and animals (mainly birds). Yeah, we're researching plants and animals; the places development takes you can be quite strange. Anyway, this is related to plot/lore implications and... well... we hope it will be quite a bit more interesting than it might seem at first.
Partially, though, this research will be swung towards modular narration to build universal, self-adjusting descriptions. These descriptions then become reusable and spread to other parts of the game. It just so happens a lot of what we have in the park happens to be about trees and flowers.
We've also continued with the usual improvements to CSS and minor code fixes that come up here and there.
Anyway, I'm still in a bad position with my usual work, so we'll try to do what we can, but the next significant changes might need a while. I might want to find something smaller to work on because, right now, that would fit my limited free time a lot better.
We do have some food and drink things on the roster.
Honestly, though, at this moment, the biggest issue we're facing is just the lack of man-hours dedicated to writing and data input to keep up with our backlog.
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In terms of finding something smaller to work on because of limited free time, I've sometimes wondered if you should do some game jams, to get a feel for building smaller, faster-to-prototype games. These never-ending mega game projects are great for students, but aren't great for people with jobs unless you happen to really like that sort of thing. Personally, I think if you have a challenging, interesting career, then your job usually satisfies your desire for deep projects, and then your free time ends up focusing on less intense aspects of your hobby.
I don't like game jams. Participated in a few and I consider every moment I spent on them an absolute waste of my time.
My job isn't expressive or interesting, it's just what I do to, primarily, be able to cover my medical bills, there's not much to it. I don't hate it, it's just how it is. Getting swamped with work because I took almost 3 months off on a position that isn't exactly easy to replace just happens.
In what sense did you find game jams to be a waste of time? I've found them to be useful to prototype new game ideas and to try out new frameworks. When I've game jammed on a team with others, I've often learnt new approaches to making games from people with different sets of expertise from me. And there's also a social aspect of game jamming where you get to be exposed to how other game makers and see all their weird creative processes and ideas. I've also found game jams useful for getting more time in certain parts of the game development process that I usually don't reach. In making actual shipped games, the most important stuff is often at the end--refining the gameplay mechanics and narrative to make them more fun, controlling scope so that things can ship, game testing with real users, etc. With game jams, I can actually spend some time improving my skills in these areas because I actually ship a game at the end. I am, admittedly, pretty good at fast coding and am pretty experienced with game jamming, so I'm more able to shape my game jam experiences to what I want.
I'm a bit saddened to hear about your job. You seem pretty talented. I'm not sure why you aren't working a more challenging job in Silicon Valley where you get to work on interesting things with interesting people. Or why you aren't slumming it in academia where you can just spend your time pursuing your own research directions. I know you think of yourself as the smartest person in the room. And though that may be true, that doesn't mean you can't have peers from whom you can learn things and who can challenge you.
Well, there's a lot to unpack here, but let me try.
"In what sense did you find game jams to be a waste of time? I've found them to be useful to prototype new game ideas and to try out new frameworks."
If I want to try something out, I'll try something out; I don't need a game jam to artificially drum my interest in it.
"When I've game jammed on a team with others, I've often learnt new approaches to making games from people with different sets of expertise from me. And there's also a social aspect of game jamming where you get to be exposed to how other game makers and see all their weird creative processes and ideas."
Fair! But again, can explore on my own, and I much prefer to expose myself to the expertise of others in different ways. It's not much of a draw for me. If that game jams for you, great, but I prefer to do these things while not under stress and not while trying to work out other people. Additionally, in terms of working on mature content games, the only thing I got out of trying to, you know, socialise with other people who make them, I guess, was years of harassment, abuse, people creeping on me and several stalkers. And I very much don't want to repeat that.
"I've also found game jams useful for getting more time in certain parts of the game development process that I usually don't reach. In making actual shipped games, the most important stuff is often at the end--refining the gameplay mechanics and narrative to make them more fun, controlling scope so that things can ship, game testing with real users, etc. With game jams, I can actually spend some time improving my skills in these areas because I actually ship a game at the end. I am, admittedly, pretty good at fast coding and am pretty experienced with game jamming, so I'm more able to shape my game jam experiences to what I want."
I'm not interested in any of these aspects. I'm not interested in being a game developer and shipping products.
"I'm a bit saddened to hear about your job."
I'm not, and neither should you be; the job is exactly what I need in my life. It just isn't an issue.
"You seem pretty talented. I'm not sure why you aren't working a more challenging job in Silicon Valley where you get to work on interesting things with interesting people."
I'm not American, and I don't want to live in America. But I assume you actually mean working in some tech corpo? Well, I don't work in a tech corpo specifically because it's a tech corpo. Either way, I don't want an exciting job or opportunities to hustle and grow. I want stability, companionship, and the ability to pay my medical bills and live a peaceful life for however much time I have left. I think what I'd say about your approach to things is that it's a very masculine perspective. But I'm a woman; I neither do nor have ever seen life like that.
"Or why you aren't slumming it in academia where you can just spend your time pursuing your own research directions."
I worked and published in academia since I was 20yo, and I only (mostly) stopped because of the politics surrounding funding. I'm still very much engaged with a lot of people from academia and even give small lectures from time to time or advise on projects when people need the kind of stuff I can provide. And do add to that, I absolutely engage with my work on this project on an academic level. Ultimately, though, I expressly and willingly removed myself from it.
"I know you think of yourself as the smartest person in the room. And though that may be true, that doesn't mean you can't have peers from whom you can learn things and who can challenge you."
I don't, and I don't want to be the smartest person in the room. But again, returning to what I said earlier, I'm past the point when I want another stalker to pop up.
But I think this is all just an aside to a kind of misunderstanding. Like that I'm miserable because of my job or because of my game and not that, you know, I'm dying and depressed, and both the job and game are some of the few things that keep me grounded and give me some chance to continue to function.
Okay. I sincerely wish that you do find fulfillment in the things that you do. I was merely suggesting alternatives that you should consider that might bring more fulfillment to your life.
To be honest, I find it to be the opposite. I find game jams to be less stressful because the time pressure means you don't feel any obligation to make the "perfect" game or to code cleanly. Since the game is made in such a small amount of time, it doesn't reflect poorly on me if the final game isn't the greatest or if I don't finish making a game at all. Instead, I can focus on making the most amount of fun in the least amount of time, like taking a weekend to put together a jigsaw puzzle.
By "job in Silicon Valley," I wasn't really referring to the tech corpos and the tech bro hustle. I was referring more to the lifestyle of being at a company that has attracted the top talent in the world. You get to work with other like-minded people on interesting problems with the latest, most interesting technology. You can burn through tens of thousands of dollars of computing resources over your lunch break running algorithms that only a few hundred people in the entire world have access to. The company pampers you with perks, and you get to do it in a place that attracts the best of everything from around the world--the best food, the best technology, the best weather, etc.
Just based on the games from some of these communities, I can imagine that the people in those communities can be pretty toxic. I'm not familiar with the latest communities, but in the past, I thought some were considered to be more friendly (assuming that you try to avoid being toxic yourself). Weren't there subcommunities of Twine and RenPy that were more diversity focused and less toxic? Isn't the fan fiction community mostly women-focused so that they can avoid harassment from men? I think Hanon Ondricek was trying to make a secret adult subgroup of the more mature IF community too.
Being an emotionally stunted introvert, I don't know how to respond to this. But if there's anything I can do to help, feel free to reach out.
Hmmmm... I'll just add a few things here.
That sounds largely like a pipe dream. I know there are companies that try to present like this (I think Google does this the most, or at least the loudest) but companies of this kind that I know of tend to actually be really shitty places to work, filled with pretty horrible people.
I did join a few communities that have to do with various kinds of interactive writing, didn't find have much luck with finding one that fit my needs. So I just ended up removing myself from them. Well, with the exception of Ren'py, that one I just avoid entirely even if people for whatever reason come to me for help with the engine anyway. Overall I just feel better in communities that have to do with TG rather than VG. But the big thing I will say is that while consistently, on average, men were much worse to be around, it's actually specific, outlier women that caused the most damage to me. Including my last stalker being female, and that ended... really badly.
Thanks for the offer, but things are as they are. I prefer not to impose on people if I can help it.
This looks interesting so far! So since you designed your own model for the stock market thing, will Karma not effect it?
Stock prices affect so many people that they become Karma-neutral. Someone's gain is someone's loss and the PC does not have priority on overwriting the effects it has on other people, her Karma mostly affects just her.
Additional random thought about this but... I'm not sure there's really a way to subtly influence the system, because even from the perspective of the player, a stock going up and down can both be good or bad. If you want to buy, you want the stock to be cheap, counting on it going up later, if you want to sell, you want it to sell for more than you originally gave for it. There is rarely a clear implication of what is best for the player. Regardless, what I said previously still applies - it wouldn't make sense lore wise, but it's just an additional thought on the implementation being dubious in its own right. The game would need to ask the player openly what they want to happen at the moment.
Ahhhh I see I see, yeah that makes sense