Lemmy doesn't need to be #1 in popularity. I'd prefer it to split and maintain a higher level of quality, even if it's smaller as a result. Even if Meta can grab data either way, it should be disconnected on principle.

IMO it doesn't need to replace Reddit for everyone or grow to be a direct competitor. As long as there are enough users to keep communities active and discussions going, it's a nice alternative for people who want to get away from Reddit or other social media sites. I like that threads are active for longer than a few hours before dropping off, and since posts are slower I don't find myself mindlessly scrolling. Lemmy feels more like a mid 2000s forum but with better usability.

Every year became a competition, and it was unsustainable. Companies could spend millions on their presentation only to "lose" and get their reveals drowned out because Sony announced FF7 or Microsoft got Elder Scrolls etc. On all sides there was a rush to be the winner of the year, and it led to more and more CGI trailers of things 5+ years away just for the big reveal moment. I imagine both Sony and Microsoft would prefer to announce individual games as they come throughout the year, so their reveal is the only big gaming news of the week and everyone is talking about it.

My favourite memory is playing Freedom Unite solo, and finally reaching G rank on my own. It's a tough game, and making it that far without being carried was the most satisfying moment in any game for me. When I first started Freedom 2 (the previous version) I struggled to hunt even basic small monsters, and looking back on that journey made the 200+ hour playtime completely worth it for me. I think G rank took another 100 on top of that lol.

Do you honestly think only the positive, friendly people would hop over? The entire fediverse will be overrun by crazy political conspiracy theories and hostile homophobic/transphobic/anti abortion stuff in no time.

I'm new to lemmy so I might be wrong on this, but say if we have one big community for a certain hobby/interest and the moderators get power trippy or there are other problems, people into that hobby essentially have nowhere to go right? Having lots of smaller places and subscribing to them all makes it easier to cut one out and be less reliant on a specific group of people.

A lot of communities these days have moved over to Discord too, meaning information isn't archived or easy to access months/years later. There have been cases of accounts being compromised or rogue mods causing trouble, and in a few seconds a server's chat history and all associated info/guides/artwork etc are lost in seconds. I'd love to see a return to forums.

Agreed. I think Horizon and Days Gone are a reasonable price atm, but the rest are too expensive compared to their price on console.

The Souls trilogy is on sale (first time in two years) and all three work great on Deck.

I have Gulikit's own controller with hall effect sticks, and they feel way smoother than other controllers to me. Since it's all magnetic, there's no feeling of friction or scraping of plastic against plastic that I immediately felt after comparing to my Series X controller. I guess a good equivalent would be an on vs off air hockey table. I haven't tried their joycon replacements though, so not sure if the same feeling carries over to them. There's not much of a precision difference, but you can get the deadzones down to pretty much nothing without any rogue inputs so it helps a little in certain games.

Separating the two sounds like it would make the problem a lot worse. Nobody would have a reason to create smaller duplicate communities anymore so things would end up centralised and easier to abuse, like what happened with Reddit. You could hop your account to a new instance, but doing so means nothing if there's only one instance of the community.

It still feels weird to class the 360 era as retro, even though the launch is approaching 20 years ago. I'd say anything PS2/GC and earlier.

I think games generally are improving, but AAA games mostly feel stagnant. It's easy to look back at the best games of previous years, but gloss over the sea of low-effort licensed games and failed experiments. Games are more expensive than ever to make now, and that means there's too much money involved to take big risks and gamble on experimental stuff. Big games by big publishers are forced to play it safe. The average experience has improved if you just picked a random game off the shelf 20 years ago vs now, but you don't get as many of those spiked high points either.

Indie games are better than ever though. It's so much easier now for indie devs to create and share games with the public, and that risk-taking mentality is still strong. The price creep of AAA games isn't a thing, no season passes or battle passes or microtransactions, just games made by passionate players who wanted to scratch a certain itch missing in the market like you say.

Just picked it up, thanks. Shame about Halo Wars 2, hopefully it gets added to Steam in the future.

Meta deliberately provokes that kind of stuff since rage baiting is good for engagement. They've cultivated and minmaxed that kind of behaviour for years. I'm sure it exists in small pockets here already, but nowhere near the same level.

Do you remember the genre or visuals at all? Like perspective, artstyle etc?

Thanks for this! That competitive gameplay was fun to watch. Turns out I already have it in my steam library too, definitely going to give it a try.

Thanks for all the recommendations. It's always nice to have new stuff to watch.