Only way an old game is worth something is if it’s rare enough it needs to be preserved and its content extracted and shared, just so it’s not lost to time.
Speculation on retro gaming is bullshit. Games are meant to be played.
Everything is worth what the buyer will pay. If there’s a collector out there who will pay $20k for a shrink wrapped Chrono trigger, even though he could just buy the steam version for $15, then it’s worth $20k. You might think it’s dumb, and I agree, but it is what it is.
In retrogaming’s specific case though, it’s been completely manufactured in the last few years. A few famous or semi-famous idiots got in touch with con artists, and made some bogus transactions with massive media coverage. They engineered a speculative bubble.
And they managed to fuck up the retrogaming market for everyone, even those actually just looking for a bit of nostalgia to plug into their old consoles. Suddenly it was all assholes trying to scam each other and even common cartridges in a subpar state had their prices skyrocket.
Talos Principle 2 is fantastic from start to finish and makes you feel smart. I’d say playing the first one is a must in order to really enjoy it. The dlc, Road to Gahenna, is skippable. Most people I’ve talked to find they already own the first one somehow and just never got around to playing it.
Viewfinder was also good but felt kind of short. It’s priced fairly, though, so it’s worth a try.
Ghost Trick was really really good on the ds, not sure how well it translates to pc but the reviewer liked it. Some part of its charm was the interaction with the stylus. If it goes on sale, absolutely pick it up.
It’s possible. It’s definitely a game that asks a lot of the player to get immersed in the underlying story. Lots of relatively dense philosophical excerpts to read in the terminals. That’s on top of lore-related text to read which really fleshes out the pretty dark story they’re telling. Then there are the puzzles which might not be everyone’s thing.
The second game improves this greatly by moving the majority of the story out of text and into voiced dialogue with NPCs and a few cutscenes. The jump from the Serious Sam engine to UE5 is pretty mind-blowing in terms of graphics. I think there’s going to be a third one, as well?
If the game can’t suck you in, I’d at least recommend looking up the story. It’s pretty neat.
I’ll never not recommend Dead Cells. The graphics are gorgeous and the gameplay has a ton of variety thanks to all the different upgrades you can pick up. The Castlevania tie in is just gravy.
NPR, huh, doing a better job of breaking down a criterion collection type list than any of the journo blogs/sites I’ve ever seen.
They’re surprisingly tasteful too, and they highlighted some real gems from the indie devs. I really hope they do more of this stuff, they’re real good at it.
Well if you go by sales figures, predatory monetization targeting whales that only represent 2% of the player base indicates that the absolute best products in the market today are what would have been made illegal 60 years ago in most states. Yay for capitalism that destroys our world, souls, and future.
A new study from Pew Research finds that the religiously unaffiliated – a group comprised of atheists, agnostic and those who say their religion is “nothing in particular” – is now the largest cohort in the U.S. They’re more prevalent among American adults than Catholics (23%) or evangelical Protestants (24%).
Atheism is much more specific than what they consider to be, ‘none’.
Pew asked respondents what – if anything – they believe. The research organization found that Nones are not a uniform group.
Most Nones believe in God or another higher power, but very few attend any kind of religious service.
They aren’t all anti-religious. Most Nones say religion does some harm, but many also think it does some good. Most have more positive views of science than those who are religiously affiliated; however, they reject the idea that science can explain everything.
No, agnosticism is a whole other issue from any of this. Agnosticism, technically speaking, is the position "it is impossible to know whether a god or gods exist." That's a separate position from "I do not believe that gods exist", "I believe that gods do not exist", and "I believe that gods exist." You can be an agnostic theist or a non-agnostic atheist. They're along two different axes, like the Dungeons and Dragons alignment system with the law/order and good/evil axes.
Unfortunately the term has gained some additional meanings in common parlance, where it can commonly mean "I'm an atheist/theist but I don't want to say that because it gets me in trouble." Or "I'm not sure what I think so I'm going with the option that sounds the most unsure."
It's led to a huge mess when trying to categorize belief systems in polls like this one.
Scratch an agnostic and you find an atheist. If I ask you if you BELIEVE in god you answer yes or no. If You answer I don’t know, you are not answering the question. If you answer no, you are an atheist, its that simple bub. Being an agnostic doesn’t enter the equation.
however, they reject the idea that science can explain everything.
I am an anti-theist and I reject that idea too, doesn’t mean I think religion can explain anything though. In fact I would go so far as to consider that deliberately obscure phrasing in the poll.
I fall into the None category. Even if I wanted to be religious, the time, social requirement, and built-in costs just wouldn’t work for me around work, school, daily shit that needs to get done. I don’t know how people with lower incomes do it.
I think it’s time we addressed the War On Nothing that’s happening every year.
I demand to be greeted with “Hi how are you” in late December, not “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”.
“ Most Nones believe in God or another higher power, but very few attend any kind of religious service.
They aren’t all anti-religious. Most Nones say religion does some harm, but many also think it does some good. Most have more positive views of science than those who are religiously affiliated; however, they reject the idea that science can explain everything.”
Some smaller tech startups are running out of cash and facing fundraising struggles with the era of easy money now over, which has prompted workforce reductions. But experts say for most large and publicly-traded tech firms, the layoff trend this month is aimed at satisfying investors.
Shulman adds: “They’re getting away with it because everybody is doing it. And they’re getting away with it because now it’s the new normal,” he said. “Workers are more comfortable with it, stock investors are appreciating it, and so I think we’ll see it continue for some time.”
…
And as Wall Street rallies on news of laid-off tech employees, more and more tech companies axe workers.
“You’re seeing that these tech companies are almost being rewarded by Wall Street for their cost discipline, and that might be encouraging those companies, and other companies in tech, to cut costs and layoff staff,” said Roger Lee, who runs the industry tracker layoffs.fyi.
So it’s exactly how it feels - it’s pure greed, done by the powerful and unaccountably rich CEOs to woo powerful and unaccountably rich Wall Street investors. All of these tech companies at this point treat their workers as numbers on a balance sheet, just elements of an optimization game where only those oligarchs have a seat.
This is a cycle that has existed for decades now. Hell, it’s existed ever since Capitalism took hold, and laborers became just another “interchangeable part” to a business.
We were really bad about protecting workers from it, until it the combination of anti-labor actions by businesses disrupting WWI war manufacturing (resulting in the National War Labor Board), as well as the Great Depression-era judicial (and physical) fights over striking, resulted in actual labor protections under Hoover and Roosevelt.
Now we’re seeing the effect of decades of corporate lobbying (as well as brain-dead “Libertarian” mindsets among Centrists and Republicans) to weaken employee protections. Businesses have realized that they can, without consequence, use cycles of firing and hiring to manipulate their financials to have more favorable short-term outcomes.
npr.org
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