I was going to say something similar to that too. Specifically, the consolidation of power means there’s less smaller companies taking risks. You’d think a big company with Disney money could afford to be weird and experimental, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
I say this despite enjoying superhero movies
Others have touched on this but this also feels downstream from the capitalist hellscape. Most people don’t have a lot of spending money. Movies are pricey and a bad money:time ratio.
I bet if wages were up, more people would go to the theater. I don’t want to spend $40 to watch a movie and eat popcorn, but I’d consider it for $3.
Sometimes I think about the billions of dollars of wasted productivity caused by Outlook being so bad at rendering email.
Also frustrating: how end users don’t care. You can explain how Uber mistreats employees or Airbnb causes rents to rise double digit percentages, but they’ll just be like “oh but it’s convenient”.
Twitter is a Nazi bar but “it has such good memes!”
If people cared just a little more, things could be so much better.
If you think ‘voluntary’ is acceptable for anything important you want corporations to do, you have no business making decisions about real life. If it’s voluntary, they’ll only do it if it benefits them.
Apply it to healthcare, science, finances, and the world will become a better place, especially in healthcare.
That’s all kind of moot if we continue down the capitalist hellscape express. What good is an AI that can diagnose cancer if most people can’t afford access? What good is AI writing novels if our homes are destroyed by climate change induced disasters?
Those problems are mostly political, and AI isn’t going to fix them. The people that probably could be replaced with AI, the shitty “leaders” and such, are not going to voluntarily step down.
I find it kind of funny how games are becoming more mainstream, but every once in a while I still meet people that are like “games are a waste of time”. But then again I guess people said that about movies and tv and still do sometimes.
Also I’ve been playing guild wars 2 again. Base game is like 10 years old but it’s still fun
I’m not sure what you mean. There aren’t really a lot of “quests” in gw2.
There’s the main story, which is a green marker on your map. That’s always there (unless you turn it off or finish it)
There’s orange markers for nearby events. That’s like “zombies are attacking! Save the town!” or “help these kids pick apples” or whatever. They’re just things that happen in the world and, to a limited degree, change the world state. Like an area might be full of toxic vines until an event finishes successfully, or a merchant might only sell items after his mission succeeds.
There’s red markers, which are basically the same as orange, except they tend to be world events and not local.
And then there are collections, which are kind of like quests. They’re not super advertised. They’re kind of of “get these achievements for a special reward”. Sometimes NPCs will give you one- like “go find all my favorite fish” or whatever. They’re optional, but sometimes fun and sometimes have good rewards. Like if you finish the one where you get most of the achievements for one chunk of the game, you get a max-stats accessory that all your characters can share.
Anyway. Long reply. Nothing is really beamed into your head, no.
I mean if you want to keep running bleed against a boss immune to bleed go ahead, but I’ll probably switch to an occult infusion.
I think guild wars 1 you didn’t just pop on any clothing you found. One of the NPCs was even like “you think you can just pick up a jacket after you set the poor bastard on fire and stab him, and it’ll fit nice and snug? No. It won’t. Bring me materials and I’ll make armor that fits you”
Then gw2 was like "fuck it people like when items with cool colors pop out of monsters "
Yeah we finally set up a workflow where we get production data available in a staging environment. This has saved a lot of trouble via “well it worked on my local where there were 100 records, but prod has 1037492 and it does not”
Flawlessly clearing Genichiro in Sekiro was deeply satisfying. Parry parry parry, dodge, mikiri counter. Don’t think I got hit once.
If there’s going to be fantasies about murder, can his whole posse go out?
Morrowind. Every once in a while I reinstall it, but I can’t get over the “it looks like an action game but it’s a stats game” thing anymore. And I never liked Oblivion or Skyrim. But when I was a kid, Morrowind was so full of wonder and stuff to discover. I also wasn’t playing with a guide, so discovering stuff like “You can enchant an item to have 1-100 strength, duration permanent. It picks the bonus when you put the item on, and it stays that until you take it off. So put it on and off until you get a big number. Much cheaper than trying to enchant it to +100 straight out” felt more personal.
Last game I finished was Veilguard. Pretty close to EoY. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, and the difficulty falls off a cliff as a mage when you get life steal, but it wasn’t bad. The romance with Neve was entirely too… unromantic, and PG-13 though. Very disappointing. No intimacy.
Then I started CrossCode and it’s been good. Feels like a mix of old snes games (Zelda, lufia2) and MMO, without the annoying parts like other players. The puzzles also aren’t very hand holdy, which is nice. I feel like a lot of games are too aggressive with their “HEY IT LOOKS LIKE YOU CAN SLIDE THAT BRICK. HEY I BET FIRE MELTS ICE.”
I like that they did turn based but I didn’t actually like it that much. There are too many trash fights. I think one of the developers suggested a mod to cut HP so they go faster.
I also don’t really like the “one action per turn” model (as in DND) and kind of would have preferred action points (as in divinity).
But overall I’m a big fan of Deadfire, and I’m bummed they’re not making a third one.
I think the most fun I had was with chanter. Just hang out and summon dudes that wreck shit. Slap on the heaviest armor you want and just scream at people until they’re dead.
I remember realizing all the names are science terms and being like “oh that’s clever”
Kind of like it more than the usual “throw darts at a fantasy word board” that produces like Dark Age, Dragon Priest, Eternal Soul, etc
If we’re waving magic wands around, change the tax laws to limit how much you can inherit.
Changing the step up basis thing is actually pretty low hanging fruit.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stepupinbasis.asp
https://smartasset.com/investing/buy-borrow-die-how-the-rich-avoid-taxes
Where would you lay the blame?
And how is that hypothetical response “intellectually dishonest”?
Any plan that depends on “and then the common person develops discerning taste” is doomed to fail. Especially considering that even people who are usually picky might enjoy something basic from time to time