Absurd Minds

I saw this really interesting post on reddit about the ethics of game design. I thought you guys might be interested in it as well.

http://reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments ... rs/d885z26

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Haven't read it yet but is it behind visual design or story design?

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The article is general, but the post is about efficiently ethical use of resources as a game designer.

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Ah, I remember something similar to that where the animators behind the sausage party movie was overworked and even had their position in the credits threatened if they didn't work over time.

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Well this was physical resources. Using the environment ethically

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I have forever hated the phrase "a couple lines of code to fix X" because it is a stupidly ignorant statement to make. However, he does have a point that lots of games are poorly designed and can waste energy like that. But then again, most people don't leave their game sitting there in the main menu for hours on end and they would rather play the game. Besides, playing the game is the problem most of the time anyway, because it will pull lots more electricity during gameplay than during main menu, usually.

An easy solution, and I mean that relatively, is to detect if a user hasn't done anything on the menu for a certain time and execute some sort of freeze-frame type thing, so that it just pauses it and will pick back up all the threads to render when the user comes back.

Also: he is blatantly wrong about Rocket League. Psyonix actually took some time to make their menu and gameplay both entertaining and efficient. Grant it the menu is still a lot of usage for a menu, it isn't the 100% that Mr. Bologna wrote.

Main menu, spike is loading of the game and of the files, drop off is when all of that is complete.


During game, spike is loading of the map and of the files, drop off is when all of that is complete.

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He pointed out that the loading screen actually pulls way more power because it's usually uncapped performance. He also did bring up the point of a static screen when there's no input.

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