vulgarcynic @ vulgarcynic @sh.itjust.works

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5

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423

Joined

2 yr. ago

As an avid Bawls drinker, I 100% agree with this sentiment.

Oh yeah man, GameStop was at the forefront of what the industry as a whole is doing now. Acquiring, consuming, shitting out a husk.

I'm of 2 minds with GameStop nowadays. On one hand, it's somewhat nice to still have a physical game store. On the other, it's fucking GameStop and all the baggage that comes with that.

I don't see much of a future for physical shops at this point. Especially with Best Buy, Walmart and Kroger phasing out retail space.

Soon we'll have nothing but digital and subscription and I guess we'll like it? I'll hold on to my dragons hoard of physical games as long as I can (thanks Game Crazy for employing new throughout high school) but it'll be painful the day I realize I'm no longer adding new stuff to it.

Jesus Christ, content warning for that body count you crossed off at the end there.

Fuck. I miss all those shops. Can I get a R.I.P. for Babbages, Game Crazy (pre-hollywood buyout) and Software Etc... while we're at it?

No sense in not going totally dark here. Haha

Ended up being a hoax. The crew is still around and we occasionally get together to golf or drink at tailgaters when it's football season. Time and children have taken their toll on the LAN's and other drunken tomfoolery of those days. That's always the thing about the "good times" they just seem like life when we're in it.

Goddammit Ted.

Actually checking on Steam that appears to be a pretty accurate statement. My man's got a hell of a library built up.

Absolutely! It was a pretty fun moment in my early years in this industry. Now, after 10 or so years working from home, I almost get nostalgic for an office.

It ended up being some jackass on the SoCal sales team sending a "joke package" to one of our local sales guys. As far as I remember he was let go and no criminal charges were pressed. I think everyone involved was just relieved it was a hoax.

This is a fun question!

So, in the mid 00's I worked for a pretty large software company doing mid level tech support for enterprise customers. One unassuming weekday, we get a notice that the building is going in to lockdown. Nobody in, nobody out.

Not long after we're told to contact our families and anyone that may be depending on us after work. There's a communication stating "we have a strong reason to believe anthrax was released in the building and no one is leaving until the CDC takes a sample and tests it". Awesome.

After the initial chaos wears down the dawning realization that there are a few hundred (well closer to a thousand of us) now stuck in a multi- building complex with fuck all to do sets in. This is before YouTube really had anything and Netflix was barely serving up a few streaming movies. Plus, there's no way I'm installing Silverlight on my production box. Dark times indeed.

In a stroke of pure luck, I stil had a couple of burned "backups" in my backpack from the previous weekends LAN party (jesus, this story just keeps getting more and more ancient).

A few short moments later and the ISO's were dumped and it was game time. Now, we were all saddled with Dell Optiplexes of some random flavor (620's maybe... this was pushing 20 years ago, details are a little sketchy) so there wasn't much we could really run but anything in a pinch, yeah?

Long story long, I'd spend that time playing C&C Renegade, Quake 3 Unreal Tournament and maybe speed run Duke3D one more time. All while listening to some flavor of Scandinavian metal to truly flesh things out. If that got boring, I'd likely watch Ricky-O again or maybe throw on whatever else I happened to have dumped at the time (likely something from Tartan Asia Extreme or an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm).

Despite what an utter shit show this moment was, I have so many vivid memories of playing those games on the test network with a bunch of other 20 something people barely navigating through life while being scared to death that we may never see our families again.

That and trying to teach Ted how to copy a crack to the install folder... again... wtf man, directions are right there in the readme.nfo

This is 100% the dystopian reality we are heading for. Maybe not in the near-term future but, there is no way that eventually corporate greed and shareholder gains won't reach a point that this has to become the reality. They are simply leaving too much money on the table by not doing it.

I think our only saving grace is that the laws haven't been defined enough yet to prevent this from happening. But I have to imagine to some degree it already is. Just look at the way driving telemetry is being sold to auto insurance providers in the States already. If the information is out there, someone will get their hands in it and use it to manipulate the price of something.

This was my first thought as well! Good call.

It not being the same 8 ball that Bushnell and those Atari guys consulted back in the day may be the greatest failure.

But in all honesty, I think that's a great analogy. There's no harm in bringing in competent consultation, but you have to choose wisely. This is more akin to a movie screening. It just so happened to be a test audience that has traditional been compensated for their opinions..

I think the counter arguments from the reddit threads are pretty big points.

Good Battlefield plays like something different than the other major offerings. BF2, BC2 and BF4 are all modern military shooters but they "feel" way different than a CoD or Counterstrike or anything else.

The scale is important but so is the struggle of a tight pitched rush push with limited tickets left. Sure, a good pilot is a pain in the ass, but it's part of what makes Battlefield work. Same with tanks. Man, Golmud and the fucking tanks...

Anyways, just because someone is paid to do something doesn't mean they're an expert in all the relative disciplines. I don't really follow any streamers, but I do work in a pretty specialized industry and know that just because a peer and I are technically in the same field, what we bring to the table, how we approach problems and the way we implement solutions can be wildly different.

Don't ask him the best strats for Quake 3 and don't ask me anything about Counterstrike. Otherwise, you'll be sadly disappointed and end up with a worse experience overall.

I'd like to believe Dice made the best call here, despite what a shit show BF2042's launch was (even if basically every BF launch from 3 on has been fucked). They set the standard for rough launches years ago and yet every new release comes with doomsayers predicting the studio being closed and the game dying. Yet the reality is, they almost always, eventually get their shit together and patch things up to the way it should of been at launch. Just like most other major devs at this point.

Likely because a large portion of the people who are employed at these venues are, generally speaking, more vulnerable and susceptible to abusive cycles and behaviors.

I have known and been friends with a few people in the sex work trade throughout the years and generally they didn't end up there because they came from solid foundational bedrocks of self-care and self-advocacy growing up.

Of course, that's not to say that my anecdotal experience is empirical, but I'd wager reality sways a little closer to what I've seen than the opposite.

Not exactly the timeline you're putting out but, my son was about a year old when I remember getting GTA 4 on launch. He's in his freshman year of college now...

"Here's a box for your personal items, Steven will show you out."

The amount of my life that I have confused Jason and Matt is almost insufferable. I accept what a terrible person I am.

Renowned Fighting Scientist Matt Rorie?!

Samuel L. Jackson. The L stands for motherfucker.

I have no doubts about that. It's a sentiment I hear echoed all the time in the smaller PNW town I live in. How can someone possibly have freedoms and equality unless it's taken from someone else.

Man, I hadn't even thought about that. Valid point.

I hope they get to truly enjoy their experience of being a white male minority soon! Maybe that'll help with the empathy some day.