audaxdreik
@audaxdreik@pawb.social
- Comment on Teen killed himself after ‘months of encouragement from ChatGPT’, lawsuit claims 16 hours ago:
I see your point but there is one major difference between adults and children: adults are by default fully responsible for themselves z children are not.
I think you miss my point. I’m saying that adults, who should be capable of more mature thought and analysis, still fall victim to the manipulative thinking and dark patterns of AI. Meaning that children and teens obviously stand less of a chance.
Independent of technology, what a parent can do is learn behavior and communication patterns that can be signs of mental illness.
This is of course true for all parents in all situations. What I’m saying is that it is woefully inadequate to deal with the type and pervasiveness of the threat presented by AI in this situation.
- Comment on Teen killed himself after ‘months of encouragement from ChatGPT’, lawsuit claims 16 hours ago:
I definitely do not agree.
While they may not be entirely blameless, we have adults falling into this AI psychosis like the [prominent OpenAI investor](Prominent OpenAI Investor).
What regulations are in place to help with this? What tools for parents? Isn’t this being shoved into literally every product in everything everwhere? Actually pushed on them in schools?
How does a parent monitor this? What exactly does a parent do? There could have been signs they could have seen in his behavior, but could they have STOPPED this situation from happening as it was?
This technology is still not well understood. I hope lawsuits like this shine some light on things and kick some asses. Get some regulation in place.
This is not the parent’s fault and seeing so many people declare it just feels like apoligist AI hype.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 4 days ago:
Shadow Tower Abyss (PS2 - FromSoftware 2003)
There’s a growing trend in indie games for the King’s Field-likes; Lunacid, Dread Delusion, etc. I’m a huge fan and if anyone has any other good ones to recommend, please let me know!
But for this I thought I’d return to the roots. I’ve picked at King’s Field I (JP) and II a bit before and while I enjoy them, they’re overall still very clunky and I usually get distracted. I wasn’t sure how long I’d stick with Shadow Tower Abyss, but I feel like this one I may very well see through, I’m enjoying it quite a bit so far. That’s not to say it’s not still a clunky slog, and it’s certainly not for everyone, but there is real charm there.
(Scoring system: 1-5 being bad, OK, good, great, excellent with decimals being vibe based to push it closer to one rather than the other. For example 3.2 is meant to indicate a bit better than just good, but still not great. 3.8 might indicate close to great, but missing a few aspects that prevent it)
Sound: 3.2/5, Good. Like a lot of FromSoft games, there’s not really much music aside from the occasional musical sting which provides effective ambience. The sound design is minimal as well, but there are some very good moments of creepy thrumming, droning, and distant screeching that make it an intense environment to inhabit.
Graphics: 3.5/5, Good. What’s on display is generally competent and atmospheric, each new area has its own theme which is interesting to explore, but still, I feel like they could’ve done a lot more with the PS2 graphics. It’s certainly an improvement over King’s Field '94, but exactly how much is debatable …
The monster design is pretty good, everything has this kind of alien/abyssal feel to it. The overall theming is on point. Areas of the game have simple descriptions (i.e. Blue Light Area) that give the impression the player character is a foreign explorer rather than anyone with innate knowledge of this weird world. It’s a small aspect of world-building I appreciate.
Gameplay: 3.8/5, Good. Overall control still feels dated, but much less clunky than previous entries. The player moves at a brisk enough pace, but still slowly enough that you soak in the environment and progress feels meaningful. Being an older game you can’t really rebind the controls, but there are a variety of schemes including Type 4 which allow for the expected, modern dual analog stick looking/movement.
Combat can still be a little boxy and clunky but each weapon offers a left and right slash as well as an overhead bashing and frontal thrusting attack. Each weapon also has related stats for these types of attacks and enemies will have weaknesses or possible points of dismemberment making them vulnerable to particular attacks. Unlike some of the earlier King’s Field games, connecting attacks always feels good and has satisfying feedback.
The stats system is definitely very obtuse, even if you are familiar with From’s games and I recommend consulting a guide quickly before your first time playing. Again, as is very typical in From’s fashion, there isn’t an abundance of items but what exists is very deliberate. Money consists of these single large coins which you usually only find 1 or occasionally 2 at a time. Most things will only cost a handful of coins with healing potions being 2, boxes of ammo (for your gun!) being 1(?), and weapons and armor ranging anywhere from ~4-15. You’ll also find a plethora of items scattered throughout the game so there’s no shortage.
There is a unique balancing though as in order to heal yourself from the rare healing stations you have to sacrifice items for their value, although I’m early enough in the game that a basic Hat still seems to fully heal me from low health. In order to repair durability on your items from the rare purple repairing stations, you must sacrifice health with items like magic rings requiring sometimes more health than you currently have! This creates a tense and balanced management situation that feels like you might possibly softlock yourself by eating through too many resources, but so far hasn’t proved an issue for me. As a personal aside, I’m a big fan of playing games as they were designed so I’m doing my best to only save at the rare save points and not save state my way through the game, although this is of course up to your own tastes and discretion.
But is there a poison area with forced damage, I hear you ask? Yes, you fool, YES! Why would you even doubt it? Don’t let this discourage you though as understanding the stats system and equipping proper armor allows you to minimize the damage per poison tick such that it creates urgency as a pressure point more than a pain point. Definitely sacrificed a few lives just scouting the area out, though. Game Over means reload a save.
Summary/TL;DR Shadow Tower Abyss is a very competent dungeon crawler with a unique theme and atmosphere that’s worth exploring if you’d like to see historic FromSoft (it’s 20+ years old, as an ancient gamer I can use “historic” if I want). Miyazaki gets a lot of credit for modern From games and while a lot of that is certainly due, it’s fascinating to see how many of these deliberate design concepts have always been in their DNA.
As an aside, one day I’m going to write an entire essay on what makes a Soulslike a Soulsike. I missed the boat on the original hype and only got into them during COVID lockdown in 2020. I didn’t think I’d be a fan of the grueling, “git gud” experience but I’ve come to realize that’s not what makes those games interesting. It’s one concept and some people may find it unsatisfyingly vague, but it’s not the bonfires, or the losing souls on death, or the dodge rolling. It’s the stone-cold deliberateness. A lot of the difficulty from these games arises out of that deliberateness; what items you choose to equip and how you observe and approach unique situations. The games aren’t good because they’re hard, the specific design elements that make them hard are also the things that make them good.
- Comment on One UI 8 New Features: A First Look at Samsung's Big Update | Tygo Cover 6 days ago:
- What is the main focus of the One UI 8 update?
Based on current rumors and industry trends, the main focus of One UI 8 appears to be a significant leap in on-device AI capabilities (“Galaxy AI 2.0”) and a major overhaul of home and lock screen customization options.
Cool. Let’s shoehorn some AI in there and just fuck up my home screen again. I hate stability. I love it when my phone constantly shifts in my hands and never settles. I love waking up one morning to find that my device has updated itself and now nothings behaves as it did before.
I haven’t felt a significant advancement in years. It’s just shuffling UI elements for the sake of claiming you’re improving things.
I am less than enthused for this update. I dread it.
- Comment on It's rude to show AI output to people 1 week ago:
Hope you enjoy! It’s getting referenced so much these days, I think I’m due for a reread myself.
- Comment on Lords of the Fallen 2 Will Be Revealed During Gamescom 1 week ago:
The Surge 1 & 2 are massively underrated. They’re not without their annoying issues but even despite them I can enthusiastically say I enjoyed my time with those games. 2 was a big improvement as well. I’ll get around to revisiting them sometime and doing a second playthrough.
I never even got terribly far in the first LotF, it just straight up did not feel good to play. Everything was just a bit too clunky and jank around the edges. I intended to check the second one out but never made it a priority, guess I never will.
I’d absolutely take a Surge 3 from the other guys though!
- Comment on High Score on DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu 2 weeks ago:
Thanks! Yeah, only the first score extend. I’ve been trying to figure out the game on my own since I kinda treat these things as puzzles, but I think I’ve really maxed out what I can understand and it’s time I watch a video or two of a pro playing. I have a general concept of how things work, but I often forget where the hidden bees are. I’ve memorized a bunch of patterns but I still don’t really approach things with a “plan”, mostly just survive and pick up bees when/where I remember them. I also probably hold onto my hypers too long to use on the midboss and endboss, I could be more efficient with them.
Had no idea I was so far off on the scoring, though, oops. I can get the hidden extra on Stage 3 before getting the extend pretty easily, but I’ve only ever been able to get into Stage 5 twice as it is. I thought my barrier was skill, but maybe it’s scoring (AND skill). I appreciate the advice!
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to games@lemmy.world | 3 comments
- Comment on AI companion apps are on track to generate $120M+ in revenue in 2025, and in H1 there were 60M downloads of this kind of app, up 88% YoY 2 weeks ago:
Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to police the internet, I get why this situation is darkly humorous to a lot of people.
But it’s worth considering what you’re laughing at and why, because the joke could soon be on you or someone you love.
- Comment on AI companion apps are on track to generate $120M+ in revenue in 2025, and in H1 there were 60M downloads of this kind of app, up 88% YoY 2 weeks ago:
Sarah Z did an amazingly prescient and compassionate take on this over 2 years ago with The Rise and Fall of Replika.
I urge everyone to try and approach this with some level of compassion and understanding; even though it seems ridiculous to most of us they are actively preying on the emotionally vulnerable to profit. In the same way that “you are not immune to propaganda”, the ability of AI tools to parse language and wield emotional payloads in a calculated manner (something a lot of us already refer to as “the algorithm” in various ways) shouldn’t be underestimated. Even when you’re not directly using those tools yourself, they could be used against you. Dead Internet Theory and AI posting chatbots are already a part of this.
People using AI companion apps are juts the leading edge, the volunteers. I urge you to take the danger seriously and please have some compassion for your fellow human beings, especially the vulnerable.
- Comment on Any good Android games that aren't roguelikes? 2 weeks ago:
I really like The Quest for being a simple first person, dungeon crawler RPG. There’s an overworld and towns and a story, so it’s not just straight dungeon crawling. Nothing mold-breaking, but for a mobile game that I just want to fill some time when I have nothing else in my pockets, it absolutely does the trick.
- Comment on Games Where Nothing Happens (SPOILERS for various game plots) 2 weeks ago:
github.com/sayucchin/P2-EP-PSP/
This isn’t the CJ Iwakura patch, but if you’re not into fan translation drama that won’t mean a whole lot to you. It’s fine!
- Comment on Games Where Nothing Happens (SPOILERS for various game plots) 2 weeks ago:
This reminds me that there’s an official fan translation for Persona 2: Eternal Punishment PSP version. It has some many quality of life improvements I was holding off on completing the duology until it was available.
- Comment on OpenAI claims GPT-5 AI model can provide PhD-level expertise. 2 weeks ago:
Part of what makes these models so dangerous is that as they become more “powerful” or “accurate”, it becomes more and more difficult for people to determine where the remaining inaccuracies lie. Anything using them as a source are then more at risk of propagating those inaccuracies which the model may feed on further down the line, reinforcing them.
Nevermind the fact that 100% is just statistically impossible, and they’ve clearly hit the point of diminishing returns some time ago so every 0.1% comes at increased cost and power. And, you know, any underlying biases.
Just ridiculously unethical and dangerous.
- Comment on Meet the AI vegans: They are choosing to abstain from using artificial intelligence for environmental, ethical and personal reasons. Maybe they have a point 3 weeks ago:
What aspects of crypto have been integrated into everything?
- Comment on ‘We didn’t vote for ChatGPT’: Swedish Prime Minister under fire for using AI 3 weeks ago:
Absolutely incorrect. Bullshit. And horseshoe theory itself is lately bullshit.
(Succinct response taken from Reddit post discussing the topic)
“Horseshoe Theory is slapping “theory” on a strawman to simplify WHY there’s crossover from two otherwise conflicting groups. It’s pseudo-intellectualizing it to make it seem smart.”
This ignores the many, many reasons we keep telling you why we find it dangerous, inaccurate, and distasteful. You don’t offer a counter argument in your response so I can only assume it’s along the lines of, “technology is inevitable, would you have said the same if the Internet?” Which is also a fallacious argument. But go ahead, give me something better if I assume wrong
I can easily see why people would be furious they’re elected leader is abdicating thought and responsibility to an often wrong, unaccountably biased chat bot.
Furthermore, your insistance continues to push an acceptance of AI on those who clearly don’t want it, contributing to the anger we feel at having it forced upon us
- Comment on Need a keyboard with a dedicated "slop" button 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, sorry, that wasn’t directed so much at you as it was using your post as a starting point.
I remember the Folding at Home program, that was more about distributed computing than AI. Game AI has been well-discussed for decades now, but in 99.9% of other AI cases it’s usually in reference to the current trend (or trying to ride that wave) and like 0.1% niche nerd talk you caught a stray from.
- Comment on Need a keyboard with a dedicated "slop" button 3 weeks ago:
I really don’t think there is any useful generative or general AI.
So a lot of the issue is how marketing got their slimy tentacles around the word, but most “useful” AI is domain specific, symbolic ML (machine learning). Even LLMs have their uses in very specific domains, but again, general usage is very questionable.
People are already somewhat familiar with ML, but that’s been kind of covered by the catch all term “algorithm”. What most people understand as “the” algorithm (YouTube, Twitter, whatever) isn’t a single algorithm, but a complex set of algorithms often at least partly compromised of some sort of ML.
All that to say, the general public really doesn’t need to know this stuff and the serious engineers couldn’t care less of our opinion of it. Fuck AI.
- Comment on Microsoft concedes that 'The Outer Worlds 2' retail price was too high — Xbox says it "will keep our full priced holiday releases at $69.99," with refunds incoming 5 weeks ago:
This is the biggest factor for me now, too. Not to go all old man Millennial, but humor me for a second:
I’ve been playing games since the NES era. The scene used to be a lot slower and while I never played every single game that came out or even every console, I was enough of a hobbyist that I could still follow all the major developments. These days, there’s simply TOO MUCH. And I don’t mean to imply that an abundance of choices is bad, just that it’s an absolute firehose that no one person can follow. You have to dedicate yourself to your specific interests, your specific niches. These can well be served by indies and the whole back library of games.
Because that’s the other thing, we’re starting to more thoroughly recognize games as art, as a library rather than as pure content. Unless you are absolutely committed to sucking on the end of that firehose to catch all the new content at its zenith, what’s really the point?
Fuck man, it’s time to go back to the NES for me, pick up all those games I never beat as a kid and sink 10,000 hours into learning how to speedrun some of my favorites. There’s simply no need to spend $70-80 fucking dollars on subpar, rushed, exploitative content. Fuck 'em.
- Comment on It's rude to show AI output to people 5 weeks ago:
Oh yes, I think Peter Watts is a great author. He’s very good at tackling high concept ideas while also keeping it fun and interesting. Blindsight has a vampire in it in case there wasn’t already enough going on for you 😁
Unrelated to the topic at hand, I also highly recommend Starfish by him. It was the first novel of his I read. A dark, psychological thriller about a bunch of misfits working a deep sea geothermal power plant and how they cope (or don’t) with the situation at hand.
- Comment on It's rude to show AI output to people 5 weeks ago:
Blindsight mentioned!
The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception becomes apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus.
This has been my biggest problem with it. It places a cognitive load on me that wasn’t there before, having to cut through the noise.
- Comment on Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss - Closest modern equivalent? 1 month ago:
I’ve somehow heard about this game before but failed to realize what this actually was. Oh no … I can feel a new obsession coming on …
- Comment on Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE 1 month ago:
Comes to mind as an example that already exists, …steampowered.com/…/MEGA_MAN_X_DiVE_Offline/
- Comment on EU says it will continue rolling out AI legislation on schedule 1 month ago:
I just can’t get over how little we hear from academics RE: AI. It shows a clear disinterest and I feel like if they did bother to say anything it would be, “Proceed with caution while we study this further.”
Instead it’s always the giant corporations with vested interest in this technology succeeding. It’s just so painfully transparent.
- Comment on AI Job Fears Hit Peak Hype While Reality Lags Behind 1 month ago:
What kind of source is GazeOn? Based off the top menu items, looks like a pro-AI rag. Biased source.
To give them an ounce of credit, there are many factors that would prevent any sort of accurate reporting on those numbers. To take that credit away, they confidently harp on their own poorly sourced number of 75.
Whether AI is explicitly stated as the cause, or even effective at the job functions its attempting to replace is irrelevant. Businesses are plowing ahead with it and it is certainly resulting in job cuts, to say nothing of the interference its causing in the hiring process once you’re unemployed.
We need to temper our fears of an AI driven world, but we also need to treat the very real and observable consequences of it as the threat that it is.
- Comment on Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE 1 month ago:
For sure, 💯
- secure players’ data: there should be no sensitive player data being stored on a private game server like that anyways, you’re connecting to a server, not logging into a service
- remove illegal content: not the developer’s responsibility in this case, it’s the responsibility of the private server (admittedly this could get messier with net neutrality and safe harbor stuff? unclear, but point remains, it’s still not the developer’s responsibility here)
- combat unsafe community content: ditto. Not the the responsibility of the developer but the private servers. It’s often been argued that the smaller communities of private servers do a BETTER job of moderating themselves)
- would leave rights holders liable: HERE IT IS! We can’t let you self host something like Marvel Rivals due to all the copyrights and trademarks and brand protections. How dare you!
- Comment on Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE 1 month ago:
Absolute trash statement, I really hope this bites them.
They’re just repeating a lot of the same misinformation that Pirate Software had been saying, the exact things that had riled the gaming community and caused this latest wave of action. We’re already primed to discount the points they’re trying to make and it shows exactly how disingenuous they’re being.
Positively, I hope this reflects some true fear on their end.
Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.
As has been stated over and over and over again, private servers used to be an option until the industry decided they weren’t any more. If the result of this is that it forces the industry to not make shitty, exploitative games, that’s still a win for the consumers. I would rather have no game at all rather than something that psychologically tries to exploit my FOMO and drains my wallet.
- Comment on Large majority of French, German and Spanish public back tough EU stance on Big Tech, despite risk to Trump relations 1 month ago:
There are so many ways in which big tech is complicit with what’s happening in the US right now, but corporations have no home.
Lack of regulations, cozying up with an authoritarian, and a populace still with significant funds to drain keep them safely within bounds while things like the GDPR keep them at bay in Europe. But rest assured, once things become too difficult/drained over here, they’ll start pushing the boundaries. Likely through grassroots campaigns to make Europeans distrust the GDPR (what is the general consensus on this anyways? as an American it looks pretty good to me but I’ve never lived under it).
Big tech is a behemoth unto itself, and will need to be fought as such. Put up strong protections now while you can.
- Comment on Windows seemingly lost 400 million users in the past three years — official Microsoft statements show hints of a shrinking user base 1 month ago:
You would hope, but this is the same thing we see across almost all industries these days. It’s almost like there’s a root cause for it, some sort of, Iunno, economic system we could blame …
But especially cable companies, for example. Has a dwindling customer base caused them to rethink their business strategies? Or has it caused them to try and bleed that dwindling base dryer even faster?
There’s no “learning” anymore, there’s riding the bus to the absolute pits of hell and just hoping you’re not the CEO to be the one that has to go down with it.
- Comment on So you want to start playing Castlevania games (a giant primer) 1 month ago:
Good write up!
For my own perspective, I’d like to add that I think they’re all worth playing even if you don’t stick them out. I think Castlevania is one of my favorite series to discuss from a media literacy standpoint because it’s easy to the ideas as they evolved over the different games. You don’t even necessarily need to attempt to tackle them in chronological order because the old ones still have a direct and simple charm to them, if that’s your thing.
While Metroidvania has half of Castlevania in it (and all of Metroid), outside of Igarashi’s contribution the series didn’t show a whole lot of interest in following through on a lot of those ideas, especially as it attempted to break into 3D. Curse of Darkness was perhaps the closest, but still not very. It doesn’t surprise me that Igarashi broke off on his own eventually and now does Bloodstained. I think it’s fitting, it’s a good thing to give him his own series (while still holding clear inspirations) and let him do his thing.
I was never a fan of Lords of Shadow and for the longest time I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. As you state, the series is loosely defined as “gothic action with Dracula” so to say something isn’t a “true” Castlevania feels disingenuous. Especially when it was so open to remaking and reinventing itself prior, so what difference is another reboot? There was a clear conversation or thread of design going through the early series up to that point and Lords just kind of tosses all that aside to go in on game design of the day. God of War as you put it. I don’t want to say it’s a bad game or shame you for liking it, but it’s just a bit too far of an outlier for me to really embrace in a meaningful way
OP, you did not mention Vampire Survivors. HAVE YOU PLAYED VAMPIRE SURVIVORS?!
I initially wrote it off because it didn’t look like the kind of game I was into, but the “we have Castlevania at home” vibe is very much intentional and endearing. We 💜 you Antonio Belpaese! For $4 the game looks like a flashy mess, but it hits all the dopamine receptors in just the right way and the metagame of unlocking all the secrets is incredibly satisfying.
Which doesn’t even get into the Castlevania DLC where Konami actually gave them assistance and let them use that delightfully crunchy authentic sprite art. The ending of the DLC (completing Richter’s scenario) legitimately had me in tears, it’s so good and the kind of love letter/wrap up to the series that Konami was never going to give us. Please don’t skip this entry! 😭
