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spookyrobbins · 3 years

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thinking abt s9 again and it still pisses me off how much of az's experiences and disability is viewed from callie's pov (like literally at some points). like disclaimer here bc i understand that the people around an amputee are affected by it too and i understand that (esp at the time) showing callie's pov and struggles was extremely novel. but callie's pov should have been a supplement to az's, not replacing it?? bc literally every single one of az's ig accomplishments?? 1/8 – darkness anon

are seen from callie's pov. it even goes into the way they film certain scenes. (note that i am not like a professional filmmaker but i did take courses on art interp) comparing two scenes - the scene where az walks across the apartment to the door w her prosthesis and like trips and breaks shit along the way vs the "i got back up" scene which are very different scenes that occur in the same location - i noticed smth rlly interesting abt the way the audience is positioned 2/8

in the first one. there is only one portion of the scene (lasting maybe one second) where we do not see arizona in frame. in fact, most of this scene, we see arizona from her side, and at the end, we see her facing forward, toward the camera. and that's significant bc when they do that, we don't see things like the character sees it. we see it like an audience. we literally don't see az's perspective even when she is the Only character on screen. the closest we get to that in this 3/8

is the split-second frame of the vase breaking and one of the outside of the apartment, pointing to where the files bailey promised should have been. what the scene conveys isnt necessarily az's experiences, as a result, and instead is showing us the results of bailey's plan to get az walking again, which is linked back to callie's feelings abt az's response to the amputation and,, yeah. admittedly though, this scene is probably one of the most arizona centric scenes in the season. 4/8

comparing a scene with similar setting - the i got back up scene - is super interesting though, because we can see that the directors are filming az's scenes the way they are on purpose. bc that scene starts from callie's perspective and stays there for the rest of the scene. we start with the camera behind callie as she stands outside the door of the apt, and then cuts to a side/frontal angle so we can see her expression at the sound of az giggling behind the door 5/8

then she opens the door and we cut to a frontal angle so we instantly see callie's reaction to smth behind the camera and then turn around and show us what she's reacting to. compared to how they framed az opening the door in the 9x06 scene (they focus on the empty floor first and then pan up to az, emphasising the importance of the empty floor over az's reaction). and even when the camera is focused on az and sofia, it's callie's voice that we hear first and she asks if az 6/8

had a good day and then az reveals oh well i fell down and then we cut back to callie for her reaction. and then az responds w "i got back up". but the "i got back up" part? literally lasts less than a second before we cut back to callie again. and after that the cam cuts between focusing on callie and watching az and sofia from callie's pov (u can argue that the focus on callie is sofia's pov but i dont think that makes much sense? idk) but yeah. its like really weird too bc 7/8

in the same ep, they have the scene where az actually falls and its filmed so similarly to this scene in some ways and even though some of these techniques are used on az, it emphasizes alex's pov more than it does az and ugh idk. s9 irritates me in both the storyline and filming ig is the conclusion here. and uhh just realised how super long this got so like. feel free to not,, respond? like i get that this is like ridiculous and im sorry my dude 8/8

no no but you're so right. i've said it before (i think) and i'll say it again: the show disproportionately favours callie's pov over arizona's (it does this with other characters, like meredith's over derek's, but to a slightly less extreme i think) - part of this i think is bc callie was there first and arizona is written as a love interest exclusively. but the whole amputation storyline really showed this to an extreme

i also think that the amount of time spent in callie's pov is part of the reason that the cheating felt so extremely ooc/cheap emotional payoff. i've seen various places where people have said that cheating can be part of depression/ptsd/trauma (and i fully agree/believe that) and that could fit in arizona's storyline - except the audience never really saw her dealing with that. there was the stuff at the beginning of the season and then arizona seemed fine? and the challenge of arizona i think is that she's very internal and taking away teddy and mark (to an extent) sort of limited her external processes, which left the viewer thinking that arizona was doing okay. but the effect of not showing us arizona's pov is that it comes out of left field (which is you were writing not filming from callie's pov could work bc limited 3rd person) is that it just seems out of character and tawdry and you have to create miscarriages to explain her behaviour

the way they filmed/wrote 95% of calzona's scenes in s9 were focused on callie and her feelings. even scenes that on the surface seem to be about arizona are really centered on callie. like for instance the shoes before bailey's wedding. arizona is struggling with self-worth and beauty and this would be a perfect moment for arizona to have ownership in her journey - instead we get callie yelling at her about how "everything is about the leg", which i think does a disservice to arizona and also to callie's character, which has often been based around empathy (don't get me started on callie's empathy and how it relates to arizona lol) like you said, every one of arizona's moments/accomplishments is not really about her. and that was a problem with arizona's character from the start - it's never really about her - it's about other. for example: her telling callie about tim was about reassuring callie's feelings versus it being a moment to add depth to arizona's character

one more thing: i think the writers majorly screwed themselves with the amputation sl/how they approached it. in the same way that the plane crash dominated like 4 seasons on a wider scale, arizona's leg and amputation did on a smaller scale, but they set it up so poorly that it was almost unsalvageable. they wanted the pat on the back for having a disabled character, but they mismanaged the storyline so atrociously that by the time s10 rolled around they were sort of screwed and didn't know what to do with callie and arizona. it's also notable that by like what? s11 they just stop talking about arizona's leg entirely

lol my part got long too so i'll leave it here

#darkness anon #the writing goes so downhill in s9

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isthatacalzone · 5 years

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Hello Would you consider writing something about the possible interpretations of why klaus' meeting with his father took place in a barbershop? Or do you think it has any relevance? ☺️

why yes, anon. i would love to.

before i start, i wanna point out a couple cute things about the barbershop itself because i went looking for mise-en-scene clues and found a couple things:

the barbershop is called “NITE OWL”

it’s open 11-7 (it doesn’t say if this is am or pm but if the name of the shop is anything to go by, it being in the evening would be brilliant)

there’s a sign on the door that says “Barber Banter May Offend” and i thought that was hilarious (and also very apt)

ok you asked why klaus’ meeting takes place in a barbershop and whether it has any relevance. at first, i kinda stopped and went “oh, yknow, i’m not sure”. thing about film and television, though, is that nothing is ever random. even the shit you think is random has SOME reason for being there, even if it’s just that the props department was just making some joke. so my first thought was maybe the setting was secondary to the action of the scene, that being reginald shaves klaus’ face. then i started thinking some more, and realised none of these things are separate at all, they all work toward the larger theme of the scene.

“what’s the larger theme of the scene, katie?”

it’s all about the relationship between a son and his father.

(before i go any further, i wanna say that this is just an idea, i’m not saying that this is exactly what the writers were thinking about, but if @seven-valid-libras wants to chime in with some bts stuff i’d be more than happy to hear it (was that a subtle way for me to tag her so that she’d read this because i think she’s pretty freaking cool? maybe.👀))

anyway.

barbershops are pretty traditionally masculine places, right? they’re somewhere men go to get their hair cut, their beards shaved; it’s a place of male grooming. this whole scene is pretty steeped in the male presence; on the wall behind Klaus are all the male figures in his life: Luther, Diego, Reginald, Dave, Five and Ben. underneath all their pictures are hats, hats that are traditionally a part of a pretty masculine outfit: the suit.

now, at this point i wanna point out just how out of place klaus looks when it comes to the environment he’s in.

you might have noticed i used the word “traditionally” a couple times there, and i think that’s important, because one of the big things about klaus is that he’s pretty non-traditional. he wears skirts and bright coloured shirts and usually has eyeliner rubbed on his eyes. he’s not like his other brothers. he doesn’t exist in binary. he just is. furthermore, when you look at what klaus is wearing in the scene and compare him to the environment, he almost looks like a teenager. these all help in setting up the scene and the context before he sits down in that chair.

we, as an audience, are already thinking how bizarre this set up is. the camera angles are all very wide, the depth of field incredibly deep, creating this sense of unease. the previous scene has set up our expectations, because we’re meant to be experiencing everything that’s going on from klaus’ perspective, so as THIS scene begins, we think we’re going to see our favourite human oujia board reunite with the love of his life. then we enter the barbershop, the confusion kicks in, but everything gets put in context when klaus reveals who’s talking:

“Dad.”

this might be a bit off the mark, but i think fathers and sons going to a barbers together is a pretty important bonding experience. my dad used to take my brothers to the barbers all the time when they were younger, and even as a kid it always felt like my dad taking time to hang out with his sons. combine this with the image of a father teaching his son how to shave for the first time; showing him how not to cut himself the way his father before him probably did, you get this set up of a pretty traditional father-son bonding experience.

now, klaus might not be traditional, but y’know who definitely reeks of it? reginald fucking hargreeves.

we all know the relationship between dear old reggie and his kids is pretty tumultuous. we also know that klaus’ relationship with his dad is particularly fraught. he actively talks about how awful he is from the moment we meet him (which i won’t go into here, because i already went into it here! yay self promo!) so the fact this scene is setting up a father-son bonding moment is very interesting, and also absolutely genius. why? because klaus doesn’t trust his father, and in any other context klaus might have gotten up and walked away, but the fun thing about those barber chairs is once that apron is on you really can’t go anywhere. on top of that?

reginald is shaving klaus’ face.

just think about that for a moment. the trust that goes into letting someone take a straight razor to your face, to you neck. not only does that immediately create a power dynamic which favours the person holding the razor (in this case, reggie, the father figure), but it also suggests an innate intimacy. this is doubled by the fact they’re in a barbershop, a place traditionally filled with people, and they’re alone. it’s like, the perfect recipe for a father and his son to have their first proper conversation in over a decade.

go back to why we’re here in the first place: reginald needs to tell klaus important information about the apocalypse. what happens instead? klaus gets the chance to face up to his father and call him out on being a shitty-ass parent to both him and his siblings, and comes out of it with a better understanding and empathy for his father than he’s had his whole life. interestingly, considering reginald starts the scene with all the power, klaus is the one who takes control of the narrative. he’s the one who really gets something out of it. he gets the chance to grow.

i dunno about you, but that sounds a lot like a pretty pivotal moment in a relationship between a son and his father to me.

#the umbrella academy #tua #umbrella academy #meta #the umbrella academy meta #tua meta #klaus hargreeves #reginald hargreeves #the seance #the monocle #number four #i hope you like this anon!!#you really got my gears turning for this one haha #i also hope it makes sense???#bensklaus #now watch this flop in comparison to my first meta lmao #anonymous #the day that was

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maximelebled · 6 years

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2017

Howdy! Time for the yearly blog post! There's enough depressing stuff that happened this year, so I want to try and not focus too much on that; talk more about the positive and the personal. (I am looking back on this opening paragraph after writing everything else, and I don’t think that ended up true.)

I find it increasingly harder to just straight up talk about things, especially in a direct manner. I think it comes from continuing to realize that so many things are extremely subjective and everything has so much nuance to it that I feel really uncomfortable saying a straight "yes" or a straight "no" to a lot of questions ("Nazis are bad" is not one, though). Or even just a straight answer.

I always end up wanting to go into tangents, and I inevitably run into not being able to phrase that nuance. You know that feeling, when you know something, you have the thought in your head; it is so clear, right there in your head, it is crystal-clear to your soul, yet you have no idea how to word it, let alone doing so in 140/280/500 characters. Frustrating!

I guess I could just put a big disclaimer here, "I am not a paragon of absolute truth and don't start interpreting my words as 'Max thinks he is the authority on XYZ' because you'd be quite foolish to do so"; but that doesn't help that much. Online discourse, let alone presence, can be so tiresome these days; not to be too Captain Obvious, but, there are quite a lot of people that delight in engaging those they see as their "opponents" in bad faith.

As a white man, I don't have it that bad, but still, I'll continue to tell you one thing: the block button is extremely good and you should feel no shame in using it. It drastically improves your online experience. (There are some very clear signs that make me instantly slam the button. I’m sure you know which ones too.)

Anyway, regardless, it's hard to get rid of a habit, especially one you've unwillingly taken on yourself, so I apologize in advance for constantly writing all those "most likely", "probably", "maybe" words, and writing in a style that can come off as annoyingly hesitant sometimes.

I started watching Star Trek this year. My Netflix history tells me: January 29th for TOS/TAS, March 26th for TNG, June 3rd for DS9, November 9th for Voyager.

TOS was really interesting to watch. A lot of things stood out: the (relative) minimalism of the sets and the directing was reminiscent of theater, and even though that was, generally speaking, because that's how TV shows used to be made, it was still striking. From a historical perspective, "fascinating" would still be an ill-suited word to describe it. Seeing that this is where a lot of sci-fi concepts came from, suddenly understanding all the references and nods made everywhere else... it was also soothing to watch a show about mankind having finally united, having exploration and discovery as its sole goal. I feel like it wouldn't have made as big of an impact on me, had I watched it a year prior.

I've always thought of myself as rejecting cynicism, abhorring it, but it's harder and harder to hold on to that as time goes on. I still want to believe in the inner good of mankind, of people in general, but man, it's hard sometimes. I think what really gnaws at me most of the time is how so many of the little bits of good that we can, and are doing, individually, and which do add up... can get struck down or "wasted away" so quickly. The two examples that I have in mind: Bitcoin, this gigantic mess, the least efficient system ever designed by mankind, has already nullified a decade's worth of power savings from the European Union's regulations on energy-efficient light bulbs. And then there's stuff like big prominent YouTubers being, to stay polite, huge irresponsible fools despite the responsibility they have in front of a massive audience of very young people. It can be really depressing to think about the sheer scale of this kind of stuff.

What we can all do on an individual level still matters, of course! I try my best not to use my car, to buy local, reduce my use of plastic, optimize my power usage, etc.; speaking of that, I've often thought about making a small website about teaching the gamer demographic in general quick easy ways to save energy. There is so much misinformation out there, gamers who disable all the power-saving features of their hardware just to get 2 more frames per second in their games, people who overclock so much that they consume 60% more power for 10% more performance, the list goes on. Maybe I'll get around to it some day.

All this stuff going on makes it hard to want to project yourself far ahead in the future. Why plan ahead your retirement in 40 years when it feels like there's a significant chance the world will go to shit by then? It's grim... but it definitely makes me understand the saying "live like there's no tomorrow". Not that I'm gonna become an irresponsible person who burns all their savings on stupid stuff, but for the time being... I don't feel like betting on a better tomorrow, so I might as well save a little bit less for the far future and have a nicer present. You know the stories of American workers who got scammed out of their own 401k? That's, in essence, the kind of stuff I wish to avoid. If that makes sense.

Anyway, going off that long depressing tangent: something I liked a lot across The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, was how consistent they were. The style of directing, framing, camera movement, etc. was always very similar. Now, you can argue that's just how 80s and 90s TV shows on a budget, a 4:3 aspect ratio, and smaller SD screens worked, yes, but I do believe there is a special consistency that stuck out to me. I jumped into the newest series, Discovery, right after finishing Voyager (I don't plan on watching Enterprise) and the first two episodes were confusing to watch... shaky cam, a lot of traveling shots, shallow depth-of-field, and the tendency to put two characters at the extreme left and right of the frame.It’s a hell of a leap forwards in directing trends. It all gets better after the first two episodes, though.

youtube

I remember alluding to the King of Pain project in my last yearly post. I'm glad I managed to finally do it. I'd talk about it here, but why do it when I've made 70 minutes of video about it? (And unlike my previous behind-the-scenes videos, it's a lot more condensed, and hopefully entertaining.) Unfortunately for me, I completed the video in late June, with only a month left to the TI7 Short Film Contest deadline. So I ended up making two videos back-to-back. I had to buy a new laptop in order to finish the video during my yearly pilgrimage to Seattle. It was intense! And thankfully, I managed to pull off the Hat Trick: winning the contest three years in a row. I would like to think it's a pretty good achievement, but you know how us artists are in general; as soon as we achieve something, we start thinking "eh, it wasn't that good anyway" and we raise our bar higher still.

While I do intend to participate in the contest again next year, I know I'll most likely do something more personal, that would probably be less of a safe bet, now that the pressure of winning 3 in a row is gone. I already have a few ideas lined up...

... and I do have a very interesting project going on right now! If it goes through and I don't miserably land flat on my face (which, unfortunately, has a non-zero chance of happening), you'll see it in about a month from now.

youtube

I'm pretty happy to have reached a million views on all three of my shorts; a million and a half on the TI7 one, too... it might reach two million within six months if it keeps getting views at the current rate. It surprises me a bit that this might end up being my first "big" video, one that keeps getting put on people's sidebar by the all-mighty YouTube™ Algorithm™. There's often a disconnect between what you consider to be your best work, and what ends up being the most popular.

This reminds me that, a lot of the time, I get people who ask me if I'm a streamer or a "YouTuber". My usual answer is that I'm on YouTube, but I'm not a "YouTuber". I wholeheartedly reject that subculture, the cult of personalities, the attempts at parasocial relationships, and all that stuff. It's just not for me. Now, that said, I do hope to achieve 100k subscribers one day... I'm getting closer and closer every day! The little silver trophy for bragging rights would be neat.

My office was renovated by my dad while I was gone. It's much nicer now, and I finally have a place to put most of my Dota memorabilia. He actually sent me this picture I didn't know he'd taken, behind my back, in 2014; the difference is striking... (I think that game I'm playing is Dragon Age: Inquisition.)

Tinnitus. I first noticed my tinnitus when I was 20. I vividly remember the "hold on a second" moment I had in bed... man, if I'd known back then how worse it'd get. Then again, the game was rigged from the start; as a kid, I had frequent ear infections because my canals are weird and small. What didn't help either was the itching; back then, they thought it was mycosis... and treatment for that didn't help at all. Turns out it was psoriasis! Which I also started getting on my right arm that year. (It's eczema, it's itchy, it's chronic, and the treatment steroid cream. Or steroids.) Both conditions got worse since then, too.

Tinnitus becomes truly horrible when you start the doubt the noises you're hearing. When all you have is the impossible-to-describe high-pitched whine, things are, relatively speaking, fine. You know what the noise is, and you learn, you know not to focus on it. But with my tinnitus evolving, new "frequencies", I have, on occasion, started doubting whether I was hearing an actual noise or if it was just my inner ear and brain working in concert to make it up. So I end up thinking about it, actively, and that makes it come back. I had a truly awful week when, during an inner ear infection, the noise got so shrill, so overwhelming, I lost so much sleep over it. I couldn't tune it out anymore. It was like it was at the center of my head and not in my ears anymore. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I'm not even sure that I'm in the clear yet regarding that. But, like I said, it's best if I don't dwell on it. Thinking of the noise is no bueno.

Really, the human body is bullshit. Here's another example. A couple months ago, I managed to bite the inside of my mouth three separate times. I hate when it happens, not because of the immediate pain, but because I already dread the mouth ulcer / canker sore (not sure which is the appropriate medical translation; the French word is "apthe"). Well, guess what: none of these three incidents had the bite degenerate into an ulcer... but one appeared out of nowhere, in a different spot, two weeks later. And while mouthwash works in the moment, it feels like it never actually helps... it's like I have to wait for my body to realize, after at least ten days, oh yeah, you know what, maybe I should take care of this wound in my mouth over here. And it always waits until it gets quite big. There's no way to nip these goddamn things in the bud when they're just starting.

But really, I feel like I shouldn't really complain? All in all, it could be much worse, so so so much worse. I could have Crohn's disease. I could have cancer. I could have some other horrible rare disease. Localized psoriasis and tinnitus isn't that bad, as far as the life lottery goes. As far as I'm aware, there's nothing hereditary in my family, besides the psoriasis, and the male pattern baldness. I wonder how I'll deal with that one ten, fifteen years down the line...

Just as I'm finishing writing this, the Meltdown & Spectre security flaws have been revealed... spooky stuff, and it makes me glad I still haven't upgraded my desktop PC after five years. I've been meaning to do it because my i7 4770 (non-K) has started being a bit of a bottleneck, that and my motherboard has been a bit defective the whole time (only two RAM slots working). But thankfully I didn't go for it! I guess I will once they fix the fundamental architectural flaws.

The Y2K bug was 18 years late after all.

Here's a non-exhaustive list (because I’m trying to skip most of the very obvious stuff, but also because I forget stuff) of media I enjoyed this year:

Series & movies:

Star Trek (see above)

Travelers

The Expanse

Predestination (2014)

ARQ

Swiss Army Man

Video games:

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

Horizon: Zero Dawn

What remains of Edith Finch

Uncharted: Lost Legacy

Wolfenstein II

Super Mario Odyssey

Metroid: Samus Returns

OneShot

Prey

Music:

Cheetah EP by James Hunter USA

VESPERS by Thomas Ferkol

Some older stuff from Demis Roussos and Boney M.... and, I'll admit reluctantly, still the same stuff: Solar Fields, the CBS/Sony Sound Image Series, Himiko Kikuchi, jazz fusion, etc. I'm still just as big a sucker for songs that ooze with atmosphere. (I've been meaning to write some sort of essay on Solar Fields... it's there, floating in my head... but it's that thing I wrote earlier: you know the idea, intimately, but you're not sure how to put it into words. Maybe one day!)

I think that's about it this year. I hope to write about 2018 in better terms!

See you next year.

#year in review

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gamingtipsandtrickshacks · 5 years

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Why Below has taken half a decade to make • Eurogamer.net

"Making a game is obscenely challenging," Nathan Vella, boss of Toronto, Canada developer Capybara tells me over the phone.

"It's a little bit physically challenging, but it's always mentally challenging. Making a project pushes you. The metaphor I always use is - I don't know if you've ever been to the desert or somewhere ridiculously hot, and you're standing out in crazy warm weather, it's 35 degrees and you're like, oh my gosh, it's so hot! But it's a warm hot, so you're like, okay, I can kind of deal with it, and you're used to it not being this hot so you think it's kind of nice, and you acclimate yourself to the ridiculous heat in a desert.

"Having a five-year project is like putting a giant magnifying glass between you and the desert and the sun. It makes everything so much harder. It makes every problem so much bigger. It requires so much dedication and commitment from the team just to keep moving forward and past a certain point. It's really disappointing to delay games. It's really disappointing to miss deadlines. But at the same time, nothing is more disappointing than putting out a game you're not happy with and aren't proud of and can't speak honestly to players about."

Capy announced Below in 2013 - too soon, the developers admit.

Vella is talking about Below, a game Capy has worked on for over five years. The roguelike survival procedurally-generated dungeon crawler with a zoomed out perspective and a tiny warrior was announced in 2013 during Microsoft's E3 press conference, and has been delayed multiple times. At one point, it felt like Below might never come out.

But Below, Capy insists, is coming out this year, in 2018. That's good news for people looking forward to playing the game, but it's even better news for the developers, the people who have spent every day for five years trying to make Below work, trying to make it the best it can be.

Clearly, Capy has run up against significant challenges in the development of Below. As Vella tells me, no-one wants to delay a video game, and no-one wants to spend half a decade making one. But what kind of challenges has the team faced? In short, why has Below taken so long?

Vella, who is happy to discuss the problems Below has thrown up, says the team spent a lot of time trying to work out whether the game was more than the sum of its parts. That is to say, trying to work out whether combining Below's mechanics and systems made for a fun experience.

"Every one of the major pillars of the game - the scale, the perspective, the systems, the combat, the goal of creating interesting exploration - all of those things, we did them," Vella says.

"They were there. And then it was the question of self-reflection as a developer, like, is them just being there good enough, or is there somewhere else this game could go?

"The way our creative director and the game director Kris Piotrowski talks about it is like, we were actually excavating the depths as we were making a game about the depths. You find a lot of stuff along the way."

Below has turned out to be a much bigger game than Capy intended. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, Vella regrets announcing the game in 2013. "We thought it would be cool to announce a game a little bit earlier and bring some fans along for the ride," he explains. "We totally understand it was too early." Then, though, Capy didn't see the problem with announcing the game. Then, it was nowhere near as big as it is now. "It's a big, long, weird game we didn't necessarily expect to make."

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Back then, all those challenges Capy ran up against had yet to present themselves. Indeed, Capy didn't think Below would suffer such a tricky development in the first place. "It's not one of those shit happens scenarios," Vella explains. "It's one of those, we made a whole bunch of choices to try to make the game as good as we can after a certain point. Once you've delayed it once, you may as well do what you need to do to make it great, because a delayed game that still comes out crappy is not really going to be okay by us, by any means."

When Capy last delayed the game - in 2016 - it sounded like it had done so indefinitely. There was a negativity associated with the delay and Capy's accompanying blog post. It suggested, at least it did to me at the time, that Below might never come out. It was quite a depressing delay announcement to read, as someone who had high hopes for the project.

At the time, Capy was conscious of the risk associated with telling people Below would come out at a certain time, or even a specific year, because it had already delayed the game a couple of times and didn't want to again. It wanted this latest delay to be the last one, the delay that would see the studio go dark for two years before re-emerging with something concrete: what we now know is a promised 2018 launch.

"When we sat down to talk about it, the biggest risk we saw was telling people it was going to come out and then delaying it again, and saying, oh, you know, we said it was going to come out this time but we need another six months, and then after that six months being like, actually we need another six months," Vella says.

"There are only so many times you can do that before people tell you you're crap and that's the end of any potential relationship you have with them as players.

"It was like, we know we need some time, we think we know approximately how long that is, but instead of saying approximately how long it is, let's just say we're going dark and we'll come back when we believe we're ready. It was the most honest way of putting it. The least PR'd way of saying we're delaying is saying we're delaying for maybe a long time."

Some thought Below secretly cancelled. I wondered whether it had been - or would likely be - myself.

"A lot of people took it like we were cancelling the game, and I totally understand that," Vella reveals. "But in our gut it was just better to do that than to risk anything else and to let people down and have them become apathetic about the game. I would rather people be angry about it - or even worried it's delayed - than have them just be like, meh, I don't care about these guys any more."

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Since that announcement, Capy has worked to get Below where it feels it needs it to be. It has spent months refining systems, adding content, cutting content, putting content back, and taking more content away. Vella mentions the old adage: the last 20 per cent of any video game development takes 80 per cent of the time, and says it's "never been more true than on this project". Below, he says, is a long game, fuelled by procedurally-generated content but also Capy-created bits and bobs, "hand-done" content for players to find. Then there's all of the various systems, all of the enemies, and all of the "moments" Capy wants players to experience.

"All of that stuff required either a bunch of polish or redo it from scratch because we weren't happy with the way it was," Vella says. "Even just taking the pieces that were mostly complete and giving them a hard look to see if they were actually going in the right direction.

"It's been a lot of work and taking the things we think are working and try to make them work even better, which is in a lot of ways just as hard as starting stuff from scratch."

Digging into the detail, Vella says Capy has done four full iterations, "almost from scratch", on the procedural generation system and how it builds the single screen levels of the depths of Below. Each iteration worked, Vella says, but there was something about each that didn't. Either it didn't feel like it was creating enough "gameplay moments", or it felt "too grid-based" and as a result "looked kind of janky", which was a problem because Capy wanted Below to feel like it was set in natural spaces.

Then there was the technical challenge of getting Below running well. The game has a unique, heavily stylised art style, but even more unique is the camera perspective, which is zoomed out and at times presents the player character as a tiny warrior on-screen. The single screen levels can be vast, despite being single screen. When you begin the game, you find yourself exploring a huge field of grass in a storm, with rain and wind battering each of the thousands of blades you can deform by simply running about.

Because of its aesthetic, Below doesn't look like the most performance-heavy video game, but Vella says there's plenty going on under the hood to tax the Xbox One, the console it's launching on first.

"We're so used to everything in games being up close," Vella says. "How close can we put the camera to a character? We want to be able to see their ear hairs if they're in third-person, or we want to be able to see the scratches on their guns if it's an FPS. For us to go the opposite direction, quite often people think that's easier to do. Of course they're going to do 4K / 60 frames per second, that's easy! But we're doing so much to make that work and it is actually extremely technically challenging to do so."

Capy originally intended for Below to run at a 1080p resolution and at 30 frames per second. But over the course of the development, and to make the most of the Xbox One X, it spent time boosting the game's performance to 4K and 60fps. This is made easier on the more powerful Xbox One X, but Below will run at 1080p and 60fps on the bog standard Xbox One, which Vella says was a challenge.

Below is a much darker game now than it was even two years ago.

Below's aesthetic also evolved as the scope of the game ebbed and flowed. Early in development, Below was a lot brighter than it is now. Over the years, the developers have become more confident in making Below a game about the contrast between light and dark, about the mysterious lantern you find, about the way the fire pits and torch pillars work. Capy has become confident enough to shroud Below in actual darkness, to the point where you sometimes find yourself in what looks like an entirely black screen, save a small circle of light around your tiny warrior in the corner somewhere. "Even in the past little while - and by that I mean since we've gone dark - that's become more foundational for us," Vella reveals. "To be confident enough to make a game that is dark and hope to god people set their gamma settings correctly."

Burnout is one of the biggest issues affecting video game developers today. Developers, who work so hard for so long on projects, some of which never see the light of day, can sometimes exit the industry altogether, so exasperated and exhausted are they with the seemingly never-ending games they have become embroiled with. When you spend years working on a game that struggles for direction, or vision, or identity, developers can, understandably, lose faith. They can lose hope.

"We constantly have that balance between burnout and optimism," Vella says when I ask about how Below's development has affected the team.

"That's just something every game has, but the longer it goes, the more aware you are of it. It's definitely been a challenge. For me it's a little bit less so because I'm not into in the nitty gritty of the project. I'm not making assets or trying to solve some of the big ticket problems. But for the people who have been working on the game every day for years and years of their life, I know for sure it's been a very big challenge. The fact we're positive we can overcome that challenge together is one of the things I'm most proud of about the studio."

For the makers of Below, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I ask Vella if he ever considered cancelling Below. His answer is unequivocal.

"No, absolutely not. It probably crossed the minds of other people on the team. But the idea of letting our team's work not see the light of day was never really an option for us. Everybody's worked so hard and put so much of their life and effort and creativity into the game, people need to see it.

"I'm 100 per cent sure there are people who are not going to like this game, but at least we know that going in, because of the type of game we're making. It's a hard game. It's a game that doesn't do the things some people like about games. Some people like having their hands held. Some people find constant death frustrating. That's okay. Some people aren't super into playing as a tiny little character. That's okay, too. At the end of the day, we put such good work into the game, I think, I never once thought we shouldn't keep working on it."

Like Below's tiny warrior emerging from the depths, for the developers of the game there is, finally, half a decade later, light at the end of the tunnel. Clearly, Below's development has had its ups and downs. In the game, when you die you respawn but must find your corpse to reclaim lost items. But the world is reshaped, the caves shifted slightly, the paths moulded anew, the procedural generation system doing its thing.

As I learn more about the depths Capy went to in the making of Below, I wonder if this is art imitating life. As Below repeatedly reshapes itself for the player after each death, the developers have reshaped Below - thankfully without death.

"It's happening, man!" Vella declares. "It's happening."

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gamingtipsandtrickshacks · 6 years

Text

Why Below has taken half a decade to make • Eurogamer.net

"Making a game is obscenely challenging," Nathan Vella, boss of Toronto, Canada developer Capybara tells me over the phone.

Capy announced Below in 2013 - too soon, the developers admit.

"Every one of the major pillars of the game - the scale, the perspective, the systems, the combat, the goal of creating interesting exploration - all of those things, we did them," Vella says.

"They were there. And then it was the question of self-reflection as a developer, like, is them just being there good enough, or is there somewhere else this game could go?

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"There are only so many times you can do that before people tell you you're crap and that's the end of any potential relationship you have with them as players.

Some thought Below secretly cancelled. I wondered whether it had been - or would likely be - myself.

youtube

"It's been a lot of work and taking the things we think are working and try to make them work even better, which is in a lot of ways just as hard as starting stuff from scratch."

Below is a much darker game now than it was even two years ago.

"We constantly have that balance between burnout and optimism," Vella says when I ask about how Below's development has affected the team.

For the makers of Below, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I ask Vella if he ever considered cancelling Below. His answer is unequivocal.

"It's happening, man!" Vella declares. "It's happening."

0 notes

gamingtipsandtrickshacks · 6 years

Text

Why Below has taken half a decade to make • Eurogamer.net

"Making a game is obscenely challenging," Nathan Vella, boss of Toronto, Canada developer Capybara tells me over the phone.

Capy announced Below in 2013 - too soon, the developers admit.

"Every one of the major pillars of the game - the scale, the perspective, the systems, the combat, the goal of creating interesting exploration - all of those things, we did them," Vella says.

"They were there. And then it was the question of self-reflection as a developer, like, is them just being there good enough, or is there somewhere else this game could go?

youtube

"There are only so many times you can do that before people tell you you're crap and that's the end of any potential relationship you have with them as players.

Some thought Below secretly cancelled. I wondered whether it had been - or would likely be - myself.

youtube

"It's been a lot of work and taking the things we think are working and try to make them work even better, which is in a lot of ways just as hard as starting stuff from scratch."

Below is a much darker game now than it was even two years ago.

"We constantly have that balance between burnout and optimism," Vella says when I ask about how Below's development has affected the team.

For the makers of Below, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I ask Vella if he ever considered cancelling Below. His answer is unequivocal.

"It's happening, man!" Vella declares. "It's happening."

0 notes