The More Things Change...
...the more different they feel. Ha! Gotcha! Last week was a rude re-awakening to the world of gaming. As I often complain, my day job has kept me out of touch with gaming & gamers for years, so I asked some developers for a little help in getting reconnected. They obliged with an avalanche of websites and videos and articles. And holy crap things have changed since the days of five foot ten packs. Alright I'm not that out of touch. I do the Steam thing like everyone else. But what surprised me was how early indie games show off their barely-alpha gameplay, and how willing online reviewers are to not only play them but treat them with kid gloves. Last past week I absorbed roughly 2,561 hours of YouTube let's play videos and I saw dozens of early, early alpha builds with temp art, no menus, sometimes even no animation. And yet even the snarky, quick-to-judge reviewers were happy to ignore crashes and broken features. Not that this is a bad thing. Just weird. It's clear ...