Coffee is just too bitter for me unless I overload it with way more cream and sugar than is healthy. At that point all the caffeine and sugar makes me way too jittery. On the other hand, I enjoy drinking tea black, so tea it is.

Fair enough

Yeah, I guess "black tea" is a bit of a misnomer. It's probably just simpler to share the terminology with coffee though

You know, years ago, I used to really like Neil before he adopted this "Well, ackchually..." shtick over scientific inaccuracies in works of fiction. I find him absolutely insufferable now. It's the same kind of brainworms as CinemaSins.

I wonder how much it has to do with how much of a shithole the Fandom network is. Between the godawful UX, aggressive SEO to bury competing wikis in search results, and scummy business practices that effectively prevent wiki admins from migrating to other hosts, the idea of maintaining a game wiki probably isn't all that appealing these days.

I miss Wikia...

'90s-'00s McDonald's primarily appealed to kids, as the colorful characters and Happy Meals were a big part of the draw.

'10s-'20s McDonalds has pivoted to marketing towards adults, in part because they had come under fire for marketing greasy, oversalted calorie bombs to children as the US obesity epidemic took off. The other reason is that mid-to-low income adults became a much more lucrative demographic after decades of wage stagnation basically created an entire generation that's too tired and overworked to cook for themselves but too poor to go out to eat anywhere else.

The problem with the Steam Awards is that they try to get as many people to vote as possible, even if people haven't actually played the games in question.

People will see a bunch of games they haven't played, be like "oh hey I at least know the name of that one" and vote for it even though they have no idea if the others are more deserving or not.

It's kinda crazy how quickly people just... stopped talking about Starfield after release. Like, even if it ended up being bad or disappointing, people would've at least still been talking about it in that capacity.

Starfield was one of the most hyped releases in years, at least since Cyberpunk, yet when it finally released, it seems like the entire gaming world played it for a few days, collectively decided, "eh, this is alright I guess," then moved on. I don't think I've ever seen the mood towards a game shift so rapidly from massive hype to complete indifference...

I hate that the focus of AI/ML development has become so fixated on generative AI - images, video, sound, text, and whatnot. It's kind of crazy to me that AI can generate output with the degree of accuracy that it does, but honestly, I think that generative AI is, in a sense, barking up the wrong tree in terms of where AI's true strengths lie.

AI can actually turn out to be really good at certain kinds of problem-solving, particularly when it comes to optimization problems. AI essentially "learns" by extremely rapid and complex trial-and-error, so when presented with a problem with many complex, interdependent variables in which an optimal solution needs to be found, a properly-trained AI model can achieve remarkably effective solutions far quicker than any human could, and could consider avenues of success that humans otherwise would miss. This is particularly applicable to a lot of engineering problems.

Honestly, I'd be very intrigued to see an AI model trained on average traffic data for a section of a city's street grid, taken by observations from a series of cameras set up to observe various traffic patterns over the course of a few months, taking measurements on average number of cars passing through across various times of day, their average speed, and other such patterns, and then set on the task of optimizing stoplight timings to maximize traffic flow and minimize the amount of time cars spend waiting at red lights. If the model is set up carefully enough (including a data-collection plan that's meticulous enough to properly model average traffic patterns, outlier disincentives to keep cars at little-used cross streets from having to wait 10 minutes for a green light, etc.), I feel that this sort of thing would be the perfect kind of problem for an AI model to solve.

AI should be used on complex, data-intensive problems that humans can't solve on their own, or at least not without a huge amount of time and effort. Generative AI doesn't actually solve any new problems. Why should we care if an AI can generate an image of an interracial couple or not? There are countless human artists who would happily take a commission to draw an interracial couple (or whatever else your heart desires) for you, without dealing with investing billions of dollars into developing increasingly complex models built on dubiously-sourced (at best) datasets that still don't produce results as good as the real thing. Humans are already good at unscripted creativity, and computers are already good at massive volumes of complex calculations, so why force a square peg into a round hole?

IMO, smartphones had the chance to revolutionize the gaming industry, but ended up wasting almost all of that potential on skinner boxes riddled with ads and microtransactions. Most of the best mobile games are ports from other systems, like the mobile edition of Minecraft and whatnot.

I think Pokémon Go was possibly the closest any major publisher has come to actually realizing the full potential of mobile games as a format, but it still fell painfully short with massively dumbed down mechanics and an absolute grindfest of a progression system.

There are still a few good indie projects out there (I like Soul Knight) but generally the mobile gaming market is so full of absolute dreck that I usually just don't bother.

As far as CEO takes go, it's better than most, at least at face value. However, the idea that C-suites can learn how to get wage workers to "buy-in to the company's mission" by "empathizing" with them is... suspect.

The obvious conclusion of empathizing with one's employees should be that said employees are best motivated by a fair, living wage, but I can just as easily see this kind of thing being used to justify those idiotic corporate culture initiatives that think the occasional pizza party is a valid substitute for proper pay because "we're a family" or whatever.

I mean, I think it just demonstrates that the problem is not on a development level, but rather on a project management and (particularly) an executive level.

Crunch and unreasonable deadlines in the gaming industry are the norm, and there's too much pressure from higher up to deliver a product as soon as possible, even if it isn't 100% ready.

Unfortunately, there's no real good answer for this as a consumer... If the game does well, the execs who set the deadlines pocket the profits. If it does poorly, the developers who worked on it bear the brunt of it by either getting insufficient raises, an even higher level of pressure on the next game, or at worst, get laid off.

The real answer would be widespread industry unionization. Efforts to do this are ever-so-slowly being made, but it's not even remotely close to being a reality. I'd say that if the game appeals to you and you don't mind performance issues at launch, buy it, but if not, then don't.

They don't actually let admins shut down their wikis or remove content from them. They can leave and start a new wiki, but they have to leave the old one in place (for which Fandom could potentially just find new admins), and they can only link to the new wiki from the Fandom wiki for a period of two weeks. With Fandom's SEO, there's a good chance the Fandom wiki will still be ahead of search results of a new wiki even after migration. Source

Oh, so I guess the "uncompleted level count" just refers to "uncompleted by anyone except the creator."

They meant they only found out the YMCA organization was real recently, they thought it was just a song at first.

Did Mario Maker have any kind of safeguards against users publishing troll levels that were just physically impossible to beat? Since there's only one uncleared level left, I assume so, but I would've thought that the easiest way to verify a level could be beaten would be to make the creator beat it themselves before it could be uploaded.

I would've expected either loads of unbeaten levels or no unbeaten levels at all, but having only one unbeaten level is interesting...

https://lemmy.world/comment/8841989 2 days ago. (Linked to a comment because I can't for the life of me figure out how to copy a link to the main Lemmy post itself on Jerboa.)

It's funny that Aftermath is writing about bad game journalism practices when they themselves have an initial "you must register to read our articles," but then after registration, hit you with an actual hard paywall after a couple of articles.

If they want to paywall their content, that is their prerogative, but they could at least be up-front about it, instead of only telling me about it after I went through the trouble of creating an account.

You do know that Lemmy counts as social media too, right?

"Mortal Kombat 1?" Really? I'm getting pretty tired of this whole trend of really confusing reboot/sequel names that make it increasingly difficult to convey which actual game is being referred to. I kinda wish more games would take the Final Fantasy route and just own their ridiculously long sequel count.

And to think the GOP used to claim it believed in "small government..."

The reason that it's so hard to compete with Steam is that Steam just does what it does so well.

I don't have much desire to change my primary digital storefront because there isn't really much of anything more I want from a digital storefront that Steam doesn't already provide. If the quality of Steam's experience declines at some point, I would welcome competition, but otherwise, why would I bother switching to another service when I don't really have any complaints about Steam?

Besides, the TV/movie streaming service market has already demonstrated what happens when not enough competition suddenly turns into too much competition. If Epic were able to demonstrate that it was possible to overtake Steam, everyone would try to copycat their strategy, and then you likely end up with a balkanized market where no one has the market share or resources to provide the level of quality that Steam does.

The public lobbies have (usually) one of the least toxic player bases in online gaming.

Maybe I just don't look at the right parts of the internet to end up seeing it, but I haven't even really seen anyone talking about hating it.

Warframe.

Good luck with that lmao

Man, that's even dumber than I thought.

I don't think online resources are necessarily a replacement for in-person classroom instruction, and even if they were, it's not a reason to take the option of home ec classes away from those who want it.

That said, I think it's at least a good thing that so many good internet resources on cooking exist, and it helps mitigate the problem to some degree. Still, it takes time and energy to seek out those resources, learn from them, and put them into practice. Not easy to do for anyone who has been worked far past the point of burnout and are still just scraping by.

I mean, common issues surrounding subscription-based services and the lack of ownership of digital content aside, the full price of $10 a month (for the base rate, at least, I know they have some "Ultimate" package which combines the Xbox and PC programs) is actually a pretty good value on its own, given the size of the selection.

Even if you only play a few games per month on it, you're still getting pretty good value compared to buying those games individually. For example, once Starfield releases, you could play it for six months on Gamepass before buying it up-front would've been a better deal, and that's if you never play a single other game on the platform.

It's also nice to be able to try out games without having to commit to purchasing them. I've found a number of games through Gamepass that I've enjoyed which I never would have tried otherwise.

However, I have a strong suspicion that video game subscription services will end up following a similar trajectory to TV/movie streaming services at some point... Gamepass doesn't really have any major competitors, and has been priced very aggressively in order to build market share, and it reminds me a lot of Netflix in its early digital stages.

I think it's inevitable that other publishers are going to try and get in on the action, balkanizing the available content into too many services for consumers to care about, and diminishing the value of each service individually.

I also fully expect that MS will start driving up the base price of Gamepass at some point, once they feel like they have enough market penetration. The reduction of the $1 trial might already be a sign of that, but I'm hoping we'll still have some time before that happens. I might stay around at $15/month, but if it reaches $20 I'm probably out.

I played CDDA for a while about 5 years ago. I really enjoyed it for a while, but after a certain point it seemed like the devs just got more interested in simulating fiddly minutiae to micromanage in excruciating detail over actually developing interesting new content or fixing existing broken systems.

NPCs were an absolute mess around that time, but the devs were messing around with implementing individual vitamin and mineral meters and making installing bionics more fiddly.

Well-put. Compare Bill Nye, who comes across as highly intelligent, yet still relatable and likable, in large part because his Science Guy character tends to be a bit of a goof, and, more importantly, because he never talks down to his audience.

For me that grabbed the link to the post which the NotTheOnion post was crossposting from - https://feddit.uk/post/9650395 - not the NotTheOnion post itself. Idk if that's intended behavior for crossposts or if there's another way to do it on crossposts in Jerboa.

Edit: Wait, I guess that is it? Since it was a feddit.uk link and NotTheOnion is hosted on lemmy.world I thought it wasn't the right link, but it seems to go to the right place anyway. Guess I don't quite grasp all the nuances of how the fediverse works...

Not to mention the absolute clown show of Star Wars: Battlefront (2004), Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005), Star Wars: Battlefront (2015) and Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017). Come on, 4 isn't even that high of a number.

I'm wondering if the aversion to numbered titles has to do with execs wanting to divert attention from the sheer number of sequels and reboots being churned out by AAA studios, often way beyond their franchises' reasonable ending points. I remember when Final Fantasy was often the subject of mild ridicule for its absurdly-high sequel numbering, and at this point, a lot of AAA franchises would be starting to get into the double digits. Dropping the sequel numbering may be an effort to get people to forget just how long those franchises have been milked.

That's not the case everywhere, and I think sometimes on reboots they just want to signify that the franchise is "starting fresh" to a degree (Doom and SW:B for instance), but it's still aggravating that completely-identical title repeats are for some reason acceptable now.

Jesus fucking CHRIST

Huh, first I'm hearing of this Amico thing. I don't know if it really has the support to capture enough of the market it seems to be going for... It looks like it’s trying to go for the "family-friendly, easy-to-use" concept that the Wii had, but the Wii had Nintendo behind it, along with other major publishers making games for it. The games included also look rather... basic.

...Annnnd it’s also a Tommy Tallarico thing. Of course it is. Why on earth does Atari want this?

It's not too hard to roll back changes on a wiki. Any attempts at sabotage wouldn't be very difficult to undo.

I know they say all press is good press, but I don't know if Pringles wants their brand to be associated with a cardboard tube full of shit...

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II

Deus Ex

I think there's a right way and a wrong way to do a remake/remaster. If a game doesn't run well on modern hardware and/or its online features are long gone, a remake can be justified. But to be a truly great remaster, it should also improve upon the original without messing with what made it great.

For example, the Age of Empires remasters were phenomenal, and the AoE2 remaster in particular basically revived the entire series. Not only did it add a fresh coat of paint visually, proper HD/widescreen support, stability updates, and such, there's been a pretty solid stream of new content and extended support. And it wasn't even sold as a full-price title to begin with.

But remakes of games that still run fine on modern hardware, don't really add much of anything new, and are priced at or near full-price? Yeah, cheap cash grab. There's no reason to remake a game less than 10 years old.

Yeah, I feel largely the same way. ADHD can have its occasional perks - it's fun to hyperfixate on a topic of interest when I can afford to do so, and sometimes all the bits of random information that happen to stick in my brain can come in handy - but it's not a "secret superpower." It's a disorder.