To paraphrase an old tweet: “parentheses - for when every thought comes with bonus sub-thoughts”.
To paraphrase an old tweet: “parentheses - for when every thought comes with bonus sub-thoughts”.
“Exploration is one of the central pillars of our gameplay. That’s why we’re offering this handy little DLC to instantly fill out your map!”
I’ve seen that kind of DLC a few times for open world games and it’s always jarring.
We could also have “karma” on Lemmy, but while technically tracked the environment is better off without it being public in my opinion. I view voting records similarly.
It’s strange that they removed total account karma visibility a while back but are now thinking about making votes public.
I think a good compromise (since Lemmy already tracks that data) would have been to show the upvote/downvote ratio a user receives on their profile page, without showing their total karma. That’d help you spot toxic users without incentivising karma whoring.
Similarly, a display of how often a user upvotes versus downvotes others would help spot bots and trolls without completely obliterating privacy like their suggestion would.
(But ultimately none of this solves the problem of privacy on the Fediverse being one federated bad actor away from nonexistence)
Godot has one of the better explanations of vectors and their uses in games in their documentation, if you haven’t checked that out yet. It focuses on their practical use rather than going deep into the mathematics (though there is quite a bit of that too).
And if you don’t understand the math, the documentation also explains when and how to use specific methods, so you can still use it as a cheat sheet when working on your project even if you don’t fully understand vectors.
(And you’ll probably have an “ah-ha!” moment when working with them yourself. Like a lot of math, vectors are much easier to understand with practical, non-abstract examples.)
There are two things I can’t stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures… and the Dutch.
“Fell down an elevator shaft and landed on a pile of bullets” has lived in my head rent-free since I saw this movie 25 years ago. I don’t know why - it’s not even particularly funny or clever, but the line stuck with me.
The game made over a billion dollars but disappeared from the cultural zeitgeist almost immediately. Of course the publisher only cares about that first part, so unnecessary sequel it is!
What I meant by it being too late is that once you’re a billionaire, you can fund your interests (like making the world a worse place) off the passive income you make from interest and investments. Licensing fees are probably a drop in the bucket at this point. Even if she makes tens of millions less due to a massive boycott (which is wildly optimistic), it wouldn’t affect her life or political activities a smidgeon.
And since Hogwarts Legacy was the game that finally dethroned Call of Duty and random sports games as the top seller of 2023, I doubt a boycott would be at all effective. Harry Potter was many people’s childhood, and they’ll buy it regardless of external factors just to finally live in that world.
Edit: I fully support anyone who chooses to boycott Rowling and anything associated with her. It makes sense to not want to support her in any way. I just wanted to point out the unfortunate truth that a boycott won’t actually hurt Rowling or her disgusting political activism in any meaningful way, outside of maybe bruising her ego. She’s not beholden to public image like a corporation is, so she won’t even make a token effort to appear less awful.
There are good live service games, but the blatant monetization bothers some people.
Take Warframe, one of the most popular live service games. Everything can be earned in game, including the premium currency as long as you’re willing to put in time and effort. However, every single UI element offers a way to spend that premium currency with higher presentation priority than the actual in-universe methods of doing whatever that menu is for.
Want a specific gun? Only 500 platinum for a fully kitted out model* (or 25,000 credits for the blueprint you actually want, and it wasn’t until fairly recently that they added tooltips showing where to earn things in-game). Building something? Only 20 platinum to rush construction, or you could wait a day. Want to customize your frame? Here’s a few dozen color palettes, 99% of which cost platinum.
* Which is such an awful newbie trap. Don’t buy weapons or frames off the Market in Warframe, kids. Their Prime variants, which are statistically superior, can be bought off other players for a fraction of what DE charges for the inferior regular versions. The Market is hilariously, blatantly overpriced and has been since the very beginning.
Space Engineers is another offender. It’s a block-building game and all of its DLC is cosmetic skins, but even if you don’t own the DLCs those skins show up as unique blocks in the block picker with a padlock icon that tells you to buy their associated DLC. It clutters up the UI to the point of worthlessness, but there’s no way to turn it off because it acts as an advertisement.
Let’s not even get into gacha games, which feed off of addictive impulses to have a small percentage of players pay thousands of dollars to subsidize everyone else who plays for free.
Live Service and Dark Patterns go together. Games as a Service requires a constant revenue stream to fund development, which incentivises predatory design patterns.
I get that, but she’s already a billionaire. The damage is done; nothing we as consumers can do will have a meaningful effect on her life. And the game studio is obviously against her views, given the positive presence of a clearly MtF trans character* in the first game.
* Which honestly bothered me (the obviousness, not the trans part), because the Potterverse is one where you’d imagine transitioning to be easy and perfect (take that, Jo). I think it would have worked better if that character had a flawlessly feminine voice and only revealed they were born male later in their dialog. The way it was implemented it felt like pandering to negate Rowling’s toxic reputation, which tbf it probably was.
Counterpoint: it’s WB Games. Nothing they’ve done in the last few years gives me confidence that their suits won’t fuck things up in their attempts to wring ever more money out of their games.
It also mentions that the unannounced title is planned to have a “live ops” phase post-release, suggesting that the Hogwarts Legacy sequel could be a live-service game. WB Games has been quite vocal about doubling down on its live-service push in recent times, seemingly unfazed by the failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
That’s all you need to know.
Felt the deep pit in my stomach
It’s depressing how I went from not understanding this expression, to feeling it nearly every time I checked the headlines starting in November of 2016.
I remember registering my fingerprints as a kid as part of a Cub or Boy Scout activity. In retrospect that was really messed up.
Prosecuting the president for stochastic terrorism? That’s a precedent they really don’t want to set with Trump as their candidate.
That they are pushing it is evidence they don’t think they’ll have to follow the rule of law if they win.
Didn’t they already do this with Unity, and it was a buggy half-baked disaster?
Either way, bears may have been involved.
I’ll grant you the Psycho Mantis fight, but the other two are Easter eggs and not the way the game expects normal players to handle things.
4 is also being delisted later this year due to expiring licensing deals. It’s on discount until it’s gone IIRC, but if you don’t get it soon you’ll never be able to legally.
Only 99¢ to recollect your blood echoes remotely, or $20 to never lose them again! Pay $5.99/month to unlock an extra co-op slot!