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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)NE
Posts
3
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482
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Per Cormack, Doom 2 development cost was $550,000. Doom 2016 dev cost was $90,000,000 (couldn't find Doom Eternal's but that should be close)

    It's not about how much one or the other has gone up. It's about how much they've gone up in comparison to eachother

  • I'm not only talking about AAA. I'm pointing out some of the things you missed in your assessment.

    Like I said, even indie studios today spend more to make their non-sprite, full featured games than studios did making NES games. And then those indie games sell for $20 or $30 instead of the full $60 price point. So the content-to-development cost ratio is still shit

  • Tell me you don't make games without telling me you don't make games.

    You can make perfectly good games, yes. But good luck making anything AAA like that. The games you're talking about are indie or niche. For example, they will have no mocap.

    And even in those cases, there is a difference between "cost to start a studio" and "cost to develop a game". The costs you're talking about are the cost of getting started. Those are barrier to entry costs, not development costs. When we talk about development costs, we typically talk about everything after you have all the hardware and software you need. Studios already have those things so they barely factor into the ongoing development costs

    Also you only don't need proprietary dev kits if you have no intention of doing per-platform QA. Fine for indies. Not fine for AAA

    Yes, the barrier to entry has gone down; the minimum cost to ship something, anything, is lower than ever....but only by comparison to the peak cost. Even small indie studios are spending as much as studios did when making $60 NES games

  • The price of games hasn't gone up in decades. We're only just starting to see games that cost $70 instead of $60.

    The cost to develop games, on the other hand, has gone way, way, way up.

    Think about it in "cost per megabyte". Players have been getting more and more content - not playable hours, but content that needs to be created by a human - for the same amount of money. While developers have larger and larger staff, with more and more demands... For the same amount of money.

    There's a reason live-service and freemium games are becoming the monetization scheme of choice.

    Cost of games needs to go up or we'll just see more and more exploitative monetization.

    Let me also add that $60 for 20 hours of entertainment is one of the best deals there is. And the best games give a lot more than 20 hours of gameplay. Books are about the only thing that comes close

  • Put another way: everyone deserves a chance, even if they fuck it up. But many don't believe that your parents being super poor because of generational trauma, or mental illness, or addiction are significant impediments to success. Bootstrap mentality. Anyone can and should make, and if they don't it's obviously their own fault

  • "According to SAMHSA, 38% of homeless people abused alcohol while 26% abused other drugs." (These are overlapping statistics)

    "Most research shows that around 1/3 of people who are homeless have problems with alcohol and/or drugs, and around 2/3 of these people have lifetime histories of drug or alcohol use disorders"

    This means roughly 11% of homeless people started their abuse as a consequence of becoming homeless, while 22% of homeless people may have become homeless due to their substance abuse.

    So you'd essentially be proposing that we don't help 78% of all homeless people because the other 22% of them would misuse the money.

    And that's without even discussing the fact that many of those 22% could be rehabilitated if they're provide with appropriate healthcare on top of the monetary benefits

  • Unsurprisingly, when people are given enough money to make immediate, material improvements to their life, they do.

    If you're homeless and miserable, suffering psychological and/or physical pain, and someone gives you $20, the most immediate relief for that suffering is often escapism into things like drugs and alcohol. In situations of extreme distress, humans tend to favor solutions that immediately, if only temporarily, remove the stress. We see this behavior all across humanity.

    So the thing you spend money on in that situation iis typically the thing that will, in your belief, most improve your short - and medium-term condition. Give them $20, they'll get alcohol. Give them $500, warm clothes and other durable QOL improvements. $7500? A car. $50,000? Long-term shelter.

    Sadly, this study isn't telling us anything that psychologists and social workers didn't already know :/

  • Because the argument they are trying to refute is "in general, if you give homeless people free money, they won't use it on the things they should be using it on, they'll just be lazy because they're obviously bad with money."

    They are NOT trying to refute the (pointless) argument that "there are some homeless people who would waste free money on things like drugs and alcohol".

    They are refuting the general argument against UBI, not the specific argument against individual people

  • I'm not sure I agree yet, but I respect that. I guess my last comment is that you can't squeeze blood from a stone. You can't get businesses to voluntarily police their own greed, nor can you outlaw having best in class service providers. These are the wrong levers to pull when trying to fix the problems of wealth disparity and access to well maintained, valuable, unhindered services for everyone.

  • There is a difference between monopolies and anti-trust. It is not, nor should it be, illegal to be the only serious contender in a given category.

    If I make widgets for arcade machines so well that I drive all the other arcade machine widget makers out of business, that's normal commerce.

    Antitrust is when I gain and maintain that advantage through specific practices detailed in the legal code

    Monopolies are only broken up when it is of grave public interest to do so. There are industries I believe have monopoly/duopoly problems and should be broken up. "Hosting videos on the Internet" is not one of them.

    Again, trying to say "pharmaceuticals shouldn't be an oligarchy/monopoly, which is proof that nothing should be" is not good logic

    You should look into the history and breakup of the Bell telephone company for context on when a monopoly is broken up and why

    How are you defining "should be" anyway? Your personal opinion? What profit margins should be considered okay and for which products or services?

    You need to pick which things are important enough to forcibly break up, and everything after that is fair game, regardless of what you think is healthy for the market. Otherwise you're just talking about "I don't like the leadership of that company, they're bad people" at which point your problem is about, like, specific people's ethics.

    I hate that those people succeed, and there are things I think we can do to mitigate those problems, but "Google bad, don't let them secure their products or help others secure theirs" ain't it homie

  • Yeah, you told me a sad story in a thread about other people. You turned it into a conversation about yourself instead of thinking about the perspective of others

    You're the one not listening. I've been talking about other people this entire time and all you can think about is yourself and how hard it was for you and your bad memories.

    I'm doing fine. I don't need your support. I'm not asking for your support. Not once have I told you that you should support me.

    I'm trying to tell you that compassion is free. You aren't being asked to take care of anyone. You're being asked not to place the blame at the feet of people who are suffering, and not to point at people who struggle and call them sick because "only an unwell person would do that."

    You sound really narcissistic. Even your efforts to come off as supportive were performative and came back around to "but I said the thing, so I'm the good guy".

    I don't think you're being aggressive. I don't think you're being mean. I don't think you're angry or hateful.

    I think you're selfish.

    Muting you now so I don't keep seeing your self-pitying excuses for why you should shun those who struggle with mental health. It's really starting to make me sick

  • This will be my last response:

    Going through that? It's not something I'm "going through". It's a condition I've had almost all my life and it's well managed for a long time now. I'm not asking for your support. Just your understanding. And that's what you don't get. Compassion costs you nothing, but you can't even do that

    ✌️

  • If someone tells me they have something mentally wrong with them

    You know, I was gonna reply to you with a bunch of information on how to help people and be understanding, patient, and compassionate. But then I read this line and I lost all interest. I'm sorry you've gone through what you have. But this is callous and heartless. Don't project your extreme situation onto the common mental health challenges of others. I hope nobody with mental health challenges - you know, simple stuff like depression or minor trauma responses - ever comes to rely on or trust you. They'll just have their heart broken.

    Don't be surprised when your children, spouse, family, or friends do not trust you or share their struggles with you. They will doubtlessly fear that you'll abandon them in a heartbeat once they know this terrible trait of yours

    Shame on you for painting all people who struggle with mental health with a single brush.

    And since I have my mental health issues (MDD) I'll assume "you just can't" and end our conversation here, for both our sakes

    P.S. My wife's best friend when through a rough patch and came out of it with a similar attitude. She tried sharing one of her struggles with PTSD with him, like she used to, and he told her "I need a break from you, you just bring me down all the time" and I saw what that did to her. Made me sick to my stomach

  • Ah yes, I remember that time when the Internet stopped allowing gifs, jpgs, and pngs. Now Firefox crashes whenever it tries to load an image other than a webp because Google made them /s

  • Except American medication prices a) aren't supply and demand; they involve manufactured scarcity among other serious problems and b) are a matter of life and death in many cases; they deal with necessities

    There are many things that should not be capitalist: education, healthcare, prisons, to name just a few

    The pricing of funny Internet videos et al is not one of those things, and it's frankly inappropriate to make that comparison here. You think the ethics of lifesaving medication and YouTube videos are comparable? Gimme a break