sj_zero
@sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net
- Comment on Are AAA Games too bloated? 1 week ago:
They might be, but most AAA games for many years just haven't been worth playing at all, much less forever.
Like 95% of my gaming is pre-pandemic.
- Comment on Harassed by Assassin’s Creed gamers, a professor fought back with kindness 1 week ago:
"we based this off of actual historical Japanese battles"
"So here's a giant enemy crab, you flip it over and attack it's weak spot for massive damage"
- Comment on Carney wins Canadian election, while Conservative leader loses his seat in Parliament 2 weeks ago:
In this election, leftists put a hedge fund manager/banker in charge of the country.
- Comment on Discord CEO steps down, replaced with former Activision Blizzard CSO as they work towards being a public company 2 weeks ago:
Discord is like the dread pirate Roberts combined with a used car salesman. "I'll probably kill you tomorrow, you should buy nitro"
- Comment on Do you have any “headcanons” (so to speak) about the Star Trek TNG characters? 2 weeks ago:
The important thing is that it shows that canonically the holodeck is for porn.
- Comment on Do you have any “headcanons” (so to speak) about the Star Trek TNG characters? 2 weeks ago:
Is there a cold there were two Vulcans on that ship, and I think they both had to do it at least once, but according to dialog from memory alpha, it sounds like it's pretty common:
"I am a married man." "It's the holodeck, Tuvok. It doesn't count." "Is that what you tell your wife?" "No, of course not. My days of rescuing slave girls from Planet Ten are history. Look, you have photographs of your wife, right? The computer can use them to create a replica. You wouldn't be breaking your vows if it's a hologram of your wife."
- Comment on Do you have any “headcanons” (so to speak) about the Star Trek TNG characters? 3 weeks ago:
Wait a sec, tuvok literally used it to pon far. So even more canon, on screen canon!
- Comment on Do you have any “headcanons” (so to speak) about the Star Trek TNG characters? 3 weeks ago:
Not just Barclay either. Remember laforge? He was basically married to his warp drive waifu and then she showed up and it's like "oh shit uh awkward I've boned you in every hole"
- Comment on Do you have any “headcanons” (so to speak) about the Star Trek TNG characters? 3 weeks ago:
That's just canonical at this point. 👉 👌
Otherwise why can you create holograms of your coworkers to bang and apparently that's not against the rules or the programming of the holodeck?
- Comment on Do you have any “headcanons” (so to speak) about the Star Trek TNG characters? 3 weeks ago:
Especially time cops.
- Comment on Do you have any “headcanons” (so to speak) about the Star Trek TNG characters? 3 weeks ago:
You kind have to admit that Star Trek isn't much of a post-scarcity socialist utopia.
For one thing, it's viciously elitist and hierarchical. You'd think a "post-scarcity socialist utopia" would have ways that a decorated captain would be able to get their hands on a ship in a pinch, but every Star Trek captain has had to steal a ship at some point because turns out there aren't a lot of them and they don't hand them out very easily.
Now you might say "Yeah but they can't just give out prime war assets to whoever asks for them!" -- at one point the ship they steal is an Enterprise that's being decommissioned -- you can't even use their junk without permission! Then ended up sending half the fleet after a piece of junk they were in the process of throwing out!
"We're delivering food and medical supplies to the colonies!" why? Why is that a thing you need to deliver? I thought this was post scarcity?
For another thing, Seems to me like there's plenty of racism in the star trek world. I mean, you don't want to be a borg, and God forbid you're one of soong's androids, you'll be on trial because they want to dissect your brain.
God help you if your ancestors were genetically modified, that's a jailin'.
Wanna live on the wrong planet? That's a jailin'.
Wanna stop a pre-warp civilization from being destroyed? that's a jailin'.
Wanna be a pre-warp indigenous civilization and not be destroyed if the Federation wants your planet? that's a jailin'.
Wanna get trained at star fleet academy without being part of the top 0.1%? You know that's a jailin'.
wanna be a hologram and get too uppity? That's a deletin'.
Wanna be a combination of two of the captains pet crew members and you don't want to be separated again? That's a murderin'.
Wanna be inconvenient to the fleet? That's a section 31...in'.
Some utopia. Some socialist utopia.
But look on the bright side! If the shiny headed captain wants to bang your mom, maybe you'll get made a member of the bridge crew anyway! Hope you have a hot mom!
But uh oh! Sorry Wesley, you got kicked out of the academy, you have to go off with space pedo now or no space for you! Maybe if your mom was seven of nine instead? "Your mom is seven? Never mind then, no space pedos for you because I want to get in that skintight catsuit!"
It's actually a technocratic aristocracy where we get to see the aristocratic few and only occasionally see the earth tone bedecked underclass in establishing shots.
Oh, we do get to see a space autist in Barclay -- oh, and he's mocked and ridiculed and belittled, and they're looking for any chance to get rid of him. Utopia, ladies and gentlemen! (Let's not talk about the fact that he's not allowed to be a space autist, but anyone is allowed to use the holodeck to create bangable versions of real people you've met or are likely to meet. Turns out the hierarchy can't enter yellow gridlines, go ahead and bang the ship's doctor, or the hot lady who's real good and making the space ships go fast good!)
"We're so advanced because we don't use money" great but who needs money when the highest ranking aristocrats get to choose exactly how all the capital gets used and the lowest ranking proleteriat can just die because there's no star ships available to deliver supplies this week?
"You don't understand! We're morally superior! We've ended want! We've elevated the common man to a new level!"
Yeah, that's exactly the logic by which the natives in America were subjugated. "Good news! We're bringing you Jesus and freeing you from your heathen ways!"
To be honest, Voyager is really great because it lays bare the fascist undertones. The young, attractive crew in nice uniforms walk around the pristine ship and live under the thumb of the God-King Janeway who will kill you if she can get 2 crew members out of it, and will destroy entire civilizations if she deems it acceptable.
But don't worry, she got her comeuppance by.... being promoted to Admiral (and that's not in Picard, that's during the movie timeline)! But don't worry, our good pal Picard, he.... was kicked out of Star Fleet for having political opinions the people higher on the hierarchy (I guess Janeway?) didn't like. How embarrassing. I guess he just didn't murder enough crew members to get them to multiply like firing neutrons at an atom until it splits.
While we're talking about Picard, let's talk a bit about holograms and synths. Why does star trek need EMH mark 1s cleaning plasma conduits in a socialist utopia? Why does star trek need mass produced worker-synths in a socialist utopia? Is it because they need slaves and they're not allowed to use black people anymore in their space aristocracy? Sounds a bit like a Greek or Roman socialist utopia.
But all joking aside? It's the space military-industrial complex. It's Space America minus the capitalism and the democracy. Far from a socialist utopia, unless joining space Raytheon is socialist utopia.
Maybe Q was right and humanity is just lucky he picked the francophone shakespearian hawk-tua who bamboozled him with bullshit into thinking humanity wasn't still a savage child-race?
- Comment on Do you have any “headcanons” (so to speak) about the Star Trek TNG characters? 3 weeks ago:
I like to think that after his episode in TNG, Scotty went on to have all kinds of adventures in his little shuttlecraft.
When I was a kid, I'd draw his little shuttle craft showing up in battles against the borg and the like.
- Comment on Wendy’s Declines to Apologize for Mocking Katy Perry’s Blue Origin Space Flight 4 weeks ago:
I don't have any love for megacorps who try to be funny on social media....
....but those were pretty funny.
- Comment on Ubuntu 25.04 upgrades halted due to Kubuntu users getting a broken desktop 4 weeks ago:
No lies detected...
I'm brave. I'll run anything on the bleeding edge. I main Debian sid.
But that thing, it scares me.
- Comment on Classic post-nuclear shooter Metro 2033 Redux is now free to keep on Steam and GOG 4 weeks ago:
"classic"
Nnnooooooo! That's not true! That's impossible!
- Comment on That Pac-Man, but what if he was a little bit evil, Metroidvania now has a summer release date 1 month ago:
"Remember Secret Level, that Amazon show that came out last December? I wouldn't blame you if you already forgot about it"
Imagine assuming people are still watching streaming services.
- Comment on Progress on system sustainability 1 month ago:
test
- Submitted 1 month ago to General@lotide.fbxl.net | 1 comment
- Comment on Were Sony and Microsoft Truly Worried About The Google Stadia? 3 months ago:
Especially when you're a company with a history of shutting down products people liked.
The Google graveyard is a website that will repair any urge to rely on a Google ecosystem.
- Comment on Doom: The Dark Ages Dropped Multiplayer In Favor Of Doomslayer's Cyber Dragon And Giant Mecha 3 months ago:
Jeez, that's exciting. Giant doom mech.
- Comment on Cyberpunk 2077 Has Finally Hit Overwhelmingly Positive On Steam 3 months ago:
Honestly, I played it at launch and it was pretty good. I'm told my experience was unusual
- Comment on New survey reports one in 10 game developers have lost their jobs in 2024 3 months ago:
It's gonna keep happening until they start making games for people who play them again.
A chunk of the games industry is making games for board room executives.
A chunk of the games industry is making games for the media.
A chunk of the games industry is making games for political insiders.
Problem is,
Board room executives are supposed to be selling games, they aren't the primary customers themselves.
The media is supposed to be talking about games for people who play games, they aren't the primary customers themselves.
Political insiders are just hoping to use poorly produced propaganda to change hearts and minds, they aren't the primary customers themselves.
And so most people just keep playing and buying games that were made for people who play games, since they aren't board room executives, part of the media, or political insiders.
A lot of the more simplistic things said about games today are actually just heuristics for games only made for these three groups. "Oh, it has X, it was made for the New York Times, not for me." "Oh, it has Y, it was made for continuous monetization, not for me." "Oh, it has Z, this was made to spread a message, not for me." Then people get all defensive about X Y and Z, not realizing it's just a heuristic and most people will play a good game with all 3 if it's good, but given how expensive games are, a heuristic that's mostly accurate is enough to scare a lot of people away from a game. How many hours does it take you to earn the 100 dollars they're floating for GTA6?
- Comment on Almost a third of developers think generative AI is a negative for the games industry, says new survey 3 months ago:
Like any tool, it's about how it's used.
But it'll make some real shite possible, cheap.
- Comment on Square Enix Has Set Up A New Policy To Go After Harassers 4 months ago:
Won't someone think of the poor, poor, global megacorporations?
- Comment on Elon Musk says too many game studios are owned by giant corporations so his giant corporation is going to start a studio to 'make games great again' 5 months ago:
I don't always even know if I agree with myself when I'm trying to figure out stuff that's outside the edge of my own understanding, so regardless of whether you think you're right I appreciate the constructive engagement.
One employment lawyer I heard an interview with once suggested something similar to but subtly different than what you're talking about, that "woke" is actually a scheme by the ownership class to divide the working class by getting us to attack each other so we don't work together to get better wages or working conditions from them.
It's definitely a multi-faceted issue.
One of the keys is definitely that "woke" isn't all progressive thought, it's a very specific point, so to criticize the piece isn't to necessarily criticize the whole.
On the matter at hand though, the fact that the accusations against Musk are very specific and in a very specific order really speaks to the fact that it isn't really the author's personal thoughts. There's lots of things you can go after the guy for that aren't in order "racist sexist misogynistic homophobic transphobic". Much more relevant to the article would be that he often claims he'll be able to do things he can't, or he sets timelines he can't possibly meet, or his whole fortune is based on a ponzi scheme where the world's smallest car company has a market cap that dwarfs any other car company even when those other companies have entire product lines Tesla isn't even involved in. Most people who play video games don't play a game engine. Most people agree that once John Romero left id the company really wasn't the same, and while Quake 2 is a technical marvel it isn't nearly as fun to play or atmospheric as doom or quake. Doom 3 was also a technological marvel, but most people don't remember it as a classic the same way they remember doom or quake. Doom 2016 was the first time in decades that id really hit the nail on the head hard, and it was thanks to real creativity and bringing new ideas into the franchise and in many ways into the genre as a whole.
That's the actual problem with using AI to produce games, AI is an inherently conservative force -- not in a political sense, but in that it is fed data and does a great job of creating permutations of that data. AI is incredibly powerful for creating something like what has already come before it, but true creativity brings something new. Someone writing about a feeling nobody's ever written about that represents insight into the human mind, that's something a human can produce, but not an AI.
- Comment on Blizzard are delisting Warcraft I and II from GOG, so GOG adds a special discount and will keep them updated 5 months ago:
Of Course I already had these games on gog...
- Comment on Elon Musk says too many game studios are owned by giant corporations so his giant corporation is going to start a studio to 'make games great again' 5 months ago:
Actually, I came up with a much better definition that I think fits.
"I found a paradox, that in a lot of ways wokeness is deeply, deeply conservative. There's an orthodoxy, and all that matters is that you follow the orthodoxy. Everything outside the orthodoxy must be rejected and silenced, and anyone who isn't strictly following orthodoxy must be rejected and silenced regardless of their alignment otherwise.
If progressivism is truly about challenging norms and fostering dialogue, then an orthodoxy should not exist. Instead, the rigidity undermines progressiveness by creating a new form of conservatism: a defense of the orthodox beliefs and existing hierarchies within the movement itself.
The foolish justification for this behavior they came up with of Popper's paradox of tolerance relies on answering a paradox with one answer or another without realizing that the nature of a paradox is such that there is no cut and dry black and white answer.
My criticism here of paradox also applies to the paradox I recognized, by the way. You can't change anything to resolve it in a simple black and white manner because the components that make up the paradox are required to have the thing in the first place and thus the question is complicated. Without some form of orthodoxy, progressive ideology that questions societal norms would immediately have to start questioning the societal norms it successfully installed, potentially just resulting in paralysis.
I wonder though if this framework helps explain the difference between "progressive" and "woke". The former is a spectrum that most westerners are somewhere on, the latter is where you reach a highly dogmatic, highly self-assured spot on the spectrum.
Most people, even a supermajority of ideological conservatives, want social progress in some form. Anyone can see things aren't perfect and want things to be better. It's when you know exactly what needs to be done and it makes you a better person than everyone else and anyone standing in your way is the devil that it becomes (to use a bad term in context) problematic."
The dogmatic adherence to orthodoxy further fits with an analysis I did a few months ago about the movie Idiocracy. In that movie, the entire world is taken over by a form of populist, anti-intellectual idiocy. My criticism of the movie was that there are in fact multiple forms of idiocy. and today's predominant form of idiocy is in fact elitist and pseudo-intellectual. As an example, instead of watching "ow my balls", watching people watching "ow my balls" so you can point and laugh at the idiots watching the stupid show, as if that's any better. Under such a form of idiocy, the dull end up using the trappings of intellect to try to act as intelligent people, similar to the cargo cults of the pacific islands. From this point of view, the strict adherence to orthodoxy is a requirement because such idiots can't synthesize new ideas, they can only take ideas someone else created and pretend they came up with them, and any movement from that strict orthodoxy will not allow them to pretend they're smarter than they really are.
Ironically, the phrase "anyone that says anything I don’t like is woke" is part of the orthodoxy of wokeness. It suggests that the author of the parent post won't engage with my arguments in any real way, because they're just reciting pieces of an orthodoxy they've been given.
My post didn't call PC Gamer "Woke", I called it "Dreck". The problem with it isn't necessarily that it has even performative orthodox progressive values, it's that it has always been boring, lazy, and typically just an industry mouthpiece. I used to subscribe to PC gaming magazines, and there ere more entertaining magazines such as the legendary PC Accelerator, there were more engaging magazines that brought in industry experts like Ken Levine, there were more neutral magazines such as PC Games magazine, but virtually all of those magazines failed while PC Gamer continues on.
The fact that the article spends so much time in its introduction using orthodox buzzwords is evidence of what I'm talking about. The actual article appears to be "someone I disagree with politically is doing a thing. They are bad because I disagree with him politically."
- Comment on Elon Musk says too many game studios are owned by giant corporations so his giant corporation is going to start a studio to 'make games great again' 5 months ago:
Yeah.... It's an actual shame that all the good magazines got shut down while dreck like this continues to survive.
- Comment on Valve must address swastikas and other hate on Steam, writes US senator in a letter to Gabe Newell 5 months ago:
A lot of fascists don't realize they're fascist.
Mussolini once said "Fascism can be better described as corporatism, the combination of state and corporate power". Under fascism, everything and everyone is socialized under the state, and everything becomes a tool of the state. For this reason, some historians call fascism "State Socialism", contrasting Hitler's "Racial Socialism" or Marxism's "Class Socialism", each of which use a totalizing state to socialize everyone into one group. So a government official putting pressure on a corporation to silence speech the state doesn't like is openly fascist, and many people think they want that sort of fascism.
In my book The Graysonian Ethic, I talk about why people think they want fascism(though they might call their fascism something different because they want to pretend they're not calling for fascism) but they actually don't:
"The truth is, everybody thinks that they want fascism because they imagine that fascism will do exactly what they want and nothing more. They look at all the groups of people that they do not like and they imagine that the fascists will go and clamp down on those people and then just stop. Reality is not so kind. Yes, the evil empire did go out and do reprehensible things to the group that they identified as causing the problem. Of course, you do not need to make any kind of choices to whether someone of that particular group caused any problems to realize that most people within any given group are not responsible for the actions of the few. Within any given group there are lots of people who are just trying to sit back and live their lives without hurting anyone. Despite that, this great evil empire went out and exterminated a people. They did not stop there though. To them, even amongst the people that they claimed to protect and try to save there were two sorts of people: those who supported the regime and those who did not. For many of those who supported the regime, they were given the means to gain tremendous wealth and power in a very short period of time. For those who did not, they had their livelihood stripped away, they were shunned, in some cases they joined the groups who faced extermination."
- Submitted 5 months ago to General@lotide.fbxl.net | 1 comment