I’ve a dual boot with Linux + Windows, my games are isolated on Windows where I’m not logged in anything important. I can just encrypt my Linux partition for a possible vulnerability. But I really think that it’s hard to happen, at least it never happened to me, I’ve pirated before a few times.
Also it’s allowed to pirate on my country, it’s just not allowed to redistribute it, so I don’t need a VPN.
Just download from trusted sources and it’s fine. At this point I’d rather to trust the community providing pirated games than big companies harvesting my data.
I didn’t have a good experience with Linux, I tried twice, I’ve a laptop wit hybrid GPU AMD + NVIDIA, and NVIDIA is painful on Linux. I loose a lot of performance playing on Linux, tried Fedora last time, OpenSUSE before that.
Thats why you usually use a VM / dedicated computer to download / check pirated software. Its annoying… But less annoying than the shit that ubisoft / EA does…
Using a VM to check pirated software, but then running it on your main pc if you don’t notice any malware (I think that’s what you are saying?) is not safe.
Running untrusted software only on a vm or machine that you don’t care about with zero personal info is safest.
At least from Lutris you can run your games (pirated our otherwise) genuinelly sandboxed with something like Bubblewrap or Firejail, which as far as I can tell you can’t do in Steam (unless you sandbox Steam itself, which is problematic if for example you want to deny networking to some games but not others).
IMHO, if you sandbox them it’s actually safer to run pirated versions of games in Linux than running the official versions from Steam with no sandboxing, at least for AAA games since pretty much all those companies have done or do abusive shit.
Gaming in a vm is possible, high end multi-player game in a vm is more complicated because of the performance penalty and the anti cheat (again the same problem) honestly I don’t know how good this solution could be
Regarding the “Trying to prepare in advance” part. Download a complete SNES Rom collection from archive.org and an installer for SNES9x. The collections are around 1GB and include hundreds of games. Lots of them with Co-Op or two player modes.
I think there are broadly speaking three main categories of let’s players: hypemen, analysts, and tryhards.
Hypemen focus on being boisterous, high energy, and fast paced. They focus on entertainment value above all else, even above the game itself.
Analysts take things a bit slower. They aren’t trying to be the best at the game, but instead like to play a variety of things and talk about their experience playing or insights related to the game.
Tryhards are usually either pro gamers or very close to it. They usually play a smaller number of competitive games trying to be very skilled at them. The enjoyment of these streamers comes more from seeing someone excel, and potentially learning from them if you play the same game.
My point with this is all of these routes are proven ways to engage an audience, so having interesting things to say isn’t a necessity.
That being said, this is an entertainment medium we’re talking about. If you aren’t entertaining in some form then I don’t think you’ll find much success. It’s a learnable skill, so don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t come without practice
Only possible thing I could maybe add or tweak would be… expand ‘hypemen’ a bit more to include… well, at least an attempt at some kind of comedy.
Maybe split this off into its own group?
A lot of earlier gaming youtubers… at least seemed to be trying to more or less do live playthroughs or after playthrough reviews that… basically just tried to either ad lib, or write a script with as many relevant jokes a possible.
I keep emphasizing ‘tried to’ and ‘attempted’ because many of these schticks just… sucked, lol, or quickly fell apart into a depressing cynicism spiral.
Granted, you seem to be focusing mostly on live streamers, specifically lets players, as opposed to the older, sort of gen 1 of youtube video game content people, where a lot of it was just… i dunno man, i just recorded myself playing a game, shrug.
…
Also, at this point, there may be at least two other distinct kinds of… video content about playing games, types of people, excluding esports amd speedrunners, but nvm anyway:
…
Roleplayers.
There are a lot of streamers that just pick some roleplayable game or roleplay mod or whatever of a game, and I think that’s … kinda its whole own thing, where a lot of the content/style is … i dunno, you could call it maybe a real time soap opera generator, a number of these people will actually learn or construct a whole fleshed out voice and personality for their character… but also a lot of roleplayers will more or less just basically be asshole trolls/bullies.
…
‘I am bad at games but cute’
Many vtubers, pickmes, also not pickmes but actually interested in games, but also very unfamiliar with them.
This is a whole other style or genre, where the appeal comes from… well, theoretically it could include other extremely naive / inexperienced noobie video gamers, but realistically, its mostly the appeal of viewers parasocially having a mostly submissive but also earnest psuedo girlfriend.
Probably worth noting that this can be a consistent schtick, or can… often evolve into ‘hype(wo)man’ or ‘tryhard’.
This is imo distinct from just being cute and also being any other kind of streamer… because the ditzy cute naiveity is strongly emphasized, often to a ludicrous degree, as well as the lack of skill and amount of unforced errors… and this is the whole point, to evoke sympathy.
…
Also, now that I think of it, this could maybe qualify as distinct:
Meme/Joke/Ludicrous self imposed goals or restrictions video game player.
The whole concept of this is to basically attempt to do something completely absurd in a game, to play the game ‘wrong’ in a way that is at least in broad concept, humorous on its face by how ridiculous it is.
Like uh i dunno… play through RDR2 but you have to never use a horse, ever, or play through Morrowind without ever increasing any of your stats, naked playthroughs of Dark Souls, aim for some nonsense/meme strategy in Hoi4, play competetive Madden or Fifa where your entire team is 4’ 6" and weighs 600lbs, kill yourself as fast as possible in a game that is designes for that to not be able to happen, win a racing game going entirely in reverse the whole time…
Just wacky zany shit.
Usually this translates better to a youtube format thats cut down from a livestream, but those livestreams can get decent numbers as well, and you can also tie in your viewers to the whole thing, maybe they get to decide some new absurd task or make some decision for you at some point.
Thanks! I think you’re right that there could definitely be more granularity to what I said. I was trying to go as broad as I could, which of course leaves out a lot of detail. Good thoughts about other possible categories. I don’t disagree with any of it.
I actually haven’t ever seen the roleplayer category you’re talking about, but I’m intrigued. Is there anyone you’d recommend?
If I had to give a name to the joke streamers you mentioned, I’d probably go with challenge streamers. I think that definitely falls outside of the categories I said, but I also see a lot of streamers that do fall into the three I made up dabbling with that kind of content here and there, so there’s probably some crossover too.
Hey, I took your framework and ran with it, collaborative effort =D
But uh sadly no, perhaps ironically, either I’ve aged out of really enjoying livestreams, or the… content and or platforms have basically just become quite generally off putting to me, I haven’t really watched any livestreams or livestreamers in a few years now, beyond basically a bi-annual check in, followed by a sigh, lol.
So I don’t really know any current roleplay type streamers I could suggest… but it theoretically wouldn’t be too hard to find one?
Basically, you’d wanna look for some kind of … serious, adult only roleplay community for some game, and then see if any of them stream.
Ideally, just uh, instantly nope out of any RP community that has its own MTX scheme of any kind, those basically all devolve into bickering and cliques and internal power struggles … in the actual community, outsidd of the roleplay.
Also ‘challenge streamers’ yes, good, this is much more succinct than my ramblings, haha!
And yeah, you’re right that… these aren’t all perfectly exclusionary boxes, they can mix and match a bit, blend somewhat… but they are all perhaps good basic conceptual starting points for some kind of… grand unified theory of videogame oriented content or something.
EDIT:
Fuck, I just finally actually read your username.
Thats clever, I like that =P
Ok, bed time for me, I’m nodding off, uh, woof, lol.
I mean that children (squeekers) are not allowed in these RP comms/streams, because they very often tend to be extremely immature and petty, and very often just… ‘RP’ as a self insert, powertripping bully/troll/outright fascist, do shitty shit like stream sniping to intentionally ruin other people’s RP.
But uh, that’s my personal preference away from such content.
Such content is… imo, depressingly… often quite popular.
I am trying to more emphasize that there are some examples of what I would say is more quality, diamonds in the rough.
I never got super info their videos, but I think the DreamSMP would count as the roleplayer category. Honestly, when I think about my childhood Minecraft YT channels, Aphmau was the main creator of RPG-like “tell’s a story though Minecraft” content (MC Diaries, MyStreet, Dreams of Estorra [RIP 😭], etc ).
Anyway yeah, there’s a subcategory of people who I think like to roleplay in their games and make a creative, original story out of it. I think another modern example would be the Your Average Hylian, a channel that makes silly content focusing around LoZ, like “What Hyrulean ads would be like” or “Hyrule Cooking Show Parody”
I am not super familiar with the actual content and nature of these streams, but if your descriptions are generally accurate, then yeah, these all sound like good examples:
You throw yourself into a gameworld by genuinely treating it as reality, more than as a game, like TTRPGs where the RP is more than ‘murder hobo’ or ‘i am an extremely obvious joke/gimmick/reference character’.
I remember randomly stumbling upon, at one point, a Japanese youtuber who did / is doing a playthrough of Kenshi, and then goes back and sort of invents dialogue between her party of characters, to try to build an interesting storyline and do character development, out of what is basically a reactive sandbox… they’d voice the characters with an AI gen, or perhaps more old school voice generator, have the dialogue in english and japanese subtitles, kind of uh… ren py story based game or like fire emblem style cut scenes, interspersed between clips of gameplay footage, sometimes superimposed on top of it.
Now, this was very niche and isn’t really representative of what is popular or hugely succesful, but it is an example of another way that you can approach some kind of video game rp content to… more or less try to make something like an anime out of it.
The whole Gaza situation is a wasp’s nest that nobody should poke without knowing damn sure what they are doing. There are multiple big players playing chess with other people’s life there, and you could lose a lot.
But given the complexity the chance that the situation is resolved and thus something is won is very small.
Yes, it’s terrible what is happening. But unless you have a lot of resources and a big army you are not in a position to muscle all the parties involved into submission, which is what will be required at this point.
I just wanted to have actual, official ones shared!
This one is not official, it was done by a girl who goes by https://www.instagram.com/p/CQZUoIJrW26/?hl=en&img_index=1, she just tried her best to make a photo in the ‘style’ of the old Y2K era, and the days of PS2 ads and…everyone ended up believing it was real. She did such an amazing job of it, this one often gets shared as if it were done for Sony.
And…to be fair, the actual official ones got way worse than those I included:
Heh this post blew my mind twice in one package: I was definitely one of those that believed it was a real ad. I distinctly remember some discussions about the serialized nature of it or not. So as you said, super well done.
But secondly, the official ad you posted instead has three nipples at once? And one male two female on top? That almost seems weirder to me.
I don’t care about toxic players and I never spend a dime on any live services… my chief issue is that I have to work for a living and online game matchmaking mix me with people (children) who’s primary stressor in life is trying to print out homework that doesn’t look like ChatGTP wrote it.
It saddens me that my country (Italy) has such a low percentage of signatures. Most of us are either ignorant of anything happening outside of our borders, or straight up doomers who don’t believe anything can ever change for the better.
Big congrats to my fellow northern cousins. I was expecting Poland, who has a healthy videogame industry, to gather a good enough number of signatures, but 160% is wild! It’s refreshing seeing so many people joining the petition - It’s not even about videogames: this initiative will have huge repercussions on the lifespan of other, unrelated products and, in general terms, planned obsolescence.
I think it’s been very hard for us to spread awareness into countries where a majority don’t also speak English, as the organizer and much of the coverage is only in English.
If you know of any big Italian gaming YouTubers or streamers that might be receptive to helping or talking about the campaign, could you reach out to them about it with a comment?
Unfortunately, that’s not my area of expertise. I don’t follow streamers or YouTubers (Italian or international), nor do I have a close enough relationship with any of them that I’d be able to talk to them and convince them to mention this petition to their fans.
The one and only time some friends and I attempted to interact with a few local content creators (to publicize our free fan games we poured hundreds of hours into and NEVER attempted to monetize in any way), we either got ignored, insulted, or received vague answers that went nowhere. It soured me towards Italian content creators and vowed to never interact with them again.
One thing you can do: In person organising. It’s something the campaign has been really bad at. Have some flyers printed up and start handing them out. I don’t know the Italian school schedule, but if universities are still in session they might be good targets.
I did it last year, first at Gamescom and then at a local uni and I think it helped spread the word.
Here are the up-to-date numbers, the threshold percentages are now better than shown the image in the post but there’s still a long way to reach the total of 1 million
If I remember right, both Legend of Zelda Windwaker and Mario Sunshine were either rushed to an end or released early, leading both to come out unfinished. I the details on why are hazy, but I think they were pushed to try and make up for poor sales of the Gamecube at large or to make up for other gaps in the schedule.
Windwaker had a ton of content cut. The ice island and fire island were both supposed to be full dungeons. Both of those incomplete dungeons later ended up being used in Twilight Princess.
Tap for spoilerHyrule Castle was supposed to be a full dungeon.
Personally the movement mechanics and the tropical overworld were amazing in this game.
While the water jetpack may seem like a gimmick, I thought it really changed the platforming in a good way.
Additionally, I’m a sucker for a good overworld and the amount of things you can unlock or discover in delphino plaza turns it into its own sort of level.
There is definitely some jank and padding (blue coins) in the game, but it holds up better than Mario 64 in my opinion (just due to the camera issues IN Mario 64).
I would say theoretically not. If you only do new construction nothing you touch has had shit on it yet. But then again it is intended for shit so it depends on where you draw the line
And FFS don’t send me weird rage-filled basement-dweller DM’s on all my platforms demanding to know why I’m friendly to Epic. The last time I posted something with Epic news in it, some of you really took it badly.
“Omg how dare you write good news about another multibillionaire gaming platform that is not steam? I’m literally crying and shaking right now 😭”. It’s so sad that people go this low on the internet.
Anyways, don’t pay attention to them, love your work on the fediverse!
I’m shocked to see Donut County mentioned. But you’re right, it’s a perfect pleasant game similar to the perfection of the first Portal. In fact, it’s my son’s favorite video game, by far.
Biased because I’m pro steam deck, but yes, Steam Deck will offer you the full steam library of games, on top of games from other platforms / consoles through emulation
Steam Deck will offer you the full steam library of games
*some exclusions apply.
Of my nearly 300 games in my library, 36 are fully steam deck certified. While another ~70 have some layer of compatibility. Leaving almost 1/3rd of my library not usable on the Steam Deck.
1/3 sounds high. Just because it isn’t verified doesn’t mean it won’t work, and most of the non-anti-cheat-related compatibility problems are solved by installing Proton GE.
Some games that say not supported actually work fine. I was disappointed to not be able to play some older games like Jedi Academy, but I installed it, set a community made controller mapping, and it works with zero issues.
Sure there are some games that don’t work, but a lot more do than just the ones that are steam deck certified / playable.
Either that or this magical thing called GNSS :)
Openstreetmap has roads mapped down to a couple decimeters and Japan has its own satellite constellation QZSS, which in combination would be more than enough to find the center of the road and then slowly work your way outwards to the edges.
That doesn’t all fall at once haha. They continually plow after every snow fall and add to the existing piles. How they manage to keep stacking and carving it so perfectly and so high is a mystery to me, but I’m sure the snow is only this high in this particular area. It’s likely an attraction or something
Ok awesome! They use GPS and bulldozers and plows. That makes sense. That said, seems like they do wait for it to all fall then they carve it. Very fucking cool.
That was such a cool read. Thanks for that, I’ve had a rough few days and to read that at 630 this morning set me right for some reason. Have a great day, friend!
Sometime in early March, a bulldozer specially equipped with both a GPS and a mobile satellite phone is sent up the mountain and over the Snow Canyon. The GPS and sat phone work in tandem to provide the driver a detailed video screen image of the dozer’s location in relation to the center of the snow-buried highway. This driver’s job is not to clear snow, but simply to lay out an accurate track of the road itself. Following the GPS dozer is a team of dozers that will begin the clearing operations.
bin.pol.social
Ważne