I really want to use AI like llama, ChatGTP, midjourney etc. for something productive. But over the last year the only thing I found use for it was to propose places to go as a family on our Hokaido Japan journey. There were great proposals for places to go....
So far, there have been two interesting uses I’ve seen for chat gpt.
One is I’ve used it to help me write regular expressions in the very rare time I need to for my job.
The other is kind of cool but also kind of troubling in a way. But I’ve come across a couple of therapy style chat bots that are essentially just reading off a list of “here’s what to do for XYZ”
I’ve tested them a bit, and I’ve found I’m 1) concerned who gets access to the information shared. 2) If/when these kinds of bots will be used to manipulate people in a negative way. 3)The possibility of a bot replying in a bad way that could make an issue worse for someone
Overall, I like the idea of them. I find it’s hard to process information if it’s coming directly from myself, or accept compassion from myself. So funny enough, these chat bots actually work really well in that respect.
In some cases, I’ve had better discussions than I have had with actual therapists, which is funny but also sad.
So while there’s some troubling possibilities, I think there’s a lot of positives that I’ve seen from my time with it.
Isn’t that a prerequisite for enshitification? Publicly-traded companies are required (by law, I think) to maximize profits for their shareholders, even if that means utterly ruining their original product (Reddit, Boeing, etc.), yes? What do you think?
I’m really emotionally and mentally exhausted. But what you just wrote makes me think you are my spirit animal. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s nice to see that other people are identifying a major issue and care about it.
I always referred to Diablo as an isometric RPG. At the end of the day, language is weird, and as long as we’re able to clearly get our point across to another person and have them understand, I think that’s all that matters. But it’s fun to think about
I’m getting super close to finishing cyberpunk 2077. I said that last week when I was at like 80 or so hours. But uhh 100 hours in now and I swear I’m really close this time lol.
I really wish they hadn’t released the game so early and hadn’t released so much advertising hype about the game. If the game released in a functional state I think it would have had the complete opposite reception.
If they were to have released the game this January or something and only advertised what is actually in the game, people would likely be praising it left and right. I thought the writing and quest design was a breath of fresh air. I loved how the game gave you agency to make your own decisions and made you think about the implications of all of your actions. Even if many of the decisions didn’t directly matter in the grand scheme of things, it allowed you to roleplay and at least feel like you were staying true to how your character would react in different situations.
I liked how there were so many twists and turns during the quests. Overall it felt like I was playing a completely different game compared to the couple hours I had tried at launch.
Edit: side note, Outer wilds is so good. Give it 5 years and maybe you’ll forget some of it lol!
You’ve just reminded me that I’ve wanted to try both ghostwire and lies of P on gamepass! I’m always so terrible and managing my time lol. I wish there was a calendar so we could see months in advance when a game will leave the service. It’s not so bad with short games. But the longer RPG’s are tough to finish in a month if you discover they’re leaving!
The cat is out of the bag and despite many years of warning before this and similar technology became widely available, nobody was really prepared for it - and everyone is solely acting in their own best interests (or what they think their best interests to be). I think the biggest failure is that despite there being warnings...
And we thought identity theft was shitty before. I hope that we’ll have better tools to identify AI voices in the future. In some cases right now I have a hard time telling between an actual person and a faked voice.
On the switch you have Skyrim (but I’m assuming you’ve played that)
But also there’s a couple games that could be worth looking into. I have no idea how well they play on the switch or if they would even be your cup of tea, but there’s Dragons Dogma(the first one) and also Outward. Again no idea how they play on switch but they’re both open world rpg type games.
If you’re up for something that is specifically all about exploring, you could try Outer wilds on the switch(this does not have combat FYI) but you get to explore a solar system and unravel a mystery.
The 100% emoji is the only thing I thought was weird. I can understand why they might think that way given that the developers went through weeks dealing with what seemed like internal sabotage. Given the context, it makes sense, but it might also be an overreaction.
I use the 100% emoji to show agreement sometimes. I certainly hope people don’t think I’m trying to use it as a dog whistle. Kinda sucks because we’re running out of agreement emojis at this point lol.
Apologies for being late on this. It completely slipped my mind! I drove across the country to continue moving stuff up north over the weekend, and just lost track of time I suppose. The threads here now! Expect another one on Sunday. ❤️
I’ve been playing cyberpunk2077 for the past month and a half straight. I was worried going into it because I thought it was going to still be bad. There’s still some minor bugs, but overall I’ve had an enjoyable experience. The only downside is that it’s eaten up so much of my time lol
At first I thought “hey, patient gaming is taking off” when I read this headline, but really, what it’s saying is that people are spending most of their time on evergreen live service titles like Fortnite. Ugh.
My biggest gripe is that fortnite(along with a lot of games that feature battlepasses and rotating stores) preys on FOMO. If they didn’t do that, I probably wouldn’t mind nearly as much
The only xbox exclusive(s) that I can think of that I have enjoyed and come back to in the past decade are the forza horizon games. I’ve had more enjoyment from backwards compatibility and 3rd party titles on my Xbox.
Halo should have been good. But something happened to both bungie and 343 during that split. Bungie had some kind of magic with their specific group from halo CE to reach. They knew what they were making, and they knew exactly how to bring their vision to life.
After the split, it felt like both company’s were limping their releases to the finish line.
To be fair, I think a good portion of the issues are that Microsoft seems to be treating everything like a financial decision and not a creative one. I know this might not be the most popular opinion, but shit I would be happy if they scaled back their games a bit and just made something solid for once on a cheaper budget. I think we’ve seen that people don’t need these massive projects to have fun. If you look at what some of the most popular games have been the past while, a lot are indie games.
I think the saddest part is that the xbox ecosystem during the xbox 360 was so good when it came to community features. Party chat was a game changer, and it made the system feel like a hub to gather friends. A lot of the games available were perfect for groups. Now because the games have been suffering, a lot of my friends have moved to various platforms. It’s become less social and a lot less fun. Of course this is anecdotal and less of a tangible issue for Microsoft. But it’s these long term issues that have cause a cascading effect of corroding their brand.
I’m so tired man. I just want it to stop. It feels like everything nice is slowly being squeezed in all aspects of life.
Anything that capitalism touches or influences has begun to choke us out. It just seems to continue and doesn’t seem to ease up or improve. Maybe I’m just noticing it more, but the past 4 years felt like things accelerated quickly
I was going to say replaying but I feel like that limits the question to games like Prey or Fallout New Vegas that have endings and games like The Sims 2 or Cities Skylines where you can play indefinitely end up excluded....
Mirror’s Edge, Jet set radio future (and now bomb rush cyberfunk)
The 3D Mario’s (I haven’t gotten around to playing galaxy 2 yet and it’s eating me up inside lol)
Skyrim, Minecraft, stardew Valley
Ocarina of time and majoras mask.
Animal crossing (usually whatever latest entry, but I liked new leaf the best so far)
Lumines has become an addiction
Forza Horizon (similar to animal crossing, usually the latest entry, but surprisingly I enjoyed 1 and 4 the most. I was surprised about 4 because I didn’t think I really cared too much about the location, but I liked the seasons a lot. It kept everything feeling new)
Super Mario world is a classic! I haven’t tried any romhacks for it, that sounds like fun!
Oh man Diablo 2. I’ve attempted to play it so many times, but I’ve yet to finish it yet. Not because I don’t want to, but it’s like every time I start up a fresh game, something happens to my game or save. I’ve lost a save twice now(this is over the course of 15 years) and the last time I tried to get it to run, it didn’t want to cooperate on my windows 10 install. It’s oddly cursed lol. I’ll finish it one day. I have to haha
I’ve never been able to wrap my head around T spins. High level tetris play is absurd to me. I have no idea how people can make sense of it. Watching it makes sense, but playing it is entirely a whole other ballpark.
I think my favorite versions of tetris are a homebrew version made for the gba called apotris and the newest tetris effect because it has pretty colors lol. Oh actually I also like tetris 99. The concept is really neat. I also like the themes available in that one. You can probably see a trend here. I like the pretty colors lol
I’m glad they keep iterating on it though. I think there’s a lot of “classic” games that don’t really need to be…revamped or changed. They’re good the way they are, but people just want more of what made the existing games good. So many timed companies try to reinvent the wheel when it didn’t really need to be remade (the halo series comes to mind. RIP)
At the risk of going slightly off topic, one puzzle type game similar to tetris that I got completely absorbed into is lumines. Have any of you played that title? I’m curious how tetris experts would compare the two. In my eyes lumines seemed a lot more simple in design compared to tetris. But I have no idea. I sunk 60 hours so far into lumines which is probably rookie numbers, but I’ve never gotten so into a puzzle game like this before.
Those kinds of subs were the best. I liked when they weren’t too big, but just big enough to have a steady feed of topics. It felt like a tight knit club
The writing was on the wall. The announcement posts were always sad to see. In the comments you would have people begging for better mod tools or asking various questions only to be completely ignored or brushed off. Or they would get false promises that never actually were acted on. Classic spez
I only follow specific youtubers and artists. If stray away from my specific feed, Twitter is too scary lol. I am at a loss for good social media though. It seems like most social media sites have just gotten worse over the past decade.
I guess there’s pros an cons to it all. Pro: less time wasted on social media Con: I’ve missed out on some information that is sometimes good to know.
PC. We played through all of the 3+ player ones around a year or two ago in chronological order and it was stupid fun, what we liked about it and are hoping to find elsewhere is it being a shooter with an emphasis on movement and it’s physics sandbox (AKA CHAOS) while still having at least 3 full campaigns to play through in a...
Reading your post and then reading the replies made my chest hurt lol.
Bungies halo campaigns were just something special. I don’t know when we’ll see a co-op fps at that level of quality again. Those titles have lived rent free in my brain for the past decade
One thing you could do, depending on how much you and your friends enjoy a challenge. Is to do the halo 3/ODST Vidmaster challenge. My friends and I did it together twice when it was first released and those are some of my fondest gaming memories
So yeah, I want to discuss or point out why I think Valve needs to fix Anti-Cheat issues. They have VAC but apparently its doing jackshit, be it Counter Strike 2 (any previous iterations) or something like Hunt: Showdown the prevalence of cheating players is non deniable. For me personally it has come to a point that I am not...
Valve works differently than other companies. Internally everyone works on what they want when they want. You can literally wheel your desk to a new location if you decide to want to work with another team. Because of this though it creates an odd dynamic that isn’t always going to work out best for the developers or the consumers.
This is why it feels extremely random whenever valve releases something new. You would think they would just release banger after banger of hot AAA titles. But it’s more complicated than that unfortunately. This is also reflected in things like fixing cheats in team fortress 2 etc etc.
For destiny, I have no idea. I first played D2 when it launched and that was fine, but I attempted to pick it up again a year or two later and I was immediately lost.
For overwatch I agai haven’t played in quite some time. But for multiplayer shooters like that I try to go into a casual mode or training mode first and just get a feel for everything. Eventually you get the hang of things.
For RPG’s it depends. Some games can benefit from reading up online. For example I’m playing bloodborne right now and I had no idea how I wanted to spec out my character. So I looked up what weapons and abilities are in the game and made my decision based around that. If a game features a respec option, I’ll be more likely to just go in and wing it and change things up when I need to.
Well I guess now is as good as any to finally try the game again. I was one of the foolish people that had fallen for the initial hype of the game. Tried it on launch day and was insanely disappointed. Time to go find a cheap used copy
I just finished inside and wanted to see how people felt about it in 2023. Everything I’ve read about it around 2016-2017 seems to regard it as the best game of the year and in some cases one of the best of all time. It’s this truly still the consensus?
A friend wrote a post looking at some of the history of Virtual On as well as what had taken influence from it. I like their coverage of games and thought folks here might too!
I remember finding some of those arcade cabinets in a local movie theater in the early 2000’s. I’m not sure if it was a sequel or a spin off but they had the dual joystick control setup. The game was definitely a quarter sink at that theater but man it was fun.
Playing the first game in yakuza was a treat. I would love to see them spread out for western audiences but it probably is a pipe dream.
Microsoft has integrated Microsoft Teams with the Xbox Game Bar, allowing users to stream their gameplay in real-time to friends over Teams video calls. Up to 20 people can join a call to watch and chat together while gaming. The viewer can see both the game and overlaid video of friends. However, streaming performance is...
Me too. Teams is the worst for finding old conversations. They might as well be gone after a couple days pass.
Not to mention lately teams will sometimes just not update with any notifications lately. So I’ll go an hour with no messages or whatever and then suddenly teams decides to update informing me that I missed a call and a handful of messages.
Signing out and back in usually helps but man it feels like they took Skype and just Jerry rigged it
I think once my current gamepass offer is up in a year and a half I’ll be using the service similar to blockbuster. Only grabbing a month when there’s a couple things I’m interested in trying.
I have only played the first two games so far. Overall I strongly disliked the dungeons in the second game as they felt like padding and a way to kill off your pikmin. They just weren’t executed properly in my opinion.
That being said, there was massive room for improvement. As long as the dungeons in 4 aren’t repetitive and feel unique enough I think they could be fun.
I tried outer wilds on gamepass. I went in blind knowing absolutely nothing. At first I thought the graphics made it look like a generic unity indie game. I didn’t like how the jumping worked. I was so close to closing the game but I figured “I haven’t even gotten past the tutorial. I should at least give it a try.”
Oh man. The second you complete the tutorial and you are set free to play I had the best “oh holy shit” moment I’ve had in years. It’s still not everyone’s cup of tea but I absolutely loved it. I hope they make a second.
I have only been around the reddit halo community (maybe others are worse) and to be honest I don’t think it was that bad. A lot of the complaints were/are valid. For sure not the worst
Some notable titles (for me) were skyrim, portal 2, LA Noir, ocarina of time 3D, star fox 3D(do these two count? They were technically remakes for the 3DS), skyward sword, Dark souls.
Other titles that might be notable (there might be more that I don’t list, I’m just skimming quickly) Amnesia, battlefield 3, COD MW3, Catherine, Crysis 2, dead space 2, gears of War 3, hatoful boyfriend, little big planet 2, Mario kart 7, mortal kombat (2011), no more room in hell, red orchestra 2, saints row 3, SMT devil survivor 2, tekken tag tournament 2, terraria, track mania 2.
Again there might be some i missed(especially playstation releases, I think i maybe missed a resistance game or something) but those were some notable ones I saw.
The company I work for uses activity watch to monitor our productivity. The program isn’t very accurate though but they seem to take it as gospel. So I’ve had to set up ways to prevent it from making me appear away when I’m actually still at my pc working.
These kinds of micromanaging steps only further the employer/employee divide. In my eyes a good employer would consult with an employee if they aren’t meeting their standards and work with them to improve things or offer other potential solutions.
From my experience they want us to be robots, not humans.
Edit: I also forgot to mention they monitor us with this tool without employee knowledge. They only will reveal this once they feel there’s a need to fix an “issue” (which might not even be an issue)
There’s also been a rumor going around that they are checking our webcams without our knowledge but I can’t confirm if this is true.
I’ve been trying to find one throughout the Steam summer sale and come up dry, and now I’m out of money until the 15th. Hopefully y’all can help me find a good one before the winter sale. Here’s a rundown of what I’ve tried so far and what I’ve liked and dislike about them:...
I’ve recently rekindled my love for Katamari Damacy and it made me wonder if there’s any other amazing cult classics out there that aren’t talked about these days. What are your recommendations?
I’ve noticed tactical shooters have kind of sat on the back burner. There’s not a lot of selection at the moment. It’s a shame because they offer unique gameplay
How G.M. Tricked Millions of Drivers Into Being Spied On (Including Me) (www.nytimes.com)
What do you personally use AI for?
I really want to use AI like llama, ChatGTP, midjourney etc. for something productive. But over the last year the only thing I found use for it was to propose places to go as a family on our Hokaido Japan journey. There were great proposals for places to go....
Does enshitification happen because companies are publicly-traded?
Isn’t that a prerequisite for enshitification? Publicly-traded companies are required (by law, I think) to maximize profits for their shareholders, even if that means utterly ruining their original product (Reddit, Boeing, etc.), yes? What do you think?
Why are there two different genres both called ARPG?
ARPG aka Action Role Playing Game....
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of April 14th
Whatcha all been playing! I got the itch for outer wilds again, which I can’t really play anymore (😭)...
Baldur's Gate 3 actors reveal the darker side of success fuelled by AI voice cloning (www.eurogamer.net)
The cat is out of the bag and despite many years of warning before this and similar technology became widely available, nobody was really prepared for it - and everyone is solely acting in their own best interests (or what they think their best interests to be). I think the biggest failure is that despite there being warnings...
Open world games, need recommendations
Its been a while since I played botw and totk, I want to get into similar open world games with good combat systems, any recommendations?...
How Hidden Nazi Symbols Were the Tip of a Toxic Iceberg at Life Is Strange Developer Deck Nine (www.ign.com)
A very late "Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 31st"
Apologies for being late on this. It completely slipped my mind! I drove across the country to continue moving stuff up north over the weekend, and just lost track of time I suppose. The threads here now! Expect another one on Sunday. ❤️
60 Percent Of Playtime In 2023 Went To 6-Year-Old Or Older Games, New Data Shows (kotaku.com)
At first I thought “hey, patient gaming is taking off” when I read this headline, but really, what it’s saying is that people are spending most of their time on evergreen live service titles like Fortnite. Ugh.
Opinion: Phil Spencer, long cast as Xbox’s saviour, may be remembered as the man who killed it (www.videogameschronicle.com)
Enshittification Continues: Discord to begin showing advertisements on it's free platform (archive.is)
cross-posted from: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/17617609...
What are some games you find yourself frequently coming back to?
I was going to say replaying but I feel like that limits the question to games like Prey or Fallout New Vegas that have endings and games like The Sims 2 or Cities Skylines where you can play indefinitely end up excluded....
Let's discuss: Tetris (beehaw.org)
The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!...
deleted_by_author
Fewer people are using Elon Musk’s X as the platform struggles to attract and keep users, according to analysts (www.nbcnews.com)
What are some good PSP games?
I wanna get into non Nintendo stuff. What are some good PSP games in generals....
What are the best multiplayer games to try if me and my friends are looking for a similar experience to a Bungie Halo campaign marathon on Heroic+ difficulty?
PC. We played through all of the 3+ player ones around a year or two ago in chronological order and it was stupid fun, what we liked about it and are hoping to find elsewhere is it being a shooter with an emphasis on movement and it’s physics sandbox (AKA CHAOS) while still having at least 3 full campaigns to play through in a...
Valve needs to step up on Anti-Cheat
So yeah, I want to discuss or point out why I think Valve needs to fix Anti-Cheat issues. They have VAC but apparently its doing jackshit, be it Counter Strike 2 (any previous iterations) or something like Hunt: Showdown the prevalence of cheating players is non deniable. For me personally it has come to a point that I am not...
How are you all playing these insanely complex games?
Just some off the top of my head: Destiny, Deep Rock Galactic, Overwatch, and most recently Baldur’s Gate....
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty almost corrects the past (www.polygon.com)
well i may have to consider picking this up.
How was inside for you?
I just finished inside and wanted to see how people felt about it in 2023. Everything I’ve read about it around 2016-2017 seems to regard it as the best game of the year and in some cases one of the best of all time. It’s this truly still the consensus?
canon fire 034: The quiet and enduring legacy of Virtual On (canonfire.net)
A friend wrote a post looking at some of the history of Virtual On as well as what had taken influence from it. I like their coverage of games and thought folks here might too!
Xbox 360 digital store will close next July (www.eurogamer.net)
Weird to think how the Xbox 360 will turn 18 in November this year.
Microsoft Teams is now part of the Xbox Game Bar so you can stream gameplay to friends - The Verge (www.theverge.com)
Microsoft has integrated Microsoft Teams with the Xbox Game Bar, allowing users to stream their gameplay in real-time to friends over Teams video calls. Up to 20 people can join a call to watch and chat together while gaming. The viewer can see both the game and overlaid video of friends. However, streaming performance is...
Microsoft's £1/$1 Xbox Game Pass offer cut from a month to 14 days (www.eurogamer.net)
Earlier in the year they removed the trial offer. Now it’s returned, but worse than before.
Dungeon of the Endless is free to get on Steam for a limited time (store.steampowered.com)
Its a novel mix of Tower Defense and Roguelite games
Out of the way FROMSoft, Pokémon Sleep is now the hardest game ever created (cdn.imgchest.com)
seen on Twitter...
Pikmin 4 Review Thread
Game InformationGame Title: Pikmin 4...
Outer Wilds and BOTW/TOTK
(edit: vague spoilers for outer wilds + dlc!)...
What's the most toxic game community you know of?
The most toxic communities I know of are the Genshin community, Payday 2, FFXIV and source games communities in general.
in my opinion, '98 was the best year for game releases. What's yours? (en.m.wikipedia.org)
98 has some of my favorite games to ever come out, like:...
Tinybuild CEO admits publisher is using AI tools to monitor employees (www.gamedeveloper.com)
and subsequent update to the headline, which reads like kind of a backpedal from the CEO:...
Where are all the good stealth games?
I’ve been trying to find one throughout the Steam summer sale and come up dry, and now I’m out of money until the 15th. Hopefully y’all can help me find a good one before the winter sale. Here’s a rundown of what I’ve tried so far and what I’ve liked and dislike about them:...
What forgotten cult classic games are worth revisiting?
I’ve recently rekindled my love for Katamari Damacy and it made me wonder if there’s any other amazing cult classics out there that aren’t talked about these days. What are your recommendations?