Braid is the closest I’ve seen videogames come to literature. The best literature is always about something else - not the plot, but deeper themes. And Braid feels like that, to me. Everything in that game, from the story, to the specific mechanics all tie into the greater theme.
I QA tested Carmageddon when I worked at Interplay oh so many years ago. It was one of the only games I worked on that I could still play for fun after. I think I still have my boxed copy.
For me it was pretty great. I was young, did not have many expenses and enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere and weird people. Play testing games got old really quick and it was rare that any game could continue to be fun after “playing” it all day every day. Carmaggedon was one of those few. It was not even a priority as it was part of a package deal that Interplay would publish it along with some other utterly forgettable game. Brian, the owner of the company, took notice of it when he came to QA one day and found a bunch of us playing a LAN game when we were supposed to be working on other titles. After a few years of game testing I was kind of burned out and was going to quit but got hired into the IT dept. Here I am almost 25 yrs later still doing IT, though not in the very volatile games business.
That’s amazing, thanks for telling. I guess you’re partly responsible for my career in game dev and the pitch black humor my friends must endure.
Hey maybe if you ever have a problem with a server or something you can destroy it with your car.
I’ve looked up swiv 3d. It looks super bland and unexciting. I can imagine getting burned out from that. The predecessor looks better. I used to play tyrion 2000 as a kid.
So, I haven’t watched this yet but I just wanted to say this. I opened this video in an isolated, private tab. I’m not logged in, this is the algorithm in it’s default state. And litteraly the first video YouTube recommends me on the right of this one is a one hour and twenty-one minutes video called “Spider-Man 2 is Disgusting, Woke Propaganda”. YouTube’s default recommandation are still horrendously fucked and immediatly sends you to far right content…
I mean, if your business is able to convert people to a mindset that is more supportive of your business and less likely to regulate it, and all your concerned about is making money, then this is the obvious choice is it not?
A long time ago (at least 15 or 20 years) I played a game on PC with physics like this. I specifically remember driving a Dodge Viper, and every crash would crumple the body a little more where it took a hit. At one point I ended up crumpling the entire car into a single tire I could drive around, as the tires were the only thing that didn’t squish.
YES It was a Dodge Viper game, as in that was the only car available I think. And there was a button to either crush the car more or maybe launch it into the air? I’m pretty sure that’s how I managed to crumple it into a ball with wheels just like you. 15 to 20 years ago sounds right
This game is awesome and deserves more credit than it receives. The only thing it lacks imo is built-in multiplayer support (right now you can have mp with a mod but it has some flaws).
Aero is simultaneously half missing and the most detailed aero of any game I’ve played. if you take all the weight out of a piccolina and put a mattress on the roof and push it down a hill it flys.
beamNG was one of the games that drove me to build a new PC this summer with an actually modern CPU. That physics engine is completely unparalleled but damn have you gotta pay for it.
The headline made me think I must be missing something. It’s not weird to me that games look better/more realistic over time. That’s the progression of technology.
So I watched the video, and… if I was missing something in the headline, I missed it in the video, too. I want my 6 minutes back, please.
To summarize: the video opens on a series of games, each one progressively older, overlaid with a review of that game from the time it came out praising it as the best graphical fidelity of its time. Basically, they’re saying “Yes, graphics got better, but we always seem to conclude that they’re the best they will ever be”
We can’t just get out of capitalism, but you can work to improve your situation. If you have a yard, grow a garden.
Also, see if there’s a mutual aid group in your area, and if not consider talking with your neighbors about what you can do to help each other out. One person might be good with car Maintanance. Another might be a good gardener. Everyone can contribute something.
Where did I say it would solve the climate crisis? I was just having an alternative to capitalism to provide some of your food. Of course it won’t dismantle capitalism or save the world. People have been gardening forever, yet here we are. It’s just a step you can take to take some control over your situation back.
no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism.
There was a time, long ago, where companies actually cared about their customers, and wanted to sell them good products while making a profit, and they strived for the win - win, and the “customer is always right” philosophy. They took their fair share, and they didn’t triy to squeeze every last dime out of their customers with crappy products.
Not that that they were saints by any stretch of the imagination (there were definitely bad players back then too) but there used to be a sense of ethics with Capitalism, in America at least, a sense of products being warrantied to work the way they should be and advertised as how they would actually work.
I have no effing idea how to get back to that state, as it seems like the “lunch for wimps” crowd are running the c-suites these days.
Regulation. Take the money out of governing, both national government and private directors. If someone makes decisions that affect many people, make that person accountable, either through a competitive market or a functioning justice system.
The problem is that the fantastically efficient tool that is capitalism will try to increase it reach as much as possible. Killing competition and undermining laws will always be the end goal, so long as they are in anyway allowed.
The reason companies used to care is because not caring drove customers to the competition. But then there was no competition, and the care evaporated. As long as they are allowed, they will take. Civility can only be guaranteed if profits are on the line.
Tbh mainly because of dumb content. I grew up with free TV so i understand and can life with some ads if the content can be used for free. Also tbh i still sometimes use it for music and that one video gaming magazine’s channel that i really like.
I feel like I’ve become somehow allergic to youtubers and such.
The video pretty much describes why Fandom is so bad and why many games are moving their wikis to alternative services, and why you should stop using it in general. Some examples include:
Ads everywhere, including autoplaying video ads that play another ad when they’re done. There are also ads sneakily inserted in the middle of articles that are related to the wiki, like a Gamespot review (Gamespot is owned by Fandom)
A sidebar you can’t remove that promotes their content
Fandom hijacked the community’s Mcdonald’s wiki to turn it into a giant advertisement
Accounts that are 4 days old can bypass restrictions and easily vandalize pages
Fandom sometimes introduces things nobody wants, such as AI generated answers that are usually wrong, take up the top half of the page, and with no way for wiki admins to remove it. They removed it after a lot of backlash but still…
When people fork their wikis to other sites, fandom refuses to let admins delete their old wikis. This makes new wikis difficult to start because Fandom usually ends up as the top result on search engines, even if they’re old abandoned wikis.
And then you learn about Fextra’s embedded twitch player that artificially inflates their twitch view count and pushes out smaller content creators who are actually trying to engage with a game’s audience.
God, I hate constantly seeing their channel with 50k+ views on Twitch. It’s insane that embedding the player throughout their entire website isn’t against TOS.
Oh yeah… Gamespot, that place existed and it was terrible always. Then you look at the other things Gamespot own and realize they all got butchered in terms of reliability and impact.
Seems like on that last one someone could go through and change all the content in every page to a link to the new wiki. A PIA? Certainly, but at least it would get the ball rolling and use the built up SEO from fandom to help your new site get views.
Unfortunately they just use a bot to revert those. You’re not allowed to truly migrate off fandom, all you can do is fork your own data and try to out-SEO the fandom wiki, because as soon as you put it.on fandom, fandom owns it too.
I wonder if you could use a bot and AI to write fake information and post that instead. Seems like fandom wouldn’t have enough game specific info to judge the accuracy, especially if it happened over time.
The video also calls out that one of the challenges in moving off of fandom is SEO. The fandom sites often are above the new sites even when the fandom site becomes a pile of unmaintained, vandalized garbage. This suggests that vandalism actually helps fandom.
The best thing we can do is not visit the sites and don’t link to them, instead using and linking to their new sites.
Fandom is a wiki farm, meaning it hosts a bunch of wikis. Also they run on freely available software mediawiki.
Fandom has a couple main problems:
Barriers to entry are super low, verification for users takes place 4 days post account creation, with no other steps needed by the user. Paired with the limited options that moderators have for editing access on wikis and you have a wiki that is much tougher to moderate.
Ads. Fandom is for-profit. And that means super obtrusive ads that we’ve come to expect. But fandom also shoved ads in the middle of wiki pages, with admins having no control of where those should be placed. There’s also the matter of sketchy ads that are served to minors. Also, some of the ads are outdated but are for subsidiary companies of Fandom.
The Grimace Incident. Basically Fandom took over and turned the McDonald’s and grimace wikis into huge advertisements, wiping out the hard work that the actual wiki maintainers did. They also put in a bunch of factually incorrect information, literally going against the whole purpose of a wiki and really worrying other wikis, because what’s stopping Fandom from getting paid again and repeating the event with their wikis?
I’m sure I glossed over a bunch of the details but that’s the best I can do from memory.
It is called individious, there are many hosts you can choose from. In any instance, a youtube link you paste in the search bar gives you that video in individious. If a certain video is not working, you can use “Switch Individious Instance” to quickly jump to another.
Why would we need a fediverse alternative 😂 unless you want to go around editing wikis with your mastodon account, wikis are basically just static webpages. It’s called HTML 😂
Believe it or not, Wikipedia actually does use a single global account for all of its wikis. That includes Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, and almost every other site listed on their website. The only one you have to create a separate account for is their test wiki where they test new versions of MediaWiki (the software they develop for their wikis).
Wikis like Fandom typically make it easy/easier to create and edit pages. Wiki editors are rare and you want to make it as easy for them to latch onto helping and volunteering as is possible.
Maybe a fediverse option isn’t needed (though the below comment’s point about having a central account would make it easier for a lot of users), but having a convenient and easy way to create a wiki for your favorite fandom, without using Fandom would go a long way toward breaking Fandom’s hold over the entertainment sections of the internet.
I learned about this plug in the other day. Indie Wiki Buddy. It’s not a fediverse alternative, but it’s the next best thing. It can redirect your Fandom results to their independent alternatives.
youtube.com
Aktywne