loobkoob

I’m not sure I see how they’re comparable. Progressivism requires the ability to progress; if we somehow create a completely perfect utopia then there will be no room for progressivism, but otherwise there will always be some way to improve things and progress. In practice, there will always be some way to improve society which means infinite progressivism surely isn’t unreasonable?

Infinite growth isn’t possible because infinite money doesn’t exist, it’s as simple as that. And if infinite money did exist, infinite growth wouldn’t be possible because everything would already be infinitely large and therefore unable to grow any further…

… but beyond that, it also requires more and more people who can afford whatever the product/service in question is. Which requires either infinite people, infinite money or both. And as the product/service grows and prices likely increase, people will priced out of the market which is the opposite of infinite growth.

It’s also worth considering that progressivism is a mindset that is aiming for zero - zero problems, zero inequality, zero bigotry, etc. It’s not about pushing for infinite anything, it’s about trying to reduce existing issues. And while it’ll likely never reach its goal, it’s not theoretically or mathematically unreachable. It’s much more realistic to attempt to reduce something to zero than it is to increase it to infinity.

“poop knife xDD hehe”

There’s so much actually great content posted across reddit over the years, it blows my mind that people decided that was something that needed to be mentioned all the time.

that game is over for me once I’ve launched the rocket

Ahh, well that definitely isn’t the case for me! I usually keep playing long after I’ve launched the first rocket. For me, launching the rocket is a somewhat arbitrary “ending”; it’s a good objective for people to focus on - especially new players - but I don’t think anything really changes before or after the rocket launch in terms of gameplay loop (and there’s no narrative to change). Just like before the rocket launch, there are still things to optimise, new ways to build, etc, (some of which are supported by the science you get from launching rockets, in fact).

I suppose it partially comes down to whether you’re an objective-driven player or someone who enjoys the process. For me, it’s all about the process/journey, and the objectives are more of a guide than anything. If the objectives are complete and I’m still enjoying the process, and there’s still room for me to enjoy the process, then I’ll keep playing.

I can definitely think of quite a few non-live-service games with an “end game” that I’ve enjoyed:

• (Older) Pokémon games with their battle towers, where putting together a flexible team with as few weaknesses as possible is the aim.
• Loot games like Borderlands, Grim Dawn and Last Epoch where I want to make new builds and test their limits against harder and harder challenges.
• Factorio, where I want to optimise my factory. Although there’s absolutely an argument to be made that that is the game, but I think it becomes more about player-set goals once you’ve launched the rocket.

All of them are either offline or have offline modes available. All of them have potentially infinite “content” if you’re the sort of person who like optimising, or just being able to set yourself new targets. They’re all enjoyable to play for their “campaigns” alone, but they also have very strong sandboxes that players can continue to engage with even after the game stops giving them objectives.

I don’t necessarily disagree with your overall sentiment, though. I think MMO-style “end games” where you login for your daily, time-gated quests and do the same thing you always do with no variation or sense of progression (be it narrative, emotional, build-related or some other kind of progression) isn’t necessarily healthy. And I dislike the way “end games” have tended to move away from being optional post-game content for people who aren’t ready to finish playing yet and instead are often viewed as the main game that you have to get through the sorry excuse for a campaign/story to access.

Even of that were true (which it may be), there are loot games and loot games. Personally, I want itemisation to make a meaningful difference to how my build feels to play and how it performs. I want to be able to have a unique/legendary item drop and think, “wow, I’m going to make a while new build around this”.

Games where the loot is just +1 damage or 7% extra armour, and where there’s no real depth to the loot, would be better off without loot, I think - I’d rather just see an armoury where I pick the weapon I want, and not have to deal with the loot scaling, enemy level scaling, etc. Save the looter aspects for games like Path Of Exile or Borderlands where loot is actually engaging and impactful.

Mine, too! It really showcases the kind of narrative that is only possible with the interactivity of video games as a medium. If I could experience any game again for the first time, it’d be Outer Wilds!

Absolutely. I think perhaps my all-time favourite romance of any RPG is Parvati’s from The Outer Worlds, where you play wingman and confidant to Parvati. It feels so much more fleshed out and intimate than any player romance has ever felt to me, despite the player only being an onlooker.

Branching dialogue and decision trees are great for letting players decide what actions to take, but I feel that giving players that level of freedom with their romantic relationships feels very limiting and shallow - especially when the player is given multiple romanceable NPCs to choose from. The fact that the player character is often a blank slate means it’s impossible for there to be any real chemistry built up, too.

Give me railroaded romances between clearly defined characters where I can actually believe the characters are into each other, or give me no romances at all.

Around 15 hours for someone who goes in completely blind, I think. Or 20 minutes for someone who knows what they’re doing!

(It has been funny watching some of my coworkers learn a new coding technique and finding it to be so cool that they apply it everywhere regardless of whether it fits or not while I think to myself, “Ah, I remember when I went through that phase as a teenager!”)

I’m not a programmer (although suggestions on a language to start learning with - with no project in mind - would be welcome!), but I’ve found similar things with my old musical projects. I look back some old project files and see that I used various techniques all the time that I don’t necessarily use nowadays. Sometimes, I think I probably should use them more than I do now, but I definitely overused them back then when I first discovered them.

I guess it’s just exciting when you learn something and it opens up a bunch of possibilities for you!

I reckon the number of sales of the game was pretty irrelevant to them. They lived off investor money for years, and the fact that they released something makes it rather difficult for them to be sued for fraud. I suspect that’s why they never took pre-orders, too - it makes it more difficult for any “false advertisement” class action suits to get any traction if they weren’t accepting any money.

Here’s something that isn’t that widely known outside of developers/publishers: Steam holds any money from the sales of a game until the end of the following month - it makes refunds easier, it gives them time to deal with processing fees, etc. So The Day Before’s devs, who said they had to shut the studio because they’d run out of money and couldn’t afford to stay open because the game hadn’t sold well enough, wouldn’t have seen any money from the game until next week anyway. And they’d have known this - this wasn’t their first game.

The convenient thing about a handful of people controlling all the wealth is it means there are only a handful of people who need to be liberated of their wealth!

I’m not sure they’re sleepwalking into it; I think there’s just very little they can do without pivoting to an entirely different business sector at this point.

• Physical game sales been dropping for years as people get better internet connections, bigger hard-drives and as games come with larger and larger day-one patches
• Many “physical” versions of games these days just contain a download code which only reduces physical sales further
• People often find it easier to buy peripherals on Amazon then go into GAME. And GAME can’t really compete with Amazon when it comes to online shopping.
• GAME tried to diversify into gaming and general “nerd culture” collectibles years ago and it’s obviously not something that’s revitalised their business.

Where do they go from here? I certainly think they handled things poorly 10-15 years ago, and could perhaps have pivoted successfully then if they’d seen the writing on the wall. But pretty much no-one predicted the current landscape back then. It’s only a decade since Microsoft’s disastrous Xbox One reveal where they got savaged for its always online nature and for heading towards digital-only games, with everyone saying, “but we love buying physical copies of games”, and now here we are ten years later with brick-and-mortar stores looking like they might not survive the year and physical sales numbers in free fall.

I don’t think GAME is necessarily mishandling things right now. I just think there’s not really a market for a business like theirs nowadays.

I’m sure a lot of the people who said they were going to boycott it did boycott it. But a boycott was never going to work for this game. The IP alone meant it was going to sell 10M+ copies, even if it was absolutely terrible.

My thoughts exactly. I wish it’d been stolen instead, or something else just generally less environmentally damaging.

I think it’s good that they asked here. The way the fediverse is structured means there can be plenty of people who use an instance - posting to it, browsing posts from it, etc - without being registered with that instance. If Beehaw says they’re contemplating leaving, only to be met with a “NO, DON’T GO” response from the rest of the fediverse, then that might give them reason to rethink their position. And if everyone just says “eh, whatever” or “yeah, go away” then it may reinforce their position.

Obviously the opinions of the people who’ve registered there should hold more weight, but I think putting the question to everyone is a good move.

I’m pretty sure the opposite of “critical thinking” is “free thinking”, at least based on all the “free thinkers” I’ve spoken to. I assume it’s short for “free-of-critical-thought… thinking”.

She’s also an evangelist, pro-conversion therapy, a TERF, and a staunch defender of Suella Braverman. She thinks LGBTQ rights charities teach “extreme ideologies that don’t have a basis in science” and she felt that, when COVID was in full swing, focusing on protecting the elderly only had a short-term effect on the “longevity of older people” and that the government should have instead focused on the “long term impact of lockdowns on young peoples’ lives”.

She’s a piece of work.

Who are you?

I don’t know how you want me to answer that. I’m an internet user, like you. Do you want my full name and address or something?

I am not sure why your comment is relevant to the discussion

I am not sure why my comment is any more or less relevant to the discussion than anyone else’s.

civil discourse

You started your first comment in the thread with “Now, you tend to post irrelevant bullcrap for attention” - I think it’s safe to say you didn’t do a great job with “civil discourse”. All you’ve really managed in this thread is to come across as rude and as someone who has a chip on their shoulder.

Just… do better. Be a nicer person.

I prefer real poo, personally.