paultimate14

@paultimate14@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your gaming highlights of 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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 ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s hard to generalize, but often it’s really just a few whales propping the whole thing up.

  While they may make up 2% of the users, they can account for 50% to an astounding 70% of game developers’ profits

  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 ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

  Relevant xkcd.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dude read the rules of woman only community and decided to post anyway⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Was it a common saying or were you just on 4chan too much?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scandal⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Germany⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  China kind of depends on who you ask and how you look at it. Some historians argue that if you remove a euro-centric bias, WW2 really started with the 2nd Sino-Japanese war in 1937. Or you could look further back to territorial disputes and skirmishes between Japan and China going back to 1931.

  India was a British colony until 1947 and participated as part of the British Empire.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Good Halloween Games⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Pumpkin Jack. It’s a 3D platformer. I haven’t played it in a couple years, but I remember it being mostly linear. Not a ton of collectables, but some. 11 months out of the year it’s a pretty “meh” game, but it absolutely NAILS the Halloween aesthetic. Not “horror” or “scary” or “autumn” but very specifically Halloween.

  MediEvil is similar, though much older. I have only played the original for PS1, though there is a modern remake on all platforms that looks pretty good. Not quite as explicitly Halloween-y, but still pretty close. Flawed in its own ways, but I would still say a better game overall than Pumpkin Jack. The levels were a bit less linear and it was a bit more like an adventure game than a platformer.

  Luigi’s Mansion is a classic too.

  A lot of other games have levels or worlds that are good for Halloween even if the whole game isn’t. Like Pumpkin Hill in Sonic Adventure 2, or Subcon Forest from A Hat In Time. Honestly one day I want to compile a list of all of these themes areas across my favorite games and the play all of these levels seasonally.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PC Master Race⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  They’ve increased in other countries too. The PS5 digital edition costs £70 more today than it did at launch. In 2024 Sony increased the Japan price of all PS5 versions by ¥13,000.

  The tariffs aren’t helping, but this has been a trend for years. The gaming console market is not very volatile- prices changes in the US usually happen once every few years, not every few months. The tariffs keep fluctuating all over the place and I would not be shocked if there are more pricing adjustments for consoles specifically next year.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PC Master Race⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’ll get you… The lowest storage tier Series S. Or a Nintendo Switch OLED. Yay.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PC Master Race⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Nah it’s the GPU market. Cryptocurrency briefly exploded and now AI is sucking up all of the GPU manufacturing capacity. Back in 2019 I got my RX580 for $175. The AMD 9070 that released this year is a tier down from that and had an MSRP of $550, but an actual price more like $650. The sweet spot of value PC building has shifted from $750 to $1,500 in just a few years. Some of that is just general inflation that affects all parts, but roughly half of that increase is just from the GPU.

  It’s impacting consoles too. Consoles uses to get cheaper over time, with both price drops to existing models and new, cheaper models being released (Sony’s Slim models, things like the Wii Family Edition and Wii Mini, the DSLite, etc). Looking at this generation… The original PS5 with a disc drive debuted at $500 in 2020. The “Slim” version also debuted at $500, and just got a price increase to $550. They released a PS5 Pro at $700, and just increased it to $750.

  Nintendo is doing it too. The Switch was $300 for its entire life, and now that the Switch 2 is out consumers would typically expect a price cut to move the existing stock. Instead, Nintendo raised the price to $330. The OLED model went from $350 to $400, and the Lite went from $200 to $230.

  And of course Microsoft is in on it too. It’s more complicated to write up since they have different storage variants of the Series S|X, but for example a Series S 512GB was $300 at launch (For some reason I remember seeing them for $250, but maybe that was a Black Friday sale or something). Now it’s $400!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I hope that once my account turns 18 they will stop asking my for by DOB to look at mature content.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨More than 1,200 games journalists have left the media in the last two years | VGC⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You have a much more optimistic memory of gaming review platforms than I do.

  I remember getting several different magazines in the 90’s and they were always the same thing. Any “professional” journalist knows that their livelihood is based on selling games. Journalists have to strike a balance between their audience and publishers, which makes negative reviews incredibly rare.

  It’s not just videogames. Music, movies, TV shows, books, comics, consumer products. Unkess you’re paying out the nose, reviews almost always have some sort of bias towards trying to sell things. I find the best opinions come from other sources: people I know personally, organic community discussions on the internet (though those are not immune to corporate influence), or when products are only mentioned in contexts where the author clearly will not benefit. For example, a journalist making a list of the top-10 games of all time putting Ocarina of Time on it is probably not incentives to do so… Unless Nintendo is trying to promote a re-release.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon plays Skyrim⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly she was one of the few characters in the game that I felt had enough depth and interaction with the player that marriage could make sense.

  Pretty much everyone else is like “oh you fetched that alchemy ingredient for me? Sure I guess I’ll marry you, I’ve got nothing else going on that day”.

  Don’t get me wrong- i still love Skyrim and I’m perfectly happy with marriage being basically just another quest that gives you some buffs. It’s just funny to me that Serana is one of the few characters where we can learn a TON about her, meet her parents, go exploring together, share interests, wash blood off our hands together, eat food together, go on dates. She’s accomplished enough that she is not at all intimidated by the Dragonborn, rather relates to them for being granted these supernatural powers and responsibilities they didn’t ask for. My first time playing Dawnguard ii really thought the devs were hinting that she would be the canonical spouse of the Dragonborn moving forward because it makes so much sense. So I was quite surprised she wasn’t eligible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do video game leaks (such as the huge GTA VI videos leak) cause "low morale" for the staff working on it?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  So what are you looking for here? Some sort of objective and peer-reviewed academic research of the morals of videogame developers and the impact of leaks upon that? I think you’ll find that does not exist.

  I’m just pointing out that the only people who seem to be complaining are managers and PR departments. And it’s not that dev’s don’t have voices- there are plenty of current and former developers who are now producing social media content and talking about the industry, and I cannot remember this ever even being addressed as an issue. I DID bring up my personal experience in the corporate world is that management and marketing craft these narratives for public consumption which are just lies, and I don’t have any reason to think the videogames industry is any different.

  The very topic is one that is nebulous and subjective. That’s why it’s on c/nostupidquestions and not c/askanexpertwithameritoricalbackground.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do video game leaks (such as the huge GTA VI videos leak) cause "low morale" for the staff working on it?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  My assumption has always been that this is just the usual made-up corporate nonsense that comes from management and marketing departments, to try to turn public opinion against leakers.

  My guess is that most of the humans actually creating the game don’t have strong opinions. Marketing teams probably care because it disrupts their plans. Management of course cares because it could impact sales. And with big dev teams with dozens or hundreds of people working on a game there will never be a consensus opinion. Maybe some would be upset that people get to see placeholder work or rough drafts, but only a fool would look at a leaked game and judge the individuals who made it based on that. Heck, even when games are officially released in functionally unfinished states I think most fans these days know to blame management and ownership rather than the workers.

  I don’t remember ever seeing an actual dev talking about leaks much. Even content creators that are former devs. Absense of evidence is not evidence of a sense of course, but like… If I apply that to my own work I don’t think I would really care.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Video-Game Industry Has a Problem: There Are Too Many Games⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The article seems primarily focused on new games. And the article still makes some great points, but when you factor in older games the problem gets bigger.

  I am not going to say that old games were better or that “they just don’t make them like they used to”. What I will say is that a lot of older games that are super cheap on Steam or out of print entirely are still great. There are occasionally new great games being released of course (I haven’t played Hades 2 yet but I expect it to be great, for example). But there’s a lot of new games being released where I think… “Why would I spend $70 or $80 on this when I already have this backlog of older games? Why would I spend my time playing 7/10 games when I have dozens of 9/10’s sitting in my library waiting for me?”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Video-Game Industry Has a Problem: There Are Too Many Games⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Back when I was on Reddit years ago, one of my favorite subs was the Patient Gamers one. There are a couple of similar ones on different Lemmy instances but they’re nowhere near as active.

  I remember friends of mine assuring me I absolutely HAVE to get games like Atomic Heart, High on Life, Avowed, the Oblivion remaster, Starfield, Prey, the Outer Worlds, and many more. There are series that I have enjoyed in the last that have way too many entries to keep up with- 3D Sonic, Assassin’s Creed, Monster Hunter, Yakuza (with all it’s spinoff games like Judgement and others). I’m sure a lot of those games are great, but I just don’t have the time to play then all. And with hundreds of games in my backlog already, these games need to be on sale for dirt cheap and without anti-features like DRM and micro transactions and online requirements in order to get me to buy them.

  So I think it’s worth asking- are there enough whales willing to buy these games for $70 or even $80 to subsidize people like me picking them up for $10 in five years? If not, perhaps these developers and publishers will need to move to a different business model. Maybe there are simply too many devs and too many games getting made.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I get texting and driving being a danger. But back in my day you could eat drink change radio stations etc. Why weren't laws implemented back then?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  1. People died. A lot. Ralph Nader, who is today probably better known for being a former presidential candidate for the Green Party in the US, first got famous with his 1965 book “Unsafe at Any Speed” that brought just how dangerous cars were to the public attention. Which led to a ton of laws that regulated the manufacture and operation of motor vehicles. It was similar to how Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” was with the food industry.

  2. Density has increased. It was easier to get away with driving when there were fewer cars on the road, fewer intersections, fewer buildings and other property nearby. Our signs and signals have grown more complicated. I live in a major US city, where there is a main thoroughfare that cuts through the southern suburbs with a 5 lane stroad (2 lanes each way with a central turning lane). There are traffic lights every couple hundred feet to allow interesections with feeder roads. My grandfather still tells the stories about how when he was a teenager, that was a 3-lane DIRT road, where the center was still a turn lane. He could drive for miles before getting to the densest part of the city where there was 1 traffic light.

  He also tells the story of how the police radios used to only be one-way, so officers in cars could receive messages from the station but not send anything back. On top of that, their big heavy cruisers were slower and less maneuverable than his motorcycle, so he used to commonly blow by and ignore cops trying to pull him over. It was a completely different world.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Disney 2025⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You know that Godwin’s Law waa just some random guy making something up, right? It’s like claiming that the average person eats 7 spiders a year or that the average male thinks about sex once every X seconds.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hardest battles⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For a long time I was confused by two seemingly separate pieces of information.

  1. The majority of people I seem to interact with seem to act like communications are effortless. “Just pick up the phone”. “It’s just an email”.

  2. Most communications I get are terrible. Like, the number of times I need to restrain myself from typing “as I mentioned in the email below” is insane, or how often I send an email with a bulleted list of issues that need to be addressed and the response only addresses a fraction of them while the rest are ignores.

  Then I realized that most people are stupid, casual, and oblivious. They put very little effort into communications, so while they seem so easy and effortless they are harming the quality of that communication.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Virtual Boy: Nintendo Classics - Announcement Trailer⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  These games should have been like maaaaybe $5 each on the 3DS a decade ago. Maybe $30 for a physical cartridge with all of them bundled.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon has a problem with Bioshock⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well I kind of alluded to it, but both of the games lack any clear solutions other than “play the game kill the bad guy”.

  Which, to be fair, is probably the reason BioShock 1 at least got so popular. I would say this point is much more important to BioShock 1 than any commentary about Ayn Rand, or any commentary about how worker’s movements can get subverted by selfish actors like Atlas. It takes the usual tropes about videogames and turns them into a commentary on how easily our assumptions and expectations can deceive us. Players do what the game tells them to, they progress the way the game allows them to, without ever questioning whether that is the morally correct thing to do. I would say that’s a pretty reasonable thing to do considering the money these games cost, but BioShock at least shines a light on that and makes the player think about it.

  There are plenty of other examples of games that DO engage with political ideologies, and use games as a mechanism to think about then. The most famous one is probably Monopoly, which was stolen from the original creator who called it “the landlords game” to show how capitalism eventually leads to one rich person and a bunch of broke people.

  If you want a videogame, Disco Elysium is a fabulous, recent, and well-reviewed example. Personally it’s a bit dense for me to play for too long (sometimes it feels more like reading a textbook than playing a game).

  I don’t think BioShock 1 or Infinite are terrible or that they shouldn’t have delved into politics at all. I think that they are overrated in part because they get credit for political commentary that ends up being pretty superficial. I think they could have executed the ideas better.

  Fitzroy for example: either give us a better reason to fight her or don’t make us do it. Maybe she gets killed by Comstock and leaves a power vacuum, with the chaos of rebel leaders trying to promote solidarity, fight for their own power, hold off or even negotiate peace with Comstock. Or maybe someone like Lady Comstock or Fink could be a source of division within Comstock’s ranks. Or maybe Fitzroy gets convinced that she needs to kill Elizabeth because she’s some dimensional McGuffin protecting Comstock. Maybe get rid of the rebellion entirely and have another country attack Colombia. They already ceded from the US- surely Uncle Sam isn’t cool with losing this technological marvel, nor having this independent state potentially floating above US territories. It’s been a while since I replayed it but I remember the Boxer Rebellion being a key piece of the story: maybe some fallout from that cones to Colombia.