DWin
@DWin@feddit.uk
- Comment on I accidentally recreated Daria from the episode „Road Worrier“ in Stardew Valley 20 hours ago:
Does she have the remnants of a peanut butter sandwich on hear jeans?
- Comment on Too many young people find doing a day's work 'stressful', says Liz Kendall 2 weeks ago:
How do you even deal with wage compression? It feels like it’s ingrained socially at this point, people just seem willing to accept that pay because there’s no alternative. I know that for public sector jobs it’s a tricky balancing act where the government can’t increase a salary for roles in 1 Civil Service grade as it may disincentivise workers in another role at the same grade. That probably hasn’t helped when highly skilled roles that require decades of experience are tiered similarly to a role that may only take 6 months of training, where that high skill role wage is being constrained by that lower skill role. Perhaps that’s had a wider effect of bringing the perceived value down? I haven’t spent any time really thinking about this though, if you have any resources on this, I’d love to give them a read/watch.
Also sorry if my comments felt like I was implying young people are lazy, that wasn’t what I was getting at at all. I think the apathy that young people feel is absolutely valid, and even workers who are in their late 50’s who have been hit by redundancy are feeling this apathy intensely as they may not see any opportunities that allows them to provide for their families due to the general outlook of things.
- Comment on Too many young people find doing a day's work 'stressful', says Liz Kendall 2 weeks ago:
I don’t have that many answers, but I’ll give it a go.
I think we need to come down extremely hard on landlords, potentially crippling their income stream. They chose an investment, and all investments carry risk, the risk in this case is that too many people can’t afford housing, and the government has to step in and heavily regulate those who profiteer off of basic shelter. This would apply to anyone with rental properties, second homes, long term investment opportunities, ect.
Along side that, a shakeup to planning permission. Fuck NIMBYism, sorry but you don’t get a say when people are paying 80% of their income on the bare essentials. From the top down, mandate construction of new housing in an aggressive manor. After Thatcher absolutely fucked us by forcing the local councils to sell off their council houses with the start of austerity, we’ve been at a ludicrous deficit. I think the figure I was reading is we need to be building about 400,000 houses a year and then in 5 years time, we’ll get “close” to fixing the lack of supply that we’re faced with now
Where does this money come from for that? I dunno, I would guess borrowing like we have done. It’s risky as hell, but it’s better than the current risk where we borrow against our rise in GDP, just hoping we outpace the loan rate without any long term plan to reduce the cost of living. Failing that, a wealth tax could maybe be possible? In the tune of 0.5% or so. That would generate an insane amount of revenue, but it would risk foreign investors looking unfavorably towards the UK. It would look risky for their assets, so foreign investment may fall in a dangerous way, maybe this isn’t the best plan? I just have no idea, it’s not my area of knowledge.
I think the above could be enough to trigger an actual wealth transfer. By dramatically reducing the cost of living, people will actually have disposable income. Income that can go into buying things. Say you work selling clothing, your customers suddenly having 50% more of their paycheques to spend is like the ideal situation, now they actually have the funds to buy your wares. With that higher income, well now you can hire more staff, you can pay your staff more also. You’re not having to work to such a fine margin as economically your customers aren’t as screwed just trying to survive.
I have no idea if this is all viable to be clear, I hope that I’ve come to some solid conclusions and ideas here, I’d love to hear pushback on all of that as well as I’m sure I’ve made some wack assumptions.
- Comment on Too many young people find doing a day's work 'stressful', says Liz Kendall 2 weeks ago:
I want workers to earn more, but can you really regulate the economy into being better like this?
The cost of living is insane, but the relative pay per hour of a worker competed to anywhere in Europe is already pretty high. Our current minimum wage is 25% higher than Germany, 28% higher than France, 81% for Spain, and 318% compared to somewhere lile the Czech Republic. Our economy is already stalled out, It’s already prohibitively expensive to run a company in the UK, and I don’t think making employees cost more will stimulate the economy.
Also if minimum wage rises aggressively then I think all that will happen is we’ll get a wage spiral upwards and companies will hire fewer and fewer peoeple. We saw a bit of this as we were coming out of covid as a reaction to inflation at the time. The concern is if wages do inflate quicjly, then that drivea prices higher, which results in people demanding higher wages, ect.
Tackling the actual living costs, housing, utility, food, I think that’s the only way to go about this. Anything like a minimum wage increase just rolls the snowball down the road, and it will 100% be bigger when you reach it again.
- Comment on What is your Game of the Year? 1 month ago:
Naw shucks haha, kind of you to say. I’m glad my ramble/vent was worth it!
Since ya played Edith Finch, in Until Then you form a much stronger connection with the characters, but the content and topics it faces are less extreme What is there will hit harder because of that connection I think.
I hope you enjoy any of the games I suggested! Also really, just get yourself Donut County. It’s a stupid cozy romp. Do racoon crimes.
- Comment on What is your Game of the Year? 2 months ago:
Sorry to hear that, there’s been times where I’ve avoided certain bits of media for similar reasons, and that feeling of “should I invest myself in this?” while trying to keep yourself safe. I hope things improve for you.
I don’t want to say anything about Until Then really as I think the experience would be hampered knowing anything about it, but it’ll still be there for you in the future. There are heavier moments throughout the story however, I cried at both the beauty and the sadness at multiple points in the game.
Some comparable games that have some similar themes or vibes
- Night in the Woods - Has themes around mental health issues especially focusing on dissociation
- What Remains of Edith Finch - Covers topics around death of loved ones including issues you’re likely concerned about
- Life is Strange - Mental health and death along with suicidal discussion and events
- Firewatch
I think a lot of these kinda stories revolve around the sadder parts of life to elicit emotion that drives us towards connecting with characters in the same way that seeing hardship and struggle makes you care about your fellow human. To me it feels that through these experiences we’re able to see our humanity in a rawer form, perhaps its because there’s a cost to ourselves due to our emotional investment. There’s no need to take on that cost unless you have the emotional space to do so though, but that cost is often what’s made it so great. I didn’t play any games for just over 2 weeks after I finished Until Then, I just started playing the piano, went on walks/bike rides/runs, and decided to get more involved at a local board game cafe. But really, no need to force yourself into that, focus on yourself, do the things you need to do to improve your situation internally or externally, it’ll be there for you then.
If you want some story-esque games that feel much less soul-consuming, here’s a few of my favourites:
- Frog Detective - Quite how these haven’t won GOTY every year I don’t know… I loved them
- Stray - it made me have wobbly emotions, but it doesn’t have quite the same “sting” as the games above
- Cloudpunk
- Metro Exodus - Bit of an oddball here, probably a few eyebrows raised, but I think it’s one of the only games I’ve seen actual intimacy (and not sexual intimacy), however that’s few and far between, the pew pew is great
And a couple of cozy games that are a bit adjacent to these
- A Short Hike
- Donut County
- Maybe Sludge Life but that’s certainly on the more abstract end of things
- Comment on Some Older PC games I have, just wanted to share. 2 months ago:
I absolutely loved Oni. I didn’t own a copy for a while but I’d play it round a friends house once a week… Those fighting mechanics just felt so tight (for the time) and the gun play was weighty and responsive.
Shame to hear about the fate of Oni 2 from here, I had no idea
- Comment on What is your Game of the Year? 2 months ago:
Until then.
Wasn’t released in 24, and more of a visual nofel, but I had an amazing time with it.
I cried. It was beautiful. I’ve been learning the piano since I finished it.
Go in completely blind if you do decide to play it!
- Comment on Valve is fixin' to start some arguments over the holidays because 'All adult members in a Steam Family' can see your Steam Replay page 2 months ago:
Oh! This is just the year in review thing, not your steam gameplay recordings. I don’t want my family members to hear me demolishing a burger while I watch my factory grow
- Comment on 'I want to acknowledge that we messed up': NZXT addresses concerns about its controversial Flex gaming PC rental program and commits to taking action 2 months ago:
I bought the original r4 just after release in 2013 and it’s still going. I’ve been wanting a new case but I just can’t justify it as this one’s still in great shape despite having had 4 builds run through it, handfuls of hard drives and it being used to test friends failing hardware.
Built a friends first PC with them a few months ago and used the define 7, its the same but with some nice minor tweaks to make building even easier.