Sometimes I make video games

Itch.io

  • 1 Post
  • 158 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 26th, 2023

help-circle





  • Well, I’m not a psychologist, so I suppose my interpretation might not be correct - the irony mounts.

    But from the graphs you shared, it looks to me like the only people who underestimated themselves were the top performers. And from what I know firsthand with imposter syndrome, a competent person underestimates themselves.

    I used hyperbole for effect, so I don’t think that if you believe you have zero competence in something because you actually have zero competence means that you’re secretly good at something. If you know nothing about plumbing, don’t try to install a toilet.

    But if you’re working in the software factory then you don’t actually have zero competence, you probably have formal education and some experience. Having that feeling that you might not be good enough is a sign that you’re on the right track.


  • I’ll take a crack at this one. For what it’s worth, I think the first couple are just loanwords from another language which sometimes gets used incorrectly, and the last three are uncommon words in conversation. Know your audience.


    “This isn’t a meeting about the budget per se

    “This isn’t exactly a meeting about the budget”


    “The victim met their demise vis a vis poodle attack”

    “The victim met their demise by way of poodle attack.”


    “Steve’s a real erudite.”

    “Steve’s a real reader.”


    “Tom and Jerry is a fun cartoon because of the juxtaposition of the relationship between cat and mouse.”

    “Tom and Jerry is a fun cartoon because of the oppositeness of the relationship between cat and mouse”


    “I don’t understand, can you elucidate on that?”

    “I don’t understand, can you explain?”


  • I felt like that early in my career. I used to think that being a rockstar developer was a good thing, and I’d be happy to describe myself as one.

    The thing is, a lot of rockstars are really just churning out heaps of unmaintainable code. They think they have a high degree of proficiency, they’re confident in their competence, but there’s a disconnect between what they think and what they produce.

    It can be a sign of personal improvement to question yourself when you think you’re doing great. We owe it to ourselves to ask ourselves critically if we can be doing better. Because if we don’t, and we just assume we’re awesome, then we’ll happily churn out sub-awesome cruft.

    The insidious thing is that self-criticism leads to self-doubt, and imposter syndrome can be quite paralyzing. But if you learn to control your criticism instead of allowing your criticism to control you, you can achieve higher heights than rockstardom.


  • Based on what I know of Imposter Syndrome and the Dunning-Kruger effect, it seems you’re at your most competent when you feel like you’re at your least.

    So if you’re feeling badly because you feel like you don’t know enough to do your job, take some time to remind yourself that other people who appear to be confident have no idea what they’re doing.

    It’s fake-it-till-you-make-it all the way down.






  • I was fortunate to not only have a typing class in school, but also the only computer game my grandma had was Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Now I type for a living, so hey, I guess it must have paid off.

    If you’re already a hunt and peck typer, your brain wants to look at the keyboard to confirm where the key is before you press it. When learning touch typing, you’ll want to shift your focus from the keyboard to the screen.

    There are formal methodologies for learning where the keys are in relation to your fingers, but imo the most important thing is to not look at the keyboard. No matter what you end up typing, it’s pretty easy to find backspace and try again. Your eyes verify on the screen if your fingers are giving the correct output, and your fingers find their way eventually.

    Many students did benefit from having their hands visually obscured from them when typing. If you find you keep looking at the keyboard then you might want to look into that.






  • At the end of the day, I see cheats as essentially just mods for games. A cheat enables you to do something with the software that you couldn’t before. If everyone has equal access to the mods and agrees at the outset, then who cares? But if you’re the only one in the lobby cheating then you’re probably a jerk who puts their enjoyment ahead of others’.

    If you’re playing by yourself, hack away. Enjoy yourself. You should be allowed to have the maximum amount of fun with your toy.

    If you’re playing with other people, especially against other people, it’s super unsporting. Everyone should have a level playing field.

    Gamers with disabilities opens up sort of a morally gray area. Like, if you only have one hand you’ll have a hard time aiming and shooting at the same time. I could see why someone would be tempted to use an aimbot.

    As far as why cheating seems so prevalent, I place the blame largely with the F2P model. Now, I’m not saying that people aren’t cheating in other games. But if the consequences of getting banned for cheating is that you just have to make a new free account, then you could argue that there aren’t really significant consequences to getting caught. There’s money to be made by cheat vendors on massively popular games, so the free ones make sense to target because the costs are low.

    Worth mentioning: just because you think someone is cheating doesn’t necessarily mean they are. I’ve never cheated in a competitive game but I’ve been called a hacker by poor losers. If you’re looking for a cheater, you’ll likely confirm your biases and find one - whether or not someone was actually cheating.


  • I’m also nostalgic for the era where cheats were easter eggs that enhanced the single-player experience.

    Like, as a kid I was interested in Warcraft/Starcraft, but I’m horrible at RTS gameplay. Cheats gave me an out so that I could enjoy the story.

    Historically, cheats were essentially debug tools that the developer could use to, say, thoroughly play through a level with unlimited lives. But around the 90s/00s you started to see this shift away from using a complicated code of buttons to activate (Konami Code, IDDQD) to a simple to remember phrase (“PowerOverwhelming,”“GiveUsATank,” “GunsGunsGuns”).

    That shift makes me think that the cheats were for the players to enjoy. Otherwise they wouldn’t have fun names to activate them.