People also have less disposable income. It’s easy to be lazy and keep a streaming service or two going that you’re not really using when money is flowing. When you have to cinch the belt, you tend to remember that you can cancel at any time and just jump from one service to another.

Assuming you don’t have more… piratic tendencies.

A picture from this ABC article shows gas cans, camping stove cans, and fireworks in the back of the truck. The truck battery somehow survived.

When I buy a game from GOG, it comes with the presumption that I will download the installer in a timely manner and store a copy on my local storage device. Assuming I have good backup practices, that’s really the end of the story. I can build a 100 new computers and install the game I bought on each one. GOG went bankrupt ten years ago? That’s a shame, but my installer works just as well as when they were kicking.

When I “buy a game” on Steam, I technically get an installer, but Steam isn’t going to help me keep it. Those 100 new computers are going to download that installer a 100 times. And if the 51st install comes around and Steam isn’t around anymore? Or Steam decides not enough people play this game anymore and it no longer makes financial sense to host the installer? Well, at that point I guess I’ll just regret not buying the game on GOG.

State of Decay is one of my guilty pleasure series. I know it’s got its faults, but I keep going back to it once every couple years or so.

The standard difficulty just nails that dopamine cycle of grinding and reward, until you’ve got a thriving community that can hold off all threats until the resources in the map are totally depleted and it’s time to move on.

I could probably get a bit better at the game and tackle the harder modes, but that would up the stress factor and make me more likely to put it back down faster.

I’m glad Microsoft is dropping their internal releases on competing platforms now, because otherwise I’d probably never play the upcoming third one as a Linux and PS5 player.

Electronics have lifespans. With refurbished parts, it’s hard to tell if you’re buying something that someone else whoopsie-bought and sent right back, or waited until a day before the end of the return period before sending back. And that return period might be long if they had an extended warranty through the manufacturer.

I’m generally pretty comfortable diagnosing hardware failures and isolating components, but so many electronics are a massive headache to break down and service, you often have to toss them as soon as one crucial component fails. For those, I’d rather spend a bit more and improve my chances of getting the most lifespan out of the whole.

For the Steam Deck, if I didn’t already have a good desktop PC and wanted to get into PC gaming, I would be happy to spend the full price on a new OLED. Just having it for travel and light usage around the house, I don’t mind holding out for a better price breakdown.

And this is of course also assuming that the refurbishing process is on the up-and-up. That’s not always the case

Ooh. Normally I stay away from refurbished hardware, but the Steam Deck has really good repairability reviews. The base OLED price is just a bit higher than what I would want to spend, so I’ll really have to consider this.

I started playing around 2022, so I don’t have a point of reference for some of your points. They did overhaul space stations visually, but they are mostly the same functionally system to system. I can’t remember if they made multi biome planets because frankly, I rarely land on the same planet twice. Again, they did revamp the appearances of land and water biomes to make them more interesting as well.

To me, No Man’s Sky is more about breadth and discovery rather than depth and simulation. I have come back to the game a number of times because of interesting expeditions or the addition of new mechanics like piracy or organic ships.

It’s not a game for everyone, and it doesn’t do any one thing better than any other game, but it’s a great experience if you want a solo space sandbox experience.

Corrupted Blood taught us that we needed to add the vital “I’m a malicious/selfish asshole” variable to our calculations.

Good catch. I was drunk when I wrote that comment on my phone. Either I misread the release date or I mistyped it.

Meh, the best way to play RDR was back in May 2014 2010 on an Xbox 360.

Remake RDR1 in the sequel’s engine you lazy bastards.

Dunno about TN, but in NC, a Weapon of Mass Destruction is a legal term referring to anything designed to harm more than one person simultaneously.

This led, for example, to a local headline about a man holding up a bank with a WMD because he used a sawn-off shotgun.

I think it’s a roundabout attempt to get us to wonder what the fuck Kick is. I’m not that curious.

Or… mountain folk who live up in the…mountains?

I think you misunderstand their point. PostIdent would only be useful AFTER someone took the time to rate the game. Steam does not require any official content/maturity rating in their store, just some subjective content descriptors. To do so would pass an additional cost onto developers. The US-based ESRB process, for example, can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to rate a title.

Further to your point, I try to limit the number of times I provide my personal ID online. It’s one thing when you show your ID at a bar and the bartender gives it back to you after a glance. It’s another when I’m sending a photocopy over the internet and trusting a remote, distant party to use the data once and discard it. Even worse if they save it for future use and risk leaking it later.

The PS3 also had damn few games to play at launch. If it wasn’t for Sony’s decision to ship it with a BD-ROM drive it probably would have been a total flop. Home theater nerds saved the PS3.