While some of their language has changed, the sentiment of this latest aggressive movement is just as distressing. It’s time for the games industry to stand up to it
I’m being facetious. I don’t want to assume they all fit the stereotype of nerd that never leaves his room if he can help it.
They can probably either mask their hatred well enough, or they’re in a place just as bigoted, which may have fostered their convictions in the first place. They go through their interactions with the real world seething with anger and bitterness, then seek relief in video games.
At their heart, they’re no different from anyone else seeking to escape the unpleasant reality through some media - be that through building a peaceful farm, fighting powerful enemies, reading a gripping story or watching sports. They can’t actually fight the circumstances that cause their pain (or at least think so), so they flee instead.
It’s reallly just the source of their pain that’s so much more toxic, which in turn leads to a toxic result that ends up poisoning their joy in life even more. Most likely, they’ve been fed that poison by someone exploiting their vulnerability and unhappiness by giving their aimless frustration a target, reassuring them that someone else is to blame for their misery. It didn’t lessen their misery, but at least it gave the question “why am I suffering?” a satisfying and concrete answer. “It’s not you. It’s not some random and unpredictable circumstance that you have no control over. It’s these people that you can do something about.”
Except you can’t actually do anything about “these people”, but you can at least construct a fantasy of an ideal world without “these people”, where naturally you’re doing much better too. In the specific case of the toxic gamers, they’re looking to video games for manifestations of that world, for places they can immerse themselves in and be free from the troubles of the real world.
If these games fail to sate that fantasy, to provide an environment they seek where they’re powerful and “safe” from all the things that make them upset, that rage is taken to the forums and echo chambers where they share their suffering with each other to ease and validate it. It’s one thing if there’s some niche indie game made by “these people” - they’re on the outskirts of the gaming world, you can easily ridicule or ignore them. It’s another thing when there’s a game placed front and center, getting all the attention and hype for a moment, and that game is full of things that hurt you.
For a twisted comparison, imagine if a new game got all the hype and (positive) attention, despite being full of Nazis, presenting them as entirely normal or even good people. You’d (rightly) be upset too. The difference - aside from the subject - is that your upset lilely isn’t born from a stock of thoroughly curated hatred and anger. You’ll probably not muster the same rage as these people, because you don’t have it bottled up already.
I say this because I’ve been a hateful person too once. Not as bad as some of these specimens, but bad enough to know the spiral and to guess how much unhappier I could have been, how much unhappier they must be. They’re victims turned abusers, and while that doesn’t excuse their behaviour, it may help us understand where it comes from and give us an idea of what to fight:
Bigotry is born from misery seeking an outlet, fertilised by ignorance, nurtured by confirmation bias. The better our lives get, the less reason to look for someone to blame. The more we learn to think critically and question the lies we’re fed, the less that “someone” will be a convenient target keeping us in the spiral. The more we’re exposed to things that contradict our bias, the weaker it will get.
The last bit is what broke me out of the loop, the second is what saw me crawl back up the spiral and unravel my convictions.
Life’s still tough, but at least it has gotten a lot less hateful and miserable since I stopped feeding the hate and blaming others for my own deficiencies and started working on myself.
Last I heard, there were some issues about who owns the IP and copyrights? I’m not overly familiar, but legal jungle combined with corporate politics may be scary enough to navigate that Miyazaki would rather be careful around making explicit statements
Linux Gaming, while increasingly viable, isn’t currently a threat to MS. There are enough reasons people will stick with Windows. But Valve are doing a good job of showing that it’s possible, that Microsoft’s hold on PC gaming isn’t absolute and that an increasing number of games are playable on Linux too (with the right tools). Wine and co. have been around for a while, but they never enjoyed the spotlight of a major videogame platform investing time and manpower into developing a dedicated gaming compatibility engine.
I don’t think MS would intentionally run it into the ground. They’d probably try to squeeze it for money, which might end up doing so anyway.
I also don’t think they’re really worried about Linux gaming. But I also doubt they’d leave Proton untouched entirely. Whether they’d kneecap it, whether they’d enshittify it, whether they’d work on interfacing it with their proprietary stuff in an attempt to put it ahead of any competition and tip potential Linux Gaming developments in favour of using their engine to more easily target both platforms at once, I doubt they could resist doing something to squeeze money from it.
Maybe the very idea that they’re challenging Microsoft’s supremacy is unpleasant to them. Maybe their analytics show enough of a trend to concern them. Maybe they just want to make sure they have a piece of the pie if it ever becomes worth something.
Or maybe the whole thing is baseless bullshit made up for attention and site traffic.
I’ve never played a soulslike games because they are a bit intimidating to me. Amy recommendations for soulslikes games to start on or for beginners to the genre?
Doesn’t linking users work differently here? I thought @ampersandrew would be the canonical way to mention users, given that it includes their instance. I’m still fairly new to Lemmy, so maybe that’s app/instance-specific
I’ll die on the hill that DS2 was misunderstood, and rather than being a poor game it just caters to a specific taste in Souls games, which turned out to be the minority.
It’s rather unforgiving with Stamina and requires more in terms of positioning and timing to handle multiple enemies, such as lining them up to hit multiple in one swing or singling out a target to stunlock thanks to weaker poise. Healing also requires more consideration to pick the right window. I like that. It feels more like a harsh and dangerous world where you have to watch out for your own survival.
The Small White Soapstone often works for a quick trip to another world, earning souls, lifegems and regaining humanity with less commitment than a full summon, which encourages jolly cooperation by lowering the stakes and raising the reward. I like that.
I also like the changes to the weapon upgrades and the magic system. Pyromancy becomes an actual magic discipline, that can still be worked in alongside miracles, sorceries and particularly hexes, like having more attunement gives you more casts, consumables can restore spell uses and you can use materials to lower spell requirements, all of which affects character builds. Being able to respec means you can change or fix your build later on.
I’ll concede that the learning curve is bad. There’s more mechanical complexity to learn and less explanation than in DS1, and particularly the differences between the games aren’t obvious if you go at it with the expectations set by the original.
In a way, that makes it a bad “Dark Souls” 2, since you’re obviously expecting more of the same because it has the same name. Trying new stuff may be good, but changing existing systems is always a gamble whether the people trying and liking it outweigh those that didn’t like it or never even tried.
That many people ended up not liking them was unfortunate. Particularly with DS3 going so hard in the other direction, the approval of DS2 has diminished even further. Its playstyle just isn’t to everyone’s taste, and many people conflate “I didn’t like it” with “It’s shit”, which is a shame.
In summary, I think it’s a good game, even a good Dark Souls that innovates on the original, but it’s probably a bad entry point for the genre due to the steep learning curve, and a rough transition from more faster paced titles. I acknowledge it’s not for everyone, but I liked it.
I mean, I got upset like everyone else at the news that they wouldn’t be making more BG, but the longer I think about it, the longer I feel like it’s the healthier choice. Like you said, Hasbro might have pressured them to rush out the next game, instead of giving them the creative space to make that game live up to the expectations.
It seems like every other week a game studio is massively laying off employees; sometimes after years of development. What I’m reading is that it’s a quick way to lower expenses and pad the investors’ pockets, flooding the market with developers and reducing their value, to then hire them back a few months later at lower...
A chunk of their target audience aren’t really gamers so much as FIFA players. They don’t buy a lot of games, so they don’t mind splurging on the newest and most up to date installment of their favourite soccer sim once per year.
Some Sekiro, some X3: Terran Conflict. Taking on a whole squadron of enemies with a single (albeit powerful) ship to calmly dispatch them one by one is just the perfect mix of cozy and power fantasy for me to wind down between the more fast-paced sections of “Let’s chop you down as fast as possible because the longer the fight drags on the more mistakes I’ll make”.
Recognising an issue vs diagnosing it vs. figuring out a treatment. You can notice chest pains and shortness of breath, perhaps make an educated guess that it could be a heart attack, but it’s going to take an expert to diagnose whether that’s actually the case and what course of action to take.
You might want to remember that there are also working grunts in that food chain. They already got paid to make the game, yes, but that was in the expectation of profit. If the game crashes, those execs will look for scapegoats.
Buying games feeds the vampires, but also the devs (even if only in scraps). In our current world, there’s not a whole lot of options outside of “only buy indie games” to both support developers and avoid filling the pockets of execs and investors.
A few people pirating games instead of paying for them isn’t a big deal, but it eventually turns into a “tragedy of the commons” issue like other forms of theft. Either the suppliers won’t be able to stay in business or they’ll work out ever more comprehensive (and invasive) prevention mechanisms. Remember when games were just the program on the disk and you didn’t need keys and an online connection to activate your copy?
I didn’t say they were getting paid directly, but indirectly. Their employment and income - like all other working class grunts’ - depends on their ability to generate profit for their employer. If we deny the employer their profit, the employer will take that out on their grunts. Conversely, if we pay them, that money likely will end up sponsoring further developments which - guess what? - pays the developers for developing more stuff.
Much of our modern economy is centered around credit and debt. The developers are effectively paid as a credit, in the expectation that the profits will pay the debt. If it doesn’t, that will affect further credits.
And no, I don’t remember Usenet, but it sounds like that was a good time then. How do they compare to modern games in terms of entertainment?
Did you actually read my comment? They don’t get the profit from the old game. The success pays for them to develop new games.
Asked the other way round, if the game’s profit doesn’t pay the devs, what does?
The company employing them
Why does the company employ them?
To make money
So what happens if the company stops making money? A game’s profit doesn’t pay the past developers, but it does affect their future employment and income.
I’m not defending the exploitative system that bleeds us dry for the privilege of getting to temporarily benefit from the wealth they’ve already extracted. I’m not opposing piracy. I’m very much in support of OP’s strategy.
All I’m saying is that piracy won’t fix that system, because the ones most dependent on the game’s success aren’t the exec’s that’ll be hired elsewhere nor the investors that’ll extract their wealth elsewhere, but the devs whose employment and existence depends on their capacity to generate that wealth.
Attack the system at the top, but don’t drop the bottom.
The name ALDI literally stood for “Albrecht’s Discount”. It was part of their concept from the start. We can bicker about quality, but if you don’t have the luxury of choice, their prices are generally good here in Germany too.
Albrecht has owned it for most of its existence. The first TJ was opened '67, Albrecht owned the chain since '79, so out of itd 56 years, 48 have been in possession of himself or his family.
For me, it’d also need a Linux compatibility layer on par with (or exceeding that of) Steam. On paper, I’m not a fan of Valve’s exclusive hold on that market, but in practice nothing has come close for me so far (that I know of, at least).
I tried Lutris and Wine, but I had difficulties getting stuff to run, and the fixes required patience and some level of technical understanding (of Wine, specifically, not just Linux in general). They just don’t have the same (comparatively simple) convenience of “check ProtonDB before you buy it, download game, run it, and usually it’ll work fine”.
The more advanced fixes usually involve nothing more than a few well-documented steps like copy/pasting a launch command, selecting something in a dropdown or downloading and extracting a file into some directory. It’s not a universal “It Just Works”, but I feel like it’s been getting better and better, and that’s just a headstart any competitor would have to work really hard to catch up with.
While Elon’s then-partner Grimes was recording her part in the game as cyborg popstar Lizzy Wizzy, the erratic tech billionaire turned up with an antique firearm to “insist” on being included in the game. “The studio guys were like sweating,” Grimes is quoted as saying. Musk adds “I told them that I was armed but not...
Whether or not the gun was loaded, the person wielding it sure was, and it’s much easier to say “Call the cops on him” if you’re not worried about whether that guy might be rich and vindictive enough to ruin your life over it.
No matter whether Musk would have actually had any way of doing so, the fear of the possibility alone can be enough to cow you into compliance.
I saw a streamer do that once with a character they absolutely despised. Save, kill, reload, kill, reload, kill, reload a couple times until they finally had it out of their system.
To be honest, in the face of how dumb that lie would be and how I have come to view stats-based decision-making (where companies favour decisions they can point to some KPI for because it makes them seem scientifically grounded over ones made “just” with human reasoning), I’ll invoke Hanlon’s Razor and say:
I absolutely think it’s possible some middle-manager looked at the view stats and decided they’d look better if they cut some chaff, never mind just what that chaff may be. Protests - if issued ar all - went unheard or unheeded, and the change went through because the numbers told them to make it.
It’s awful optics, in any case, but I’m willing to concede it may be dumb coincidence paired with dumb decisions, probably made by someone wholly uninvolved with the pricing change decision, rather than actual dumb malice.
(Doesn’t excuse the rest of their bullshit, of course)
No dispute on that front, it’s a dumb move to excuse a dumb move with a dumb excuse at a dumb time where nobody will believe that it was genuinely just dumb instead of malicious. And who knows, I might be totally wrong too.
My giving them this much credit is really just out of (possibly misplaced) idealistic desire to find alternate explanations before jumping right to accusations of malice. I’m not even entirety sure I believe it myself, to be honest.
Oh it definitely would be grossly negligent, but the amount of technical systems I’ve seen that somebody should have a stake in but wasn’t actually involved with… well, if Legal’s purview ends at writing up those terms, Compliance made sure they’re up in an appropriate place and nobody thought to put “make sure they are automatically involved of any change affecting this” on the checklist, all the boxes have been ticked and they won’t notice until the fallout starts hitting.
In an ideal world, any change to the master branch of that repo or to the repo itself should require the approval of a technically versed member of Legal/Compliance (or one of each, if they’re separate teams). In reality, that approval process may well exist only on paper, with no technical safeguards to enforce it.
I always treat Wikipedia as a first stop for a general overview under the caveat that not all information may be accurate or complete. From there, I typically use google to look up more info on specific events and such, or sometimes check the referenced sources if they’re available.
When I mean “specific,” I mean things like something dedicated to a certain genre, a certain video game, to gaming suggestions, to asking whether you should buy a certain game… anything that isn’t just one catch-all for any video gaming topic. So I’m not including the various !games@instance or !gaming@instance links....
Consider this reply a test. Supposedly /u/Paradoxvoid@aussie.zone should work, and @Paradoxvoid should also offer autocomplete, but Voyager at least doesn’t seem to offer it.
The disturbing online misogyny of Gamergate has returned – if it ever went away (www.theguardian.com) angielski
While some of their language has changed, the sentiment of this latest aggressive movement is just as distressing. It’s time for the games industry to stand up to it
Hidetaka Miyazaki 'knows for a fact' other FromSoftware devs want a Bloodborne PC port: 'If I say I want one, I'll get in trouble, but it's nothing I'm opposed to' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Crazy rumour suggests Microsoft are preparing $16 billion offer for Valve (www.altchar.com) angielski
Best Soulslike game for beginners? angielski
I’ve never played a soulslike games because they are a bit intimidating to me. Amy recommendations for soulslikes games to start on or for beginners to the genre?
The Real Reason Your Favourite Game Studios Are Getting Closed Instead Of Sold (www.thegamer.com) angielski
Can somebody explain why game makers don't start their own companies together? angielski
It seems like every other week a game studio is massively laying off employees; sometimes after years of development. What I’m reading is that it’s a quick way to lower expenses and pad the investors’ pockets, flooding the market with developers and reducing their value, to then hire them back a few months later at lower...
How FIFA lost their video game franchise - YouTube (youtube.com) angielski
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of April 21st
Another thread! Whatcha all been playing?...
Stop blaming teeth for Cities: Skylines 2 performance problems, say devs (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
AITAH for pirating games before buying them?
Nowadays, the absolute vast majority of games that I play are shit tbh....
You teleport into the last game world you played. What happens next? angielski
(Idea taken from a similar post I saw in Reddit a longer time ago)...
Disney's CEO Is Reportedly Being Urged to Consider Turning Company Into a 'Gaming Giant' [and buying EA] (me.ign.com) angielski
Epic Games Is Cutting About 900 Jobs, or 16% of Staff (www.bloomberg.com) angielski
Elon Musk demanded a cameo in Cyberpunk 2077 while wielding a 200 year old gun: "I was armed but not dangerous" (www.pcgamer.com)
While Elon’s then-partner Grimes was recording her part in the game as cyborg popstar Lizzy Wizzy, the erratic tech billionaire turned up with an antique firearm to “insist” on being included in the game. “The studio guys were like sweating,” Grimes is quoted as saying. Musk adds “I told them that I was armed but not...
Unity: disappointed at how removal ToS has been framed. We removed it way before the pricing change was announced not because we didn't want people to see it. (twitter.com) angielski
Sweden’s Embracer weighs options for Borderlands maker Gearbox Entertainment (www.reuters.com) angielski
Archive link: archive.today/cxPph...
List of specific video game communities on the Threadiverse, feel free to comment with more (kbin.cafe) angielski
When I mean “specific,” I mean things like something dedicated to a certain genre, a certain video game, to gaming suggestions, to asking whether you should buy a certain game… anything that isn’t just one catch-all for any video gaming topic. So I’m not including the various !games@instance or !gaming@instance links....