Be the change you etc.

Nothing inside a video game should cost real money.

No digital product should ever disappear forever.

Nvidia’s anti-competitive monopoly should be broken up over this API.

The fact AMD was visibly scared to even be associated with this project is a big fucking hint to regulators that CUDA is vendor lock-in tool which Nvidia guards at all costs.

It is always better to do that shit with a separate gizmo. Ideally, something computery enough that it will not betray you, or cheap enough that you can take a hammer to it when it does.

Never give your TV the wifi password.

Sony’s been fucked since 2005. The console war is over and nobody told them. Developers want to sell games to customers - and platforms are an obstacle.

Nintendo doesn’t care because they want “blue ocean” gimmicks with no competition. So: motion, tablet, handheld. Microsoft actively encourages the shift because they expect they’ll be The Only Platform, despite Steam selling so many Windows games that Windows is optional. Meanwhile - Sony has clung to exclusives because that’s what made the PSX and PS2 super duper successful and they do not have a Plan B.

They keep winning each generation, as if the blue AMD laptop is meaningfully different from the green one. The libraries are 90% identical. They keep having “no games” in the sense they have no games to lord over the other kids on the playground, when their core demographic is 30. This is how disruption always works: fantastic margins on dwindling control. Whatever you have is more profitable than what you don’t! Until suddenly you have nothing.

The economic case for bribing studios into a single platform is doomed. Has been ever since GTA 3. Really, ever since RenderWare made a generation of PC / PS2 / Xbox / GameCube titles look identical, until EA bought that company and destroyed them. Now every machine is powerful enough, to the point the last-gen PS4 is still relevant alongside the endgame PS5 Pro. Crossplay is the default, because fuck you, of course everyone who bought the same game can play each other. The writing is so clearly on the wall that Microsoft may not bother with another proper Xbox. Does anything think that’s because they’re losing money? Even the studios they delete are profitable. They are fucking around on a level above the 1990s cosplay that Sony desperately wants to maintain.

Nothing inside a video game should cost real money.

There is no ethical form of that business model. Games convince you to value arbitrary worthless rewards. That is what makes them games. That fiction can never be the same form of value as US dollars. You might as well try buying a hamburger with soccer goals.

Loot boxes barely even exist anymore, because people finally acknowledged they’re awful and abusive. Every alternative people rush to defend is that same abuse. Surprise - game developers made their manipulation more effective and less noticeable.

If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else. It is in $70 single-player games. It has been added to games people already bought. The skeeze factor does not matter, because of how much money this abuse makes. It’s now half the industry’s revenue. Only legislation will fix this.

‘You can’t all not work!’ is slavery with extra steps.

… and then Yuji Naka killed one of their biggest Saturn projects by throwing a hissy fit that a Sonic game was using the NiGHTS engine.

Frankly it’s a miracle the Dreamcast worked so well and had such great games. Sega was a fucking mess throughout the 90s.

Hey look, a business model that should be illegal.

I look forward to slapping random assholes who insist it’s somehow better than selling a product or service in exchange for money.

“This is worth eighteen bazillion chips. Here is five dollars.”

OpenMW has a Switch port.

Three mods make Oblivion the peak of its era:

• Leveled list fix. Any one will do. The base game fumbled it, and everyone knows that, so plenty of people have rebalanced it their own ways.

• Darnified UI. As with SkyUI: it scrunches things down to where they make sense on a 1080p monitor instead of a 480p television in the next room, and it adds a few sort-by options for loot goblins. There’s nothing to be done about the nested tabs because they’re fine. Morrowind has its mouse-driven WIMP setup, Oblivion has its 360 blades dashboard, it’s fine. They are endgame versions of what shaped their era.

• Quest message popup removal. You absolutely do not need a modal fucking dialog, ev-er-y single time your journal updates. The little ching! is enough.

Oblivion is fantastic so long as you use any leveled-list mod. That’s a tiny fix. The game plays wonderfully, to this day, so long as you stay level one and maybe bind jump to space.

What a bag of kneejerk hot takes this thread is.

This tech allows games to render like it’s 2003, and get a one-step filter to look like a goddamn Pixar film.

Foobar2000 works fine.

Right, you’ll have to collect the wave beam and screw attack all over again.

Exclusives have been a gimmick for at least a decade. Games are not made for one system anymore. They’re generic software. They’ll run on anything, if you try.

All you need is CHIM.

Huh, Fortnite is the next Family Guy.