The other day I had to use a browser without any plugins to go to a site, and it was unrecognizable with all the ads. When I normally visit it’s clean and simple. These ads pushed content under the fold. Horrible.

Additionally they have to have time to play it.

And money to buy it! Wages are down. I was unemployed for a while so I just didn’t buy any games (or much else)

I leave reviews when the game does something exceptional (good or bad). Or sometimes when steam nags me to leave a review.

It’s funny: if you leave a negative review and keep playing it asks you if you want to change your review.

Many years ago I had to explain to a coworker how progressive taxation works. He was like “that’s a great idea! We should do that! It’s stupid that now your pay goes up but you take home less because you get taxed more”

I had to tell him, yes it is a good idea. It’s how it works now. You don’t get more pay and suddenly your whole income is taxed more.

He’d had no idea

Yeah if AI was actually good you wouldn’t need to mandate it. No one was like “everyone here must use Google search”.

On the one hand, omnipresent surveillance is bad and ripe for abuse.

On the other, I feel like the haphazard and selective enforcement of traffic laws by police officers is also really bad. Cops can selectively enforce laws so poor people or black people or whatever out-group suffers more. A machine should be impartial.

On the last hand, no traffic enforcement is probably going to get people killed. So that’s not desirable.

Also, fines are problematic. Fines should probably scale with wealth, but also it shouldn’t be a revenue source because that’s a perverse incentive.

Companies fill up with idiots and parasites. People who are adept at thriving in the role without actually producing value. Google is no exception.

There are dozens of us reading rock paper shotgun!

But yeah, the modern web sucks. It’s all soulless algorithms and profit/rent seeking.

Even if someone tried to make forums again, they’d probably fill up with AI slop.

Weird that it’s unsupported on steam deck. Doesn’t look that demanding technically.

I really liked CrossCode’s art and vibe and everything. The puzzles are good, too. But the puzzles are kind of hard in a way that tires me out.

I guess that’s how some people feel about dark souls. “Oh, I’m glad that’s over”. That’s not quite the vibe I’m aiming for.

Maybe I’ll play it with a friend who’s good at puzzles so I can just do the fighty parts.

Assuming what you’re saying about the harms of consuming pornography, is it the state’s responsibility? Is it a top priority? Do we trust conservatives to implement a solution in good faith?

The answer to all of those I think is no.

There’s no analogous ID check for violent media, so far as I know.

There could be a raging wildfire and I would hesitate if a Republican said “let me deal with it”. They are fundamentally untrustworthy.

That’s on top of the deep irony of the same party that goes on about “small government” and “parents rights” is typically the same one pushing draconian anti-porn laws. It’s a joke. “A government small enough to fit in your bedroom”. Their motivations are so corrupt I am extremely skeptical of anything they propose.

Adding websearch to the start bar’s search was solving a problem that didn’t exist.

Maybe the average user is so ignorant and bad at computers they don’t understand this. They don’t know what a browser is. They don’t know what a website is. They don’t know what a program is. It’s all just stuff.

Personally, I’d rather spend billions on education than AI slop and other patches on “people are kind of dull”

Saint Luigi preserve us.

I’m sure there are companies that are at least more good than bad. Teachers pay teachers. Meetup. Bandcamp before they sold. That’s all I have off the top of my head. But even so capitalism invites cruelty, and the best intentions can easily wither under the pressure to make more money.

I work for a very large company involved in medicine. They make machines to do like blood work. That’s fine. People need that. But they treat many of their workers like trash. I don’t get paid for holidays and get the legal minimum sick leave per year. Their mission isn’t especially evil , but their behavior sucks.

I think a good step would be if people could admit the companies they work for are making the world worse. I’ve met some people who work for Google who do some backflips about how no the company is good and definitely they’re good people and it’s not the $300k salary talking.

Difficulty settings are, first and foremost, accessibility settings.

I’m not opposed to more options but I think this tactic is distracting and generates more pushback than it wins converts.

Are games art? I’d say so, usually. Some are more like toys than art, but many have creative expression

If they are are, must all art be accessible to all people? Well, what does accessible mean exactly? To understand it completely? Then I’d say trivially no, because there are many books that are incomprehensible to many people. No one is going to say “House of Leaves” is inaccessible and the author did a gatekeeping by writing it as such. No one is going to say Finnegans Wake is ableist because it’s hard to understand.

Must all aspects of all art be completable by all people? I’d also say trivially no. You might have a segment in French that doesn’t translate well. You can dub it or subtitle it, but the original experience will remain inaccessible unless the audience spends years mastering French.

I bring that up because some games will have within the game, not a metagame menu setting, easier or harder routes. For example, Elden Ring with a big shield and spirit ashes is significantly easier than a naked parry build. Is the expectation that everyone should be able to finish in both styles? If there’s a hard mode, must everyone be able to finish it?

Should everyone be able to trivially 100% every game?

Personally I think the floor is everyone should be able to interface with the game. Change inputs. Add subtitles.

I don’t really think “I can’t party this spear guy” is an accessibility problem the same way “I’m color blind and can’t read the text” is.

But again, I don’t care if someone wants a god-mode with auto-parry. It just feels like it’s bundling some unrelated ideas together. You’re not necessarily disabled if you’re bad at parrying in dark souls.

Buying power is down. If they want me to spend more, capital has to pay me more.

I’ve heard similar numbers tossed around. I’m not sure how consistently people need to be showing up for change to happen. It seems a lot of what we’re seeing now is brief protests, and then back to business as usual (pun intended)

I’m not friends with some old coworkers in large part because they just don’t go to protests or do anything. They’re comfortable just staying home and playing video games. Extremely basic bros.

Any time I realize the optimal path is really boring or tedious.

Like, imagine you could sell junk to vendors for money, but for some reason you get more money if you sell them one at a time. Spending five minutes splitting inventory stacks sucks, but it’s 30% more gold and that’s the difference between the cool sword or the basic sword.

A made up example, but hopefully gets the point across.

Related: long travel times with nothing interesting or challenging happening. I remember playing some shitty MMO and you had to like run through a building, go up an elevator, and down a long hallway every time you wanted to learn skills. Just five minutes of nothing. Gotta juice those playtime stats, I guess.

It’s different if there’s stuff to do en route. Monsters to fight or whatever. But when it’s just jogging? Very disappointing.