who is actually buying these? I thought having disposable income would preclude someone from thinking a live service grind that’s dead in a couple of months is a good use of time
There are lots of people poking at them with sticks. Every time someone does it they post who’s doing it and show it as proof that they’re being oppressed.
At this point, I’m convinced that most developers have forgotten how to make a multiplayer game that isn’t live service. Larian still remembers, but you’d think some people who make action games would remember too.
I don’t think the developers have forgotten, they just can’t get permission from management to make one because management demands MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) as part of the business model because that is valued at 7x EBITDA.
No, that’s not it. Single player games still get made. You can monetize multiplayer much the same way, but basically no one makes a multiplayer game that you just sell once, maybe with an expansion or two, like they do single player games. Naughty Dog threw their hands in the air and said, “These are the only two options, and we choose single player!” instead of just selling a Last of Us multiplayer game for a single purchase.
Idk… I just played Phasmophobia yesterday with friends and had a lot of fun. 🤷🏻♂️ So its only about people decision for what they want to spend their money.
In order to be efficient, it assumes people will act at least mostly rationally. It’s one of those things where it’s both true and false at the same time, somehow.
Yet they constantly create products that require consumers to be irrational enough to fail to see through their greedy ploys. Almost like it’s all BS lies the greedy fucks tell themselves…
No, they tell a lot of those same lies to their consumers, too, so the market is acting somewhat rationally related to what they’re told. It’s why you still have a “buy” button on store pages instead of “purchase temporary license” or “rent”.
it assumes people will act at least mostly rationally
People generally do act rationally, just not optimally. The difference is rooted in availability of information and accumulation of priors.
“The Marshmallow Test” is a great example. People who are predisposed to distrust authority figures and experience chronic hunger will “fail” the test, because they rationally assume they better take the marshmallow now rather than put their trust in a second marshmallow later. This same group happens to underperform long term, not because they are short-sighted or dim-witted, but because they continue to experience the same psychological reinforcements - unreliable social services, inconsistent access to basic necessities, predation by private industry and law enforcement, notably higher rates of social murder - that lead them to take what’s in front of them rather than waiting patiently for a bigger reward.
The next big market crash will produce this kind of person in spades, just like 2008 and 2001 and 1987 did. As people experience retirement accounts as a scam and schools as a prison pipeline and professional careers as economic dead ends and police as occupying invaders, they stop engaging with these institutions innocently and start dealing with them adversarially.
These rational responses result in a vicious deteriorating cycle of distrust and division. Any individual action rationally follows from the prior experiences. But the system isn’t optimal - people suffer disproportionately the longer these rational actions continue.
Another thing I’d like to add, not that your comment wasnt very well argued but just to expand, the rationality of a decision to each individual is still coherent even when talking about sadistic and selfish decisions like those made by the oligarchs and corporate executives. Those actors are not irrational, they are rationally motivated by a completely different structure of stimuli, like you explained.
Capitalism is rational, the issue arises from the fact that a rational decision for someone with billions of dollars is universally irrational to anyone else. You cant expect a system of individualized economic success to allow rationality to be egalitarian.
That’s how we end up in these situations where millions must suffer the failures of a system they never benefitted from while the beneficiaries actively pursue the further dismantling of the system to increase their personal benefits from it.
You cant map the needs of millions and the needs of billionaires onto the same resource pool. The rational actions required to be taken in that environment is what leads to the inconceivable outcomes that make us question actors as irrational. They are personally acting in a rational, self preserving way, which just happens to be the most oppressive and dangerous to the masses.
I think you covered the mindstate of the masses pretty well in your comment, so I wanted to give some exposition towards the other side of the coin. In equal proportion, “Any individual action rationally follows from the prior experiences” applies both to those exploited by the system and those benefitting from it.
The problem with “good games” is that you can only make them a few times before people stop getting excited.
Mario was a good game. A cloned, reskinned Mario knock off is derivative and hack.
At some point, you need to incorporate new technology, new art, and new game mechanics in order to draw in the crowds. Otherwise, why would I feel the urge to put down money for Starcraft 35 when I’ve got Starcraft 1 & 2 back home?
As a Canadian, American Express most certainly exists here. A quick google search shows that it exists in the UK as well. I’m going to guess it exists in other major countries as well.
No idea about Discover though. Barely even knew it existed at all.
Discover is on the JCB, UnionPay, Troy and RuPay. (japan, China, turkey, and India respectively). Probably many more.
Similarly, a JCB card should work wherever Discover is. It’s a billateral alliance.
Oh, and all Discover cards work on Diners Club International because those two networks completely merged.
Alliance members are not 100% acceptance. It seems like 95%+ acceptance though (most JCB will accept most Discover cards and vice versa, though you will get confused looks from the locals). It sounds like there’s a lot of old equipment around the countries that break compatibility but cities and other urban areas with new equipment shouldn’t have any problems.
I’ll probably get a Discover card and start testing this out. I already have Visa and Mastercard but this new censorship issue seems serious enough to make me start supporting a 3rd place competitor.
Between Discover vs AmEx, it seems like AmEx is about elite club / customer service / returns etc. etc. nice features but I’m not sure if it’s worth the price.
Discover is free of annual fees, reasonable cash back, mediocre costs for the merchants (better than AmEx anyway and comparable vs Visa) and a surprisingly huge offering of international compatibility (RuPay, JCB, UnionPay, etc Etc). It seems like the winner to me as a 3rd card to experiment with.
Have you played any of these sexual violence games? You aren’t comparing apples to apples here, and there are plenty of books that are much more graphic than acotar or haunting Adeline.
Leaving aside how gross it is, and separate from whether corporations should be the arbiters of morality:
Incest between parent and child, even if the offspring is of legal age of consent, would imply an insurmountable power differential as well as likely grooming. Incest between siblings would depend on the age differential and authority structure of the family. It’s not a case of incest=abuse, but of how likely it could imply abuse. The challenge is nuance. The goal is harm reduction
I understand that for some incest porn is enjoyable, not because they would commit incest themselves, but because incest=forbidden=naughty=sexy. Maybe that’s you? In any case, you asked how violence is implied, and that’s my take
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