Fortunately in the US I trust that their First Amendment has some teeth. If that were happening in most other countries, I’d be seriously worried that this senator might succeed with his evil plans.
Another thing, the first amendment doesn’t protect against violent or criminal speech, like terrorist threats/advocacy, threats towards individuals (bodily harm, sexual assault, murder, etc.) things which there is no shortage of anyway on Steam and they have every right to force the platform to moderate this, on the count of it being against the law.
Public space would be a place like a national park or the sidewalk. These forums are owned and operated by a private company, they’re private spaces and can be moderated however the company sees fit. Same thing for Twitter or Facebook or Lemmy.
A senator has the right to tell them that they need to do a better job at moderating their platform if there’s reasons to believe they’re letting people threaten violence or incite criminal activity.
Alright that’s still a weird ruling to someone outside America though because something like a shopping mall or a parking lot are public spaces here too as well as anything that is openly visible on the internet. Which makes a lot of sense.
@Kecessa speaks unclearly when saying “public space”—the term they are thinking of is usually “public forum.” source
The rules around what constitutes a true public forum and what the public forum doctrine even means are fuzzy, but in all cases the term refers to a space owned or created by the government.
Thus, a shopping mall, parking lot, or internet forum, being owned by a private company, is not a public forum and can’t really be defended on the basis of the public forum doctrine.
See the US section, the use of the term “public space” in this conversation is acceptable as the term “public” is used in opposition to privately owned and not public in the sense that it’s open to the public like a mall is.
.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space
The government cannot usually limit one’s speech beyond what is reasonable in a public space, which is considered to be a public forum (that is, screaming epithets at passers-by can be stopped; proselytizing one’s religion probably cannot).
Think of it like your house. You can ask people to leave if they say something you find offensive. That is not infringing on their free speech.
If the owner of a shopping mall wants to ban the word banana, they can ask anyone who says it to leave. That is also not infringing on their free speech. That’s because shopping malls are not owned and operated by the government.
I think you’re misunderstanding the use of the term “public” here.
A mall is a public space in the sense that people can go, but it’s not a public space in the sense that it’s not operated by the government, it’s a private space.
I’m using the term public space in the governmental sense, not in the publically accessible sense. If you use that definition of public I’m pretty sure even in your country you can get censored and kicked out of a mall and moved off its surrounding property (the parking around it), because it’s privately owned. Once on the sidewalk you’re on public property though so you can do whatever you want as long as it respects the law.
Also, talking about Europe as a whole is wrong since different countries can still have different rules on the subject.
A shopping mall is absolutely not a public space, and if youre shouting slurs into a megaphone, or even just harassing random shoppers with your crazy beliefs, you are definitely going to be dragged out by security. And or/have the cops come to remobe you. I hope you understand how badly you just disproved your own point.
I don’t get how kids can be unsafe because of other kids being dumbasses. I guarantee the majority of the hate symbolism and speech on Steam’s forums, is from people under the age of 18. Kids are fucking little shits. Especially when they have no supervision, like on the Steam forums.
Teenage nazis when not moderated or taught otherwise will grow up to be adult Nazis, and have the very real possibility of spreading their hate to others when not moderated. It may seem trivial like something to hand-wave away, but many of these people complaining about woke games will grow up to be hateful republicans like the ones currently trying to take our rights away. It’s not a laughing matter.
I feel this is a bit disingenuous. The original Steam forum post said:
when straight comin out.
Calling that even a complaint is beyond me, and mocking the poster seems unnecessary. I don’t understand the intention behind this new title. As purely a joke against that forum post, I guess, but are they trying to mock straight sexuality?
If I can express my sexuality if I’m gay, why refuse that same ability if I’m not? Maybe I’m interpreting too much into it, but I don’t find it funny. I like it when people can be proudly and openly gay/trans/bi, but I don’t see why I can’t also be proudly straight. Or in other words, this game now gives me the message “if you are not LGBT, it’s not for you” which I guess is fine if that’s what they want.
you know “straight pride” is in the same category of thing as “male pride” and “white pride”, right? it’s a homophobic thing to invoke. nobody cares that you’re part of the hegemonic sexuality group, it’s not something to be proud of.
The only reason “gay pride” exists in the first place is in reaction to oppression. The straights have in no way been suppressed, and “straight pride” is nothing but a backlash to gay liberation.
Maybe we have a different view on what pride means, but I see no reason to be ashamed of being straight, the same I see no reason to be ashamed of being white, the same I see no reason to be ashamed of being gay, the same I see no reason to be ashamed of being black. LGBT+ inclusion is not the same as straight exclusion. Gay pride, from what I understand, at its core is about being proud of yourself and not having to hide your ethnicity. That goes both ways, and I sure as hell would feel like I’m being shamed for being straight in this game. Not a great message is it?
Like I’m genuinely trying to understand here. How is shaming straights helping gay pride?
Sorta. They’re pointing out the fact is the default is straight, if you want to scream it at people well that’ll cost you some money.
It’s dumb, super petty and ultimately inane as are most identity politics. I get the point to an extent but anything to either extreme gets a bit grating and irritating.
but I don’t see why I can’t also be proudly straight
Ignoring all the power dynamics reasons why this is nonsensical, what does straight pride look like to you? What exactly are you being denied in terms of self-expression or inclusion?
its ok to vilify straightness hope this helps. you are not oppressed in any way for being straight lmao. this is the “complaining about anti-white racism” of misunderstanding sexuality power dynamics. queer people are telling you to shut up and you’re doubling down on your chauvinism, consider touch-grass you suck!
Yeah and that behavior is how the queer community loses straight allies.
When you require people to vote in your favor for your personal safety and survival, maybe don’t throw shit in their face. At some point they’ll say “fuck it, you’re on your own.”
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the Straight moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Gays’ great stumbling block in their stride toward freedom is not the Super Straight or the Super Happy Fun American, but the Straight moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes they can set the timetable for another person’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Gay to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
If you never leave the online world then the only oppression you can know is being called mean words. That’s the only way these people can justify what they’re saying. Dang, someone called you a cissy and you don’t get a little ‘straight’ title in a game? Awesome! Hope this brutal oppression keeps going!
Then you should probably leave every game, because you can probably find some dumbfucks that argue about this everywhere. There are less than 30 people posting on this Steam discussion linked.
Honestly then… it probably didn’t warrant a response that will only bring more attention to their whining and more people rushing in to “support the cause”
Nobody normal complains about politics in games, what people complain about is poor writing and US cultural idiosyncratic defaultism in games. Perhaps if ESA members hadn’t laid off the lion’s share of adult writers in the room to hire cheap, overwhelmingly ignorant, uneducated and straight out of college dev teams with a superiority complex, we could get good narratives. There’s a reason why everyone and their mothers keeps harping about indie games now, that’s where the laid off talent went, they make independent games now. But it’s cheaper to take “journos” to Disneyland than keeping a roster of devs with 10+ years experience. In the past, there was already a backlash on journos for their habitual prostitution to the companies they cover but that message was quickly erased in favour of “gAmErS aRe MiSoGyNiStIc”. Now, most traditional game news outlets are owned by a handful of holding companies, and most of their articles are AI generated drivel by, you guessed it, people not holding journalism degrees. Gaming journalism has become the off ramp of untalented and incompetent language/social science majors who are too inept to actually find a job in their field. That’s why we get this level of shitty journalism, because technically, they really don’t know what being a journalist is, from the ethics standards to the reporting without inserting personal bias. No self respecting journalist chooses covering hatsune miko’s latest release when there are so many conflicts in the world that need covering, so we get Felicity, Mars and Bruno, English major extraordinaires, who end up on a dead end career with wages capping at below 40k pounds per anum that justify their lack of journalistic ethics by “It’s the perk of the profession since we don’t get well paid”.
There were more articles covering game character sexuality than the mass lay offs of the last two years that left entire families without sustenance. Then people are surprised that orange nazi cheeto gets elected by the dumb yanks? The megaphone holders for social issues have room temp level IQ. When was the last time that a “game journo” or major dev from a AAA outlet seriously addressed relevant issues like social inequality or poverty? Do yourself a favour and compare the google interest in the topics “transgender”, “hunger”, “unionization” and “lay offs” and tell me that it isn’t by design that an issue that affects an infinitesimally small percentage of the population has so much air time in comparison to an ongoing genocide and hunger crisis in the global south. I guess rich white teen problems are more serious than brown people dying. The bourgeois left has set back the class struggle for 100 years. Enjoy the hard right turn of modern western society.
Edit: Jason Schreier is a good example of how to conduct yourself, he mostly keeps his private ideas to his social media but his work focuses on more relevant issues to a majority of the population.
Both GPT4 and Gemini estimate a 3:2 ratio between articles addressing video game character sexuality and those addressing lay offs and unionization in the games industry.
I won’t continue this discussion because “Schreier’s politics come out in his writing as well as social media. The drum he’s been beating for a long time has been about labor and unionizing.” is basically what I wrote on Schreier using more words, which indicates you’re more interested in being a confrontational than engaging in an honest discussion on the topic. Enjoy the Cheeto for 4y.
If you want to talk about an honest discussion, consider the sample set you plugged into your search. You didn’t go through two years of articles on VGC or GameSpot. You plugged indiscriminate search criteria into an AI. We just had a discussion a few days ago about how mainstream media is not covering major gaming news, but if you’re reading gaming news outlets, it’s been layoffs for the past two years dominating the news. Gaming news outlets would have very little reason to ever use the word “hunger”, for instance, and “transgender” would apply to far more articles than those about fictional characters.
Ai, google trends in english, what else does one need? Even after I gave precise google trends inputs so that the observations are reproducible? Your reply proves my point yet again. Peace.
I see you have a 10 days old account. I can’t imagine why you had to create a new one… This one won’t last long, ironically you can go to r/gamergate and feel accepted.
Yes yes, whatever illusion you created in your head to make me some kind of monstrous being because I dared question the ubiquitous distortion of the class message in favour of bourgeoisie invented flags. I’m also the boogey man on my free time. It’s funny, all the replies I got fit just in line with the ones I’d get in r/conservative every time I shared climate change evidence.
But of course you’re DARED question the distortion of the class message… By complaining about diversity in video games…?
The funny thing is how everything you said so far would fit in a conservative forum, reddit or otherwise. It seems that’s where you have you go to find people agreeing with you. Should make you think (but it won’t)
You must be salty, coming back two days after. Did you practice the perfect answer in the mirror?
At least now it’s not ChatGPT! Anyway, I’m sure Bernie is not going to be bitching about too many blacks and gays in videogames (he’s not an incel after all), so I’ll assume this is yet another non argument.
What point have you raised? You bitched that there is too much diversity in games and used an LLM as proof. You mentioned a few games that had failed… So? Concord failed when overwatch was a success, with much more diversity. Hades, Persona, final fantasy rebirth, Hogwarts legacy … Those are the games I played in the past few months with much more diversity than your examples, and successful. The likes of you claimed those games were doooooooooomed and then proceeded to shut up when people played them.
Then started telling that those who disagree with you sound like redditors and conservatives and send a Sanders video. How can you complain about red herrings if everything you do is rant and go on tangents?
You’re also the one who somehow couldn’t shake this conversation for your brain and had to come back. If that’s not a sad fucking life, I don’t know what is. What a sad, miserable existence you have you have, really.
I can’t say I enjoyed this conversation even though at least I could laugh at you a bit.
The original comment is still available. At no point did I complain about diversity in games, I complained about incompetence in games and lauded indie games. I see you’re having a Quixotic moment and are arguing with a figment of your imagination. In fact, one could argue my point is the exact opposite, clumsy amateurish depictions of diversity do not do the importance of the topic justice. I understand not everyone can be as talented as Naughty Dog (Amy Henning is the GOAT) but at least something passable would be desirable. Keep fighting windmills.
I’d even consider the possibility he’s right, but not for reasons that support his argument.
Games and media present transgender and minority groups in an unobtrusive way, and bigots create 17 articles complaining about their basic inclusion for the sake of “DEI”.
On the other hand, how is doom even on the list? This isn’t a ‘most influential games’ list. Surely the 10th best game in 2024 isn’t Doom 1993? Their scoring system (Quality 60%, Importance 15%, Hotness 15%, Playability 10%) makes sense to me, but how they assign those scores is baffling.
Take doom and doom eternal for example:
Doom 1993: Q 8.41 - I 9.99 - H 6.81 - P 6.81
Doom eternal: Q 8.00 - 7.45 - H 6.09 - P 8.45
How is cardboard enemies, simplest damage mechanics, story made of 2 still pictures and exposition text, and single axis camera control higher quality than any modern shooter? And in what universe could a 30 year old game be called hot??
I don’t have strong feelings about level design. I think the levels I enjoyed the most were in other episodes. If this is about the keys I’m neutral about them, I like exploring everywhere anyways so I’d just collect them on the way. I don’t know what else to say
I feel the same way for smb. It has historical importance but it’s not up to the quality standards of today. I like the digital movement, feels better than the analogue stick in nwerer games
I’m a massive nerd for level design, and in my mind massive sprawling (especially proceedurally generated) maps/levels are a scourge on modern gaming.
I don’t think it’s hugely controversial, but I view E1M1 as possibly one of the best levels ever designed. But then again I also view Doom as more like a dungeon crawler RPG that just happens to be first person and real time, so who knows?
I think I also tend to be more into simpler games than ones with too many bolted on systems, which might also be why I tend to favour older ones (or indie ones).
Maybe that’s the point? Newer Doom games aren’t especially top tier FPSs, and you can find better examples of them (Bioshock (not so modern anymore), the alien-dinosaur-robot spaceship thing, and probably others). So they don’t make the list, and then Doom holds the classic place and genre defining status. (Hexen and Strife were never gonna make the list).
I agree that Super Mario Bros could do with a new lick of paint (and think Nintendo has given it more than a few of them) to bring it up to par. Doom, I’m less sure needs updated graphics, but I don’t think it’d hurt if it kept everything else the same.
(Favourite Doom levels are probably E1M8, E2M9, and some D2 and TNT and Plutonia levels I can’t call to mind off the top of my head.)
I’ve come to the conclusion I’m incredibly biased on this matter and also that you’re entitled to your own opinion, and appreciate that you’ve responded kindly and patiently.
I see, I don’t consciously think about the map/level design when playing something so my opinion of doom comes from its mechanics and presentation, both of which are lacking in comparison to what indie boomer shooters have today.
find better examples of them (Bioshock
I don’t know if I played it wrong or something but I really didn’t like bioshock 1. It lasted like twice as long as it was fun and as time passed enemies just got spongier. Ammo is super scarce in the beginning and super common at the end. Shooting not very satisfying. The existence of the elemental gun. Bioshock 2 was much better imo
Larian has always supported modding and D:OS 2 included a GM Tool, but BG3 belongs to WotC/Hasbro which likely limits what Larian can allow players to do, officially. My assessment comes from many years of watching how Swen and Larian treats players and how WotC/Hasbro treats players. But, if you enjoy snarky cynicism, I am not going to piss on your birthday cake.
IF you’re correct, then hasbro would just force them to fix it, and it’d become a never ending game of whack a mole, where probably every update has to break existing mods based on the hack to further disuade people.
Moguri mod works great on the Steam deck. It’s a bit of a learning curve to get it installed, but there’s a guide that will take you through the entire process, and it will teach you some about the more niche features of the deck.
There isn’t much to know about the series other than the main guy got accused of heresy and has to work his way back up the chain. They’ll probably explain that at the beginning of the game as a lore dump. As for Warhammer 40k - everything sucks, humanity was meant for great things but weren’t prepared for what was out in the galaxy and beyond. A civil war happened, turned out that demons are real and they don’t like the ruler of humanity that much (who basically rivals their power). Dude got stabbed, is now in a huge immovable wheelchair that supports his body, but still tries to save humanity.
That all happened 10k years ago and everything sucks even more. There is no technological improvement - tech is barely maintained by a bunch of ritualistic fanatics that don’t know why it works or doesn’t, they just burn a bunch of incense, pray to it a lot and press control alt delete because it’s all part of the ritual. Humanity fights like 15 evil factions at all times, but humanity is evil too. Space marines would be great to fight the wars if there was enough of them for it - there is basically a couple thousand marines for millions of worlds.
Emphasis on this. We humans have become Xenophobic Christofascists* turned up to 11. All aliens are bad** and anything against established doctrine is heresy of the highest order. Human labour is essentially free vs the gross expense of materiel so the leadership will think nothing of having entire generations of a planet mine out some toxic substance that kills before you age much past the ability to outbreed it.
In short, anyone who claims humans are the good guys, is misguided at best.
*EmperorFascists as the ruler is the Immortal God Emperor. ** Officially, but there exists means and people who can deal a little more diplomatically than with a gun.
I would recommend playing the first game (it’s good, though it is showing some age). Apart from that: no, you don’t really need to know the lore to follow along. And the comments in this thread have given more than enough background to follow it.
That being said, if you’re interested in the lore I’ve been listening to a podcast called “Laying Down the Lore Warhammer 40k”. I found it entertaining and informative
For basic behaviour and pathfinding, yes. But aesthetics, outfits, dialogue, backgrounds, etc etc was all made by humans. The reason why NPC’s can feel so immersive and part of the worlds they exist in is because they’re made and written by the same people that made the rest of the game.
NPC’s with awkward AI-gen voicelines spouting hallucinated nonsense that has nothing to do with the game or the player’s actions is going to be an absolute dumpster fire.
Pathfinding was an absolute dumpster fire for a long time. Remember dreading any gameplay where you had to lead an NPC somewhere? Things take time to get better. Gotta start somewhere.
Then start it in experimental games. There’s no reason to have garbage AI in production games in order to improve it. Make it functional, then deploy it…
There’s a place for AI in NPCs but developers will have to know how to implement it correctly or it will be a disaster.
LLMs can be trained on specific characters and backstories, or even “types” of characters. If they are trained correctly they will stay in character as well as be reactive in more ways than any scripted character could ever do. But if the Devs are lazy and just hook it up to ChatGPT with a simple prompt telling it to “pretend” to be some character, then it’s going to be terrible like you say.
Now, this won’t work very well for games where you’re trying to tell a story like Baldur’s Gate… instead this is better for more open world games where the player is interacting with random characters that don’t need to follow specific scripts.
Even then it won’t be everything. Just because an LLM can say something “in-character” doesn’t mean it will line up with its in-game actions. So additional work will need to be made to help tie actions to the proper kind of responses.
If a studio is able to do it right, this has game changing potential… but I’m sure we’ll see a lot of rushed work done before anyone pulls it off well.
I think the issue is that games are games; an example that springs to mind is Caves of Qud’s Markov-chain generated books. I don’t mind them, but once I realized what they were, I stopped reading them. Unless it’s written by a developer, it doesn’t matter. They might as well be empty, unopenable items, like books from Dwarf Fortress where they get a description of what is inside but not any text from the passage.
Even random dialogue is interesting in games not only to “immerse” the player, but to receive messages and information from the developers; if they are randomly generated, they have no purpose. The game would only be improved by their absence.
Those are not my ONLY issues, no. They’re the most egregious for a videogame right now, but the entire concept is just … Fluff for no reason other than to list “AI NPCs” on the box.
Paying for more writers is simply better all around.
I don’t get it. Actually well working AI NPCs sound fucking amazing. To have an actual conversation about anything in the game by typing your questions? That’s like the wet dream of an RPG.
Have writers write the background info, some lore stuff, “books” about stuff in the game etc.
I want to have a conversation with all the NPCs and choose from four premade questions about a quest I am on.
And yes, obviously they have to work well or they’re extremely awkward and anti-immersive.
@sugar_in_your_tea proposed this theory the other day, and I think it makes a lot of sense. A lot of journalists are feeling threatened by the onslaught of LLMs so I would expect to see a lot more news attempting to shine a negative light on LLMs in any way possible.
No. Just. No. One is just a complex logic gate with a bunch of if, the other is a generative ia. Those are two VERY different things. It’s like comparing a rc car with a cargo baot, they are simply nothing alike.
Ah yes now that you made a fool of yourself you start acting like one to play it cool. You really out did yourself on the personal development today didn’t you ? :)
I understand them both well enough to implement them in my projects. I don’t see why people are anything other than excited about the implementation of more capable AI in games. Are these initial implementations garbage? Probably, but that’s just growing pains, So what is it about gen AI that actually bothers people?
So what is it about gen AI that actually bothers people?
It’s being used corporate suits to replace talented artists, writers, programmers, and voice actors and make their shareholders happy. Although this is Ubisoft, so they already making substandard products anyway. I mean, how do you fuck up the login system for your online table top games as much as they did?
So I work in a creative industry (video production), and have for like three decades. If A.I. can do a lot of the work I do just as well, no part of me wants to continue to do that work. Most of what I get paid for is not “art” in the sense that it expresses some fundamental drive in me. But I do love collaborating with A.I.s to create things that I would’ve never been able to do on my own (and that A.I. would have never been able to do without me). This is where things are going, and I totally grant that greedy corpos doing greedy corpo shit is not to be lauded. But that’s an Ubisoft problem, not a gen AI problem. People are the issue with A.I.
I will say I can feel the hype train with Manor Lords, which I usually am not a part of. I like that kind of game and already had furthest frontier so I picked it up.
I was pretty… shocked with how much was unfinished and how little soul and love the game felt like it had.
I figured I got duped and someone paid every youtuber on a slow week to hype it up since they missed some publisher deadline or whatever
Yeah, I saw a review where the guy was like "what mechanics are there are really polished" and to me that was saying that they can really feel an absence of the "rest of the game", and so its probably not that far along.
I mean it just released into early access so I mean yeah it makes sense that there isn’t a full game there yet. Personally I like this approach to early access more then the approach a lot of other games take where the full game is there but it’s super buggy and has lots of bad design throughout it. This feels more like a slowly building out and polishing from the start of the game to the end which I think is gonna make a great game once it’s done. And even now while the experience isn’t super long it’s really good and well polished.
This is exactly why I never buy Early Access games. The biggest thrill for me is starting a new game, and if that isn’t as good as it can possibly be, then that opportunity has been wasted.
Sure, it /may/ get better at some undefined point in the future, but there’s just so many games out there that are complete, and won’t require re-visiting at some point because they got better. Once that first play is gone, it’s gone.
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