Wait, what is this about “modern people not seeing what’s so horrifying” about Sisyphus’ punishment? I’ve never heard of anyone who seemed to believe that.

The spread of “skill-based” matchmaking and ranked competitive ladders largely took away a valuable communal aspect of online multiplayer games, IMO. Getting dropped into a match with a bunch of random people you’ll probably never see again just makes things so impersonal, which can cultivate a lot of toxicity.

Some of the best times I’ve ever had with online gaming were from finding a dedicated server with settings I liked, hanging out there often, gradually getting to know the regulars, and becoming part of a community. I’ve never had that kind of feeling from a game with automated matchmaking.

Yeah, he led the design. The whole thing was his brainchild, iirc.

Yeah, I’m… skeptical, to say the least. I don’t think any of these sprawling, massively-scoped “everything games” have ever actually lived up to the hype. It’s a problem of pure logistics. Making a game with so many different segments each with entirely unique gameplay loops is essentially like developing more than half a dozen games at once. It’s the problem Spore had - the scope was just too broad, and even with EA and Will Wright behind it, it eventually released as a pretty decent creature creator stapled to four shallow, rushed game stages.

No studio has the resources or inclination to commit to the 10-15+ year development cycle for a single game needed to fit that much scope, and even if they did, the entire game design landscape would have changed between the beginning and the end of the project, which would make major technical and design components of the game obsolete before it was even finished.

I’d put money on this game either becoming vaporware or releasing as a chaotic, disjointed mess with the depth of a puddle. I’d love to see them prove me wrong, but I just don’t see how anyone could overcome those kinds of logistical hurdles.

No need, actually, I originally assumed this was a past code that I missed, but it’s currently up on Prime right now, so I’ll grab it myself

Is RIOT - Civil Unrest still available?

The most that I have proof of is Europa Universalis IV at a little over 1k hours, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my time on Guitar Hero 3 in high school surpassed that by quite a bit. I played a lot of Guitar Hero in high school…

I mean, sure, you’re not wrong. It’s just that cyberpunk as a genre is pretty strongly linked to anti-capitalist and anti-corporate themes, and I think a triple-A game published by a big corporation is not very likely to adhere to the spirit of the genre.

You know, I had heard a lot about how much Cyberpunk had improved since launch, but I still couldn’t really convince myself to try it. “Cyberpunk game made by big corporate studio” always just struck me as something of an oxymoron.

I mean, Christianity kinda does, too, but gay Christians definitely exist. Islam and its interpretations/practices aren’t monolithic.

That’s not to say that I think she actually exists - all evidence seems to point to Coty Craven being a con artist - but “gay muslim” isn’t necessarily a red flag.

Didn’t Obi-Wan order a drink at that bar that he and Anakin went through while chasing Zam Wessel in Episode 2?

It sure does.

Humble used to be an event that celebrated and showcased indie developers while at the same time raising many millions for charities. Then IGN bought it and rapidly enshittified it into a bog-standard, for-profit corporate enterprise like any other, and I’ll never forgive them for it.

Do they even give any of the profits to charity any more? If they do, I bet they only keep it around to take advantage of the tax writeoffs.

Is this implying that a publicly-traded corporation whose software is installed on millions of computers around the world has the same level of agency and responsibility as a preschooler?

I mean, yes, Microsoft bears responsibility for blindly accepting whatever deployment package CrowdStrike gave it and immediately yeeting it out to 100% of customers via Windows Update without any kind of validation or incremental rollout, and should probably be sued for it. That still doesn’t negate the complete and catastrophic failures at every step of the development process on the part of CrowdStrike. It takes a lot of people to fuck up this bad.

Fair enough

Yeah, I guess “black tea” is a bit of a misnomer. It’s probably just simpler to share the terminology with coffee though

Coffee is just too bitter for me unless I overload it with way more cream and sugar than is healthy. At that point all the caffeine and sugar makes me way too jittery. On the other hand, I enjoy drinking tea black, so tea it is.

In that case, I’m still not sure what the Intellivision brand even has left that Atari would want… I guess they could do one of those nostalgia re-release collections of old Intellivision games, but I feel like the nostalgia market for a nearly 50-year-old console mostly known for being a failed competitor to the 2600 is… very niche.

Huh, first I’m hearing of this Amico thing. I don’t know if it really has the support to capture enough of the market it seems to be going for… It looks like it’s trying to go for the “family-friendly, easy-to-use” concept that the Wii had, but the Wii had Nintendo behind it, along with other major publishers making games for it. The games included also look rather… basic.

…Annnnd it’s also a Tommy Tallarico thing. Of course it is. Why on earth does Atari want this?

Personally, I prefer release order, especially for first-time watchers, but whatever you do, don’t start with TPM. The prequels are a terrible introduction to Star Wars, and if they’re watched before the viewer has an emotional investment in the franchise, it can cause them to lose interest in continuing.