ConstableJelly @ ConstableJelly @beehaw.org

Posts

25

Comments

232

Joined

2 yr. ago

Very good point about the Paladin (even with @djsaskdja@endlesstalk.org's workaround). Glad to hear too that Larian has loosened the rules in places to make things more flexible.

Two roll buffs and healing word is tempting. Good to know you get a thief early, although there's also the question of whether to do one of the origin characters or not...

Globally, over 98 percent of seafarers are men. (The active-duty US military, by comparison, is 83 percent male.)

I had no idea there was any industry with numbers like that. Kind of stunning.

I appreciate your humility in approaching the challenge. I witnessed the conversation in real time too, and it's certainly true that morality in conflict is a super complicated topic (especially in these specific circumstances), but there is a way to manage that kind of disagreement with civility.

If I had been in that situation and implied something and/or offended someone in a way I hadn't intended, it would be a simple concession (for my own sake I'd argue a compulsion) to apologize for at least that misunderstanding. I was disappointed and a little uncomfortable with how that conversation played out too.

They're claiming that construction costs raised substantially and unpredictably and due to that can no longer fulfill their obligations.

I caught two important points on that argument though.

1. The original funding was granted through auction, which incentivised ISPs to underbid what costs would have been even under the best circumstances.
2. A separate coalition of ISPs who did not win claim that these market increases were not as unpredictable as claimed, and in fact were factored in by the more responsible participants in the auction:

The Coalition of RDOF Winners said these cost increases "could never have been anticipated by the Commission and RDOF winners prior to the auction." But the WTA said that isn't true and that its own telco members "and other responsible bidders factored these likely future cost increases into their Auction 904 bid strategies, and stopped bidding when the bid prices became so unreasonably low that projects were no longer financially feasible or sustainable."

I'm inclined to believe the WTA. The auction occurred in October 2020, well into COVID when its volatile impact on supply chains and the like was apparent, which I was thinking might have been the crux of the winners' argument.

No sympathy here for the winners, they made a deliberately reckless gamble and these are the consequences. But also it was a dumb way to grant this funding to begin with.

Earlier in this video, Games as Literature does tie the "none of this would have happened if you'd just stopped" theme (i.e., the "hero" is the cause of the problems or at least a driving force for their exacerbation) as inherited from its direct inspirations: the Heart of Darkness novel and Apocalypse Now. So in the broader scope, the game is still addressing the original works' anti-imperialist and anti-war themes while also adding the gaming industry meta-criticism.

But you make a good case that Yager added that extra layer clumsily by failing to direct its own additions with appropriate precision. Honestly, when I played this game a few years after its release, I interpreted it much the same way that you have here. But as I was watching this video I felt the pieces fit really well and just thought it was a really interesting perspective.

then maybe laying on so thick on how the player, and solely the player, is at fault for pushing it to the end, is if anything counterproductive to that.

This is the argument I've seen many other creators make that I've never bought into. No one's going to stop playing a game they purchased just because the game is accusing you of being responsible for the actions of the characters within it.

The argument that this creator is making, I think, is an assumption that if you are playing this game, then it's intrinsically because you're entertained by war shooters. Now that only really applies through a certain time period. Eleven years on from it's original release, the only people playing it for the past few years are likely doing so because of its reputation as a meta-critical narrative. But it was released into an environment saturated with similar games based on real locations and real conflict involving real people. And I don't think the intent was to target the player exclusively or even specifically for criticism, but rather that environment as a whole. Why was the industry uncritically making games glorifying violence inspired by real events (and Games as Literature does point out that the catalyst for this genre--MW4--was more cynical about its violence than the later games it inspired), and why were we enjoying them? And the response doesn't need to be, and really shouldn't be, "I should feel bad about this." The argument is that the response the developers seemed to be aiming for is something like "Am I being mindful about the way my enjoyment of this entertainment reflects or maybe even shapes my view of and interaction with the real world," if that applies to you. In other words: Do you feel like a hero?

With this interpretation, I disagree that the developers believed the issue "is all in the players' agency and mindset." You're not being scolded for playing through this war shooter, you're being urged to reflect on why people play through these kinds of war shooters, especially when the violence (as is common for the genre) becomes increasingly militaristic and (arguably) carelessly nationalistic. I concede there's an argument to be made it's too heavy-handed with that message or too accusatory in the wrong direction, but that's just a risk for this type of art and is ultimately a subjective response.

This is the first of his that I've seen, and I'll definitely be checking out more.

I'm unfamiliar but just read a bit. Are updates to the apk manual? Does the android app sync to a browser or desktop version?

I'll take a link to that channel. I'm a sucker for obsessive 3-hour video essays.

Prey is a masterpiece of world-building, level design, and gameplay. I can't overstate how special that game is. Without spoiling anything, its opening "level" was one of the coolest, awe-striking experiences I've had in gaming.

I was largely car free in Chicago (still used ours sometimes when we were going somewhere where we had to bring lots of supplies, like the beach or a big grocery trip). But since moving back to Florida there's just no way. Everything is miles apart, and bus routes can only cover so much and and even those double back on themselves in inconvenient ways.