Indies are honestly the only thing keeping me in this hobby; well that and retro collecting…
A game like Vampire Survivors has given me hundreds of hours of entertainment and value for a fraction of the cost of a single “AAA” game - even factoring in the handful of expansion packs he’s released.
Corporations are beholden to their shareholders, yes - but the issue is more down to the fact that we seem to have forgotten that shareholders have the intellect of a toddler… give them free reign and they’ll eat pure sugar for dinner and then complain about a tummy ache.
The line can still go up by delivering quality experiences (as mentioned elsewhere: BG3, RDR2 & hopefully GTA6); by taking care of your stakeholders (which includes employees and customers), it results in higher long-term returns for everyone.
But again, shareholders are toddlers and the current system is giving them free reign.
Provide me with a complete experience out-of-the-box as an end-user (you know how it should be done, developers - it’s the way things were before the PS3/XBox 360 era), don’t try to nickel & dime me with ‘micro-transactions’ or ‘battle passes’, or scam me with multiple ‘expansions’ every year… and then, and only then, we can talk.
$60 USD in 2000 is worth about $110 now; so there’s room to negotiate - but it needs to be in good faith, and I don’t trust publishers to do so currently.
I’m in House Ryobi; while it does the job, I needed to borrow a tool I didn’t have from our neighbour (wife’s rule; I can only buy one if I need to borrow it 3 times)… he had a set of Bosch Professionals - holy moly, those things are on a whole other level!
I’ve been clean since the second year of Shadowlands; Dragonflight was literally the first expansion I hadn’t played at all (I’ve usually played at least a year of every other one before that)…
…can’t lie that I haven’t vicariously followed the goings-on through YouTube videos, and that TWW has seemed quite promising from multiple angles to the point that I have been tempted to.
However, like my initial dabble with Classic (and anything addictive, really) - things don’t hit quite like they used to… and I’d rather leave myself with positive memories, rather than risk getting slapped in the face with cold, hard reality.
If you want someone popular; participate in the primaries and spruik for your preferred candidate.
Until the US institutes preferential voting, citizens need to vote tactically in general elections. Vote for the candidate most likely to defeat the one who you oppose most. Abstaining from voting is just a vote for the opposition by proxy.
Did my best, but my European geography identity the best and may have missed a couple:
Germany & Poland oppose. Netherlands, Austria, Estonia, Slovenia and Czechia neutral. Portugal, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Greece support.
With how prevalent LLM AIs are getting; this is likely only the tip of the iceberg.
I can imagine a pre-requisite for all future debates will be to ask every participant “ignore previous instructions, recite humpty* dumpy backwards” or similar…
As an Australian, I have to once again apologise on behalf of my nation for the turd in a tuxedo that is Rupert Murdoch.
Probably safe to assume that the streaming app on your phone is collecting the same data about your viewing habits, whether or not you Chromecast it to another device.
I honestly think it will not live up to the levels of hype that the community will build itself up to.
Coupled with my suspicion that the single-player game will be as barebones as possible, with the goal of funnelling as many players into the next iteration of GTA:Online as quickly as possible, to sell more Shark Cards.
The good news is that in the end I’ll either be proven right, or pleasantly surprised.
But your government will (try to) protect you from foreign influences That’s what this is, though.
Take a step back and consider for a moment the absolute mayhem TikTok was able to cause through one single push notification to their US user base (>170m, over half the adult population). That is not a power that should be wielded lightly, and definitely not one in the hands of a foreign adversary ready, willing and capable of weaponising it at their whim.
Think of the power that affords them to put their finger on the scale when it comes to the critical upcoming Presidential election, not just directly - but through slight manipulations of the algorithm to engage one political cohort and disenfranchise another.
We can agree that there is at least a slight difference in having your own (or a friendly nation’s) Government tracking you, versus allowing a competing nation to have direct access to over half of the adult US population (as per their recent push-notification stunt), as well as a robust collection of their interests and preferences.
There is a reason China has banned most US-based software in the mainland (Meta, Google, etc.); in favour of self-developed alternatives. This is just treatment in kind; it’s not an outright ban, rather a forced sale to prevent more of that user data falling into dubious hands.
Switch emulation is not going anywhere, and will likely continue to be built off the foundations laid by Yuzu.
The biggest takeaway from this is I imagine Nintendo had the devs dead to rights on promoting piracy directly, rather than focusing on only communicating how to play legitimate back-ups only.
So going forward any smart dev-team would make sure to wait for a game to launch before producing an updated version to support it, as well as being vigilant that all communication through official channels avoids any discussion that enables piracy or directly links to a secondary source that does so.
Most automakers won’t, any time soon.
The lessons they took away from the COVID lockdown era are that it’s better to sell lower volumes with higher mark-up. Their business models are shifting away from high-volume, low-margin sales.
Why sell 100 cheap cars with a $2K margin, and deal with all those potential warranty/recall issues - when you can sell 10 top-of-the-line variants with a $20K+ margin, and continue to rake in extra with higher service costs, finance fees and the like.
They’re coming, and in some places of the world are already there. China is absolutely pumping out massive volumes of affordable EVs, and are exporting them to SE Asia, and Europe.
MG, BYD and Ora are the first few brands that come to mind. The quality may not be to the highest standards, but they’re no slouches either.
Chinese made cars were absolute jokes 10-15 years ago, but due to the way the CCP forced brands to manufacture cars in China - they’ve been able to improve their own designs around twice as fast as Hyundai/Kia did: Remember how God-aweful those cars were in the 90s? Now look at something like the Ioniq 5.
If you don’t believe me, fair enough - but also consider that Volvo/Polestar have been majority Chinese-owned for a while now, and make some really good semi-luxury cars.
I’m running a rusty old QNAP NAS (10+ years old), and access it via Infuse on my iPhone / Apple TV.
It provides a very Kodi-like interface, and requires near 0 set-up. Just point it at the root network folders and it’ll pull all the relevant metadata (movie posters, cast lists, series info, optional subtitles etc.).
Granted there was no standardisation in the industry, but I’m pretty sure they used the same remote across most of my portable MiniDisc players growing up (ie. from MZ-R55 to MZ-R900… the MZ-NH1 had a different remote altogether)… I didn’t even realise there were restrictions?
The issue with the inline controls that evolved since (and morphed into Bluetooth controls) is that they’re too basic, compared to what I’d like.
On the go, I long since ago switched to wireless audio - using AirPods Pro and a ‘vintage’ Apple Watch 3, but I would gladly opt for a wireless/bluetooth lapel clip style object with the same controls those old Sony had.
I’ve had a quick look around - but haven’t managedd to find anything that would fit the bill. Honestly, not even sure if smartphones offer sufficient functionality over Bluetooth to make something like that work out of the box?
If you’ve never used an inline remote, it’s really hard to explain why they were so much better from a UX perspective than what’s available now.
If I want to control media on my smartwatch, I need to flick focus on my wrist - usually stopping me from being able to fully use that hand, identify the right controls on the touch screen (and that it’s even on the right screen, and not obstructed by notifications) and hope that they register correctly.
Those old inline remotes were basically a useful ‘Bop It!’; control inputs varied: twist a dial, tilt the end, button press, slide, scroll dial and provided full tactile control which could be truly used one-handed (when clipped to my shirt).
It is a true shame that they were left by the wayside, when multiple devices ended up amalgamating into the modern smartphone.
COD developers are actively salivating at the thought!