I’m acutely aware of how anti-consumer it is, but I always found it strange they ever started putting singleplayer games on PC.

Yes, it’s some revenue for the game itself, filtered through Valve’s 30% cut. But from what I gather, most of the reason the console offering works is because people who’ve finished God of War will learn about some new forever F2P game, and decide to play it on that same PlayStation, thus getting all the microtransaction revenue. None of that environmental connection really happens on PC.

That especially hurts because the cost and risk for singleplayer games hasn’t always been great. Sure, we look positively at Hollow Knight: Silksong, but that often ignores the 95 other indie failures for every Silksong. At the least, a publisher like Sony that’s put out enough big hits can pull that failure rate down, but they’ll still put out stinkers; and the whole “environmental buy-in” helps to pay for that failure rate.

But, if people can get their well-produced games anywhere, the insular cycle encouraging people to get PlayStations kind of falls apart. Not many people will buy them specifically to play FortNite (though they will, in the end). It was good for PC consumers for a time, but I feel like PC releases were very much motivated by short-term profit. You can also see how, since singleplayer games fit in a longer-term industry plan, it may explain why we don’t see many of them anymore.

I do think, if gambling is to be allowed anywhere, it should only be in places that can verify age; just like alcohol delivery services. But, given the trend of using age verification as an inroad for data collection and Palentir spying, I mostly think of that requirement as a jury-rigged guillotine for the casino, or for the loot boxes. Either get rid of gambling, or set up a monolithic roadblock to users. I’d be appalled if Valve were somehow required to collect drivers’ licenses of people playing Dark Souls.

Trading cards are arguably a problem too, but one that becomes much less prevalent due to their comparative inconvenience. The internet can gamify immediacy around them, and the cards of that store will never run out of stock.

Man I want to finish the campaign and enjoy this game, but as long as they have this split-lock issue on Linux causing severely low framerate every few minutes, I basically can’t. ProtonDB for more info…

What kind of organism do you think the government is made of? That’s right - People. Where do you think today’s Republicans and cops grew up?

Every person that’s managed to exit cults of toxicity has admitted they inherited a poisoned worldview because it surrounded them - they never would have felt “Black people are subhuman” if they didn’t have messaging all around them saying it so.

If you have resigned yourself to the idea none of these people will ever change, and they’re fated to be that way from birth, stay in your own bubble and stop commenting anywhere about it because by your own admission conversation doesn’t do anything.

Nothing will ever get better

Stop suggesting policies and theories. Don’t vote. Don’t even suggest taxing the rich.

/s

I’ve said this before about games like Dragon Quest. I’ll play a good JRPG, but it needs a hook to make it stand out and seem interesting, be that storywise, combat wise, etc. A game showing off swords and magic still needs to define why it’s different and why I should care.

Might be another time to push Elizabeth Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act, in which workers of a company must vote in a show of support for a large number of chair members. That would likely help a lot of industries get perspective below the sacred MBA.

I’m not even entirely sure it’s a capitalism problem. Making a solution for a given problem known does require hawking it in some form, even if that’s a character standing on a soapbox at a street corner.

Even without capital, there are motivations for someone to push their own solution over someone else’s, even if that’s just “my solution is better”.

I think all it takes is a good E3 reaction to make me understand just how much developers want to own those reveal moments, position them perfectly. If you find out 5 hours ahead of time that you have a surprise birthday party waiting for you at home, that’s “really nice”, but probably doesn’t have anywhere near the same impact as if it goes off just as the planners organized.

I’ve also heard of on-paper spoilers that sound really stupid and aggravating how an article describes them, but then playing through the game events that lead into it, I end up respecting the outcome quite a bit more as something that makes sense. This happened for the oft-forgotten Prince of Persia reboot; the one where you have a teleporting lady cohort with you the whole game.

It’s definitely more towards character-scenes than any overarching plot where a big bad wants to use a virus to rule the world. I genuinely think the messed-up behavior of Jack from Resident Evil 7 was well-done though. The general theme of “a weird, angry, and incredibly decisive guy” is generally underused.

It’s not beyond them to write something pretty good on that vein.

I remember visiting the teens center at a local library. I saw a bit of nerd merch I thought was really cool, so I went to take a picture of it, and the librarian there was on me in a flash to stop photography. Recording protection is a real thing when it matters.

People follow “rules/systems” and notice “patterns” when pulling slots too.

I feel sorry for this game, because it was a pretty well-written story and a bit of a better grappling with anger and the dark side. Also a great choice for a story, given that it occupies a span of story where “The Empire is winning, and none of the heroes can change that until Luke flips his dad.”

As mentioned, the performance issues make it hard for anyone to experience that. I think I heard a claim that it performs better on Linux than Windows, which I didn’t take time to verify yet. Sadly, while they’ve made some cool findings here I don’t think this is enough for anyone to pick it up. If I ruled EA, I’d want them putting out a re-release by fixing the issues themselves, and throwing in some new skin or something to market it.

It’s a very tricky thing, I’m sure thousands of people will cry foul about it, but I do think “low framerate” has a good place in design, mainly around cinematic moments where the loss of clarity triggers an intentional panic. Ex: PTSD-riddled hero is in shock from a sudden violent event, and has a panic attack blurring their vision.

One thing that comes to mind is the reveal of Ganon (final form) in Ocarina of Time. The game kind of overloaded the N64 with all those active effects, which worked really well especially with the lightning silhouetting the beast.

Another scenario is some scenes in Final Fantasy 7. In 3D, all tweened animations are naturally smooth. I can’t quite tell what triggers it, but a few hard-hitting character scenes somehow bring that animation framerate down to emphasize certain actions (one specific example is Barret, in the town below the gold saucer, raising his gun to shoot his teammates - but actually hitting an ambusher behind them).

NO ONE WANTS YOU NOT TO BE ANGRY!!

LOOK AROUND LEMMY! Every political community! Every discussion! EVERYONE is angry, jaded, fucking upset the system isn’t working! The difference is, SMART angry people get angry at the actual causes of that economic disparity. Not going on wild, racist tangents to blame people even poorer than them that have barely done a thing to even affect that economic situation!

I don’t fucking trust anyone who’s not angry at the world. Those people are blind. But worse are people who are angry at the most victimized part of the world, instead of the ones doing the victimizing; or those who are angry at politicians who did in fact try to give rural America something to do with their hands - read the Inflation Reduction Act - but were spat on because Fox News parroted Shell’s line that renewable energy is a scam.

Don’t you dare say I’m demonizing people or “wagging my finger at them” for being fucking angry. That is a bald-faced lie. I demonize people for taking their anger out on people that should be brothers and sisters in the fight against injustice.

I’ve tried Remake once or twice, and cannot adjust to their “action battle” system. Give me old turn taking to make sense of things.

I definitely think they sorely mishandled the story with so much “addition”. They completely lost the feel of “less is more”, like only seeing the results of Sephiroth’s warpath instead of seeing every pixel of his presence.

I didn’t even bother with Rebirth. A while ago I thought “I’ll just wait until the full story is actually out, I don’t buy into this piecemeal bs” But now, I really don’t think I’ll ever play it from what I know.

When on sale, it’s about $100 for a year of access to a general library of games. Xbox Game Pass never goes on sale, costs at least $15 a month now, and doesn’t even have many of the singleplayer exclusives Sony puts out. So this comment seemed completely the wrong way around to me.

I’d especially like to see more games making a modern take on this battle. We used to view Nazis as a historical, comically evil villain. I’d like something new that makes every one of them alive feel thoroughly unwanted in this world.

Fuck shit damn. Cunt piss bitch. America was built on goddamn slave labor. Ooh boy, all that cursing was so, so difficult for my civilized upbringing.

This is what chuds don’t get, since they never read terms of use. Social networks don’t often oppose aimless expletives like “Let’s fucking kick a baby into lava haha!” They oppose pointed, meaningful intention like “I’m going to shoot up my school because it’s been infested with n%%%%s.” Hate is a language used everywhere, separate from curses, and it’s one I don’t mind blocking on every front possible.