I’m going to nail this Steam review to the doors of every AAA studio like a modern Martin Luther

from now on I’m going to exclusively rate games based on how long it takes for me to get to the core gameplay /hj

@kasdeya

HOLE: 10 seconds
Clone Hero: 5 minutes of configuration
Metroid Prime: a 2-minute cutscene, or ~45 minutes to get to Talon IV
Witcher 3: I don’t know I gave up after an hour

@konstruct hehe - it’s called a tone tag and this specific one means “half-joking”. you can read more about tone tags here

@konstruct @kasdeya Handjob.

@kasdeya I knew about tone tags but didn't know about hj! We should use more informative tags that allow to guess easily. Thanks! I should use those more often

@konstruct I would love if tone tags were more like /HalfJoking or maybe (/half joking)! I think that’s way clearer. I feel similarly about Fedi’s CW abbreviations like “uspol” or “mh-“ - like it’s much more helpful to type the whole thing out like “US politics” or “mental health negative”

now that you bring it up, maybe I’ll start writing tone tags as (/half joking) or (/joking) or etc. though I might need to think about the syntax a little more first

@kasdeya yeah it took me a moment to guess that "mh~" means mixed mental health.

@kasdeya @konstruct this makes me think of a video i like about the /hj tone indicator (i have very similar problems that the person in the video is expressing). it discusses the possibly intentionally-ambiguous nature of the indicator and how at its best, it’s unhelpful and at its worst, it’s worse than just not including it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bYXy1jT3m8

@rowan @konstruct this was a really interesting and eye-opening watch tbh. I had never had any trouble interpreting the meaning of /hj so it never occurred to me that others might have trouble with it

when I wrote:

from now on I’m going to exclusively rate games based on how long it takes for me to get to the core gameplay /hj

my intent with /hj was to communicate “it would be funny if I literally believed that this should be the only criterion for judging any game’s value, but this is also a criterion that I genuinely value for games”. so I wonder if a better indicator might have been “(exaggerating)” (because I’m exaggerating my own feelings to be funny) or maybe just “(joking)” because I was joking, even though I sincerely believe something similar to my exaggerated statement in the post

if I used “(exaggerating)”, though, I feel like that might imply that what I really mean is “from now on I’m going to consider this criterion when evaluating games” - but the truth is that this is already one of my criteria. my criteria haven’t recently changed, and this has been something that I’ve considered when evaluating games for a long time. so maybe “(joking)” is clearer

idk - what do you think about those two options?

@kasdeya @konstruct oh, thank you for clarifying! 💜 that was a good example to use because i can’t parse that statement without your explanation

as far as (joking) versus (exaggerating) – i actually don’t have as clear an distinction as that video does when trying to interpret /s vs /j. i’ve seen so many instances where someone will say something ridiculous (but plausible) and then walk it back with “i was joking.” whether or not they were joking or fielding opinions on an extreme statement is something different, but it seems like “a joke” can be something which is non-serious in delivery but serious in intent, serious in delivery but non-serious in intent, or non-serious in delivery and non-serious in intent.

if i had to guess what each one of those means, it would be

• unserious delivery, serious intent: exaggeration
• serious delivery, unserious intent: hyperbole, sarcasm
• unserious delivery, unserious intent: joke, but also sarcasm?

“rowan do you seriously not know what a joke is” no

but i think of the options you’ve given, i like (exaggeration) because it’s the most unambiguous to me 💜

@rowan that is really good to know - thank you! 💙 and to be honest the distinction between /j and /s has always been pretty fuzzy to me too

@konstruct @kasdeya In case it helps, for “all that slang I’m too embarrassed to ask about” Urban Dictionary has never failed me.