If I understand right, the usefulness of basic questions like “Hey ChatGPT, how long do I boil pasta” is offset by the vast resources needed to answer that question. We just see it as simple and convenient as it tries to invest in its “build up interest” phase and runs at a loss. If the effort to sell the product that way fails, it’s going to fund itself by harvesting data.
I recently published my novel, and at the last minute I had this panic about what was appropriate. There’s one bigoted character who calls gay people “f***ot” multiple times, as well as many characters that drop F-bombs on numerous occasions. There’s a (semi-magical) event similar to a mass shooting, many references to torture, and someone’s hand is chopped off. To be really safe, I put a content warning on the first page just to make some of that clear. Surely, that puts it a level beyond the Young Adult region, right? But…possibly not, given what I tend to hear offhand of some series.
Other cases that have happened relate to failure to upkeep services needed to access content. Companies stop supporting devices, close down servers, etc. Many consumer rights orgs fail to protect in those cases, but they could easily defeat any measure to introduce a conscious, intentional, mandatory monthly fee.
On Linux, running an exe isn’t often as simple as “wine frog-fracker.exe”. It’s usually “proton PREFIX=~/steam-proton-10/ TRICKS=b DXIMPL=1.7.8 blah blah … frog-fracker.exe”
As a result, Linux gamers tend to have launchers even for hobby games they downloaded. Arcade launchers for emulated games are especially common now.
GOG offers them, but they’re inconsistent and only work with their launcher. While I have some GOG games on my Steam Deck, they don’t transfer saves over to my PC.
For anyone looking for new alternatives, I’m sure most Lemmy users can suggest more open-source pubfed options, but for anyone trying to generate a bit more presence (not that there’s much) I did find a YouTube video highlighting some “indie social media” sites, mostly focusing on nostalgia of simpler versions of the historically popular ones.
Having the whole world operate off of publically-owned shared systems is probably an ideal, but having them at least in tight competition, with easy destinations to abandon off to, is still quite a bit better.
Tbf, I don’t think Apex Legends was completely new either. It refined and combined a lot of good ideas in other games into a battle royale. I think they’re trying to do that with this type of hero shooter vibe, having taken some ideas from Rainbow 6 Siege and a few other games. Doesn’t seem to have worked as well this time.
What’s the bribe price for “serious” concern?
Also, the journalist writing the article may wish to wear some armor on their neck.
As awesome as that is, I’d be excited for FF2. Much like Silent Hill, I think the sequel is where the series was at its best.
Good news is, in this case it seems like FF1/2 weren’t too far apart in basic engine/apperance.
Ichiban walks into the Abandoned Replacement Protagonists bar, and sits down despondently alongside Apollo Justice, Raiden, and Nero.
It’s saddest that this is a repeating pattern. We get a great sequel where the beloved protagonist gives a sendoff like “This is the new generation’s story now”. And then the next game is a remake of one of their past games.
I’ve found the same thing with survival games camera controls. The originals were made with odd camera angles in mind for scenic purposes for better or worse. Tank controls mean that your direction doesn’t change when the camera suddenly shifts.
Fatal Frame had a median scheme that was tricky to work out but useful. You move relative to the camera. If the camera changed, but you didn’t change your thumbstick direction past a few degrees, your character would keep moving in a straight line.
I’m still sad this is my one game that doesn’t run well on Proton. With development winding down, I can only hope for some modder to work out what the occasional slowdowns are.
ChatGPT, generate for me a press release that will excuse the firing of another 10,000 employees.
There’s a gacha I have a lot of fun with, thanks to some very detailed animation work and visuals, but I haven’t spent a penny on it and don’t intend to. You really do have to be acutely aware of every effort to get you to spend, and how much those efforts can inflate. Gambling fallacies, sudden power creep, etc.
I’m going to guess that decision was based on the failures of the recent 2.5D PoP games, which were well reviewed but barely advertised (and oft compared to indie games)
I appreciate that the other games, even if they’re 90% power fantasy, retain a tiny bit of that nihilism in the story of each game.
3: Jason becomes totally disconnected from society and almost feels like he can’t come back from the killing. 4: Help the rebels, and they become despots just like Pagan Min. Give up on the rebellion at the beginning of the game, and even Min admits he’s tired of the cycle. 5 I won’t even spoil, definitely a bit less of an artistic message even if it’s a huge twist.
I mean, Kleiner saying “I had expected more warning!” is a sort of mixed surprise. If he’s been gone for 20+ years, the natural reaction I might expect is “What…? That’s impossible! We all thought you were dead! Or lost in Xen forever!” Heck, even Kleiner’s reaction to the “slow teleport” you and Alyx take late in the game is much grander. “I had…given up hope of ever seeing you again!!”
That feels like a bit of a hate train on SOMA that’s not really relevant. We often dislike character idiocy, especially when it’s our player. But speaking protagonists can be done well - Dead Space 2 made the move, and even ported it back when they finally did a DS1 remake.
Perhaps the only major issue with using environmental storytelling to give City 17’s base exposition is that the game is both a sequel, and intended as an entry point. I remember as a kid playing HL2 (with very little knowledge of HL1) and as soon as I saw the aliens in gas masks corralling everyone, really wondered what sort of story I missed in the first one. Leaving people to figure things out is definitely cool, I’m just offering ways to point out clearly that you, the player, didn’t miss anything key, because in today’s media deluge, often the reason for that feeling is because a story is slapdash and poorly written - as opposed to simply hiding the details in plain sight for the player to find.
Interestingly, there are some notes in an art book where the G-Man originally gave a longer opening speech to explain what’s happened in your absence, but they removed it. Overall it was probably the right move, but I’m curious how it would have felt.
It tends not to give you enough to last an entire fight with the ammo you have on hand, but usually if you’re pushed into an arena, it will have ammo and health laying around - and not the light stuff, either. The game was coming from a Doom 3 era when ammo searching was not just a known habit, but could be done during a fight to keep you moving, so it’s perhaps an implied assumption they made from the time. But, teaching players anything while they’re under fire is going to be a very uphill battle I suppose.
Sure, you could say that, but Windows is also a general distribution. Much as people say they’d like a “Gaming OS”, it should be usable for everything else too. Bazzite wasn’t necessarily “incapable” of the other things I tried to do with it, but the UI remained a bit obtuse.