The nice thing about Gator Game was that movement felt so good and fluid. It really is just a game about jumping and climing and bouncing around like a hyper kid.

Given the game doesn’t have ‘combat’ they really really needed to get traversal right because that’s the main draw, and they succeeded in that.

That sounds miserable :(

In a previous position I was asked if I was willing to be on call, but it was optional. I accepted because the terms were good.

If I was on call the requirements were clear - No alcohol, and a 10 minute response time 24/7.

In return, I got a bump in my paycheck for weeks I was on call, no matter whether I was actually called or not. And any time that I did end up spending on support incidents I was eligible to take back out of normal hours at time and a half. So if I spent two hours on support in the middle of the night, I could take three hours off the next day.

It was a respectful arrangement that made me feel positive about the company and management, and I wish all companies did it that way.

I got lost a few times too, but I think they did a good job of providing mitigation for that with specific large landmarks you can see at least one of from anywhere, like the big tree, the mountain, the windmill.

I understand what the devs were trying to do by not having a map. When a map is there, especially an always-on minimap, I basically spend my whole time with my eyes glued to that tiny corner of the screen rather than actually looking at the world. So I can respect the decision to try and do without any map.

There’s all sorts of problems and roadblocks.

Another big one is generation of inappropriate or sexual content. No publisher will dare to ship something when the next week there’s going to be videos all over social media of their game characters saying and doing wildly inappropriate stuff (as hilarious as that would be for us as players!)

It would be difficult, yes. I’m a software developer myself and have been working with LLMs on personal projects recently, so I’ve got some context on the challenges involved.

The hype around LLMs is obviously all “Yeah just throw AI at the problem! AI can do it!” but the reality is that you will always need a good amount of normal coding to wrap around that and make the LLM inputs and outputs sane and interoperable with the rest of your system. So I’m very aware.

My real wonder is that with an appropriate implementation, how much of the classical aspects of the game could you ultimately and eventually move to LLMs, which is what the patent seems to be suggesting.

For example, if you used LLM only for character dialogue and nothing else, it would go something like this:

• You talk to an NPC and insult them
• The convo is assessed and it tweaks some hidden classically programmed reputation and faction variables
• You go to the base of a faction associated
• Those variables determine the faction is hostile

But you could potentially use LLMs to manage more aspects directly, and that could look like this:

• You talk to an NPC and insult them
• An LLM summary of your actions is written to a world log
• You go to the base of the faction associated
• The controller LLM parses the entire world log for your actions relevant to the faction and determines the result as hostility, including extracting reasoning for that which members of the faction can confront you on if spoken to

Now that’s already a lot of work and the only bit of classic programming we really took out is how the rep system is managed. But we gained some flexibility in that the source of your relationship with the faction could come from any action anywhere, including ones the game designers never even dreamed up, not just certain things which were pre-known to update it.

Where decisions actually interact with the game world will always need to be classically programmed (like being hostile and what that means and how it causes the characters to act, do they shoot you, what it means to ‘shoot’ and ‘move’ etc) and there will need to be a way to interface with that, but LLMs could introduce some level of flexibility in places where that wasn’t possible before.

A reaulting problem though is that the more you give to LLMs, the more the entire thing is likely to unravel and become incoherent, without doing even more work to prevent that, and there will still be cracks.

Is it ultimately feasible? I don’t know, but it will be interesting for whoever gets to try.

What the fuck are people doing

The diagram proposes it be used in other aspects too, such as in dynamically altering the game narrative.

i.e. you feed into the LLM “okay, this is the current state of the game and characters, what would be interesting to happen next?” and then the game state changes based on that assessment.

Setting aside the feasibility of implementing this typically overreaching and broad tech patent, I can see this eventually being useful in immersive sim games like Deus Ex and such.

In immersive sims the dream has always been to give the player infinite freedom, but games can’t provide infinite freedom because every possibility has to be programmed and accounted for, and dialog written. Would be amazing if the game itself could dynamically adjust based on player behaviour.

But honestly, to your point about breaking it, I think that’s why we still haven’t seen LLMs deployed in big titles apart from some private tech demos - studios and publishers are afraid of the prospect of abuse.

As soon as such a game landed you can bet your ass people will be working immediately to break it and get it to do inappropriate things (because that’s fun!) and publishers are terrified about that, because it will totally happen no matter how many safety rails you try to put in.

As a Brit I don’t know anything about the CFPB, but let me just say they have a top-tier logo right there.

The ‘spotlight’ shining out from inside the C to shed light on anti-consumer shenanigans tells you instantly what the CFPB is presumably all about.

Graphical masterpiece of a logo.

It does feel like it might be, but I don’t know if it actually is.

The UK generally has extremely good fire safety regulations, so if this was getting people killed I feel like it would have been the subject of some scrutiny.

The house I grew up in was this way, and the house I live in now with a new door (<10yo) is still that way.

As a kid I never thought about it, and I don’t remember ever being stuck in the house.

The way people normally deal with keys is that everyone who needs a key has one of their own on their keyring, and there is usually also a ‘house’ key which stays by the door and isn’t taken away anywhere.

And none of this is to say “this is a good way” it’s just to say “this is the way people are used to here”

Different lock types are more or less common in different places.

I don’t know where the artist of the comic lives, but here in the UK for example most exterior doors have a keyhole on BOTH sides, and you need to use the key to lock or unlock it from inside, as well as from out.

Chocolate bricks

Exactly, it’s not on Nintendo to fix, this could be happening anywhere in the chain.

Could be within the stores or their suppliers, or it could be returns from end-customers.

My personal bet would be scammers buying games with cash, taking the games and then shrink-wrapping the box before returning them for a cash refund. And then they flip the cartridges on eBay or whatever.

I’m a software developer, so I simply empathise with the position

I understand that “half caf” is supposed to be one-eye-asleep and one-eye-awake, but to me he instead gives the impression of being in that intensely pissed-off zone where he wants to drink coffee and is gagging for a full strength cup, but he’s been having heart palpitations recently and his doctor advised him to cut back and he promised his wife that he would but it’s Monday and there’s so much fucking work to get done but there’s this stupid two hour meeting and don’t even fucking dare talking to me about your bullshit Karen or I’m going to fucking snap I swear to God

I was quite intrigued by the article and thinking I’d put this on my wishlist, until I saw “multiplayer”, and suddenly all my interest is down the drain.

It feels like some developers are making live service games simply to chase the revenue stream, not because the specific game they are making would actually be better online.

Elephants have an image in popular culture as being ‘gentle giants’ - and the companies who can benefit from that image by offering elephant petting, bathing and other experiences have no reason to suggest it’s anything other than perfectly safe.

Honestly, it’s absolutely disgusting.

For a time my retired father was looking into buying one, but I’m super glad in retrospect now this has all come out that it didn’t go through and he walked away.

These parks and the individuals who run them are intentionally scamming vulnerable people out of their entire retirement by painting a false picture that these holiday caravans are a sound investment just like owning a house, while all the while knowing fully that people will lose almost everything they put in.

GET ON THE FLOOR! NOW!

You guys are lasting half a year???

More like 1st to 31st January

In reality, they only talk to the idiot