He did not explicity state this, no. But the entire premise of the invisible hand metaphor is to show that a core function of the capitalist system is that it moves wealth to those that bring good to their society. The natural inference from this is that wealth is representative of virtue, ie, if Roblox was doing net bad things, it wouldn’t be worth millions.

Don’t get me wrong, fuck the various Catholic attempts to justify wealth as a virtue too, but the issue is as prevalent in the secular world as it is in the non-secular.

It’s even worse than that.

At it’s root, capitalism, as shown via Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” theory, infers that wealth equals virtue. To receive wealth is to have provided a benefit to society, and to be bereft of wealth is to contribute little while taking much. This system inadvertedly places a dollar value on the abuse of minors in Roblox: any suffering caused is of no consequence to the great good being provided to society, otherwise Roblox would go bankrupt.

CEOs and corporations take the moral high ground because they live within a system that tells them that wealth is virtue, and they are overflowing in wealth. Until we accept that the core principals of capitalism are flawed, we will never begin holding bad actor’s appropriately accountable.

Olympics ends Esports plans

Aww…

with Saudi Arabia

Oh. Nevermind. Carry on, then.

While you are absolutely right, that doesn’t make it engaging to listen to. Perhaps ludonarrative harmony can go too far.

Fantastic response tbh.

It’s a good game, and very unique in what it does, but it’s not the objectively best written masterpiece it gets praise for.

My friend who thinks it is also thinks the same o Shakespeare, which I think explains a lot. I tend to be impressed with works that say more with fewer words rather than say little with very many. If the author could pull his head out of his own ass and get to his points, I think it would be a better game, but I suspect Disco Elysium fans would argue that that would ruin the best part of the game, so I just accept I’m not the target audience.

I don’t think this is about enthusiasts buying less games, though. We’re not talking about the average number of purchases the consumer makes. This is more evidence that there are a lot more casual players out there, who will make their 0-2 large game purchases a year and play their games over a long time. The college guy who literally only buys a couple sports games that they play online with a friend. The burnt out parent that can only make time for their 2 open world adventure games all year. I know a few people in my life who own a Switch, Mario Kart and Animal Crossing, and that will be literally the only two games they load all year. And this is to say nothing of people who strictly play F2P tirles, which apparently are 33% of players.

“US game players purchase 1-2 games a year on average” is not the same thing as “the bottom 60% of purchasers only purchase 1-2 games a year.” This is evidence that, one, the medium is reaching a much more widespread market and, two, the casual market is often more engaged with F2P titles.

I think if we looked at enthusiasts and hobbiests, there would still be a decline in purchases. I don’t think this is evidence that games have become too expensive for most.

I’m not convinced this is worse than being publically traded. Now instead of being beholden to faceless investors who only care about number go up, it’s one specific owner? I mean, considering who it is, it isn’t better. But I struggle to imagine it as worse.

Doesn’t matter, I’ll still either avoid their games or pirate.

I’d hardly call $50 games “budget titles.” Is paying $30 for a meal at a steakhouse a budget meal just because that high-class $50 a plate reservation-only place exists?

I agree that price doesn’t equal quality, but I don’t feel so good about trying to normalize AAA $50 games as “budget titles.” And the link to the article is broken, so I am not sure what the greater context and points of the article are.

God fucking dammit.

Chuds: “people are exaggerating when they compare Trump to Hitler.”

ICE:

And originally created by a university design team with a female design lead, at that.

Even as Portal 2 adds male characters, one is greedy and responsible for all the conflict in the franchise, acting as something of a caricature for masculine stereotypes, and the other’s only defining trait is that he’s an easily corrupted idiot.

Portal is perhaps the best example of, and should be held up as the golden standard of, feminism in gaming.

I think it has less to do with gender politics and more to do with delivery, though.

The writing was just better. They make Joel to be a complicated, sympathetic character, and create a situation in which, even as Joel/the player murders relative innocents, you know he is doing a bad thing from a complicated and genuine love. Then, they take that character and reduce all his love to “he did a bad” and shoot him, make you chase his killer for half a game, and try to make you sympathize with his killer after the fact? And it’s all tied together through this tired, “cycle of violence” trope that another major post-apolcolyptic zombie survival media has already bastardized and beaten to death.

The “fans” who defend Joel as the hero are insane, on that point I can’t agree more. But I think the dislike of Abby and the love of Joel is deeper than “guy good, girl bad.” I’ve seen far fewer complaints (though not zero complaints) about playing the notably more “woke” surrogate lesbian daughter than about playing as Abby.

As an aside, I’ve been thinking recently about how the game would feel if you spend the first half of the game as Abby, chasing her father’s killer, only to have the rug pull later that the killer is Joel. Then, you spend the second half playing as Ellie, dealing with the consequences, while the player is trying to reconcile what just happened. Though it prob would have been harder to sell a game that doesn’t open with Eillie and Joel.

No. They’re whining about Witcher 4 using Ciri as a protagonist because they think she was made ugly.

Attractive women designed solely to be the object of male affection are allowed to be protagonists. When a woman stands on their own as a unique complex individual, they take issue.

I think I disagree about the severity and urgency of some of the things you’re talking about, but I do agree with your sentiment. I restate: the only thing I am criticizing here is the ambiguity of language. It’s the “side quests” that give life flavour, and to give them up to deal with the “real problems” would be choosing to stop living because you’re too worried about surviving.

But still, strange headline choice.

I can’t help but read this headline as, “with climate change and the rise of fascism, the real world is ending, but how is this for a distraction: why can’t RPGs get the sense of urgency right?”

And like, this is genuinely an article and discussion I’m interested in, so this is not a criticism of anyone or anything other than the ambiguity of language.

Do yourself a favor and stop putting off Cassette Beasts. Every time I play it, I am gobstruck that an indie team made this and sells it for a fraction of the price of whatever mediocrity Pokemon is pumping out.

I could sing it’s praises all day, but I’d rather just politely nudge you to push it up the list.

A little surprised to hear Zero Time Dilemma is seen as the weakest game of the trilogy. I played them all in a vacuum, never really engaging with the communities around the franchise, and I would never have said that myself.

If I had to pick, I’d argue that Virtue’s Last Reward was the “worst” one, but I am not happy about writing that. It was a great game that I enjoyed start to end, but ending on a “this will only make sense when the 3rd game releases in X years!” note leaves a really sour taste in my mouth. The other two games are complete experiences, and when I am playing a visual novel, the last thing I want is a cliffhanger “join us next time to find out!”

That said I think I enjoyed puzzles and philosophical musings of it the most out of the three? So my opinion is more about what was bad than what was good and should probably be discarded anyway.

I’ve gotta put this one out there because it will largely get overlooked every time the topic of “Visual Novel” gets brought up, but Digimon: Survive.

As a tactics RPG, it’s pretty mid. Character growth and customization exists, but isn’t quite as expansive as I’d like for that kind of game. It’s no Final Fantasy Tactics, for example, but comparing it to other tactics games doesn’t do it justice, because it’s one of the better-to-best written visual novels I have ever played.

Each of the endings explores the way small changes in circumstance can heavily impact people’s decisions, each of the characters and their partner monsters are oozing with personality, and some of the potential outcomes for each character represents some of the most wild, fucked up, and human emotional responses possible. Your decisions as the main character have minor impacts in the lines of which characters reach their end of their growth arcs, and which evolutions are available to your partner and some of your companions partners, and the collective value system limits which of the main branches you’re permitted to explore for your ending. Which it doesn’t boast the wide assortment of branching narrative paths that some visual novels take, it does still succeed in making your decisions feel like they matter.

And this is completely aside from the fact that it’s a Digimon game. A franchise widely viewed as “for children”, yet it engages with heavy existential themes and doesn’t shy from letting horrible things happen to good, and bad, people. People die, on screen, in ways I would not want small children to see. In a lot of ways, the game is a functional “reboot” of the franchise, sharing a lot of commonalities with Digimon Adventure, but using older characters, more serious mature themes, and never referencing the monsters as “digimon”. In fact, the term is only used once, during the epilogue of one of the endings, otherwise they’re referred to as Kemonogami, and treated like Yokai. They’re engrained in the history and legendsof the world, and it’s an amazing take on the franchise.

I’m gushing at this point, but what really matters is it’s an extremely well-written visual novel with competent enough Tactical RPG gameplay, and also currently on a rather deep Steam Sale. Cannot recommend it enough.

Maybe if the game was anymore more than an uninspired mess, it would have sold some copies.

It’s not a good article. I was following along until, 5 minutes in, it suddenly decided to be detailing and describing exactly what AI and LLMs are. Like, long after showing some of the ways it’s hurting the industry, presumably to pad words.

For every shitty article pushing AI hype out there, there’s a shittt article pushing AI hate. Extremism generates clicks.

I thinks there are some nuggets of good information in there. The bits on first-hand accounts from former and current Activision employees, and on how it’s mostly the concept artists that are hurt is interesting. But you really have to wade through a mound of shit to get there, and I genuinely don’t have the patience to wade through the second half and see if there any more truth in this soft mound of turd that Wired called journalism.