Undeadpool

@bigsocrates: Oh I know, I'm just saying: at that point, the bots are revealing the futility of it as they tend to respond identically to bad-faith humans. So why bother? I'm not nihilistic or anything, I'm not even that jaded, I'm just saying that engagement drives these people, and often drives the grift that they're already trapped in, so going to spaces where a modicum of decorum is required is preferable. Doesn't have to be an "echo-chamber," but it's long been revealed that unmoderated forums aren't spaces for free speech and free thought, they're havens for ideas too toxic to survive scrutiny.

@ben_h: "Lack of context" is an issue I've been banging the drum on for some time, which I know on the internet is like saying, "I've been throwing teabags into the sea to try and turn it into Earl Gray," but it is a chicken that has come home to roost in a huge way with this Google fiasco. People want to talk about "echo chambers" and "walled gardens," but I'm not sure there are any better or bigger examples than those that come out of tech. From fighting games that don't have penalties for ragequitting to those super-geniuses who tried to put an AI child on Twitter, to everything Elon Musk has done in the past decade, to this stuff with Google now: it might be time for the people in the tallest ivory towers to stop making sweeping, unilateral decisions that are based on having a realistic worldview.

@bigsocrates:I understand what you mean, but it just highlights the pointlessness of those interactions even with humans. When it's a human on the other end, it's never civil either, not on those platforms, because so rarely do people engage in good faith on them. And the interactions are almost indistinguishable from ones with bots, and while I think people deserve empathy in-general, I don't think it falls to me to engage in good-faith with someone who absolute won't.

I wonder if asshole/trolls realized the jobs AI stole would be their own...

Honestly, I think twitter and reddit both became cesspits well before the advent of AI bots to this level, reddit's been the gathering place for people who think they're the smartest person in LITERALLY any room they walk into for years and twitter's been a sewer since news media began taking everything on it at face value.

Which is just to say: I think spaces like this with actual human connection and, perhaps as importantly, moderation have always been critical strongholds in thoughtful conversations.

Big tech will ALWAYS overreach because it's quite literally the nature of the beast: total deregulation and profit-first mentalities mean, it's quite literally never enough and they MUST make $5 tomorrow instead of $15 next week.

I get what you're saying, I feel like I'm just along for the ride and trying to come up with what you're talking about. Because I know it's there, it's on the TIP of my brain, I can so clearly see the UI of the game, I just can't get the title. And as I read that back, I think I'm starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist.

Or I'm thinking of Saint's Row, which just removed gender tags from clothing and suddenly became iconic. I will never forget my roommate's VERY accurate-to-life large, pasty, male character running around in a red bikini and bandana while he drunkenly screamed, "I'M ELEKTRA, MISTRESS OF JUSTICE!" while stabbing random NPCs.

I know, and you're absolutely right. I mean there's definitely the persona "bikini" armor, but that's more a costume, even if it is an actual piece of armor in P5. I think a lot of MMOs would probably fall into that category.

@atheistpreacher: Yeah, I figured, it's just always good to point out the whole executive pay thing since people (not you) like to hide behind the whole "skyrocketing dev costs" talking-point. Which, of course, is SORTA true but also mostly due to keeping graphics bleeding-edge when most consumers couldn't care less about graphics looking .5% better.

I mean considering people keep voting with their dollars in that way too (the Switch still doing gangbusters despite the 'dated' graphics I can't stop hearing about) doesn't seem to stop the graphics arms race.

Half-Minute Hero is generally a weird, slightly too-meta puzzle/RPG, but there's one level where you're dealing with a very strange city and a woman who shows you around.

The twist being: it turns out the people you talk to are all actually zombies covered by an illusion, and after the woman showing you around makes you promises that you'll stay with her and you two can be friends forever, the game will tell you the final zombie "looks familiar." And if you kill it, a dialog box comes up that just displays the word, "...Liar." It was genuinely one of THE MOST shocking moments in any narrative game I'd ever played.

@atheistpreacher: The other issue with this is that it doesn't take into account that while worker pay has stagnated, executive pay has skyrocketed, so the notion that games "should cost more" becomes slightly harder to swallow when lay-offs happen during record-shattering profits, and now games ARE $70, and are STILL crammed full of live service BS.

If execs wanted to drive the prices down, they very easily could with minor pay cuts but that's about as likely as any one power-hungry giving up said power because they promised they would.

Loved this write-up! I have come to the conclusion that this game simply isn't "for me" at the moment, but I do love hearing people for whom it did resonate talk about it. Kind of like EVE Online or complex mathematics.

And speaking of heady concepts: pro-wrestling podcasters and naughty Irish lads OSW review pointed out something akin to the "armor that makes you more naked than being naked," and that's "pro-wrestlers in trunks or a singlet without knee and elbow pads look more naked than if they just whipped their flute out." This is made doubly apparent if they're wearing a hat or other headgear.

I'd be intrigued if this is any kind of seismic shift (per capita, anyway) away from MMOs or MOBAs or Battle Royales, even, in their day, and I'd like to see what that 8% actually constitutes in-terms of a raw number. Just throwing out a percentage doesn't actually tell me all that much, a lot of people just pick up 1 game and then play it until they get sick of it. If it's a live service game, it scratches a similar itch to MMOs, but with more robust solo content, so it's not exactly surprising that something like Warframe, Sea of Thieves, and Destiny have a ton of staying power with people who just want to hop on, do dailies, chat with friends, and hop off.

The problem for me is that major publishers refuse to learn from the past and are still trying to "make" new live services work (just like they did when ever new MMO tried to dethrone WoW) and, failing that, push the bullshit "graphics arms race" because that's what's always worked in the past.

Bespoke, artistic experiences have never sold better in any industry than big, flashy mainstream ones, it's why The Pixies never outdrew New Kids on the Block, it's why the year Abbey Road came out, the #1 single was "Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies. Alan Wake 2 was never going to outsell Fortnite, because more people would rather floss as Ninja, Goku, or the xenomorph than play a meditative, meta narrative about a writer coming to grips with the very notion of fiction and the supernatural.

There's a reason The Lighthouse isn't as much of a draw as Transformers 4, I'm not sure this is anything new, it's just becoming hyperfocused as more and more the myth of "infinite growth" is further exposed.