CorrodedCranium

CorrodedCranium, 6 days ago

That’s kind of like Tiny Life. It is similar to the Sims but with retro graphics. Lots of people bought it as soon as it hit early access when a lot of core things were missing.

CorrodedCranium, 5 days ago

I mean you aren’t too far off. Honestly I wouldn’t mind it. I would rather have a feature rich simpler looking game than something that’s fancy and shallow.

I’d be more than impressed by something just basically recreates the original Sims experience.

CorrodedCranium, 4 days ago

Kind of reminds me of how I played The Long Dark. I turned all of hazards to minimal and treated it like a walking simulator/exploration game

CorrodedCranium, 8 days ago

I am not a fan of the title the article uses. It seems more about Steam abusing their near monopoly in a way that hurts publishers. The overcharging aspect seems more like a byproduct

CorrodedCranium, 8 days ago

I mean abuse in the way where they are taking advantage of their position in the market.

There are several online game retailers publishers can utilize and being profitable is always going to be part of their business model. Epic would do it in their own way no matter what Steam did.

Even Humble Bundle isn’t perfect. You can read this article for more information but they trialed removing the slider that decides where your money goes in 2021 and even now the Default Donation and Extra to Charity options still only give the charity a small percentage.

It’s just an unfortunate reality.

CorrodedCranium, 6 days ago

Steam, for its faults, is where it is because it is the best application to do what it does.

Yes others exist, and they’re all vastly inferior.

I’m not denying that. As a consumer I like a lot of what Steam does. I am a big fan of what they’ve done for the Linux gaming community for example. I am saying because they are so dominant in the market they can do things like keep their commissions high and push publishers to sign price parity obligations.

I imagine a lot of publishers feel like if they don’t have a choice but to list their games on Steam. The alternative would greatly limit their reach.

My initial point was Steam isn’t directly overcharging players like the title of the article implies. I feel like the title should have been about the cause and not the effect.

CorrodedCranium, 10 days ago

Fun fact for those interested the STALKER series was partially inspired by the book A Roadside Picnic. A movie was released in 1979 that was also inspired by it named Stalker.

CorrodedCranium, 18 days ago

I wonder what games would take up that much space for save files. I mean if a game is autosaving frequently sure but I feel like you’d need a decent amount of them

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

I feel like hair dye for dogs must be a thing. Though it sounds like they used human hair dye on them.

If it didn’t hurt them I’d think this is a little cute

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

Yeah but I like to think I am a bit better about not ingesting hair care products through my eyes, nose, and mouth than a Schnauzer. Hopefully it was something non-toxic

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

It’s like nostalgia blinders.

An example a lot of people here can relate to is thinking about game consoles and handhelds they played growing up like the GBA.

There were likely some great games produced for it but there was also a lot of shovelware movie tie-ins and horrendous ports that were misrepresented in advertisements.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

I really hope Valve doesn’t start making small incremental changes to the Steam Deck like devices in the emulation handheld scene (Powkiddy, Anbernic, etc.) do.

I’d feel a lot less incentivised to buy one if I felt like my device was going to immediately age out. I imagine less developers would make system settings specifically for the Steam Deck like Cyberpunk 2077 did or design third party peripherals.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

Any reason they are releasing it now instead of when the game or the show released?

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

That’s unfortunate. A nice gesture but it’s a bit late. Kind of like removing online DRM immediately before a game becomes abandonware.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

When I was in high school we didn’t know how to mix drinks so we did it half and half. I can only imagine if this contained the same ratio

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

It seems silly to me.

It’s essentially rehashing the debate of people being more comfortable with violence than sexual content. A game can have someone getting vivisected with a shotgun and no one really cares but having full frontal nudity will end up with a game that has articles written about it.

From what I’ve heard Stellar Blade didn’t have full frontal nudity or anything remotely close to that level but the outfits were toned down. I don’t think it’s really necessary especially when you can choose which outfit the protagonists wears.

I feel like this has been the norm for a while though with games getting released here in the west with women being less sexualized. I’m kind out of the loop about Stellar Blade so I’m not sure if it was censored globally.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

I think it depends on the developer. They might lump it in with other realism things like hair physics.

I think what OP is talking about is things being removed. It doesn’t have much to do with optimising the game.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

I get that. I’m saying showing less thigh doesn’t make the game run faster and developers might not view something like that as a waste.

… apparently boobs now.

I feel like jiggle physics has been around for just as long

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

I didn’t watch the video the article references but it seems to be missing a big part of why so many NSFW games have been added to places like itch.io and Steam in the past couple years.

COVID 19. A significant amount of developers got started during the quarantine and continued on afterwards. Development of a lot of these games slowed down afterwards and many were abandoned though. A big percentage of them make direct reference to some kind of quarantine or virus.

It probably helped, as well, that so many people were stuck at home and the tools to create these games have become more accessible in the past couple years.

I think it has just spiralled since then with lewd games sneaking into people’s recommended games list and others making jokes or commenting about it. Fetish Locator was one that some people might recall.

https://leminal.space/pictrs/image/73587fa6-f7f2-4647-9992-7a272a6b418c.jpeg

I don’t think games like Cyberpunk 2077 can be considered sex games because they have occasionally have visual genitals and carefully framed sex scenes. That seems more like a natural progression like people’s tolerance for violence in video games.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

ThinkPad x200s. I recently did the USB C charging mod and upgraded to WiFi 6E. I’ve had Libreboot installed for a while now.

I do wish I could have more than 8GB of RAM though.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

I also can’t imagine Nintendo’s next console not being a mobile one so I think there’s definitely a market for a traditional stationary console.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

I’ll have to watch the BBC interview. The way the article is worded makes it sounds like they’ve been in communication with Bethesda while creating Fallout London.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

Yeah it doesn’t help that the Steam version would likely try to auto-update and I don’t believe there is an easy way to downgrade.

I could be wrong about that latter point. There might be an option in the properties menu similar to how you can opt into betas.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

I doubt it. Most people seem to regard Creation Club content as something different than regular mods. You can check out the content that’s available here but a majority of it is closer to the paid skins found in online games than what people typically associate with modding and meaningfully altering a game.

I think Bethesda knows this and most people looking to mod Fallout 4 are probably going to continue working with what’s available.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

!garfieldism

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

It’s been a while but I remember liking the DLC more than the base game. If you own it you might want to give it a try.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

Same. I was real happy when the MIG Switch came out. I might actually buy a (used) Switch now.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

What a shame. I feel like mods are an example of how passionate fans are and it’s not impacting Nintendo’s profits if some 12 year old wants to play as Zelda in Trouble in Terrorist Town.

I wonder how long it will be until Nintendo starts targeting other games with a rich workshop community like Teardown.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

I think so. Installing Linux was a hurdle for a lot of people but having it by default on the Steam Deck was a bit of a game changer. Installing Windows on it versus figuring out how to use something Lutris probably takes a similar amount of effort for average casual user.

I feel like it also helps that Windows isn’t very controller friendly, in my experience, and an increasing amount of people are looking for that for couch gaming and viewing media.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Another catalyst is one company buying another. I cannot think of one example where the acquired company’s product/services got better after a M and A.

I feel like there have been some positive outcomes of mergers and acquisitions but I am having trouble thinking of them. What comes to my mind is Meta acquiring Oculus, Activision merging with Blizzard, and Microsoft acquiring Minecraft. All of those have led to a shitty Russian nesting doll of launchers and DRM.

The positives might be harder to note though. There must have been a couple times where some kind of acquisition has brought a series into the mainstream.

I know a lot of people prefer the classic Fallout games but I do wonder how people would be aware of the series if it weren’t for Bethesda buying the right to Fallout for example.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

I don’t think it’s required by law for a publicly traded company to increase profits. I think that’s a side effect of shareholders voting.

If Microsoft held a vote on whether or not disclose a report covering diversity I feel like the board would recommend against it and a majority of voters would agree because it could mean decreasing their stock’s value.

There is a thing called ethical investing but that can mean investing in stocks that will see lower gains.

All-in-all I feel like it depends a lot on the core of the company and what percentage of the company belongs to different people.

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To be clear: I am not a professional and am drunk. This is just my two cents on the topic.

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

I’m not sure. Portal and Team Fortress both have really interesting back stories that I think have a bit to do with Valve acquisitions

CorrodedCranium, 1 month ago

You might be interested in Portal on the N64 while you’re at it.

I’d check out Narbacular Drop. Pretty sure that’s the game that I’m talking about that became Portal, in a way, later.

There was a good YouTube video about it a while ago but I think it had a clickbait title that makes it hard to find.

CorrodedCranium, 2 months ago

Mostly powering off my system when I shouldn’t have. I believe one time I began the process to format a drive I didn’t mean to and when I saw the process had started I pushed the power button and just made things worse. The other times were when I was updating.

This all happened when I first started using Linux.

CorrodedCranium, 2 months ago

It’s neat but I think I would still prefer using the 3DS. Especially for games like Moon where you have to use the touchpad and D-pad at the same time.

CorrodedCranium, 2 months ago

Fair enough. I would probably just rely on emulators or, if I felt like putting in some additional effort, the virtual console and modified CIA files. I say would because I don’t typically use my DS or 3DS for anything but those games.

CorrodedCranium, 2 months ago

Even with emulators there’s a lot of room for tinkering. Just look at !sbcgaming

CorrodedCranium, 2 months ago

As soon as I saw the price I knew it was the AYANEO Flip DS

CorrodedCranium, 2 months ago

… none of your friends have it.

I feel like that’s what kept me away from it. When I was younger I probably would have been happy with the smaller library but I never had the opportunity to try it and get tempted to buy one

CorrodedCranium, 2 months ago

One Youtuber that covers a lot of what you are talking about is JarekTheGamingDragon. Someone else mentioned Trepang2 for example and this was his review.

CorrodedCranium, 2 months ago

Sleeping Dogs was a lot of fun. Kind of like Grand Theft Auto but more serious and a focus on martial arts.

CorrodedCranium, 2 months ago

He covers a lot of stuff other than Half Life and BioShock. I feel like BioShock has been a rabbit hole he’s gone down recently and Half Life (along with F.E.A.R.) is a reference point he uses a lot when comparing games because they’re some of his favorite games.

He’s covered RoboCop, Beyond Sunset, Remnant 2, Roboquest, Diluvion, Rip Out, Retchid, and Sprawl within the past six months. You might just need to scroll down a tad. His titling system is a lot of X game is like but Y but with Z so you might need to look carefully to see what peaks your interest.

CorrodedCranium, 2 months ago

Thanks for the links. I’ll check them out

CorrodedCranium, 2 months ago

That’s a good question. I wonder if there are available user numbers for them.

I imagine it’s regional and depends on what communities you are in. SimpleX chat seems pretty popular these days in privacy circles but I could see something like Briar being useful if traditional networks weren’t reliably available for example.

CorrodedCranium, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

I feel like a lot of the military probably uses Facebook messenger because of the convenience.

I imagine everyone is creating groupchats and assuming other people use Facebook just like pretty much every other job.

CorrodedCranium, 2 months ago

Totally but people do get careless. We’ve seen it a few times with the war in the Ukraine. /r/VolunteersForUkraine is a good example of that.

I imagine it could be difficult stressing the importance of it to loved ones.