paultimate14

@paultimate14@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jeff Bezos reportedly launches new AI startup with himself as CEO⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  at a concert

  There’s your problem. It doesn’t matter if you’re buying Dasani or Aquafina or Arizona Tea. Venues have captive audiences and jack up the prices because they can.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jeff Bezos reportedly launches new AI startup with himself as CEO⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  As of June 2025, Mike Cessario’s estimated net worth is around $80–100 million.

  The CEO is wealthy, sure, but very far away from being a billionaire.

  I’ve occasionally bought liquid death at my local beer distributor for parties, and it’s a bit expensive but not crazy. Pretty much every drink at a festival is incredibly overpriced - that markup is usually going to the vendors selling it and the venue, not the manufacturer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When we eat the billionaires, we should spare Gabe Newell? No?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  In order to be incorporated, a company has to have stock. Private companies still have shares even if they aren’t traded on public exchanges.

  It’s possible that Gabe owns 100% of Valve’s stock, but it’s also possible that he’s sold some to other people or entities. Originally when Valve was founded, it was a split between Gabe and Mike Harrington, but Harrington reportedly sold his shares to Gabe when he left.

  It’s also very likely that Gabe owns shares in other corporations, even just as personal retirement investments. But that’s not what I was talking about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scandal⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This is exactly why I’m wondering if “Bubba” could be referring to someone else. Maybe not a celebrity.

  Heck, could be a giant novelty dildo. Or a dog.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When we eat the billionaires, we should spare Gabe Newell? No?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “Billionaire” is a convenient modern buzzword. It used to be “millionaire”. The classic joke from Austin Powers where Dr. Evil demands money is a good example. It’s just inflation.

  Plus, a lot of “billionaires” are only considers such because they own shares in their corporations. It’s a “theoretically if they could find a way to sell all of those shares at the current price without tanking the market value of those shares in the process, they could get $X billion from that”.

  If there were a theoretical global revolution, on of the the first steps of eating the rich is to seize and nationalize those businesses. Later, land reform will seize the extra mansions they own. They will still be left with adequate personal property to live quite comfortably. Finally, the justice system will need to evaluate what labor laws (or other laws) they may have been violating for years and using their wealth to get away with.

  Start with the biggest fish and watch as the rest start to downsize voluntarily and cut deals to avoid jail.

  I don’t expect to see any of this in my lifetime. Not in any major country, and certainly not globally.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When we eat the billionaires, we should spare Gabe Newell? No?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  None of that was invented by Valve. “Normalize” is subjective but I would argue they didn’t do any of that either.

  Launchers existed for a long, long time before Steam- part of what made Steam so successful was having a centralized launcher for games from a lot of different companies together. Before then there was usually a separate launcher for each game.

  Online DRM has existed for as long as the Internet was ubiquitous enough to get away with it. Offline DRM existed before that. Even back in the 80’s games would ship with all sorts of anti-piracy mechanisms. The only 2 Valve games that ever had DRM were Artifact and DOTA 2, both of which were online multiplayer-only games, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.

  Maple Story is pretty widely considered to be the first game with micro transactions, and they were in the form of loot boxes. By the time Team Fortress came out the concept was already popularized in MMO’s, Facebook games like Farmville, and FIFA.

  Achievements aren’t something I really care about, but game had those concepts for years. I remember playing Spyro 2 as a kid and tracking down all the skill points. Sure it doesn’t use the word “achievement” but even today Sony uses the word “Trophy” to mean the same thing.

  Corporations aren’t your friend of course, it’s just weird that people think Valve invented these things. And Valve’s implementations are some of the most benign and consumer-friendly cases in the industry.

  The launcher i consider a positive - it’s a great way to organize my library, including non-steam games. There’s tons of free features I use all the time, like Remote Play, free Cloud Saves, friend management. It’s great for managing inputs from all sorts of different controllers, managing systems with multiple displays, allowing me to control everything with a controller without having to set it down to use my mouse and keyboard. They have great mod support for the games that use it. There’s tons more features I don’t use. It’s not just a launcher like EA Play or UPlay- it’s a full platform. It’s so useful that I even added GOG Galaxy as a non-steam game.

  Any business needs to balance the needs of its stakeholders. Owners, partners, creditors, consumers, employees, governments, etc. Valve is one of the fairest companies left alive in 2025 at balancing all of these entities, and yet in every online discussion about them someone always feels the need to pipe in and be like “well aktually they are secretly very bad!”, just because they don’t have the power to stop other companies from being shitty. They don’t have the bargaining power to tell Sega to get rid of Denuvo on a games from prior generations selling for $20. They don’t have the bargaining power to Ubisoft or Larian to drop their annoying launchers. They don’t have the power to tell other publishers and devs to stop adding pay-to-win mechanics. They don’t have the power to stand up to payment processors that are demanding certain content be removed from the store.

  Valve DOES have the power to promote Linux as a legitimately viable operating system for gamers, behind Linux enthusiasts. They have the power to get Microsoft to drop their ridiculous store. They have the power to get Ubisoft to at least add their games to Steam, even if you need a dumb launcher still. They have the power to clearly and consistently label games with DRM in their store so consumers can make informed decisions without spending hours digging through the legalize or EULA’s or doing research on enthusiast forums.

  It’s fair to question whether Valve’s 30% cut is justified for every publisher, though we also know that some publishers have been able to make separate deals at times. I’m sure you can find other things that are fair to question. It’s really weird to accuse people of “kissing Gabe’s ass” just for recognizing that Steam is the best platform for a consumer to use right now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Hardware Announcement⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the main hangup is going to be: how easy and simple is this thing for the average person?

  The Steam Deck is, any way you slice it, a better value than the Switch or Switch 2. The Steam Deck has sold roughly 6 million units in 3 years. The Nintendo Switch 2 has sold close to 11 million units in about 5 months.

  I hope you’re right and that Valve really shakes up the whole industry, but I’m not going to start expecting that until I see it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rush⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I started typing up my own personal observations about Rush lyrics changing over time, but then I found this quote from Geddy Lee himself:

  A few songs may have also been a little naive in their original intent. The nasty little tale called “The Trees,” of course — a comment on forced equality. Being a much more liberal-minded adult, I now have a softer approach to things in life and I’m much more open and willing. I put a lot more importance on social responsibility now than I ever did. I talk about that, of course, when I’m referring to free will. There were a few things we sang about in our early twenties that seemed very important. But as time has gone on, you ameliorate those views because life has told you it’s not so simple. Once you encounter problems and you begin to help your family or friends with some of those problems, you learn a lot about how much of life has lived in the gray areas as opposed to the black and white areas.

  The Trees was, and still is, one of my favorite songs for the sake of the music. And I can see how the lyrics may have worked a lot better back during the cold war, just a couple of decades after genocide and famine wiped out millions in the USSR and China.

  I grew up listening to both a greatest hits CD that has libertarian tracks like Freewill and The Trees and 2112, but also listening to Snakes and Arrows that had polar opposite messages in songs like Far Cry, the Way the Wind Blows, and The Larger Bowl. They got smarter and more aware of their own privilege as they grew older and saw more of the world.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨And now I'm reminded I have two of these to repair.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Pro-tip: I invested in rechargeable batteries, including 9v’s. Every solstice I just go ahead and change out the batteries proactively. (Could use the equinoxes instead but I usually have a bunch of other chores winterizing or de-winterizing the house at those times).

  It’s annoying and probably overkill, but it’s way better than dealing with those annoying low battery beeps that always seem to start happening at 3AM.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Germany⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  China kind of depends on who you ask and how you look at it. Some historians argue that if you remove a euro-centric bias, WW2 really started with the 2nd Sino-Japanese war in 1937. Or you could look further back to territorial disputes and skirmishes between Japan and China going back to 1931.

  India was a British colony until 1947 and participated as part of the British Empire.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Good Halloween Games⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Pumpkin Jack. It’s a 3D platformer. I haven’t played it in a couple years, but I remember it being mostly linear. Not a ton of collectables, but some. 11 months out of the year it’s a pretty “meh” game, but it absolutely NAILS the Halloween aesthetic. Not “horror” or “scary” or “autumn” but very specifically Halloween.

  MediEvil is similar, though much older. I have only played the original for PS1, though there is a modern remake on all platforms that looks pretty good. Not quite as explicitly Halloween-y, but still pretty close. Flawed in its own ways, but I would still say a better game overall than Pumpkin Jack. The levels were a bit less linear and it was a bit more like an adventure game than a platformer.

  Luigi’s Mansion is a classic too.

  A lot of other games have levels or worlds that are good for Halloween even if the whole game isn’t. Like Pumpkin Hill in Sonic Adventure 2, or Subcon Forest from A Hat In Time. Honestly one day I want to compile a list of all of these themes areas across my favorite games and the play all of these levels seasonally.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PC Master Race⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They’ve increased in other countries too. The PS5 digital edition costs £70 more today than it did at launch. In 2024 Sony increased the Japan price of all PS5 versions by ¥13,000.

  The tariffs aren’t helping, but this has been a trend for years. The gaming console market is not very volatile- prices changes in the US usually happen once every few years, not every few months. The tariffs keep fluctuating all over the place and I would not be shocked if there are more pricing adjustments for consoles specifically next year.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PC Master Race⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’ll get you… The lowest storage tier Series S. Or a Nintendo Switch OLED. Yay.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PC Master Race⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Nah it’s the GPU market. Cryptocurrency briefly exploded and now AI is sucking up all of the GPU manufacturing capacity. Back in 2019 I got my RX580 for $175. The AMD 9070 that released this year is a tier down from that and had an MSRP of $550, but an actual price more like $650. The sweet spot of value PC building has shifted from $750 to $1,500 in just a few years. Some of that is just general inflation that affects all parts, but roughly half of that increase is just from the GPU.

  It’s impacting consoles too. Consoles uses to get cheaper over time, with both price drops to existing models and new, cheaper models being released (Sony’s Slim models, things like the Wii Family Edition and Wii Mini, the DSLite, etc). Looking at this generation… The original PS5 with a disc drive debuted at $500 in 2020. The “Slim” version also debuted at $500, and just got a price increase to $550. They released a PS5 Pro at $700, and just increased it to $750.

  Nintendo is doing it too. The Switch was $300 for its entire life, and now that the Switch 2 is out consumers would typically expect a price cut to move the existing stock. Instead, Nintendo raised the price to $330. The OLED model went from $350 to $400, and the Lite went from $200 to $230.

  And of course Microsoft is in on it too. It’s more complicated to write up since they have different storage variants of the Series S|X, but for example a Series S 512GB was $300 at launch (For some reason I remember seeing them for $250, but maybe that was a Black Friday sale or something). Now it’s $400!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I hope that once my account turns 18 they will stop asking my for by DOB to look at mature content.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨More than 1,200 games journalists have left the media in the last two years | VGC⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You have a much more optimistic memory of gaming review platforms than I do.

  I remember getting several different magazines in the 90’s and they were always the same thing. Any “professional” journalist knows that their livelihood is based on selling games. Journalists have to strike a balance between their audience and publishers, which makes negative reviews incredibly rare.

  It’s not just videogames. Music, movies, TV shows, books, comics, consumer products. Unkess you’re paying out the nose, reviews almost always have some sort of bias towards trying to sell things. I find the best opinions come from other sources: people I know personally, organic community discussions on the internet (though those are not immune to corporate influence), or when products are only mentioned in contexts where the author clearly will not benefit. For example, a journalist making a list of the top-10 games of all time putting Ocarina of Time on it is probably not incentives to do so… Unless Nintendo is trying to promote a re-release.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Corcoran Group CEO says Gen Z’s housing market struggles mirror what boomers faced 30 years ago: ‘Stop buying Starbucks coffee,’ she advises⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Who is drinking Starbuccks in 2025? Just last month Starbucks closed 400 stores and laid off 900 employees in North America.

  This will inevitably become “Gen Alpha is killing coffee shops”. Fewer Barista jobs are available. The small, local coffee shop that is a nice quiet place to hang out or meet up with friends closes.

  The problem is ghouls like her scraping value off the top of everything and hoarding that wealth like a dragon. Removing it from the system so their own personal number goes up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do video game leaks (such as the huge GTA VI videos leak) cause "low morale" for the staff working on it?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So what are you looking for here? Some sort of objective and peer-reviewed academic research of the morals of videogame developers and the impact of leaks upon that? I think you’ll find that does not exist.

  I’m just pointing out that the only people who seem to be complaining are managers and PR departments. And it’s not that dev’s don’t have voices- there are plenty of current and former developers who are now producing social media content and talking about the industry, and I cannot remember this ever even being addressed as an issue. I DID bring up my personal experience in the corporate world is that management and marketing craft these narratives for public consumption which are just lies, and I don’t have any reason to think the videogames industry is any different.

  The very topic is one that is nebulous and subjective. That’s why it’s on c/nostupidquestions and not c/askanexpertwithameritoricalbackground.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do video game leaks (such as the huge GTA VI videos leak) cause "low morale" for the staff working on it?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My assumption has always been that this is just the usual made-up corporate nonsense that comes from management and marketing departments, to try to turn public opinion against leakers.

  My guess is that most of the humans actually creating the game don’t have strong opinions. Marketing teams probably care because it disrupts their plans. Management of course cares because it could impact sales. And with big dev teams with dozens or hundreds of people working on a game there will never be a consensus opinion. Maybe some would be upset that people get to see placeholder work or rough drafts, but only a fool would look at a leaked game and judge the individuals who made it based on that. Heck, even when games are officially released in functionally unfinished states I think most fans these days know to blame management and ownership rather than the workers.

  I don’t remember ever seeing an actual dev talking about leaks much. Even content creators that are former devs. Absense of evidence is not evidence of a sense of course, but like… If I apply that to my own work I don’t think I would really care.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's your favourite menu music in a game?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Gran Turismo 2. The different areas of the menu have different music and they’re all great.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google is blocking AI searches for Trump and dementia⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Dimensia Donny seems like a nickname that could fit

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Video-Game Industry Has a Problem: There Are Too Many Games⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The article seems primarily focused on new games. And the article still makes some great points, but when you factor in older games the problem gets bigger.

  I am not going to say that old games were better or that “they just don’t make them like they used to”. What I will say is that a lot of older games that are super cheap on Steam or out of print entirely are still great. There are occasionally new great games being released of course (I haven’t played Hades 2 yet but I expect it to be great, for example). But there’s a lot of new games being released where I think… “Why would I spend $70 or $80 on this when I already have this backlog of older games? Why would I spend my time playing 7/10 games when I have dozens of 9/10’s sitting in my library waiting for me?”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Video-Game Industry Has a Problem: There Are Too Many Games⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Back when I was on Reddit years ago, one of my favorite subs was the Patient Gamers one. There are a couple of similar ones on different Lemmy instances but they’re nowhere near as active.

  I remember friends of mine assuring me I absolutely HAVE to get games like Atomic Heart, High on Life, Avowed, the Oblivion remaster, Starfield, Prey, the Outer Worlds, and many more. There are series that I have enjoyed in the last that have way too many entries to keep up with- 3D Sonic, Assassin’s Creed, Monster Hunter, Yakuza (with all it’s spinoff games like Judgement and others). I’m sure a lot of those games are great, but I just don’t have the time to play then all. And with hundreds of games in my backlog already, these games need to be on sale for dirt cheap and without anti-features like DRM and micro transactions and online requirements in order to get me to buy them.

  So I think it’s worth asking- are there enough whales willing to buy these games for $70 or even $80 to subsidize people like me picking them up for $10 in five years? If not, perhaps these developers and publishers will need to move to a different business model. Maybe there are simply too many devs and too many games getting made.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I get texting and driving being a danger. But back in my day you could eat drink change radio stations etc. Why weren't laws implemented back then?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  1. People died. A lot. Ralph Nader, who is today probably better known for being a former presidential candidate for the Green Party in the US, first got famous with his 1965 book “Unsafe at Any Speed” that brought just how dangerous cars were to the public attention. Which led to a ton of laws that regulated the manufacture and operation of motor vehicles. It was similar to how Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” was with the food industry.

  2. Density has increased. It was easier to get away with driving when there were fewer cars on the road, fewer intersections, fewer buildings and other property nearby. Our signs and signals have grown more complicated. I live in a major US city, where there is a main thoroughfare that cuts through the southern suburbs with a 5 lane stroad (2 lanes each way with a central turning lane). There are traffic lights every couple hundred feet to allow interesections with feeder roads. My grandfather still tells the stories about how when he was a teenager, that was a 3-lane DIRT road, where the center was still a turn lane. He could drive for miles before getting to the densest part of the city where there was 1 traffic light.

  He also tells the story of how the police radios used to only be one-way, so officers in cars could receive messages from the station but not send anything back. On top of that, their big heavy cruisers were slower and less maneuverable than his motorcycle, so he used to commonly blow by and ignore cops trying to pull him over. It was a completely different world.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Disney 2025⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You know that Godwin’s Law waa just some random guy making something up, right? It’s like claiming that the average person eats 7 spiders a year or that the average male thinks about sex once every X seconds.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why did in game cameras take so long to get good?🤔⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Alas I have the PS5 version.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why did in game cameras take so long to get good?🤔⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I generally point to controllers first and foremost. It’s incredibly difficult to get good 3D movement without two analog sticks. The N64 only had 1. The Playstation’s were optional, so those games were in a weird spot where the sticks were ignored or treated as a bonus option (often with the D-Pad being mapped to the left stick and the right stick just not getting used at all).

  But it’s not just that simple. I’m replaying the PS1 version of Spyro the Dragon, and while it’s not perfect the camera usually does a good job of following Spyro while he still feels great to control with either a D-Pad or a stick. I could map the shoulder buttons to the right stick and get camera controls that way, but for the most part it’s not necessary. According to legend they hired a guy who had previously worked on flight control systems for NASA to help with Spyro’s controls. Little things like the movement speed, camera height, and the distance from the player character make a huge difference, and Insomniac clearly put a lot of effort into those details that other devs didn’t.

  Some games still managed to do a decent job in spite of these limitations, and the power of emulation can help a lot. A couple years ago I played throught the PS1 Armored Core games. I tried to play them as they were originally intended, with the movement and camera controls split out across the D-Pad and shoulder buttons. But after a while I gave up and re-mapped them to the sticks. But having my right thumb on the right stick makes it harder to use the face buttons, so I mapped those to the shoulder buttons. Once I got it all sorted out the games controlled wonderfully.

  I’ve recently been playing through God of War (2018), and one of my biggest complaints is how bad the camera and movement is. Everything feels slow and clunky, and the camera never lets me see what I want to. It’s too close to Kratos and his thick ass takes up too much of the screen. The graphics and art direction are great but I can’t appreciate it because I can only move the camera in a very specific way, and often the game either softly guides the camera towards where it wants you to look it just full-on takes control away from you and it’s really annoying.

  Another game I’ve been playing is Bloodborne. Once again they give you no control over the distance from your character and have a very limited vertical angle. One of the strengths of Bloodborne (and most FromSoft games) is the use of vertical space in both level design and combat design, but the limited vertical placement and angle of the camera makes it a pain in the ass to actually see what you need to.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hardest battles⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For a long time I was confused by two seemingly separate pieces of information.

  1. The majority of people I seem to interact with seem to act like communications are effortless. “Just pick up the phone”. “It’s just an email”.

  2. Most communications I get are terrible. Like, the number of times I need to restrain myself from typing “as I mentioned in the email below” is insane, or how often I send an email with a bulleted list of issues that need to be addressed and the response only addresses a fraction of them while the rest are ignores.

  Then I realized that most people are stupid, casual, and oblivious. They put very little effort into communications, so while they seem so easy and effortless they are harming the quality of that communication.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Virtual Boy: Nintendo Classics - Announcement Trailer⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  These games should have been like maaaaybe $5 each on the 3DS a decade ago. Maybe $30 for a physical cartridge with all of them bundled.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨That's an impressive drop. Any ideas why?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It seems you believe the myths that media wants to tell you about modern courtship. Yes, such shallow people exist. And yes, there are thresholds of hygiene and stability someone should be expected to meet. But a lot of women want to get laid just as bad as men, not for the money or the status but for the sex.