I on the other hand find it extremely accurate. Termite in the untouched nature wont eat the house, but build one there and it will take a bite.

Hidden village in the amazon can live in harmony with nature, but give them some gas, electric lights and aggregate and i bet that bad boy will be running a lot.

“Dont say termites are eating your porch. There are billions of termites that are not eating it.”

Coming back to the map markings. It is also economics. How many players are going to use the feature versus how much work it is. It migh seem simple thing, but when you add option for player to write on the map there are lots of things you need to take in to account.

How many symbols can be used, what happens if the games resolution is changed from the settings, how the text wraps if its close to the edge of map, what if there appears new automatic map marker under text user has wroten, are there interactive symbols for fast travelling or something else, will those go under the text or on top, what if writing uses special characters etc etc. Not to mention if devs have been cute with the map and its not just a flat texture. Skyrims map for example is the game world and you can see storms on it. Spending time to make and test all those features when it really serves a tiny fraction of the playerbase is wastefull.

About saving the game. For better or worse its also a game mechanic and now days its not necessary about the limitation. For example if you could save in a middle of an battle in pokemon you could just save the moment you start a fight with shiny pokemon and you could infinetly try to catch it without any stakes. Or if you could save in middle of epic multiphase jrpg boss it would take away from the feeling of succes after long battle.

But i absolutelly agree games should atleast have exit save, so if real live happens and you need to close the game, it should not punish the player and loose their progression.

Three first ones can also be game engine limitations. Im not saying its good desing and its always because the limitations, but there might be more happening under the hood that does not show to the end user. Things like quest stage flags or loading things behind the cut scenes.

Dialogue history i agree completelly. I love the way pillars of the eternity did this. I also loved how text refering to things like cities, characters and gods were highlighted and you could see short summary hovering your mouse over the higlighted text and clicking it opened the codex where you could read about the topic. This helped me immerse to game because my character would what the capital of the country is or what god uggapugga is. Also it helped when there was long times between game sessions.

About map markers. I like when i can add markers or text on the game map, but inherently i think game should do these things for you, either adding a symbol in the map, or adding something in to games quest log or codex. But on the other hand i lived in a era where if i wanted a map for game i needed to draw it by myself on the grid paper. The habit has stayed with me and in games like Dark souls, Remnant and blue prince i keep small notebook with me, where i write my notes and stupid theories. To me its really fun to read those scribles later and try to figure out what i have missed or how dumb i was.

Hollow knight, Project Zomboid, minecraft and Legend of Grimrock have all very different tools for you marking your map and in all of them the map system is part of the game desing and gameplay loop. While these games benefit from the map system to most of the games its just unnecessary. The ability to mark “digging spot #31” just is not necessary.

I love how in pillars of eternity and satisfactory you have in game notepads. And now days steam notepad is also great. You can even add screemshots to it, but i like my oldschool hand writing stuff more.

Yes and no.

You need to have +5 years of history in entertaiment business and/or in community work and somebody else needs to nominate you. Then if the commitee acepts you and you pay the sponsor fee you get the star.

But yeah. If you have lots of money and friends in right places you can pretty much buy it, but its not like any bluecollar worker can just take a loan and buy one for themself without any merit.

Its not really that different than how people get wings in hospitals or libraries named after them. Except Hollywood star does not benefit normal people in any way.

Same thing happens with games to some degree.

There are many stories from gaming about placeholder music becoming integral part of the game.

In original doom games Carmack and Romero loved Black Sabbath and listened it during testing amd working on the game. That led to now legendary doom ost.

During the development of Max Payne 2 Remedy used Poets of the fall song as a placeholder and in the end they decited they wanted it in to the game, but because they could not get in to agreement with the publisher, and because PoF members are just cool guys, they eventually made song just for the game to get around the licensing debucle. That song was later released as a single.

I remember hearing story about Brutal Legend having some licenced music as a place holder in meeting with investors and it lead that music ending in to the game.

Im writing this while im little busy, so everything is coming from my memory, without fact checking, so who ever is reading this take it with a pinch of salt.

Guess the difference was that they werent scared for their life /s

I was visiting my friends in centrall europe and one if them wanted to show me the local speciality. We travelled 45 minutes by car and other 45 minutes by foot to look teeny tiny swamp. It was line 4m² and It was protectect area. My friend was really proud to show it to me.

I live in country where 26% of our landmass is swamps and wetlands…