MudMan

No, it cannot.

They are confronting what is obvious, effective tools to undermine democracy with some weird experiment that is at best a niche effort to do online social engineering much more than it is social media.

Social media is a destructive force. By nature. Yes, Fedi as well.

You learn to manage in society, maybe. Like you do addiction and cancer and crime. The techno-optimism stuff is borderline delusional at this point.

Sure, and with the GPU sucking up a bunch of juice that’s plenty to get toasty.

It’s just I haven’t been using laptops that do that in the past few years and coming from desktop world it feels so wrong now.

On a 1660 Ti (MaxQ, I presume)? I can believe it. It’s the exact range of game that card is made for. At a glance I don’t see Skyrim AE benchmarks, but notebookcheck has it running Monster Hunter World, MGS V and Rise of the Tomb Raider maxed out at 1080p60ish.

Maybe I’m spoiled by just assuming Windows and Linux benchmarks are comparable by default? I guess it’s no longer a surprise now, so… congrats, everybody?

Also, man, is there something you can do about those CPU temps? It makes me nervous just to look at that 28% utilization at 90C. I’ve been away from gaming laptops since handhelds are a thing and I’m not used to that anymore.

You know the real problem with this conversation?

It is not, and everything I said is sincere and honest.

I mean, unless it’s a confession, which I guess I could believe.

What, you think any of the stuff he said is expected by his base?

It was never about the stuff he said, it was about how you didn’t have an answer to it he couldn’t counter, so you lose and they win.

What you lose and they win about was never the issue, and there is no consequence to it beyond perhaps the opportunity of another argument they may have a harder time winning, but they know how to win arguments against you, so they’re not particularly worried.

Who said “why aren’t you playing it”? I said you should play it. Very different things.

I know why you’re not playing it. It’s because you’re a sourpuss that doesn’t like good games and does like being angry on the Internet.

I’m saying you should change that and play good games. Don’t even need to spend hundreds on them. Just throw a tenner at them on sale, give them a look, maybe.

Also, and I say this with utmost sincerity, I am not a serious person. Wish I was even less serious. I’m a bit too stiff for comfort, really.

Man, you really should play the game if you’re trying to be mad about the additional content. It’s really good and it’s ten bucks on sale right now. Forty to get all the extra content. Well worth it.

The stamps are mostly premium edition filler. There are hundreds in the base game and nobody is particularly mad at the three jpegs they try to sell for two bucks as a way to pretend they added two bucks of value to your premium bundle.

The music pack is pretty solid, though. Lots of licensed anime music. Can’t argue with blasting out Solid State Scouter when playing with Bardock. Just… remember to disable it if you’re going to stream the game, you will get dinged for copyright infringement on Youtube. You want to get mad about something? How about selling people music as part of a game and then accusing them of infringement for streaming the game they paid for? How silly is that?

There is no exploitation in charging different prices for different things. Prices aren’t based on how much a thing costs to make, they’re based on how much people are willing to pay for it. Welcome to supply and demand.

Cosmetics are (relatively) cheap to make and sold at a high margin because they are subsidizing a game that is sold at very low price. Turns out the sticker price in DBFZ with its what, 24 characters at launch is twenty bucks or so cheaper than good old Street Fighter 2 with its eight characters.

There are a bunch of ways we’ve been shaving cost from games to keep that somewhat artificial price point. Selling people who are willing to spend more a bunch of non-game-relevant stuff at a higher margin is just one of them. You are extremely outraged by this for some reason, I am very glad.

Because yeah, sure, I spent like 200 bucks in my copy of the game (probably a bit more, I got the Switch version, too) and I subsidized a number of more casual players that only bought the base game.

That’s cool. I get more people to play against and they get a cheaper game up front. I played that game for 500 to 1000 hours, I spent 3-5 cents per hour. I have no regrets. Didn’t even have to pay a subscription for it, my physical version will live forever and I can still play my Steam copy with forty-plus characters.

You are commited to being mad about this on our behalf, turns out us spenders don’t need your protection. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. You don’t have to get it. We’ll pick up your slack.

Which is not to say everything is fair game or that there aren’t predatory practices at play in gaming. It’s to say you’re obscuring those by crying wolf because you like being mad about things and have fixated on this in particular to an unreasonable degree.

I guess it depends on where your line for “gross” happens to land. In my old age I tend to look at old arcades as being pretty gross. Certainly worse than I thought they were at the time.

I’m also not sure if I have a problem with Diablo IV. I think their incentive is for you not to run out of content and bounce all the way off before they can give you more, which is why they retuned it much more generously later. In this case the version of the game that people like more is also the one that did better for them financially. Is that more or less gross?

So I’m not sure I agree on whether the incentives matter. I think the experience I get matters. There is definitely a bad place there in the middle where you feel frustrated playing but won’t stop playing, and that’s a place where a bunch of the sloppier, grindier games make their money. And I’m not gonna stand here and say that all the upsells in games with a big live service don’t make the experience worse. They do, in my book.

But those impacts to the experience are what matters to me, not that they are made as part of a business proposition. Full games in boxes were also sold for money. Live games I enjoy are made for money, too.

I’m more concerned at how live games get to vacuum up all players and keep them on lockdown forever than I am about their moneymaking practices, to be honest. People are worried about the wrong set of incentives here, if you ask me.

That being said… man, do I wish people would put their money where their mouth is. It’s all well and good to complain about more expensive pay-up-front games or about overly intrusive microtransactions, but this conversation would be a lot smoother if people actively spending hundreds of hours on those weren’t currently spending like 70% of the time and 50% of all the money in gaming. Voting with one’s wallet rarely does much, in isolation, but there are absolutely tons of games out there. It’d be nice to see people flock towards the good ones, as per their own standards, and ideally spend some money on those.

Skins are fine. They are entirely optional. Something existing doesn’t mean you must own it.

That’s the part where we’re not going to agree. Well, the maximalist holier-than-thou stance in general. But otherwise, you see things existing as an affront to you personally. This skin was made by someone and put in the game, and so I’m entitled to it, so it either shouldn’t exist or it should be mine.

That just doesn’t track. I don’t feel any more entitled to some random bikini costume than I do to some random statue bundled with a collector’s edition. It’s faff some people may want, but I’m not being attacked because somebody is buying and selling collector’s edition of Cyberpunk for 200 bucks, just like way I’m not attacked by someone buying some in-game costume.

Also, you do know pro football players get bonuses per goal, right? That comparison means different things depending on whether you know that and both are confusing.

Nah, they did it with Youtube videos.

But on the underlying point of “everybody is freaking out about AI things that good old big data had been doing for years with zero pushback” I very strongly agree.

Nah, some thoughts.

But not everything is black and white. And in the spectrum of grey there are plenty of in-game sales that are better than the alternative.

Again, I would much rather buy the characters one by one and have the all-in-one box come out later than have to wait for the big box and pay full price for it.

I am genuinely baffled about why you think that’s worse than “pay me for the game every month or I take it away”. I am even more baffled by how you think that distinction is somehow logical beyond personal preference. Your being adamant about this doesn’t make it make sense.

Hey, if latching on to the jokes helps you ignore the point be my guest, but the point stands with or without your acknowledgement.

I don’t “delight in their exploitation”, I am one of the people who buy this stuff.

I am not a victim just because you decide I am. I have some say in this.

So hell yeah, bait me, daddy. To this day, Dragon Ball FighterZ is probably the best gaming experience I’ve ever had. I was there at ground floor, bought every character, watched every tournament, got competitive. I ended up with three copies of the game, all 100%-ed and with hundreds of hours of play.

And the only thing that bums me out is that they had to bail out of it early, presumably to go make Marvel Tokon.

I will be on ground floor for Tokon, and I will be funding that mouse engine with a bunch of piecemeal cash, I’m sure.

And I need you to listen to me when I tell you that it’s going to be on purpose, that I’m not a victim, that I hope that treadmill lasts for a good long while and that the game is good enough to support it.

So please spare me the benevolent outrage. I don’t need your protection from my own taste. I would very much appreciate an offline-playable version of the game I can buy with all the DLC down the line, like I did for Marvel vs Capcom 3 or Street Fighter IV, and thanks to the weirdly wholesome interaction between developers and the FGC I may actually get that at some point to support tournament play. But otherwise? Nobody is complaining. You can go save somebody else.

And hey, I say this being a big fan of single player games, and a big supporter of physical media and game preservation. But you come here to tell me that some of my favourite games —and I’m talking game-changing experiences I cherish deeply— should have been illegal and I just don’t know better? Yeah, not gonna fly, Hillary.

Wait, in what world is a subscription a “rational consumer purchasing decision” where buying characters for a fighting game if you want them as they come out is not?

I would prefer to pay for in-game content of any kind, cosmetics included, over paying a subscription for a game. Any day. Especially if the content is characters, as is the case in LoL or Street Fighter.

And yeah, I bought three 3D Street Fighter games. And a bunch of characters for each. Even a costume or two. I am extremely on board with that. Money extremely well spent, as far as I’m concerned.

Hell, the SF6 community at the moment is begging for more cosmetics. They just announced a handful of horny-ass swimsuit costumes and people went ballistic. It’s not my bag, but if people like them and they know what they’re buying who the hell are you to tell them they’re wrong, let alone that it should be illegal?

I mean, it’s a straightforward enough transaction. You think bikini Cammy with tan lines is hot and will pay some money for that skin. I get subsidized by your teenage hormones and keep playing the game I like. Win/win in my book.

That’s the problem with this train of thought. There’s some stuff where you and I agree there are bad practices and we can probably agree on some common sense regulation for them. But if you’re going to come at me with a maximalist approach that boils down to “games I don’t like shouldn’t exist” we’re going to disagree.

Which, if nothing else, is a good reason for regulation of creative products to be relatively loose whenever possible. I was not on board with Hillary wanting to ban Mortal Kombat in the 90s because she didn’t like hearts being ripped out and I’m not on board with people wanting to ban free to play games now. It made sense to have age ratings in the 90s and it makes sense to have that and other common sense regulations now.

There aren’t anywhere near enough of us here for there not not be an “overarching culture and ethos”. There are few places on the Internet more ideologically consistent than this, frankly. Self-selection is a powerful force.

Yeah, no.

I like a bunch of games that do this. I’ve liked games that do this for 40 years.

I mean, technically you just banned all arcade games that ever existed. I liked a bunch of those.

And I like a bunch of free to play games. I spent a bunch of time playing Hearthstone. I’m gonna say that at least some of the millions of people in LoL would like to keep playing what they’re playing. I am looking forward to a bunch of new characters in Street Fighter 6. I kinda don’t want to go back to the days where I had to buy a second full price copy of Street Fighter 2 just to get access to 4 new characters.

I get that it sounds good to say this when thinking about the worst parts of the industry, but… yeah, no.

Well, the missing context is that this is how a lot of gaming is tuned regardless. It’s pretty basic economy tuning to look at how long a task takes to complete and tune based on that (for games with grind, anyway, think RPGs).

So if you’re playing “Perfectly Fair Single Player RPG 3” there’s a more than fair chance that the developers looked at the expected completion time of a quest, plugged in that time into some spreadsheet and assigned XP and other rewards to the quest based on that, just to keep the XP curve of the game somewhat predictable. This is a big rabbit hole with a bunch of nuance, but for these purposes we can assume they at least started by doing that flat on all quests.

If you have a F2P game and you’re charging for things you can also grind I frankly don’t see a much better place to start.

Now, if your premise is that all design for engagement in F2P is gross because it’s servicing your business and all design for engagement in paid games is fine because that’s just seeking “fun”… well, I don’t know that gets fixed. I agree that pay-up-front games can benefit from getting the ugly matter of getting money from players out of the way early, but these days even those games are trying to upsell you into later content, sequels and other stuff, so the difference is rarely that stark.

I think there’s a conversation to be had about whether “good”, “fun” and “makes people want to engage more” should be seen as the same thing and, if not, what the difference is. It’s tricky and nuanced and I don’t know that you can expect every game to be on one end of that conversation. Sometimes a person just wants to click on a thing to make number go up, and that’s alright.

Hah. The machine I’d burn down is social media, in case it wasn’t clear.

Also, don’t fret for… I don’t know, my immortal soul, I have to guess from the severity of the warning? I am confident I’m not in some corporate body horror thing where I gradually transform into some weird yuppie werewolf, but I appreciate the concern.

I would counter that not recognizing the humanity in the… “dystopian slide engineers” would make me more worried about slippery slopes. My stance on corpo middle management and their output has remained neither slippery not sloped for many, many years.

For me it got particularly bad back when I was running Manjaro and the GUI package manager showed you multiple package types for the same software all the time. Three metronomes is bad, but three differently packaged versions of Steam is worse and potentially unrecoverable.