Katana314 @ Katana314 @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Although we still number consoles, in a lot of ways we did get our “tiered” console structure.

Take most people’s daily plays, and I’d say about 90% of them or more have an edition available on the prior gen console. And it makes sense when so many of those games have relatively basic graphics - and when game engines have gotten better at scalability.

So, those consoles are neatly serving as a low budget option for a lot of gamers that can’t follow all the latest and most expensive games. Yes, some newer releases will be fully excluded; but even then, getting a brand new or used Switch or PS4 can introduce someone to a huge number of games if they haven’t been exploring options.

I think your voice could actually be better than your wallet on this.

For one, these games are free. So, are you harming the world by playing them and just not buying loot boxes? Minimally, at best. I also advise people enacting boycotts to represent vocal action around them. For instance, I called Target directly about my boycott when they ended DEI hiring.

You can also help lobby politicians to make clear how you feel on the issue. That can put a lot more panic on publishers. Politicians don’t have a strong reason to defend them - often it only gets ignored because they don’t think voters find it a significant issue. Even if you don’t get a federal ban, sometimes you can get state laws like limiting physical advertising; which can also sometimes spread to other states.

Basically, boycotting as a form of inaction, especially when it makes your days boring, isn’t necessarily an effective approach.

You misunderstand the relation of minimum wage to game prices. Video games, compared to other things like theatre, cool cars, fancy restaurants, are relatively cheap and high-longevity entertainment to be consumed at all income brackets; even if that means a single mom buying a used PS4, and one 140-hour Assassin’s Creed game a year for her son.

So raising the price in a country with such a HUGE low-income population can price out far more people than you realize. Even if inflation has grown, the budget has not changed for many of these people. It’s a broken financial system, yes, but that’s the situation.

This relates to the "zigzagging spikyness" you often see with the stock market. Each time a stock falls, many people are going to ask themselves "Hey, do I think that other people are wrong about this property being worthless? Maybe this is a good chance to buy, before they bounce back."

There's a mental appeal to the middle, it's just a question of what the correct "middle" is. That's also why many investors were cautioning people against selling during Trump's week-long tariffs (of course, if you believe the USA is on its last legs, that may be a good idea). You're probably seeing those purchases from those that feel the Tesla Takedowns will run out of steam, which is why it's important to keep them up.

(Reminder if you haven't been to one...)

You talked about needing consequences so that people make more informed decisions. I was trying to illustrate to you how the current path of consequences is built to dismantle informed decisions.

There are millions of Americans being asked “Regretting your choices yet???” and answering “wdym? Everything is fine. You read too much of the news.”

So if your motivation for accelerationism is spite and anger, nothing to criticize. But if you’re in favor of the harm caused because you think it will lead to people changing their minds anytime soon, you are grossly misreading the current path.

I agree that, on paper, that is a reason for game prices to go up. However, I also think that on paper, there are reasons for it to go down at the same time.

For one, game budgets really should be controlled. A great many indie developers have put out superior products using the better technologies available. This often coincides with longer development time using a smaller team. You even see a disjointedness in AAA games now where it very much feels like 8 teams lumping their portions together.

Two, minimum wage has not gone up in the USA; and the reach of these games has expanded to many countries that (in part due to import laws) can't even pay what were considered normal prices elsewhere. Many of these games they're selling only hit viral growth when a lot of people are playing and talking about them, and we're in real danger of big, expensive productions being completely out of people's reach and thus dropping entirely off the radar.

That’s where you messed up. The current administration of chaos is extremely efficient at putting the horrors outside of people’s direct vision. Comparatively, very few people are going to arrive home to find their neighbor on fire and feel compelled to act.

Better social safety nets and better education can put people in stable enough circumstances they can become socially aware of problems beyond themselves. By that point they don’t even need to be pushed into it. And Democrats - not all of them but plenty of them - have championed those policies. But they’ve been thoroughly crushed now by “both sides” mentality because they don’t have a violent expulsion reaction to being crushed by accelerationism.

Tip: The price comes down If Trump gets impeached.

One of my frustrations is, if I want to try some dozen games on Itch.io, they all come down as EXEs and it's not clear how I could quickly set them up for Proton. I understand the 20-clicks method of setting up one game off of Steam, and Lutris helps with well-known launchers like Ubi Connect. But for independent authors, needing to do setup for every EXE is a heavy dealbreaker.

This whole thing has erupted on my radar in the past month ever since they abducted the girl from Tufts.

HOW does this genocidal state have such an insane stranglehold on our country?

Now I’m getting YouTube ads to demonize Hamas; apparently their effort to “pull people back” and get people sympathetic for October 7 hostages. I AM sympathetic to the hostages!…So why is Israel bombing them??

Between trains and large ships, I love the feeling of operating large vehicles with multiple rooms. Bonus points if one large vehicle can carry a smaller vehicle.

Examples: Sea of Thieves, Subnautica, many JRPGs with airships, even something like The Last Express.

I really want a better formalized framework for argument/discussion of a topic that either participant can feel safe in. Currently, we have courtrooms, our old schools have Debate Clubs, but I'd want something far easier to pick up on that allows for time to research/validate discussion points.

I wish Nintendo would catch up on Nintendo Lore. When is Link going to go relax with Zelda, only for Toadsworth to exit a pipe and ask if Link has heard of the Mushroom Initiative.

I know of that site, but in many ways I can’t stomach following trial-and-error debugging steps to try to get a perfect experience. Very rarely has it been one command line option and then the game runs as perfectly as Windows.

You can generally get Steam games very cheap, especially when using authorized key resellers. Switch games are sourced only from Nintendo and generally stay high in price. Their Switch 2 games are being advertised at $80, above even Sony’s $70 metric.

I called to specifically inform them that I was a decently regular shopper, as someone who avoids many "mega-corps", and that in the wake of their anti-DEI move, I would never buy anything from them ever again.

Granted, I live in a city with many shops of various local varieties, and have other options. I'm aware the same chances aren't available to everyone else.

I mean, if they find actual artwork, audio, or code stolen, much of which goes into UI development, that would definitely make for a fair case. I'd presume that Schedule 1 devs would never do something so stupid though.

This reminds me of the Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht. In short: No, not so many of them are victims and puppets.

There are some cases where people are pulled out of cults by exposure to outside opinions. Anyone among the Republicans that has frequently had that exposure, on some level (for instance, hearing arguments from Democratic senators prior to votes) agrees with and wants the destruction.

Hawaii was recently successful in enacting state laws to limit campaign contributions. I'd hope that other states willing to tackle the fight could do the same. The biggest chance would be if it could be done in battleground states.

I've wanted this for ages. And it's represented so well in Republicans having only one platform: "Oppose Democrats. If it makes a Democrat angry, do it."

Cleanse - and I mean CLEANSE - the opposition party. No one here can claim the Democrats never have good ideas. And yet, we can definitely do better than them. A better party means having better ideas - not just "Stop them libruls". Bernie just toured the States with a message of exactly what that would look like.