Telemetry on Zelda: Breath of the Wild | Hacker News Reader

Telemetry on Zelda: Breath of the Wild

zeldamods.org

63 pointsakyuu29 comments

Doesn't basically every AAA game do this now?

I've seen recent posts giving extremely detailed statistics about the choices players made in Baldur's Gate 3 and Jedi Fallen Order. I was surprised that nobody seemed bothered by it.

Here's the Fallen Order one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FallenOrder/comments/13xldf8/star_w...

I assume the devs use it to prioritize bug fixes and to learn what game design works/doesn't. Knowing the % of players having difficulty with a dungeon etc. I don't see any harm in that, it could improve their next game. It's not like it's used or useful for targeted ads or something. You can opt out the analytics in the bg3 launcher btw.

It's only bad because you don't know where else that data is going. Are companies selling your gaming activities to others who will use it to determine dexterity, intelligence, memory, distractability, psychology, sexual preferences, etc.

Gaming offline as much as possible might be the best way to protect yourself, but is also pretty limiting since some games offer desirable online content

Yes, the testing of reflexes, timing etc, could be sold to insurers to effect their prices.

It is interesting with Captchas that ML is faster than people now. I wonder how many people like me intentionally mis-time their input?

Note also that offline gaming still can send cookies via OS when the OS detects IP connection.

To what kind of insurers and where? Car insurers already get people to install spyware to observe their driving patterns, and can probably get it straight from the car company soon if not already. That's better than a one or twice removed guess.

Exactly. If they are buying it from one source, you can bet they'd buy it from another even if only to ensure the data they bought is accurate. That's also more datapoints that can be used to model the effects of being distracted or being ill on your reflexes.

What if your country bans such data collection in cars? Luckily game may still collecting and selling this while the loophole is being closed so you win years if not a decade of data.

What ML libraries are you using for captchas?

Early in the BG3 beta the devs put out an article complaining that everyone was playing a white guy. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1086940/view/2896336... Now if you are required to play as some character that looks like yourself to feel "represented" is that surprising?

> Don’t forget to read the EULA ;)

Perhaps the GOG release can run offline.

Imo it’s because the character creator is not so good. There’s very few face choices and each one feels real world ethnically specific.

The fantasy species racial options are very jarring. The halflings and gnomes are goofy. Note that none of the provided characters are gnomes or halflings. You know ahead of time that you’re going to be wandering around with a group of largely classically attractive tall humanoids.

The tieflings and Dragonborn look so jarring that it’s hard to imagine casually imagine picking them unless you specifically planned on it ahead of time.

If your planned headcanon is to look like someone that people take somewhat seriously it feels like your respectable looking options are drow and human.

That is a bizarre misrepresentation of what they were saying. They're just surprised that people are making themselves a generic person instead of using some of the options that add more fantasy elements to the character.

Though I'm not sure why that's surprising to them. If you look at WoW for example, the distribution of race selection was always heavily biased towards human (followed by the next closest to looking human, the various elves). I guess most people are looking to make their character a self-insert. I find that boring in a fantasy setting, but I'm not going to say people can't do as they please with their characters.

See, I don't mind the anonymous data being used to improve the game (mostly). It's what they take from the data and how they "improve the game" is where I get weary. My beef with analytics is I've worked at enough places where the data is used to min/max everything, which ultimately makes for a very bland product that loses its vision.

Let's use Larian's post as an example. Most people are making a generic white guy. Other companies see that and say, okay then let's only invest resources in allowing players play as a generic white guy. It's wasteful to do otherwise because "the data says so." But then you get a souless product that looks like everything else.

There's value in catering to the niches. It's more inclusive to the users who are looking for products with those niches (horns, tails, headphone jacks, whatever). But mostly having those niches makes it more appealing to everyone else, even if they won't interact with the niche, because now it stands out.

> Now if you are required to play as some character that looks like yourself to feel "represented" is that surprising?

I'm not sure what that means. Isn't this an RPG? As in, Role Playing Game? You're supposed to play a role, not feel represented.

Why would anyone be bothered by it?

Personally, I don't like the normalization of my every action being spied on by huge corporations.

If it was just going to be used by the devs to fix bugs, _and_ it was either opt in or very obvious opt out, I'd be ok with it. But fixing bugs is only one tiny aspect of why these corporations want to track you. And as far as I can see, there's no way to opt out at all short of blocking IP ranges with a PiHole.

But in my opinion, this is just blaming the tool and not the company.

It's the company's fault that they use the data for "bad", when they could use it for good and to improve the product.

Even without the data, they could simply test random hypothesis and see the outcome that maximizes profit, in the process of which the end-user my "suffer" even more than when analytics are being used.

Because data is being collected about them without informed consent, and without any basis to believe the collectors interests align entirely with their own?

Every game informs you about telemetry in the EULA nowadays. It doesn't even do it in complicated jargon it literally says "we collect data on the way you play - agree or disagree?" You have to agree or disagree before starting the game and if you disagree it disables the telemetry completely.

If people don't like to read and spam accept then it's their fault

edit: there is EULA for nintendo switch

> if you disagree it disables the telemetry completely.

In my experience (although I haven't tried it with the switch), it usually also disables the rest of the game - at which point you are free to argue with support about a refund, or change your mind and accept their terms.

There is no EULA for BOTW.

Is there actually a way to get the AllPlayTime value? Funnily enough, it isnt shown anywhere in the normal menus is it?

The Switch's user profile screen shows each game's play time in 5-hour increments.

I believe it only goes up to 200, at which point it just says 200+

My profile entry for Tears of the Kingdom says 215 hours.

It shows up in Ryujinx's debug console. Let's hope there's a way to copy your save to the emulator. And without Nintendo finding it out and banning your console.

I'm sure it's kind of beyond their remit, but I hope the EU eventually mandates being able to get your data off of consoles.

Even if you can't put it back on there, it'd be a huge benefit.

If your switch is hackable (all are, but some new ones need a hardware mod) you can copy user and system (animal crossing only, ATM) saves off the console using lockpickrcm/tegraexplorer without even booting the device. I used this to get my saves off a corrupted SD card that had my emunand on it.

Hence why I only play 90's games...you know, when the industry was actually good

> It is currently unknown when or if these reports are actually sent.

Isn't that comment specific to the Wii U?

Oh indeed it may be?

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