Fed up with Microsoft. I had a windows 10 computer they said couldn’t update to windows 11, and they said Recall was coming, so I said fuck it. Switched to mint, and now I’m trying pop!_os.

Way back like 10+ years ago I ran Ubuntu for a while, but I play a lot of video games and support was lacking. Wine, proton, and other tools have come a long way since then.

My old desktop couldnt update to 11. But for my newer computer, Windows recall was a deciding factor. Fuck that shit. Also fuck their “ai” nonsense.

It’s nice that it’s free and doing little to nothing contrary to my interests.

I only buy drm free music and then back it up somewhere myself. Bandcamp at least is drm free, but who knows if they’ll turn to shit after being bought and sold.

Buying music on Bandcamp and similar has been good for me. When I got laid off I kept all the music I owned and didn’t have to pay anymore. All these subscription services suck.

You can turn that one on desktop off, btw

I know plenty of adults who are really bad at money and paying bills.

I feel like the average video game player has really poor media and political literacy, but maybe it’s just the ones who make noise online who fit that profile.

One of the guys at my old job submitted a PR with tests that basically just mocked everything, tested nothing. Like,

with patch("something.whatever", return_value=True):
  assert whatever(0) is True
  assert whatever(1) is True

Except for a few dozen lines, with names that made it look like they were doing useful.

He used AI to generate them, of course. Pretty useless.

One of the many things that’s infuriating about this is that these people are so profoundly stupid, but they keep getting all the money and power. If there was any justice in the world, people like the decision makers in your stories would be living a very spartan life somewhere, reflecting on how they are so fucking senseless.

And yet people continue to worship these “job creators” and “visionaries”.

88 is an unfortunate score.

Anyway. I haven’t played the full release, but it’s been good in early access. I think it’s a little harder than the first one

Thinking about it, it seems like the kind of wacky thing that would be on par with dwarf fort. A passion project years in the making. I doubt any big studio would go for it.

Side note, I really liked how mage: the awakening 2e did paradox. You risk more for witnesses, sure. But you mostly risk paradox for making your spells more than you can safely handle. Hubris. That’s the theme of the game.

(Further minutia details: you can make small changes to your spells magnitude or subjects, and that only risks the spell failing. But bigger changes, those require you to “reach” and that can cause paradox. make a spell last two turns instead of one? -2 dice. Or, reach, and make it last the whole scene… but maybe roll for paradox. Mind2 can’t make someone hurt themselves… unless you reach. Great system. Very fiddly. Wouldn’t play well as a real time game.)

Is he showing any of his work, or is he just making stuff up? Seems like he’s just making stuff up.

Also, everyone should look at the “wealth to scale” webpage: https://dbkrupp.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ . Humans are not good at scale, and this helps visualize it.

when you play competitive games you’re expressing your skill as a player in front of an audience of people.

The first part of your post makes sense, even if I don’t agree with it. But this part stands out- buying a skin isn’t a skill question. It’s just a wallet question.

Some games have stuff you can only earn via achievements or whatever. I could see being proud of, like, a skin you only get if you get 100 perfect whatevers in a row. But, like, just buying it? But I guess the audience has enough people who are impressed by that sort of thing.

spending some money on a skin isnt a big deal you’re just paying devs for the game you love.

Also not to be a negative nerd, but unless the company is very tiny the developers aren’t getting much, maybe zero, of that money. Developers get a salary. Stock options, maybe. It’s not like a tip jar. Profits typically go to the owners under capitalism, not the labor. “Buy skins to support the developers” might be indirectly true, in a limited sense, but it mostly feels like capitalist propaganda.

I feel like no one’s going to make a good Mage game unless there’s some genuine breakthroughs in AI. It’s a very open ended system, and limiting it to pre-scripted “you can use mind-2 to persuade here” or “you can telekineticly slap someone here” would suck.

Most basic game problems just go away for mages. Just starting stats mages are a whole cut above your standard RPG protagonist. Teleport anywhere. Dominate anyone. Rewind time.

I guess. I’d rather not throw away my money, even if it’s not tight. I wouldn’t feel joy about a custom skin. Every time I saw it I would be reminded that I’d wasted money.

But that’s me, not everyone.

I feel like a game in development this long is extremely unlikely to be good.

Also I’m one of the dozens of people that liked Requiem (2e) more than Masquerade. Dozens of us!

Switched to Linux. Don’t miss windows. Shit like this does not entice me.

…who is paying a million dollars for a skin??

These skins have 15% returns? That seems dubious but it could be. I don’t think you can sink $300k into skins like you can vanguard, though.

Who is buying these skins. I feel like such an alien sometimes. I just can’t understand wanting to spend any money at all on a cosmetic skin