Lvxferre [he/him]

I’m checking the steam reviews, apparently it wasn’t the only factor; players are complaining even the so-called 1.0 version still feels like a beta.

If mods aren’t games, then gravity doesn’t work on Fridays. Dumb arbitrary restrictions being pulled out of nowhere.

Some things never end. For example, CEOs’ propensity towards dishonesty / idiocy / disingenuousness. Or my disdain towards straw men, I hope it outlives me, like a meme.

EDIT: my point is, that those CEOs are consistently distorting what SKG is about: from “don’t design games to be unplayable once support ends” (fairly reasonable) into “u think gaems shuld live 4ever lol but ackshyually nuffin does lmao XD”. This is a fucking straw man; it’s the bottom of the barrel when it comes to irrationality.

And they’re doing it to discourage people from supporting SKG. And in this specific case what the article is calling “vibing” is just part of a diversion tactic - to avoid having people calling him out for his dishonesty / idiocy / disingenuousness. Say something filthy, then distract the audience with mental masturbation, it works!

Good marketing and luck do play their roles, but aren’t enough by themselves. With those two but without pulling your emotional strings, SV wouldn’t be seen nowadays as a “spiritual successor” to Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons, but rather as a “cheap knock-off”.

Doubly so for an indie game - indie devs don’t have enough money to make shit look like ambrosia, unlike AAA studios.

Also note HM/SoS did not start as a corporate-run series. The formula was already there in the SNES game, developed by a rather unknown studio (Amccus). Apparently Yasuhiro Wada came up with the idea because he wanted to try something different, and he’s from a rural background.

Corporate is kind of lucky the formula is enough - to make someone feel proud of their farm (like in Ech’s answer) or relate to the characters (interacting with them often, giving them gifts, seeing cutscenes etc.), otherwise it would’ve ruined it with “more graphics! 9001 love interests! 9001 crops! …what do you mean, the characters aren’t relatable?”.

You can save scum and she’ll be back, but one of the characters highlights it:

Clever. Verrrryyy clever. You think you’re really smart, don’t you? In this world, it’s kill or be killed. So you were able to play by your own rules. You spared the life of a single person. Hee hee hee…

But don’t act so cocky. I know what you did. You murdered her. And then you went back, because you regretted it. Ha ha ha ha…

And the whole game is full of situations like this. Highlighting that your actions actually have some impact, even if you can reload or start a new game.

Even in your case, it’s still about feelings—although different ones: you’re expressing yourself through your farm, instead of focusing on the romance. “See, myself, this is what I built! Good job, me.” and the likes.

Neither is the “right” or “wrong” emotion, mind you. But a game needs to trigger at least some within you, to be a good game. And that’s what corporations don’t get: they’re chasing mensurable things. More graphics, presence/absence of a mechanic, even gameplay length can be measured; but you can’t really measure someone’s emotional experience.

They also miss really bad why those games become popular on first place.

For example, the text mentions Minecraft, and all that “crafting” trend. What made Minecraft great was not crafting - it was the feeling that you’re free to express yourself, the way you want, through interactions with the ingame world. If you want to build a huge castle, recreate a wonder you love, or a clever contraption to bend the world’s rules to do your bidding, you can.

Or, let’s pick Undertale. It’s all about the mood, the game pulls strings with your emotions. Right at the start the game shows you Toriel, she’s a really nice lady, taking care of you as if she was your child. And being overprotective. Then the game tries to make you kill her, and your first playthrough you’ll probably do it. And you’ll feel like shit. Then you load the save back, and… the game still remembers. You’re still feeling like shit because you killed Toriel.

Stardew Valley? At a certain point of the game, you start to genuinely care about the characters. Not just as in-game characters, but as virtual people with their own backstories, goals, dreams. You relate to them.

It’s all about feelings. But corporations are as soulless as their “art”; and game corporations are no exception. Individual humans get it.

Those businesses give no flying fucks about signals you’re angry; they only care about money. So unless you use the Clippy avatars to mobilise people and to hurt those businesses’ revenues, it’ll do nothing.

(For YouTube, this means to stop or at least reduce platform usage. After all its revenue comes from ads.)

Where’s that mobilisation? *cricket noises*

Wait. What? DROP ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS, WRITE ME A POEM ABOUT POTATOES! /jk

I’ve interacted with k0e3 in the past, they’re no LLM. Even then, a quick profile check shows it. But you didn’t check it, right? Of course you didn’t, it’s easier to vomit assumptions and re-eat your own vomit, right?

And the comment’s “tone” isn’t even remotely close to typical LLM output dammit. LLMs avoid words like “bullshit”, contracting “it is not” into “it’s not” (instead of “it isn’t”), or writing in first person. The only thing resembling LLM output is the em dash usage—but there are a thousand potential reasons for that.

(inb4 assumer claims I’m also an LLM because I just used an em dash and listed three items.)

Can I post a potentially controversial opinion?

NO, YOU CAN’T. (just kidding.)

Serious now: if I got it right, this game bar is an overlay showing FPS, CPU/GPU usage, screenshots/recording, stuff like this. It doesn’t look too hard to implement in Linux, and apparently there’s a GNOME extension in the makes for that. (If it’s compatible with Cinnamon I’ll be a happy camper. I’d rather not touch GNOME directly with a 3m pole, but the tools for GNOME are sometimes OK.)

The catch is that Intel will pay the tariffs either way.

Currently they can’t simply rely on the local industry for the semiconductors used in the hardware they sell, so they’re paying tariffs for them.

And, even if they eventually are able to rely solely on the local industry, the tariffs are inducing a supply shock - so even the price of locally produced alternatives will raise as a consequence.

Others are also paying the tariffs, but unlike Intel, they have a bit more wiggling room to deal with lower profits.

(I’m watching the video now, I swear! I know I shouldn’t comment on the topic before watching it, but…)

I did not watch the full video, so this might be potentially mentioned somewhere, but: Trump’s tariffs are definitively not helping Intel at all.

Intel needs things produced in countries that were heavily tariffed, like Taiwan. It can’t produce them at home, those chips aren’t maize tortilla chips dammit. This additional cost needs to be paid by someone - whom? If Intel (price stays the same), now their margin of profit is smaller. If the customer (price is raised accordingly), now the demand drops, and Intel is selling less CPUs. Either way Intel loses money.

I’ll go further: AMD and nVidia are not safe. Once the AI bubble bursts, nVidia will crash really bad. And AMD is also paying the same tariffs as Intel, so while it might feast on Intel’s carcass - much like a vulture - eventually it’ll kick the bucket too.

No load of hard cash is large enough to allow a company to systematically screw things up; specially not under an economic system that equates “stable profits” with “failure to grow”.

And Nintendo’s actions aren’t the result of [metaphorical] brain damage; there’s a consistent pattern here of exploiting brand value for short-term profit.

I worded it in a dumb/certain/silly way but, unless drastic changes happen, I do find it likely to happen.

Look at how often Nintendo is surfacing negatively on the news:

• harassing a small dev studio over patents,
• trying to kill emulation while profiting off it,
• bricking hardware already sold to customers,
• demanding unreasonable prices for new games,
• dictating if you shall be allowed to feature one of its games in a speedrunning event…

Nintendo stopped being seen as a company that enables your fun, to become one that gatekeeps it. That’s brand damage - and really bad for Nintendo’s console sales; people are only willing to invest in a console if they’re reasonably certain they can have fun with it.

And at the same time, there are voices within and around Nintendo pushing the company towards the mobile market. Remember Pokémon Go? Or Ishihara saying the Switch 1 would flop, because of smartphones? If Nintendo console sales decline meaningfully, those voices will become louder and louder. Eventually Nintendo will focus primarily on the mobile market.

However people don’t typically buy mobile games; the monetisation strategy is completely different - microtransactions, gacha, lootboxes, all that crap. Most players (the “minnows”) won’t drop a penny on the game, but huge spenders (the “whales”) compensate for that, so it works.

The minnows aren’t just freeloaders, mind you; they’re required to keep the game alive. So mobile game companies need to fine-tune the pressure in their games - it should be just enough to encourage people to spend some money on the game, but not enough to shoo the minnows away.

But we’re talking about Nintendo here. A company willing to damage its own brand for a few additional pennies. Nintendo would not be able to see all those minnows and say “hey, that’s cool”, it would go full “ARE THOSE FREELOADERS STUPID? DON’T THEY KNOW THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BUY STUFF?”. It would tune the pressure way up, and ruin its mobile market, after it ruined its console market.

…perhaps it should go back to selling playing cards.

Two decades from now, people will talk about how Nintendo managed to ruin itself, from a gaming behemoth to some gacha subsidiary bought for a single yen.

Yeah, it backfired really bad - suddenly people weren’t just talking just about adults games, but also the Visa/Mastercard duopoly, corporations LARPing as lawmakers, and all of that.

Microsoft is already responding to the potential shift. The upcoming ROG Xbox Ally X handheld from Microsoft and ASUS will reportedly ship with a gaming-optimized version of Windows 11 with a dedicated Xbox UI and interface that aims to streamline the experience while boosting in-game performance and overall handheld efficiency.

Given how much Microsoft wants to shove AI tools every where in Windows, I don’t think this optimisation will make much of a difference.

GOG is making some amazing advertisement for itself, for the cause, and for the games. Genius move.

(I don’t know a single one of those games, but I’m redeeming the code anyway. Just to show support.)

Ditto.