Back in the day this was actually a decent chunk of what online moderation jobs involved: I worked for a major AAA console company and I basically just played games looking for aberrant behavior – dicks in player-made content, map hacking in shooters, rude behavior in co-op games.
And there’s a reason people see that early 2000s era as a golden era of online play: it’s because there were dozens of us around the clock working to moderate. It wasn’t farmed out to folks adhering to metrics, it wasn’t AI, we were actively playing the games and even infiltrating hacker clans to figure out how exploits were happening. When people were ragequitting or spamming insults? There was a chance we were either playing that game or spectating it (depending on mod tools) and looking up their report history because that was our job, and that player was likely banned that same night. We’d celebrate whenever we found a repeat offender we could ban – the “ban process” was quite hallowed and exciting.
As mod tools became more sophisticated, our interaction became more observant – at the time I was working, this was becoming clear. Some games had no mod tools, whereas some were developing full mod spectator options….and it’s interesting that once they could remove mods from actual gameplay it quickly made this jump to just having mods read reports. Reading reports was definitely part of our job before this, but it shifted from watching for trouble to reading about trouble and watching them in game or checking our their player created content to basically confirm the behavior, but within a few years after I moved on from that role everything started getting fully automated. And then after that it became fully outsourced. I don’t think my former job even exists in America, despite it being a rather huge department at the time I worked there.
As a sidenote: It was the “fucking best job ever lol”, but it also broke me. Yeah, I got exposed to some horrific shit on a daily basis (and I’m glossing over some of the darker sides of the job, because who wants to hear about things like CP, death threats, extreme racism, extreme gore, etc), but I also got to play games so much that I could set SMGs in shooters to single shot fire for headshots (because we also low-key did QA/feedback work). Being a woman was an extra level of “oh god” to it all. There were times where it was fun af, but most of the time we were being clockwork-oranged to the worst part of the player base for 8 hours at a time.
I’m a writer and I think games create more immersive ways to give that emotional moment that I aim for in writing.
To me, making games is about making that perfect moment which places you somewhere emotionally ala Ratatouille. I want people to experience an entire concept.
For example, Succor is focused around moments of emotional catharsis. It’s maybe even triggering (hence splash warning) for people not in the right head space.
Manu is probably a good intro to my “feel” of game design, which I am still developing.
Arcbow Anthology is my latest and uses UI a ton to help set the scene.
So, I’m playing with different AI tools – as a QA professional, I find this a fascinating new horizon for QA so I have been testing a lot to learn how all the different tools work.
So, here’s a fun example of how things get quickly off the rails (but kinda appropriately?).
This song is based on my writing from an online game where there was a god of Silence/Night/Basically emoapathy.
Here’s the original text, updated to include voice direction. I was young. Shut up, yes, I know it’s super emo:
[Penitent]: Lord of Silence, in the night Help me now, in my plight The pinch of hunger, pull of want The ghostly fingers of darkness haunt
Long I’ve shivered, alone and cold Long I’ve longed for one to hold Lord of Dreams, far removed Are you tacit, are you unmoved?
[God response]: Little one, why do you cringe? The stroke of shadows will not singe Why do you fear Mother’s might? Softly, feel the touch of the Night Feel the gloom and feel the chill Feel the blood pulse in a thrill Darkness falls across the land But Night holds you in her hand
[Penitent]: Lord of Silence, in the dusk See me now, all is adust Gloaming falls, light grows dim Darkness plucks and sight wanes grim Long I’ve drifted, hounded by fate Long I’ve kept the eve at bay Lord of Silence, watching all Observe me now, in my fall
[God response]: Little one, wandering blind Know you not all is entwined? Why do you shrink without sight? Softly, look within the Night See the shadows, see them writhe See the absence of harsh light Beauty springs at every view Look within and find what’s true
[Penitent]: Lord of Silence, in the still Hear me now, hear my will Quiesce plagues my thirsty ears Quiet dogs and bites my fears Long I’ve been lost upon my way Long I’ve wandered as a stray Lord of Silence, from the Void Save me now, lest I am destroyed
[God]: Little one, deaf to all Can you not heed My call? Hush, and cease your strangled fight Softly, listen to the night Hear the whispers, hear the song Hear the thrum of murmured throngs In the depths of unspoken words Silence reveals the unheard
[Penitent]: Lord of Silence –
[God]: Loyal one –
[Penitent]: Take me home….
[God]: You’ve already come.
Now here’s where it gets fun. The [text] are supposed to be prompts for Suno to dictate individual song composition.
Somewhere between my lyrics and the implied prompt of “be a god” the AI thought it was appropriate to sing about “death to all” which should probably be hitting a guardrail!
3:05 is when we get this.
Thinking lyrics contributed to this.
Not up for a deep dive ATM, may revisit later, but found this amusing.
So, I’m working on a quick jam game and today I found myself absolutely bogged down trying to make a cooking minigame. I couldn’t develop the code well and the design was clunky and then I had this thought: what if I pivot into the clunky design to enhance the narrative? My game is, overall, about the story (point and click Twine game).So instead of trying to chug through and build a slick UI-based design for the minigame with timers and all that, I’ve focused on the narrative of being a line cook and the stress of incoming orders…I just decided to let the play experience be overwhelmed. The code became much more simple and the player instead deals with an increasingly impossible task of fulfilling those orders and gets narrative breakpoints every now and then based on their order backlog to enhance the frustration of being unable to complete the mechanic.
Basically the player has to pick a dish to cook based on a cooking surface (baked foods used the oven, fried food uses the fryer) and each food takes x amount of time to cook. I decided to just give the player a new food order every round, with cooking time set to multiple rounds, and when the orders reach a certain number they get a cutscene about how frustrating and unfair it is – my game is about the stress of jobs and working, so this ties back well to our core subtext.Now the player advances to the next round through being overloaded, which puts the emphasis on stress and frustration. The overall game experience, through a flawed minigame they can’t win, conveys the emotions I want for this chapter, and I’m able to make a quicker bit of code.
Where have you pivoted design in similar ways to work with code or enhance narrative?
So in the very early days of the Internet, all games were merely text and symbols, which encouraged a rich community to form focused heavily on writing. Gameplay in these games focuses on written output and a night of gameplay may mean a bunch of different sessions of collaborative, improv storytelling.
MUDs: multi-user dungeons. Basically collaborative D&D. The focus is more on RPG/MMO style content where bashing and combat are just as importantly as story, though you can find some incredibly story-focused MUDs. I personally suggest Aetolia – not only is long-form roleplay (eg writing a paragraph at a time) the norm, they even have mechanics like a random RP roulette where you get paired up with someone in a room to just start writing at each other.
MUSH: these are similar to MUDs but tend to feature one-off overarching stories and more strict roleplay. Many players roll up a new character for a MUSH and play it until they die (where it’s mourned and deleted). These are more like D&D campaigns vs an MMO’s persistent nature you find in a MUD.
MOOs: this is heavily focused on story and often includes commands accessible to all users for lots of customizing characters and modifying environments. Yes, one of the coolest parts of text games is that you are basically acting out a screenplay and you can adjust the descriptions or room or clothing or character to reflect changes in in plot. MOOs focus heavily on letting players have just as much control over the game world as devs.
All in all, this genre is a goldmine for aspiring writers – it’s like a virtual writer colony where you will constantly bounce ideas off of others and learn new concepts to improve your own writing. I highly suggest giving this a check out of you’re interested in improving your writing and feel like you need more. It’ll also help you a lot with describing rooms, sensory details, dialog and emotes just from the gameplay.
This game was really fun because it helped us use an important teaching concept: creating memorable mistakes.
This also syncs really well with advice for couples – create memories. This one was memorable!
Before the game started, husband and I had been discussing casinos and I mentioned that HS BGs fills that same “itch” – I’ll do a later blog post about thoughts on human nature and gambling.
Universe aligned a bit, because he was then dealt Barov. This guy is really fun to play and I love him in duos. Being able to pass gold at will is so useful and in duos the shared economy is such a key for power spikes.
I consider Barov an all around strong hero. At early game, he rewards skill but as you last into late game, he becomes rather easy economy as it’s obvious who will win against a ghost. My pick rate with him is around 60-75% each game. I’m not a savant, but I’m not bad.
I also consider him quite advanced, but as our earlier conversation had been about gambling, we thought it appropriate to pick.
So the first turn started with the hero power, buying the +4 attack spell and a refresh. I explained the value of taking some small damage now for a big boost later – husband got the concept pretty quickly, but he’s great at meta.
We froze because either we’d be leveling up or buying next round, and the glim dragon was the best of the options. We ended up winning the gold and bought that, but I had husband hold the +4 spell.
“Why?” he asked.
“Trust me,” I answered.
There’s a thing in game theory called the prisoner’s dilemma. It basically boils down to “look out for yourself.” This game is a great way to play through this concept: https://ncase.me/trust/
It’s a 30 minutes of your life you’ll be glad you spent.
I think in duos, it’s often an exercise of trust in a similar way as well as an incredibly interesting experiment in symbolic communication.
For example, I had a game the other day where a key minion for my board was in my teammates tavern, but I had just passed them [tier 3 eating minion]. They pinged question mark, they pinged [eating] and I emoted back [fingers crossed emote].
Let’s gamble. Let’s give it a try.
And we pivoted from there because we got lucky (it was only a 25% chance to eat it).
And so back to playing with my husband.
Worrying that your partner will do something wild or not understand a key tech play is a pretty valid concern in duos and I think a lot of us play it safe because we’re scared to trust. I had a great moment last game where I passed my partner a card for a triple – it was best for my board but at the time it made sense for them to play both solo versions (naga which grows per spellcast). I was playing Faelin and already had naga going so I picked the dragon which buffs allies as a good filler. I was basically buffing my own future triple.
And my teammate passed this naga back to me after it was tripled. I was able to play the strong minion we needed on a different board and also get a discover. But how scary is it to give your partner a triple? You just have to hope it works out and that they understand and help you out.
And so back, again, to teaching my husband this game.
Remember how I mentioned the axe spell? We got a whelp smuggler, so I had him play that spell on a dragon – he then instantly understood the value of holding a spell, because we got extra health from waiting to use the attack buff.
Sometimes casting a spell can have extra effects, and me telling him to hold and then play showed him how using spells at the right time is important.
I let him go “casino” for most Barov choices. I thought this so be a good way to train in tempo, and it worked well – when he was uncertain, he looked to me, but for the most part I let him gamble Barov.
Since he was playing dragons we stayed at tier 3 for most of the game. I loved watching him figure out how to deal with poets and placement – I think this was a great revisit to dragons which made him think more about positioning.
We seemed to high roll dragons and when he got amber he did a cute little dance. It was GORGEOUS watching him place poet and tarec and amber. This was a really good test, imo – he had to sit and consider who would be best where, and he figured out positioning really well. We worked through a papercut dragon and then amber as he cycled establishing buffs.
Results:
– he really liked voting for mechanobot sheerly because of the portrait and voted for that one to win every round. The dude ended up in our final 2!
– one of our enemies had a hilariously vulgar name so he voted for it several rounds in a row for the the lulz. Ironically <censored> then won the round we gave up on him!
– I had the most I love you moment when we were in the final 2. Husband had just watched me play Barov in duos before we played him and he saw me (mumble) “should have bet against myself” – an hour later, husband is in final two and says “best to bet against myself.”
If you are top two and you are Barov, always bet that you’ll lose! If you lose, you get some extra gold. If you win, you WIN, so why bother with buffing yourself next round?
So to go back to the start of this post, we made some hilarious “failure” memories through wrong predictions, especially with the vulgar name we started meme picking. I gave him room to explore and make mistakes, and we focused on creating a scaling build.
Welp, I’m back to Pandaria. Re-reading my old blog for tips, lol.
Also guess I’m back to the archives for tagging. What interesting timing – I was just yearning for a return to decentralized social blogging over consolidated, commercialized social media.
Edit:
Ok just played through character creation! From what I’ve read, this is basically OP alt levelling and when the event ends, they will transfer to normal realms all levelled up!
You can play allied races. You can even (maybe?) play a Dracthyr. It says one per account. My husband is trying that this weekend when we play. He’s going to delete the one he has 2 levels into the starting zone. Given how insane MoP is with heights, I think it will be hilarious. Imagine soar from Mount Neverist – he might hit Timelost Isle or the island with the T-Rex.
Wonder if they’ve tested that… Better make sure there is some handling when people hit the map edges!
I’ve decided to play a Pandarian, though it’s priestess yet again! I’m thinking:
1. Would be nice to get panda heritage armor
2. I already know how to priest all of this, so it will be easy
3. I fall off stuff a lot, so bouncy will get value. And Pandaria has a LOT of stuff to fall off (aren’t there even some raid mechanics which this will mitigate damage for?)
4. Stardew Valley chef dreams. Pandaria actually has exciting cooking mechanics and one of the panda racials doubles food buffs
5. CC for PvP. MoP is an amazing PVP expansion and this is an OP trait.
Be prepared for couples chemistry. We got distracted early by how sexy it can be to communicate really well. We’re both gamers and I was surprised at how much I appreciated watching him learn a new game. Forearms and brains with a mouse, yum?
They will understand it a little and then think they now understand it a lot. Pure Dunning-Kruger: they will hit a learning spike, internalizing a new concept, and think they get it, and then get very confident. For example, my husband loves mechs (he’s a Transformers/Voltron flavor of nerd) and he thought he understood mechs when we played a round of heavy magnetization with the avenge mechademon and then started playing them in a flow state (which was awesome) but also a bit at random, eg reborn on minions who have the spawn 3 mag. Reborn won’t trigger because mech will spawn too many minions – but this is an advanced concept and it’s more valuable to let them go and then review.
Use each turn as a teaching moment: Show them one tribe at a time, as they play through them. It’s a lot easier to understand concepts as you play through them. Also look for ways to teach an overall concept, eg we played Azurite to teach about tavern buffing, or when I had him play a handbuff Murloc while holding a minion to show him handbuff and the value of holding a card. Consider each round a way to teach a few concepts.
Look for a win to enhance a concept: We played a game with Azurite and I had a turn where I walked my husband through casting spells before buying the 4 cost freeze spell. As soon as he realized what had happened, the concept of tavern buffing leveled up in his brain. I had shown him a new concept in a very exciting way – now we had a huge minion which reinforced the value of Azurite. He then became obsessive over azurite and that spell. I had to gently redirect him to focus on the shellemental we had. In the final buy round I had to tell him we just want stats now – my smart wonderful husband then sold off all 3 of our golden Azurites (like I said, he loved them) and bought pure stat level 1s for an easy victory.
Review each game: In the mech game, we worked because we had the tier 4 end of turn magnetic buff.
He then wanted to play a bunch of magnetizations as soon as he could – better numbers! We were late game, facing a pretty perfect Murloc end of turn battlecry build. It felt wise to just let him stack stats.
But after the game, I explained the strategy of playing magnetizations as solo units to build up stats and explained about Beatboxer, and he realized the value in building really strong magnetics. Now, he’s pretty much thirsting for that 6-drop: he understands the strat, he now knows the advanced version of it and he knows a key minion he needs to get. He’s excited to potentially get Beatboxer and now he wants to play mags with triples.
He wasn’t ready to learn that mid-game, but the recap got him really excited to learn and play more.
Facilitate communication: for us, me trying to point at the screen blocked his view of the screen, so we decided we needed a pointer. It’s the weekend, we’re kinda tipsy and we settled on using his wand, because my husband is awesome and loves magic so we have a wand which shoots fire. We might have taken a break here to go play with a firebolt-casting wand. 😛
After shenanigans, we then used that wand for the next game. The extra length proved better for pointing compared to finger, pen and chopstick. It was silly, but it worked: it streamlined communication and eliminated confusion. If it works, it works!
We also spent a lot of time reviewing communication strategy. As a doubly neurodivergent couple, we really value being able to quickly convey concepts, so we already practice communication shorthand – it was an easy evolution to simply say the word positioning, for example, to trigger him to think about the layout and order of minions.
I liked this way more than I thought I would is a surprising but key thing which also helped this become a future game for us to play together. Husband has played Hearthstone in the early years and because of that – despite me playing battlegrounds for YEARS next to him – still has the concept of buying card packs associated with HS in a negative way. He hated how it felt like he had to buy packs to keep up, so he was reluctant to event TRY battlegrounds for literally like 3 years before he watched me playing duos. HS as a stand alone entity is actually unappealing to gamers who have been exposed to it already, even though BGs are entirely different. As soon as he realized it wasn’t a TCG he got a LOT more interested and excited.
Be prepared for them to make mistakes – lean into that as a learning experience! After 4 games, my husband felt pretty confident and insisted on tiering up to 4 early – after all, we had dominated tempo in earlier games, so why not chase that same gold curve? I asked if he was certain and had him look at his board again. He really liked tiering up, and really wanted to go for it, so I said sure, let’s see how it goes. Remember that your board may be a bit weak, we don’t really have scaling yet.
So he tiered up and found a nice core dragon minion, but tempo overtook us. At the end, I asked “do you think we should have tiered up?” and he replied (and I’m obviously quoting verbatim) “on reflection, dear lady, I wasn’t strong enough to take advantage of the higher tier.”
He knew we made a key play but also learned about how scaling works. And then, he said the one thing that any duo fan hopes their potential partner can say: “I just wish I had more armor.”
a little bit of everything all of the time 