paultimate14

@paultimate14@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Australian anti-porn group claims responsibility for Steam's new censorship rules in victory against 'porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists', and things only get weirder from there⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  What are the odds one of this group’s leaders gets caught with some sort of secual deviance in the next decade?

  This sort of hatred and need to control others always seems to come from a place of self-loathing and suppression. Normal, well-adjusted can’t enjoy anything because these people are obsessed with their own internal conflicts and project it out onto the world.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the difference between a platonic and a romantic relationship?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s important to remember that this is a model used to analyze relationships. Famously, “all models are wrong, but some models are useful”.

  Human relationships can reach incredible levels of complexity. Heck, human sexuality alone is a huge thing to study.

  I know a couple where a bi person is married to an ace person in an open marriage. I know a couple that owns their own house and run their own business together but keep separate personal bank accounts. I’ve heard of people who are “just friends” who parent and raise children together. I know people who are married but maintain separate residences. And of course I know people who are married, own and live in one home together, and have parented and raised children together, and have a joint bank account. There are a lot of different ways people can relate to each other.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Krafton Issue Statement Regarding Subnautica 2⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Also a great point.

  I’m not ruling anything out at this point. It could be a classic case of a greedy corporation pushing out the real artists in order to exploit the art. It could be that the devs (specifically the 3 guys involved in the lawsuit) got lazy after they got paid. It could be both, neither, something else entirely. Honestly with how things go these days I’m just grateful there hasn’t been anything distasteful enough tl give me qualms about playing Subnautica.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Krafton Issue Statement Regarding Subnautica 2⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  After the last decade or more of people complaining about greedy publishers forcing devs to release half-baked messes too early (Cyberpunk, No Man’s Sky, etc), it feels like I’m living in a bizarro world to see so much criticism for a publisher delaying a game to (allegedly) make it better.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pop it in your calendars⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The public does not have enough information to judge the relative probabilities. Krafton has that information and has every incentive to release the game as soon as possible, and they still chose to delay.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pop it in your calendars⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s how bonuses work. If it was guaranteed regardless of how the company perfroms, it wouldn’t be a bonus.

  It is entirely possible that, even if they had released Subnautica 2 in its current state right now, it may not meet sales expectations and no one would get a bonus anyways. They could make a great game and the marketing team drops the ball- no bonus. They could market like crazy but the game sucks- no bonus. Data breaches or corporate embezzlement or world war- there are tons of factors that could prevent them from meeting those goals.

  The amount is also important because it is being used by the position to try to support an argument that Krafton made this move in order to avoid paying the bonus. When in reality the cost of that bonus payment is probably a tiny fraction of what they are losing by delaying the game.

  Personally I hate bonuses, and I have always advocated at my company for more of the payroll to be structured as salary. But other colleagues of mine really like bonuses. They like the increased reward and risk involved. It comes down to risk aversion, so I’m not going to call those people or employers evil or anything just because it’s not my preference.

  I’m also not defending Krafton’s decision to replace the leadership and delay the game. Personally I suspect that they did so in order to add more monetization to the game, but that’s impossible to know until reviews start to get published. I will say that no one should pre-order the game, but I would also say no one should pre-order any game. Why are people pre-ordering games at all?

  And what if Krafton is right? What if the game is actually in a state right now that would disappoint customers? Seems like for the last decade every videogame community has been complaining about games being released as unfinished and buggy meses. No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk for example. Any time Nintendo delays a game, all their fans applaud and share the Miyamoto meme (“a delaged game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad”). So I’m really surprised to see that a publisher has come out and admitted that they think the game needs more time to meet customer expectations and instead of applauding them for taking the loss the Internet is instead promoting these weird conspiracy theories that don’t add up to explain how it’s actually bad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pop it in your calendars⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The $250 million bonus was due to kick in if Unknown Worlds hit certain revenue targets by the end of 2025

  The whole key to this is how the bonus is structured, and that is unknown still. They very well may have just been something like “10% of net profit, capped at $250 million”.

  If the whole cost of the game was JUST $250 million, that would put it in the [top-15](The $250 million bonus was due to kick in if Unknown Worlds hit certain revenue targets by the end of 2025) most expensive games we have official numbers for. This doesn’t pass the smell test.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pop it in your calendars⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Bloomberg reported that the bonus was tied to revenue targets. So the $250,000 estimate must be estimating significantly higher revenues for them in 2025.

  What you posted is just the sales on 1 platform for 1 game, whixh came out in 2018 when games were cheaper.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pop it in your calendars⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Is it still more expensive if they just shelve it

  Yes. Like, it’s not even a question it’s more expensive to delay it. First of all, they are choosing to pay for 6-12 months of extra development, which alone is probably several times more money than the bonus that they would have paid out. I don’t know what their payroll is, but we don’t need to know because math.

  If the bonus was for 1/2 annual salary per person (which would be insanely high), then the cost of the bonus would be the same as 6 months of additional payroll. Meaning that with any longer delay than 6 months or smaller bonus structure than 1/2 of annual salary, it becomes more expensive to delay the game. Both of which are incredibly likely in my opinion.

  And that’s just salary. It’s possible the studio was planning on laying people off after release, but more likely that they would have moved to a other project that is currently wrapping up pre-production. So this is causing a cascading effect unless they hire additional staff to catch up.

  Then you have marketing costs. The rule of thumb in the industry is that half the overall budget is marketing. There are all sorts of contracts they probably had- digital stuff like banner ads on websites, on the console digital storefronts, partnerships with twitch streamers and YouTubers and review websites, physical stuff like cardboard cutouts and fliers. They may have started printing for boxes for physical releases (though I’m not sure whether this game would have had one or not). They may have started acquiring merch inventory: shirts and stickers and backpacks and flashlights and more perhaps. Some of these contracts they may be able to postpone or cancel, but they certainly aren’t getting back 100% of what they paid.

  And in all of this time they aren’t getting the huge revenue spike they were expecting. The vast, vast majority of a game’s revenue comes at launch (excluding live services, which this hopefully will not have). They need to survive another year on the trickle of revenue coming in from the sales of their other games, or Krafton may need to pump more of their own money into Unknown Worlds. Or debt.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pop it in your calendars⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m at least willing to wait until it gets reviews to make a sound judgement.

  I don’t think the bonus would have been a big enough reason to delay the game. Delaying a game like this relatively last-minute and giving it an extra year of development is waaaay more expensive than the bonuses would have been. That’s a gigantic revenue spike they were expecting to get this year and now have to push out to next year, and they may well end up paying out similar bonuses next year too.

  My suspicion, from the history of Steve Papoutsis, is that Kraftom wanted to add in anti-player elements and the original founders refused. Probably micro transactions, or maybe even having a bigger multiplayer focus to make it closer to a live-service game. Some mechanism to get money from customers beyond the original purchase. I suspect crap like that will be reason enough not to buy the game when it comes out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You can only bring back one. Which do you choose?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That does not match my own experience.

  Back in my day, I received a couple of demo disks packed in with my PS1, and I got a couple more through other means like magazines and the famous Pizza Hut promotion. Some games would include demos for other games too: Spyro and Crash Bandicoot used to do that a lot. Now that I think if it I don’t remember ever seeing any cartridge-based demos at all for any Nintendo or Sega systems, even the later ones like GBA and N64. There were kiosks in public places, but I never saw anything intended for a consumer to have- carts were just too expensive.

  By the PS2 era demos had mostly dried up. I have a God of War demo that came with a magazine and that’s about it. I could only speculate as to why, but I suspect increasing game sizes and DVD’s being more expensive than CD’s may have been a factor?

  I’ll admit I stopped paying attention to demo’s for a while, so maybe I missed a peak at some point from like 2010-2020. But nowadays Steam, the Switch, and the PS5 all have a category or filter option to look through demos. There’s tons of indie games trying to get attention, and of course tons of shovelware too. But most of Nintendo’s published games have demos on Switch. Scrolling through the PlayStation store I see EA sports games, Persona 3, Power wash Simulator, Ys, Diablo 4, FF VII Rebirth, Tekken 8, Crow Country., Chants of Senaar, Sea of Stars, Ghost Trick (I didn’t even know that was on the PS5 lol), Like a Dragon, Resident Evil 4… So Square, Capcom, Sega, EA, Activision-Blizzard, tons of indies, and more. Sony is the only publisher whose absence I noticed, unless you count VR stuff. The number of demos available today is overwhelming, if you look for them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You can only bring back one. Which do you choose?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean… Your last sentence is already becoming more and more true every day, and has been for years. Microsoft was trying to eliminate the used game market back with the Xbox One. In the US at least there has been a sever decline in videogame stores. Gamestop used to be just one of a handful like Babbage’s and EB Games. Other stores on this initial post like Toys-R-Us also used to carry physical videogames too (I think Circuit City may have too?).

  Plus I always felt that videogames are just consumed too differently from movies. Movies are something easy to consume in a night or a weekend, especially because the rental versions were usually just the movie with none of the special features. I rented videogames a few times as a kid, and I always felt so much pressure to try to play as much of the game on the time I had it as possible. It ended up a stressful and unpleasant experience. Plus you had some videogame developers who adjusted difficulty specifically for rental markets, like Lion King and Battletoads, which I would argue was detrimental to those games.

  There’s a reason TV show rentals never really caught on like movies either- it just takes too long to consume comfortably. The Netflix mail model made a bit more sense for shows at least, but couldn’t quite bridge the gal for videogames. GameFly tried it and I suppose technically still exists, but I haven’t heard anyone talk about it in years. RedBox tried and had a nice moment, but ultimately got swallowed by streaming.

  Plus DLC and updates are becoming more common, so it would be annoying to have to go and re-rent a game, purchase the DLC, try to speed through it in a weekend, then return the rented game but still be out whatever you paid for the DLC with no way to play it.

  Rentals were pretty good for being a low-risk way to try a game out. You could spend $1-$5 usually for a game that might cost $40-$50 to buy new, and occasionally publishers would have promotions where a rental would come with a coupon to offset the rental price if you want to buy the game. Nowadays that has been replaced by free downloadable demos. Which aren’t perfect, but I think are better than the old rental system.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨60% of Teachers Used AI This Year and Saved up to 6 Hours of Work a Week⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Is there enough value in AI to justify burning down the planet for it?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You can only bring back one. Which do you choose?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Please enlighten me then- what does Scarecrow Video do that makes them special? From a quick Internet search it looks like they re-organized into a non-profit, got officially recognized as a museum by the state, have relied on Kickstarter campaigns to stay running, and seem to still be struggling to keep the lights on. So just from skimming their website it seems like less of a business and more of a preserved piece of nostalgia and novelty.

  Don’t get me wrong- I’m very much in favor of physical media and media preservation. Today’s streaming and digital “purchase” landscape has a ton of issues. I just think the solution to that is public libraries, and it looks like Scarecrow is trying to be a hybrid of a library, museum, and business with the business part failing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You can only bring back one. Which do you choose?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Video rental is just plain outdated. Streaming as it is today has a lot of problems, but they are ones that could be easily solved through regulation if regulators ever had the appetite. These stores went out of business because technology made their industry obsolete. I bet most people would have to do a little work to even play a DVD or Blu-Ray today. Maybe dig out an old device and hook it up, or use a laptop with a disc drive. Maybe a gaming console, but there have been a lot on the market for a while now that don’t have optical drives. There’s enthusiasts of course- including people who still keep VCR’s and laser disc players and even people with their own reel-to-reel projectors, but they’re a tiny minority.

  Friendly’s I only went to once and it was unremarkable casual dining. That industry DOES have a problem where private equity keeps on buying, looting, and destroying companies, but I’m also hopeful that can open up more space for small businesses instead. I’ll pass on this one.

  My memories of RadioShack were that it was cheap junk that was overpriced, but often the only reasonable option unless you wanted to order online or through a catalog from somewhere that could take months to arrive. I do wonder what the world would have been like if RadioShack had positioned itself as a repaor parts supplier and lobbied for Right to Repair legislation. Probably a stretch of the imagination.

  Circuit City… For some reason I thought they went out of business largely due to embezzlement, but when I look forward that now I can’t find anything so maybe I’m thinking of another company? Best Buy seems to be struggling to compete with Amazon and Wal-Mart still today, so I don’t think Circuit City could have lasted much longer than it did either way.

  Party City and Toys-R-Us are the 2 that make me upset, because both were successful businesses ruined by Private Equity. Not that I want to simo for these corporations, but what PE has been doing to so many industries in the past decade is absolutely disgusting. Id I had to choose one to bring back I’d say Party City because a lot of the custom and specific party supplies there aren’t going to be stocked by your local Target or Wal-Mart, and that’s the kind of thing you’d prefer to see in person rather than order online.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is closing down Xbox studio The Initiative, with Perfect Dark killed as well — joining Everwild and ZeniMax's new IP, and other unannounced projects⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They bought the Perfect Dark IP though. That’s probably just going to languish now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Deus Ex devs say they weren't trying to make a statement when they made one of the most political games of all time: 'What I think is the right future for humanity is irrelevant. It's all about...'⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think of that with BioShock 1 and Infinite too. Rapture was an atheist society while Colombia was highly religious. Colombia was highly centralized and regulated by an authoritarian dictator, while Rapture is deregulated and allows private businesses to run wild and cause chaos. It’s almost as if BioShock Infinite was written as a counterpoint, to clarify that the first game was not meant to be political.

  I suppose you could say both games are criticizing extremism, which combine to form a centrist message. But even that I think was less of a choice to discuss politics and moreso just “We need conflict to create an interesting videogame. What’s a good way to create conflict? Just take some political views and crank them up to the extreme- surely no one will sympathize with them then!”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft layoffs are reportedly underway, with ZeniMax and King employees losing their jobs⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  1. WTF is going on with this website? I had to turn my phone to read it in landscape lol.

  2. I am 100% sure that Microsoft was asked about the impact to their staffing by various government regulators and media for each of their recent acquisitions. Zenimax and King are the most relevant ones here, but I would argue the rest of them like Activision-Blizzaed would still be relevant too. Disappointing to not see anything in this article.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Video] BBC cuts away during pro-Palestine musicians Kneecap. The followup act Bob Vylan invents a new chant on live TV⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The beautiful irony here is that you are believing in and spreading IDF propaganda for them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Video] BBC cuts away during pro-Palestine musicians Kneecap. The followup act Bob Vylan invents a new chant on live TV⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It would be a logical fallacy to jump to such a conclusion without interviewing a randomly sampled and much larger population. It is possible you may be correct or incorrect, but you are jumping to a conclusion about a topic with insufficient data to do so.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Video] BBC cuts away during pro-Palestine musicians Kneecap. The followup act Bob Vylan invents a new chant on live TV⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Your evidence supports that there are members of the IDF who are enthusiastically engaged with what they’re doing. I am not debating that- i think you’re right.

  But it’s important to remember this absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just because you haven’t seen interviews of IDF members objecting to what they are doing does not mean those members do not exist. I would expect the IDF to have systems in place to minimize the external visibility if any such objections, which makes a generalization like that dangerous.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Video] BBC cuts away during pro-Palestine musicians Kneecap. The followup act Bob Vylan invents a new chant on live TV⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They aren’t going to let you see the unenthusiastic ones.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favorite Tactical RPGs?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Shining For e is a classic. Basically Seva’s answer to Fire Emblem.

  Wargroove is pretty good too. Kind of like Advance Wars, but in a more medieval fantasy setting. From an indie dev with pixel art. My only real complaint is one I have with all modern “retro pixel art” style games: the “pixels” can move by much smaller increments than themselves. I wish games that used that style would align everything, including animation, to the fake pixels. It looks kind of busy and messy imo. It doesn’t bother me enough to ruin Wargroove though.

  Banner Saga was pretty good. It’s a combination of tactical RPG with mostly text-based choose-your-own-adventure style elements between battles. Still haven’t played the 3rd one, but I enjoyed the first 2.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Switch 2 Breaks Records By Selling Over 3.5 Million Units In Four Days⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You and I remember the press for the Wii very, very differently. Just look at the Wikipedia article listing all the awards it won before or around it’s launch. Game Critics, Spike TV, Golden Joystick, Popular Science, IGN, GameSpot, the Guardian, and much more. including awards and praise for the innovative controls.

  Was there negativity? Sure, but it was a miniscule minority. The kind of thing only an extremely defensive Nintendo fan would notice. The Wii sold out instantly and was impossible to find for the first year or two, similar the PS5 except without the excuse of a global pandemic disrupting supply chains.

  It’s not some anti-Nintendo bias. The press was pretty mixed on the Xbox One for example, with some outlets pointing out it was a bit overpriced, and of course the whole debacle about being always-online and the Kinect being mandatory caused a lot of backlash. The PS3 was seen as overpriced at launch and got a 6/10 from IGN.

  And another important factor is that conditions change after launch. (The 360 probably would have had worse reviews if the press knew about the red ring of death before launch. The PS3 saw price reductions and eventually outsold the 360 despite having a worse launch. The 3DS floundered for its first few months until Nintendo dropped the price.

  The press is neither monolithic nor perfect. I guarantee you can find some outlet somewhere with the exact take you are looking for, but to just dismiss the entire industry because you don’t agree with most of them on the Switch 2 seems like coping.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Switch 2 Breaks Records By Selling Over 3.5 Million Units In Four Days⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The WiiU also got negative press. That doesn’t somehow redeem it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Switch 2 Breaks Records By Selling Over 3.5 Million Units In Four Days⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The Switch 2 being a bad deal and Nintendo having a VERY strong history of anti-consumer behavior has nothing to do with console wars. The person you are replying to is equally allowed to have a nuanced take.

  What, are you expecting every comment critical of Nintendo to also include criticism of how terribly Xbox has managed it’s game studios just so we can be “fair and balanced”?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rule 34 rule⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  What else do these all have in common?

  They all have art styles that are purposefully designed to be really cheap and easy to make. The same choices that helped these studios crank out hours upon hours of formulaic content also helps the rule 34 artists.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If it's good enough to keep your house warm, it's good enough to keep your insides warm⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you are a professional who is installing insulation all the time? You absolutely need that mask.

  If you’re a flipper who buys a new house every year or two and usually replaces the insulation? You should wear a mask.

  A homeowner who installs it once, maybe twice in their lifetime? Eh. A lot of PPE mandates are about doing it often and professionally where you can get a lot of exposure. Or if you already are at risk. If you have respiratory issues then if course you should wear a mask. If you have healthy lungs and plan to do this task just once in your lifetime, just having decent ventilation and not shoving your face in it is fine.

  I’d wear gloves, but more because the rafters probably have splinters and rusted old nails or staples or whatever. The skin irritation from fiberglass lasts like a day or two and doesn’t have any long-term impacts, but I also find gloves aren’t as inconvenient as masks.

  Eye protection is a must. I don’t mess with that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hot take: Get your game reviews from gamers, not from collectors⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think more general advise would be to understand the perspective you receiving and how it relates to yours.

  Collectors are great for finding weird and evil things. Like “this cartridge had some special chip that makes it different from every other game on the system” and I think “oooh I kinda wanna try emulating that”. Or “this developer made this weird bad game a few years before they found success with their breakout hit series” which can be interesting to check out.

  Also a lot of “gamer” reviewers have their own issues. Fromsoft is a great example- they purposely neglect areas of their games that they don’t want to focus on, and fans have interpreted their business priorities as genius design decisions that every game should copy. No more minimaps, no tutorials or onboarding systems, no explicit story. There are Nintendo fans who eat up every single thing they do and love to pay a premium for it- somewhat like Apple people.

  Not to say those perspectives are “wrong” or shouldn’t exist, but it’s usually good to try to look at different perspectives.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s where the “analysis” part of “cost-benefit analysis” comes in and it doesn’t make sense to generalize like you seem to want to.

  Is it really that much more responsible to run Windows 11? You seem to have a LOT of faith in Microsoft to keep you safe. There’s plenty of reasons to not switch to Windows 11.

  I also use Linux on some machines. But I can also see why there are reasons why one distro or another, or even Linux in general, may not be the right call for some people.