If you really want a fresh experience and don't wanna spend more time modding than actually playing, I cannot recommend more strongly Wabbajack. It's a fully automated modlist installer with a huge gallery of available lists.

Some of the available modlists are foundational, giving you just the essentials (Engine tweaks, HD assets, community bug fixes, etc.), and some are total conversions, turning the game into a fully-realized modern third-person action game, with controls, animations, and graphics as good as any modern game.

It does everything for you, from installing Mod Organizer 2 to creating game launch shortcuts, and everything in between. All you have to do is log into Nexus (and whatever other mod sites your modlist of choice might use). It's worth getting Nexus Premium at least temporarily to speed up the process.

Here is the Skyrim Special Edition modlist gallery.

Two questions to ask yourself:

1. Does it make you happy?

2. Does it hurt anybody (yourself included) in any way (including financially)?

Fox News. Televangelists. Trump.

Religion can be a very positive tool to bring communities together and support one another, but capitalism means exploitation, and nothing's easier to exploit than blind faith.

You know who's really mutilating kids' genitals? Any doctor who performs medically unnecessary circumcisions on infants.

One extremely important factor that this article neglects to address: Valve is a private company - it's not publicly traded in Wall Street. That is the reason Steam has remained the best in the business; it's not beholden to shareholders' short-sighted meddling. It's also the reason Steam is effectively immune to enshittification.

• With the exception of any article that's even slightly political.

If someone tells you they don't care about pronoun usage, believe them. I'm nonbinary and don't care what pronoun people use for me, because I identify as both male and female. Most people default to "he" for me because of my beard, but others use "they" because of my proclivity for wearing skirts, nail polish, and lipstick. Rarely I'll have someone use "she" (or I'll use it myself), but ultimately, I'm just a person who exists outside of the gender spectrum (or right in the middle), and pronouns are just a grammatical tool to save time, so I prefer that people use whatever comes most naturally to them.

Wow, that blog post is truly nauseating and infuriating to read, knowing the context.

Fuck Google. They're the Nestlé of tech.

Oh, console/PC without a doubt. Mobile development, at least in my experience, is a constant struggle for relevance and a nonstop sense of urgency. Creativity is only allowed if it answers the question "how can we better trick players into giving us their money?"

Console/PC development, however, is focused on making a good product that will last. Nobody ever asks "how much money will this feature make us?" At worst, the question is "how much will this feature drive engagement?"

I've only worked for major companies, so my experiences don't reflect what it's like at indies.

Yeah, they should really stop killing their own people. Over 30,000 Palestinians, many of them children, dead at the hands of Hamas!

Good thing Israel's there to stop this horrible genocide and restore order.

/s

The Steam Deck is the best thing to happen to Linux since... Linux. It's the first time average tech illiterate folks have gotten a taste of Linux on their own systems, and it's driven the development of compatibility tools (Proton) to a hitherto-unheard-of degree.

It convinced me to switch to Linux.

A guy just wants to leave his home country and see the world, but his dad won't let him. Even when he gets past his dad, he still can't quite make it. It's in the blood.

indie

You keep using that word, AAA developer/publisher Square Enix. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Sounds like something an AI-loving Nazi would say!

Seriously, though, yes. This was exactly my first thought. There are plenty of reasons to be apprehensive about AI, but conflating it with Nazis is just blatant propaganda.

Temba, his arms wide.

What's the point of this article? That even conservatives can see that Palestine is being victimized? Is it trying to cast doubt on the fact that Israel is committing genocide by associating the idea with undesirables?

Such nonsensical results. It really is a popularity contest.

At this point, I think it's clear that voting restrictions of some sort are necessary. My first thought: players can only vote in a category if they've got at least 5 hours of total gameplay distributed amongst at least 25% of the games in that category, with a minimum of 30 minutes of gameplay per game.

My old job doing systems design for a predatory mobile game. I quit that job, moved half a state away, and got a job that pays half as much in a company with integrity. Best decision of my life.

Honestly, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if, in the inevitable Israel Nuremberg Trials, it comes out that the Israeli government intentionally instigated or even carried out the October 7 attack in order to generate sympathy and as a pretext for its genocide.

Ha! Fair point. I guess the Internet is ultimately peanuts compared to the real world.

But as far as relative negative effect on its sphere of influence, I'd say they're comparable.

I don't think many have beliefs rooted in hatred. Most "hateful" beliefs are rooted in fear and ignorance. I don't usually look to pop culture for my moral philosophy, but I believe Yoda said it best:

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

It's why leaving a podunk town to go to college usually makes people much more liberal and open-minded; they're exposed to new ideas and a wider variety of people. Their fear of the unknown is replaced with connections to real people and experiential knowledge that everyone is an individual, no matter what their identity's social stereotype may be.

In my experience, the path to enlightenment is paved with love and understanding. No matter how hateful & misguided a person may be, as long as they're not a literal psycho/sociopath, showing them genuine compassion and a willingness to listen, not just preach, will almost always have a positive impact.

Only the new OLED decks have the Bluetooth chips with wakeup. If you have an OG deck, you're plum outta luck, I'm afraid.

What an absurd, ignorant notion. Of course social media has a negative impact on developing minds, but forcing sites to display warnings would have zero positive impact. Browser extensions would immediately pop up to hide those warnings, and if anything, the presence of such warnings would increase kids' use of social media, since the danger is something even adults had a hard time understanding and kids love to rebel against oppressive systems. The warnings would turn into memes.

The only answers to this problem are to break up and ban social media companies (not possible) or get parents to actually be parents and teach their kids about the pitfalls of social media.

AI art is very easy to learn, but has a lot of intricacies and extra functions that can take a while to learn and master. The only free and open source one, Stable Diffusion, has a lot of resources online. Here's a beginner's guide to get you started.

I recommend running locally if you have the hardware for it. You generally need at least 8GB of VRAM for reasonably fast generation, though I've heard of people being fine with as little as 4GB. Check out Civitai for additional resources.

True. He's more a symptom than a cause. He certainly isn't helping.

What an inane question. Of course they aren't saying all Jews are racist. They're saying that the people in charge of Israel are deeply racist. They also happen to be Jewish, but that isn't really a factor.

Like Did he do it on purpose?

At this point, I'm gonna say yes. Yes, he did do it on purpose. Why? The conspiracy theorist in me says it's to push people into Meta's Threads, building it up even more before it federates, in an attempt to kill the Fediverse like Google did with XMPP, because the Fediverse is the fastest growing bastion of corporate-influence-free speech on the Internet.

Or he's just an idiot. 🤷‍♀️

Very right. As a content/systems designer, it was my job to carefully balance a feeling of progression with a frustrating lack of progression at key points, thereby pushing players to spend.

The first few levels are easy and free, then progression starts to slow, but you've already gotten to level 10 easily enough, so you can take a bit of extra time to get to level 15. By level 15, you've invested enough time that the sudden valley of progression from 15 to 30 convinces you to make that first purchase; after all, why not spend just $5 to instantly double your level when you've already spent a few hours in the game? Progression speeds back up from 30 to 45, letting you feel like you're in control of your leveling, then another valley hits and you're now even more invested, and, since you've already spent $5 to get from 15 to 30, what's another $10 to get from 45 to 80?

Rinse and repeat, steadily increasing the cost of each purchase while seemingly improving the in-game value per dollar spent.

Our biggest whales were spending over $10,000 per day on that disgusting "game."

I had to get out. My next job, one at a prominent console/PC game studio, only paid about half of what I was making at the mobile game company, and I loved it. No more panicked 2 AM meetings because our revenue dipped 10% over the last hour. No more convincing myself that players enjoyed wasting thousands of dollars on an endless treadmill. No more 28-hour shifts.

Rant over.

Bonus: I've since become a dad, I'm actually proud of what I'm making now, and I'm excited to share it with my child when they're old enough.

Dynasty Warriors (and its many, many spinoffs). I know they're not objectively good, but man does it feel great to kill 1,000 enemies just by mashing Square and Triangle.

The older entries also had endearingly bad English voice acting.

You've just unlocked a painful childhood memory of mine. A childhood friend pronounced Sephiroth as "Seph-eye-roth" and Tifa as "Tiffay"

Oddly, he got Aerith right.

My most pleasant surprise on the Deck this year has been Shadow of War. It plays on high settings at a smooth, consistent 60FPS, even in big battles. As a fan of its predecessor, Shadow of Mordor, I've been loving it!

Worst was definitely American Truck Simulator. I'd been interested in the game for a long while, and finally decided to buy it when it was only $5. I got about halfway through the tutorial before I refunded it and added it to my Ignore list.

FYI, you need two new lines (hit Enter twice) to actually get a new line in Lemmy.

Two new lines One new line.

Really interesting stuff. Just goes to show how one person really can make a difference.

Exactly what I've been saying to anyone who'll listen. All that money saved (plus all the money the rich are needlessly hording) could easily support all of humanity to do what we want with our lives while the robots do the grunt work.

I don't think I'd make a Wilson, but I just might make a Milky Joe.

I never thought a picture of leaves could make me cry, but with your caption attached... 😭

I'm a bio-male whose favorite color has always been pink. Until a recent personal awakening, I kept that part of me hidden from most, only wearing pink "ironically" or because "chicks dig it."

I'm downloading this picture and turning it into my new wallpaper. Thank you. 💖

I occasionally pre-order games, but only ever through Steam, where I know I can get my money back, no questions asked, if it's within 2 weeks of release and < 2 hours of play time.

Otherwise, I stay far away from pre-orders.

not to rain on your parade but uuuh, this is patient gamers

What's your point? The game is over 20 years old, and there's no rule against simply mentioning an upcoming remake.

Nobody likes unnecessary gatekeeping.

So excited for this! I bought into the beta about a decade ago and have been reading the dev logs on secretsofgrindea.com every so often since then.

It's a top-notch classic-style isometric RPG with tongue-in-cheek writing, great character building, and a roguelike mode.

Red Dead Redemption 2?