Exactly.

I’m not interested in any company announcing what they ‘plan’ to do, I’m interested when they actually do it.

Seriously! When clothes have been on the rack for a while getting yanked around by their tags sometimes there’s pretty significant damage, especially visible on some types of textile.

Just stop it.

It IS going to happen, if you keep using big tech operating systems and services, because THEY want it to happen and will not stop pushing until it DOES happen.

The thing that makes me upset isn’t that it’s not for me.

I accept that plenty of games aren’t for me, and that I shouldn’t play them. I’m never going to get into Dark Souls or Elden Ring, because they aren’t going to be my thing.

The part that makes me upset is that Hollow Knight very much was for me, and was a game I enjoyed and have very fond memories of. I was very much looking forward to Silksong, but the difficulty is so much higher that I can no longer engage with this world I once loved.

It feels in TV terms like watching Season 1 of a show and really getting into it, and then when Season 2 comes out, you excitedly start watching - episode 1, episode 2, but your TV somehow stops working every time you start the third episode. Or any episode after the third. Everyone is talking about how great the show is and you’ve seen clips and you want to experience it, but no matter how much you try, you can’t.

If I hadn’t seen Season 1, I’d just give up after those two episodes like “That show’s obviously not working for me” - but I have seen Season 1. I’m invested, yet now I can’t see it through.

That’s why I’m upset.

I loved the first Hollow Knight incredibly, and I really wanted to love the sequel Silksong just as much, but the problem, you see, is that I am Not Good.

The first game had an OK difficulty and plenty of charms to help so I made it to the end, but all the first game DLC was so crazy hard I couldn’t even. And that made me sad.

I hoped Silksong would be a return to a more accessible place, but while it started reasonable it quickly got to a difficulty where I couldn’t keep up, no matter how much I tried. Way more than the original game.

So fuck you, Silksong. I love your world and I love your music and I love your vibe and I want to love you but I hate you.

I’ve recently been playing a lot of Minecraft.

This.

It almost never gets better later, in anime. It goes the other way around.

When live-action TV shows get better in second seasons, it’s often because the acting cast find their groove and learn how to play their character, and the writers learn how to produce scripts that work for them.

Anime largely doesn’t have this.

In anime it often starts strong because you have the excitement of new characters to meet, a cool new world to learn about, a great premise, some looming mystery. But once all that’s done with it fizzles out.

Sometimes it doesn’t even last a season before it takes a dive. And it’s because all the writer really had was a grab bag of cool ideas, and not really a story. And once that initial excitement is over there’s nothing left.

I can’t quite identify the point at which this turns from real to parody

My wisdom is “always put a white outline around black subtitles”

I’ve not read the books or seen the movies or anything, so I don’t have a clue what Edward is like.

The ‘minor’ issue is one thing (eek) but if I had the power of telepathy, I can only assume I’d be pretty fascinated by someone I couldn’t read.

Human interaction is kinda built on the supposition that you can choose what you share with others and keep private things private, and getting to know people is the process of getting comfortable in sharing more about ourselves. We feel happy around our friends because we feel we have a sense of them and know them, and that’s an earned process.

If you always knew what anyone was thinking, it would make life very bland.

People are accustomed to consoles being unnaturally cheap, and even as manufacturing costs sky-rocket manufacturers are still eating a lot of that increase because they don’t want to lose sales to the competition, and expect they can make money back later on game sales and online service subscriptions.

Valve meanwhile doesn’t have that approach, and will be selling the the Steam Box for at least what it costs.

It will be exactly the same story with the Steam Frame - everyone is hoping it will be price-competitive with the Meta Quest but I can almost guarantee it won’t. It will be FAR more expensive.

Why? Because Meta are making money back later with advertising, and selling your data, while Valve are just providing a device.

If you want a little privacy, Linux support, and hardware you control, you’ll have to be prepared to pay a premium for it.

I think it’s even simpler than that.

Back in my first year at university, I lived in halls of residence. We had no control over how the heating was set, and in the winter it was pumping max heat constantly. So almost everyone had their window cracked open 24/7, even if it was snowing.

And let me tell you, that felt truly luxurious. You get to be all toasty-warm while still enjoying fresh air, and a nice breeze. And you aren’t the one paying the heating bill.

I suspect our animals feel exactly the same. They want to enjoy the smells and the freshness of outside, while still having the comfort of inside. From our perspective it looks like “whenever they are out they want to be in, and whenever they are in they want to be out!” but what they really want is both at all times.

Pets have no concept of “the heating bill” (or A/C if you’re somewhere warm) so they don’t understand why we insist on closing the door constantly, instead of letting them sit right in the middle like they want.

Kettle pros know how much is in there by how heavy it feels.

We don’t like muffins ‘round here! No muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes, no hot cross buns, and definitely - no smeggin’ flapjacks!

Since the API exodus, yes.

I made a very conscious choice to leave reddit at that time, due to that particular bullshit, and I don’t regret it.

Doesn’t mean I don’t miss reddit though, because I do. Reddit has a lot more traffic which obviously means a lot more content in the sort of niche communities I really love.

But I made the right choice. I don’t want to be part of that any longer. And the more of us make this choice, the better things will be for us all.

Minecraft is really out of place, yeah.

The rest are all multiplayer PVP/PVE shooters, MOBAs and the like, and then there’s Minecraft.

I’ve been playing Minecraft since Beta, and the way I like to play it’s a super chill and creative game.

Nakéd

Superfish wasn’t at the BIOS level, it was a root certificate preinstalled in the OS. Wiping the machine and installing Linux as your operating system would have prevented any exploit.

I can see why you’d still be rightfully put-off though, since it shows a lack of good security hygiene, and you have to assume if they screwed up once there’s no reason they won’t do it again for similarly profit-driven reasons.

The big ones are so iconic, I feel sure the surprise for most is actually that they make small ones!

When people say “Indie games are better” they don’t mean this as some universal truism, as if awful ones don’t exist. Of course they exist.

They mean that triple-A gaming has lost its way, and the soul of what is great about gaming is no longer found there, but in Indie.

Indie games are free to be just games - built with the intent of creating fun for the player, or telling a memorable story, or being interesting in whatever way the creator likes.

Triple A games are becoming only products, designed to make money. They are increasingly stuffed with mandatory accounts,microtransactions, DLC, and predatory gambling mechanics to keep players hooked while drip-feeding them dopamine.

The people at the top don’t care about games as creative expression, just games as a money product. If publishers could create ‘games’ without the annoyance of needing studios of developers or designers and creative types who have ‘vision’ and other bothersome things, they would. If they could just pull a lever and shit out another AI-generated turd, they’d do it.

Even single-player triple-A games aren’t immune. Despite enormous budgets games are coming out half-baked and bland, because they are made by a huge and disparate team who lost sight of the game’s vision because it’s too dilute, and they are overworked and being pressured to just fucking finish it already because we need this out in time to boost the Q4 shareholder results.

So yes.

“Indie games are better.”

I haven’t played it, but that sounds great honestly! :)

One of the things that absolutely winds me up in game cutscenes is where it becomes super obvious it’s just actors in a room. This is especially apparent when there is ellipsis, such as when a character is interrupted by a surprise event:

Char A: “We should head back before the…”

Char B: “Hey, look out!”

In writing, this is fine, but in the recording booth it almost always ends up with A’s voice actor stopping in the middle of their sentence for seemingly no reason (because they have literally no more script to read) and then B ‘interrupting’ them after a weird pause of dead air, with absolutely no overlap or cross-talk. It’s utterly unrealistic and completely destroys any illusion we were experiencing a genuine interaction.

I’m honestly shocked at how many big-budget games that clearly have a focus on narrative and story put out immersion-breaking rubbish like that and think it’s good enough.

On a somewhat related note, if you enjoy anime and good voice acting then check out “MILKY☆SUBWAY the Galactic Limited Express”

It’s super-short at 3 minutes per episode, and has fantastic VA work that sounds like real people having organic conversations, rather than reading a script. You can watch the whole thing on youtube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2erzV0ZmZKca9UHllZ2DObnwC56ffwqH

Honestly the best anime I’ve seen in ages.