The word for a market dominated by only a few very large players is oligopoly, not… polyopoly.
Not saying you’re saying that, just saying.
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As to the etymology…
Its derives from Greek.
A monopoly has one (mono) influential seller for many (poly) consumers.
An oligopoly has a few, wealthy (oligo, as in oligarch, oligarchy) sellers for many (poly) consumers.
Importantly, in Greek, poly is closely related to polis, meaning basically ‘all of the people/citizens’.
This is also where English gets ‘Politics’ from.
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Also, I wrote a whole other comment, but the mere existence of any competitors, no matter how small… doesn’t mean you aren’t a monopoly.
Its just means you aren’t a perfect monopoly, which basically never exists in real life, outside of public utilities.
If the rubric for ‘is it a monopoly?’ was ‘do any competitors exist?’, then basically no company that’s ever been broken up or regulated for being a monopoly was actually a monopoly.
On Steam store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/, all Linux operating systems combined have around ~2% users, compared to the MacOSX ~1.4%. This is only a recent trend, as for the longest run Mac had more Steam users than before. And building a native Mac game was more straight forward than on Linux.
Nowadays its completely different than before, thanks to Proton integrated into Steam. This means even though there is a higher percentage of Linux players on Steam, there is less reason to make native Linux games. That has some advantages: Windows binary through Proton has feature parity without the devs needing to understand the underlying Linux system and libraries, less work for the developers means higher probability of supporting Linux for longer time, thanks to Proton and the auto selection of Proton version for each game its also less worry for the end user. It does not matter what system libraries you have installed or what operating system you are using.
It would be nice to have, but in reality there is no real need for native Linux games from developers or for the end user / player.
There’s one historical movie scene that comes to mind for me when I think about Sid Meier’s Civilization 7, and it’s not a flashy arena fight in Gladiator or mission control cheering as we safely bring Apollo 13 back home. It’s Leo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in The Aviator, running his hand along an airplane fuselage and insisting that he doesn’t want to see any rivets.
With Grand Theft Auto I would say you could start anywhere. Each game features a different protagonist and they play quite different to each other.
I would say playing 4 before 5 is probably a good idea because it doesn’t feel like as much of a tremendous leap compared to going from Vice City to San Andreas. Going from 5 back to 4 would probably make things like the car physics stand out even more.
The original monochromatic Castle Wolfenstein, blowing up Hitler with my buddy and his grandfather who lost family in the camps in Poland will always be a fun memory.
You’ll never perfectly solve the “no pissing people off” issue because in competitive games you necessarily have people benefit at the expense of others and in cooperative games you’ll fall into the trap of backseat-driver players telling you what to do on your turn.
That being said, here are some of my favorites I’d like to suggest:
Cooperative:
Time Stories (kinda like a time-travel themed mystery-solving role-playing game where the pre-built deck is your DM. 1-4 players. You can buy more decks, each with a different setting and story.).
Pandemic (Stop COVID a deadly disease from killing off the planet. Work together to limit the spread and find the cure before it’s too late) (1-4 players)
Competitive:
The Settlers of Catan (claim resources and land strategically to build the most prosperous kingdom) (2-4 players but there are expansions and spinoffs so this could be like 1-6 players)
7 Wonders (draft cards to build the most prosperous kingdom) (3-8 players IIRC)
In-Between:
Betrayal in the House on the Hill (explore a haunted house until you find a dark secret that turns one of you into a villain the rest have to fight) (3-6 players)
Downside is Catan is fucking boring. It’s one of those games where most of the time you’re stuck waiting for your next turn. 5-6 player add on just makes the game infinitely worse. Out of the expansions, Seafarers is nice since it gives you more to do, tho the standalone Starfarers is my go to pick if I gotta play Catan since it sorta has the best parts of all expansions plus random encounters and a more even start. I also like that in the 5-6 player mode 2 players take their turns simultaneously. Tho Catan still isn’t my go-to of board games.
Newer cooperative games mostly avoid the quarterbacking issue by having secret info, or just making it complicated enough that it’s impractical for 1 person to track everything.
It’s not real time but Civilization is a must for any strategy fan. I personally recommend getting V and all its expansions, it’s peak for me still. Some like VI but I could never get into it.
Unciv is a free, open-source reimplementation of Civilization V. It doesn’t have all the eye candy and music and such that the series is famous for but as a result of not having it runs responsively on a phone.
For me anyways, it’s less “what was I doing?” and more “how do I not be an incompetent combat derp?”
I recently fired up God of War after a few months on a different game and promptly got slaughtered for the next 90 minutes straight until I could re-learn all the combos, special abilities, and enemy attack patterns.
Portal and Portal 2 are some of my all-time favorite games. They’re about the only games I enjoy watching other people play, primarily when they’re playing for the first time—it kind of lets me relive that wonder of the first play through. Going through those with my stepdaughter (only 10 at the time) not long after I married her mom was a highlight of my life and really helped us form our own bond. As we progressed through I realized that chamber 17 was going to be rather traumatic for her because she was going to absolutely love the weighted companion cube, so we stopped playing for a few days while I ordered a stuffed weighted companion cube and gave it to her right after the level. As we neared the end of the game I explained to my wife about the Cake. She owned a bakery at the time and we presented kiddo with a cake like the one seen at the end of the game when she won. We did Portal 2 as well, me watching as she played the solo campaign and then we did the co-op together. I’d highly recommend it for any parent who likes gaming to share these with your kids.
Portal 2 spoilers The final fight where the ceiling crumbles and you see the moon and realize what you need to do is definitely a top 5 moment for me. Those games are so fantastic.
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