Screw anyone who says Stardew Valley is a cozy game. If I don’t water my plants they die! If I stay up too late I’ll lose money! I can’t get the fish I need unless I fish at 6pm in the mountain lake on a rainy Tuesday in winter! Abigail has once again dominated me at the egg hunt! Ahhhhh!
I say this with all the kindness in my heart. If stardew valley estresses you out, then the problem is not the videogame. Your perfectionism and minmaxing POV might be what’s causing the anxiety and you would feel anxious and estressed in most other activities as well.
I have had many thoughts along the lines of “how can I fully optimise my cellar” and “dino eggs are worth more money than dino mayo” and it just sucks all the wonder out of the game
We call those intrusive thoughts. The answers are literally meaningless. There’s no punishment or failure state on stardew valley, it cannot hurt you. Full optimization is not something that exist in or has any impact on the game at all.
To be honest, most of the games I’ve played in the past 5+ years since I’ve started to get back into the hobby are stressful in various ways. That doesn’t mean they aren’t “quelling” stress and anxiety for me, just that when I’m playing them, they stress me out and give me anxiety.
Take for instance my current game du jour: Doom 2016. When battles are going, I’m for sure sweating and amped up, stressed, anxious, and what have you. It’s anything but relaxing while playing. But still quite enjoyable.
So, perhaps the “quelling” comes after? A bit like a workout, where you’re hyped up and exerting yourself, but after the fact you mellow out and relax?
I go into a meditative, Zen-like Trance playing the Doom titles.
For reference, I’ve been playing Doom since it came out in 1993, arguably, I’ve played it for more hours than possibly anyone alive on the Internet at the present moment. Maybe over a solid 128,000 hours between D1/D2/D3/D2016/D:Eternal.
I still play it, various MegaWADS featured in the CacoAwards, and whatnot, but I digress.
My feeling with this is, as they’d say:
“Your judgement for the sin of wrath is an eternity in Hell”.
“Why are you smiling? It’s supposed to be a punishment.”
“No, adjudicator, I heard you perfectly. An eternity in paradise.”
If you like the stress of combat, and as much as you say “quelling”, I must recommend Warhammer 40k Darktide. Since the last big content patch in ~October that pretty much finally brought it to 1.0, it has essentially been the roguelite, frenetic FPS I’ve been searching for. High skill ceiling, skill-based movement system, target prioritization is paramount, tons of play styles with builds and classes. Give it a shot. Do some ripping and tearing for the emperor.
They’re playing less AAA games, yes. People are thinking much harder about the $60+ price tag as AAA studios repeatedly fail to live up to their promises. I feel like Nintendo is the only AAA company that doesn’t have a losing record for the past ~5 years
According to EA, people want more large open worlds, multiplayer, and existing IPs so they want to do double down on that. This is from the company who released immortal of averum and wild hearts which barely ran at launch and then they wonder why people don’t like any of their new IPs
And according to Ubisoft, people want always-on live-service AAAAAAA $99 deluxe edition games stuffed absolutely full of microtransactions, loot boxes, daily exclusive rewards, kermel level root kits DRM, Ubisoft connect exclusive, nightmare shitfests that you don’t really own anyway.
Ah yes, Saudia Arabia is the gonna ruin games with racist tropes… Like any call of duty game or most western games set in the Middle East or anywhere in the world really making with racist tropes and stereotypes. Mate whether your from the UK or America the call is coming from inside the house with your awful fucking nations and their bullshit notion of “freedom of expression” remind me who was it that was crying about battlefield v having women and black people in it?
Who said it was better before. The problem is that every nation is pushing their agenda and we need truly independent games companies. Having video games owned by public funds is just bad. Like every medias owned for political reasons.
I’m not from UK or America. My country got stereotyped enough in games and medias don’t worry.
„Przede wszystkim Polska stoi dziś przed wyzwaniem związanym ze starzejącą się siecią energetyczną, a zwłaszcza z przestarzałą siecią przesyłową. To właśnie ona stanowi główną barierę dla szybkiego rozwoju zielonej energii i integracji nowych źródeł prosumenckich” – znów Magdalena Dziewguć. „Kluczowe jest więc wdrożenie warstwy danych i inteligentnego zarządzania, które pozwoli na bieżąco monitorować stan sieci i optymalizować jej działanie”.
To brzmi wręcz komicznie – rozwiązaniem na problem starzejącej się sieci przesyłowej nie jest jej rozbudowa, tylko… uruchomienie niezwykle energożernych usług po to, by tę sieć „zoptymalizować”?
Gdy ma się do dyspozycji tylko młotek, każdy problem wygląda jak gwóźdź – brzmi angielskie przysłowie. Google ma do pompowania bajerę AI, więc każdy problem musi mieć rozwiązanie w postaci AI.
„Dla Google’a to nie jest nowość. W ramach globalnej infrastruktury stworzyliśmy własną, zaawansowaną sieć energetyczną, dzięki której nasze usługi, takie jak YouTube, wyszukiwarka czy Mapy Google, są dostępne dla miliardów użytkowników na całym świecie bez zakłóceń” – kontynuuje swoją wypowiedź szefowa Google Cloud Polska. Niecałe pół roku po tym, gdy usługi Google Cloud doświadczyły poważnych zakłóceń w Europie.
Based off the article, it sounds like it was purchased quite recently as well. My personal guess is Embracer was buying up studios faster than it could support, counting on getting more funding down the line. Then Embracer had a deal fall through and realized they were laden with debt and had to drop the load.
Maybe Gearbox was giving the worst return on investment since it was such an expensive purchase which made it the prime target to sell.
Someone came along and said they'd like to buy them. Perhaps at an attractive offer given the deal that fell through or perhaps at an even higher price than Embracer paid for it. Anyone would consider a sale at a decent price if someone approached them with the offer.
Gearbox is also a publishing arm, which recently put out Remnant II, and they seem to have a stake or ownership in Risk of Rain, Bulletstorm, and Torchlight.
Remember the time Sony Music installed a rootkit on peoples' computers via commercially purchased CDs because hacking paying customers' computers seemed like a good way to combat piracy?
Sony BMG initially denied that the rootkits were harmful. It then released an uninstaller for one of the programs that merely made the program's files invisible while also installing additional software that could not be easily removed.
And then they just paid some settlements, recalled some CDs, and continued to operate as if nothing has happened. Bloody hell.
I remembered there was a Part II to the story that made it even worse, but did not remember those details. Should have read my own link! Thanks for highlighting that because it truly is the icing on the cake.
reuters.com
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