What if Breath of the Wild had fishing? (thoughts on "Context Sensitivity")

[@ChillyUK77]

I love that Matt seems to try and not take anything for granted and provides those 'mental handholds' to those that may be struggling to nail down a vague feeling they have. The automation in some games has always been something that could easily get under my skin. Watching Arthur Morgan position himself over and over in order to 'realistically' loot a room was agonising. Also after recently playing Stray it feels like a context sensitive Rain World.

[@boghogSTG]

Hell yea finally someone agrees with my takeaway! I liked Matt's video but I thought his overall thesis was halfassed. You could see him patch up holes in his analysis with the "it doesn't *feel* context sensitive" statements. The pieces were there but he didn't put them together in a way that left me satisfied. Because he started his analysis with what's effectively just a tool used to achieve a specific outcome rather than human decisions/perception. The problem he described as I see it is just a lack of focus in a lot of games - they are soups of subgenres and mechanics. They don't focus on testing a small set of skills by design, and their emphasis on quickly getting players into the flow of the games incentivizes them to use context sensitivity (and assists more broadly) at the cost of challenge, depth & control. It's not as though designers of these games are slaves to context sensitivity - they know what they're doing, even if it's just intuition/playtesting. Games which have a much stronger core layer tend to not only be a lot simpler, but also use context sensitivity in ways that are either inoffensive, or outright good because they are more in tune with what the players are looking for. That's why some things "don't feel like context sensitivity" to Matt, and why the rollback example is damn good. Of course sorting games into "core" and "secondary" layers is highly subjective and chaotic (people can misinterpret what the core is, developers themselves can be unaware of how their mechanics come together) but you can't reduce game design into just good/bad rules & systems. Case-by-case basis like you said.

[@forte4450]

I think the rollback idea is even more interesting because your game never actually makes an assumption, your opponents does

[@joebailey8294]

I feel like people don’t appreciate how far ahead he is of his competition. It’s like he’s speaking a completely different language

[@jerm5466]

Correct and his absence is a huge loss for the space, but it’s good he’s pursuing what’s best for him

[@HotPocketHPE]

Yeah subject action object is nice and all but are we gonna see that Nioh 2 stream? (Good video)

[@ziadbruh]

🤔

[@SpeckObst]

Isn't the floor technically the object in your example comparing a loose platformer to RE4? Without the actual level structure and obsticles, isn't the movement as meaningless as the shooting in RE4 without enemies or other objects? Feel like the main difference between your loose vs tight and Matthews context sensitivity scale is that loose vs tight seems to focus more on player movement and physic interaction while context sensitity encapsulates pretty much every single action. Feel like that is where the slight disconnect in those examples you mentioned comes from. Both concepcts overlap to a great degree, but still differ in that key aspect.

[@m.z6610]

Huh I just watched like a third of your channel's videos. Your content is surprisingly good for learning German (and videos are very good on their own)

[@ziadbruh]

yeah that explanation nails it and it's something i didn't flesh out enough. i think the criterium i tend to consider is: are the core character controls deep/interesting on their own? you could put mario or nero in a blank space and it'd be fun to move around, whereas RE4 basically needs level design to be interesting. i realize that's pretty fuzzy and arbitrary though.

[@raphaeljimenez6376]

The concept of granularity holds true to your netcode example - most implementations of rollback are also taking advantage of delay-based netcode to serve as a buffer for desync It's interesting to see that fighting games don't have to alter or compromise their mechanics to accomodate rollback. Even a game like Melee which is harder to predict due to DI works perfectly fine with Rollback

[@raphaeljimenez6376]

Bit of a tangent - As weird and annoying and problematic as he is, Jonathan Blow talking about how 'games are more than interactivity, they're systemic' was really poignant and has been stuck in my head for years I don't know if your instructor saw Blow talking about it (I hope not, lol) but it's strange how rare that take is 🤔

[@ziadbruh]

@@raphaeljimenez6376 yeah that’s one of the first big things we talked about (“books can be interactive too so that can’t be the only distinguishing factor”) and in hindsight i’m honestly shocked it’s not a more ubiquitously understood concept

[@forte4450]

Unironically about to make a follow up to your follow up of the MM viddy

[@ziadbruh]

LET’S GO

[@joebailey8294]

Idk if rollback netcode is super analogous to his example in the video. It is an example of interpretation by the computer but I think it’s a separate issue to context sensitivity because it has to do with the interactions of two actual players and because bad internet isn’t an intentional game feature. It’s a little muddled with other issues

[@joebailey8294]

You can technically dash in a sphere if you aim the dash but that’s unwieldy