I love when games themselves are sort of meh, but there’s that one thing in them that keeps you hooked for hours and hours because it’s done surprisingly well for some reason.
When I played FFX I basically stopped playing the story when I found blitzball. I’m not sure if I ever actually finished the game. It was amazing use of 3-D space that actually played really well, at least compared to what else was around at the time.
I suspect the population needs to see nothing happen if they vote in a blue wave, and I suspect it’s going to need to get worse… not that I don’t support voting, but right now there’s still too much faith that the system will correct itself. If you aren’t constantly consuming political news, you might think the lip service is actually doing something, and with the constant barrage of shit, people can honestly be forgiven too since extent for not knowing exactly how things are playing out with challenges and stuff.
It would be nice if it did correct course with voting, but I don’t think it will. At least not without a bigger shakeup (like actually progressives in place of dinos, flipping gerrymandered red districts, etc.) than 2026 midterms are likely to deliver…
So what I’m hearing is… put a bunch of random stickers for various things on your car to make them work really hard to figure out if you are worth it, instantly making you not worth it!😜
It’s certainly true that the indie market is better about that stuff, but the indie market also generally isn’t considered the driver or trend-setter of the overall games market the way AAA studios are. It would be amazing if that trend shifts, don’t get me wrong, but until or unless it does, I don’t see this going well overall. It does, though, mean that people who care will still have options, and that’s good, so solid point.
I figure the digital-only consoles are a stepping stone toward this. I’d never consider one myself because if I don’t own a copy of the game that I can sell, I’m not paying for it just in principle. But a ton of people wanted the convenience over the practicality of resale. Digital-only consoles have basically killed the physical game market going forward, since it’s been basically dead on PC for ages. I see the same thing happening with the consoles themselves. I mean ps+ already has a streaming option and a substantial portion of their catalogue is only available to play that way. I’m sure Xbox has the same thing, probably with a similar portion of content locked behind streaming from their servers. I don’t even really understand why they would do this since the bandwidth to stream is far higher than to download and play offline, so I have to assume there’s something behind it like a push toward that model. Get people used to it as an option, then make it the only option.
And there’s nothing indie studios can really do about those big trends led by big studios/companies, except to quietly keep doing what they were already doing, and make a huge fuss about it when they get their 15 minutes like larian has done. Wake up as many people as you can sort of thing.
I hope you are correct, but I don’t think you are.
I don’t think game devs (or web devs or any dev really) even remember what optimization means, at this point. They sure aren’t going to start prioritizing it now, especially if major companies continue to be out of touch about what gamers actually want.
I mean we have microtransactions, we have games as service, we have single player games with online connection requirements, we have games that need logins to other services, etc etc etc. no gamers want these things, but it doesn’t matter because companies do. And companies aren’t going to care if you can’t afford to play their game on your own equipment, they’ll offer you a subscription to stream it from theirs.
I was told the first line repeatedly as a teenager, and stopped wearing makeup a few years later as a result. Then I’d hear intermittent comments about how I look tired because I have thin skin around my eyes. I look tired no matter what I do. But whatever because I save a bunch of time every morning and evening, not to mention money. Holy hell is makeup expensive!
Now as an adult nearing middle age who stopped even using hair dye, I’m starting to hear that I’d be prettier if I did my makeup/hair better… and I just go “yeah, probably.” And shrug. I’ve accepted there’s no winning, someone will always comment, so I just do what I like. Not my problem if that makes you feel insecure enough to try to change my behavior.
I also don’t recall if I ever did the stabby thing… probably.
But I did get my hands on one of those weird putty erasers that artists use for fine point erasure or whatever they are actually for (didn’t work very well, anyway). I used to use that stuff to make little sculptures in class. If it hadn’t been slightly elastic it would have worked very well for it.
Some phone apps do display the link url below the post body. I use voyager and it looks like this
Wow, I haven’t heard “smooth move, ex-lax” in many years. Haven’t even said it myself in at least an age.
Get a friend/friends to split the costs and items with you. Most stuff comes in multiple packages, so it’s pretty easy to split this way. If you have an uneven number, split so the person who is likely to use it faster gets more.
I’ve done this before and it works very very well to keep costs down for 2+ people who don’t live together. It probably won’t cover everything you want to buy but it dramatically reduces the “omg I’ll never eat all this” feeling.
Depends heavily on the comedy for me. I have an entire folder of stand up specials, and I really enjoy a lot of it, but I lean heavily away from political and broad social commentary, and toward personal/anecdotal and more nuanced stuff.
I want my comedy to be silly, not offensive. If you are going to be making racial/minority stereotype jokes, they better be about your own experience as that race or minority. That’s the one and only way they even could be funny (tho most still aren’t). If you are going to punch down or across, not interested. If you hit yourself, or punch up and get a fist full of shit for doing it, it might be worth watching!
There’s a HUGE amount of really shit standup out there, though. Punching down, shock comedy (especially shit like rape jokes, sexism, etc), that sort of thing. It’s a shame really because you have to wade through it to find good stuff. There’s also an absolutely absurd amount of totally vapid brainrot comedy that could also go extinct, imo, but at least it’s not actively harming anyone, I guess.
I would consider dev mode in rimworld to be cheating in a “technically it is” sort of way… spawning infant thralls that are then adopted by my colony, or spawning whatever activity site I choose are definitely not how the game is supposed to work. The mods are sort of also cheating I guess, tho most of them are content heavy… there are definitely several hacky mods in my list, like minify everything.
But while it’s cheating in a technical sense, it doesn’t impact anyone and it’s teaching me a lot about how video games function, which I find more entertaining than completing hard-coded objectives. It’s the first game I ever put a lot of mods on, and between troubleshooting and testing stuff, it’s been nearly as illuminating as rendering lag that adds each texture layer individually starting from low poly (my ps4 is having some major lag issues I’m trying to sort out, and horizon zero dawn is fascinating for this rendering issue, so so many layers! And then to realize it usually gets processed in real time! 🤯)
As for cheating in multiplayer, it hasn’t come up in decades. WoW was the last multiplayer game I played, and I stopped that when whatever the third expansion was came out. So like 2010 or so?
You mean we could have seen these memes before?
Probably would have worked better if she hadn’t abandoned the metaphor and swapped to another one.
She went with whatever she felt would be most impactful for the message portion, rather than the whole thing.
It seems disingenuous because it is. It’s not a coherent thought. At best it’s a bunch of unrelated thoughts crammed together. Probably based on what she thinks will hit. As sound bites.
So don’t feel bad not trusting it; it’s not even internally consistent. Even if you agree with part of it, a stopped clock is right at least once.
Seeing both is true love.
Smashed up with the flavor sprinkled over and eaten like popcorn, it’s a snack.
Cooked and whatever, especially with additions if available? Meal.
Same here. Or if I have no choice, I’ll have several instances of overwhelm where I freeze and process just enough to continue, get flustered, and just skip looking at anything at all I don’t need. Tunnel vision is a major cope. And even stuff I do need, and specifically came for, often gets left behind because I just can’t.
I wish I could get groceries delivered, but there aren’t any services in my area (close by, but I’d have to get them delivered to a delivery locker site for a huge fee, and at that point I may as well just do the shopping myself). That’s the biggest instance of this for me. I genuinely hate grocery shopping.
Wouldn’t put it past him tbh. Rich people are super weird.
I definitely can’t.
I substantially reduced tp use, but female anatomy makes that level of frugality nearly impossible, at least without uncomfortably damp undies, in my experience. 😅
Best I managed before the swap was one 24 pack for a year. Still very good, but room for improvement :)
I also got a bidet, but then I went one further and got small towels to wipe up the water.
Pack of 50 cheap washcloths isn’t that much more than a pack of nice toilet paper, but they can go through the wash in a sanitary cycle with bleach and I can reuse them until they fall apart. Then I just need toilet paper for visitors.
It sounds kinda ick, I know, but consider that we wash underpants, and what’s the difference?
From 5th grade onward I didn’t spend two consecutive years in the same school district. I was perpetually the new, weird, poor, neurodivergent, easy-target kid who sucked at making friends, so they pretty much all sucked in uniquely scarring ways. The best part is my parents thought they were doing me a favor by trying to find a school that would be good with my neurospice… We didn’t actually move from the time I was 9-16. Only me.
I have no clue how to make or maintain friendships and I desperately want to move cities, or at least homes, every couple of years or I get restless. Very glad I’m well educated, though, it makes the isolation that much more profound.