Seriously? An unfounded Ai accusation? If I wanted to be talked down to after putting in a herculean effort to help people, I'd go teach children.
I spent two hours recording a live play through of every single entry, going into great detail of my thoughts on each game, in each category I was marking. The audio quality ended up being a bust, and I did it AGAIN. LIVE.
After this, I then took very detailed notes of my thoughts so I could make sure I had a great jumping point to to write out my report. Believe it or not- I have a rubric that I built to help me do all of this. It's a trick I've learned after years and years of practice and working on being an effective communicator.
I'm sorry you were so offended by eloquence compared to sophomoric writing and were equally off-put by my use of Emoji's and a rubric to make the report a more enjoyable read.
I'd offer you the raw notes in the word doc, but quite frankly, I am disgusted by you. All that work and effort, and that's how you respond?
Kindly never darken my doorstep again.
Now that I know it isn’t Ai, I’m sorry. I never wanted to be on the accusatory end and I never thought I’d be unable to distinguish Ai versus human. I checked your other posts and channel, so my message was based on multiple reviews you made, not just a reply to me.
That wasn’t because of emoji or rubric, but the style of writing itself. Ai writes similar to how people write school essays to hit the word mark. I know my game and your review didn’t read genuine, it reads like trying to hit a word mark or a blog post you get paid per word. Ai writes exactly like that compared to how a real person would write a quick opinion on a 3 minute game, therefore the style is very similar to Ai. I used chat-GPT myself and because of this I was even more convinced I recognize the style.
All that work and effort, and that’s how you respond?
That what i felt when i read an Ai review. I would be ok with people not playing, but Ai felt like going extra mile avoiding real communication to me.
Kindly never darken my doorstep again.
Again, now that I see a comment that reads like a real person, I apologize for my accusation. But given all the reviews you’ve written, I am 100% sure I’m not the only person who thought it was written by Ai, they just didn’t mind enough to ask. This is something you should consider further, because you’re going to run into this accusation again due to your writing style. It is sad and as an artist I’ve seen similar situations, but it is the modern issue with Ai that any creative can run into, including me. If i was accused I would also be offended, of course.
Even if it wasn’t Ai, your review reads as a paid blog post, not a jam game player comment. I am thankful for your effort to give a detailed review and again I’m sorry that I didn’t make you feel valued. I said my honest opinion because I also expected an honest opinion and I felt like I didn’t get it. It was immature on my part to jump to conclusions, but I’m sure even you can see how your reviews can be mistaken for Ai.
I appreciate you taking the time to follow-up with a thoughtful reply. I would like to apologize for flying off the handle like that. I had literally spent 6 hours of my day that day between the live recording, note taking, and then editing to produce those reports for every single entrant. Then having someone devalue my effort and work like I was some Ai bot just really struck a nerve with me.
Some background: I've been writing blogs for my business for decades, and over time, you fall into habits and rubrics that works for catching peoples attention and engaging readers in that way. There is a reason it reads like Ai, because Ai is following the marketing formula that works. On top of that one of my higher education focus's is in English and Writing. I also was a teacher for many years and that background helps me cater my reports to fit for a students perspective as well.
My Process: I play through the games, live. My first 5 minutes focus's on raw first reactions, which I narrate. After that, I go through each category that I am evaluating an entry on. I literally have a list in-front of me with questions to "ask my self." After the play through, I write a rough draft of the report for each report, in most cases, almost verbatim the audio notes I took during game play. I like to be whimsical, and tell a story through my communication, even in rough note form. Once the notes are taken, I then go back, re-read my notes, and edit them into the rubric I have created for these Jams.
Here. I am going to share with you the literal raw notes copy of your review. It will be very similar to my notes in the live video recording (which you can watch through as well.) It will also read like a rough draft version of the "pretty" report you got that has not been edited yet, but will have the exact same whimsical tone and marketing based communication.
Timeline P015***
V.
First Impressions: Oh, a text based adventure? Let's dive on in. As someone who likes to read, the theater of the mind is a wonderful thing to explore and play around with. being thrust into a story that has a slight choose your own adventure style to it was quite nice, especially, when there are dark secrets to uncover and work your way through. I appreciated the stories respect for the player in allowing a seamless movement backward and forward through the text allowing one to explore other options and avenues within the same story without having to be forced to the beginning or remembering all of their previous decisions.
Fun & Engagement: I did find myself quite engaged by the story. What was this families curse? What happened to their car? Was this a murder? I wanted to know more and was left with so many questions leading me to be curious about the rest of the story here and more backstory!
Theme Use: I feel the interpretation of the theme was quite loose here, but, you could argue that follows into the ripple effects of decisions we make and "Just One More Day" can ultimately lead to different outcomes.
Visual Presentation: Here's where it get's tricky. With these types of games, we want to allow the theater of the mind to create as much as possible, but, with this comes the challenge of utilizing lots of flavored words in our writing to help coax the brain to form pictures, hear sounds, and ultimately, paint a canvas for itself. We can, of course, utilize small visual cues to help with this. Quick flashes on the screen of a clock when we are checking the time, or barely visible car with no distinct features pulling through the background of the text as the family arrives home. It is a delicate balance, and if we choose the complete lack of visuals, we need more descriptive text.
Sound & Music: My personal favorite, when it comes to creating theater of the mind games. If you forego any visuals, sound can be extremely impactful, especially by itself. Utilizing an engine turning over sound when the car fires up, the gentle chiming of a clock when you look at it, or the subtle purr of a cat that's getting scratches. These can be powerful tools when trying to immerse your player in a text based adventure.
Technical Execution: Everything worked perfectly, no bugs, no soft locks, the abilitiy to move freely through the story and retrace paths was a very nice touch and respected the players time.
Originality: A good story is often times all you need to bring originality to a tired genre, and a good story becomes even more important when your game is completely focused on the story itself. Good work.
Polish: It's complete, and it all works in a nice little package. Well done.
Final Thoughts: A wonderful narrative taking us down a dark path with a family that has a curse. We end up with more questions than answers even after exploring the different avenues making us want to know more about this family. The lack of visuals and sounds made us rely much more on the descriptive text, but it felt a bit lacking in this department. Fortunately making up for it with some strong characterization! But here's where we can really dive deeper. A narrative game, unlike a book on paper, offers up unique opportunities to subtly play with the theater of the mind with brief and vague sound and visual ques without forcing the player to have a specific image. It is a strength that the game format has above pen and paper and can allow us to expand on our creativity.
Hello again, thank you for reconsidering.
would like to apologize for flying off the handle like that. I had literally spent 6 hours
No problem, I am sorta used to it partially because I am temperamental myself, so I run in to conflicts I could avoid regardless of which side is wrong (if any). I also have experience preparing blog posts/youtube reviews etc, so I understand, it takes a ton of time.
There is a reason it reads like Ai
Yea, after talking to you I understood it never crossed my mind what text Ai is trained on. With art it is pretty easy to figure it out, especially it was at first with notable artists having their style stolen, but with writing it just felt like “Ai style”.
I also was a teacher
That makes sense in regards to your writing style and the way you give feedback. I’ve been in multiple jams by now, your style stands out also because jams are competitive and your feedback feels “standalone”, more like a beta test/reader feedback or something.
I guess what struck me as “ai” was specific comments that didn’t make sense to me. It makes sense to discuss it in educational setting, but jams are more of a competitive nature so the feedback I am used to is very different.
You probably have a very habitual way of reviewing games by now, it does read like youtube review. I haven’t figured how to have this stream of consciousness on while doing a Live stream, but it makes sense you’d think in this manner in Live because of you’ve already done it too many times. My notes are super different when I prepare stuff like that, I am more paying attention to what doesn’t work (it’s not that i like to criticize, I just have the usability design too ingrained in my head, so my main objective ends up looking for bugs etc).
What stood out to me:
I appreciated the stories respect for the player in allowing a seamless movement backward and forward
given the genre, it is a basic mechanic. Since you had a gaming channel, it stood out to me as odd, because I got feedback about such stuff before primarily from newbie devs that do not know Interactive fiction is games genre.
theatre of the mind
it repeats multiple times. I’m not a native speaker, so it stood out to me as somewhat confusing. I read a lot in English for decades, but I don’t recall seeing it in text, though I don’t read plays or listen to radio fiction, so perhaps that’s why it is unfamiliar.
Now the reply to your review(if you wanna read haha, i also don’t see the original anymore so i reply to the draft):
Theme: i did this game originally for a different jam, but the theme here was similar to the game. Depending on the ending though, just one more day is a literal thing, the bad outcome is simply postponed, not avoided.
I appreciate your feedback, I found few moments especially useful even back when I thought it was Ai:
if we choose the complete lack of visuals, we need more descriptive text
Yea, makes sense haha. I don’t treat jams as serious work (partially because I can’t yet, I am recovering perfectionist), so I don’t do much editing & all the games right now are prototypes. I kind of avoid getting deep in the prototype stage because I end up solidifying some unnecessary things as canon to the plot and cannot let go of it when needed.
Utilizing an engine turning over sound when the car fires up, the gentle chiming of a clock when you look at it, or the subtle purr of a cat that’s getting scratches.
That was very “visual”, good ideas, thank you.
We end up with more questions than answers
This is a very small bit of a massive project, so there’s a bunch of stuff being hinted at. It’s related to my Magnum Opus, so perhaps in a not so distant future you’ll recognize this story in some game trailer on Steam (one can dream..). Since it is not a standalone, using visuals was also somewhat risky, like I intentionally avoided names, because it has some major spoilers and I have been posting aobut his project in my art etc, I don’t want certain characters to be connected to one another. I was supposed to work on something else for the jam I did this game for, but I got the idea for mom’s POV, so I ended up with this. I had no concrete plan and cutting it short both in text and visuals was my way to not overthink it and worry if I gave up too much.
In any case, I’m glad we could smooth it out (I guess?). It was a good lesson for me to not assume and get defensive, even if I do get Ai response in the future. And also thank you for taking your time to both have this back and forth with me and the initial review. I’m sorry it hurt you when you did so much hard work, I understand how it feels, not something I’d want to impose on others.
