You don't have to be a top chef to know a choice cut of ground meat, well seasoned, cooked to perfection on a fresh bun, served with quality condiments makes a great burger. 

**I suggest a dash of Montreal seasoning, some bouillon, and a bit of worcestershire sauce to season the patties!

What makes a good game? Even the people who work in this industry have no idea! What's the secret sauce? What combination of things make a jump jumpy? A punch punchy? It's hidden in dark caves, and closed meetings, where neckbeards scream and throw tantrums at other neckbeards as everyone points fingers for why their ill conceived dreams aren't now reality.

What even are the foundational elements that compose the molecules from which gameplay is built? How do we foster best practices, how do we empower developers to get better at the processes of gamedev, and teach those who want to make games what the pillars are? What's a code editor? What's a gameplay loop? What's a quaternion and how do I wrangle with one? How do I conjure a game out of the ether? And how do i make sure that game isn't dog sh*t? 

How do we compose the symphony of sound, animation, animators, rigs, collisions, layers, physics forces, ability scripts, stat systems, shaders, materials, loops, lighting, etc. all together in that singular moment as the player throws their tiger uppercut at the big bad buff guy?

It boggles the mind how little we as developers seem to give a damn about where our tech, our entertainment and our resulting culture comes from, where it's going. Why do we do anything? How do we plan to make better things in the future? No one seems to give a damn, everyone is short sighted, everyone is swept up in this wave of nihilism and immediate gratification. It shows. We know we like Nintendo games, we know most studios are falling into the dirt. But why? What did they start doing wrong? How do we right the ship? What is the path to creating ingredients from which we can cook good tasty games from again?

There was a place I worked where they had a literal cage, it was called "The cage" and all the coders worked in it. It was a bit of a joke... but not really. Says a lot about what we as a society think of tech and the general types of people who are tasked with generating it. Kept in darkness and forgotten, exploited. We're so content to not care about and keep secret the absolute driving force in our modern world. Scary thought: This is the breeding pit from which our AI overlords will spring, at the hands of unchecked, exploitive, conniving neckbeards.

Outside of the dark cage hidden in the outskirts and forgotten, no one knows what makes a game, no one understands the struggle and mechanics from which the fun is conjured, and it is madness we do not bring a better understanding for what code is, how best to design code, and how to orchestrate our digital ventures in a way that maximizes our chance of success, and to develop projects in a way that is at least remotely ethical. 

Could you imagine living in a world with no innovation in agriculture? Every year another chance for a mass famine, for mass death? That's where our technological innovation stands. Hoarded, stifled, suffocated in darkness by man children who can't share their toys.

Gamedev amounts to a group of demanding deep pockets, above the burden of executing pain in the butt code, cracking the whip on those who are doing their darndest to create something great in a vacuum through great pain, for those who have no understanding or appreciation for what it is they do. In this darkness projects fester, reality is inverted. Hard work puts a target on your pack, gives free loaders the opportunity to cut you down and point fingers. The goal shifts from creating a great project to avoiding scorn, avoiding arduous, fruitless work that will always be squandered by incompetent know-it-alls.

This is to say nothing of the general anti social nature of neckbeards. Pipelines are steered by assholes and social butterflies,  those who are most competent, are often too distracted by technical things and incapable of playing the social games that are able to enact tangible change in this mad world.

I can't get over that in the year 2023, we are still creating these hodgepodges of code from scratch to piece together our monstrosities of projets. We don't have a communal set of code built with standards that are scalable to appeal to coders of various skill levels, to teach people the importance of organization, of creating structures of logic that are digestible at a glance. We have absolutely no standardized course structure of codebases for people to grow and learn best practices in an environment that fosters this growth. Everything is kept in darkness, everything is hoarded, everything is stifled by greed, by smarm, by indifference in a world where infinite knowledge, infinite education, infinite encouragement and help could be shared for free.

Unity has an asset store, there should be a throng of systems available that have a community behind them interacting on them and building them up to be the perfect starting spot for people wanting to develop various systems of their game. Making an RTS game? There should be a generic script designs to issue ticket based AI commands that utilizes a well architected movement detection systems, the code should be meticulously commented to explain why things are set up as they are and what they do. And if you want to dive deeper you can go into the library of the code for further explanations.

I don't understand this world. I don't understand why this self centered, greedy, hoarder mindset of keeping everyone in the dark, of ensuring your little d*ck drivel collection of code slaves can't work with others to build a growing method for creating this digital stuff for the betterment of all.

Games today are garbage. We have absolutely dropped the torch and then kicked it into the mud, distracted by monopoly, empire growth, kicking others into the dirt, all in service to building gaudy, embarrassing castles in the sand showcasing hubris, greed, and utter incompetence. A throng of lazy, coddled, brown nosed devs falling over themselves for a chance to suckle at the festering teet of modern tech.

Trying to gear up for work, this world is painfully cruel and stupid.

Enough self destructive rambles. Let's get to work.

Post work edit: Solid day of work, making progress on an ever expanding set of things. Bit of a landmark moment I played the old web build from a few months back and I think the game is starting to get a good bit better than that old demo. It's always good to try older demos and see you're making progress, and that even with an expanding set of things, that things are polished enough to be superior to older, smaller builds. I often wonder where all the time goes, but I noticed quite  a few little things that i'd fortten about that have been polished up. Every little things matters when you add it all up.

Edit: Finally got a good day in today after a few days of really trying nights of paying the piper and not feeling well. I still don't know where all the time goes, but it's going into making the foundations better. At some point, there will be nothing left to do but build up the levels and make fish and items. It's slow going, but it's going, getting some really solid work in!