I’m not even mad that we didn’t get the multiplanetary open world new-tech live-experience cooperative second coming. I’m mad we didn’t even get a simple, short singleplayer experience living off of the charm of the first one.
It's possible translate has gotten better with AI. The old versions, however, were not necessarily using AI principles.
I remember learning about image recognition tools that were simply based around randomized goal-based heuristics. It's tricky programming, but I certainly wouldn't call it AI. Now, it's a challenge to define what is and isn't; and likely a lot of labeling is just used to gather VC funding. Much like porn, it becomes a "know it when I see it" moment.
Suppose that may be it. I mostly do bug fixing; so out of thousands of files I need to debug to find the one-line change that will preserve business logic while fixing the one case people have issues with.
In my experience, building a new thing from scratch, warts and all, has never really been all that hard by comparison. Problem definition (what you describe to the AI) is often the hard part, and then many rounds of bugfixing and refinement are the next part.
I remember one where a sect of humanity was being persecuted, and left to try to find a better life in the stars. They failed to find a life, gave up and returned home, but their interstellar trip consumed so many Earth years that by the time they returned, Earth had moved on from persecution and eagerly welcomed their historical memories.
Sadly, I forget the name; it may have been a short story.
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.
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.
Beyond Good and Evil 2.
I’m not even mad that we didn’t get the multiplanetary open world new-tech live-experience cooperative second coming. I’m mad we didn’t even get a simple, short singleplayer experience living off of the charm of the first one.