Since Batman has been mentioned a bunch, you may like a twist on his formula. In the Absolute Batman comics, Bruce Wayne isn’t rich at all - and engineered some of his gadgets off his job at a construction site. But The Joker? Obscenely rich.

The worst part is that a rich person hears this and thinks about all they’d have to sacrifice to have empathy for these people. But then there’s the part you mentioned: “could have recovered and lived productive lives”. Many aren’t just going to flip burgers at Burger King, they’d be the one inventing a new burger that tastes better, wins the company tons of money, and makes people happy.

Productivity is the tide that lifts all ships, and we’re actively firing at the floor of the boat with a machine gun.

China, right? Yeahhh…

It sucks because I’ve been hearing about advances in social living out there, as well as seeing its indie game development scene explode, and I’m pretty envious and supportive - but I’m also absolutely going to highlight the worst of their government.

But unlike America, they don’t seem to have a notion of separating the government from its people. I know a random Chinese gamer isn’t responsible for Uyghur Muslim genocide. They still regard it as “xenophobia”, or “ignoring America’s crimes”.

I’ve been with this in video games too.

I spot it with Ubisoft. The entire audience is primed to the idea Ubisoft = Open World = Slop which is sometimes true but many levels of disingenuous. Ubi has some pretty good writers that have made some enjoyable characters, though they’re often muddled by the need to build 80 hours of content. So when a Ubisoft game gets good reviews (not often) everyone feels it was paid off and that it’s laden with microtransactions. Meanwhile I’ll be like “If I literally wanted to burn money on this game I wouldn’t even know which menu it’s in…”

I wonder if Steam could build a standardized notice for games like this. Right now, it makes sense to just delist it. But if it’s a functioning product dependent on a third party piece of work, then that could still be worth a purchase to some people.

Kind of like buying a broken appliance, or a spare part for that appliance.

That would also help if not everyone at the studio is okay with their work being given away for free in the case of their commercial failure. That could build systems that push towards failure.

I’m sometimes a bit concerned that I do buy into the “white actors voice them better” trope.

I think last major instance I recall is Widowmaker from Overwatch. The fake French accent is generally much easier to hear their lines through, and they can build their vocal focus on the “sexy spy” theme.

It could be just that English actors are better at understanding cultural expectations to build on for their audience. I’ve had a hard time building investment in some characters with certain heavy native accents, which is tricky to think about.

I could say consistency is a good design pattern.

I’m reminded of those actors in those Japanese “candid” skits, who are victimized by some creep and then reassured “Don’t worry, it’s just TV!” and they laugh. Like a normal human.

This is what jerks learned from to diffuse any ghoulish behavior with “I’m just joking, it’s just a prank”.

For different reasons than usual, this comment deserves the reply: “Let me Google that for you”.

(Or: Epic/Fortnite would beg to differ)

Nobody owns “The PC Landscape” though, that’s the beauty. Steam has a large share, but even that is not completely unbreachable.

I’m considering this with Overwatch to join a group of friends online. I’m not as bothered with it, because I judge each societal action by its weight. Jaywalking doesn’t matter much even if I generally support traffic safety.

With that group, I still might point out and recommend better multiplayer games as they come around. But I won’t stake my social morals on successfully convincing them - I admit I’m not a compelling guy.

The two hurdles I see are viewership (current inertia has everyone browsing on YouTube) and monetization (people rely on ad money that comes from those watching 30sec of insurance slop).

There are weaknesses in YouTube, like algorithms forcing creators to reach the 10 minute mark, or unfair content ID detection, but we might need a good corporate player to invent something against them. And I do mean a company - content creation is a business for a lot of people, not just an open source project.

Well, casey beat me to it. By default anything you’ve grabbed from the internet or a flash drive won’t have execute permissions on it, so it’s intentionally more obtuse to run than Windows’ simple “Are you sure you want to run this unknown publisher” dialog.

I feel weird even about wearing my sunglasses indoors. I do it only because I like bringing one pair out the door, it’s very sunny out, and they’re long-range prescriptions that help me read menus and signs.

Aside from the cameras, the obvious issue, as is with cops, is just constantly hiding your eyes for little reason.

Even I said in my comment it wasn’t a fantastic game. It likely could have been a lot better, and I don’t fault anyone bored by it. But I take issue with claims it shouldn’t have been made - that greenlighting it alone was the mistake.

“Don’t make bad game, dummy, just make good game” isn’t a tremendous observation.

Sometimes I don’t even think the way people summarize Ubisoft games as “open world” is a good descriptor of their failures. I will see people meanwhile applaud dozens of games that can all qualify as “open world”.

Maybe Ubisoft is deserving of a lot of criticism, but I’d also put them in perspective against an Xbox that is canceling studios and games left and right, and a Sony that just isn’t making anything except 8 more Last of Us remakes. No clue if EA even makes anything anymore.

In both cases, just a bit of a reboot.

Like, I still don’t understand how Nier tried to make death this big important momentous thing in these scenes, while also showing both of them die in the first fight of the game, after opening lines about being sick of dying repeatedly.

Fittingly, I’m also sick of rebooting stalled machines.

It was tricky to get used to the Linux mentality of not really having a dedicated double-clickable “executable type”. But it makes sense - if you want to run code, that should be a planned action by an app that is dedicated to the task of setting up new code. (Package manager, IDE)

Okay, criticize Ubisoft and other publishers for a lot of shit, but in my view things like Star Wars Outlaws are off limits.

Is the game amazing? No. But it’s an idea using a fresh character in an underserved IP. They put together a lot of things based on unique ideas - and it didn’t hit.

That’s a consequence of a company taking risks, even though we generally want them to take risks. They put out 8 new singleplayer IPs, 7 are junk to be forgotten while one becomes the next Halo franchise.

Taking paycuts to execs can better excuse paycuts at low level, and can slow the bleed if the company is to accept going into the red during a new game’s development.

I’ll agree with you that a lot of projects are getting overfunded. Good games don’t need thousands of people working on them. It can help with tertiary objectives like accessibility, marketing, or other features.

Trails in the Sky inverts this in a nice way.

I mean, afaik Steam has never helped in the role of publisher.

Publishers might provide engine tools, development resources, coordination, or other forms of development assistance. Or, if they’re rich and brain damaged, they’ll just buy out functioning game studios and force them to make live service slop.