bogdugg @ bogdugg @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

Here's one example of how your data can be wielded against you: https://www.businessinsider.com/police-getting-help-social-media-to-prosecute-people-seeking-abortions-2023-2?op=1

I've read similar things about the development of Morrowind, about creative decisions needing to get past Todd, in this excellent article about its development.

Here are some quotes from Michael Kirkbride:

The game was originally set in the Summerset Isles. And then we got bored and decided, “Man, this is really boring. How about we put it in a volcano with like giant bugs everywhere?” And people were like, “What?” So Todd Howard — the easiest way to get anything past Todd, at that time, was you basically just had to say “Star Wars.” Which was true for me and anybody then. So I was like, “The game should be like Dark Crystal meets Star Wars.” And he was immediately hooked. I got all the bug creatures I ever needed, we moved it from Summerset Isles to this weird dark-elf place on the map, and we just went from there.

I used to have this thing with Todd, because he was one of the ones that’s like, “Let’s not make it too weird.” So I’d bamboozle him. There was a period where I would actually draw two different versions of a monster — the one that was weird and that I wanted to be in the game, and then one that was fucking crazy. And so I’d go to Todd, and I’m like, “OK, I think I’ve got the mid-level creature set.” And I’d show him a picture. He’d be like, “Nah, dude, that’s crazy.” Then I’d go back to my office and I would act like I was drawing something new, and I’d just come back with the original drawing of what I really wanted to be in there. Like, “Hey, is this what you were thinking?” And he’d be all, “Oh, yeah, that’s much better. That’s great.”

I can definitely believe his influence has become immense following the studio's success - though it definitely feels like he needs to hand the reins over to somebody else.

I thought this as well, but I've started to think they could be useful if I follow way more aggressively, and create a list that is "what I want on my feed" and default to that. It's stupidly cumbersome, but would have the desired effect. Of course you're right that they should just let you add directly to a list - I think the reasoning for the current functionality is to limit stalking/harassment, though I don't exactly understand how that is inhibited at all.

Maybe you've read it before and you want to skip to the good parts. Maybe it's non-fiction and you're only interested in something specific. Maybe there are parts of the story that make you uncomfortable, but you're enjoying it overall. Maybe a page is missing. Maybe it's an abridged version and it's not up to you, that's just what was available.

And to the original point, what of translations? Maybe the original author is dead, and somebody translated their book. Are you 'circumventing' the author's original intent to 'gain an advantage'? I mean, yes. Does that mean you're 'cheating'?

What about audio books? Was the book intended to be read on a page? Are you cheating by having the book read to you?

Calling these things 'cheating' is silly and unnecessarily loaded, and they assume that the goal of a work is completion. That the only reason you would start a thing is to finish it. I don't believe that's the case for any art. One might say that the challenge in a game is the point, but that's only sometimes true, and challenge is relative. If something comes naturally easier to you, is it 'cheating' to use mods to make the game more difficult, because you're gaining the advantage of improving your experience, against the original intent of the game? I don't think so, so I don't see why it is any different the other way around.

To think about it another way: if you subtract that paragraph from that book, does it cease to be a book? No, it's just a different book, and that can still have value to people. You're not 'cheating', you are making a new experience for yourself.

I could go on and on so I'm gonna stop myself here.

Is it cheating to skip a paragraph in a book?

Feel like the inverse is more apt: where old people go, the young run the fuck away from.

An "Everything App" is just an operating system.

Fascism isn't a problem we can solve by just not allowing it the more oppressively we try to ban them the more secretive and the more fuel we give to their extremes

This is a commonly held belief that is actually just not true. Certain garbage opinions and behaviours will fester and spread and absolutely make a space worse. Communities that allow toxic behaviour will both push away reasonable people, and attract people with toxic views. Setting proper boundaries, rules, and conduct are important for maintaining a place of healthy discussion.

I don't mind if they have somewhere to talk with each other - I think you're correct it's pointless to try to stop that - I'm just not interested in spending any time there.

Limiting downvotes forces other people to think about bad ideas more, at the cost of letting people with bad ideas think about their bad ideas less. Ideally the bad idea has some tangible rebuttal that the original poster can consider, but ultimately the onus is on you to understand why your ideas aren't landing. This is all presupposing an idea that is worthy of consideration. People aren't obligated to convince themselves you're right, you have the job of convincing others they are wrong, or realizing that you yourself are wrong.

Worth noting it is "infused with" i.e. probably a very small ratio of blood to water.

The reasoning behind a specific system may not be arbitrary, but why is one system better than another? People have also used 8 day systems, and 10 day systems. It would seem to me that biggest reason it is still in use today is "it's the way we've always done it". The inertia of the 7-day system makes change very hard, though there have been attempts over the last few centuries by both France and the Soviet Union. So, even if you could scientifically prove that some other system would be more productive, you would have a very hard time implementing it.

The idea that I will work a few percentage points more or less over my life, as a direct result of the phases of the moon, is, while perhaps technically correct, a fundamentally silly reason.

I tried to pick ratios that wouldn't cause riots in the streets, haha. Interestingly, 7-3 is still less work overall than the current standard 5-2. I could get behind a 3-1-4-2 system.

I walked into a Games Workshop with some friends to maybe pick up a board game. My friends quickly realized our mistake and promptly left. I stuck around, so they handed me a sample figurine and talked me through the process of painting miniatures for a few minutes before I thanked them and left, because I didn't want to be rude.

This is a tangent, but you ever think about how arbitrary the week structure is? Like, if weeks were 6 or 8 days long, it would be a big shift in work-life balance regardless of how you split the days up. But thousands of years ago we decided on 7 and it just kind of stuck.

Assuming 8 hour days, here are some different splits for on and off:

• 3 on 1 off: working 25% of the time
• 5 on, 2 off: working 23.8% of the time
• 4 on, 2 off: working 22.2% of the time
• 5 on 3 off: working 20.8% of the time
• 4 on 3 off: working 19.0% of the time

A large majority of their player base never uses mods (roughly 92%). They need to serve a minimum viable product to people who don't know about or care about that ecosystem. They tried to bridge that gap with paid mods, but, well, we know how that went.

I got the award for the "most unlucky, anti-lucky, possible player"...

So there's that.

It's because the publisher has put out multiple games in the "ENDLESS" universe, so it's a shared world kind of thing - I agree it's kind of dumb. I haven't played this game, but I did play the 2D "Dungeon of the Endless" which I liked a lot. To my knowledge, that game serves as a kind of blueprint for this higher budget release, so I'm looking forward to this one. Hopefully it's not shit.

Jusant looks sweet, hope it feels good to play.

My entire argument stems from the idea that you can ascertain quality from these ratings, which I am refuting. The rating is "correct" in that it is measuring something, and as long as people keep in mind what that something is, there is no problem. But this article, for example, uses the flood of positive reviews to make the case that it is one of the best of the year, which I believe is faulty reasoning.

What I meant by certain is that the reviews are more clumped together (again if you had a score - even though it isn't present presumably you could attach one to these reviews), so there's more agreement among different people about the quality of the product. If you don't agree that games can be more or less polarizing, you won't agree with this point unless I can back it up with data which I'm not going to spend time doing. You could go through Rotten Tomatoes and compare Critic Score with RT Score because they surface both those values and see how closely they track on different parts of the spectrum.

Why does the ratio become less relevant the more certain people are about the quality of good games? Again, the review is only positive or negative, no actual review number assigned. In which cases do you expect the ratio to drift away from the actual useful information?

It's because there's no review number in combination with varying certainty that makes for bad information regarding judgment calls about quality. If people are certain the game is a 7/10, that could produce a better score than being less certain about an 8/10, because the wider distribution (less certainty) could put more reviews below the positive/negative threshold.

The following reviews: 6/10, 6.5/10 , 7/10, 7.5/10, 8/10 will produce a 100% rating. More certain, less useful.

The following reviews: 4/10, 6/10, 8/10, 10/10, 10/10 will produce an 80% rating. Less certain, more useful.

It's only consistent if you assume all games follow the same distribution, which is not how reviews work in my opinion. There are many websites which do surface score information, and they follow wildly different distribution patterns depending on many different factors.

Again, it is useful for predicting whether you'll like it, but bad for predicting how much you'll like it.