paultimate14
@paultimate14@lemmy.world
- Comment on ‘This shouldn’t be normal’: developers speak out about bigotry on Steam, the world’s biggest PC gaming storefront 7 hours ago:
The article is behind a paywall. Do they have any statistics or evidence backing that sentiment or is it just vibes?
You can find articles and reddit posts claiming this same exact thing going back years, and yet personally when I go through the store and look through reviews it’s really hard for me to come across hate speech, especially if you don’t specifically look at reviews that have been downvoted to hell. It’s never going to be perfect, but I encounter less hate speech on Steam than most other platforms.
- Comment on ‘This shouldn’t be normal’: developers speak out about bigotry on Steam, the world’s biggest PC gaming storefront 7 hours ago:
They also have guidelines for “user generated content” which includes reviews, and you can report people for violating those guidelines.
Sure Valve does not pay for moderators to check things proactively. I quite like that they don’t have AI or some other half-assed attempt at “moderation” like other platforms have. I hate the way that the whole Internet has moved to censor “fuck” and made up the word “unalive” because the automated systems of platforms I don’t even use have decided they are the arbitora of what language is allowed.
I think the responsibility to monitor reviews should lie with whoever controls the Steam page: I would assume the publisher most of the time? The publisher and developer should be looking at reviews anyways. Add in the ability for users to vote reviews as helpful or unhelpful and I think it’s one of the better systems left on the internet.
- Comment on ‘This shouldn’t be normal’: developers speak out about bigotry on Steam, the world’s biggest PC gaming storefront 8 hours ago:
There are guidelines on Steam that ban such content, and you can report people for violating them.
So no, Steam does not do “nothing” as you claim. A very basic Internet search can confirm that.
Even better, users can rate reviews as helpful or unhelpful. Which is great for a wider variety of reasons, but is also good for reviews that get into a grey area or use dog whistles to hide their true intentions.
- Comment on Games you fell out of love with. 1 day ago:
BioShock 1 and Infinite both have the same problem.
On your first time through, the story pulls you through the game. There setting and characters are so mysterious and interesting you’re compelled to figure out what the hell happened and get to the bottom of it. You might notice, on your first run, that the games are really easy and the gun play isn’t particularly good. The actual gameplay gets repetitive, basically moving from big room to big room shooting things.
The special powers are fun the first couple times you use them but are mostly situational and the kind of thing other games just use items for (land mines, grenades, etc), just re-skinned.
Then at the end there’s a big reveal. Some plot twist that re-contextualizes the whole game and leaves you thinking about the game for an entire week.
Then you replay them and realize… The big twist at the end? There’s almost zero foreshadowing and it would be impossible to have predicted either of them on your first playthrough.
There are plenty of factions that have different political ideologies, but they are nothing more than a setting. The most obvious is how they spent the first half of Infinite pretty clearly establishing that Comstock and his associates were violently oppressing the working class in Colombia and that Daisy Fitzroy’s rebellion was both personally and ideologically justified. Then all of a sudden Booker is there enemy because… He thinks they were too violent in their pursuit to overthrow that oppression or something? It really felt like the devs just needed to throw more enemies at you in the back half of the game so they made a flimsy excuse to do that.
The BioShock games give the illusion of talking about politics and ideology, but really the only message is just “extremism bad”.
- Comment on I have a rasberry pi 5 collecting dust, what are some neat useful things i can do with it? 4 days ago:
I always like to think: what happens if some random hacker (either a bored teenager or hostile state) was able to control this thing?
Operating locks? Hell no. Controlling my thermostat/furnace? Hell no.
Monitoring locks? Like, having a sensor that indicates that a door or window is locked or unlocked and can notify you when it changes? Well, personally I still don’t do that because broadcasting to the internet that my window is unlocked seems dangerous, but I could also understand how that could be helpful, especially for people with OCD.
Controlling my window-mounted AC units? Mild inconvenience at worse. I could go without them in the summer and just be a bit uncomfortable (and some years I do to save money). They aren’t powerful enough to be dangerously cold. I could always unplug them or kick them off my wi-fi if I had to. Worst-case scenario is that someone runs up my electric bill if in away from home for a bit. The ability to change the settings, set automation, and monitor room temperatures remotely is convenient enough to be worth the risk.
Lights? No problem at all, especially because I still have dumb lights in some fixtures that I just don’t use often. So the worst-case scenario is that someone turns them on/off when I don’t want, and the solution is just… Unscrew the bulb, unplug the fixture, or flip the switch to cut the power. Or turn on a dumb light. LED’s are so efficient that I probably wouldn’t notice a difference on my electric bill if all of my lights were on vs off for a full billing period. In exchange, I’m able to use light turning on as a much gentler alarm in the morning, or turn everything off from bed when I’m ready to sleep, or if I’m out at a friend’s house it’s nice to have lights on before I go home.
Each piece of automation is its own evaluation. What could go wrong, and how much damage would that cause? What information do I care about potentially being leaked? How much efficiency and convenience am I getting in return?
- Comment on meal 4 days ago:
There is some evidence that it depends on the yerpenes, which vary by strain.
Humulene (also found in stuff like ginger and hops) might be an appetite suppressant.
I hope weed gets re-scheduled or legalized in the US so it gets easier to actually research this stuff.
- Comment on meal 4 days ago:
Humulene, terpene found in some weed strains (and also other plants like hops and ginger), has some evidence of being an appetite suppressant.
When I first went through the process of getting my medical card, I was required to have a consultation with the pharmacist and she recommended strains with that if I have a problem with the munchies. Personally, I really like to get high and eat so I’ve mostly avoided those strains, so I cannot attest to the effectiveness of this myself.
- Comment on What is the definitive way to play certain games? 1 week ago:
I swear every time I start looking into a romhack that claims to just be a mostly vanilla QoL update they always add in a bunch of random stuff to “fix” the difficulty.
Like, yes I am aware the games are incredibly easy. They’re for children. I originally played most of them as children. Just let me get high and stomp all through FRLG with a perfect-IV Feraligatr and the Gen 4 physical-special split. If I wanted to do Nuzzlockes I would… Do Nuzzlockes. If I wanted a game with difficult gym leaders and level caps, I would go play one of the thousands of romhacks that have that.
- Comment on What's up with "Plex Servers"? 2 weeks ago:
I’m really trying to avoid using for-profit 3rd parties. CURRENTLY I could sign up as a free user and probably be fine. But Tailscale could wake up any day and decide to start charging, or put restrictions on the free tier that would force me to a paid tier.
Part of the reason I bought a Blu-Ray drive, some big HDD’s, and started collecting discs in the first place was to take back control from tech companies. It’s why I chose Jellyfin over Plex. Going with Tailscale would defeat the principal.
- Comment on What's up with "Plex Servers"? 2 weeks ago:
I would probably be this guy if I ever got around to doing the research into how to make my Jellyfin available over the internet safely.
- Comment on 'Go Back and Play Morrowind and Tell Me That's the Game You Want to Play Again' — Former Bethesda Veteran Delivers His Verdict on Potential The Elder Scrolls Remasters - IGN 2 weeks ago:
The article was updated in 2023 with the most recent data.
Almost all of the sales of videogames are front-loaded. Most at launch (or at the launch of a re-release), and then it falls off hard over a couple of years. Morrowind came out in 2002. It’s incredible that Bethesda even released any sales data still by 2010. The units sold since then would be immaterial to the conversation.
- Comment on 'Go Back and Play Morrowind and Tell Me That's the Game You Want to Play Again' — Former Bethesda Veteran Delivers His Verdict on Potential The Elder Scrolls Remasters - IGN 2 weeks ago:
Morrowind only sold ~4 million units. I think you’re overestimating how big the fan base is. The fan base is loyal, opinionated, and vocal, but small.
- Comment on Ubisoft target audience when they play a good game 3 weeks ago:
They make some good points about how we view “classic” games too.
A lot of 16-bit games are remembered fondly because of things like “look at how many colors are on the screen at once! Look at how big the sprites are- they’re almost as big as the arcade version! Hear how there are 4 separate audio tracks that kind of almost sound like real instruments sometimes!”.
Mario 64 is a great example for me. I hear other people was nostalgic about how incredible it was to be able to move in 3D space at the time, and how they spent hours just wandering around levels and marveling at the technology. For me, I did that with Crash Bandicoot (which came out a few months earlier in the US). And shortly after Spyro blew them both out of the water with its incredibly smooth controls and, imo, better graphics and sound. When I’ve tried to go back and play Mario 64 I find it a clunky mess of a game, more of a tech demo than anything else.
On the one hand I can respect the pioneers. The original thinkers who push the frontiers of what art can be. On the other hand, those games that rely so heavily on being “revolutionary for their time” often don’t hold up well decades later when tons of games have done what they did better. I think it’s possible to appreciate those games for what they did without enjoying going back and playing them.
When I look back at what I’ve played the past couple years, games like Control and Horizon: Zero Dawn stick out. I don’t think either one of them had anything particularly innovative or new. I see any games coming out today where I say “wow that’s a Control-like” game. But what they did do was execute on a high level, with a lot of polish and very few flaws. I think that’s the biggest strength of AAA games: execution, not innovation.
- Comment on IF NO HEN 5 weeks ago:
Yeah I think this might be a rare case of this kind of design working well.
- Comment on World's Best-selling Video Game Consoles 1 month ago:
And it still outsold the 360 in the end
- Comment on World's Best-selling Video Game Consoles 1 month ago:
I don’t remember that. Maybe you’re thinking of something like “if the Wii keeps selling at its current pace it will pustell the PS2”?
They said that about the Switch as well and it didn’t happen.
- Comment on That boy is all right 1 month ago:
If I wanted a clean, convenient, and flavor-neutral method of cooking my meat then I would just stay in the kitchen where I have a variety of electric and natural gas appliances very capable of doing so.
“Grilling” with propane is just silly. Idk maybe there’s some merit to camp stoves while camping, but that’s only if you can’t use firewood for some reason.
- Comment on What are your gaming highlights of 2025? 1 month ago:
I played a decent number of games this year, and a lot of games that have huge fan bases. God of War 2018, Bloodborne (my first ever soulslike), Baldur’s Gate 3, Disco Elysium, and more. But the one that keeps gnawing at me is Subnautica
I remember when it was in early access I watched Markiplier play it, and it piqued my interest enough that it was the first time I ever bought anything in early access. Which is very unusual for me (I think the only other time I’ve done that was Hades, which was also great). I played through as much of the game as there was at the time, or at least as I could find. Which was still mostly in the safe shallows, no deep areas. Still out in a dozen hours or so and was satisfied given the price so I moved on.
In 2024 i recommended it to my wife, who loves marine biology and base building games. She, in turn loved the game and I watched her play through it. I got to see all of the deep areas. After watching her play it and the DLC I got the itch to go back to it, so I started a new file in late 2024.
By mid-January 2025 I was about halfway through that file. My wife visiting her friend in another city, so I had the house to myself, I think I took some PTO too. Single-digit temperatures Farenheit outside. My wife had taken our only car, so I was loaded up with plenty of weed, drinks, food, and snacks. So I had a few days to focus and finish that first file. I had such a great time I did something else I almost never do: I immediately started a new file to play it again. While I had so much fun, I also learned so much and had so many ideas of what I could have done better. Better places to build based, exploring in a different order, knowing all the great spots to farm resources and get blueprints and everything.
So I played through again. The soundtrack is phenomenal synthwave that perfectly suits the game, but by the time I had built my cyclops and was ready to plunge down into the depths I was also ready for a new soundtrack. I put on one of my favorite albums, which is also one of the most appropriate: Oceanic, by Isis.
I strongly recommend this to anyone who likes Isis or Subnautica. Just absolutely sublime. It’s like peanut butter and chocolate.
- Comment on 2 months ago:
AI has slop is a problem, and Shovelware has been a problem for decades, basically as long as videogames have existed.
However, a LOT of these cheap and obscure games on steam have more innocuous explanations, with that explanation often being “the dev doesn’t really care about making money”. Perception, for example, is a student project that was released for free and I wouldn’t pay much for anyways, but it was a fun way to spend a couple of hours.
Or when I was in a band, one of the other members was a developer by trade who, as a hobby, connects with a couple of his other friends to develop game that he released on steam. I recorded and produced an EP for that band and we released it for free and we certainly spent more money buying drinks at the bars we played than we were ever paid for playing. I think his game was similar: they charged money for it to cover some of their costs, but he certainly never left his day job.
Or Mind Over Magnet, which was the project of the YouTuber GamerMakersToolkit. The whole thing was a multi-year project where the guy made videos covering the game development process and culminated in the release of the game. The actual business model was based on the video content, while the game itself was just a side piece that was probably profitable, but I doubt made enough profit for him to survive on for years.
- Comment on How does the private equity bubble compare to the AI bubble if at all? 2 months ago:
I would not call PE a “bubble”. It’s not something people are just tossing money into because there are nebulous promises and the numbers are going up. PE is involved in EVERYTHING - restaurants, housing, tech, manufacturing, finance, marketing. It’s not an industry, just a way of investing that bypasses pretty much all of the safeguards and regulations societies have put in place for public trading. And I don’t expect it to “pop”. Either it continues, and all of the wealth continues to be concentrated towards the top, or the populace manages to take enough power back to get legislation, regulation, and enforcement to add transparency and rules to private equity.
- Comment on To celebrate Oxford Word of The Year, Submit your worthy ones for rating in the comments 2 months ago:
It’s hard to generalize, but often it’s really just a few whales propping the whole thing up.
The linked article is referencing Candy Crush, not AAA games, but it’s hard to find published data on the matter. Different games and communities will be different, but I would hesitate to broadly blame consumers for this.
- Comment on Nature 2 months ago:
Somehow I don’t think Trent Reznor wrote “Closer” in an attempt to get laid lol.
- Comment on Dude read the rules of woman only community and decided to post anyway 2 months ago:
Your teenaged nephews may do the same thing, but my teenaged nieces do not. The internet is a gigantic place, and it’s dangerous to extrapolate our own limited perspective onto the whole.
- Comment on Dude read the rules of woman only community and decided to post anyway 2 months ago:
That’s quite an “if” that you’re starting with.
- Comment on Dude read the rules of woman only community and decided to post anyway 2 months ago:
9gag
Really? I don’t even remember the last time 9gag was known for anything other than being uncool and irrelevant.
Sounds like you’re in a bubble of a lot of sexist communities. That’s real unfortunate- you should maybe try to get out of that.
- Comment on Dude read the rules of woman only community and decided to post anyway 2 months ago:
I spent a couple of my teenaged years there too. I remember I printed out the “rules of the internet” post, which includes that “rule” and had it on my desk in high school. “For the lulz”. It’s important to grow and change, both as individuals and as a society. My friend group back then was a bunch of supposedly straight cis teens who threw around all kinds of slurs, and we thought it was okay as long as we weren’t actually being mean to other people and we kept it amongst ourselves. Largely, it was. But a lot of the same people who loved to throw the F slur around back then have boyfriends now. At least one person transitioned.
But my broader point is that it’s very easy to convince ourselves that something common in our own bubbles is ubiquitous across the internet and across time. Other people close to my age had very different experiences with the internet because they were in different communities. I’m sure that the youth today, with TikTok and Roblox and whatever else they are doing, have an entirely different culture. The older people on Facebook have a very different culture. I’m sure non-English speaking communities have different cultures.
And that’s also part of why I’m against segregated spaces. They create an echo chamber and reinforce societal divisions.
Any time some bigoted anti-trans law about bathrooms is proposed, progressive people advocating inclusivity point out that it’s impossible to define what a “woman” is in a manner that both excludes all trans-women and includes all cis-women. And I fully support that, which is why I have a hard time supporting exclusionary policies on the internet too.
- Comment on Dude read the rules of woman only community and decided to post anyway 2 months ago:
Was it a common saying or were you just on 4chan too much?
- Comment on Scandal 2 months ago:
This is exactly why I’m wondering if “Bubba” could be referring to someone else. Maybe not a celebrity.
Heck, could be a giant novelty dildo. Or a dog.
- Comment on Rush 2 months ago:
I started typing up my own personal observations about Rush lyrics changing over time, but then I found this quote from Geddy Lee himself:
A few songs may have also been a little naive in their original intent. The nasty little tale called “The Trees,” of course — a comment on forced equality. Being a much more liberal-minded adult, I now have a softer approach to things in life and I’m much more open and willing. I put a lot more importance on social responsibility now than I ever did. I talk about that, of course, when I’m referring to free will. There were a few things we sang about in our early twenties that seemed very important. But as time has gone on, you ameliorate those views because life has told you it’s not so simple. Once you encounter problems and you begin to help your family or friends with some of those problems, you learn a lot about how much of life has lived in the gray areas as opposed to the black and white areas.
The Trees was, and still is, one of my favorite songs for the sake of the music. And I can see how the lyrics may have worked a lot better back during the cold war, just a couple of decades after genocide and famine wiped out millions in the USSR and China.
I grew up listening to both a greatest hits CD that has libertarian tracks like Freewill and The Trees and 2112, but also listening to Snakes and Arrows that had polar opposite messages in songs like Far Cry, the Way the Wind Blows, and The Larger Bowl. They got smarter and more aware of their own privilege as they grew older and saw more of the world.
- Comment on And now I'm reminded I have two of these to repair. 3 months ago:
Pro-tip: I invested in rechargeable batteries, including 9v’s. Every solstice I just go ahead and change out the batteries proactively. (Could use the equinoxes instead but I usually have a bunch of other chores winterizing or de-winterizing the house at those times).
It’s annoying and probably overkill, but it’s way better than dealing with those annoying low battery beeps that always seem to start happening at 3AM.