My understanding is that one of the upsides to Bazzite is that Nvidia drivers are pretty easy to install and manage. That was the thing that turned me off of Fedora when I tried making the switch to that a couple years ago.

Is that easy to do in Kinoite? This is the first I’ve heard of it, and it sounds like exactly what I would want out of Bazzite.

Were you around when it released? There was a somewhat small but steady voice online that disliked the weapon degradation, lack of traditional dungeons, the small scale of what dungeons there were, and the clunkiness of the UI.

2-5 times a year I get really into Enlisted. It’s a really grindy free to play game, it feels like 90% of my teammates fail to work toward the objective, and every other round there’s an enemy player that paid for overpowered equipment wiping us out.

But man, it is a thrill to charge through whizzing bullets to get into the midst of the other team before firing round after round from a lee enfield bolt action. And if I am playing with friends there is constant strategic and tactical chatter that makes it so engaging.

So am I to assume there was more to the story that didn’t click with you than the optional narrative sub-branch that you chose not to engage with?

Out of curiosity, who did you romance, and why?

TW3: I like it, the base game provides a decent core roster of factions to play, and on sale there’s a decades worth of further factions that are fun to play. I have a friend to give this copy to so we can play together a little.

Another Crabs Treasure: I’ve heard good things, wasn’t going put of my way for it but I’m excited to try it.

No More Heroes 3: This is my buddy’s favorite game series, it’s a little strange for me to get into.

Etrian Odyssey: I’ve heard this game is good, I want to try it, I know I never actually will.

Pharaoh: from what I recall it has Caesar 3 vibes, so I’m down to try it. I’m always down to try a city builder.

Synergy: played a Next Fest demo a year or more ago. It was pretty if a little basic, so I’ll probably get a chill evening out of running through the tech tree once.

The other two: Never heard of them, they seem fine, maybe one of my casual (as in chill/cozy) gaming friends will like Paleo Pines.

On the whole, it’s a decent month, enough to keep my sub going.

I feel like doing research shouldn’t be an issue for people playing Paradox games, where it takes hours of research in the tooltips just to understand the mechanics.

That said, my research for new Paradox DLC usually consists of hovering over it in the store, ignoring anything with reviews less than mixed, taking interest in those with positive, and reading the first dozen reviews of the mixed ones, and that works well enough.

I’ve been wanting to for a few years now as the service gets worse (where is my playlist radio?) but have been complacent. This is the last thing to push me over my limit. I’ll be transferring my decade-worth of playlists this weekend.

When I consider changes to language, I try to start from a prescriptivist position rather than a descriptivist, which to me means assuming language should stay static to ensure a common understanding rather than fragmented meanings that lead to misunderstandings. If there is a change in language, it should justify itself through simplifying terms or adding a new meaning that other words lack, while avoiding harming the meanings of pre-existing words.

I use they/them pronouns for non-binary people as an example of this mindset in action because I think the benefits far outweigh any cons. With a greater understanding that non-binary people new language was needed, and they/them seems to me a very natural fit as I would already think to use it when asking about a stranger even before I knew of non-binary as a concept (“oh your friend is coming? What’s their name, are they a boy or a girl?). In my experience having a very close non-binary friend I have found that context tells whether I’m using they as a singular/plural pronoun ~90% of the time, and when it fails it adds maybe 20 seconds of clarification to explain I was referring to person’s name.

I think what you’re saying should be taken as inspiration for further evolving how we use those terms to better separate between singular and plural use rather than try backtracking on how it has already evolved in common use, and I think the answer (for me at least) lies in your very comment. Much like “you” vs “you all”, going forward I’ll put a little effort into using they/them in a singular context and use “them all” or “they all” as a plural. Maybe it will catch on and 30 years from now we’ll be saying “theyal” and “theyal’ll” as shorthand for “they all” and “they all will.”

Tots and pears, sounds like thoughts and prayers.

I’ve never heard that the initial investment has to come from a third party for it to be considered capitalism. Does that mean if a person had a business, sold it, then took the capital from that sale to start a new business that couldn’t be considered capitalism since a third party wasn’t the one investing?

Corporatists? Are you looking for the word corpocrats or corporatocrats?

Edit: corporatocracy is a government ran by corporate business interests, such as we see in the US.

Corporatism is a governance principle that government is a meeting ground for “corporate groups” to make decisions. Corporate groups represent a group of people, typically business leaders but also unions.

In a fascist corporatist state like Mussolini’s Italy this meant keeping business and union leaders close to keep a close eye on them for greater control. In a social corporatist state like Sweden, this means those same leaders have a legally mandated place in the government to get the benefits of capitalist growth tempered by the demands of common workers to receive a fair share of that growth and ensure safe working/living conditions.

I don’t think the powers that be in the US want unions anywhere close to the government, so I don’t think corporatist is the right term.

Kinda there with you. Just bought the base game, played through it once, ~70% through a hardcore Henry playthrough, and then I’ll wait for all the DLC to get that and do one more playthrough.

I mean, the guy is fucking Satan.

It’s just a meme format to say indie devs are better than corporate studios. Not the best choice for this context, I would have gone with the “who would win” meme: corporate studios with millions of dollars vs two guys with 7 years and some free time.

Believe me, I was headed toward emotional burnout long before I discovered drugs.

Hey now, I get an extra shot of espresso when I get Caribou because I want sugar and coffee!

On the one hand, you’re right that the market for micro transaction laden multiplayer games is much larger than single player games. On the other hand, the market for people who want single player games is still very large. You showed that yourself mentioning Rockstar games and Harry Potter.

So while many publishers want a piece of that larger pie, every publisher trying for it just leads to over saturation and greater odds that a game will fail entirely. So there is still incentive for publishers to release large single player games even if the pie is smaller since there may be less competition making it easier to stand out. And what the article is saying is that, within that pie, one way to stand out is to avoid micro transactions. And since it’s discussing single player games specifically, I don’t see a lot of relevance for bringing up multiplayer games that exist in a different part of the gaming world.

KCD2 is exactly like KCD1 with a few more years of development refining and in some cases expanding the rpg systems, a new map, and a continuation of the story. It feels the same, just a little nicer. In other words, it’s a perfect sequel.

The only fault I have with it is that Henry starts the game bad to mediocre at most things instead of useless, and that beginning stage is my favorite to go through and out of. But being a sequel I can excuse it pretty easily.