Yeah, I think the real exception here is Dragon Age: Origins. It has a lot of interesting choices, many matter and they impact the end in complex ways. Sure some of it is slideshow based but that is completely fine IMO. And all choices made can carry over to the final game in the series, actually altering the experience there in noticeable ways. First Mass Effect also had a good ending variation but it was far more subtle, small differences that ultimately didn’t have much impact on later games (though I applaud them doubling the voice lines by allowing your choice of leader of humanity to stand in subsequent games). Mass Effect 2 however had a very interesting take on ending given that the ending is basically the whole of the final mission were all your choices impact how that mission plays out. It’s interesting how you can “fail” that mission and it’s a viable ending. Kinda like a “bad ending” in a visual novel.
So I’d go with DA:O if we’re talking strictly multiple endings as we normally think about it and ME2 if we want to consider the final mission as a way to do a new take on multiple endings. Maybe “dynamic ending” would fit ME2 better.
Yeah that’s is an attack on Netlify and not on him. It’s them that should have protections against this. I argue that the customer can’t even effectively defend against this themselves if they’re using Netlify, which is turn means a court would likely get them off the hook for anything that can easily be classified as a DDOS attack.
Not really any different from my experience around clothing and “ringtones” for your phone. And not different from my parents around clothing which was ridiculously important, much less room for any personal expression than there is today, back then it was with the times / fashion or outdated, no styles or choice existed unless you count sub-cultures which without exception were social outcasts.
As a parent to a kid smack dab in the middle of this right now I gotta say that while I welcome regulation on 1, 2 and 4 generally, not just for kids, I really and firmly believe parents who allow their kids to buy whatever they want in game (i.e. gift in game currency and leaves it at that) are horrendously lazy. And I have an analogy for that as well.
Back in my day what happened when kids got unsupervised cash was at best candy instead of lunch in school and at worst alcohol or cigarettes. Back in my parents time it was basically, due to before mentioned conformity, only cigarettes as the only possible outcome.
As such I really feel loot boxes is decidedly better than cigarettes and alcohol while being tied with candy for lunch.
3 is just a parental issue. It’s the same as not knowing where your kid is and who he’s playing/interacting with.
5 is a big societal issue right now. Social media is really fucking with not just kids but virtually all of us. Me being here is largely a way to combat my own unhealthy relationship to social media. We’re extremely social creatures at our core and social media manipulates us in ways we have little chance of resisting with mindful consumption. It’s cigarettes as they were back in the early 1900s.
I’d argue that so far the load as it is, is from my outside perspective about the same as what I had. It’s just split over more stuff and what pressure you face is much more related to the crowd you interact with. My son, like me, is more of a nerd while having a theater side that I don’t. The pressure he faces is keeping up with YouTube trends, Roblox games and Minecraft mods that the creators that are popular play. While some of his friends flaunt in-game items and follow creators that do content that I personally don’t find child appropriate I have had no issues so far talking about that with him and setting limits on what he’s allowed to interact with and have managed to instill understanding about the ultimate pointlessness about avatar items. And given the vast sea of content there is there has been no issues finding appropriate content and he’s confident enough to bring what he found/enjoyed to the group and not just mindlessly follow.
It helps that he really hates loot boxes IRL, like say kindereggs and gumball machines. He finds no enjoyment in the surprise part, only disappointment when it’s not the one he wanted.
That said I understand that while I put in work as a parent the exact same amount of work might be woefully inadequate with another kid, due to no fault at all on the parenting. Hell I have three kids and they all have had vastly different challenges. Stuff that was easy with one took extreme effort with another. So I don’t really fault parents for the small stuff, if a kid watches one YouTuber that really isn’t age appropriate, OK. If they watch only stuff that is not at all for kids then I have an issue with that and have raised such concerns with them.
For sure, as I outlined social media is a completely different beast and one I do not permit my son to interact with and will hold out for as long as is reasonable.
I agree the glee some have around China supposedly failing is misguided at best and just spurred on by propaganda.
That said the last decades of explosive economic growth in China is because they adopted more Western economic policy, albeit with more far reaching government control. Calling the economic system of China “communist” is misleading, sure it’s the communist party that rules and set the system up. But it shares much more with a modern capitalistic system than the economic systems we’ve seen in other communist states.
As for political system it feels very ominous to read a text that very clearly hints that democracy is not any better than authoritarian systems. I also strongly feel that is a bit of a reverse from how it normally goes.
Democracy is the ideal state, the good in theory but with flaws in practise. Just as marxist / socialist systems are wonderful in theory but in practice has had problems.
I reject the notion that anything existing today is optimal. And I very much believe that the optimal path is somewhere in-between China and US policy for a lot of things. And to the left of China for some.
Finally, excusing human rights abuses by proclaiming “they do it too!” is just distasteful.
Not quite that easy either, from my understanding they’re not paid like doctors in other developed countries, i.e. it’s not a top paying job. And they see this as a threat to “solving” that issue. Now we could argue that doctors maybe are overpaid in many cases, and if they’re “really” underpaid then opening up more slots for education won’t actually lead to any more applicants, thus the shortage will continue until salaries increase.
Yeah, personally I have strong issues with “daddy” roleplay where the girl / woman obviously acts, talks and dresses like someone underage or even a little kid (commonly referred to as age play). But I also accept that what they do is their business and no one is harmed. I also strongly object to scat play and animal play but once again. Their business and no one is harmed (well, scat play can be iffy… But it’s consensual and you’re “harmed” by BDSM or boxing in a much more direct manner).
In essence I see this as really no different than allowing GTA where you play as a thug with the ability to slaughter innocents with impunity. It’s all fantasy and we (the majority) don’t believe it actually increases the likelihood of you doing it for real in any meaningful way. Same applies to all forms of roleplay, virtual or in real life.
As such this is just daft fear mongering and as you say dilutes child abuse in a way that can move resources away from protecting / helping actual kids to stopping safe and consensual adult roleplay. Which is very counterproductive.
Sure, but as opposed to real life you can just not participate. And you can quit if you work there. Let them do their thing if that’s what they want, no one is forced to participate or watch.
Some just eat a lot. I do sometimes, not frozen pizza but other stuff, but then I also regularly skip both breakfast and lunch or dinner without really thinking about it so on the whole I don’t think I eat more than others. I’m around 60 KG. The one that makes people look is when I pack away 30 pieces of sushi while they ordered 10 pieces and are somehow satisfied. That or how I can kill a full bag of potato chips (300 g) in one sitting, a cool 1500 kcal of crispy goodness.
Germany doing it will likely set precedent in all of northern Europe. My prediction is Denmark will follow in 2 year time, Norway in 3-4 years and Sweden likely last at 5 years, even though I think we consume more of it per capita… Swedish stance on drug use has been extremely conservative for many, many decades by now and is super rooted in the common Psyche, which is why so many die of overdoses and kill themselves if it comes out they use. The stigma is heavy.
Not fully decriminalized no, you’re right, but it has come a long way. And the step from illegal to decriminalized is much larger than decriminalized to legalized. The latter is also a way to boost the tax revenue and strangle gang income, with a slight risk of giving them legitimate revenue instead of illegal.
Huh looks kinda fun but Netflix games? I guess this is one attempt at a killer app and I applaud the “no in app purchases” approach but will it be enough to get people playing on a “platform” that is not only new but just plain weird?
I think it’s a great spot to be. Should be more than enough to be profitable if they need it to be and has ample room to grow given how large the gaming market is these days. If I was heading up the division responsible for game pass though I’d be working hard right now on forging a roadmap for how to expand into the mobile market. I think cloud gaming is an excellent way to deliver true gaming experiences to a crowd that today make do with seriously subpar experiences and extremely predatory monetization. Couple that with them making their own smartphone attached universal game controller and they will get filthy rich.
I’d expect the number to be in the low double digits. 10-20% on the total by now. But in the high double digits for pre-orders / early-access and starting the hype train. Say 70%. I haven’t met a tabletop RPG player that hasn’t played BG3. Though in the more hardcore circles I know there are those that don’t play video games at all…
But I can also safely say that DoS players don’t account for the success of BG3 since those games never had mainstream appeal. Brand recognition is for sure a massive factor. Also keep in mind that Baldurs Gate, particularly 2, is considered a must play to understand the evolution of western RPGs. While the PC gaming market was much smaller back then so many people will have played it, read about it or wanted to play it but couldn’t get past the aged mechanics and looks since then. Its sales numbers belie its influence and reach.
Finally I’d say a good 50% or more of the total buyers bought in after it was apparent that it was going to be GOTY, so many were talking about it and every critic was singing its praise’s, but it wouldn’t have gotten there without that brand appeal and the super rich and deep lore which the “power users” (like many critics and early adopters) crave.
Yepp, if they were attempting anything grand they’d have filed by now. The worst they could bring from this point is maybe infringement on a Pal by Pal basis but even there I feel there’s not much to go on given that Pokemon draws so heavily from the real world and you can’t really claim a concept like “volcano turtle mashup” as something so uniquely creative that it deserves copyright on the concept level. Same goes for just about all Pokemon with maybe some exceptions. So while Palworld absolutely has stuff like “electric dog” and others which overlap that is not enough.
If you don’t need power then why not buy old laptops? Plenty of companies around that sell corporate laptops 5+ years old that of course still work fine. Also gives bonus points for reuse and thus reducing ewaste instead of adding to it.
They’d be dumb to keep making consoles as we know them today. A much better long term business move would be to make a “cloud gaming Chromecast” a la Stadia but, if they want to retain their fan base, a disc player that mearly reads and validates your disc and then runs the game from the cloud. Thus letting Xbox fans still have access to their games. That in turn would allow them to have the base subscription have a library that changes to a great degree every month and you only get “permanent” access if you buy the games. Hell if the “buy” cost is lowered then people would by and large applaud them for it.
The hardware has almost always been sold at a loss but with how many datacenters they have now, how long they’ve been refining the game pass and the Xbox Cloud gaming service it seems like the only way to wrestle away Sony and PlayStations dominance in high end console gaming.
Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely hate the whole “you will own nothing, rent everything, and be happy” paradigm were in now and refuse it for a lot of things. But I also understand business and I’m reasonably sure the average consumer will actually love it. “Console” for like $100, the subscription say $15 at base, $25 for the full month and you get all the games you could ever play. It would be a no-brainer for any non-gamer parent. The kids will love it, no more begging for that new game, they’ll have it day one and so will all their friends. Hell parents will probably also love the blanket, one time, parental action of setting which ESRB ratings are allowed instead of having to vet it game by game while the kid screams that Johnny gets to play it. Now they can just say ‘no if the Xbox won’t let you see it and play it then there’s nothing I can do honey’ and it’s just enough deflection that it might pass.
It’s really only when you zoom out that it becomes a shitty deal. But that’s not something the majority ever cares go do.
EU favoritism of Microsoft? The same EU that fined Internet Explorer basically out of existence?
If anything it’s Microsofts much savvier handling of their AI policies that make them less of a target. Copilot is very clear that they aren’t entitled to use your data to train the base model, which is in stark contrast to OpenAIs agreement and Googles which basically say that anything entered into them is fair game for them to use to train.
The only surprising thing here really is that Swift isn’t worth substantially more. She’s been the top pop music act for a decade now and has been uncommonly business savvy so I was really expecting that figure to be at least the double.
Sure, if we’re talking work as in compensation per hour. But we aren’t here. She’s a product (as in Taylor Swift the artist is, not Taylor Swift the person naturally) and thus can be sold in quantities only limited by the amount of people on our planet that can afford to buy her music/merch/tickets etc. For me as a consultant to make a billion just isn’t possible, but if I start a company selling something which isn’t limited like the amount of hours in a day then… Yeah no, I don’t have it in me to become a billionaire. But you get the picture I hope.
To hammer it home, she’s globally recognizeable as I’d say the most famous active musician right now. And she has been in the top 10 for a long while. That kind of fame begets net worth faster than just about any CEO gig ever will.
Valid point. Unlike other billionaires with public companies connected to them Taylor Swift’s net worth is her value up until this point, what she has generated. There is no pricing in of future potential like what made the Tesla and Nvidia stock absolutely explode (and by that their respective stakeholders net worth). I hadn’t thought of that.
Yeah, texture fidelity is one metric but for textures really how good or bad they are depend much more on the skill and attention to detail behind making it more so than raw numbers. The models themselves is really the only part where the increased polycount actually shines through and makes it competitive because it is so important to make things like hands, hair and clothing look "right’. But the aesthetics of SS is just so bland and flat that it ends up looking like an old tech demo.
I’m looking for recommendations for WWII single player fps games for the pc. In particular, I’m looking for older games from the 90s to early 2000s. I always hear how the market used to be over saturated with these games, but after playing through the early Call of Duties and Medals of Honor, I don’t know of any games that...
Brothers in Arms is fantastic and squad management is not a very intrusive part of it at all.
As for the saturation it wasn’t just FPS, it was that every genre (well, baring racing I guess, but there every game was heavily “Fast & Furious” inspired) had more than one WWII game, it was ridiculous…
I find that very unlikely actually. What SoC would it run? AMD hasn’t released anything stronger than the Z1 Extreme (which is just a power constrained laptop part) so the only alternative would be a variation on that, maybe one that works better under a tight power budget just like the AMD chip in the Steam Deck? However I’d argue, as a ROG Ally owner, that battery life improvements aren’t really that high on my wish list. If I could get anything it would be optimizations making the experience more stable and improve 1% lows. But most of that I don’t think is even on Asus, it’s more on AMD to tweak their drivers and on the game makers to tweak for the Z1 Extreme, which thankfully is in more than just the ROG Ally so it does make sense to do so.
Spoken like someone that hasn’t been working very long, or if at all.
While school can be very pressure intense around exams in ways many jobs aren’t you at least have summer and other breaks. For work you get vacation time sure, but it’s nowhere near in terms of time.
Further adult life has a whole slew of responsibilities on top that you need to handle. Most 30+ can’t subside on the crap we ate during college, we can’t fuck off from our responsibilities when we can’t be arsed with minimal consequences and we sure as shit won’t find social stimulus without putting in effort, neither friends nor romantic. Sure if you live where you’ve always lived then you hopefully have childhood/school friends left at 30 but if you’ve moved then it’s not a given at all.
Wow, that’s one hell of a naive mind-set. He basically bet it all on red and since it paid of he’s going to be hailed as a genius. But in reality with that kind of “plan” it was a gamble that could just as well have ended in the company going under and everyone out of a job. I’m actually most interested in how he sourced the money, who loaned them the cash? (Or invested in the company). I very much doubt they had that kind of money laying around after their previous, rather niche games.
It has that mainstream appeal as in being a brand parents know (Harry Potter) and being pretty inoffensive (i.e. no guns and blood or sex and partying) so I imagine just about every kid with a system it runs on and in the age bracket of 6-16 got it for Christmas or their Birthday despite not being on the wishlist.
Mine disappeared as I got older, like around 25 or so. Now if they or similar visual effects come back it means I need to rush for my migraine pills or I’m in for some serious ass whopping… Don’t know what I did to my old friends to deserve that kind of treatment.
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WWII first person shooters
I’m looking for recommendations for WWII single player fps games for the pc. In particular, I’m looking for older games from the 90s to early 2000s. I always hear how the market used to be over saturated with these games, but after playing through the early Call of Duties and Medals of Honor, I don’t know of any games that...
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Nitter link: nitter.net/matpiscatella/…/1747983570222875017
I'm never lonely cuz i got these little guys with me :) (lemm.ee)