squirrel

squirrel, 1 day ago

Yes. From the article:

Ethiopia: […] It is one of the few African countries that enacted its own anti-gay laws – most others inherited those laws from Britain.

squirrel, 6 days ago

I love this game (500 hours played), but I have to bring up a point of criticism…

One aspect which has not aged well IMHO is the “kindness coin” mechanic: The exchange of goods for the NPCs’ friendship and/or affection. You give the NPCs stuff, then you give them more stuff, then some more on top, then you get a cut scene and then you get back to giving them stuff until you trigger the next one.

Yes, the requests on the blackboard and the occasional personal quest mix up things a little bit, but overall the mechanic remains the same and for me over the years this has cheapened the interaction with the NPCs for me somewhat: They are mostly transactional and predictable to the point where you can calculate their outcome.
You have to give character A so-and-so many objects X to romance them. It takes so-and-so many days to do that.

Sure, the “kindness coins” mechanic was industry standard at the time, but I wish there were more variety in regards to the interactions with the NPCs, because they are amazingly written and I wish there was more to do with them besides giving them stuff over and over again.

squirrel, 6 days ago

The most famous one ATM is probably “Baldur’s Gate 3” which offers a wide variety of mechanics and stats to measure if an NPC member of the player’s party is romantically interested in the player character. Two examples given in the talk I linked are the VNs “Monster Prom” or “First Bite”.

squirrel, 6 days ago

Yes and no. Like in Stardew Valley, technically you can romance every NPC in your party, but in practice you have to meet certain criteria to do so and those differ from character to character. Of course, it is possible to “game” that system.

squirrel, 6 days ago

“My child…”

squirrel, 9 days ago

There is a legitimate reason why we may see “something” in the future.

Ubisoft accepted subsidies from the French government for the production of BGE2, which puts BGE2 in a similar place like “Skull and Bones”: “Skull and Bones” was partially financed by subsidies from the Singaporean government. So BGE2 is trapped in the same weird limbo “Skull and Bones” was trapped in for years. Ubisoft has to figure out whether they actually want to finish the game or write a big, fat check to the French government.

We all know how that turned out for “Skull and Bones”, so I am not going to get my hopes up.

squirrel, 11 days ago

The “”“alpha male’s”“” masculinity is so fragile, they threw a conniption when seeing a picture of a fit woman.

squirrel, 11 days ago

Your quote reminds me of one of the biggest misconceptions about Judith Butler’s work who wrote so much about gender…

People constantly misquote them and say that Butler wrote that “gender is a performance” and assume that Butler meant that gender is fake.

What Butler Butler actually wrote is that “gender is performative”, ie. it involves a performance that communicates our gender identity to others without the performance being the end-all-be-all of gender.

squirrel, 16 days ago

Technically this year, but already after the last elections in 2020, there were credible allegations of election fraud in favor of the ruling GD party which resulted in massive protests. Since then GD has only tightened its hold of the country’s institutions and has suppressed civil society. You can see why the upcoming elections aren’t looking promising…

squirrel, 14 days ago

Without doubt, it will. Though the GD party is not keen on joining the EU anymore anyway and favor Russia. Laws like this will make it easy for the GD to blame the EU when the EU makes the inevitable decision to suspend Georgia’s admission process.

squirrel, 24 days ago

A little long maybe, I assume it won’t be long until it’s just “likensub”.

squirrel, 1 month ago

How often does it need to be said? Do not preorder games based on what they looked like in the trailers!

squirrel, 1 month ago

They did! See the article over here.

squirrel, 1 month ago

Yeah, trans people in the UK are in horrible danger.
In regards to Hillary Cass I am not even sure how much of this is actual regret and how much is her trying to save her reputation in regards to her scientific credentials. It may be politically opportune to write a report full of bigoted pseudo-science that slanders the academic community who does actual science, but it comes at a price.

squirrel, 2 months ago

The original article that went with the picture spoke of “a new race of amazons” and calls the woman on the right, “Diana”, which may be a reference to Wonder Woman (AKA Diana, Princess of the Amazons).

squirrel, 3 months ago

Yeah, Majestic was incredibly interesting because it was an attempt to create an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that was more than just a marketing campaign and could support itself financially. Its failure led to ARGs being abandoned as standalone games and ARGs mostly remained marketing which - ultimately - led to a slow, but inevitable decline of the ARG as a genre when the marketing money dried up.

squirrel, 3 months ago

George Lucas introduced evil guys wearing SS uniforms who conduct genocide before the viewers’ eyes and somehow people still pretend that Star Wars is apolitical.

squirrel, 3 months ago

Oh, I have… I have…

Image

squirrel, 3 months ago

They also leave out half of the story: The whole thing already started in October. After months of harassment one of the employees snapped and called their shit out. But they leave that part out, claim they got attacked out of nowhere and play the victims.

squirrel, 4 months ago

Thanks. Corrected it.

squirrel, 4 months ago

flips table

Thanks. Corrected.

squirrel, 4 months ago

The cruelty is the point.

squirrel, 4 months ago

Biscuit?

squirrel, 4 months ago

I am very troubled by this inaccurate depiction of…

spoilerListenbourg

squirrel, 4 months ago

I wonder if 2023 will go down as one of the last good years for gaming (and even that only works if you ignore all the layoffs that already happened).

squirrel, 4 months ago

Sure, the death of the live service hype plays a role, too, but in my view it is mostly due to the gravy train of cheap money coming to a halt: Lots of companies are scaling back because they had funded themselves with loans while laundering profits through tax havens. Gaming companies are not much different from tech companies and media companies in this regard. Those are also in hot water ATM and fire people in order to stabilize their cash flow.

At the end of the day, gaming companies are going to invest far less in the future. Games such as “Spider-Man 2” and other AAA titles with exorbitant budgets will become rare. This has been a trend for years.

Thus I am rather certain that 2023 was one of the last years where we have seen a strong line-up of high quality, high budget titles alongside indie success stories.

squirrel, 5 months ago

Piranha Bytes is/was owned by Embracer, that should say everything about its chances of survival.