And this is a problem, why? Mods are from the community. It’s what they want to add or change in the game. You could probably get similar numbers for a lot of games.
Hell, forget Nexus, look at lovers lab (or don’t if you wanna stay pure lol).
If I ran a business, I wouldn’t engage in any political events whatsoever. I don’t think businesses should, quite frankly. Be politically neutral. I don’t believe doing so “supports the status quo,” and thereby oppresses people “de facto,” that’s just pressure from activists to support them. You support gay people on your service by letting them play and putting down any instances of anti-gay rhetoric on your platform. Simple as that.
I think its easy and smart to make political decisions as a business, it simply has to come from a place of pure empathy for real people who actually exist.
Pride is a political movement - or did they not fight for the rights of LGBT people? Flags are inherently political. Flying a flag signals allegiance and identity, which are political at their core.
This makes pride month political.
Being Lesbian/Gay/Bi/Transgender isn’t political in and of itself, but movements are.
While that is true, “political” has been co-opted to dismiss legit issues so those in, ya’ know, politics can ignore the people. It’s really frustrating.
When being from the lgbtq community means that you are persecuted, punished and your life is threatened, doesn’t it mean it is political? why do you say it is not political? Or is that about fighting for survival? Is fighting for survival political? Does it even matter? You don’t specify it in your comment, are you supporting the other comments that because it is political companies should stay away from it?
When laws and states and governments try to push too far to limit things such as gender identities the lives of many become political as they are threatened by the laws, states, and governments. And yet, the rights and survival of people in peace is not truly political. That’s just the excuse used to try and censor the discussion of such topics.
No, it’s definitely political. So was the Civil Rights movement in the US. So was Womens’ suffrage.
Pushing for change is political, even if it’s nearly universally agreed that the particular change is necessary and good. I agree with LGBT rights and as far as I care, they can have a month long pride if they want, it doesn’t in any way chafe my willy. However, I agree with the person you replied to. As a business, ANY stance on ANY political cause risks alienation of some part of your customer base. Doing a 180 on your stance like Jagex did is of course the worst thing you can do, because then you alienate the people who agreed with you, but the others will still remember when you disagreed with them. Once they decided to do pride, they should’ve fucking stuck to it, at least for the year where they already had events scheduled!
If I ran a public-facing business at all, it would have literally no political allegiance or opinions. No stance on LGBT rights, no political donations (not really a huge thing in my country anyway), etc. Just do my thing, provide a great service, make sure my employees and customers are happy, and… The LGBT folks can do whatever they want, I’m just not voicing support for them as a business. Even if I as a person root for equal rights, I just don’t want to take a stance as a business owner. Donations to charities, including LGBT charities, are fine - I just don’t want it to be particularly public. But then I just prefer privacy in these kinds of matters.
Pride movement is as political as Christmas is political. There will be people that make it a political issue, but that doesn’t mean it is actually political. A company that celebrates a holiday that big part of the population celebrate is not siding with a political party or even with a religion. The rights for any minorities in a government or a state is political, but pride is a celebration and as such it is not political. A state making a religion official and forced/encouraged is political. Celebrating Christmas is not political. And celebrating Christmas as a company doesn’t mean they alienate customers or employees that don’t actually follow the religious side of the holiday.
Don’t get sucked into the idea that a company cannot show support for minorities or make events depending on the celebrations socially occurring because you need to be neutral. That’s not neutrality, that’s self censorship.
To take it to the extremes, are we expecting companies to say they are not against slavery but also not in favor, because it is political? Child labour is bad, but I don’t want to support any side because it is too political. Terrorism attacks? Well we don’t have a stance against or for them, it’s just too political.
There’s a big difference between siding with one party or another and not showing a stance into what should be universal human rights. Are universal human rights political? Well kinda, but we shouldn’t support, or allow any company that is afraid of supporting human rights because it might alienate some customers… Pride and lgbtq rights might not be on the same level as slavery, terrorism and child labor but hell who someone spends their life with is a human right and has nothing to do with politics.
In my country at least, there are differences of opinion about whether queer people can exist in public, use the bathroom, etc., and the people in power are endangering everyone. So pride is very much political.
You must live in a pretty privileged country if you can compare the LGBT rights movement to the anti-slavery movement, a nice “it’s done, let’s go have some beers now” state of things, eh?
It’s certainly not so clear cut in a lot of the world. People are still fighting for their rights and pride is part of it.
If you were in 1850s or 1860s in the US, hell, even some time after that, and your company said “We support black people’s rights”, that would be very political. Morally the right message to put out, but you suddenly lose half your customers and a bunch of idiots want to kill you. Not a smart business move tbh. Now if you said that for years in a row and then decided “We’ll stop our black people’s rights campaign”, now you’re making a whole new political statement, in the exact opposite direction to the original one, and significantly worse. Now you’re also alienating the people who DO agree with what you originally said, and hoping that the people you originally alienated, are coming back. They are not.
Doing something political for years and then NOT doing something political is not “politically neutral,” you’re actively decided to make a politically motivated decision instead of simply continue with existing behavior.
I didn’t say cancelling it was neutral. I was commenting on the people’s opinions that companies should take stances.
Jagex here, clearly already took a stance (they had pride for several years) and then canceled it last minute after already announcing event dates for this year. That’s straight up cowardice on their part. Like I’ve said before - if you’re going to do pride as a company, fucking stick to your guns or you’ll reveal you were never really an ally.
The fact that business engage in Christmas celebrations instead of, say, Ramadan, is itself a political decision - it places value on Christmas over the celebrations of other religions.
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be Christmas events in games - quite contrary, I think having as many events from as many cultures would be a smart business decision and it would make a larger number of players happy. But the fact is it would be a double standard to be fine with that and not with Pride.
I’m not saying it isn’t - but so is Pride. Why would you place a subculture celebration - Christmas (since not everyone celebrates), over another subculture’s celebration - Pride (which also isn’t celebrated by everyone)
I don’t see why we can’t have both. Just ignore the one you don’t like and let others have their fun too
Do you also support gay people on your service by letting them organize and run a gay pride event on your service? Or is having to witness people celebrating gay pride too much for your delicate sensibilities?
Not the person you replied to, but agree with them to some degree, at least on the fact that any strong political stances are dangerous for a business.
If I ran a service and gay people are celebrating pride on it, that’s none of my business and they can keep on doing whatever they want. Similarly, if conservatives want to throw a straight party without outright saying gay people deserve fewer rights, it’s fucking weird, but it’s their business. The moment anyone advocates for harming someone else, THAT’s when it becomes a problem for me. Goal of a business, in my opinion, is to serve as many people as possible.
I just wouldn’t want to voice support for, or against, anyone’s rights, as a business. It’s horrible that LGBT rights are a politicized issue, sure. But if I ran a business, and there are 30% otherwise quite well-behaved customers who would drop my business because I changed my logo to a rainbow colored one… I just don’t see myself doing that. If I’m providing a service at the best price/quality ratio, it would just mean they drop me to go pay a homophobic business owner even more money for the same service. Does that actually benefit anyone, other than the hypothetical homophobic business owner?
But the worst, most cowardly thing, is supporting LGBT rights and then WITHDRAWING that support. If you’re political already, fucking stick to your beliefs. Don’t abandon them the second the political landscape starts changing.
I think your last paragraph encompasses the essence of what people hate about this decision. I haven’t seen any outrage at companies that have never celebrated Pride. On the other hand, having celebrated it before and then deciding not to - especially when the event was ready to go and just needed approval - well, imo that’s even more of a politically motivated decision than simply having Pride
So the new RuneScape was just a cash grab? “reduce complexity “ by reducing headcount just means management incompetence, it also doesn’t make you more agile, proper guidance makes you more agile.
I was about to start playing runescape classic before it got bought out. I played it as a kid and have friends that have stuck with it since they were kids. Friends told me to hold off because this new company is raising the subscription price. Seems like another golden parachute scheme for some scumbag ceo is underway…
someone likened it cost as much as WOW, with less content.
for monthly, 6 months, yearly. the original price before the jump was 12.99, 49.99, 79.99USD
the new ones are 14.99, 69.99, 99.99USD member ships. they got greedy, and they pretty much change ownership a couple times, now a PE firm?
BUT people sitll using in game gp to buy membership, but how long will it last. since ingame it cost 128million gp per bond. bond is currently 8.99/bond. i stopped because last year it massively jumped in gp price.
The problems of Starfield, the ones that prevent it from being great even if only through modding, are engine-level problems. Those can’t be fixed without remaking the entire game from scratch in a new engine, and nobody wants to do that.
Maybe in a couple decades we’ll get Starfield Remastered made in UE9.
Not really an engine problem, but Bethesda not caring to make the setting even remotely believable and making the mechanical parts feel isolated and meaningless is what hurts the game the most.
Exploring and collecting materials almost serves a purpose, as you need them to craft/upgrade armor and weapons, or to create stuff around your base, but you can just buy the stuff you need off vendors, which makes both the exploration and the point of having a base pointless. Crafting is almost something you might care about, but you can buy pretty much anything you need off vendors (heal kits, drugs) or get them as drops. None of the crafting targets the ship or its parts, for whatever reason.
If the game was just Dungeon -> Vendor -> Dungeon loop, it’d be much, much better rated and less hated. The lack of variety is felt very early on anyway, it’s not like cutting the bullshit would make it worse to endure.
Also, considering how nearly everyone using UE besides Epic themselves seem to do a really shitty job, including Bethesda with Oblivion Remaster, I’d expect that SF remaster to be even worse than the original 😆
I mean… I can’t imagine it being that much more expensive than Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous? Idk if this is a management issue or a funding issue or what. But it sounds cool so I mean I’ll maybe check it out at least
I was listening to an interview with a senior EU translator several years back, and he said that these days, he normally does the first pass with Google Translate, then manually cleans things up. My guess is that to some extent, most human translations likely incorporate some AI translation already.
Correct. But the AI bro here think AI translation is the final work, while translator that use google translate still required the language knowledge to proofread.
Pure machine translation would indeed be sloppy, but games have (unfortunately) done it before. An automated 1st pass with a last check from a human contractor seems reasonable for a studio about to fold.
AI Bro is pretty specific. To me, its evangelists worshipping nebulous ideas and figures like Altman or maybe Musk, looking down on others for not “understanding” how amazing their vision of AI is, all in on the enshittification and impracticality, all in on the raging hype.
It feels very much like crypto fanaticism.
Even if we interpret OP as cynically as possible (lazy AI-only translation when they have another option)… that’s bad, but not “AI Bro” to me.
If it saves your company from bankruptcy, then why not do it? The developers even said it got a little out of control.
Sure, you can call me an “AI Bro” lol. But I’m just being real. Using AI or finding another job? Use AI all day and make better choices with the next title.
“Save” is a bit stretch, if they officially released a halfassed translation(which AI translation without went through a layer of human emotion is), you will be damn sure the reception is gonna be negative, which would negatively impact the sales and also reputation they have.
My SO did translation as a contractor for a little while, and that’s what they did too. Run it through a translator, and fix whatever it messes up. A lot of the output is totally fine, but not all of it, so you need someone experienced with both languages to make sure the result is good.
There shouldn’t be any problem in using AI to translate something, translation is more or less static. Its no different than someone using a calculator for mathematics equations.
Localizers will still need to check the AI output for contextual accuracy, but they will be able to complete this faster as they can essentially skip a step.
My only issue with translation currently is that localizers often go too far with the liberties they take. Its necessary to ensure people from another culture can understand what is happening. For example, in a language that has no word for “rye bread” or a saying like “you are what you eat” specifically, the localizer may substitute the closest word or phrase that conveys a meaning as close as possible to the original. What is not okay is completely altering large portions of the work because of the localizer’s personal opinion. And unfortunately, because this is entirely on the localizer, no amount of AI can help prevent that. Unless translation AI can be so good that it can even understand context from the various bits of text needing to be translated. Then the developers can just use it themselves. But AI has a while to go before it gets to that point.
a member of my extended family spent a decade or so as an interpreter. when they got their certification, the little ceremony we attended had a panel of level 5 interpreters (the highest score you can get on the test they were taking) interpret a speech from one of the more popular interpreters in the local union. i doubt one of them used the same word at the same time. when we did the national anthem, because of course we did, there were two scripts because two languages. i hate saying it, but it really kind of depends what you’re translating/interpreting, but usually translations can be fluid.
Quality not withstanding you’ve got to pay for access to the model or electricity to run your own local model, pay people to run the lines into the model and stitch them back into the game and pay people who speak the language to proof read the outputs to ensure it’s not giving you gibberish.
And if you’ve got voice lines now that’s a whole other can of worms of paying for TTS ai models, paying for audio mixing specialists, inserting the lines into the game, paying to once again have a speaker of the language QA test the output.
The electric costs aren't nearly as high as people think. For huge datacenters, yes, but that's because they're processing requests for hundreds or thousands of users simultaneously. For a studio using it to translate lines for a single game, they could easily get away with doing it locally, and effectively for free. You can train your own local model on a consumer-grade PC without any issue, and it'll still run just as fast as the big server farm-powered models.
My roommate has been playing with a bunch of different local AI models on his own PC for a couple years now. There's been no discernable change to our electric bill. His PC draws more power playing an anime waifu gacha game than it does training/generating AI.
I think about the creativity that goes behind translations like Ace Attorney, and lament that people are skipping past the nuance. Ex:
The name “Naruhodo Ryuichi” means nothing to me. However, their invented name “Phoenix Wright” evokes a popular image on its own. Same for a great many of their pun names. There are many detective games I’ve played from a Japanese theme where I actually couldn’t put clues together because I couldn’t remember “Udo Rayoge” was a noodle shop owner and “Ero Gotaro” was the police deputy that was taking bribes and was murdered - because those names form no connections in my mind.
Maya Fey eats burgers. Before translation, it was ramen; but at time of release, Americans associated ramen with being extremely cheap and low-nutrition (thanks to Cup Noodles). Changing it to burgers accomplished the intended character theme of being junk-foody and gluttonous.
Quite often, linguistics have some effect on the visual clues of the game (and Danganronpa mysteries just as much so), which means they often have to go very creative with something like a torn letter or a message written in blood.
i picked your comment specifically for this reply.
i am so happy that you found a game that you love withe a great dev and a supportive community.
but i still can’t figure out why this game is so big.
i know, i know. and i feel like a dad trying to figure out why all these kids love the minecraft on their nintendos these days.
you might think i want you to explain or convince me. but i’m just happy knowing you love a game i’ll never understand the way you do. that’s actually really fucking cool.
Do you mean Stardew Valley or Haunted Chocolatier?
Stardew Valley is a combination of a creativity toy, a dating simulator, a soap opera and a security blanket. You’re actually able to return to a humble artisanal life, make absolute bank doing it, and beat the giant megacorp should you choose do to so. A decreasing number of places offer that kind of hopeful feeling in reality.
Haunted Chocolatier? I don’t know, didn’t really see the appeal when it was explained to me.
people are gonna hate me, but i never got into Star Wars. however - and i can’t explain why - Spaceballs was my favourite movie as a kid. i recoded it off CityTV on Beta.
The initial appeal for me was that I enjoyed harvest moon, except for how the old tech made the experience of playing it suck so bad, I couldn't replay it. It was annoying doing any of the basic tasks like switching tools iirc. so there was a huge opening in the market for a new harvest moon that wasn't annoying to play. And where you were allowed to be gay.
So the initial buzz came from that, imo. the people who wanted a new harvest moon game were like 'wow, finally!' and then word of mouth did its thing. these days, nostalgia for it specifically drives people back to play, along with extensive modding and occasional free updates keeping things fresh.
i think other people can explain better why the harvest moon formula itself is so appealing, but i just think it's interesting how an indie game can get so popular by just being like "what if i made this big corporation game people want a new entry from, but fixed the stuff in it that sucks?'
i don’t know anything about harvest moon, but you said something that stood out for me.
i thought it was neat that you could flirt with anyone in that game, but that’s as far as i got with that. i assume, though, that you can pursue relationships with anyone and that it’s totally not an issue at all. that’s the impression i got, and i thought that was pretty cool. didn’t come off as anything political when i saw it at the time, though, i just figured it was the inevitable evolution of characters in fiction. i miss my old naivity.
iirc, there was one old harvest moon game where you played as a woman and you could marry a guy OR live forever with your female bestie. i don't remember if that one made it to the english speaking world.
stardew valley really upped the game when the guy who made it decided it'd be no big deal if you wanted to pursue a same sex relationship in it. now it feels like a standard of the genre to let you do that, and it really wasn't always like that. other games did it, too, but it still felt exceptional back then.
(but, yeah, the gay thing was a big deal for me personally, especially at the time sdv came out. i don't know if it was generally a big deal for most players, but that's definitely a reason for it to catch a certain sort of player's eye back when it was first becoming popular.)
i thought there was something special about just making it that way and not making a point of it. it’s just the way it is. that’s just really cool to me.
Chiming in with why I love SV: While the game itself is a new thing (well 9 years old at this point), it really feels like a product of an earlier time. And not just the graphics, music, gameplay, and plot. It lacks all the dark pattern mechanics and monetization that’s nearly inescapable in modern games. It just feels good to play, but always feels good to put down.
I just find the game endlessly charming. Every time I pick it up it reminds me of my childhood playing SNES.
And also patching in their spyware they just got fined for, which will likely mean they have to patch the game again soon to remove it or add a disclaimer for it
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