Having been through all this, I would most of all prioritize getting a permanent residence permit. This brings stability, and then you can decide whether to work in games (more fun) or elsewhere in tech (higher pay). Having been in both industries for a long time, I can tell you you’ll always wonder if the grass is greener on the other side. But at least you’ll have options. If a tech company gets you to permanent residence quicker, go for it.
I’m applying for it in 4 months time, not sure how long the processing time will be though. This is the most stressful time. I only got my second 2 year permit in October 2023… I terms of pay, it seems like here every industry pays the same and I’m close to the ceiling of my role.
Most of the immigration issues we deal with are handled by HE or a company we outsource to - I have some direct involvement in terms of writing out roles and duties, but generally they keep us away from the actual mechanics of things. However, for us, it’s handled at the company level. I know that they’ve tightened up on the perm residency and H1Bs, but I think it’s something your employer should be solving, not you.
Second, things are tough all over these days, but the gaming industry as an industry has always had a terrible reputation for long hours and (comparatively) low pay. The attitude seems to be to get in younger people and burn them out. I’m very sympathetic to your desire to make a move.
The best thing you can do is find someone who can write you a recommendation for an open position at their company, but as you know you’ll have to take your immigration status into account. All of the companies I’m familiar with don’t take immigration status into account when hiring - it’s specifically forbidden by policy - but if you have to grit your teeth and deal with your current position for another six months or whatever, it’s probably better than starting from scratch.
Some games are so old that the technology needs to be sorely updated for modern gamers to be able to understand the controls, and “upating (the controls) for modern audiences” can be good.
Further, older games often have some pretty awful stereotypes in them that don’t need to be preserved so we can remember them.
I know Disney’s Bambi isn’t a video game, but I’ll use it as an example that’s being re-made. Bambi was made in 1942, and a massive amount of cultural references and ideas just don’t make as much sense in the modern era. There are literally things young people today would be like “what now?” in films that old. Sometimes “updating for modern audiences” is removing stuff that just doesn’t make sense anymore, or people don’t recognize or understand.
Even further, it used to be that “getting updated for modern audiences” was the norm. Anyone remember that hokey fucking Romeo & Juliet with Leonoard DiCaprio in the 90’s? Yeah, that was “updated for modern audiences” and it was a smash fucking hit. Back then, updating for modern audiences meant setting it in Verona instead of Venice and swapping swords for guns.
Like if you’re dealing with games that were always meant to frustrate and offend like Postal 2 or Conker’s Bad Fur Day or Redneck Rampage, you’re probably not gonna have a lot of people happy to “update for modern audiences” but there’s not much to update about campy schlock humor anyway.
So yeah, sometimes its not great, but I think the worries about it are overblown.
In movies there used to be a joke about how “the black guy always dies first” in action/horror movies because it held true for a long time. Black characters were given bit-roles that were quickly written out of movies. That is no longer the case, but you don’t see movies that don’t kill off black characters right away as being advertised as “updated for modern audiences” because that’s just silly.
“updating (the controls) for modern audiences” can be good.
My only experience of that is when they removed grid based movements from New N’ Tasty and forced players to use the analog, trying to walk felt horrible.
But something like the first 2 Fallouts on the other hand can really use a controls overhaul.
But something like the first 2 Fallouts on the other hand can really use a controls overhaul.
Those were literally on my mind! I know Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II got some updated control schemes more recently, including gamepad support, but it seems my favorite Fallouts are still stuck in the past.
God damn it what I would give for a modern Fallout in the style of Baldur’s Gate 3. It breaks me how Bethesda has ruined that series.
I think you're looking for Wasteland. They shared a lot of DNA already, and they've got different senses of humor, but Wasteland still has a black comedy angle.
As in most RPGs, having more actions was always beneficial, so I for sure always had companions in Fallout, even though they were AI controlled and often got in the way. At least Wasteland just gives you control of them.
Both updating the controls, and removing stereotypes, should be optional, at most behind a parental lock.
Some historic material is evil shit, and some people may understandably not want to get exposed to it… but it shouldn’t be some censor’s decision which scholars get access to the historical originals, while everyone else only gets the PC mush of the moment.
Everyone should have the option to see as much evil as they want, no more, no less.
Going back to your Bambi example, I learned a lot about 1942 US by watching the now censored scenes, much more than by just listening to the opinions of those who condemned them.
I agree with this sentiment in respect to the idea that you’re actually trying to learn something from what you’re looking at. I agree, because I felt the same way when I watched censored WWII cartoons. If you’re willing to learn from them, that’s great, but here’s the thing.
Not everybody is taking away the same things.
What you take away from it isn’t what everyone takes from it. While you might rightfully not be a giant piece of shit yourself, there’s a lot of people who are.
My personal example is growing up with the Grand Theft Auto series. As a youth, I thought concerns with it were more or less overblown, and I was more or less right, for the most part.
However, after the torture scene in GTA 5 and talking to a wider community about it, I started to realize a lot of people weren’t learning anything good from that scene other than how to torture people, and a perverted glee in being able to do so.
And that’s where I begin to worry, because while like, I’m in the middle of an Evil playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3, like… It’s hard to feel real “glee” at being evil. Many of the decisions I make tend to make me go “awwww” inside, but I tell myself “I can’t get caught up in that if it’s an evil playthrough.” And in that sense is where I agree, because like, yeah, I should be allowed to play evil if I want.
But the reality also is that a lot of people don’t care about the nuance and are looking for reasons to be pieces of shit, looking for dark things to make fun of, and are generally going to take horrible justifications from what they do learn, and yes, that does worry me a bit.
while everyone else only gets the PC mush of the moment.
You realize that while there might be some hamfisted attempts at this, that not all of them are so hamfisted, right? This statement doesn’t inspire confidence that you see that.
The commentary said they wanted to do rival criminal gangs, which would have made a lot more sense than the construction magnates they went with, but my guess is they realised West Side Story already did it.
Me in 2004: Yeah I’ll never play Half-Life 2 because I hate that it comes with a mandatory useless piece of software. « Steam », what the hell is that? Full of DRMs, ugly, bugged to the core, eating up my precious RAM.
There are valid concerns but there are benefits to using one game manager. There’s nothing good about having to install a bunch of them because every other game is in a different store.
It still would be best if games came DRM-free and all of them were compatible with whatever game manager someone chooses, but a lot of them aren’t, especially from big publishers.
I’m pretty pragmatic. While I appreciate what Valve has done for PC gaming, I like the idea of them having some legit competition in the space. So when the Epic store started, I bought a bunch of games there to give it a shot. Outer Worlds, Control… And of course I grabbed up a bunch of free games, too!
…and then, over time, I’ve repurchased all of the games I liked on steam anyway.
Edit: for the downvoters - as OP, I officially congratulate Kecessa on their sick burn. It made me lol. So… If you were feeling conflicted here, go with the upvote.
Epic is not a competition to Valve. They are long ways from that position. If Steam ever was afraid of competitor it was from Windows Marker Place or whatever the name of built-in windows crap is.
Personally my main gripe is their aggressive strategies to force people into their garbage-tier launcher. Compared to Steam it’s just miles behind, and it’s yet another app to run on your PC. All my friends are also on Steam, and Steam had Linux support. However, if all you want to do is launch singleplayer games, you don’t mind the Epic launcher, and you get a good deal, then do whatever you want to.
I have never used a launcher before (for obvious reasons as mentioned in my post), so I found the idea of a separate launcher dumb in the first place. I have used it in recent times thanks to Epic’s free games. Finished two of the Tomb Raider trilogy.
Like, I’m fine with a store, but I gotta open the launcher to launch the game? On Windows, with the Tile based Start Menu, I kind of thought it was a terrible idea NGL. I gotta open, wait for it to load, open the library, then click to run, THEN it’ll open…
Plus, if I want to track progress, it’s a hassle because I can’t track without the damn launcher…
I fundamentally have no issue with the Epic Games launcher. Steam needs competition to keep it in check. Without alternatives, Steam can and will strangle Dev profits, which is a problem. But Epic is a mediocre service, another app to be running, and actively going out of their way to prevent games from being on the platform of the consumers choice, which I am not a fan of.
Related note: does Epic have any DRM free games? Even Steam has a fair portion of games that are DRM free and work perfectly well from a flash drive on a computer that doesn’t have Steam installed. As far as I am aware, Epic does not.
There’s just a series of minor ways in which epic is worse, and I don’t like having front-end clients for my games as is, so a second, competing alternative going out of its way to push me into using it rubs me the wrong way.
You don’t need all store fronts running at once on your pc though. Just boot up what you need for the game you want and it’s just six and two threes, whether it’s steam or epic, or any other launcher.
The issue is that I miss features when using Epic. Additionally, games from Epic are not visible in my steam library which leads to me forgetting that they even exist. And also nobody uses it, so there’s no community feeling like I have with all my Steam friends.
I don’t mind it for free games though. If they give me a game for free, they deserve me using their launcher for that game haha.
Seduction would have been like winning the Euromillions. Extremely nice, but totally unrealistic and I know it. I just wanted a nice chat and some pocket money after trekking all this way.
Honestly, most “professional” game reviews are made by average joe gamers who happen to have a platform to broadcast their thoughts. Most of these writers are not expert players nor are they always well versed in the genre of the game they’re reviewing.
I never understand why people put so much stock into them when their opinions are no more valid than any random person on the internet.
Proton VPN is probably one of the best VPNs out there. Has open source clients, is based in Switzerland so under their strong jurisdiction for privacy and data protection, doesn’t keep logs or sell data, has good speeds, includes useful features, etc. I’d definitely recommend it, as well as Proton’s other products.
Ahhh ok. I’m using a controller at the moment for accessibility reasons, but I’ll definitely look into doing that when I can again! Maybe it’ll show if I just idle a couple seconds over the selection
Right on 🤙🏻 I figured there had to be with how accessible the controller options truly are - I haven’t been able to check since my initial response. I should get to relatively soon though! Option on the controller is: select --> enable help tools
They can’t sell them at a loss without a locked-down ecosystem. Sony learned that the hard way with the OtherOS support for the PS3 that lead to a ton of them being purchased to build cheap supercomputer ls and never spending a dime on games or software to cover the loss.
I think that was overstated. Sure there were some “fun” projects for fun or publicity.
However supercomputer clusters require higher performance interconnect than PS3 could do. At that time it would have been DDR infiniband (about 20 Gbps) or 10 g myrinet.
Sure gigabit was prevalent, but generally at places that would also have little tolerance for something as “weird” as the cell processor.
OtherOS was squashed out of fear of the larger jailbreak surface.
I think that one was also significantly a publicity thing, they made videos and announced it as a neat story about the air force doing something “neat” and connecting relatable gaming platform to supercomputing. I’m sure some work was actually done, but I think they wouldn’t have bothered if the same sort of device was not so “cool”
There were a handful of such efforts that pushed a few thousand units. Given PS3 volumes were over 80 million, I doubt Sony lost any sleep over those. I recall if anything Sony using those as marketing collateral to say how awesome their platform was. The losses from those efforts being well with the marketing collateral.
IIRC, the Deck, at launch, had a limit per Steam account, and it had certain requirements. There’s no reason they couldn’t do something like that here. Sure, it makes it harder to convert console players if they do the same technique, but it could be restricted sales based on something.
There is a spot in Space Quest 6 where you can skip a puzzle and go to the solution immediately… If you already know what to look for. I tried that once, since it was not my first run and I remembered the last step.
At first the narrator wonders how you did that, then he assumes you’ve been using a walkthrough. He shames you and punishes you by slowly draining your score counter… Before reverting it and telling you not to do it again.
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