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The two things that stand out to me is:
His eyes
His unnaturally upright pose in the side-view compared to the front. I'd expect him to be leaning his head forward a bit.

DRM arguments!

So much pointless fun! Depending on where your arbitrary wall is, everything can be considered DRM- Steam requires a client, GOG requires an account and sign-in, as does itch.io and fireflower and the like. It's your own goalposts that set what annoys you or not: signing in doesn't bother you, or using a specific client doesn't bother you, or being able to download and then do whatever you want with your game doesn't bother you.

Personally, I consider Steam itself to be a form of DRM, but one that can be bypassed if one wishes to (3rd party software to download games from the steamdb, copying games elsewhere, etc.), as long as the game itself didn't implement some other form of DRM. I use it, but am happier to use DRM-free services, and would be even HAPPIER if all of it was on some open API standard that let me use a client of my own choice to have all my games collected in one place.

[complete waste of my time]

I CAN NOT deal with a list of pictures without context, optionally adorned with "x % off". I need completely different information in order to judge whether I want to buy a game. I feel that I'm in for a complete waste of my time, by needing to click on All. Those. Damn. Pics. One. By. One. In. Order. To. Get. At. Founded. Information., so I shy away and leave.

You're not expected to click all of them. You're expected to be attracted to the one you've be attracted to, and click that. For example, out of all of those, I'd likely only click the ARBORIA game right on the top, because it is obvious from the other images they are all genres I'm uninterested in (simulation games, sports games, racing games). Other than that, I might click on the RAW FURY sale, because I recognise Call of the Sea from there, and I'm interested in that game.

I do have got a largish portfolio of games in my Steam account, of course, but I've never arrived at any of those games through a “browsing” process as described. In each case, I'd always been pointed to some specific Steam page through other means, and I went to that page in order to buy, when I was already  sold. For instance, I'm on the Internet (!) homepage of some game, find it cool, see a "Buy it on Steam" type button and then switch to the Steam page to buy.

How would you have gotten to that internet homepage of that game? Likely from an image link made of a capsule. That "capsule" is supposed to be your first impression introduction to the game. Your very first impression isn't going to be made from looking at 8 screenshots and reading some summary text, it's going to be an immediate image. Of course, if you're already sold on the game, you don't need that, but then you're not who the capsule would be targetted at.

I don't think I've ever "wishlisted" any game in all my life, and I wouldn't see any advantage to it from the prospect's perspective, either. I'll buy it when I'm ready, irrespective of release drama or sales timelines. I don't waste my time with kitchen fridge lists of what I “wish”, and I don't think that's any of Valve's business to peek their inquisitive nose into, thank you plenty.

Yes, there are sales. But let's be honest and look past the artificial drama. Games have their specific price at each phase of the selling lifetime, and when a “good” price has once been made, it'll soon come back, or an even better one.

I wishlist games so that I can be notified when there is a sale, and so that in case some kind soul wants to gift me something, they can have some idea, and get me something I'd actually be interested in. Steam might use such data to show me more appropriate games on their homepage/sale pages, but I've never noticed anything like that. You can get pretty good sales quite early on in a game's lifetime (flash sales, publisher deals, etc), and then not get such a good price for ages afterwards, so it is useful.

[you]

Do you react to unknown games that are presented to you in a similar way as the talk author supposes?

The specific points he was making about the "capsules" (what you called cover image or thumbnail) absolutely applies, and as gamers, we've gotten a sense of such games, where, while unfortunately judgemental, we form immediate opinions on games based on first glances.
It's not going to be hard, for example, to guess the only "non-trash" (hope to God none of the authors of the other games read this) game from the list below (and yes, they're all indie games of around the same price):

Absolutely, hence my suggestion to focus on his other points!

Your image does not show up, arjon
As for your question, I was just watching a video recently that touched on it:

I've added the video with a timestamp, but in case it doesn't work, the relevant part starts at 7:22. They also come back to it near the end of the video, so you may wish to watch it all.
Aside from his (quite impractical, if you ask me) suggestion that you should pay someone $500-1000 to do it for you, he makes some pretty interesting points.

I will say though, that I think they're unfairly painted as difficult and challenging to read, whereas I had no problem whatsoever reading them all in a breeze.

I dunno, there's a point in the Two Towers where it really becomes a slog (although I have read it twice, once as a kid, and once around the time the movies came out).

I'd like to claim that I'd read any good book, but going by the numbers, it would appear my favourite genre is comedy-scifi/fantasy. Stuff like the Discworld books, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Xanth stuff, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

I've seen a lot of people selling art assets on itch.io, and the process seems fairly straightforward to set-up, even for someone who's never sold stuff online before.
Of course, the expectation in itch.io would usually be for "complete" sets, so I'm not sure if something like what you posted would be viable.

Not at the point yet where it can be critiqued, look forward to seeing it when complete!

And since suffering is a function of the brain and the human brain is the most developed one in this regard, it just so happens that the more something is like us, the more it can suffer.

I am reading "The human brain has the greatest capacity to suffer", but I'm not sure that's been evidenced.

Also, slightly unrelated, but slightly related timely video:

For me, the most compelling argument against meat-eating is that the brain architecture devoted to experiencing physical pain and even some basic types of emotional distress is essentially the same in humans and at least the mammals we eat (not so sure about fish and birds). So while some animal rights sentiments can be naively anthropomorphic, this one is pretty real - what animals experience in factory farms is quite similar to how people would feel in the same situation. Which is pretty horrifying when you think about it for a while.

None of this applies to bugs in any way. You can smash bugs left and right and you haven't caused any real pain to anyone. Counting them as "meat" would be the naively anthropomorphic bit.

Interesting. Is that the criteria you would set, then? "They feel the way we feel, so we shouldn't eat them" (yum yum to all the reptiles, fish, insects and plants)?

I've seen people justify their revulsion to eating things like dogs and cats "Because they are intelligent", but that discounts similarly intelligent pigs and goats and such.

Nuts and bugs both have tons of protein.
Unfortunately, most people have an adversity to eating bugs (including me), despite them being safer to eat than meat.

While the enivironmental footprint is way smaller, I'm pretty sure bugs are still "meat".

Chickpeas, beans, lentils, pulses, mushrooms, soybeans, tempeh all are great sources of protein. You can use their derivatives (e.g. gram flour) to make some great barbequed or fried snacks. For example, I batter whatever vegetables I have in the fridge in gram flour, and bake (it's meant to be deep-fried, but that would be too much for me) to get a great assortment of snacks.

I don't have an intrinsic moral opposition to eating meat,  but current meat industry practices don't seem very moral to me. When I lived on or near farms, I had meat more often, but now in a city with only one small scale, reasonable abattoir I am aware of, aside from seafood (which I eat about maybe once a week) I eat meat maybe once or twice a month. Still, I'm cowardly and easily swayed by peer pressure, so I don't put up too much of a fuss when I eat out (that hasn't been in a while, though)- if the restaurant doesn't make any point about ethically sourced meat (which they usually don't), my preference is (balanced) vegetarian, seafood, then meat.

The pedestal could be more prominent by reaching to or above the horizon, which would be somewhat lower.

Thanks for the suggestion! You're right, it's super-effective at making it more prominent.

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/aIR1RvA.png[/imgzoom]
I didn't want to have to redo all the brickwork in the new perspective, so I sort of just made the pedestal bigger, and more like a milestone/gravestone. But I think I did achieve the intended effect!

Just finished reading Flatland yesterday. While it is 90% "look at this awesome idea I came up with" and only 10% plot, it was quite interesting to me in how it helped me (realise that I can't really) visualise higher dimensions:
Take a point and move it in one direction, you get a line.
Take a line and move it normal to its line of motion, and you get a square/rectangle
Take that square/rectangle and move it normal to its plane, and you get a cube/cuboid.
Take that cube/cuboid and move it normal to itself, and you get a tesseract (and so on)

Has given me greater appreciation for why this game has been over 7 years in the making  .
Also pretty funny how the preface to the second edition had the author address logical (how come 1d items had (tiny) thickness and 2d items had (tiny) depth?) and moral (what's up with the treatment of classes and women in your story?) issues.

Now I need to figure out something engaging from the classics (i.e. can download for free) of sci-fi to read next.

Probably the apps. You can find countless free programs on a PC. But on a smartphone, if it's free (even if the PC version is 100% free), it's gonna have ads (it's a little weird actually). And blocking ads on your internet browser isn't as straightforward as it is on a PC either.
At least, that's my guess. Unless there are phones out there that have pop-up ads built into the OS like Windows 10.

Even before I rooted my android phone, I never logged in with my google account, and only used FOSS apps, so had no experience with ads. I've rooted my phone since, and avoiding apps and all manner of tracking is even easier than it was before.

I'm confused as to what advertisements have to do with smartphones? I don't get ads on my smartphone?

Oh, it's definitely not friendly. As I said, I was going for an oppressive, ominous, stark atmosphere. The player is at an unfriendly place with antagonistic intentions.
But you feel the walkable area is too small? How come? Imagine a player about 2/3rds of the height of the door, coming in from the right. The width of the walkable area would be the width of the highlighted path (plus a little more).

Hello friends!

So I did an entry for a recent BG Blitz, and in my usual way, I was deeply unsatisfied with it. So I worked some more on it, and am still deeply unsatisfied with it  .
[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/gyCXaYD.png[/imgzoom]

The idea was to use the rules to make something relating to one of the required screens in a game I've been working on for far too long. It would be one of the first screens in the game, an entrance to a "castle" the player would be spending most of the game in. My initial idea for the screen was to have a scrolling screen, where the player could walk along the side of the castle(shown in the lower left here), and come across a blank wall, a grating, and a decorative birdbath/bowl thing. I decided while working on the BG Blitz to separate that into a separate screen. The only really important part of this BG would be the pedestal with the writing, the door, and the fact that you'd have access to the roof that would overlook this BG from above, but I feel the ominous and oppressive atmosphere (harsh skyline, spooky tower in the distance) added to it.

But all that is design considerations for the BG to give you an idea where I was coming from, and not technical and artistic problems with my current implementation.

Some issues I had with my work that hopefully you can help me with:

• I wasn't the biggest fan of the original palette required by the Blitz, and I definitely utilised it badly. My final game might have the same "lineart", but probably not the same palette. Still any feedback on better implementations on this palette, or a general palette for a medievalish eastern european/turkic castle palette would be appreciated (just note, this would be one of the very few outdoor BGs in the game). You can see some changes I made from my original attempt (door was green, now it is purple), that I'm not sure worked well.
• Level of details in the BG- this is somewhat tied to the limited palette and how I'd deal with it, but I wouldn't mind a limited palette (and feel it would add to the game) if I could make it work. Between the entry for the Blitz and the update here, I had the idea to add more detail to the stonework, as well as maybe gargoyles or statues along the edges, and an archway over the door, but it just didn't seem to work so I settled for more minor changes. Also considered a foreground tree on the right, but I felt that would obscure the entrance to the BG the skyline, so I settled (unsuccessfully?) on a bush.

Spoiler

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/njlRIYY.png[/imgzoom] [imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/nqDrCl0.png[/imgzoom]

[close]

Also, any other help would also of course be appreciated!

I see it behind your avatar as well!
The upscale looks cool, but I feel that it would only ever really work for a very specific aesthetic style (in contrast to the pixel art it could be generated from, which could be fairly varied).