Gatekeeping is ALWAYS a good thing

[KAI]

Got suspended from twitter this weekend apparently because someone reported my account, but im sure it was just my account getting caught on the bot purge that is happening on that shitty platform lately.

I was reported, I think, for posting this on the new Crazy Taxi announcement

Spoiler

Between all the people hyped for this new game while replying "YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!" and "I remember this game from my childhood/visits to chuck e. cheese", or some crap like that, and all the leaks so far showing the game no longer a scoring survival driving game with heavy emphasis on map and passenger layout memorization, but instead an open world MMO battle royale racing game, made me think, what if i really was banned for that opinion? maybe gatekeeping my favorites games will be a good idea...



Not sure if most people know, but the Crazy Taxi community in particular has been all over the place for years because of some bad info/rules going around, mainly:
*That the game is quarter muncher full of random shit made to waste your money
*That the time survival is unfair
*That not having a map makes the game impossible (lots of games inpired by CT tried to "fix" that, even mentioning as a selling point)
*That half of the fun on these games are the bonus mini games included on the ports (those you always see people playing in speedrunning events), even though they are pointless and the main arcade mode has almost infinite replay value on its own.
*That it doesnt matter in what difficulty setting you play the game, you can set it to easy and max time and that's ok, and that's why you see many videos on youtube with 3-hours world record runs (this is even stated on the twin galaxies rules if you want to submit scores to that shithole)

Spoiler

This game in particular completely breaks if you dont play in default setting, you can accumulate so much time you could go to the bath to take a crap and come back, and you will have enough time left to keep playing, or just milk points for minutes doing dunuts on places without cars taking advantage of all that dead time between rides.

Appealing to mainstream audiences is what dumbed down most big fighting game franchises in the last decade. I remember lots of reviews and even friends saying the games in the Gundam Versus franchise for example "will be better with dual stick support, allowing you to control the camera instead of autolocking your rivals, they are too simplistic because of that".

I mean, imagine if there was this huge consensus in the gaming community thinking "those shmup bullet hell games will be much better if they used all the aspect ratio of modern wide screens, instead of being letterboxed or designed for that weird andrew tate mode" or that "they should be longer and more immersive" (a cygni-like)
Hope that never happens, but who knows, people could get ultra nostalgic for the genre all of a sudden, the next toby fox game could be a full shmup creating a new massive wave of undervanias clones.

Sorry if all this sounded like a huge rant (im still super salty about the suspension), but i wanted to post my thoughts outside of social media platforms, where discussion is always nonexistent.

[EmperorIng]

Sorry for the stupid suspension man. xwitter morons have been worse than usual lately, across all interest fields and groups.

Even if I am not a huge taxi man I nonetheless agree that if you don't try to uphold some standards in a sub-genre community you will eventually be flooded with people that say the stupidest shit and crowd you out. Just imagine if the shmup community had been more welcoming to all the survivor-slop hordes... "but what if they make their way to real shmups!?" < something that has never, ever been documented lol

[tzm_rade]

Had the same feeling when I saw the Virtua Fighter 6 presentation today.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

*That not having a map makes the game impossible (lots of games inpired by CT tried to "fix" that, even mentioning as a selling point)

This reminds me of seeing people complain nowadays that Dragon Quest is impossible to play without a guide because you have to talk to all the NPCs in town to figure out what to do. What if you miss one?! Or forget where you're going? Never mind that they're not particularly difficult to locate...

The rise of modern conveniences in games almost seems to have spoiled people's expectations. Crazi Taxi's map isn't even that large, looks at something like GTA Vice City or San Andreas and there was way more to find in those by sheer exploration. Having to use your memory a bit or make notes is seen, by some apparently very lazy gamers, as a literal kiss of death for enjoyment of a game. They'd likely also complain if the game held their hand every step of the way, so I suspect it's impossible to please people who aren't willing to do some basic learning and problem solving themselves.

I don't know if it's tied to generally lower literacy rates but I have a suspicion it is. Being able to understand challenging works you're reading and more difficult vocabulary you're unfamiliar with requires some willingness to learn and problem solve that won't exist if you fry your brain with TikTok videos all day...

[Sima Tuna]

*That not having a map makes the game impossible (lots of games inpired by CT tried to "fix" that, even mentioning as a selling point)

This reminds me of seeing people complain nowadays that Dragon Quest is impossible to play without a guide because you have to talk to all the NPCs in town to figure out what to do. What if you miss one?! Or forget where you're going? Never mind that they're not particularly difficult to locate...

Oh god. So many genres are full of people like that now. People who say old rpgs are impossible to play, or that shmups can't be beaten without quarter feeding, or beat em ups can't be won "legitimately" because they're designed to take your money, etc etc.

I'm not gonna say gatekeeping is always good but you do need some standards where new people come in. They should understand that "hey, maybe the reason this feels hard to me is because I'm not experienced with it and I still suck." Maybe the problem isn't the game. Maybe it's not an objective flaw that old RPGs didn't have map markers that held your dick all the way from quest start to quest end. Maybe losing a couple times while you're learning a game (and having to reload a save game) is actually a good thing? Shit, I dunno dude.

Maybe it's not a bad thing if you die in an arcade game and DON'T feed quarters, and just start the game over from the beginning? But with the extra knowledge you've learned?

When you look at the kinds of games that typically go mainstream in appeal, they're usually aimed at the easiest possible experience. That's fine for those who enjoy it.

I also get a little annoyed when people say shit like, "I'm an adult and I don't have time to learn a hard game." Really mate? It takes me about 10 minutes to get my ass beat in Final Fight. Don't know what's taking YOU so long! Arcade games are some of the shortest and most immediate games around. Nobody is forcing you to spend 100 hours learning the 1cc for Dodonpachi. But the thing about arcade games is you can play as much or as little as you want. You also don't have to play it all in huge chunks.

[KAI]

Well... New Crazy Taxi trailer just dropped and all the footage on it was from a 1:1 remake of the first map of the first game, with some mechanics from Crazy Taxi 3.
Im glad they dropped all that racing shit after all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePi8tDdKuWw

Then i read the AI disclaimer on the steam page.

If they include more maps from CT3, and some original ones I think ill get more excited about it, cause paying modern prices for an HD remake of the first game that will probably be bloated with non-arcade content its a no-no for me.

I'm not gonna say gatekeeping is always good but you do need some standards where new people come in. They should understand that "hey, maybe the reason this feels hard to me is because I'm not experienced with it and I still suck." Maybe the problem isn't the game. Maybe it's not an objective flaw that old RPGs didn't have map markers that held your dick all the way from quest start to quest end. Maybe losing a couple times while you're learning a game (and having to reload a save game) is actually a good thing? Shit, I dunno dude.

Akio, the Irem/Metal Slug guy, asked about something like this for the game they are developing now, if people wanted markers or would like to explore everything in detail.
The thing I love most about retro games, and especially ultra old rpg stuff from the PC88/MSX era is that you needed to examine all thing you see and catch your attention, it may sound antiquate, but that design philosophy was lost in the early 90, and when companies tried to recapture that same style like Falcom tried to do with the first ZWEI game, they were heavly criticized for it (I adored that game exactly because of that).

https://x.com/akio_1963/status/2044370359936487786

He was kind enough to reply to me when I told him not to add those things, and if the game is going to look that good, it will be a pleasure to explore every pixel on it.

[m.sniffles.esq]

I'm officially confused about what nu-crazy taxi will/will not be. After seemingly years of hearing it's going to be PSO with a car, they release a trailer thar looks like... Crazy taxi

Then i read the AI disclaimer on the steam page.

For tools. Which I would get real used to seeing. Devs find paying a lot of money for some unlucky souls to perform hundreds of hours of ultra-repetitive drudgery to be less than optimal.

No one makes pixel art by busting out the graph paper, and coding one square at a time anymore, either

[ryu]

I would expect almost every dev to use ai for prototyping at the very least.

[Sumez]

While it's arguably possible to make a good point in some situations, I don't think I've ever ACTUALLY seen someone complain about "gatekeeping" in a context where it was justified. It's almost always someone who is sour about "not being allowed to enjoy" something they clearly don't really care about anyway.

I think having standards and expectations for something that you enjoy is a good thing, and wanting others to appreciate the same things about it is also good.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

For tools.

Unspecified tools. And then it's a short step to "autogenerating all my assets is using a tool".

I shouldn't be surprised how successfully the industry managed to sucker and normalize their garbage.

[Sumez]

I get the negative reaction, and I'm not a fan either.

But good luck finding any software dev house that doesn't rely on at least CoPilot. There's, in all fairness, still a pretty big leap from that to using AI-generated assets. It's more comparable to using bloated garbage engines like Unity

So yeah, devs will typically *have* to put it there - I wouldn't dismiss the game itself on that basis.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

But good luck finding any software dev house that doesn't rely on at least CoPilot.

That's quite easy; I have a library of games from the year 2020 and earlier I can happily content myself with. There's also plenty of indie game devs who reject AI entirely. People seem to underestimate that in order to truly change anything they need to be willing to hold firm boundaries and say no to corporate bullshit. You don't have to simply roll over and say "there's nothing we could have done!".

[Obiwanshinobi]

I believe actual works of arts will be made no matter what, because as a species, we have a need to create stuff. Sometimes it just feels good to create something.

[Sumez]

But good luck finding any software dev house that doesn't rely on at least CoPilot.

That's quite easy; I have a library of games from the year 2020 and earlier I can happily content myself with. There's also plenty of indie game devs who reject AI entirely. People seem to underestimate that in order to truly change anything they need to be willing to hold firm boundaries and say no to corporate bullshit. You don't have to simply roll over and say "there's nothing we could have done!".

You're completely misunderstanding or misreading the part you quoted and are responding to.

Saying "I don't want to play a game made by a person who used copilot" is like saying "I don't want to play a game made by a person who used stackoverflow"

[Sumez]

I believe actual works of arts will be made no matter what, because as a species, we have a need to create stuff. Sometimes it just feels good to create something.

This is true, and I feel like the live music community has proven that to me over the past couple of years. AI is barely even a consideration anyone has in that context, despite how impressive some AI generated music has been. It's not even that people are actively rejecting it - they just don't care. It's irrelevant.

[KAI]

CTWT gameplay footage is out, is even worse than I thought.

Mini map, nitro button, map warp, story mode, focus on lore and characters, free roaming, funko ads, and they destroyed almost every driving mechanic in the process...

Now im gonna gatekeep even harder, and you should do it too, or this could also happen to your favorite game.

[Lethe]

Anti-AI coding is like veganism. It exists in the public consciousness so long as it's marketably icky and means as much to the average person as they've been told to care about it. I already know about a dozen mod projects that wouldn't exist at all without Copilot et al.

For me, most people don't get the weird shit I like whether gatekept or not, and people who really do care will work standards out on their own anyway, so I don't stress out about it. It's nice to have some pathos and interact with other opinions but other people shouldn't be defining what you get out of something. If it leads to trash being developed, then that just becomes yet another thing to not care about. I had the same falling out with the state of fighting games, if I feel forced to play bad games to have a healthy player population then I'll just stop giving a damn, there's plenty of other things to do. Am I supposed to expect it to last forever?

[Obiwanshinobi]

I struggle to think of a single game I'd like to get a sequel of. I used to be AGAINST releasing game developed by Bethesda bearing Fallout 3's name. As well as anyone's 30 fps game getting released bearing Devil May Cry's name. Somebodies out there acted AGAINST my wishes. Heck, the number of games which I, for a reason whatever DO NOT play, increases each and every day. So I... DO NOT play them all the same?

[Starfighter]

Now im gonna gatekeep even harder, and you should do it too, or this could also happen to your favorite game.

No, my favorite game is already released. I have it on my shelf and it'll never become anything else.

Anti-AI coding is like veganism. It exists in the public consciousness so long as it's marketably icky and means as much to the average person as they've been told to care about it.

I've read this several times and I just can't understand what you mean.

[mycophobia]

Anti-AI coding is like veganism. It exists in the public consciousness so long as it's marketably icky and means as much to the average person as they've been told to care about it.

I've read this several times and I just can't understand what you mean.

because its nonsense intended to justify the accelerated destruction of the environment and the overrunning of the internet with plagiarized slop because of Game Mods.

anyways sucks about crazy taxi i guess.

[Lethe]

Oh? Oh, is that my opinion is it?
I could have sworn that I thought GenAI is a fundamentally dead-end technology whose generalized use is conceptually incompatible with the human condition, which is being frantically propagandized and invested in by the powers that be because our worldwide socio-societal decay is becoming increasingly severe and impossible to ignore, and politicians need SOME sort of magical future industry for people to vote for them on, doesn't matter if it's shit, destructive or nonsensical, so long as it makes the right people money right now and gets through an election cycle. Funnily enough, I held similar opinions about how the entire internet was being used before GenAI existed.

By the way, I've spent my whole life refusing to eat animals on principle, I avoid driving unless there's no other option, I don't buy stupid plastic shit flown in from China, I haven't been on a plane myself in 10 years, I grow my own vegetables. I am a very small-community-oriented kind of person (why do you think I'm here?), I think that the people close to you are the only thing that really matters and that all big problems are both created and solved atomically through the personal interactions of individuals. None of that stops me from admitting that cheap faddish "well-meaning" will always be more appealing than actually having the courage to address our real systemic issues, and the cowardice feedback loop resultant is what's landed us in the last few decades.

Then you step out of the tumblr deep freezer with the revelation that I'M ingenuine because erm acktually AI is totes bad for the environment or smt???? gross chud
I'm glad that you understand these things about me better than I do. Fucking cretin.

[mycophobia]

your opinion was poorly expressed :P