Then they were able to take that game away from me and replace it with something I liked far less. This is inevitable for any live service game; if not replacing the game you liked with something else, then its removal altogether so that no one can play it anymore in any form. It sucks.

This is a good, concise way to describe one of the subtler problems with these types of game. At least with some of them, if they’re sold without DRM, you can keep the version you like, but more often than not, those are few and far between.

@morrowind@lemmy.ml

It’s a bit of both in my opinion. You only market/suggest Lemmy (as forum/link aggregator software) to those with the tech knowledge to build with it, but to everyone else you mention a community site to join and don’t bother mentioning what it’s built with, as they won’t care anyway.

If we remain in our current comfort space, Lemmy will likely continue to stagnate as a niche platform.

I follow what you’re getting at here, but I think this line of thinking, of Lemmy as a platform, also contributes to the issues in drawing more people to this network of communities/sites.

As Kichae said in your other thread:

[…]
“Lemmy” doesn’t exist like Reddit does. It’s not a place people can go to talk about shit. It’s a website engine. It exists like WordPress does. One of its features just happens to be “can pull content from other websites”.

If we want this space to grow, we need to focus on building community websites that stand on their own. Then we can market it as “hey, you love it here on MyInterest.social, but did you know you can also talk to people from SomethingElse.social? Pretty cool, huh??!?” Nobody seems to want to do that, though. That means we’re totally at the mercy of places like Twitter and Reddit, waiting for them to fuck up badly again and hoping more people just kind of land here, in some cheap and uncanny knockoff of where they really wanted to be.

On one hand I agree that the interface, and in turn the user experience, is worth focusing on to help get people to participate around here. On the other, I think you also need what Kichae describes at the end of their comment. Communities that can stand on their own with their own distinct identities and interests that also happen to let you talk with and see stuff from other distinct communities.

At some point I’d like to move to a little more focused sort of community like that built with Lemmy (or Piefed, or Mbin), but haven’t had luck finding any that fit so far since many are broader in scope instead.

I don’t love the default Lemmy web UI, but I agree with the sentiment of preferring a lighter, faster UI…Which makes me surprised to read that you love it.

I don’t know why, but it occasionally slows way down for me when signed in and browsing. It’s nearly driven me to switching interfaces to see if they’re any better with performance.

Was hoping they might have added an option to Not Update/Skip Update or Never Update, or some other means to preserve the currently installed version. I don’t like Valve’s (and other tech businesses’) assumption that updates are always good.

The only games for which these update settings make some sense are always online, “service” games. Other games are largely fine to indefinitely delay updates on, or never update at all.

Streaming isn’t the middle ground in my opinion, rather it’s unrestricted downloadable files that you can then handle however. Streaming provides some convenience but no consistent access (see various shows being delisted or shuffled between services).

Companies would love if everyone forgot having home video, in the sense of owning copies of movies and shows they always have access to and ability to watch whenever.

True, but as noted, it isn’t a necessity to run a full-network relay, which those resource demands and costs relate to.

At the same time, one of the larger Mastodon instances, Mstdn.social in terms of financial costs alone amounted to about 1000 euros per month as of October 2024.

The architecture of ATProto also enables a greater degree of flexibility in separating out costs by comparison, which in some respects may be an interesting model worth consideration for new or developing ActivityPub software, and in some respects is already in the works with projects like Bonfire and ActivityPods. On the ATProto side there’s already at least one person looking to adapt ActivityPub to ATProto’s PDSs in a manner similar to ActivityPods, just using ATProto data formatting instead.

We use different terms, but that’s what I’m referring to here:

ActivityPub is more suited to scaling across multiple instances/sites than up, and I’d argue that’s its strength.

I understand the hesitation, which is why I’ve been trying to monitor its developments closely. Hence why I linked the example of someone testing out a small network ATProto relay, and why I also dug up this post about self-hosting different parts of the ATProto infrastructure the other day.

From what I’ve observed, there’s no pushback against people doing so, and the only things stopping people are the usual: time, costs, knowledge, motivation, etc. For the first step to really happen at all there have to be people with the resources and motivation to do so, which is always the tricky part. In a small way part of my OP is intending to encourage anyone with both to give it a shot, as I lack some of the necessary resources to try it myself.

It’s not so much that ActivityPub can’t scale up, so much as that for one, as I’ve understood it that’s not really been desirable anyway (undermines the point of decentralization/distribution), and for two, it starts getting bogged down as you already recognize. It also runs into similar, if not worse, cost problems to operate as ATProto’s full network approaches are now.

ActivityPub is more suited to scaling across multiple instances/sites than up, and I’d argue that’s its strength. It unintentionally has an implosion threshold to counter centralization in terms of cost and performance.

On the other hand, ATProto’s advantage is that it enables scaling up while also enabling better data portability. I’m aware of work on this with ActivityPub as well, but it’s still very early stages. My thinking is that there may be some ways to work with both to push towards their similar shared aims in terms of an open social web, with more flexibility in moving between spaces and adjusting experiences to better find what one wants from these different spaces.

Ideally they would be compatible, I agree.

Also you’re right regarding the capacity to scale up, and frankly, while ATProto makes it feasible, I don’t think it’s necessarily desirable even with ATProto. Part of the point of it is to have various independent relays that would better distribute the load, and enable people’s mobility when any of them go bad. Setting that aside, they don’t all have to be full network relays, in fact someone is already toying with running a small network relay.

I also agree regarding moderation problems at a larger scale, and that ActivityPub’s various software should take this as a wake-up call to improve the user experience, not so much for “big social media vibes” but for a better, less finicky experience.

However I also think there are potential benefits to ATProto, which blended together with ActivityPub, could make both better overall. The technical literacy and insistence on independent servers of the ActivityPub culture could make ATProto properly distributed and federated, which would be far better than letting it languish in corporate hands. Meanwhile the openness to optional transparent, customizable algorithms and preference for a smoother user experience of the ATProto/Bsky culture could make ActivityPub a more accessible, and livelier feeling space for more people.

Both can improve from one another, so long as both communities choose to try to learn from one another.

Mainly games built for replaying, so arcade puzzlers like Super Hexagon/Tetris Effect/Mixolumia/Equaline/etc, roguelikes such as FTL/BrogueCE/etc, or strangesims like Powder Toy or Vilmonic. Although even with those it’s more occasional, like when I’m uncertain of what I’m wanting to do.

That’s a fun mix, Gemini Rue was a pleasant surprise to see!

You might also enjoy Primordia given that.

obligatory but entirely sincere addition for those looking for palate cleansing games: Outer Wilds

and for those after a variety of others, in particularly no order, that may or may not come up as much:

• The Powder Toy
• Heaven’s Vault
• Vilmonic
• Intraquartz
• Interior Worlds
• Mixolumia
• Thousand Threads
• Mu Cartographer
• Hypnagogia: Boundless Dreams
• Jazzpunk
• Crossniq+
• BrogueCE
• Heart&Slash
• Umurangi Generation w/ Macro
• NeonXSZ
• Paradise Killer

But this is all from a flipside of a flipside, so each is as likely to appeal as repel, quick slide to catch clicks and clunks

No, since there is only the PowerPC bits on the disc, there is no way to play the game on a newer x86 cpu without downloading the x86 bits

Something worth adding here, if you happen to know, would be if the games still work after download & install while offline. Microsoft’s been rather inconsistent with this over the years (which is part of why Xbox One fell behind PS4 at launch).

There have been a few titles that I think reach that potential, but most of them are quite old now.

Don’t leave us hanging! Quality endures the ages, well, mostly.

maybe CDPR (hopefully the cp2077 release was just a fluke but we’ll see).

Cyberpunk 2077 was Witcher 1 repeat tbh, people forgot Witcher 1 was a mess at launch since they patched it up a bunch and some other stuff to try to make amends

Saw where you mentioned being into fighting games, action games, & shmups, so I wonder which games you find yourself bouncing off of more.

Along with reasons other have mentioned that are similar to my own (many games demanding a lot of time, better finding what games really click with me, etc.), I’ve also been put off by other details (hyper-monetization, big budget photorealistic & cinematic styles, etc.). Personally it’s less being into very few games, and more being into more specific kinds of game design and creative style, which are sometimes harder to find.

Like not being into drawn out progression systems immediately narrows one’s options pretty significantly, especially among many recent games.

Pretty sure all the adweb enclosures have been doing this for years now. Even pre-Musk acquisition people mentioned that Twitter seemed to bury posts with links, this is just Musk putting it upfront.

This is how these businesses try to squeeze people for money. Bury outbound links unless you pay up to have them as ads/sponsored/promoted posts.

we can go further, somethingsomething StreetPass