MurrayL
@MurrayL@lemmy.world
- Comment on Doom Bar maker Sharp’s Brewery in Cornwall to be closed by US owner 6 hours ago:
They make Coors, Miller Lite, and Carling. Safe to assume they don’t know and don’t care.
- Comment on Chocolate kept in anti-theft boxes as retailers warn it's being stolen to order 3 days ago:
I think that principle is intended to apply to staples, when people in poverty are forced to steal food so as not to starve.
Stealing bars of Dairy Milk and then selling them on seems like a different thing.
- Comment on A Web Revival: the Internet didn't die, you're just not on it 4 days ago:
This is the videos community. Are you lost?
- Comment on ‘This shouldn’t be normal’: developers speak out about bigotry on Steam, the world’s biggest PC gaming storefront 5 days ago:
You’re acting like harassment of the sort in the article is some kind of unavoidable natural phenomenon, and the only possible course of action is for the victims to suck it up and take it.
Steam is a platform owned, operated, and fully controlled by Valve. They have the ability and the money to take steps to improve the situation, but instead they seem perfectly happy to let it continue. It’s gross.
- Comment on Xbox chief Phil Spencer is leaving Microsoft 6 days ago:
Sega, I guess?
- Comment on Star Trek Removed From Amazon Prime [TNG & Voyager Refunded] 1 week ago:
Once again, people who pirate the shows end up with a better experience than legit customers. Tale as old as
timedigital media. - Comment on I Bought a “Junk” PSP From Japan: Here’s How It Went 1 week ago:
The clearly and repeatedly say the website they ordered it on, to the point where the post feels like an advertorial.
- Comment on Confirmed: Comic Book From ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Ep. 6 Was NOT Created With AI 1 week ago:
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that they outsourced it and the outsourcer used AI but said they didn’t. It wouldn’t be the first time, even on high profile projects - Marvel’s Loki ran into exactly that issue before.
- Comment on Why are we not getting stress relief games where we take our stresses out on normal people? 1 week ago:
It’s interesting how simulators do tend to draw in people who also do the same thing as their IRL job.
Lots of farmers play Farming Simulator. Lots of truckers play Euro/American Truck Simulator. Lots of pilots play MS Flight Simulator.
- Comment on Video Games Need to Be Cheaper to Buy 1 week ago:
- Comment on "Benefit of the doubt" is a very important aspect of a game's success 3 weeks ago:
We had to read manuals for tutorials, maps, and story exposition. Try releasing a game nowadays that does that and you’re going to get slapped with a 1/10 because people nowadays have less patience than a goldfish.
I kind of get where you’re coming from but it comes across as out of touch, ‘old man yells at clouds’ type stuff.
The shift has far less to do with patience and more to do with designers getting better at integrating tutorials into the games themselves. Games now are designed to teach you how to play through playing, so reading a manual became unnecessary. That’s not a flaw, that’s an improvement.
The only reasons this wasn’t done earlier was because the field of UX was still developing, and because cartridges limited how much text could be crammed into the games themselves.
That said, there are still well-received games that rely on manuals, but it’s now an explicit design or aesthetic choice rather than something everyone has to do to make up for limited tutorialisation. Check out Tunic, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, or TIS-100 as examples.
- Comment on Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase Announced for February 5 3 weeks ago:
Thanks for fixing!
- Comment on Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase Announced for February 5 3 weeks ago:
Please don’t post links that just tell me to download an app.
- Comment on One-Third of U.S. Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off Over the Last Two Years 3 weeks ago:
Here’s an article detailing the methodology.
- Comment on What should be emoji reaction for "me too" in the general sense 4 weeks ago:
Just don’t accidentally send 👉👌 instead
- Comment on What should be emoji reaction for "me too" in the general sense 4 weeks ago:
If you want to express agreement, it’s usually 👆or ➕
If there was an action and you want to confirm you’ve done it, ✅ (or 👍 but that’s ambiguous between ‘I’ve seen this’ vs ‘I’ve done this’)
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 4 weeks ago:
Do you say the same for Epic Games Store exclusives?
Yes, actually. If they funded a game, like with Alan Wake 2, then whether or not they make it an EGS exclusive is their prerogative.
there is no pro-consumer reason that the GOG fixes could not have been given to everyone that already owned the game on Steam as a free update
I disagree. GOG invested time and resources into patching the game. Tacking the word ‘pro-consumer’ in there means nothing. They’re a business. They shouldn’t be expected to give away their work for free to customers of a competing platform.
I don’t care if 2% or whatever goes to GOG for their fixes
That much is clear. You just want something for nothing. Pirate the GOG version if you’re so desperate to play without paying, but don’t frame it as some kind of pro-consumer protest.
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 4 weeks ago:
It’s as much as anyone outside of GOG can know, based on interviews like this one.
The exact contents of the deals is not public information and no doubt differs for each game, but the overall process has been reported on.
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 4 weeks ago:
Oh, well that’s the easier part to understand.
Before they even start on any technical work, the GOG legal team contacts the owners of the game they want to sell (e.g. SEGA, in the case of Alpha Protocol) and they negotiate a deal to update and distribute the game.
Things get complicated when a game has joint owners, or when it’s not clear who owns a game, but otherwise it’s as simple as that.
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 4 weeks ago:
If you’re interested in a specific example, here’s an interview with their technical producer on how they updated and rereleased Alpha Protocol in 2024.
Lots of insights!
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 4 weeks ago:
Why would GOG give the work they did to a competing storefront?
If you value the work, support the people who did it.
- Comment on Asbestos found in children’s play sand sold in UK 4 weeks ago:
“As a precaution, we have voluntarily removed the product from sale while we carry out independent testing … We will update customers as soon as we are in a position to do so.”
Sounds like they’re just waiting to confirm if there’s actually a problem, rather than issuing a full-scale product recall based on a single test result reported by a random member of the public.
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
Written in 2020 but still an interesting read. I wonder what the author thinks of games that have released in the intervening years, like Manor Lords, Going Medieval, and Farthest Frontier?
- Comment on What's the best free version of word? 4 weeks ago:
OpenOffice isn’t as well known now because it was replaced, for all intents and purposes, by LibreOffice in ~2010.
- Comment on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | Opening Title Sequence 5 weeks ago:
Nothing? The whole thing is couched in a metaphor of new growth to represent the reopening of the academy and the importance of building a new generation. It says at least as much about the show as watching the Enterprise D zooming past a few random planets ever did.
- Comment on Is there a list of important/key episodes – but not just the good episodes? 5 weeks ago:
When I was going through TNG and DS9 for the first time with my wife, I built our watchlist based on a combination of Kethinov’s and Jammer’s reviews.
Kethinov is particularly of interest here because he gives a ‘filler rating’ for each episode, separate from its overall rating, which tells you if it’s important to the longer-term story.
- Comment on Ubisoft target audience when they play a good game 5 weeks ago:
I fucking love Highway 17 - it’s an atmospheric and enjoyable road trip and I will die on this hill.
- Comment on Where can I get sweet dish fish? 5 weeks ago:
Are you talking about Swedish fish?
- Comment on What do all the subgenres of music mean? How does anyone make sense of them? 5 weeks ago:
It sounds like you want a clear set of rules as to what defines every possible genre of music, which does not and cannot exist.
Genres are largely subjective and only exist for the purpose of subjective comparison. Anyone can create a new genre by taking some elements common to several pieces of music and labelling that as a genre - there’s no master list or governing body that decides exactly what constitutes ‘art rock’. It just is.
- Comment on Meta is closing down three VR studios as part of its metaverse cuts 1 month ago:
Fuck off, sincerely. It’s hard enough out there for game devs as it is without heartless idiots online celebrating the demise of their studios.
