I agree with your points but I think the problem is even with games that have good writing (and music and art direction and all the other bits and bobs that make up a video game) they often fall flat because the interactivity is not woven into them. RDR2 is just genuinely a well written western which is even more impressive considering it has to rank up there as one of the longest western storys ever told if you exclude something like a dime store novel named “Cowboy Kidd” that has been issued weekly since 1962. RDR2 would work just as well as a book, or a TV series or a movie or three. All the interactable parts are fun, but they’re also mostly separate from the writing and everything else barring some minor set dressing and the video game obligatory 2 endings depending on your ratio of puppy kicked vs. money donated

Disco Elysium for example doesn’t work outside of its medium. I mean there’s enough in there you could make a TV series out of it, or a book or pretty much anything and it’d still hold up but it’d lose a really core part of the experience because the interactivity is woven into the fabric. Your choices matter and the world reacts to it.

So here’s my suggestions as per videogames that would not work half as good if made into another medium. I’ll attach spoilers to it, but I’d recommend not clicking on them because it probably ruins a lot of what makes them good

• Metro 2033

CONTROL

The only good thing to come from Cyberpunk 2077

Ah c’mon the games pretty good

I’m not well versed on the History of real life PUF enough to answer that one, but for the SCP:

I do not get your point at all because it turns out you can do more than one thing. You can go hiking in a day and then also play videogames, with or without friends, at night. Or read a book, or watch a movie or whatever - these thing’s arent exclusive by design.

common thread for any type of police officer anywhere tbh. I’ll say you can sign up for that kind of job out of idealism but give it like 5+ years or so on the force at some point you have to square the circle. Either you adopt the ideals you enforce or alternatively you’re so much of a nihilist you figure your job is to be a mercenary to inflict violence on behalf of orders above for pay. What else are you gonna do to be able to sleep at night?

hard agree, the most leftist position is your life should be toiling, eating nutripaste and recreating in accordance to the 5 year plan. everything else is counterrevolutionary

Fine, correct, even!

I’m coming out swinging here.

Movies? Right out, between the distinct fandoms of both American Sniper Part V: Killing Children, the acolytes of Marveslop and guy who’s really into french indie cinema to sexually assault women there really is nothing to save there. Get rid of it, I say, what difference does it make?

Books? Pfff, there’s the door. A thousand women converted into abusal BDSM play by a badly written fanfic of twilight and you want that shit to go on? You in favour of Steel Storm and My Struggle? Thought not. Fuck books.

Paintings? While Homeland Security is waxing about Kinkade? Statues, as if that’s not the #1 signifier for alt right weirdos now? Away it goes!

I think you get the point. To judge a medium by it’s worst fans is inane, though. Capital G gamers suck, but so do so many different flavours or fans of other mediums. The problem is not the medium.

What’s the last thing you see on the page? There is absolutely a blank spot in there but it’s intentional

Where do you read up on techniques, then? I can read recipes and I’m a fine ass cook as substantiated by lots of people but what I want to learn is "if I were a stereotypical mom or grandma (vietnamese) what do I vietnamesically throw together out of the pantry? What do I even have in the pantry? What do I buy for special occasions because it’s worth the effort (and combine with things out of the pantry of mystery). Or is there even a pantry, does the whole thing kind of work on “go to local fresh market every two days”?

It’s enough of a melting pot I can find most non-persihables you mentioned easily but then there’s also really no good supply of fresh kimchi, for example. So I’m wondering, for example, with the abundance of sauerkraut here in germany if I were to just add some ingredients does that get close enough, you get me?

I can easily do the equivalent of spaghetti and meatballs, i.e. italo-american, for most of anything and give a local pan fry the japanese / korean / vietnamese spin but it’s still not the cuisine

I mean they do make basically everything

Wind Waker is not beyond criticism, even on the sailing part (what a slog in the original version in the midgame, honestly). But that wasn’t really what the hullaballoo was about back then, because the game wasn’t out. I personally do not understand how anyone can not marvel at the art style of Wind Waker but taste is subjective. I think this article gives an allright overview, even with “we were lied to!” by this 5 second trailer clearly styled after OOT with no mention of the actual game

Wait there was a schism? Guess I haven’t been on there in awhile.

This is at least 5 years back but I didn’t follow it too closely, IIRC they had a number of people leave over their refusal to go “we are entirely unpolitical” which of course would be a stupid thing to be for a creative writing site. I think it came after they cleaned up shop with their QA and threw out a shitload of grimdark edgelord bullshit that accumulated.

Wasn’t Public Universal Friend nonbinary and afab? The male pronouns are throwing me off.

Very much intentional, maybe go through it again

On the flipside I don’t think just boycott works, not with the way IP law is structured. If you want true archival of games that has to be put into law, otherwise eventually somebody just buys the Remnants of Ubisoft and figures all those long life SSDs aren’t worth it to keep around anymore.

I think if you wanted to do this you have to just get politically involved like in general. You can’t single issue this, there’s too many hurdles. From gerontocratic parliaments over to IP laws and a general populaces ignorance as to how important keeping history and archives is this was never going to fly. Very much a true love is possible only in the next world - for new people. It is too late forus. wreak havoc on the middle class thing.

I’ll repeat this as often as this comes up, Wind Waker was widely hated in online forums back when it was announced because the 12 year old who played OoT were now 16 and wanted LoZ: More Tits and Gore and that whole debacle predated Gamergate by 12 years despite basically just being “LoZ has gone woke!!!” with the particular words put through a thesaurus.

If that’s true, why have all the other Actions failed?

Cause it’s nominal and “bring underway legislation” is a catch all term. Petitions to democratic parliaments are bullshit, why would any of them care about - as you point out - a single issue thaat 0,22% of the population signed up for?

They might have to have it as a point of order for the next meeting, in which they all decide “nah, no legislation needed, shit’s fine” and be done with it. That’s how most petitions go, anyways. You cannot force a law into existence by petitions.

Does that mean as a US citizen I get to decide EU laws?

No, not how petitions work in the EU. Nominally it means they can force the EU parliament to bring underway legislation concering the topic, albeit there isn’t really a control mechanism for this. But say they do it anyways lest they lose even more credibility, considering games despite having existed for at least 50 years at this point are foreign objects to basically everyone that is the leftovers in the EU Parliament Ubisoft or whatever is gonna send two lobbyists and it ends up at at some sort of EU law that says “under reasonable circumstances video games should have to be playable after the copyright holder abandons service except if it costs them any money”

Everybody likes to joke about Joey Steel as a nom de guerre but Public Universal Friend goes so much harder

I guess it grows exponentially via exposure. Besides the woke I’m really impressed they keep managing to do community based QA to such a degree that the whole thing hasn’t devolved into my OC vs. the classics or the authors barely disguised sexual assault fetish.

Also probably more like 3,5k, a lot of the 8XXX slots are still unused since they don’t just go up numerically