domain:gurwinder.substack.com?page=0
4doorsmorewhores
10m ago
In the same vein I'm finding it harder and harder to approximate the value of these good RBs. On a really good offense they are clearly force multipliers, dynamic runners and catchers that add points to every game. The convention wisdom is that they aren't worth a lot of salary because they're replaceable, and even on bad teams they do very little. I'm more skeptical of this these days, seeing the big drop off in effectiveness on the Raiders and Giants offense after losing Jacobs and Barkley. The flipside of this is a good blocking and offensive team that has a bad RB who is carried by his environment. Najee Harris maybe? Not a lot of examples come to mind.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
12m ago
You know, I have never met a man who likes the Dumas books but was incensed that too much time gets devoted to this Milady character, or how it's bullshit that she's so powerful. Dumas chose to devote many more chapters to Milady. The chapters about her mission to kill the Duke of Buckingham are from her point of view. Dumas published the chapters serially, a lot of his readers were men, and I take it as evidence that he responded as much to popular demand as he did to his own creative urges.
I think I wasn't able to communicate my idea clear enough. You are correct that Dumas wrote her as a competent villain of the selfish, ignoble, scheming kind. And she meets her end in a way that is appropriate for this kind of villain: desperate, groveling, clutching at every straw until her head is struck down into the mud. However, this puts the modern writers in a bind: they need a "strong female character" and Milady as she has been written doesn't work as one:
- if she meets her end on the bank of the Lys, she's no longer a suitable self-insert for female viewers
- if she ultimately escapes her punishment, this will anger male viewers
The writers chose the easiest way out: Milady now competes with men in the male sphere: she's a dashing rogue now, someone who, even after sending Constance to her death, has the possibility of a redemption arc. No longer are underhanded tactics implicitly coded as feminine. Could the writers have come up with a different Milady, one that could attract female viewership, not alienate male viewership and at the same time not be an ahistorical girlboss? In theory, yes, but no one has time for this kind of tightrope walking in practice.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
12m ago
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
12m ago
The answer to virtually every "why is X industry/sector/institution woke?" is the same: It's the colleges and universities.
Every institution that wants or needs college graduates are getting people filling their ranks who have been subjected to four years of woke propaganda. I would call it entryism, which is kind of is, except it doesn't take much to subvert an insitution when the overwhelming majority of your generation cohort already believes what you do. Every insitution that is not explicitly right-wing/conservative/anti-woke and requires college graduates is subjected to this. Turns out, a lot of insitutions meet this definition, including most of the important ones.
Even if the game developers themselves are mildy resistant to woke ideology on account of their nerdiness (a fact I am not convinced of, but for the sake of the argument), the HR, Payroll, Executive Support etc teams are all full of woke graduates.
I've said it before, but I probably should say it more. If you want to stop 'wokeness', you have to target the academy first and foremost. Otherwise, we are just going to keep reaching "peak wokeness" every year.
I remember a decade and more ago people - back when the woke were called "SJWs", people would just brush them off as silly college kids, it's just a college thing that won't affect the 'real' world. Turns out, those college graduates actually had to go somewhere after college.
WhateverHappenedToNorman
18m ago
I truly believed he loved Microsoft, probably even more than Bill
Their respective portfolios certainly seem to imply so
NewCharlesInCharge
18m ago
"Overrepresented" is not enough. The claim is that woke politics is overwhelmingly dominant to the point where there're no antiwoke studios. Trans devs would have to be overwhelmingly dominant to match that claim or something else is going on to give even an overrepresented minority this outsized say.
I think politeness and not wanting to get in trouble with HR plays a big role.
I work with some trans engineers. Luckily there's no intersection between their identity and what we work on. It wouldn't make sense to inject the concept of gender identity into storage drivers.
But if I worked in some area that involved storytelling, and the trans engineers wanted to insert their identity into the stories, I'd be incentivized not to speak my mind. I'd want to say things like this is a vanishingly small portion of the population, it's harmful to children to encourage gender identity navel gazing, etc. But then I'd certainly be upsetting all but the most extreme high-decoupling autists among them, and I'd end up being told by HR not to say those things.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
21m ago
Why? There are no loud, visible anti-wokes?
They tend to be fired if they don't shut up. If they get into a dispute with the visible minorities, management can't fire the visible minorities so they fire the anti-wokes who rile them up.
ControlsFreak
32m ago
Ah yes, the classic restrict supply, subsidize demand model. Once someone has given in to restricting supply, the only way out is to subsidize demand. So they say in every industry that sucks because of this exact phenomenon.
But I'm not sure one needs to get into the details of which frictions cause the 5-10% of unfilled slots to have a sense that perhaps that data at least doesn't cleanly support the claim that there is a "surplus" of residency spots. It's at least messy.
Dean
38m ago
That would be anti-woke by the current paradigm, in which negative representation is generally considered worse than non-representation for the same reason that 'don't concede the existence of excesses since it will give the bad people grounds to continue criticizing' is a norm.
A paradigm of prioritizing beneficent representation doesn't go well with making light (or villains) of it. The viewpoint of 'any representation is bad representation' being replaced by 'you must endorse' is one of the distinctions between liberalism and woke.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
39m ago
If you’re a person or brand with a real audience they are powerless.
If you're at least as powerful as Joe Rogan, they're weaker. Others with real audiences have indeed been canceled, e.g. Roseanne Barr, Mel Gibson, and Louis C.K.
Lazuli
48m ago
Does this place get indexed super fast by Google?
The Motte should take a page from DSL and ban all indexing.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
50m ago
Yeah, good luck making a movie without actors, camerapeople, costume designers and so on, but it's still the director who is the lynchpin of the whole production.
Lazuli
50m ago
Saquon is the truth. You can't stop Barkley you can only hope to contain him.
Ravens vs. Eagles this Sunday will be a slug fest.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
52m ago
Thanks, that's an interesting idea. Any specific rubs you had in mind?
hooser
53m ago
Glad you brought up Richelieu. In the book, he and Milady are aptly juxtaposed because of these very qualities: smart, adaptable, ruthless, resourceful, and seeking power. The difference is that Richelieu (for the most part) uses that accumulated power to make the state of France strong, while Milady (when not kept on a tight leash) uses it to pursue her own passions, including murder and revenge. That is Milady's one ultimately-fatal flaw: whatever her intelligence and talents, she ultimately serves her baser instinct. It's what makes her such great villain, while Cardinal Richelieu is merely an antagonist who aptly pursues goals contrary to whose of the protagonists.
She's not exactly portrayed as a role model by Dumas.
Exactly: Dumas develops her as a villain, not an anti-hero. And as a villain, she is absolutely the tops. She has her own clearly developed story arc. She has a great back story. She grows as a character. Her resourcefulness gets developed and revealed and stages. By the time of the "boss fight" scene, the reader really believes that it indeed takes four musketeers and a professional executioner to finally kill her. All that, and the only time she lifts a weapon is to pretend to wound herself.
Men hate when women characters like this are empowered.
You know, I have never met a man who likes the Dumas books but was incensed that too much time gets devoted to this Milady character, or how it's bullshit that she's so powerful. Dumas chose to devote many more chapters to Milady. The chapters about her mission to kill the Duke of Buckingham are from her point of view. Dumas published the chapters serially, a lot of his readers were men, and I take it as evidence that he responded as much to popular demand as he did to his own creative urges.
I mean, how much more empowered can a character get? The Duke, forewarned by a lucky fluke, captures Milady, imprisons her, puts an incorruptible guard over her. In a few short days, she not only gets that guard to help her escape, but to carry out her ultimate mission: kill the Duke. I mean, damn! that's Power!
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
57m ago
· Edited 51m ago
Can I quote stats on university hires? The percent of federal "science" grants going to DEI programs?
Ooo, please do. I'd be interested.
I don't think anyone's claiming that SJ is fully or even mostly gone. Certainly, I would tell anyone claiming this to extract head from own anus and take a look around. The claim @Ben___Garrison and @MadMonzer are making is that the six-metre two-tonne croc has lost a few centimetres and a few kilos, and (in BG's case) that the trend will continue. It's definitely still very big
2rafa
1hr ago
Ballmer is the classic example.
How much of a bean counter was Ballmer, really? I truly believed he loved Microsoft, probably even more than Bill.
Trans women are already, typically, fairly loud and visible influences.
Why? There are no loud, visible anti-wokes? Why don't they win, if a minority can seize all the spoils? Surely the presumption should be on their side since until comparatively recently unwoke things like "objectification" of female characters and jokes that punched down were common.
The "trans priestly caste" explanation simply doesn't work because someone is going to say "no". Someone is going to find trans people changing their plans offputting (or the trans themselves tbh -- they were a punchline in living memory). Why is it that small percentages of people are able to swing entire organizations across the entire industry? No one wants to pick up the $20 bill?
And what about industries that don't attract people with programmer socks? Why did they go woke?
they'll help drive direction in a game studio's writing
I'm actually not sold that random devs, even good ones, can do this. There's plenty of work that doesn't involve the story.
especially if the corporate overlords are looking closely at leadership position diversity.
And there we go.
There's always some other element that explains the "and then the entire organization bent the knee". Seems to me that, as with woke more generally, whatever that is explains why the vidya game industry is where it is more than the trans priestly caste.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1hr ago
Thank you for the detailed response and commentary. Great effortpost.
Let me know if this would make a suitable blogpost.
Probably. With the big "IF" upfront of - I don't think simply cataloging the NRx idea ecosystem is of a ton of interest on its own (outside of the morbidly curious like myself). What would be truly widely appealing, imho, is trying to trace how we got to NRx starting from post WW2 conservative / tradtional thinking (with pit stops in Big-L Liberalism) with a final section on what likely outcomes are.
This is exactly why I asked for recommendations. I'm try to build a deeper understanding of "how we got here" in order to have a stronger confidence in thinking about "where we are headed." It's important not to get too tied up in pure ideology - this was how Big-L liberals failed, how the neocons failed, and how the Progressive of today (Kamala) failed to even get off the launch pad*.
While the re-election of Trump has created a Right Wing honey moon period still very much in full swing, the Right in America / Britain is still very far from coalescing around a reality driven approach to the next 10,20,30 years. Right now, it's a coalition of angry populists (hardcore MAGA'ers), old Reagan style conservatives who have abandoned any idea of calm negotiation and co-existence with the Left, techno-libertarian bros (Thiel, Vance, etc.....frankly I think Yarvin is closer to this bucket that he wants to admit), and the centrist wanderers who have been so turned off by the really weird Left that they, for now, will happy vote against Blue Tribe. Oh, and then, of course, there's like 7-12 million younger men who feel utterly forgotten. This is a strange coalition to try to drive forward and, since 2016, it has been utterly dependent upon the person of Donald J. Trump. That lasts for 4 more years (Trump doesn't have the deep managerial ability nor the personality to existent as shadow emperor of the Republicans after the end of this term).
Sorry not sorry for the tangent. This is something I have a deep interest in. Again, thanks for the effortful response.
Quantumfreakonomics
1hr ago
Cyanide tastes horrible. I would be insulted as a Kraft Heinz executive that Jim Jones didn’t trust Kool-Aid® to mask the flavor.
Pitt19802
1hr ago
How much of Barkley success do you want to give him vs his situation?
Between him and McCaffrey...
I mean, it's a team sport, everyone looks better when give them better teammates.
Both those guys did a lot of good work on not particularly good teams, stick them on a strong team.
idk, both are fun guys to watch when they get it going, I'm glad they both found good situations.
I'm not sure it changes the narrative around how to value RBs as much as people might suggest. (as much crap as the Giants are getting for it, I still think that was a fairly reasonable decision).
fmaa
1hr ago
No, you cannot. You cannot even come up with the coolest game you've ever played. At best you can do an elevator pitch for the latter, and noone will give a shit because being an ideas guy is indeed not an exclusive skill.
Actual game design starts at the hundreds of pages of plans and spreadsheets and design documents required to turn those ideas into something concrete. The detail level of which keeps growing the more people with less direct personal communication you need to convey those ideas to.
Tons of great games have been made without artists. Many, many more only spend any time and effort on artists long after the designers are satisfied their prototypes are worth the expense. Tons of great games have been made without programmers. The entire fields of designer board games and tabletop rpgs are like 30-60 years old despite requiring no technology not available centuries ago, only advances in game design.
yofuckreddit
1hr ago
Is design really that exclusive of a skill? I find it hard to believe.
I'd put artists above designers in terms of value, and programmers above all of them.
I can come up with the coolest game you've ever played, in my head, right now. Good luck making it without artists and programmers.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2hr ago
What are some games where the “reward mechanism” is increasingly delayed the longer you play?
A game like chess arguably has the same amount of reward per game regardless of elo, it just gets more difficult. (Games will take similar amount of time and chance of winning/losing doesn’t shift much). Same with MOBA games. World of Warcraft and other RPGs may seem as if they delay the rewards, because it takes longer to get to the next level, but I’m not totally sure if this is the case, because you still acquire loot and have same amount of exploration and combat while the next level is delayed.
I suppose Souls games may be an example: because you keep dying and retrying as you progress through game, then the reward (the completion) genuinely delays over time. A lot of older games have this mechanic, where you are forced to retry until you complete the level. This is rare in modern games. Puzzle games and games like Portal have this mechanic. Crosswords and Sudoku as well.
I’m in interested in how this mirrors the real life progression of skills; ie, real life contains an element of delayed rewards across progression. Reading a book goes from quick and fun (children’s books) to long and tedious (professions involving lots of reading). Math problems don’t just get harder, they may take 10x longer to solve. Occupational obligations may involve increasingly delayed feeling of reward. Someone’s goal in meditation may go from 5min to 35min. Etc.
Rule of thumb for me is game devs make 50-66% of what they could make doing boring enterprise dev work, with 50-100% longer hours
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