Suffice to say, it would not surprise me if this is extremely common. Specificity to the image in their head is more important than creating a common language to collaborate within for some—in any discipline, not just art.

The best I had seen before was a smorgasbord of different film stills from different directors, production designers, DPs, styles, eras, etc with little to no discernible through line. One project had the goal of looking like Mission Impossible and the question of “which one?” met with blank stares.

Can’t say for certain it’s common place everywhere in the industry, but most art directors that I’ve worked with relied so much on Google image search. My previous studio was the first using reference books and pinpointing specific artists—it was such a breath of fresh air! Felt like theatre again!

Ezra Klein: [Slaps the forehead of Andrew Cuomo] This baby’s never gonna run again thanks to some frankly humiliating failures, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t the perfect candidate for a big ol’ tent!

Oh, most definitely! And I suspect this will lead to more and more IP consolidation/ homogenization as the budgets ballon.

But, I’ve also seen this when your creative team doesn’t really have a vision to drive towards outside of a list of back of the box features.

There is a big difference between my frustration at UE5 lacking keyboard shortcuts for their new level workflows after 6 major releases and how I feel when I die running back to collected my dropped Runes in Elden Ring.

One is a failure of design, while the other is successfully creating a fantasy.

However, the design of something intended to be a tool is failing when it is not as effortless of an extension of the human using it as possible. Whereas art is a conversation with the audience, thus extending its own vision back to the user as much as it is meant to be an extension of them.

The relevant takeaway that I had while reading it is how folks seem to confuse designing software as a tool versus designing software for art and/or entertainment.

Elements crucial to the former—HCD, mental models, cognitive load, etc.—are valuable to the latter.

I finally got around reading The Design of Everyday Things recently to see how it compared to the foundational book in my design education, Understanding Comics, and fill in the context missing from just hearing folks reference elements from it over the years.

Too often, you get told to sand off all the edges in the hopes that it will appeal to all players, which all too often alienates the audience you were targeting.

It’s a balancing act for sure, but, in these instances, there is little room for nuance in the discussion around how much would need to change improve the user experience without sacrificing the fantasy we are crafting for players.

Mind boggling considering the interview is 90% buzzwords that a marketing department would tell a studio is the perfect game for the moment based on the research of the highest revenue games out 5+ years ago.

Every imported item at checkout on a website:

I really hope that each part has scent notes comparable to the ingredient, so you know it’s about time to buy a new one when you are getting nothing but bun.

It’s super unfortunate that UE hasn’t updated the move component on the base pawn to reflect how complex the collision on all these megascan and more detailed terrain sculpting can be. You end up with scenes that look pretty, but the player and AI get hung up on a weird facet of geo.

It’s the biggest mistake that I’ve seen from the AAA studios that big publishers started in the last decade: they hire for a fully realized studio instead of laying the ground work with a core team and ramping up once you’re ready. So you get demos that look flashy but have zero substance.

The addition of real-time cinematics with pcap made this even more likely, as the lead times on those are long and create fixed points in the game when you create all of them as full scenes rather than also having a systemic scene builder for more run of the mill moments.